Toooooooo long
Is it normal that it takes my Sim all night just to cook three things — eggs, biscuits, and fruit salad? My Sim ends up going to bed at 5 a.m.! When will cooking be fixed so it doesn’t take so long? ...
Forum Discussion
I didn’t know that — why hasn’t it ever been fixed? It’s happened to me that my Sims cook at all speeds!
I try to avoid multitasking, but sometimes it just happens automatically.
Sometimes we have a party or want to plan meals for the week or for several Sims — but what I mean is that each recipe takes an unrealistically long time! Cooking an omelette can take an hour or more sometimes.
Same here, I also prepare food in advance so my Sims can eat leftovers — but at some point, you still have to cook those leftovers in the first place!
Others arguments I discussed with my friends :
- Honestly, cooking speed feels totally unbalanced compared to other activities. My Sims can finish painting a masterpiece faster than frying an egg.
- Even if you upgrade the stove or have a high cooking skill, the difference is barely noticeable. It doesn’t make sense that a level 10 chef still takes ages to make a salad.
- Time management in The Sims 4 is already tricky — if cooking takes too long, it messes up the whole daily routine (work, hygiene, sleep…).
- The game punishes players who want to play “realistically” and have family meals together — by the time one Sim finishes cooking, everyone else is starving or asleep.
- It’s worse with larger households: cooking for 4–6 Sims takes forever, even when using the “Serve” option.
- I’ve noticed that Sims waste time doing random animations before and after cooking — washing hands, chatting, or walking around the kitchen for no reason.
- It would be great if cooking time scaled more logically: quick meals = fast, gourmet meals = slower. Right now, everything feels like it’s slow motion.
- Mods can fix it easily, so it clearly isn’t a technical limitation — it just needs a proper tuning update from EA.
Let's be honest, time is the least realistic aspect of this game. The lifespans, the seasons, the moon cycles, the time spent doing tasks... it's always questionable. The IRL time taken by Sims to make a dish is kinda fast, it's the Sim's time overall that makes it seem too slow. In the Sims' universe time passes extremely fast.
I don't know why things are the way they are, but if I can take a guess, I'd say it's because having a realistic time would make the game more boring. For example, when playing with the normal lifespan, without considering seasons length, and considering that Sims become young adults around the age of 18 years old, that makes them become elders at 44 years old, and die from old age around the age of 50 years old. But if we start taking into account seasons length it really is completely crazy.
I forgot earlier to share a tip to keep Sims awake longer in the kitchen: add a cristal that give Sims an energized moodlet. I do that to keep my Sims awake to finish their university homeworks.
