[Insert: So I began this reply a couple of weeks ago, but was then out of commission for over a week because of the flu so haven’t really had the energy to wrap up this rather long-winded post before. However, I found the results somewhat interesting so even though it has been a while, I’m still going to finish the write up 🤓
Anyway, back to the original reply]:
Sorry to hear you haven’t been well, hope you’re feeling better again 😊 which you, probably/hopefully, are as writing up this reply has taken me ages, because we’ve been rewatching “Stranger Things” to get up to date for the last season, and each time I had logged into the forums someone shouted “Time for another episode” 🙄🤣
I also hope writing my reply will be easier this time🤞Like you, I also ended up using the copy-paste function last time, but it was still a hassle as I kept getting error messages - sigh.
Anyway, I decided to try to see if it makes a difference that I have more packs in terms of getting more varied randomly generated households by going to different locations and worlds instead of the base game ones in the copy that I’ve made of my event save. However, this is a bit slow going as I’m also playing my game at the same time, so it’s going to take a little longer for me to test. Hopefully, I’ll have something some time next week [insert: I’m still not done testing due to falling ill, but I have played a little more and have noticed some things that I might post about once this post is done].
At the same time I also began wondering about base game, but felt kind of iffy about the disable packs setting they’ve implemented, and then I remembered that my parents had actually bought it for the kids several years ago for our PS4, but none of us really took to it partly because we already had extra packs on the computer. And seeing as there wasn’t much point in buying the packs yet again if no one was really going to use it, it has just remained base game. And furthermore, it turned out that nobody had played since before Neighborhood Stories was introduced. So you were wondering if things have changed in regards to townie generation, and based on what I saw, it definitely has. Unfortunately, this was a one time test as we had updates set to automatic so the game updated while I was playing, but I started another new save afterwards in order to compare and this is what I experienced:
I am really sorry for the late reply, as since my last post, i have been getting in and out of sickness, different one everytime😇. Probably something went wrong with my immune system when i got the first one🫠. And somehow getting issue accessing the forums, either couldn’t login or getting page not found error🙃. And no worries about taking time to reply, since I also take a long time to draft one, since english is not my main language and I have the tendency to jump between topics😆.
Thank you so much for such a precious information on the townies generation before the neighborhood stories was implemented! Looking at the variations of family households generated at the time and now, it makes me want to cry of what we lost through the updates🥲.
I actually wanted to share my test results before the Dec patch, but I got sick. I planned to test again after the patch but was unable to due to my sickness🥲. I’m not sure if they changed anything after the Dec patch, but I noticed a few things from before the patch. For my test, I deleted all premade households when i first started the new save. And at the end of every sim day, I will check what kind of household generated and will delete multisims household before starting the next day. And here are what I found:
Sorry as well for my belated reply, but is has been a bit busy here 🙂 And sorry to hear that you’ve been having issues both health-wise as well as with the forums. Hopefully, everything will be better again very soon 😊
Now that I think about it, I’ve realized that in my previous post I probably made it sound as though the introduction of Neighborhood Stories is to blame for how random townies are generated. However, I don’t think that is the case as I have saves on the computer that I’ve started after the feature was implemented which still have the variety among the randomly generated households that I saw in my first test on the PlayStation. But these are all older saves. Instead, I actually think the problem is more recent and my guess would be that in part it has to do with their attempts to optimize the game and avoid save files becoming too large (and possibly also to cater to the players who have complained about too many townies being generated).
Unfortunately, whenever it was that they changed it and whatever changes it was that they made, the alterations are far from optimal especially if you play with just the basegame. It is a lifesimulation after all and I would expect the other households to show a variety in terms of family constellations just like real life and not just consist of either single sim households or ones with a single mother with a teen daughter and a child son no matter if you’re playing with basegame or multiple packs.
Seeing that you are only able to get various multi-sim households on the first day if you delete the premades and then pretty much only single mom-female teen-male child households after that seems like there must be some kind of error in the coding.
In the copy that I made of my event save to try and see which multi-sim households I would get, I have been seeing a little more variation, however, I’m also getting the feeling that part of it has to do with me having more packs. I’ve had my sim go to a bar where I’ve placed a couple of bowling lanes (from the bowling pack) and that seems to have helped generate households with a teen - mostly either the single female, teen daughter, child son household or a single female with a male teen, but also a few couples with a teen son. I’ve also sent my sim to restaurants (from the Dine Out pack) which seems to have created a few households with children.
So currently in this test save I have:
As you can see, the most common multi-sim household is the one you’re getting as well, and so far none of the couples have produced a baby despite having that option on in Neighborhood Stories. Only the premades have gotten babies, and as I didn’t delete any of them for this test, they still have all the babies that they had gotten earlier in my event save, which was a lot, but I haven’t checked if they’ve gotten more.
And then I have 3 additional multi-sim households that I’ve mentioned earlier as well. I believe they were all generated during the bug a couple of months ago where using a computer would generate households with a style influencer. I only deleted the randomly generated households with children when I made this test copy of my event save so these households stayed. They consist of:
My sim is friends with both of the female couples and both couples have called several times to ask if they should try for a baby. So far my sim has said yes every time, but only the couple with the dog has had any success. They’ve gotten 2 babies (a boy and a girl), not twins.
Oh yeah, and then I have about 330 randomly generated single sim households and around 90 premade households, the majority of which are multi-sim households, I think, although it could be 50-50, I forgot to check.
[I want to add some thoughts to the other part of your post as well, but I keep getting interrupted 🙄😑😆 Hopefully, I’ll find some time tomorrow]
