Optional genetic population progression: The hopeful answer to "No Story-Progression"

I absolutely love this idea! As someone who plays with only one household at a time, I would love to let the rest of the world do its own things and focus on only my one household. It adds more realism to my game. I believe the SP they had in 3 just didn't do justice to what can be done as it wasn't as efficient as it could have been. I think the Devs should take a look at how the mods Nraas and MCCC (Especially Nraas) work in the game and implement those ideas and your idea into some sort of SP or as you call it Optional Generic Population Progression (OGPP). I also know its a touchy, however, if they offer options that will definitely make a lot of players happy.

YES YES YES! ALL THE YES!!! i also only play one household per save and get super annoyed that my sims have generational legacies but no-one else does. the townies and neighbor sims just hog up houses and die then becoming ghosts also hogging up said houses. its ok in forgotten hollow, because vampires, but other developer created families like the goths will just die out and be lost to annuls of time.

this however IMO covers the fine line that is story progression Y/N and allows a neighborhood to constantly refresh new sims and continue premade sims legacys

"sazzieJ;c-16845506" wrote:
YES YES YES! ALL THE YES!!! i also only play one household per save and get super annoyed that my sims have generational legacies but no-one else does. the townies and neighbor sims just hog up houses and die then becoming ghosts also hogging up said houses. its ok in forgotten hollow, because vampires, but other developer created families like the goths will just die out and be lost to annuls of time.

this however IMO covers the fine line that is story progression Y/N and allows a neighborhood to constantly refresh new sims and continue premade sims legacys

Good to hear you like the idea! Rather than lose ones composure in the ever present battle for S.P, I thought about a compromise that would be easier for the Guru's and DEV team, whilst allowing us, the simmers, to feel they've actually taken on board our requests and delivered to some extent.

It's not perfect, obviously the design and coding teams will need to see what can be done with all of this, BUT, I imagine it working sort of as a biological clock, of course you design who can procreate and such, but for those ABLE to have families, the game goes by whose closer to passing that time scale. or perhaps it goes by traits and aspirations!

Say you have a sim who wants a big family or they have a certain trait which could be added via patches such as nurturing or something like that, the game looks at those traits and decides who most likely will have a baby, whilst also occasionally cursing those with the anti kids trait to suffer a surprise pregnancy.

Personally, I like the biological clock concept, game counts down the days to ageing up and thinks "OH PLUM SO AND SO IS GETTING OLD, TIME TO POP A BUN IN THAT OVEN", again, you get to choose which households can and can't have babies, then the game does its thing and bing bang boodles, baby time! Twins, single or triplets, that is as random as it is usually.

Maybe, for a joke, you can witness a childs conception (That sounds wrong, lemme explain): Say you have a party, one couple sneaks off, you hear that familiar rattling of a bed, closet, bush, vault, etc, and they come down all happy and loved up, then once they leave you wait a day or so and maybe bump into them on the street, and speaking of bumps, you notice one partner is expecting, yes this works as long as one partner is able to become pregnant whilst the other is able to make others pregnant, so man, woman, neither, both, whatever, long as you have both components, it can happen.

For more puns, maybe you get a phonecall either thanking you, blaming you or simply announcing your party was involved in the creation of little Jim-Bob-Buttons, The gags go on but you get the idea.

Feel free to add more concepts but this, for starters, is just how I imagine it working.

Again, happy to hear you like it!

I am 100% for this. But I would honestly be willing to try out ANY story progression at this point because micromanaging gets very taxing for me quiet quickly. I got tired of the town dying out and as a result had an adult Alexander Goth have 6 babies with like 4 different Sims :D haha! But as a result of doing so I let half of my legacy family die out without realizing it! Ugh.

Yeah, we need this so badly. It should have been added into the game in the first place. For now, my advice to everyone who's annoyed with the dead townies is to turn aging off for unplayed households in the options menu.

> @LiELF said:
> If there were ever any type of story progression added to the game, I think it should only affect Sims in the "unplayed" category. I would not want the risk of unexpected game bugs or errors destroying the many, many households I've created and filled my worlds with. I had something like that happen with MC Command Center and it changed a lot of households that I didn't want touched.
>
> Also, at this point, there are many rotational players invested in their games and comfortable with the fact that the game does not interfere, so the devs would have to be very careful with how they implement something like that. By making it only affect unplayed households, it should lessen the chance of something going wrong.


This is a good point. Another point we should consider is that story progression will most likely contribute to lagging and worse for less powerful computers. I do appreciate MCCC but I notice that it does add a bit of lag to my game (especially in the middle of the night when most, I assume, of its functionalities are being implemented). At the moment the additional lag is so small that it does not bother me. You can see this in Sims 3 as well, where NRAAS will add to the game lagging. The difference of course is that Sims 3 already lags very badly even without NRAAS (due to, I suspect, open world and all that it entails). My poor computer (not top-of-the-line gaming but above min requirement for Sims 3) choked to the point I stopped playing Sims 3. I do upgrade my computer now and then, but "so I can play a computer game" is not a good reason (for me) to do so. Luckily my computer plays Sims 4 just fine.

