I was happy when they adjusted the cone radius for fires that resulted from objects being placed on the mantle of the fireplace - because honestly a stone statue on the mantle should not be causing my entire living room to go up about every 15 minutes or so! And yes that was happening.
However - once the radius of what could start the fire from a fireplace was adjusted there was no need to decrease the frequency of fires in general - and cooking fires were never the problem - it's not fair of you to blame people who complained about a legitimate bug for the entire fire system being Nerfed! Fire in general and fire frequency was never the complaint, the complaint was that objects placed on the mantle should not start fires constantly, the fix just went over the top and started fixing things that were not broken as well as the ones that were!
And it was very much the same for the aliens - I watched an LP were this one sim was abducted every night for a week - was not a scientist or doctor, had no space rocks, nothing that should have been causing that....that level of frequency is over the top - however again, when the legitimate bug was addressed they overdid it and turned the chances down to practically nothing rather than just tweaking slightly, maybe so that there was a cool off before being abducted again for instance. Having to spend hours TRYING FOR an abduction is frustrating and silly when many people, myself included bought the expansion for the chance of alien abduction. However getting abducted every night - that was a legitimate frustration for many as well. Once again they took a fix waaay to far.
Back to fire though - Cooking fires do still happen - they are just no longer caused by walking away. Try having a low skill sim cook on a low grade stove (or especially low grade grill) while in a bad mood such as angry, sad, embarrased, uncomfortable, dazed, etc and you are nearly guaranteed a fire. Fireplaces do still spread fire - it just takes longer and the sim usually has to "warm themselves" on the fire a few times.
Honestly even after the patches I've never experienced difficulty getting a fire to start accidentally or on purpose.
Deaths still happen on accident for me to - they just function so differently from prior games that it took me a while to figure out how to set it up so that a chance of death but not a certainty would happen - death from embarrassment has happened a few times to my sims - especially with one bathroom households. The tricks that used to bring death to your sims no longer apply - time to start making sims socially awkward and build houses to encourage privacy violations! Also never let a goofball joke-star sim in the entertainer comedian track get sick with the giggles - insta death!
