4 years ago

Neighborhood Stories makes the game virtually unplayable.

Unless you just want to have a laugh at the absurd AI, that is.

I came back to this game after about a year and left NS on for a few days because I wanted to check it out. Over that time, 1/4 of the sims my household knows are dead, the NPC sims have completely shuffled households around so that very few live where they used to, and every house is full of babies and animals.

How the heck is this system meant to be played? I can't go to a single residential lot without getting slammed with notifications that multiple babies are about to be taken by child services because they're starving. Why would NPCs keep churning out babies when they live in a small 1-bedroom house? And aside from the babies you then must contend with all the sad, starved animals who fill up your action queue with the "pet" command. At some level I can understand enjoying a bit of quirkiness and imagining some scenario for why Judith Ward would move out of her mansion and adopt 5 dogs, but when every other sim does that too it stops being quirky and starts being a headache. If you want to visit a specific sim's house, you have to scour every single lot in every world to see where they went. And sometimes you can't even do that, because they died and you missed the notification for it.

And turning NS off doesn't stop the headache either. The game INSISTS that you deal with sims autonomously wanting to add babies/animals/spouses to their households by having them call you incessantly. And I mean incessantly. This game actively punishes you for making friends with NPCs, because as soon as you are friends they'll never stop blowing your phone up to ask permission to engage in the system that you turned off.

I'm honestly about at the point where I won't touch this game again until a mod comes out that blocks the Neighborhood Story system completely.

gameplay issue

11 Replies

jpkarlsen
Hero (Retired)
4 years ago
@Backstabbath88
Do you happen to have MCCC installed? This mod also have story progression. Combined with NS it can be quite overwhelming.
33Rapture
4 years ago
I feel the same. For a while I had it turned on and didn't realise, when I got dream home decorator I'd go to do a job and find 7 people living in the tiniest apartments. Not only did it not make sense, it meant you had to speak to every single one of them to complete a job. The notifications though are so frustrating, you can mute the phone so you don't hear the noise but you still have to see the pop up. I wish you could block sims from calling!
Backstabbath88
4 years ago
@jpkarlsenThe issues with Neighborhood Stories existed before I had MCCC. Ironically, I installed MCCC in hopes I could find some option to stop NSes from happening (there isn't one) and yes I turned off all story progression on the mod's end as well.
jpkarlsen
Hero (Retired)
4 years ago
@Backstabbath88
Then it sounds like you only disabled NS in My Households and not in Other Households. That is the default anyway.
I am also a bit surprised that you get notifications about children being taken away simply by visiting a household you are not playing.
khitteh
Seasoned Ace
4 years ago
@jpkarlsen wrote:
I am also a bit surprised that you get notifications about children being taken away simply by visiting a household you are not playing.
That happens with the decorating job in DHD. The babies randomly lying around the house where mother dumped them due to their baby mania from Neighbourhood Stories are always basically starving. And the decorator always gets notified about them being starving, meanwhile the parents are happily running around generally ignoring them.
Backstabbath88
4 years ago
@jpkarlsen I intentionally left NS on when I played for the past 3 days. This post was to give feedback on my experience with it, and I now have it turned off. And then after turning it off I still get phone calls from NPCs asking for permission to do everything, lol. afaik there's no way to turn those off.

I am genuinely curious how NS is supposed to be a playable experience, much less why it's on by default. New players to Sims 4 must be having a REALLY confusing experience because of it.

And yes, I visited the Goth household and I got 3 notifications that their babies were about to be taken away. Later the same thing happened when I went to the Ito household.
xochiquetzl_xkvn
Seasoned Ace
4 years ago
@Backstabbath88, @jpkarlsen
The notification that babies are about to be taken away is a long-standing issue that predates Neighborhood Stories. There's a bug report marked "Needs Saves" here: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/NEEDS-SAVES-Non-active-household-baby-taken-away-for-neglect/m-p/8813801/highlight/true#M125316
Basically, though, my experience is that if you're playing rotationally, or if you have adult children move out and have children, or if MCCC or Neighborhood Stories produces a baby, any time you're on the lot with the baby the parents (even if they're level 10 parenting) are playing video games, watching TV, and chatting with randos while their baby cries and cries and cries. The "taken away" popup sometimes hits you in the face the second you load the lot. If my Sims visit another Sim with a baby, they feed that baby no matter what other purpose they might be there for. ("Sorry, before we have our fistfight I apparently need to feed your baby. There. OKAY, LET'S BRAWL!")
Backstabbath88
4 years ago
@xochiquetzl_xkvn Yea I'm aware of the bug, and I know EA is as well, which is what makes it all the more perplexing why they would create a system that ensures every NPC household will start spawning babies which makes the problem occur at almost every residential lot.
daikoyu
Seasoned Ace
4 years ago
I tested NS now a little more in my modded save because I wait for the patch (I need to add body/sexual oriented to all my townies, so I will start again a new save and save all my tweaked townies again)
NS default settings:
Spoiler
My first try was not to change anything and let NS go wild for for all my sims (inkl. hearted) NS was successful to destroy almost all my families with unwanted babies/adopt childer&pets, dead, move out and in to 1 bed houses, all these within 4 weeks.
NC with custom settings:
Spoiler
I started then again in my starter save and edit EVER single Family before I truly started to play. Each family get her settings and some family I disable it complete. Per default I let deaths, move in and out, get a job and quit job on. These settings would only work with new created townies. What should I say? I was surprised pleased with the result. As a family got pregnant, I disabled it for this family, and it worked without issue. No single of my hand edit NPC had a NS-scenario which he was not allowed.
I would love it if I got more function there as; Townies can romance, townies can get married (and maybe invite your sim to this marriage), get friends, get enemies and maybe a toggle in NS to allow aging for these special family (I play with aging off, so I only want these for specific households) I am truly surprised of this system, and how good it worked if you edit this before you start a game.
I don’t like the AI and thinks that they AI need a lot more tweak for *smarter sims*. I am not surprised they ignore infants. Sims don’t feed pets, and as I know they are not allowed to full a bowl, but they can donate money with autonomy on. I think the team should tweak the AI so that sims are allow to full a bowl and feed an infant if it hungry, generally the AI is awefull in this game and I toggle it off. Sometimes I try it again I just roll with my eyes and toggle it off again because they just watch TV, troll the forums or want to talk with ever sim, even sims with trait loner are social butterfly in this game.
So, i agree with @Backstabbath88 as long sims can’t take care of infants/pets they shouldn't create an infant/pet army with NS.
ToraUF0
4 years ago
@Backstabbath88 Yup... Same here. Moreover, I can't seem to edit the settings at all. I try to click the icon to turn off neighborhood stories for a specific household, but nothing happens. I have never been able to customize the options... I can only enable/disable them in the settings, but I want to customize, so that they can die but not adopt babies.... for example.