I prefer to think that when certain functionalities are not in the game, it is due to financial/technical requirements rather than devs being mean. Not all of us play with top of the line hardware. Some simple story progression such as MCCC (only population I believe, unplayable do not really upgrade their skills, or improve their grades or get promotions) I can get behind. Some story progression in a non-open world such MATY for Sims 2 seemed fine. But the more complex ones involving all the above with all kinds of scenarios (selections, levels, going through every single decision for every single family etc) and open world on top of that? I have to start asking question about lagging, bloated saved files etc. Of course I am not a game programmer so I would defer to the opinions of actual game programmers.

Finally I'm glad MCCC populate my towns automatically but to be honest I used the mod mostly for "reset sims", "make happy" and skilling cheats because I am to lazy to type them. I don't really pay too much attention to the unplayed sims in my town. When my sim heir is ready for a family, I simply create a suitable spouse in CAS, plop him/her in a lot, introduce them and the rest is history.

I personally think that story progression is one of those things where extensive customization options are a must. I prefer a rotational style where I play puppet master in the lives of my sims, so I don't appreciate the game deciding to pair my sims up with unapproved partners or giving them kids I don't want them having. To me, that's the game playing itself, and it takes all of the fun out of things for me. Others, I understand, aren't such control freaks as I am and like the game to play itself because they like surprises. Both crowds can be appeased with plenty of options for story progression.

Autonomous Romance: High, Moderate, Low, and Off

Autonomous Marriage: High, Moderate, Low, and Off

Autonomous Kids: High, Moderate, Low, and Off

Autonomous Moving: High, Moderate, Low, and Off

...And so forth, with separate toggles for played and unplayed households for full customization. So, say, someone who doesn't want their own played sims to be messed with by the game, but doesn't care what the game does with the NPC's can turn off all of those story progression options for their played households, but turn them on High for the NPC's.

TS4 is very, very short on save set-up options without a mod like MCCC. That's a huge shame, because it makes every player frustrated; freewheeling story progression lovers, rotational control freaks like me, and everyone in between.

"SimsLovinLycan;c-17392114" wrote:
I personally think that story progression is one of those things where extensive customization options are a must. I prefer a rotational style where I play puppet master in the lives of my sims, so I don't appreciate the game deciding to pair my sims up with unapproved partners or giving them kids I don't want them having. To me, that's the game playing itself, and it takes all of the fun out of things for me. Others, I understand, aren't such control freaks as I am and like the game to play itself because they like surprises. Both crowds can be appeased with plenty of options for story progression.

Autonomous Romance: High, Moderate, Low, and Off

Autonomous Marriage: High, Moderate, Low, and Off

Autonomous Kids: High, Moderate, Low, and Off

Autonomous Moving: High, Moderate, Low, and Off

...And so forth, with separate toggles for played and unplayed households for full customization. So, say, someone who doesn't want their own played sims to be messed with by the game, but doesn't care what the game does with the NPC's can turn off all of those story progression options for their played households, but turn them on High for the NPC's.

TS4 is very, very short on save set-up options without a mod like MCCC. That's a huge shame, because it makes every player frustrated; freewheeling story progression lovers, rotational control freaks like me, and everyone in between.

I like this idea, and am very much in favour of everyone being allowed to play in the style that suits them so it's a good idea. I have read a few times though that they have major issues implementing toggles. Apparently it really messes with the game. Hopefully they can find some kind of compromise or work around that doesn't ruin anyones current saves or play style.

"SimsLovinLycan;c-17392114" wrote:
I personally think that story progression is one of those things where extensive customization options are a must. I prefer a rotational style where I play puppet master in the lives of my sims, so I don't appreciate the game deciding to pair my sims up with unapproved partners or giving them kids I don't want them having. To me, that's the game playing itself, and it takes all of the fun out of things for me. Others, I understand, aren't such control freaks as I am and like the game to play itself because they like surprises. Both crowds can be appeased with plenty of options for story progression.

Autonomous Romance: High, Moderate, Low, and Off

Autonomous Marriage: High, Moderate, Low, and Off

Autonomous Kids: High, Moderate, Low, and Off

Autonomous Moving: High, Moderate, Low, and Off

...And so forth, with separate toggles for played and unplayed households for full customization. So, say, someone who doesn't want their own played sims to be messed with by the game, but doesn't care what the game does with the NPC's can turn off all of those story progression options for their played households, but turn them on High for the NPC's.

TS4 is very, very short on save set-up options without a mod like MCCC. That's a huge shame, because it makes every player frustrated; freewheeling story progression lovers, rotational control freaks like me, and everyone in between.

That reveals an old school simmer’s perspective, because the same goes for the rotational system. I prefer a one-household-focused style where the neighborhood evolves next to the lives of my sims, in the background, so I don't appreciate the game freezing everything and everyone surrounding them unless I jump around households I don’t care to play to micromanage. Meaning: the game as a whole needs a set up that allows all different kind of players to have customization options. To this day the NRaas SP system sounds like the ideal solution to me.

no worries :)

its a great idea, and some fun can be had with it. i dont like being the only household that grows so getting those kinds of options would add some spice XD