The Sims 4 neighbourhood stories is a relatively new feature which incorporates many ideas present in popular mods.
The update essentially makes the neighbourhoods in The Sims 4 feel more ‘lived in’, with unplayed sims making proactive choices without the player’s input.
The goal is to enrich gameplay and make neighbourhoods come alive without the need to control them all individually.
For more information on The Sims 4 neighbourhood stories, and tips on how to customise the system to suit your taste, read here.
THE SIMS 4 NEIGHBOURHOOD STORIES: WHAT’S INCLUDED
During a playthrough, you’ll receive pop-ups from NPCs announcing life changes such as sims deciding to date, trying for babies or changing careers.
You’ll receive the option to sway the sim’s choice and either support them (guaranteeing they’ll make the change), leave it up to them to decide (50/50 chance either way) or encourage them against their idea.
The system emulates popular Sims community mods such as MC Command Centre which was previously the only way to get unplayed sims to autonomously have children, get married and be promoted in careers.
The Sims 4 neighbourhood stories include the following features, unplayed sims can now:
- Adopt Children
- Adopt pets (if The Sims 4 Cats and Dogs is installed)
- Die prematurely in accidents, the risk of which depends on factors like age, traits, and career.
- Try for babies with significant others
- Change careers, join new careers, get promoted or leave current careers
- Get married
- Go on dates with new partners
- Go on friendship dates and create new friends
- Move into different household lots
- For more sims help, read our guide to The Sims 4 relationship cheats and instantly create friendships and relationships between sims in your game.
THE SIMS 4 NEIGHBOURHOOD STORIES: HOW TO TOGGLE ON/OFF
You may wish to keep certain families exactly as they are or pick which story options you want over others.
Luckily, The Sims 4 neighbourhood stories update came with options to toggle the system on or off.
To adjust neighbourhood story options, go into the ‘Manage Households’ menu in-game, here you can choose to enable neighbourhood stories to both your played and un-played households.
Click on the arrow icon to the top right of the screen to select which of the stories you want, this will apply uniform settings to every household.
If you wish to set story options individually, the same icon is present on each household profile.
You can go into the options and pick which of the stories you want to keep.
For example, if you don’t wish for sims to have babies autonomously but want to keep the other options open you can simply deselect the ‘Have A Baby’ option and keep the others selected.