These are the top 10 Sims 4 quality of life updates we want to see come to the game. And by we, I mean me. If you disagree–leave it in the comments.
The Sims 4 Quality of Life Updates
Deactivate Event Notifications by Type
No, my childless adult sim that has been out of high school for years does not care that it’s Football or Cheerleading Team Sports Day. Yes, my ‘Hates Children’ sim attending the Festival of Youth in Mt. Komorebi sounds like their personal nightmare.
Not every event will appeal to every sim. Not every event will appeal to every player. And let’s be real, the festivals don’t have THAT much going on during them that players are chomping at the bit to attend them every time they’re in town. The constant festival notifications are one of the biggest annoyances for players in Sims 4 and they have been for years.
The aforementioned High School Years Team Sports Day notifications are the worst offender, by far. These events are incredibly niche ones that players will rarely ever want to attend or even have teenager sims in their household to attend. However, these notifications still appear even if the household lacks a relevant teenager sim.
The worst part is, these notifications are aggressively loud. Much louder than any other part of the game. It’s reminiscent to how the volume of commercials blast through the TV compared to the volume of the show you’re watching.
Players have been begging for EA to remove these events for years, or at the very least quiet the sound effect for them. Yet they persist. As does our annoyance. Why EA? Why must we suffer so?
Thankfully, the Businesses and Hobbies meetup events don’t give you a notification by default. You must go to the sign board and enable notifications for each specific meetup type and it’s setup per household.
This is how all events in the game should be. With the calendar system now being a part of the base game, this would be easier than ever. We could opt in and out of event notifications right in the calendar as it’s displaying every event already anyway.
They have the ability to favorite festivals and events in the calendar, just tie the notifications to that feature. As it is now, the favoriting system only lets you filter events visually, not their notifications.
Sims 4 Needs an Ad Blocker
EA, I promise you, we know ThrifTea exists. We do. We know Cupid’s Corner is a great place to find love. You don’t need to remind us every day. My sims who are in amazing relationships don’t care that there are tons of singles in their area looking for love.
It’s at the point where it feels as though I need to install an ad blocker because these fake ads are more annoying than real ones.
The Social Bunny notifications are also terrible. Every time a sim does something slightly interesting or new it constantly bombards you with notifications about posting them to Social Bunny. I don’t use social media in real life because it’s exhausting, so I’m not about to impose that lifestyle on my sims.
But those notifications are optional, as they all should be! You can go to your sim’s Social Bunny account and disable notifications. Why can we not do the same for Cupid’s Corner, which is also an app on our sim’s phone?
I get that ThrifTea isn’t an app on the phone to disable notifications, but we should need to go into the store and sign up for their newsletter or something.
Stop Congratulating My Sims
Do not call my sims to congratulate them on becoming friends with their husband. Do not call my sims to congratulate them on their promotion they got a week ago. Stop calling. Stop texting. Delete my number.
I have never once called a person in real life to say anything along the lines of “I heard you and so-and-so became friends and that’s so totally cool and just needed to call and let you know I think that’s great.”
If they made these calls more personal, such as having an actual friend–not a literal stranger–call and congratulate my sim on their promotion and ask them out for drinks to celebrate, that would be great. If a sim called and said something along the lines of “So-and-so said you two hit it off and we wanted to invite you to a hangout with us,” that would be splendid.
But these random calls are incredibly shallow, impersonal, and oftentimes don’t even make sense. “I heard you and your husband that you’ve been happily married to for years became friends!”
The Endless Cycle of Grief Must End
To quote Keke Palmer, “I hate to say it, I hope I don’t sound ridiculous… I don’t know who this man is. I mean, he could be walking down the street, I wouldn’t know a thing. Sorry to this man.”
This monologue runs through my head 99% of the time my sim receives a phone call about a sim that has died.
My sims do not need to be in a constant state of grief because their waiter from several weeks ago, that they talked to once while ordering, has died. They shouldn’t care that the sim they asked “what fairies do you believe in” for a quest, and then never associated with ever again, has passed away.
This issue is exacerbated by how incredibly easy it is for sims to get to know someone else. I mean… townies are always butting in on conversations my sim is having. I don’t WANT my sim to know them, but it just happens because the townies force themselves to be relevant.
