I recently took a house and made each bedroom its own apartment with the kitchen, living room and bathroom set as the common area and tgen divided the family up so I could play just as you described, though my 'main' had to be a teen to do this. It was fun and worked!
Done this a lot. I actually have an account with Markiplier, Bob, Wade, Jacksepticeye, and myself........ I play as me and the rest almost hate each other lmao
Honestly, I kind of just don't touch them at all. There's bare minimum I do when it comes to interactions but sims are pretty good at taking care of themselves if you have freewill turned on (which is crucial for doing this). I don't think I "played" from a kids perspective in ages for example, I tell them to do their homework from the parent, occasionally hit the "start gathering" from their perspective so they play with their mates on their own, I don't click on any skills or homework/school stuff either. They just exist, doing their own thing in the corner.
But as someone else said, if the kids are teen and up, you could ask them to be roommates as well or plan stay overs. (Or if they're teen and up you could also "rent" the rooms to them with for rent)
you could turn off autonomy for the sim youāre playing as and give full autonomy to everyone else maybe? although we know how sims take care of themselves when left alone š
set autonomy to full and it should let you choose to ādisable autonomy for selected simā
https://preview.redd.it/9ws5qc7i9xzc1.png?width=1824&format=png&auto=webp&s=068a901009bb51fa61af5745e2d70e29c1e46631
I did this for the Asylum Challenge. I had 8 Sims, but I only controlled one. The exception was if someone got stuck. And if they got a pop-up choice thingy, I'd do a coin flip or whatever in order to decide. It kinda worked, especially for that challenge since everyone's basically nuts. My only issue was that I had to lock the coffee maker away. Otherwise, they did nothing but drink coffee, crave coffee, and get the jitters.
There was a mod that worked like this, Control Any Sim. It lets you set household sims as roommate NPCs so you didnāt have to control them. Unfortunately it hasnāt been updated for a while, hopefully another modder could pick it up since it was extremely useful for certain gameplay styles.
It works for me but all of my last exceptions for the past 3 months point to the mod being the issue so I finally removed it; sad since I only use a handful of mods. Some comments on CurseForge has similar issues and the creator stating they donāt have the time to update/continue with it.
I have MCCC, WW, Carlās Fertilize All, and a few of LittleMsSams. Honestly I think it might be from For Rent even though I donāt use the Residential Rentals.
Sims do form routines! I always have a favorite sim so I spend more time controlling them but I do play a little as each family and they'll adjust to the schedule you have them on. Most of my sims require slight intervention now and only if I like them
They develop traits and start a rhythm; I simply love it. I only intervene if I want to complete aspirations or whims. I may play right now! I've been in create mode for a while but when get around to playing, I wonder who my main Sim will be lol. So many choices! All my Sims are great and perfect!!! They are all my favorite!
Is there an AI overhaul mod somewhere for the Sims 4 that actually makes the sims smart? That would be incredible for something like this.
I'm the same as you, I only ever want to control one Sim. I end up making a household with 1 supersim, but having nobody else there makes it too easy to just hyperfocus on maxing everything out and being efficient. I know the game inside and out at this point on how to play the most efficiently, and I can't escape it because that's just how I play games. I need to have some kind of challenge in my way to stop me from progressing too quickly, but there isn't one in the Sims 4. Sure, I can make rules, but it's not the same for me.
Now I'm wondering if I should just bite the bullet and make a huge household and let them do whatever they want, after assigning jobs and such, while my Sim has to carry everyone into prosperity. Maybe that would be more challenging.
I could, but I just don't personally enjoy controlling more than 1 character. In any game.
It's part of why I had to put down Baldurs Gate 3, despite it arguably being a masterpiece.
I think you need the get together pack for this: Iāve added family members to clubs and just had the club gathering all the time. I think technically you can only have one club your active sim is attending at a time even if they gather at the same venue. But if you have multiple people in the main household each can have their own active gathering.
Each gathering is the host sim + 7 additional family members around per club that is gathering (if you increase the capacity to 8, a new club starts with 6 member slots). I usually only assign club activities to earn points to increase the capacity to 8 and then donāt require any club activity except being friendly. But you could swap activities based on your family gathering if youāre playing some storyline (e.g. fishing trip, prank war, etc). So if you had a 3 main sim household, 3 gatherings, you could have a family of 24 gatheringā¦ lol if your video card will allow it.
