Neighborhood Stories OFF button

Anyone already know what the calls asking whether Sim X should spend more time with Sim Y calls mean? Is ist just friendship or are they asking to involve in a romantic relationship as @Sharonia wrote?

I just got such a call from an elder female that is happily married with three children and the Sim she wanted to get involved in was a mean young adult who is also married - I was too scared to tell her she shall go for it, especially as I'm playing this familiy on rotation).

"Sharonia;c-18018678" wrote:
I refuse to update my game until this has an off switch. I've seen screenshots of weird scenarios that I don't want in my game like a mother asking if she should get to know her son better in a romantic way and also a boyfriend asking his girlfriend if he should get to know another sim in a romantic way. It appears to function quite poorly at the moment which is not surprise to me. I hope they will keep working to improve it.

Are you SURE the mother was asking to get to know her son romantically or was it just vague? Because while accidental incest bugs have happened in the game before in the past; I'd be surprised if that managed to get out of testing. I can see a BF accidentally being assigned a "ask if they should spend time romantically with another sim" to a GF by the AI of the game, but I'm wondering if it just means platonically but is worded vaguely. I'd expect the BF to send a "should I propose/I found a ring in my SO's bag" to the GF text instead (seen a lot of that on the forums).

I had one Sim phone his daughter to ask if he should change careers. He’s already in a career which matches his aspiration, although he doesn’t actually need to be in the career for his aspiration (painting). So his daughter said no. It was an odd phone call… I mean, the daughter is only a child still. I’m not hugely bothered by this right now, I’ll see what happens if and when I get more calls.

I don’t think the should I get to know someone better is romantic. Someone posted a screenshot somewhere (here or Twitter I think) that showed what happened to the sim who asked after they went into their household. The green friendship bar went up and that’s it.

"83bienchen;c-18018755" wrote:
Anyone already know what the calls asking whether Sim X should spend more time with Sim Y calls mean? Is ist just friendship or are they asking to involve in a romantic relationship as @Sharonia wrote?

I just got such a call from an elder female that is happily married with three children and the Sim she wanted to get involved in was a mean young adult who is also married - I was too scared to tell her she shall go for it, especially as I'm playing this familiy on rotation).

The wording is confusing on some of the texts, it's hard to know what they mean. I don't see why a mother should want to get to know her son that she lives with more. He's her son, shouldn't she already know him well enough?

"Chicklet453681;c-18018074" wrote:

"Goth583;c-18018059" wrote:
I haven't updated my game yet, so I'm still playing the prior version but I definitely do not want neighborhood stories. I use MCCC and I prefer to keep using it rather than have EA screw up my game and my sims relationships. I'll patch my game when they patch this patch and add an off switch.

That's exactly how I feel, I don't use MCCC for any type of story progression but I don't want EA to mess with my families lives and I 1000% do not want a bunch of interrupting phone calls disrupting my story. Especially after seeing some of the ones people have gotten. (IE: a grandmother asking her toddler granddaughter if she should switch careers).

And since I had zero interest in the "manly" kit they just put out, I have no need to update the game and will pass on any new DLC that's upcoming until they add a complete "OFF" toggle for Neighborhood Stories.

I'm not updating either, until this feature either gets an official on/off switch or a modded one. I hope it gets an official off setting though, since not everyone who wants to turn it off uses mods. But for me, eh, I already have over 80 mods, what's one more. :lol:

It's not a bad spot for me to wait it out, since at the moment I'm not having any bugs that really interfere with my style of gameplay, and I have all the packs I'm currently interested in getting. I already always play offline anyway. So I can be pretty patient. But, I think it was a poorly thought out choice on their part to introduce this feature without an on/off setting from the start, given how divided the community is on whether or not they wanted a story progression feature in the first place.

"Sharonia;c-18018895" wrote:

"83bienchen;c-18018755" wrote:
Anyone already know what the calls asking whether Sim X should spend more time with Sim Y calls mean? Is ist just friendship or are they asking to involve in a romantic relationship as @Sharonia wrote?

I just got such a call from an elder female that is happily married with three children and the Sim she wanted to get involved in was a mean young adult who is also married - I was too scared to tell her she shall go for it, especially as I'm playing this familiy on rotation).

The wording is confusing on some of the texts, it's hard to know what they mean. I don't see why a mother should want to get to know her son that she lives with more. He's her son, shouldn't she already know him well enough?

Because the game's AI is not programmed to assume that and may not differentiate a parent-child's relationship vs non-related relationship (for that individual text prompt). I don't know the details of how its coded, but I imagine a lot of it is randomly generated and it's not fine tuned to recognize those sort of things (if not just a glitch).

And a direct example would be the prompt where a BF tells the GF that he found a ring in his GF's purse and asking if HE should accept (even though the GF is being actively played in this scenario). It's not finely tuned and there are some weird bumps/disconnects (that will HOPEFULLY be fine tuned as time goes on).

The reason I asked if the text/call was specifically romantic or not (or if just vague), is because if it was romantic that is a big error that needs fixing asap and should be reported. If it's just a scenario where a mom wanting to spend time with her son in a general/platonic manner; while it is something that is certainly weird narratively and needs to be tweaked but not as big of a priority as if it were an incest glitch.

Just friendship @83bienchen . It caused about a 20% green bar gain that I saw.

I have never played any sims game with story progression on. I play with aging off, and no sims in the world die if I can help it. If I want a sim to be in a particular situation, I switch households, play that household until I get the outcome I want, and then go back to my main family. I have played that way for so many years that I would be very unhappy to change my style of play.

To me, playing "my way" IS the sims. I am guessing a lot of players feel that way. I think if EA does not voluntarily offer us a toggle to turn off story progression, they are likely to get hounded until they do.

That being said, I know a segment of players really want a changing world, so I am glad EA will be offering the option. As long as it remains an option ....

Okay, okay, I really love this update and would never turn it off, but I see why some of you are hesitating to update, because yeah, to be honest, even if you intend to select no in every phone call option, you know, you could miss that one time and hit the wrong option and then BOOM that Sim will become pregnant or quit their high paying office career to take up work as a gardener. I'm generally very excited when my Sims want to make babies or new friends, because it's something I want for them, but when that career one pops up my fingers tremble a little bit before I hit the no option, unless it's for a promotion. I work so hard advancing their careers. My Sims and I have different opinions about what their dream jobs are. They have no autonomy in my game. It's funny that they think they can choose new careers for themselves all of a sudden. They think they can just throw away all my hard work leveling up their careers to do something else and I'm just NO you must keep doing the job I chose for you. :naughty:

If they don't add an off option in the main menu, there should at least be the option to x out of the window so you don't have to choose anything, you know, in case you accidentally click in the wrong place and alter a Sim's life dramatically.

What I would really like is they should make a type of answering machine so you can leave your phone on silence and then check your messages after the call to find out what it was about: date invitation, social event invite, inheritance money, advice about friendship, career, family, or money begging ... and then choose to call the Sim back and initiate the event popup. That's what I do in real life anway. I don't answer my cell phone ever. I return calls after I listened to the message.