Sims Abnormalities. Adopting 4-6 Kids or Pets for Example.

I think the problem is not with having neighborhood stories on but excessive changes it makes all the time. Adopting 6 kids or pets in a short period of time is just too much.

It would be useful to have option to slow down the changes it makes.

I haven't had the adoption option on for neighborhood sims because of this. I turned it off after the werewolf family called me three days in a row to come and see their new adopted baby, and then I decided that you're not getting a fourth one

Also, sims breed like rabbits 😕 Families will keep having babies until the sim limit is full, but I don't want my neighborhood to die so I keep it on. At least they can't have babies at t he same rate as with adoption.

Could we add some kind of child limit to stories? Or an automated thing that counts the amount of beds in a house so that sims don't multiply over that? Adoption is completely horrible, sims keep adopting babies back to back until there is no more space in household (and that's why I never have that option on), sims keep making babies until their household is full or until the parents are too old to have babies (which I still have on because I don't want my neighborhood to die off completely). And if sims create relationships, why can't they move together autonomously? Or at least give us an option to see npc sims' relationships so we can merge them on our own. 

I think the sims' traits affect this very strongly.

Like, many of the premades have the Family-oriented trait, and those sims have a much higher chance of having children through Neighborhood Stories. I've noticed the Goths and Bjergsens always have tons of children in every save for example, and what you said about Kristopher Volkov is the same, he's family-oriented but doesn't have a partner so he can only adopt (and does frequently).

I'm not sure what affects the pet adoptions but it could perhaps be Dog lover/Cat lover?

To me this reflects real life nicely, because I know some families with 4-6 children or more, and some with no children at all. 

But, if you want the behavior to be different in your game you can always alter it--

Either by turning the "have children" switch off for a while and only turning it on sometimes, or maybe even modifying the Family-oriented sims in CAS with the fulleditmode cheat so they don't have that trait anymore?

I agree it would be great to have something more detailed than an on/off switch in the future. Like a slider for more specific levels of probability, or maybe a Common/Uncommon/Rare checkbox where we could select for various neighborhood stories events to be common, uncommon or rare for various households.

One thing I've noticed over time is that the system seems to be balanced the best when I'm playing one household and everyone including NPCs is on normal aging.

When I play rotationally with only the active household aging and only occasional aging of NPCs, it does feel like the changes in town happen too often and too randomly-- because Neighborhood Stories is still going at the same rate but aging is much slower. NPCs have way too many things happen to them in each lifestage! And way too many of them die in accidents, because those odds are now much higher than the odds of them dying from old age, etc.

I received a tip from someone else that it might make more sense to have the Neighborhood Stories system enabled only occasionally while playing in rotation, kind of like I was already doing with NPC aging.