The Sims 4 Neighborhood Stories System is expanding with new additions, including the ability to have automatic life changes for neighbors in your community.
While a big focus of The Sims 4 is the release of new premium content such as My Wedding Stories or the recently-announced Decor to the Max Kit, the devs also take the time to add new features to the base game such as food delivery and group cooking. Now, an improvement to the Neighborhood Stories system has been revealed -- and this one is a real game-changer.
How The Sims 4 Neighborhood Stories Work
Previously, The Sims 4 Neighborhood Stories System unlocked the ability for Sims outside of your active household to automatically have life-changing events without having to switch your active household. This system has now been updated (via PCGamesN) and expanded these features to your entire neighborhood.
Here's what can now happen to neighbors in your community, now including Sims that are not directly related to your family:
- Adopt young Sims into their household, aged between infant and children.
- Become pregnant with their Significant Other, and eventually deliver. Family-Oriented Sims are more likely to do this, while Noncommittal Sims are less likely. If a Sim or their SO Hates Children, they will never do this.
- Some Sims may instead adopt a dog or cat (requires The Sims 4 Cats and Dogs).
- Join and leave careers. Sim Traits heavily influence these decisions. Elder Sims may decide to retire.
- Households can move into and out of lots.
- Die in different kinds of accidents, depending on risk factors such as Age, Traits, and Career.
Obviously, some of these life changes (such as death) can have a significant effect on the game world. That's precisely why the devs are also giving you the ability to configure The Sims 4 Neighborhood Stories System in a number of ways.
First and foremost, the Neighborhood Stories system is split into "My Households" (households you have controlled at some point) and "Other Households" (households you have not controlled). The Neighborhood Stories system is enabled for Other Households by default and disabled for My Households, preventing any automatic changes from happening to families you've controlled without your explicit permission.
The configuration options go a step further, though. Aside from global enable/disable settings, you can set configurations for life events on a per-household basis. Want to make sure no Sims in your neighborhood ever die due to this system? You can do that. Want to keep people from moving out of their homes? You can do that, too. There are a lot of options for fine-tuning here.
Finally, you won't have to back out of your active game to check on what's been happening with other families -- you can click "Chick Recent Neighborhood Stories" on any mailbox to stay up to date on what's been changing in your community. You can buy The Sims 4 for PC via Steam right now for $4.79 or your regional equivalent and explore this new feature at an 88% discount until March 28, 2022.
