I just purchased Growing Together with this past sale and the very first time I played it, my Sim's husband had a good friend die. Within a Sims day or two, my Sim had her BFF die. WTH is happening?I didn't download any Growing Together mods after install so I'm assuming this is an issue with this pack. Is that correct? If so, I find it absurd, disconcerting, and like EA is playing a joke on us. I understand they're going for more realism but no....this isn't real. I get "killing off" obscure Sims very, VERY seldom, but Young Adult Sims who are friends is cruel & completely unrealistic. At a bare minimum, we should be given the opportunity to "cancel" it.So on that note, does anyone know of a mod that will eliminate this distasteful and unwelcome addition?

@columbia93 The bug thread about excessive deaths was only two people who thought neighborhood stories’ event balance was skewed toward too many deaths back around the time when Growing Together first came out. Neither said it continued happening with neighborhood stories off. If there’s still a bug in that balance, it doesn’t appear to be very widespread.I have seen more reports recently of people saying that neighborhood stories failed to stay off when turned off since For Rent released, though several later reported back after testing that removing MCCC seemed to fix the issue. Again, I don’t actually use MCCC so I can’t help you with troubleshooting its settings or setup, but I do still recommend you start your troubleshooting there.

@columbia93 Neighborhood Stories settings are easy - they're in Manage Households. There's a set of settings for "My Households" (off by default) and another set for "Other Households" (on by default). Switch into Other Households, click the symbol in the top right corner, and turn off die in accidents. (or use the top checkbox to turn off effects)

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@columbia93 I've just done a web search on MCCC causing excessive deaths and there are YouTube tutorials showing you how to tune out Emotional Deaths for one example. So there will possibly be more on that subject to help you out. I also found an external discussion on another forum with players who had tuned out too many deaths with it (for their needs that is) and only had old age deaths.There should be the occasional accidental death of played Sims with NS/Ageing disabled. We've discussed before on AHQ that hysterical death seemed to be popping up last year, I'm having a few more meteor deaths and drowning. But as I mentioned before, a backup save will help bring them back. You could also save important households to your Library too, if you don't already do so. That way you won't lose them altogether. It won't preserve relationships but will preserve the characters at least so you don't have to recreate them.With Growing Together installed and Neighbourhood Stories Off/Ageing Off but no mods as I'm on Xbox, I'm luckily not having the same issue as it shouldn't be happening to such an extent. So I think the players here have likely narrowed it down to the source of what's happening for you.I don't know if you took a look through the Mods section but I have seen advice given to players before to go directly to the mod creator too as there may be advice there.Good luck.

@columbia93Console players and PC players work together here and often collaborate on testing and comparing notes. I played previous Sims games on PC. Sometimes it helps to compare so that a PC mod user can identify where the problem lies.It's always recommended to test on an unmodded save.There's mod advice here:https://answers.ea.com/t5/Mod-CC-Issues/bd-p/the-sims-4-game-issues-mods-enI was a little confused as I see you're on the bug report for Neighbourhood Stories causing excessive deaths but then I see you've got in Disabled in your game. So you shouldn't have these particular death instances and notifications occurring with it off, I don't have any as I've mentioned. But another player made a great point on that thread that any new pack adds new Sims and Townies and if you have a lot of Sims in your game then it may cull some so that could be the reason Get Together caused an issue as it adds new families. So with that in mind you could check your Sim totals in Manage Households-Other Households and delete some random characters yourself to clear space, I do this regularly. Edit: I've asked around to get you the best advice, I've then confirmed the advice with a search and the consensus seems to be check the MC tuner. It's an option to try to address the deaths issue since it's obviously very frustrating. You can also create a backup and backup key households in your Library to restore lost Sims or versions of lost Sims as I mentioned earlier. But while MCCC may be the problem, with tuning it could also be the solution.As I'm thinking of what else might help it occurs to me that another thing you could do to test for the cause is to play a test save without Growing Together if you haven't already done that. Similar to testing an unmodded save. If nothing else here helps then that would be my next step.I've found a Sims community guide for MCCC that might help and has detailed info/tips on using it for death controls. It may be stuff you already know but in the spirit of giving clear information it's here incase you could find it helpful, but as I've mentioned AHQ does have a great mods section for assistance too.https://simscommunity.info/2023/08/27/mc-command-center-sims-4-guide/There's a lot here but I hope some of it is useful and it's all been checked thoroughly. As I've been looking at it I've kept updating it as I've got more info.Good luck

Growing Together: Why are my Sims BFFs dying?