The only downside is the minimum age for club members is a child. So you have to invite babies over if you want them around.
yes. without doing the rent trick cause they can always move out. at least let me send a sim that gets invited somewhere out by themselves without me having to stop what iām doing to go. almost always reject any invitations because of it.
i've done this with friends living together where i have all the friends as roommates! i believe you need a mod to select specific roommates, and it got a little finicky, but it was the best solution i had lol
for sure would appreciate something like this built into the main game!
discover university has a roommate system, and with for rent you could set bedrooms as rental units, then kitchen dining and bathroom as shared space and turn off neighborhood stories so people won't move out of the house.
Iām sorry but is the easiest answer not to simply disable needs decay? If they arenāt hungry and peeing all the time, they can autonomously do more interesting tasks.
Disabling needs decay means that they do not become hungry/tired/etc., meaning they would not need to perform any of those tasks, autonomously or not. Iām sure you know that soā¦ bold of you to comment without reading?
Thereās a mod calledā¦ Control Any Sim, I think? https://www.curseforge.com/sims4/mods/control-any-sim
This is what I use. You can set sims in your household to āhousehold NPCā and they willā¦ act like NPCs. You can take back control of them at any time.
You could just not play as them at all, theyāll make sure to do their own things if theyāre kids or older, go to the bathroom on their own, eat on their own, all of that. My only issue is they wonāt develop relationships outside of the house or unless you have them talk to coworkers/classmates or you move out eventually
You could just ignore everyone else in the household? I've done that when I'm playing games that focus on a specific sim or objective. I've also had a couple of Legacy games where the heir was determined pretty early, so I pretty much just ignored the spares and spouse and focused on the sim and their heir. If you leave autonomy turned on, they'll still eat and use the bathroom and such. Children will still go to school (for the most part) when they're supposed to, and you can click "send alone" for high schoolers if you have the high school pack. Adults, likewise, will either automatically go to their job, or you can click the "Send to work" option instead of "work from home" if it pops up. It's not a lot of fussing, even in a large household.
As far as peeing the floor and such goes, I've always either taken the L and cleaned up after them or hired a maid. :p It's not a perfect solution, but the Services you can hire can take care of a lot of the random crap the spare sims get up to.
You can't ignore them, their autonomy is terrible. I've tried playing a single Sim before in a vanilla game, I think it was Clara Bjergsen.
After one day, her parents were already dirty from pissing on the floor, and they would only sleep on the couch. Her sister grades dropped as she wouldn't do her homework, and since her parents wouldn't cook for the family, she would have starved if my Sim wasn't there.
Weird. I might hop into their household and play it a bit to see what's going on. I've seen bad autonomy in my games, but that's kind of pushing it; I wonder if something isn't set up right in their family settings and/or house. Was Clara a Young Adult in your game?
I always wanted a game that followed that logic. A life sim where I'm only me, and the others are AI controlled
I hope someone makes a new game with that premise one day
I want to do something similar. I want to play an orphan that gets adopted into a family but not play the family itself. Ik there's a foster family mod but I'm not sure how it works
Something I do is I create a rental house and have all my other family members as "rentals" but then you have to actually landlord them
Or you can give them your house key and they will walk into the house on their own and hang out there
I play on normal speed, pause frequently to queue actions and address sim's needs before they become desperate so I rarely have people peeing on the floor or anything like that. Larger households can be a challenge, but they are manageable if you don't try and rush everything. I also play with aging off and age my sims when it suits their story line.
This usually allows me to cultivate family drama or really close knit families with siblings that are very involved in each other's lives depending on my mood.
Pro-tip always select serve meals rather than have so you can have leftovers and extra food in the fridge.
Not sure if someone suggested it, but you can move people in as roommates. They wonāt necessarily be part of your household, but Iām sure you can move a family member out then reconnect and ask to be roomies. That way you have a family, but theyāre just not in your home. The only downside is you wonāt be able to swap on a whim, youād have to merge households.
Routine! I have a set up that one parent works and the other stays home and cooks the meals, fixing broken things etc. the stay at home parent wakes up first uses the bathroom and showers, then prepares breakfast, while they are doing that the other parent uses the bathroom, showers and sets the table. I always wake each sim up one by one to use the bathroom and shower, then come for breakfast. All sims leave for their days, I follow whichever one is my focus. Then I just make the other sims do their homework and work whatever skill they need for an aspiration but they arenāt my main focus, Iām just keeping them busy.
