The Sims Team
@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.
I'm on console, I disabled this function because it added too much to the problem of constant phonecalls and because I personally hate adding babies to households that don't have the resources/appropriate setup and because "No" was being accepted as "Yes" so multiple babies were still appearing (it harked back to The Sims 3 babies lying in neighbours gardens screaming their poor little heads off). I also have elders asking about trying for a baby, all reported on the appropriate threads.
I wish disabling the function stopped the additional phonecalls. Yesterday for example it inexplicably stopped my Sim from getting to her exam even though she was stood outside the uni building. After 2 calls in that hour of waiting for her exam to start, she missed the timeslot somehow because the call about "trying for a baby" happened at the same time as the exam start. I ended up exiting without saving and doing it again as by the time she got there it affected her performance in the exam. She's also got her sister pestering her almost daily asking about trying for a baby but she has a family of 6 already and her Aunt who has a max household is asking too.
I understand the idea of Neighborhood Stories and in theory I should like it but my game is so badly impacted by bugs and nothing new every works quite as it should.
I think that if this is going to be tweaked as it goes along, it should stop the calls if it's disabled in game options...but then my game options controls don't always work either and some things that are Off still work when they shouldn't.
@simsplayer818 Reading your comment makes me kind of glad that I don't have anything other than the base game. One of my favorite YouTubers plays this game pretty regularly and even just seeing the calls and glitches there annoys me, so I can only imagine what it can be like actually having to deal with them. The situation you mentioned with your character would have frustrated me more than I'd like to admit, and I would have exited without saving too because I absolutely can't stand it when something goes wrong in a game that I had zero control over. I can accept when I personally make mistakes, but when the game makes them for me that is not okay.
I want to like this story system because the concept is one I really like, but as with so many other things in this game the execution on it falls short. I mean at least it's better than the system in Sims 3, which I don't think that one even worked at all lol. I personally wish EA would just stop with all the freaking packs for a while and just fix the game because while some people seem completely fine with it no matter what, I know that some (myself included) just get irritated with all the issues some of which never get addressed at all.
Hopefully they do tweak things in this story system, but as with so many other things in this game I have a feeling it will still be borked in some way. You mentioned that some of your options don't always work, well when a simple option can't function properly then what are they going to do with actual game mechanics? lol
@simsplayer818You make a great point! I am actually not a fan of the phone calls either. In my previous household, my sim's mother called daily asking about "try for baby", which I thought was not only disruptive but also a bit disturbing. It would be much better if we could disable all features of Neighborhood Stories. I don't understand why some features can be disabled but others can't. We can turn off aging, autonomy, whims, lifestyles, Seasons effects and storms, Eco Living eco footprint and NPC voting, Get Famous celebrity gain. I would much rather have the option to turn off all Neighborhood Stories features (and also the option to turn off Sentiments :-).
@JonaO703 As much as I'd like to think that EA will expand on this and provide more options to mess with, I have zero faith in them at this point and believe that the only way we'll see any additional options is if modders do something with the computer versions of the game. I also don't understand why there aren't more options for certain things. Even some of the existing options seem lazy compared to older games, for example in Sims 3 there were something like 3 options for adjusting autonomy where as here it's either on or off. I also don't care for sentiments. They're temporary, they only really seem to provide moodlets, and they seem worthless. If there were permanent ones and they were more meaningful then sure, but as they are now... meh lol.
Oh and I finally got one of those story calls about engagement... and it did absolutely nothing. First I had one sim call and ask about dating someone else, so I told them to go for it. Then I invited both sims over and used the "Hook Up With" option to try getting them together that way. Not long after that one called about finding a ring in a bag and I assume it was supposed to be from the other sim, but that's where I noticed a problem. Instead of actually saying the other sim's name, it said "I found a ring in___'s bag". After that I didn't see another call from either sim, so I tried playing one of them to see what was going on. They were in each other's relationship panel, but had no relationship whatsoever and certainly weren't in any sort of romantic relationship. So even though that's just one instance of seeing an engagement call, it's not off to a good start seeing as how it didn't do anything at all.
