Ideas

Seasoned Traveler

13 days ago

Status:

Needs Info

[HR] [CD] NHS: Excessive Adoption of Pets, Horses, and Children

First of all, I’m not completely sure if this is a bug or intended gameplay, but it has been happening for a long time and feels very annoying.

Whenever I check Manage Households, I often see generated households with too many horses, dogs, cats, or adopted children. This does not make sense in many situations and breaks immersion.

For example, recently I noticed a generated household adopting/having several children, two horses, two dogs, and 1 cat while living in small houses with only 2 bedrooms in Tartosa. This does not feel logical or balanced. See Screenshot (680).

It will be worse if having Horse Ranch pack. I have seen (long time ago) households with 2–3 horses, especially this Moyer household. They live in a city apartment but have 2 horses, 2 dogs, 2 children, and 1 cat. See Screenshot (505). It is not realistic for Sims to keep horses in apartment, right??? I’m pretty sure this happens in others’ games too, see my post on X here and the quoted post. They make a joke about your broken game, have some shame maybe? Why is the program so poorly coded? Why not add a filter based on where they live?

It seems the system does not check the lot type or living conditions before making the households run the intended Neighborhood Stories. A filter based on world, lot, and household size would make more sense.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Start a new save file.

2. Open Manage Households and check the generated families. Enable Neighborhood Stories. I recommend turning off “death by accident” and leave the rest enabled. This way households will not be recycled, so the game continues generating them.

3. Play through and wait until the existing household runs the Neighborhood Stories. Or simply travel around different lots so the game generates new Sims.

4. After some time, check again in Manage Households. You will notice households with excessive pets or children.

Expected Result: Households should run Neighborhood Stories "adopt pets, children, and rescue horses" logically, based on their world, lot type, and house size (for example: no horses in apartments, and no more children than the house can reasonably support).

Actual Result: Households often adopt multiple pets, horses, and children regardless of their living situation. This leads to unrealistic results such as families with 2–3 horses in city apartments or too many children in small houses.

Game Version: 1.118.242.1030 (DX11)

Mods/CC: None. This issue is clearly not related to mods or CC, just a poorly programmed Neighborhood Stories system.

Additional info: If you want my save file, sure, but I've edited the Moyer household to delete all of the household member and remain her, now she had one babies (I turned on the "Have a Baby" and turn it off again immediately)

Please refine your code for Neighborhood Stories system, I know your devs capable to do that.

Edit By Crinrict: Added Tag to Title, Adjusted Title

Note from EA_Solaire:

Hello all,

If any of you are still encountering this on the latest game version (without mods), would you be willing to share your save file(s)?

If so, please send me a private message with a link to the file. Instructions can be found here: https://forums.ea.com/idea/the-sims-4-bug-reports-en/information-how-to-send-user-files-to-the-sims-4-team/5048472

Thanks!

cc or mods removed

live mode

25 Comments

fkhr23
Seasoned Traveler
12 days ago
Yashh this is what should we get!!! Louder!
I really love to the point 2 from your idea. I'm sick when see the household have very not similar children, like a couple hetero with light skin and black hair have children with dark skin and blonde hair???
crinrict
Hero+
11 days ago
Status changed:
New
to
Under Investigation
Figblat
New Vanguard
11 days ago
I also noticed this. I had just created and moved in 2 unplayed households, both of them single young adults, and within like...3-5 in-game days they both had adopted 2 children each. I think one had also adopted a dog. Um, what? Seems like the chance of these adoptions should be lower, especially on a long lifespan... At the current rate, every household is going to be full with children and pets. Needless to say, I turned off the adoptions in neighborhood stories, until it's tuned down a bit. (Well, except for the households where it makes sense they'd be cat ladies or something like that.)
fkhr23
Seasoned Traveler
11 days ago
Agree, they need to lower the chance of adoption or limit it by specific traits: Cat, Dog & Horse Lover, and Family Oriented. So the unplayed households not filled by this mess.
HyawehB
Seasoned Ace
10 days ago
Totally agree on that. I have turned off the adoption because it was so annoying. I had some families with 2 or 3 horses anywhere. Same for cats and dogs... sometimes some sims end up alone with 7 dogs... that's too much !
Nightgypsy
Seasoned Ace
10 days ago
Yes this happens in my game too and I'm constantly having to clean them all out. The Landgraabs living in an apartment and have a horse. A female sim by the last name of Lynx that lives in Bridleton Bay I think it is, by the bar that is a cat hangout, has 7 cats in her household. So this is happening with npcs that I have never touched. Pets and babies in households are so out of hand. So much so that I just finished deleting most all households, and the ones I did leave in the game I went in and took them into cas and made sure they could not get pregnant or get anyone pregnant. The problem is THAT bad to make me take the time to do this.
classybananasala
Seasoned Vanguard
10 days ago
Horses in the apartments are hilarious and infuriating, 100% needs to end.
But you know what, it definitely makes sense for Catarina Lynx to have 7 cats. She's a cat lover, she starts with 4 already, lore-wise I'm fine with her being the crazy cat lady. She should be the exception not the rule though!
What I find annoying is when aging is turned off the Bjergsens in Windenburg will have 4 newborns. I guess I can pretend they were quadruplets?
Nightgypsy
Seasoned Ace
10 days ago
aging off shouldn't affect sims having babies and such, but when I have neighborhood stories turned off, that should prevent them. But it doesn't. Neighborhood stories should prevent a lot of things but it's broke.
And yes I agree with you on Catarina, she was just the main example I could think of and remember a name. I guess because she or whatever house she lives in is bugged. It will never load and show the snapshot like every other household does. I would leave her because she is the game's crazy cat lady, but all of the other households act just like her between pets and kids.
Nightgypsy
Seasoned Ace
10 days ago
I forgot to say that it is the game mechanic that is broken otherwise these households would not ALL be rushing to fill their house until they're max household size. I don't really pay attention to them until I had to figure out why the maximum sim count was out of hand, because I knew I did not have that many sims.
ElliSims
Seasoned Spectator
9 days ago
One (I think easy) point to fix here - people who live in the city shouldn't have horses in the apartments. Just limiting those adoptions to areas that at least some variety of hard would make much more sense.