I’m lumping in the “[Sim Name]’s spirit is fading away” notifications into this conversation as well. They too need to stop. Just cross over already, I don’t care. I don’t know you.
I’m sorry to that sim, but I don’t care that they passed. And neither should my sims.
When a sim that my sim knows dies, they should only receive a phone call under certain circumstances. Is my sim related to the dead sim? If so, yes, call them to let them know. Is my sim incredibly close with them where they were best friends, they have a key to my house, they were a roommate, etc.? Sure, call away.
But for the love of The Watcher (shoutout to all you Sims Medieval fans out there) please stop calling me to tell me a sim that my sim talked to once weeks ago has passed. They’re irrelevant to the plot.
How Many Skills is Too Many?
I don’t have an exact number, but the limit was reached years ago. The Skills Tab is a mess. Sims 4 made it so the second your sim does an action related to a skill, they immediately gain the first level. It’s convenient, but also a bit much.
Have you looked at your sim’s Skill Tab recently? It’s overwhelming.
There absolutely needs to be some organization and some optimization done to this panel. Give us the ability to favorite skills and then keep unfavorited skills in a separate tab. Or allow us to filter based on different skill categories like knowledge, creative, etc.
Also, please give the Skill Mastery Perk its own separate tab instead of plopping it directly at the top. I don’t know how often people are checking which Skill Mastery Perks their sims have, but it’s not often enough to be sitting there.
Simology Tab, Point Blank
The Simology Tab exhausts me so much that I can’t be bothered to come up with a clever title for this section. Please, EA, I’m begging–we’re begging–please just clean it up.
We’re at the point in Sims 4 where the Simology Tab now has ten separate sections. If that alone isn’t bad enough, on top it also shows the sim’s age and includes two buttons to view their genealogy and their stats.
It’s information overload. It’s crowded. It’s overwhelming. It’s too much!
Yes, there is a mod that organizes this tab with buttons leading to different sections and moving things around. But not everyone can, or wants, to use mods, so this isn’t a solution for most people. I know they can clean this up because they just updated the Inventory Tab, Collection UI, and Notebook UI. It can be done. It absolutely should be done.
Side Note: Why is the Neighborhood Action Plan section in the Simology Tab to begin with?
Let’s Get Baked
The baking skill needs to be made base game. Controversial, I know.
Some people don’t like the concept of paid content coming to base game years later, but I think this is more than necessary. Since it’s not a base game skill, having come with the Get to Work expansion pack, the Sims Team will not add, update, or change anything with the Baking Skill.
Any new food items that should technically be considered baked goods are instead placed under the generic cooking skill. It’s the same reason that you won’t find birthday and wedding cakes under Baking, but instead the Cooking menu. This is also the reason why they never made a smaller Cupcake Machine even though fans have been begging for one since Get to Work’s launch in 2015.
While they eventually updated the baking skill so you can make some of the items in a regular oven, a lot of baked goods are still locked away in the eyesore cupcake machine.
Making the Baking Skill a base game skill would clean up a lot of cooking confusion. A lot of items under the “Cook” menu could be added to “Bake” instead, thereby cleaning up some confusion of which items are found where. It would finally allow them to make a smaller, nicer cupcake machine, or allow us to bake anything in the oven instead of needing a cupcake machine in the first place. It would also increase the chances of more baked goods being added to the game.
It’s a necessary change no matter if it upsets a select few people. It’s also something they’ve done before, so it’s not unheard of. The Photography Skill, which also debuted in Get to Work, was eventually added to the base game so they could improve it and add more features later on down the line like they did with the Moschino Stuff Pack.
Can You Give Me a Moment?
Let me preface this section by saying I love having townies invite my sims places. I think it adds a lot of realism and life to the game. I don’t want this to go away.
However! Can you give me a single moment to prepare myself? Yes, I want to go to the Flea Market with you, but not right this second. Yes, I want to come see your new baby, just not right now. I’m in the middle of something, but if you give me five minutes I’ll be ready to go.
As it is now, if a sim invites your sim somewhere and you say yes, you travel there instantly. I’ve found myself wanting to say yes to a sim, but I was in the middle of something important, so I had to say no instead. I would love the option to say yes, but choose when to go instead.
Another option I think should be added is saying yes but not traveling with the sim. Sometimes a sim will ask someone in my household to go somewhere when I’m not currently focusing on that sim. It would be a great addition to the game if I could send that sim to the hangout by themselves without needing to go with them so I could continue focus on a different sim.
