Re: PLEASE stop sims from autonomously using their phone

And first person mode is completely ruined because of this. It’s a cool feature but it’s not even usable since they’re only looking at their phones half the time!

I agree this is out of hand. Even the teens taking a million selfies. Unless the action actually takes a photo, I don't want it! Useless animations make tasks take three times as long to do (It already takes a sim like 15 minutes to walk to the other side of a medium sized house, when it shouldn't take more than 2-5min).

Sometimes I wish I could have certain sims without a smartphone and just have a wall phone like the old days, lol.

@MornimrasHello 🙂 There are a few things you can do to help in the meantime until EA Maxis ever decides to actually hear our complaints and help us with them....

You can mute your phone by opening the cellphone interface in the game. At the top an icon to mute should be there. You will still recieve texts... but at least the phone is silenced.

Another is to have your sim simply ignore the calls and texts that come in. Some of us players have found that when your sim ignores these calls or text, the friends or strangers of these sims will stop calling.

If that is not enough and you play your games on PC... leave it to our talented modders to come to the rescue. There are a couple of mods on Curseforge and Patreon.com that changes the behavior of our sims phones. One will alter the frequency of your sims pulling out their phones to play video games.

Here is the one I think you will love... https://www.patreon.com/posts/no-constant-69751697

The sad truth, is a good majority of this generation find these acts as part of the norm. All too many people are whipping out their phones in the midst of conversations with people in front of them, at the dinner table, in the middle of dates, when in social outings. There was one young family at a restaurant who had a precious little girl sitting at the table across from them. Both the mother and the father were on their phones the majority of their stay while the little girl sat quietly behaved watching them. They barely spoke a full sentence to her. It took all I had to tear the phones out of their hands and get them to pay some attention to her. These people are literally addicted to their phones in fear of missing out on the latest things. How sad. So... they bring them into the game as socially acceptable and part of the norm. It is ironic, for as some simmers say... this game is supposed to be about community and brining us together. So, why not have the sims acting the same? I don't think the creators of EA Maxis know what that really means. 

It's becoming more excessive with every update, along with all the phonecalls. Definitely needs tuning for me. I wish we could just switch them off completely and give our Sims a timeout from them.

Definitely it’s way too much .  Sometimes I yell at them to put the phone away 🫣

Do you have the Eco-Lifestyle expansion pack installed? The constant pulling out and tapping on the phone might be due to the N.A.P. (neighborhood action plan): "Fun-Loving community", which includes video gaming (which is available on the phone). Use the shift/click cheat on your mailbox to see, click on "instant repeal neighborhood action plan". If it's there, repeal it, get rid of it for that household. Your Sims won't be taking out their phones as much. I recommend repealing all of the N.A.P.s at every household you're playing (if you’re not directly playing Eco-Lifestyle), as they affect your gameplay. The N.A.P.s change every Sim week. I hope I have helped.

Do you have the Eco-Lifestyle expansion pack installed? The constant pulling out and tapping on the phone might be due to the N.A.P. (neighborhood action plan): "Fun-Loving community", which includes video gaming (which is available on the phone). Use the shift/click cheat on your mailbox to see, click on "instant repeal neighborhood action plan". If it's there, repeal it, get rid of it for that household. Your Sims won't be taking out their phones as much. I recommend repealing all of the N.A.P.s at every household you're playing (if you’re not directly playing Eco-Lifestyle), as they affect your gameplay. The N.A.P.s change every Sim week. I hope I have helped.

This is definitely not because of a NAP - it’s apparently a feature of the game that is super, insanely annoying. The sims aren’t even doing anything (nothing in their queue), they all just have insane phone addiction, even elders while they go jogging 🙄