Neighborhood stories experiences?

I've completely disabled it. It's a mess of mass adoptions and death and don't want it in my game.

"mightysprite;c-18144642" wrote:
Your sims have accidental deaths turned off but they are dying anyway, and it's not of old age?
Are you sure you have deaths turned off for your "My Households" as well as "Other Households" ?

Omg I thought it was a once-off setting, and you're right, that was it.

Thanks for the help, I appreciate it

"WildIrishBanshee;c-18144679" wrote:
I always have it turned off for played - leave my sims alone! Sometimes I customize the settings, sometimes I just let it run wild and see what it will do - it killed off Sara Scott in the save I'm playing now. Kind of feel bad about that. But it's kind of funny seeing the antics everyone else gets up to - Nancy left her Boss career, for one. That was a shocker. If I were into writing Sims stories, that alone might send me running. But I still leave the writing for "work", at least for now.

Eliza is gone, but she and Bob had a newborn baby and he is now a single dad in my game. Sucks that I lost Mortimer and Caleb this time around.... but for some reason Don Lothario always dies and I never mind that happening and literally every save Marcus Flex and the Mayor from Henford end up living together in Forgotten Hollow. Its happened so much, I think its cannon.

I updated to the werewolf-patch about 2 weeks ago and I like the Neighborhood Stories. It is a happy surprise because initially I was quite worried about story progression coming to the game but this was done very well.

It is turned off for all household as a start and then I have developed a little routine that I do after I am done playing. I scroll down to the last household in "Other households" and give them a quick lookover. Is someone adult with less than half a bar left or an elder? Do they have any relatives in the family tree? If the sim in question is an elder and needed for a family tree connection then I send them over to my dear lady Death who resides on Windenburg Island. She specializes in flower arranging and deals with that on NPC-days. If the sim is not needed for a family tree then they are transferred over to the retirement home-household that conveniently have death in accidents turned on. Much easier this way.

I am a micro-manager by nature so this suits me very well. Each household get individual settings for moving in or adopting a pet. If something happens I go and switch it off since I do not want a ton of cats or babies.

Have only read about this feature up until now, it is nice to see it in game myself.

I think they need to work on it more to make it a feature that runs well. Right now some of the decisions the game makes are kind of ridiculous. In one save, it moved Simon Silversweater into a home, so he was no longer one of the Mages. And then he adopted 5 dogs. 5! I wouldn't mind if he adopted 1 or 2 but 5 is crazy. Plus, I didn't want a new Practical Mage yet. It also gets a little crazy on sims adopting or having children. The Scotts have 3 kids now, and she's pregnant again. Sometimes it seems like NS is determined to make every family a max-capacity household.

Trying to set options at the main setting (played or unplayed) doesn't work that well for the children . Like others have mentioned, the households will still adopt or have kids. It stopped the crazy amount of pet adoption though. I suppose I'm going to have to adjust all of the settings for each household if I want to use this feature, which is kind of a pain. I like it in some ways because I wanted a little variety & surprise, but not a massive population boom.

I actually dislike the Neighbor Stories. I'm running 4 Households on my Xbox Series X, And under a different save, a single household. The four different household's save? The stories are trying to control the households, that I'm supposed to be controlling. I take a member, to a different lot, and I receive a phone call, from the member at home, asking if they should try for a baby. What is the point of having the control of a household but having a program forcing me to do something that I don't want. In other saves? The boyfriend received a call from the girlfriend, if she should accept the boyfriend's proposal. And before I figured this insane program out? My sim had proposed. I was planning to do a romantic date and propose. But this program? Messed it up! If they are going to have these stories in this game? It should not, try to control my households. That is why I'm playing this game, so I can decide what happens, not some stupid interfering program. Also? Tiner Tinker? One time I advised her to get pregnant, and she did. The other time? I said no. But she showed up pregnant, again. So, why give me any say in the stories, if the program is going to do whatever it wants? This and many other things, they have put in this game. Has ruined it for me! I'm not going to purchase any more content. Unless it's free? And I really wanted to get the Werewolves content. But everything is buggy and unstable. And they have not fixed anything that was complained about a year or so ago. The doctor's field, the coffee makers, I could go on for months. One of my sims, comes home from work, and stands there for 3 and half hours and this has happened numerous times, as well as other things. Thank God, I shut the auto age off. I don't even know why bother to complain. They got my money, and there is no money in fixing anything. Well thanks for allowing me to vent. A good day and my best wishes to all.

I’m not having any real problems with NS. What I’ve found is that you have to establish your settings from the beginning and adjust them periodically. Otherwise, it can be pretty aggressive.

I have Neighborhood Stories off for all main played sims, custom settings for Sims and premades I want restricted, and on for game generated townies and premades I don’t play or need in game. With these settings, nothing radical or drastic is occurring to any of the sims I care about. I haven’t seen the game override my decisions with the phone calls, either.

I turned it off because almost every household was having babies and dying. No thanks. I’m too much of a control freak for my saves to allow that. Lol Now I just get constant phone calls of sims wanting to have a baby. At least I can spam no!

I turned off certain things for unplayed sims, like dying and move out I think, cause they were getting stupid. The rest weren't bad, so they stayed - and everything is off for my played sims. I'll decide what happens there, thanks.

"Tootasnack;c-18236041" wrote:
But the sims just mindlessly adopt children and pets or have babies until their household is full in less you turn the figure off.

It isn't "mindlessly" - it's trait based. Family-Oriented sims are more likely to have/adopt kids. Animal related traits are more likely to adopt pets. It's worth keeping an eye on the news or checking Household Manager every time you start/finish playing and turning off these settings for individual households before they get too big.

"Tootasnack;c-18236041" wrote:
Also why do they move out of their houses if they are not going to move into another house. If a sim were to move out of his home to move into his girlfriends home I would find that interesting. But they just move out of their homes to be homeless and take all of the furniture with them.

This happens if you have Move Out set as an option. They become homeless townies.

Allowing Move In means they can move around to other homes, but won't Move Out of a house completely. Homeless sims can also Move In to homes.

I normally favourite households my sims know and set them to Move In so they find a house on their own. Once they Move In, I turn that off for them so they stay where they are.