Top 10 Sims 4 Quality of Life Updates We’re Begging For

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.

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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