18 Replies

PipMenace
Hero
2 years ago
@columbia93 You don’t need a mod. Just turn off dying in neighborhood stories - either for all sims, or just for the households your sims make friends with.
Moozilla13
Seasoned Ace
2 years ago
Exactly, if you go to Manage Households, you can customize options like this in Neighborhood Stories settings for each household, or even disable them completely if you want.
columbia93
New Ace
2 years ago
I don't know what that means "Neighborhood Stories". I saw that someone said turning it off using a computer and MC...which I did, although it was a bit confusing with the disabled/enabled options & figuring out what was what...but it only had to change it to enable and nothing about individual households (which no, that would be absurd) or the neighborhood (which still irks me something fierce because I don't want it ANYWHERE. Forcing me to have to do something to make it go away is frustrating and truly maddening, let alone making me do it on an individual basis.)
Anyway, I did the Enabled thing in MC like someone said, (exited/reentered game) then played a different household, where I see that one of my Sims came home from work sad because his friend just died...another stinking, lousy Young Adult FRIEND. EA must be a bunch of sadists. I'm really angry that there wasn't a warning about this before I bought the game. I mean, seriously....3 Sim friends have died in literally days and EA thinks this is "real"? I'm ready to go back to TS3. This is the worst thing EA has ever done. (Except for banning people for daring to speak out against them...so I'll probably get banned now - after spending hundreds and hundreds from buying everything that came out with Sims 1 onward - although I'm not doing it so much with TS4, which speaks volumes.)
ErykaNeko
2 years ago
Stories what they are and how to deal / not deal with them.
Neighborhood Stories System (ea.com)

Sorry about your deaths.
columbia93
New Ace
2 years ago
Ugh.
I understand what it means because TS3 had a "system", too (which I was able to disable through Mods to override). What I do not know is how to access it (or even why I should have to simply because EA seems to be a bunch of sadists). Going to that link is nothing more than a very abbreviated overview on what it is but it sure doesn't give any info on how to access it. It only shows a household, but I want it OFF for every single household in every single one of the Saves/Neighborhoods. Am I seriously going to have to go to each one of them to eliminate this absurd death issue that EA should never have allowed? And will I be able to tune the "deaths"? I'm okay with the elderly sims dying sporadically but I'm not okay with the younger ones...if they do, it should be a once in a lifetime kind of thing. The game is literally unplayable as is. This is frustrating and apparently I have to Google how to do this because this EA link is not much help. Like EA,
Again, Ugh.
PipMenace
Hero
2 years ago
@columbia93
Neighborhood Stories settings are easy - they're in Manage Households. There's a set of settings for "My Households" (off by default) and another set for "Other Households" (on by default). Switch into Other Households, click the symbol in the top right corner, and turn off die in accidents. (or use the top checkbox to turn off effects)
columbia93
New Ace
2 years ago
What's so funny is that people are saying it's in "Manage Households" but since I've no idea where that is, it's frustrating. I literally spent about 1/2 an hour clicking on all kinds of stuff on all kinds of screens and waiting through transitional screens, etc., before I finally came up "Manage Households". I truly don't understand why no one, and I mean none of the people who mentioned it, thought to actually point out where it was. It's double frustrating because I know I'm the kind of "helper" who provides details to make it easier.
That said, Neighborhood Stories isn't enabled so that isn't the issue.
I literally downloaded Growing Together 3 days ago and in the 2 days I've played it, the 3 Sims I played (2 later married so 2 Households) lost good friends or BFFs. Nothing else changed. In the 4 1/2 years I've been playing TS4, I've never had a close Sim die. On rare events, and I mean rare as in handful, I've had stranger elderly Sims die and leave an inheritance. That's it. I also don't know how the recent Sims died because I've never had it happen before. All I got was a notification for one of the deaths, just that it had happened, and the other two I found out because they had a Sad moodlet. Now I find out there is Emotional and Accidental deaths - but again, NH Stories isn't enabled.
I have Mods: MCCC, Little Ms Sam, Twisted Mexi & . I had already made sure they were up to date with the 6th update.
I can't play the game this way.
Moozilla13
Seasoned Ace
2 years ago
@columbia93 Since Neighborhood Stories isn't enabled, the only thing I can think of is a potential mod effect. Even though, as you mentioned, your mods are all updated, it's possible one of them has a setting that's causing sims to be culled that normally shouldn't be. Since it sounds like the issue doesn't take long to occur in your game, it might be worth trying to play through a clean new game save with no mods at all, just to see if you still experience the same issue, if only for process of elimination purposes.
simsplayer818
Hero
2 years ago
@columbia93 your Sims shouldn't be dying off without Neighbourhood Stories enabled. I don't play with mods as I'm on Xbox but the usual advice is to remove mods to test it without them and then add each one back to see which one is causing the issue.
You could also go to Game Options>Gameplay and turn off ageing incase that setting is causing Sims to die off naturally. I play with it off.
I run back up saves incase of accidental deaths. If a Sim dies I can go to my back up save to the point before they die and stop it happening. I just had a favourite Sim drown, I got her back. Same with Hysterical laughter deaths, etc. You can also use Death Flowers to revive played Sims who die accidentally.
https://simscommunity.info/2022/11/11/the-sims-4-death-flower/
We've got a specific section on Mods if you haven't seen it, they're not within EA control obviously but there's still a lot of help and advice there from some real experts who are incredibly knowledgeable. If it is mods you might find some guidance there.
https://answers.ea.com/t5/Game-and-Mod-CC-Issues/bd-p/the-sims-4-game-issues-mods-en
Good luck
PipMenace
Hero
2 years ago
@columbia93 I believe MCCC has something called Story Progression that is similar to neighborhood stories, but I’m afraid I can’t help with where its settings are as I’ve never used it. But you might want to start there.