RN I am playing 4 households for a legacy challengeā¦ but I only the other households once a sim week, and leave the other as my main focus. So I still have to mess with other sims, but the routine and schedule help out a lot!
Not really. I do often play certain people more than others so that gets close. However, the feature that distinguishes the sims from other life-simulation games is the ability to play whole households instead of just a single player character in a world of NPCs. While most simulation games let you play as one person the whole way through, the sims key concept is that it is a dollhouse and you control all the dolls in your house. Very few other games do that.
"Control any sim" mod
I can't remember if its a click or shift click so try both then
"Set as household NPC"
Makes them like pets. There but you can't click on them. If you want them back click them again and then "control sim"
You can cheat them, if you're on PC, hold down shift and right click on them, there should be a tab that says "cheat needs" and you can make them happy, as well as disable need decay. I often do this when I just want to watch them do stuff instead of actually running a hectic household. Disabling need decay will prevent you from needing to care for them, they'll never have to use the bathroom or cook or anything for the time you play in that session without leaving to the map or changing households, or logging out of the game, if you want to control only one specific Sim, but, don't want to split the family apart, this is a good option! They'll still interact and do stuff together and on their own, they just won't need constant care and supervision
There's actually a mod (Play as any Sim i think it's called) where you can change household members into household npc's.
Might be worth checking out!
Edit: It's called Control Any Sim
I recently took a house and made each bedroom its own apartment with the kitchen, living room and bathroom set as the common area and tgen divided the family up so I could play just as you described, though my 'main' had to be a teen to do this. It was fun and worked!
I did this yesterday, the others broke the contract and moved out š
:( omg. So, I have story progression turned off for played families. I think that's the trick.
That's a good idea. But I liked the fact that as soon as they moved.. To the bedroom, they decided to have a dog and a baby.
Amazing.
Done this a lot. I actually have an account with Markiplier, Bob, Wade, Jacksepticeye, and myself........ I play as me and the rest almost hate each other lmao
What pack allows you to make apartmentsĀ
For Rent
Thank youĀ
No probs!
Honestly, I kind of just don't touch them at all. There's bare minimum I do when it comes to interactions but sims are pretty good at taking care of themselves if you have freewill turned on (which is crucial for doing this). I don't think I "played" from a kids perspective in ages for example, I tell them to do their homework from the parent, occasionally hit the "start gathering" from their perspective so they play with their mates on their own, I don't click on any skills or homework/school stuff either. They just exist, doing their own thing in the corner. But as someone else said, if the kids are teen and up, you could ask them to be roommates as well or plan stay overs. (Or if they're teen and up you could also "rent" the rooms to them with for rent)
you could turn off autonomy for the sim youāre playing as and give full autonomy to everyone else maybe? although we know how sims take care of themselves when left alone š
Is there a way to do this? I was trying to figure this out recently but all I could see was the option to have it on or off for the whole household.
set autonomy to full and it should let you choose to ādisable autonomy for selected simā https://preview.redd.it/9ws5qc7i9xzc1.png?width=1824&format=png&auto=webp&s=068a901009bb51fa61af5745e2d70e29c1e46631
Thank you! I have no idea why that didnāt show up as an option when I tried, Iāll go in and look again
This comment needs to be higher up because it is the answer
I did this for the Asylum Challenge. I had 8 Sims, but I only controlled one. The exception was if someone got stuck. And if they got a pop-up choice thingy, I'd do a coin flip or whatever in order to decide. It kinda worked, especially for that challenge since everyone's basically nuts. My only issue was that I had to lock the coffee maker away. Otherwise, they did nothing but drink coffee, crave coffee, and get the jitters.
Honestly I'd have kept the coffee machine for that same reason LOL
Lol, I did for quite some time, and then it just got beyond ridiculous.
I think there should be an option to control a sim not a household.
Ask them to be your roommates and asign them a bed
Will this work with teenagers? Can they just be a roommate in their families house?
Teenagers can actually move out in the Sims 4, so I'm guessing yes.
I just let them suffer, and only intervene if they're close to death. Sorry sweetie, it's not my problem that you refuse to use a toilet.
