Overwhelming Ui

+1, the ui is such a mess, especially with their weird inertia issues on mac... if i could just scroll and see everything in a list without having to grab the bar and slowly drag it down, that would make the whole game soooo much more enjoyable

It has become very bloated, every expansion adding more. They need to streamline it, maybe combine features, remove what feels redundant. 

It’s obviously a reality—we no longer know what actually has impact. The UI doesn’t serve the life mode gameplay at all, and that makes it bad.

The stories from packs need to be taken out of notifications. They should have a unique, standard interface that makes you want to read and follow the progression, along with a few cutscenes. If it’s a notification, it gets lost in the clutter; if it’s an emotional buff with a tooltip explaining it, it also gets lost in the clutter.

I don’t know if the issue with emotions is a UI or a gameplay problem. With the sheer number of buffs stacking up without the player’s real intention, it sometimes becomes impossible to meet the prerequisite conditions (a specific emotion) to validate something. The system has become uncontrollable and invisible, buried in the background with everything else (traits and even more things I don’t even know what they are, all generating more notifications with no meaningful player action).

For example, the new luck system is stupid because it further reduces the visibility of everything that explains why a given Sim is unlucky that day, adds even more clutter to the Sim’s information on the UI, and creates an additional daily notification. If, for instance, the Sim manages to stay focused on a specific activity the player wanted that day, that’s already luck… And it’s unbearable that the suggested “solution” is to disable features or even entire packs. This is clearly a symptom of poor integration.”

On objects, interaction bubbles, and, since build mode, it would be nice to see what emotions can be triggered and which skills can be developed.

Tracking skill progression from a dedicated Sims interface tab isn’t very useful, since players don’t really know what those levels represent and the information quickly gets lost in notifications. For example, the Handiness skill allows both crafting objects at the workbench and repairing or upgrading household items. It would make more sense to visually tie skill progression directly to the objects or actions, so players immediately see their mastery when using an object or performing an action.

Additionally, each object could include a small gamification section, with replayable scores and daily objectives that grant bonuses upon completion. Honestly, displaying a skill at level 10 permanently takes up unnecessary UI space, especially since a mastery diploma is already hanging on the wall in the house…

Finally, there is very little visibility on possible action chains. For example, eating only home-cooked meals made with ingredients from the garden constitutes an action chain. But I think there are many more, and they should be highlighted with bonuses to make life mode more engaging and fun.

Overall, I think life mode is too focused on the individual and their personal retrospective, while the funniest parts are Sims together, their integration into the environment, and what that produces in the moment. All the character details—that’s up to the player to create, based on the narrative they want. It shouldn’t be the game imposing it (for example, adding an extra “fear of the dark” buff or similar things should only come from specific traits).

Yes!! Like Businesses & Hobbies, you can select which meet ups you want to be notified for!

oh so it’s not just me who goes a bit insane because of the overgrown ui…

all these events and festivals and weekly prom — that’s an unbearable influx of notifications and forced gameplay. i’ve already deleted almost all the holidays because sometimes it’s just too much, but there’s nothing to do to cancel the festivals or events. like can i PLEASE turn off the notifications about henford chicken contest or whatever it’s called, at least for my urban family? and sport events notifications? and can i please ignore a holiday without deleting it and without getting a sad moodlet for skipping it?

and on top of that the only option to check the neighborhood stories is to manually check and get separate notifications for every event instead of one notification that would summarize everything that’s happened. as if i’m not already drowning in notifications.

and phone calls? can every sim i know please leave me alone, i don’t want to give advice whether they should date someone or not.

can i just play without fighting against the overwhelming UI jumpscaring me every minute

PLEASE sims team, we'd LOVE (and NEED!) the ability to turn on and off individual event notifications!! i don't want to constantly be getting festival notifications for worlds i don't live in or don't go to! for example, i don't need notifications (sometimes i don't even want the invite phone calls) for the city living and snowy escape festivals when my sims are living in henford-on-bagley but it makes sense for me to get the cottage living festival notifications because my sims live there and have farm animals! if i don't have teens in the household i shouldn't be getting sports day/high school years/thrift tea (this one annoys me so much because i never use it!) related notifications. ideally i'd want to be able to choose and/or have auto notification options based on my household sims ages/where they live/maybe even sim interests if it's possible. PLEASE ea and sims team hear our pleas, this is something the game so desperately needs if you're going to keep releasing packs with features that give notifications SO frequently!!

I feel the same, its beyond ridiculous how many events there are and we can't delete them or remove notifications for them. There needs to be a way to turn them off or delete them like with the holidays.

Personally, I sick of the GF lounge events. I'd like to be able to turn all of them off.  I am so sick of being invited to share my talent. I'd like to control when they do and do not happen. 

Same for the Tea Shop events. Comedy Night? Poetry Night? No. Please, let me turn them off/on. 

Give us a way to plan or own Poetry Night, our own Talent Night. As it is it's just mindless disruptive blather. Give us control. 

Yeah, there's a bunch of things that are quite overwhelming. The biggest issue to me is the factor that the speed of time in game makes it difficult to truly enjoy these things if I participated, and with the fact some happen simultaneously, it's too much. If it was with my modded game, no problem. But even so, the vanilla version needs work. My only respite is the fact that it if is ongoing, my sim doesn't need to participate. It can be cancelled early. Though there are some events my sim just doesn't get invited or prompted to go, so I only get a notification, which is fine. YMMV.

As far as the calendar is concerned, I haven't really bothered to check, but it might be edited out? I know one can add events. Upfront, I'd think if we don't have that, there should be an ability to do so. In fact, overall, I'd think a checklist for the sim I'm playing should be available to opt in/out of things in game. That would at least mitigate the constant load of things to do. I can only deal with so much so far even with some cheats, but there are certainly things that happen out of my control and it's the constant need to manually deal with that being a pain. This is 100% not an issue if I modded my game. There honestly should be better control like that because otherwise, playing this game is a lot less like a sim and more like playing some hard mode at life. I'm supposed to chill, not get so much anxiety.

Agree. There are the ads, the events, some more gameplay notifications. 

I had discovery quest on a new save, I have to disable these, i was literally flooded at every action. Tutorial also need some slowing down not to flood new player with too many information at once.