What happens with non controlled sims around the world

Well, the answer to this depends on what mods you are working with. If you are not playing with mods, then your NPC sims just exist. If you have aging on, they will grow older and eventually pass away. They don't autonomously do anything in my experience. Now if you use a mod like MCCC, then they can proceed in life however you envision it. I have NPCs that are in College, that move in with other sims, get married, have children, have affairs advance in their careers, etc. Up until a few months ago, I never played with mods or CC. I focused on one family per save and sort of moved them along. The townies and NPCs were just background noise. Now that I play with MCCC, NPCC, and a few others, I have found that my wonderful NPC's actually live lives similar to my played sims! I can't even tell you how awesome that is. They develop their own stories and I am ok with that!

If you have full aging on they eventually all die and your game will be left with nothing but poorly dressed random townies. I learned this the hard way on my first attempt at playing a legacy in the Sims 4.

In order to prevent this in my game I had to change how I play. I started a new save and I now have aging off for everybody except the current household and I rotate through all of the families one by one so they all age and progress at the same pace.

I know I can use MCCC story progression for this but honestly I don't like it. It just fills my game with poorly dressed sims when all the uncontrolled sims start having children and they grow up. I'm to much of a control freak and I want all the sims in my game world to look nice and not be dressed in crazy random mismatched outfits.

I play without aging, so I have been working on playing god in my world lol. I create families with complex relationships and stories, and I even have several “homeless” sims I’ve edited that fit nicely into my storylines as well since there’s just not enough lots to give them all a home. I do use MCCC, but I turn off the settings that allow for story progression since I like to pop in and play almost all my households at some point any know that MY story for them hasn’t gone unchanged without my permission.

I would love to use a mod that helps manage the endless townies the game generates but I’ve been too nervous about it messing up the world I’ve carefully created since many of my households get marked as unplayed even though I technically play them and also too lazy to actually read about what these mods actually do to see if they’d be helpful to the style I play. Ideally i just want the game to stop generating more random people but I also don’t want a mod to assign jobs and roles to existing sims I don’t pick for those jobs lol

But yeah, unless you get some help from mods, the sims in your world will just age up and do very little else, which some people love and others hate

Thanks for the replies. Unfortunately I'm a console player. Though I really wish I had bought it for PC. But now I've invested my money in all these different packs (have all but a few stuff packs) switching to PC isn't really an option. Unfortunately when I switched from PS4 to PS5, my cloud save through PlayStation hasn't been updated in forever. So I lost a ton of builds and sims. Figured I'd try making a sim and actually try playing the game haha. But if the other sims don't really do anything, this seems completely pointless. Why it's not a feature EA does not imply is beyond me. At the very least give us the option to turn it on or off. But it's EA. Anything they are involved with is typically half assed.

Guess I'll move onto something else to play until I get the desire to building again.

Well, you could try rotational play. In one of my saves, before I started using mods, I would delete all existing townies and families and I started with my own families and rotated through them. However, you could also just create and fill some houses with your own creations and play them randomly and grow them. PC does offer some advantages in a game like this but you can pull it off without mods on a console by just getting rid of the premade townies. They just don't have much to offer. Some of the preloaded families are actually fun to play with. I like the Fyres for example and the BFFs and the Pancakes even.

In my saves, I use a number of mods to do things I am too lazy to do LOL. NPCC, for example, allows you to direct which jobs townies fill. MCCC allows me to pull townies from my library only so my library only has sims I want in my game. I have it nit set not to generate random townies. It doesn't mean you can't remake them to your own liking without it though. Build some nice houses etc or use the gallery to download non-cc homes, venues, etc and you can make your own stories very nicely without any mods at all. If anything, integrate the townies into your stories!

"SimsLady2000;c-17767361" wrote:
Well, you could try rotational play. In one of my saves, before I started using mods, I would delete all existing townies and families and I started with my own families and rotated through them. However, you could also just create and fill some houses with your own creations and play them randomly and grow them. PC does offer some advantages in a game like this but you can pull it off without mods on a console by just getting rid of the premade townies. They just don't have much to offer. Some of the preloaded families are actually fun to play with. I like the Fyres for example and the BFFs and the Pancakes even.

In my saves, I use a number of mods to do things I am too lazy to do LOL. NPCC, for example, allows you to direct which jobs townies fill. MCCC allows me to pull townies from my library only so my library only has sims I want in my game. I have it nit set not to generate random townies. It doesn't mean you can't remake them to your own liking without it though. Build some nice houses etc or use the gallery to download non-cc homes, venues, etc and you can make your own stories very nicely without any mods at all. If anything, integrate the townies into your stories!

That is what I may end up doing. My plan was to create a teen and use him through adulthood until his death. I've yet to even touch the university pack really, so was hoping to fill my town with other teens/families and try to get good grades, do the college thing etc. But if the other teens/young adults don't do anything. Then it kinda defeats the purpose. I'd rather have a natural organic world then one where I control everything. That to me just doesn't seem fun. Maybe controlling a couple sims. But I don't want to control the whole town just to have a growth and changes. Oh well. Is what it is. Guess I could just go back to living in my mansion, being a professional photographer to the stars. Did they ever patch that issue where freelancers couldn't get paid for completed gigs? Thats around the time I quit playing last time. Just started back up.