Let Us Make Our Own Stories
When you kick up Create-A-Sim it asks if you want to “create my story.” This feature is a questionnaire that then creates a sim based on your responses. The created sim will have a preset aspiration, traits, career, skills, and starting household funds. This is all well and good, if not feeling a bit completely random.
However, give us the ability to create our own stories. Why can we not, right in Create-A-Sim, choose our sim’s career, starting skills, and funds? It doesn’t have to be anything too crazy and could be limited. I’m not asking to start with every skill already at level 10 and a finished career from the jump.
Instead, I think we should be given a few skill points that we can assign to our sim so that they don’t feel so displaced from the world once in game. It would help with creating backstory for the sim or sims.
It could be like the personality point distribution in past Sims games where you only have a certain amount to distribute, so you have to use them wisely. If they’re worried about the game being too easy (which shouldn’t matter since you make the game as easy or difficult as you want) they can even limit how many points you can put in one skill.
The most important part of this, though, is the starting funds. Listen, we all cheat. Freerealestate all day, every day. If we want our sims to live in a specific house, we’re going to do it no matter how much money EA has them start with.
Can You Hair Me?
I know this will never happen, but it’s by far the weakest part of Create-A-Sim and still needs mentioned. Hair color. The system is bleak.
The lack of hair color options is really disheartening. We keep getting all of these great, super detailed additions to Create-A-Sim. The makeup sliders, incredibly in-depth tattoo system, the pet fur system, and now fairy wings. All of these fantastic additions just make the lack of hair color options even worse.
EA has added a couple of hair color swatches in the past, most specifically they added six new color options in 2021. They also added twenty-four new colors… to only two specific hair styles back in 2024. That’s not the level of the Sims 4 quality of life updates we want.
As it stands, we only have twenty-four hair colors that can be applied to all hair styles. Even worse, children and younger only have fifteen colors available to them. Why? Apparently, EA thinks children shouldn’t have unnatural hair colors in a game of make believe (except for in specific hair styles for some reason). Make it make sense, EA. Give us our creative freedom. Free the hair colors for children!
It’s also worth noting that even though we have these twenty-four base colors, a lot of the swatches actually have multiple colors in them. This is a nice change of pace, but also incredibly difficult because you have no idea what swatches actually house which colors. It’s daunting for sure.
I know all of this is wishful thinking. The hair colors we have now are the hair colors we’ll always have in Sims 4. At this point there are too many hair swatches in the game that they would need to make compatible for more color swatches or a color wheel that it’s just not worth their time or energy.
It’s grim and bleak and the reality we live in. Sims 4 quality of life updates are always coming, but most likely not to this scale.
But hey, they could always surprise us, right? Right…?
And there you have it. My list of the top ten Sims 4 quality of life updates I’d love to see come to the game. Do you agree? Disagree? Have another you’d add to the list? If so, leave it in the comments!
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Not too fussed about hair colours (not really a CAS person) but yes to all the rest. I share your pain.
I want a refresh on some of the careers where they have two branches mashed together that don’t make sense. Either make the point where they branch a much lower level or split them entirely. Musician being tied to Comedian, Mixology tied to Culinary, and eSports tied to Programming – let them thrive separately. It would also be cool if some of the part time/side gig jobs would give you a boost if you switch to a similar full time job. Streaming boosting eSports, Barista boosting Mixology, and Influencer boosting the Social Media job would be a neat touch.
Agree with all of these!! I would love to add to the social panel, a “favorite” button. That way I can favorite certain family, or certain friends into one tab that makes sense for the sim I’m playing. This would also make event planning so much easier, to click a favorite tab when selecting sims to invite. Also to add on to the baking overhaul…the whole cooking wheel and select needs to be updated! Why do the same 10 breakfast choices come up when they have added so many new breakfast items? Would love to see a “serve a dessert” option…that would include ALL dessert options between cooking/baking and base game/expansion packs. My sim deserves an easily accessible sweet treat!!!
right, ik we had the meal menu in TS2 and I also believe it was in TS3 but not having an updated one now pmo so bad bc we had dozens of recipes added yet none seem to ever make it to the breakfast, lunch, or dinner options unless you click “cook” and sort thru dozens more recipes. I also love the fav social menu idea; that would definitely improve party invites and even asking your closest friends to hangout or video chat 🙂
Baking Skill absolutely needs to be moved to base game, I’m surprised they didn’t shift it over with Home Chef Hustle. I also agree that invitations to go out need to have a delay to them, my Sims are always ignoring their friends and family because they’re expected to head over right away or not at all. I liked how TS3 did it–if you’re invited to a party, you get noticed in advance and the whole day to prepare.
