Autonomy

I always play with it off. I'm very controlling with my sims and get annoyed when they try to do anything on their own.

I always turn it off. It's just too annoying when my sims cancel the interaction I want them to do because they suddenly feel like shoveling snow that isn't even on their own lot, and if you want them to read a book? Yeah, good luck with that. They always cancel that action to watch TV instead. xD No more autonomy for my sims! :)

Always off and I admit I expected everyone to play like that. It was a big surprise when I started out in the community in 2013 and realized I was in the minority.

As a side effect of my playstyle many of Sims 4's shortcomings simply do not apply to me and I also never noticed some of the bugs.

Autonomy on, of course. I don’t see the point otherwise.

Has Maxis ever confirmed what the majority of the players choose? I'm really curious about the real number. I wasn't sure what to expect with the survey results. I'm so outnumbered. Since there's 20 million players though, what do they do?? Maybe they all turn autonomy off ;)

I like to watch them and leave them to make their own choices. I'll step in and help once in awhile, like if I really need them to get a skill to get promoted I'll make sure that they do it. If they decide to electrocute themselves though, that's on them. If there's a story I'm playing out in my head, I'll step in for that too, but I like households with more than one sim and I find the autonomy useful when I want to pay attention to one and not the others.

With autonomy off, I can still control my Sims (just pause and queue up tasks), but one thing that annoys me is that they will stop doing tasks if their fun bar maxes out. (For example, if I want them to read to increase a skill, I want them to continue reading even after the 'fun' bar is maxed.)

As noted by another poster, if needs are getting crucial, they'll cancel them and do what they need to do, even without autonomy. (I remember concentrating on one Sim at the fishing hole while her mother was writing a book. Forgot that poor Gran needed the toilet a bit more often, but she didn't. When her bladder need went into the red, she quit writing and used the toilet by herself.) I've also had them autonomously try to give their toddler a sippy cup when the toddler was hungry - they still get the 'check toddler' if the kid throws a tantrum or needs food or sleep.

I like the partial autonomy in S3(?) - if you didn't queue something up within five seconds, they'd act on their own. I know there are some things I miss by having autonomy on all the time, such as 'thinking about family' while eating. It would also be nice if my kids, teens and toddlers weren't relentlessly perfect, since I'm not going to direct them to do something they shouldn't do. (Toddlers still refuse to do certain things, especially before they gain thinking skills, but they don't play in the toilet or make messes.)

I would also prefer the option to enable autonomy only for the selected Sim, rather than the other way around. That way, I could see what my Sim wanted to do, and stop them if I disagreed with their choice, but the rest of the family would continue to do whatever they're supposed to be doing.

I'm kind of in the "Other" category here. I have autonomy on but I direct more of their actions and cancel a lot of autonomous actions.

Autonomy is really just on in case I decide to go with letting them do whatever action popped up. Usually, I queue up a series of actions for each sim and adjust as I go.

All of my sims are actually different, I do have concepts of personalities for them and I basically manage their lives. I'm not a control freak, I'm more like a director.

When coming up with what they want to do, I think about that specific sim and a concept of personality forms. Sometimes I might just decide to fill up their needs or I'll look for ideas based on the time of day or professional needs. Generally, I come up with interests and personalities through play. It's actually somewhat complex or subtle. I guess I think about what is motivating a given sim at any particular time.

That could just be grabbing random leftovers from the fridge or deciding it's a rainy day to do laundry. It could be someone deciding to go on an adventure or master a specific skill. I don't know, it works for me and I don't want to change. I find it easy to manage all of the sims.

I have households of various sizes including some with up to 8 sims. There's generally a lot going on then. I sometimes pause action while lining up activities for different sims.

I realize that I wrote this in a hurry while multi-tasking a lot so I edited it for clarity.

I used to be an "autonomy on" player for the longest time! It was hard and stressful because I played with big families but I thought that if I turn it off I'll miss out on a lot of hilarious sims moments.
Then one day I realised that the infamous toddler highchair issues aren't a thing with autonomy off... and since I had a lot of toddlers at that time (four, to be exact) I turned it off. :p
I thought I'd turn it back on when they aged up but by that time I realised the game with autonomy off is just as fun. It requires more storytelling and queuing but it's much less stressful. Now I could finally make the whole family have dinner together without someone randomly taking his plate to the bedroom. I could gather them all to watch tv or chat on the couches. I didn't have to constantly cancel interactions when they'd get obsessed over an object. Everything just became so much easier... And why would I ever want to make my life harder? :D
Overall autonomy off just suits my story-driven gameplay more so I haven't turned it on ever since. :)

I have to have full control. Sims are not smart, they’ll do something stupid and die.