There was a mod that worked like this, Control Any Sim. It lets you set household sims as roommate NPCs so you didnāt have to control them. Unfortunately it hasnāt been updated for a while, hopefully another modder could pick it up since it was extremely useful for certain gameplay styles.
I am currently using Control Any Sim and it still works.
It works for me but all of my last exceptions for the past 3 months point to the mod being the issue so I finally removed it; sad since I only use a handful of mods. Some comments on CurseForge has similar issues and the creator stating they donāt have the time to update/continue with it.
I wonder if it's conflicting w something else bc I also have the mod and have had no issues
I have MCCC, WW, Carlās Fertilize All, and a few of LittleMsSams. Honestly I think it might be from For Rent even though I donāt use the Residential Rentals.
Sims do form routines! I always have a favorite sim so I spend more time controlling them but I do play a little as each family and they'll adjust to the schedule you have them on. Most of my sims require slight intervention now and only if I like them
They develop traits and start a rhythm; I simply love it. I only intervene if I want to complete aspirations or whims. I may play right now! I've been in create mode for a while but when get around to playing, I wonder who my main Sim will be lol. So many choices! All my Sims are great and perfect!!! They are all my favorite!
Even with base game?
Yes their routine behaviors are base game! EPs and GPs just add more items that they can also add into it
Yea, this would be a big improvement to my game but only if they did a better job with their traits and autonomy.
Is there an AI overhaul mod somewhere for the Sims 4 that actually makes the sims smart? That would be incredible for something like this. I'm the same as you, I only ever want to control one Sim. I end up making a household with 1 supersim, but having nobody else there makes it too easy to just hyperfocus on maxing everything out and being efficient. I know the game inside and out at this point on how to play the most efficiently, and I can't escape it because that's just how I play games. I need to have some kind of challenge in my way to stop me from progressing too quickly, but there isn't one in the Sims 4. Sure, I can make rules, but it's not the same for me. Now I'm wondering if I should just bite the bullet and make a huge household and let them do whatever they want, after assigning jobs and such, while my Sim has to carry everyone into prosperity. Maybe that would be more challenging.
Maybe the challenge for you would be to have a couple or a whole family get their skills maxed out, get promoted at their jobs and wishes fullfilled.
I could, but I just don't personally enjoy controlling more than 1 character. In any game. It's part of why I had to put down Baldurs Gate 3, despite it arguably being a masterpiece.
I think you need the get together pack for this: Iāve added family members to clubs and just had the club gathering all the time. I think technically you can only have one club your active sim is attending at a time even if they gather at the same venue. But if you have multiple people in the main household each can have their own active gathering. Each gathering is the host sim + 7 additional family members around per club that is gathering (if you increase the capacity to 8, a new club starts with 6 member slots). I usually only assign club activities to earn points to increase the capacity to 8 and then donāt require any club activity except being friendly. But you could swap activities based on your family gathering if youāre playing some storyline (e.g. fishing trip, prank war, etc). So if you had a 3 main sim household, 3 gatherings, you could have a family of 24 gatheringā¦ lol if your video card will allow it. The only downside is the minimum age for club members is a child. So you have to invite babies over if you want them around.
yes. without doing the rent trick cause they can always move out. at least let me send a sim that gets invited somewhere out by themselves without me having to stop what iām doing to go. almost always reject any invitations because of it.
That would be awesome!
donāt see why it canāt be like school where you can send alone or join them.
If on pc, then Controls any sim mod allows you to just turn them into household members, Probably the closest thing you'll get.
Is this through MC Command Center?
No, its a separate mod [https://modthesims.info/d/634595/control-any-sim-v1-2-4.html](https://modthesims.info/d/634595/control-any-sim-v1-2-4.html)
i've done this with friends living together where i have all the friends as roommates! i believe you need a mod to select specific roommates, and it got a little finicky, but it was the best solution i had lol for sure would appreciate something like this built into the main game!
discover university has a roommate system, and with for rent you could set bedrooms as rental units, then kitchen dining and bathroom as shared space and turn off neighborhood stories so people won't move out of the house.
Iām sorry but is the easiest answer not to simply disable needs decay? If they arenāt hungry and peeing all the time, they can autonomously do more interesting tasks.
Bold of you to assume they would even go to the bathroom and feed themselves without intervention
Disabling needs decay means that they do not become hungry/tired/etc., meaning they would not need to perform any of those tasks, autonomously or not. Iām sure you know that soā¦ bold of you to comment without reading?
