Growing Together: Why are my Sims BFFs dying?
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? ...
Forum Discussion
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)
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.
- @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.
@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
I've literally been playing The Sims since the first rendition came out, so I'm not a novice. I also have found people asking for help back when Growing Together was release because they were having excessive deaths, so this isn't some random thing that I've materialized out of thin air. Again, I have NEVER had a Sim die. In the 4 1/2 years of playing TS4, no Sim has ever died. Period. And with Wedding Stories screwing up weddings, High School screwing up Proms, and even the Decorator pack having the Designer career most of the time freezing the game so you have to restart it, it doesn't seem far-fetched to believe that there is indeed an issue with the pack.
I spend more time updating and checking out mods and CC than I do playing, because EA updates constantly as they refuse to do the job they are being paid to do correctly the first time. Then they setup forums so people who don't work for EA can also do the job EA is paid to do, maybe. It doesn't help that it's pretty hard to get help when people believe you have no idea what you're talking about.
There's a reason why I've owned every pack of S1, S2 & S3, and not all of them in S4.
@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.
I know they did with Sims 3 but I don't know if they also have it for Sims 4.I don't recall seeing anything like that here. MCCC does have controls and tuning but I don't really do any tuning and certainly never did any tuning in the past 3 days. <shrug>
- @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.
