Autonomy players?

I never play completely like this, but I try to have a day or at least a few hours during a sim week where I let my sims do whatever. Some of my sims have more freedom regarding this than others. Not too much happens, but I like seeing sweet interactions among family members. I also have a lot of mods in my game, which help a bit I think.

I always play autonomy full, although it can get annoying, I like my sims to do their own thing aswell, I feel that they have a mind of there own and most of the time, I let them do what they want, the shovelling of snow is annoying however ?

Sometimes I have autonomy on in some saves, and without toddlers it's nice not to care too much about them, only a few times I need to step in. However mostly autonomy is turned off, although my Sims do whatever they want to do anyways and I say hello to the surprise pregnancy.

"Karababy52;c-17845070" wrote:
I very, very rarely use full autonomy unless I'm playing a challenge where it's required. I don't play big families, again unless a challenge involves more than a couple Sims per household. In that case, I'll have full autonomy on, but check the box for no autonomy on the current played Sim and cancel any actions I deem unnecessary for them.

I've tried to play with full autonomy and it's extremely boring to me. All my Sims would do is the standard things mentioned; drink water, play video games, read books, cook meals even if the fridge is full of leftovers, and try to do other dumb things, like exercise for elders until they're ready to croak, make drink after drink after drink but never drink them and leave them to rot, do anything and everything except sleep when they're in the red zone, flirt with others than their spouse/partner/girlfriend/boyfriend, be mean to each other for no reason, shovel snow, mop puddles during a thunderstorm, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

In fact, I actually wish that no autonomy meant no autonomy. I dislike how Sims will, for instance, choose their own topics to chat about if there's nothing left in their queue, or run off to go jogging, do push-ups, get a drink, play a video game on their cell when off-the-grid, take a nap, etc. when I want them to get to know each other, or have another goal in mind. *sigh*

I much prefer micromanaging my Sims so they actually progress in the goals I have set for them. Just sitting on my hands and watching them is not 'playing' to me. Just my opinion, if others enjoy playing that way and have fun doing it, more power to you! It's just not for me. *shrugs* :)

I wish they still had the 'semi-autonomy' setting - if you didn't direct your Sims within 5 seconds, they'd decide what to do. Always playing with autonomy off eliminates some of the cute things they will do with full autonomy, but I like to micro-manage my Sims too much to play that way.

I have a strong conviction that the things they autonomously do are more or less based on the whims they get.

I always play with autonomy off. I don't like my sims doing anything that I didn't tell them to do. I'm still upset that we can't play pets and turn off their autonomy. They have autonomy even with the playable pets mod so I can never have pets in my households.

"Simburian;c-17845123" wrote:

"Mstybl95;c-17845119" wrote:
What mods make autonomy better? I am a player that likes to let my sims do their own thing, but in TS4, the only things they do is stand around talking. After playing with a family for a couple of sim weeks, one of them has started watching tv on her own and the other is always gardening, but still, they don't do anything. They want to play on computers all the time.

Why not remove their computers or only let one have the use of it?

At the time, they were both in college so they needed them. They're also authors so they still need them. I just picked up a CC typewriter with the computer fun stuff disabled, so maybe that will help.

"haneul;c-17845141" wrote:

"Mstybl95;c-17845119" wrote:
What mods make autonomy better? I am a player that likes to let my sims do their own thing, but in TS4, the only things they do is stand around talking. After playing with a family for a couple of sim weeks, one of them has started watching tv on her own and the other is always gardening, but still, they don't do anything. They want to play on computers all the time.

My sims tend to do pretty well with autonomy, but I'm not doing anything "right." I primarily play on a giant lot with a pool, computers, a ping pong table, etc. which is "wrong" because my sims have a lot of options to do whatever.

But I think it may help to have mods that generate whims/push sims to do things - so the big mods like Slice of Life, More Personality Please, Wonderful Whims, MCCC, etc. Personally, I only use WW and MCCC for big mods because the others do too much for me. I don't do this but with MCCC you can also disable sims from doing specific actions autonomously if they get on your nerves instead of getting rid of those objects in your household.

I think it helps to have sims develop a bit of a personality first as well as they tend to repeat things that they've already done. So if you give a sim a hobby like painting, watching movies, or playing a particular instrument, they're more likely to repeat it.

I play relatively large households of 5 to 8 sims, so autonomy isn't boring for me because it mainly happens when I'm focused on directing a few sims and I let the others kind of do what they want because they've already accomplished what I'd like them to do for the day.

It probably helps that my computer is a powerful gaming desktop (Alienware, i9, 2080 Ti) and that I've been lucky not to really have simulation lag or any other kind of lag.

I tend to play on smaller lots with some options, but I do have like a tv, computers, usually at least 1 hobby/skilling item, etc. This one family is the first time I've ever seen them do anything on their own and it took a whole university degree + 1 extra semester for it to start happening. That's a long time. And then it's still kind of me forcing the personality on them because I still have to direct them to do it first. I'm the kind of player that likes for them to do stuff that I can notice about them. It tells me who they are. Before this, they literally just stood in the walkway between the living room and kitchen and talked forever. They never stopped. My other families are also doing the same thing. Gathering in a bathroom and talking the whole time. I think because I play rotational and only for a week at a time, it isn't allowing the AI to shift and handle it on it's own. I only played this one house for longer because they were in college and that's how I stumbled upon them doing more than talking autonomously.

I'm going to check out the mods you suggested. I had SOL and that wasn't updated even for the patch before this one so I doubt it's good now. I won't do MCCC - I just can't figure it out and hate that it put families in my empty houses. I'll look into wonderful whims as I've never heard of it.

Build testing - Sims become fixated with putting away staged items that are part of the build.
It never crosses my mind to shut off autonomy, this results in multiple rounds of cat and mouse With Sims fixated on putting away toys or magazines or other display items.

I have autonomy on full, but then disable it lately for my selected sim, because there seems to be a lot of queue drops lately and this seems to really help. I can control the sim I am actively playing but everyone else goes about their business in the background.

I always play with full autonomy, and often have played with controlling only one Sim in the household. This actually works in TS4 -- the other Sims will take care of their needs. They won't do much else, though. With the improvement of traits, it will be interesting to see if they'll do more.