I've been having a similar issue with my game and have to admit that I hate how my sims are now suffering from mental health symptoms unless I turn off the wants and fears setting in gameplay. I think that the neuro-diversity option is something that should have been implemented in a completely new game because people who are not interesting in dealing with that kind of behaviour or symptoms of mental illness shouldn't have their gameplay ruined by it if they don't want to. I think you shouldn't take a product I have paid to use and change it for the people on Twitter who admit they've stolen the content anyway. Why am I paying for a worse and worse service whilst thieves get to have more and more fun? If you don't want money, just say so.
I can't imagine that anyone who has a mental or developmental issue would want to deal with their own issues in real life and then have a sim who is also suffering from the same issues. The Sims is about fantasy escapism, not real life. I have my own issues in life. I don't want a computer sprite ramming theirs down my throat too. Where's the escape in that? The player is playing as god, not the sim character. People need to realise the perspective.
I really like the sexual preference option as I've been able to make asexual sims who are not weighed down by lust, but I find it annoying that it was said that the sexual preference of pre-existing sims would be according to gameplay as was the case originally, yet as soon as the problematic update was installed, my male sim who was married to a female as part of an Alphabet Generation Challenge, suddenly was hit on by the male butler right in front of his wife, he developed romantic feelings for the man, though according to the gameplay he was heterosexual (so I guess his gameplay based woohoo and romantic preferences were ignored...), and the wife developed neurosis regarding her marriage. To placate her I had to kill the butler in front of her and send his soul straight to the afterlife, but her happiness over his demise only lasted until the end of the day. IRL that's how serial killing couples come to exist. I wasn't interested in that sort of story at that time though so it was an annoyance.
I think that the option to explore sexuality should be turned off by default so sims are either homosexual or heterosexual by design from the onset unless the player changes their mind. If the sims is being based on reality instead of fantasy, which I believe is the justification for the changes, then most people do not explore their sexuality. Most people are like most other mammals on the planet, engaging in sexual reproduction and I would use the nearly 8 billion people on the planet, more than 40,000 years of human history and theory of evolution as evidence of lack of experimentation with sexuality in humans.
I've had heterosexual, homosexual and transgender sims in every game since The Sims 2. I just don't understand why it has become so annoying in this game. Other than making sims asexual. I don't really see the point of the hard setting as gameplay used to determine sexuality with less sexual harassment IMHO. I hope the next evolution doesn't rhyme with grape.