"Sharonia;c-17766924" wrote:
If you have full aging on they eventually all die and your game will be left with nothing but poorly dressed random townies.

Basically this. ^

Yeah I've actually rebooted many townie households after getting mods that slow down aging. They were all dead with like the smurfs running around randomly everywhere instead. I have it very long, set manually now, like a couple hundred or thousand days per age. I let them keep "ageing", but slow enough that they're not all dead before I even know they exist or get a chance to come back and play them again.

EDIT: Probably the best would be to have NPC ageing off.

As for skills, yes they do build skills, but only if they show up in the area where you are playing an active household. That's why you see them run to a computer, or start jogging, or painting, cooking, mixing drinks or whatever. Of course the social skills build too. I haven't seen any NPC's randomly run up and start building a rocket-ship though, heh!

"Admiral8Q;c-17768282" wrote:

"Sharonia;c-17766924" wrote:
If you have full aging on they eventually all die and your game will be left with nothing but poorly dressed random townies.

Basically this. ^

Yeah I've actually rebooted many townie households after getting mods that slow down aging. They were all dead with like the smurfs running around randomly everywhere instead. I have it very long, set manually now, like a couple hundred or thousand days per age. I let them keep "ageing", but slow enough that they're not all dead before I even know they exist or get a chance to come back and play them again.

EDIT: Probably the best would be to have NPC ageing off.

As for skills, yes they do build skills, but only if they show up in the area where you are playing an active household. That's why you see them run to a computer, or start jogging, or painting, cooking, mixing drinks or whatever. Of course the social skills build too. I haven't seen any NPC's randomly run up and start building a rocket-ship though, heh!

I wonder if it's possible to turn aging on and off as I please. Like play with main sim and have aging on. But when I switch to a secondary family, turn it off. Then resume aging when I switch back. The way I was playing (when I actually played instead of building) was I had my sim living in a giant mansion. Being a professional fashion photographer of 10 years myself, I designed the mansion to double as a studio. And that's basically what I mainly focused on. Doing photoshoots, building different sets, working on my fame level etc. Of course the poses for the console game are completely worthless. (again wish I had PC) So I had to get creative and have my sims do actions to get decent shots. That got boring over time as you can only take so many photos of a sim doing yoga, jogging, cooking in lingerie etc ha.

"shotbyron;c-17768014" wrote:

"SimsLady2000;c-17767361" wrote:
Well, you could try rotational play. In one of my saves, before I started using mods, I would delete all existing townies and families and I started with my own families and rotated through them. However, you could also just create and fill some houses with your own creations and play them randomly and grow them. PC does offer some advantages in a game like this but you can pull it off without mods on a console by just getting rid of the premade townies. They just don't have much to offer. Some of the preloaded families are actually fun to play with. I like the Fyres for example and the BFFs and the Pancakes even.

In my saves, I use a number of mods to do things I am too lazy to do LOL. NPCC, for example, allows you to direct which jobs townies fill. MCCC allows me to pull townies from my library only so my library only has sims I want in my game. I have it nit set not to generate random townies. It doesn't mean you can't remake them to your own liking without it though. Build some nice houses etc or use the gallery to download non-cc homes, venues, etc and you can make your own stories very nicely without any mods at all. If anything, integrate the townies into your stories!

That is what I may end up doing. My plan was to create a teen and use him through adulthood until his death. I've yet to even touch the university pack really, so was hoping to fill my town with other teens/families and try to get good grades, do the college thing etc. But if the other teens/young adults don't do anything. Then it kinda defeats the purpose. I'd rather have a natural organic world then one where I control everything. That to me just doesn't seem fun. Maybe controlling a couple sims. But I don't want to control the whole town just to have a growth and changes. Oh well. Is what it is. Guess I could just go back to living in my mansion, being a professional photographer to the stars. Did they ever patch that issue where freelancers couldn't get paid for completed gigs? Thats around the time I quit playing last time. Just started back up.

I am with you 100%. I also like the game to more organic, almost chaotic LOL.

So the sims who attend college with you will advance in college. I noticed in one save I had Caleb Vatore in classes with my sim and he did attend college and received a degree all while in the NPC bin. Also the preloaded sims, Fletcher and Clarke, both completed college with honors without my assistance. This happened before I used mods. In addition, I have noticed that townies that have jobs advance their skills. So if you are visiting a bar, the bartender actually skills up in mixology and charisma. So they aren't completely non-engaged. I do believe they patched the freelancer problem. That one was annoying for me too. I had like 8 freelancers at the time!

"shotbyron;c-17768390" wrote:

I wonder if it's possible to turn aging on and off as I please. Like play with main sim and have aging on. But when I switch to a secondary family, turn it off. Then resume aging when I switch back.

Yes, you can manually change the aging anytime. I do it frequently with my rotation.