Children not having access to “unnatural” hair colors is also wild when you consider how many Occult types this game has now. Wouldn’t a magical family with genetically purple hair just make sense? The game tends to just pick whichever ancestor had natural hair and reuse that for every kid onward. On that note, a feature I’ve always wanted is to be able to tell the game what my Sim’s natural hair color is. If my redhead Sim has dyed their hair blonde, their kid’s hair color should be determined as if their parent’s hair is red, not blonde.
THIS! Well said about the hair.
The dyed hair thing is so true, it bugs me so much.
yess better genetics fr! that’s kind of why i avoid having my sims change hair color bc of that
As another lifetime Sims player I totally agree with all your points about life updates that are needed in the game. We can hope and cross our fingers but I just want all the bugs fixed first and I would love to have preteens. When Sims age up to teens they might as well be young adults 🙂
Also for anyone who can use mods SimMattically make a wonderful mod called Better Simology Panel:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/better-simology-130566542
theres also a mod for custom sims hair color 🙂 i think its a color wheel
Yes and yes, want all of the above.
Honestly… The woodworking table. We didn’t get anything new for it in forever except for the new login event. We got a random fabrication skill that also have nothing new added to it but I mean… It’s base game. At least some compatibility for items in different packs and kits that are made of wood would be great, even if nothing new per say.
They need update the older pack or make part of a base game and give people who own it a voucher for another pack, It’s so unfair comparing outdoor retreat, get to work with another new packs, they don’t have the same much content as the newest packs, for example get to work needs an update:
– Aliens needs a skill tree like the others ocults
– Sixam should be a little neighborhood, not an only lot
– Baking Skill need an update
– We should can access the workplaces without be in that career (maybe put the lots in the normal map of Magnolia Promenade)
There’s a lot more that a can’t think about it right now but I know there is… hope one day they can fix it!
Yes! A Get To Work refresh is desperately needed!
I’d give up every other quality of life improvement for two simple fixes- make my Sims do what I ask them to do as soon as I ask them instead of having them first stand around sighing, looking at the ceiling, or shrugging like an idiot for what feels like an eternity before they make a move and, my number one desperate beseechment, please get rid of all autonomous “Share Funny Video” interactions. Every time I play, I notice one of my Sims standing stock still in their living rooms staring into the void and when I click on them to find out what’s going on, they are invariably waiting for some complete stranger on the other side of the neighborhood to come show them a video.
agreed with all of these. especially hair colors! god, when are we gonna get a proper purple swatch!
I agree with all of these. One thing that got me annoyed recently was the skillful sleep perk,my sim kept learning totally random skills that she never cared about or done,how does that make sense? Ive never even played with herbalism and she maxed out the skill lol. They have to make it so your sim only learns the skills your sim has at least. Also they should rework the whole romantic satisfaction system. My sim couple I’m playing right now are happily engaged with plenty of romance and lately every time I go into their household the romance is down to a half,like why? Or I’ll get the notification of if you’re mean to me something something when nothing negative happened,it’s so frustrating. I guess when you start ranting you remember more but they should also rework some aspirations. Some of them are so bland with only 1 level and the ones that have more are random in their tasks,I can’t recall from the top of my head but having easier tasks at the end is weird,they have to start easy and get slightly more difficult to achieve to make it more interesting.
I don’t at all mind that the skill is random (it’s kind of like dreams – they can go anywhere) but you know what bugs me? When my skillful sleepers started meeting their own projections and the game logged that as “met new sibling”.
Hair colours and let us make our own stories, yes please! The rest could be very beneficial, but I think those two are just necessary. Thanks for the post! It’s so important to put that lists together. Hopefully our prayers are heard! 🙂
Also, what about creating our own careers? That could be just brilliant.
I think custom careers can be created, that option’s been there since the start. They count as mods, there’s no in-game option to create mods. Tbh that makes sense. A custom career is more than picking skill points at start. They HAVE given people the option to register their own career title with the “Ministry of Labor” though.
