The Sims Team
This is possibly one of the coolest things to be added in the Sims and really makes the world feel more lively. Things seem surprising, I love checking up on my neighbors on the mailbox (although I wish there was a way I could scroll to read everything instead of clicking the mailbox 50 times XD) I feel like there is no this new level of unpredictability when I play the game and I find interesting changes going on all the time. Such a cool, interesting addition that now feels like the sims has been missing before! 🙂
Personally, I'm finding this system really annoying. First off, it's really confusing that you have to enable or disable options separately for My Households and for Other Households. I thought I had the options disabled then noticed they were on for the Other Households, so now my current save is getting out of hand and I just started a couple days ago. For example I have one randomly generated household that is now up to 5 babies when they had none to start. The Landgraab household has 4 babies. Both the Goth and Spencer Kim Lewis households have moved out of their default homes and aren't even in any homes now, and both households also have 3 babies in them. The BFF household has moved twice, first into an actual home and now they aren't currently in the world. I regularly get calls asking about dating someone or trying to be friends with someone, yet I'm not even sure it's having any affect on anything.
The concept is really cool, it reminds me of the NRaas Story Progression mod for Sims 3 or even something like MCCC for Sims 4, though it needs more options. For example If you enable the adoption or have a baby options, they should have additional options for things like maximum number of children and other variables to consider instead of each setting simply being on or off. Then again I have a feeling this is another of those things where you need multiple packs to really get the most out of it, and seeing as how I just have the base game I'm probably missing a lot.
EDIT: I disabled the stories options completely yet I'm still getting the phone calls, is this normal? If so that's really annoying, though I wouldn't mind if it was optional to still get the calls with the stories disabled. Oh and in case anyone is wondering, I'm playing just the base game on an Xbox One which means no mods or anything that would alter the functionality of the vanilla game.
@valohim666Hi! I totally agree the NS system needs more options, like the maximum children limit you mentioned. I've disabled the progression options in my game but I have friends who've been saying their games are inundated with babies. As for the phone calls, they were added separately before the new story progression options. The first NS update was explained in this post from November 23, 2021.
https://www.ea.com/games/the-sims/the-sims-4/news/introducing-neighborhood-stories
Then the "From the Neighborhood to the World" update was released earlier this year, as explained in this post from March 15, 2022. EDIT: Hello? I just thought about it and this is the content of the OP by CM Cade! lol
https://www.ea.com/en-gb/games/the-sims/the-sims-4/news/neighborhood-stories-system
I believe that means the two sets of events are independent of each other, which is why we still get the phone calls even when the story progression is disabled. Also, the effects from the phone calls are real. When a sim calls to ask about trying for baby and you say "go for it", that household just might be having a baby soon. When a sim asks about hanging out as friends or going on a date with some other sim, they will likely gain or lose relationship with that sim, depending on the outcome. The only one I haven't checked is the one about getting engaged but I'm willing to bet that if you tell them to do it, then they will probably gain the engaged relationship status. The only way to be sure would be to play those sims and check their relationships panels. Another effect I've noticed is that my sims gain or lose relationship with the calling sim, depending on the outcome of the event. My sims also get a moodlet like "matchmaker" when a date goes well.
@JonaO703 Ugh so I guess no matter what I do I'll still get the calls. Well at least they seem to have died down a lot, which honestly I thought was odd. When I first started the fresh save I was obviously getting no calls since my sim had no friends, but then once I made just one friend it seemed like I had a call every single day asking about dating someone or trying to make a friend. Then I figured as I made more friends the frequency of the calls would just become completely absurd, but it seems like there are fewer calls now.
I've seen sims change careers and have babies from the calls so I know that those actually do something, though I wasn't sure about the date or friendly outing ones since I saw no place where I could actually check (unless I did as you mentioned and played as that sim which I didn't even think to try). At least with the career ones I seem to get a notification indicating the job change, as if I had asked what their career was. Then with a new baby sometimes the sim would call and ask me to come see it, or just call and say they were expecting which I thought was pretty cool.
I haven't even seen anything for engagements at all though so I also have no idea about that one, though as you said I would also assume that your actions will affect things. Honestly I didn't even know that engagements were possible with this update until I checked the links you provided (thank you for those by the way), so that's cool and I guess I'll see one eventually.
I've also noticed the relationship change pop up over my sim's head, as well as the moodlets for various things. I've seen the matchmaker one as well as one for someone having a baby, then another one from one of my sim's friends adopting a baby.
I do hope they will expand on this idea a bit more, though without adding some new pack you'd have to buy. I'm sure I'm in a very small minority, but I just don't like buying the packs for these Sims games and never have. I just don't like having to keep spending money on a game just to get more content out of it.
