The Sims 4 Forever Friends Reward Event

Normally, I make new Sims for every event but since I just made a family who has a child, I'll just use them. Unfortunately I will have to do the event later this evening. I have things to do this morning and afternoon because of course I do lol.

The event isn’t starting for me.  Is there a problem ?

I expect nothing from the trait, previous event reward traits weren't mind-blowing.

Cheap content paid by kits.

Not working?

edit: closed game and reopened and tried again, it worked.

I just started and it's already a trainwreck. Some of the quest steps are to buy items for kids. The game doesn't account for you having those items already, so you have to buy them again. And also, you have to make sure there's enough space to place one of those giant plushies around it, because some of the quests are literally just "move this item next to another item." Then there are other quest steps, like "take a nap," "play with toys," and "watch TV." You interact with the toy once during the first quest, and the rest of the time you just do things while the toy sits in the background, awkwardly separated because its item footprint is so huge that you kind of have to. They want to sell this image of you bonding with a toy, but you interact with it all of twice during both quests.

The second quest starts off with: eat something, ask the toy a question, and use the toilet. There's a glitch where any sim can eat something, but the game will attribute the action to whoever you're controlling atm. So while my sim's brother ate something, the game said my sim ate it. The whole part about asking adults for advice and coming up with a plan is cute. Nothing particularly interesting or creative, but at least there's something of a story to follow. It's an improvement over previous events in that way. Sort of. 

The pacing is so bad, too. I finished the first and second quests within ten minutes. Then you have to wait a week for the game to update with new quests and continue the story. So you just... do nothing and forget about it. If you actively play your household, you have to stop playing them until the next update, or play on long lifespan and stall for 7 IRL days. Otherwise, your child sim might be an adult by the time the next update rolls around. I appreciate more of an attempt at a narrative this time around, but it doesn't work with The Sims' format.

I get what they were trying to do, but these events really show their limitations. They don't add new gameplay; they can only recycle what's already there (eat, use the toilet, watch TV), or recycle what's already there but name it something different (draw a plan.) A lot of what you're doing if stuff you're already doing. Which is at least a step up from earlier events, where your sim had to pick up random hobbies and master them just because UI told you to do it, even if it doesn't make much sense without that context. 

You can't do a serialized story because the sims will have to put their lives on hold for IRL weeks to work with the narrative, or just drop it entirely.  You can't have any unique or new gameplay because events can only reuse what we already have, just with some text boxes to describe things sometimes. 

It's funny that they're talking about commemorating moments with the imaginary friend by taking a photo, when this past week we had that picture-blanking bug created by outdated mods. I don't blame the Sims team or anything, it was just a funny coincidence.

Also, the San Myshuno magnet features the mascot of Mt. Komorebi for some reason.

You need a kid.

Is there a kid in the household?

Karamazov123 wrote:

If you actively play your household, you have to stop playing them until the next update, or play on long lifespan and stall for 7 IRL days.

This is why I play with aging off and use one of my current households. Business as usual with plenty to do while waiting for the next quest. I also think a lot of simmers have saves specifically devoted to a quest.

I’m not a big fan of these events and find them a bit of a chore, but I’ve got this week’s done without any issues. I have a specific save with one sim I use just for these events — she had to adopt a child specially for this! Her house and garden are getting pretty cluttered with objects from all the previous events, so I might have to think about moving her somewhere bigger, especially now that she’s got a child! Now I can get back to my normal save for some proper simming until next week 🙂

What on earth am I doing wrong? I have tried different stuffed animals (small & big) and TVs (tabletop & wall), moved the animal and TV, turned the TV on, had a child interact with the toy, even restarted my game. The task will not click off. Help! I've wasted so much time and simoleons! 😩 

I clicked on the event task to see if I could get more info. This is all it offered.