Sims 4 Neighborhood Stories: A Mistake From EA?

I thought it was weird that my male sim received a phone call from his girlfriend about accepting a marriage proposal because she found a ring. She phrased the question like she wasn't talking to him on the phone. They live in separate household's. Other than that I feel it's just another way to control inactive households and it only happens if your sims are friends. I don't think it hurts to have this option but I'm still taking the time to get use to it.

"catloverplayer;c-18024795" wrote:
Has anyone seen this popup? The simmer is playing a vanilla game.
https://twitter.com/simmerkathie/status/1472095405928488960?t=-Xw2trlrRnKtASkXu2uHKw&s=19

I've never seen it in my game, but I've seen others have it in theirs, long before NS was announced.

Yes that refusal message has been in game for some time :)

And no, I do not think it is a mistake, to be in topic.

I also play vanilla & get the Neighborhood phone popups. It's part of the Base updates.

I hope the 2nd update makes townies propose marriage to our sims or going steady.That was in a survey earlier this year.

I don't think this was a mistake, in fact I think this was a good direction to go in. But it just needs more work.
The system is too overly reliant on phone calls.
Why would my neighbor ask me if I should have a baby? Isn't that a conversation you should have with your spouse?..

I think some of it is nice (calling to ask for romantic advice is cute), but some of it borders on being flat out weird.

They need to branch out and just enable story mode without asking the player's permission for every action.
Of course, this system has to have an ON and OFF switch, preferably with different levels of story mode, so people can choose what they want and not have to be forced to play a certain way.

I reali,e and respect the fact that there are players who want nothing to happen other than what they made happen, like playing with puppets or dolls, but integral to gameplay for many of us, is the element of surprise, and the chance to discover what might happen in the lives and relationships of sims, other than just what we make them do or expect to happen.

I was convinced neighborhood stories was going to be terrible because I like story progression in sims 3, but I'm the idea of having my sim asked to decide major life decisions by sims who are mere acquaintances seemed stilted.

It's not as bad as I feared, though it's still a weak way to try to emulate story progression. Better than nothing, though: was pleased to see a new baby in the fyres household, haven't checked yet to see who the parents are, but it brings the neighborhood more to life than having my played household grow and change while everyone else is in suspended animation aging but not changing.

I wouldn't say putting story progression into the game was a mistake. Though, there is one new feature I noticed that was really annoying with the new update. Entire households moving out randomly...
Some story progression mods out there do a much better job by using the 'split and move' feature instead which can lead to some very interesting results while at the same time leaving the rest of the household alone. I'd rather stick to using those.

I love neighborhood stories update but... some couple issues bugging me out. For an example. Families who live in big houses adopting child, and they're just doing this always.

I am confused by the OP, since story progression was one of the amazing features MISSING from Sims 4 for me. I wouldn't dream of turning it off after we FINALLY got it. But then I have never played Sims as a dollhouse, I have played it as a wacky simulation, coming from earlier Sim (not Sims) games by Sid Meyer to Sims 1.