I know, there can be lots of things done with mods. But what I mean is, obviously, without mods :’)
I couldn’t agree more those updates are truly needed!! Bring back the color/pattern wheel for creative freedom!
Considering how static the hairstyles we get are there are maybe a handful that look good anyway. And the little ones from infant and up it’s worse. I’ve said from sims 1 the hair is so stiff it’s weird. And yeah a baby with parents that have say hot pink hair and blue hair are not gonna have their baby having brown hair. Or worse grey. (That has happened btw) It’s why when I played sims 2 and 3 I had so many modded hairstyles. Cause the ones we get can be so bad. Now we have some really good ones but there are so few it’s like some kind of stepford wives thing going on in sims. Lol
Honestly when discussing base game updates the longer we go without mobility aides in create a sim the weirder it is. Like wdym we have fairies before a cane or wheelchair like aside from the fact it’s stoping sm people from making sims that accurately represent many peoples lives-it’s also?? Boring like maybe I want my elderly sim to have a walker? If anything it could just be a walking style or something
Canes and walkers can totally come to the game. Canes were already in Sims 3 Generations. They only require a single new walking animation. Wheelchairs will most likely never come to the game because of how much they would require in terms of new routing and animations. They would need to redo every single animation for every single interaction and action in the game to work with wheelchairs and that’s way too big of a task for such little payoff in the end. Animation is one of the costliest parts of game design. Just adding wheelchairs to the game alone would end up costing more than an entire expansion pack development would.
Can we maybe get a way to shut of specific holidays. No I don’t want my Sim to feel bad because he didn’t fight with anyone. Really. And I don’t like valentines day in real life. I don’t like it in Sims. I just would like to choose which holidays my sim actually wants to celebrate and which he wants to ignore.
I think you can do that. If you click close while a holiday is active it gives you the option to remove it from the calendar entirely.
Yes, it is possible, just open the calendar and click on the cross to delete this holiday, I have already done it, and it works.
You can delete them and start new ones, whenever you want them and how you want them. When starting a new save just immediately tackle the calender with your first sim
I agree with most of what you mentioned… Well ok all of it. But what I’d like to see come to the game is a sewing machine along with the skill set to sell items. It would definitely tie into multiple game packs and offers plenty of play options including college degrees. There was one created in 2002, I think, but it was never updated for current game play. That mod would make my day, week and be used by me for many years to come, lol. I keep mentioning it in the hopes that some brilliant creator will bring it to fruition for me. I can dream. #gottabeinmyhead
A sewing machine and associated skill/gameplay was actually in my previous article about items I want to see return to Sims 4. They were added to Sims 2 in the FreeTime expansion and I’d love to see an updated, more fully fleshed out version in Sims 4 as well.
Eu concordo com tudo.
Mas podia ter uma observação (eu faço uma família com cinco pessoas em cada uma delas eu tenho que sair de um sims para mexer no outro às vezes isso fica um pouco chato , se nós criar uma família de cinco pessoas podíamos mexer só em uma e as outras quatro podia ter vida própria no jogo.
E podíamos jogar com nossos amigos enquanto isso não acontece.)
Yes to every single one of these!
I’d also like two options when travelling: “Travel alone” in addition to “Travel with”. Most of the time I want to send a Sim somewhere, I don’t want to bring any other Sim, so why can’t I skip the selection menu?
I miss simple things. Interactions between pets (I have 2 dogs and they never play together?), being able to send or receive postcards for big life occasions, or post about it on Social Bunny, being able to walk 2 dogs at the same time, have a stroller for my baby/infant (and yes to all of the updates mentioned in this post). And why not just add some of the landscaping that’s hidden into the base game? Why hide it?? That one’s just confusing to me.
I miss the fact Sims 2 sims had individual interests in other sims. In a relationship; romantically, friendly, one could really like the other sim but the other sim couldnt be bothered by the other. The bars interacted individually from eachother, as each sim developed their own personal interests with other sims. In sims 4 its all connected, the only exception where sims 4 incorporates this is celebrities. It made realistic gameplay way more, well, realistic in older games. U had to work to make a sim like you after you did something wrong, but it wouldnt hurt your love for them. Now its just one soup. One bad interaction and bam both now despise eachother.