The animals are way too needy and need CONSTANT attention in the Sims 4.

Question

I hope I'm not alone in this, but the animals need CONSTANT. attention in this game and I am for real about to just not play with pets or animals at all. It is not fun. My dog cannot do anything for themself. They cannot eat or go potty without one of my sims constantly telling them to. I'm trying to play with my real life family as sims and we have 4 cats and 1 dog, and oh my god. All the cats are terrified of the fireplace. They scream and cry at it all day until they pass out from exhaustion. My cats have ran away like 15 times because they can't stop screaming and crying in front of the tv or fireplace and won't eat or sleep. And there isn't any way that I know of to get over these fears for animals like there is for humans.

And the barn animals, oh my goodness, for my first CL gameplay I played Cecilia Kang, a premade sim. She is a freelance programmer by default. She has a veggie garden and a chicken coop. I gave her 2 hens and 1 rooster and adopted a dog, which happens to have an energetic trait which of course requires a walk or a jog every day.

Lo and behold with chicken care, garden care, household chores and walking the dog, she has almost zero time to complete her programming gig without fillmotive cheats. And gardening has become a lot more demanding. Plants will get bugs and weed everyday and it takes 50000 hours to tend the garden (obvious exaggeration but you get my point). If you do garden chores you're out of commission for the rest of the day, recovering from the stank and how uncomfortable it makes the sim.

You literally won’t have time to garden or do anything else. Caring for animals isn’t hard, it’s a constant activity. It doesn’t end. Your sims just won’t have time to do anything other than look after animals.It is NOT fun. It feels so much like a chore and like my sanity is dwindling. I want to like farming and taking care of animals so bad. I don't mind a challenge but my sims do NOTHING ELSE but take care of the animals. Why does the barn get dirty every single day? And the coop? It's crazy.

I hope there is work being done to make the animals less awful to play with, I love animals. Pets were always my favorite expansion in Sims games but in this game theyre just horrible.

pipmenace · Answer

Dogs need to be trained. You’ll only need to tell them to go until they learn to go to the bathroom outside, at which point they’ll go by themselves.

Cats & dogs do have what I consider a bug in that they tend not to be able to find things on another floor or the other side of a large lot. So make sure you’ve put bowls and litter boxes near where they spend the most time. If you’re on a computer, I believe there’s a mod to improve this called Pets Can Find Pet Stuff.

I also consider how long it takes to walk the dog in most neighborhoods to be a bug - seriously, sometimes a “short” walk is literally all day and the sim, dog, or both are exhausted and starving by the time they get home. If you give the dog the “independent” trait you can choose to “send outside” and they’ll walk themselves. Again, if you play on a computer, there’s also a variety of different mods - dog walkers, walking multiple dogs, allowing kids to walk dogs, etc.

As for farm chores… as a country girl, yup, you have to do chores every day. 😉

If you have Horse Ranch, you can hire a ranch hand. Even if you don’t, base game allows for hiring a gardener and/or maid. But if you don’t have too many plants you can generally care for them yourself - you’ll get faster as gardening skill levels up. Also, once the plants are healthier, it’s not the end of the world if you leave them buggy/dry/full of weeds for one day. Just don’t let it go too long.

Pet fears are unfortunate. There is, once again, a mod if you play on computer that allows you to help a pet get over a fear, but otherwise it’s best to just rearrange to keep them away from things they hate. Scared of the computer? Put it inside a little office and lock the door to pets. Scared of the stove? Make sure the kitchen is off to one side and ideally closed off. Scared of a fireplace? Close it off or remove it. 🤷🏼‍♀️

daikoyu · Answer

If you have Snowy Escape active the heater if you want a time out. Pets will forget all needs. They are obsessed with this thing and just sleep. This of course only help with the needy aspect.

I don’t have much issue with them. They eat, play, and use without problem the litter. Dogs are not much harder, but my dogs have mostly independent. So, they walk themself. I dislike in the beginning how pets were programmed in Sims 4 but now I find it okey, after I learned which traits I should avoid or not have more as 1 pet with these traits (loyal + affectionate)

Generally, I find the game to easy, so I am happy that the farm animals need a little more attention. I think the team programmed this right in this case.

sheznyellow · Answer

@nymphaeaeae Agreed! These pets are so needy. I made the mistake of having 2 dogs and cat. I can't do anything else except care for these pets.

nennarc · Answer

Agreed, this must be fixed. I mean you can't cuddle goats all day long, you have a job to attend to as well and a family maybe 🙂

corny48 · Answer

Not everyone uses mods though. Especially for laptop users because mods crash the whole system 9times out of 10.&nbsp;

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The animals are way too needy and need CONSTANT attention in the Sims 4.

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