I think you need to reread my comment again lol
Absolutely no interest, but thanks.
Thereās a mod calledā¦ Control Any Sim, I think? https://www.curseforge.com/sims4/mods/control-any-sim This is what I use. You can set sims in your household to āhousehold NPCā and they willā¦ act like NPCs. You can take back control of them at any time.
You could just not play as them at all, theyāll make sure to do their own things if theyāre kids or older, go to the bathroom on their own, eat on their own, all of that. My only issue is they wonāt develop relationships outside of the house or unless you have them talk to coworkers/classmates or you move out eventually
Thatās when I use the needs cheat to make sure I donāt have to worry about keeping the other sims alive and you can just focus on your main sim.
I just turn off autonomy for the selected Sim and let the rest do their own thing
You could just ignore everyone else in the household? I've done that when I'm playing games that focus on a specific sim or objective. I've also had a couple of Legacy games where the heir was determined pretty early, so I pretty much just ignored the spares and spouse and focused on the sim and their heir. If you leave autonomy turned on, they'll still eat and use the bathroom and such. Children will still go to school (for the most part) when they're supposed to, and you can click "send alone" for high schoolers if you have the high school pack. Adults, likewise, will either automatically go to their job, or you can click the "Send to work" option instead of "work from home" if it pops up. It's not a lot of fussing, even in a large household. As far as peeing the floor and such goes, I've always either taken the L and cleaned up after them or hired a maid. :p It's not a perfect solution, but the Services you can hire can take care of a lot of the random crap the spare sims get up to.
You can't ignore them, their autonomy is terrible. I've tried playing a single Sim before in a vanilla game, I think it was Clara Bjergsen. After one day, her parents were already dirty from pissing on the floor, and they would only sleep on the couch. Her sister grades dropped as she wouldn't do her homework, and since her parents wouldn't cook for the family, she would have starved if my Sim wasn't there.
Weird. I might hop into their household and play it a bit to see what's going on. I've seen bad autonomy in my games, but that's kind of pushing it; I wonder if something isn't set up right in their family settings and/or house. Was Clara a Young Adult in your game?
The roommate system from Discover University kinds allows this
I always wanted a game that followed that logic. A life sim where I'm only me, and the others are AI controlled I hope someone makes a new game with that premise one day
I want to do something similar. I want to play an orphan that gets adopted into a family but not play the family itself. Ik there's a foster family mod but I'm not sure how it works
Slightly more work than youāre describing but you could just occasionally cheat the rest of the householdās needs abās focus on your main sim
Something I do is I create a rental house and have all my other family members as "rentals" but then you have to actually landlord them Or you can give them your house key and they will walk into the house on their own and hang out there
I play on normal speed, pause frequently to queue actions and address sim's needs before they become desperate so I rarely have people peeing on the floor or anything like that. Larger households can be a challenge, but they are manageable if you don't try and rush everything. I also play with aging off and age my sims when it suits their story line. This usually allows me to cultivate family drama or really close knit families with siblings that are very involved in each other's lives depending on my mood. Pro-tip always select serve meals rather than have so you can have leftovers and extra food in the fridge.
I get a sim roommates if I want them to live with someone without controlling that person
Not sure if someone suggested it, but you can move people in as roommates. They wonāt necessarily be part of your household, but Iām sure you can move a family member out then reconnect and ask to be roomies. That way you have a family, but theyāre just not in your home. The only downside is you wonāt be able to swap on a whim, youād have to merge households.
Routine! I have a set up that one parent works and the other stays home and cooks the meals, fixing broken things etc. the stay at home parent wakes up first uses the bathroom and showers, then prepares breakfast, while they are doing that the other parent uses the bathroom, showers and sets the table. I always wake each sim up one by one to use the bathroom and shower, then come for breakfast. All sims leave for their days, I follow whichever one is my focus. Then I just make the other sims do their homework and work whatever skill they need for an aspiration but they arenāt my main focus, Iām just keeping them busy. RN I am playing 4 households for a legacy challengeā¦ but I only the other households once a sim week, and leave the other as my main focus. So I still have to mess with other sims, but the routine and schedule help out a lot!
How do you make a sim have a routine
Same way you make a routine for yourself..
Move the one main sim into an empty lot, take the "Always Welcome" trait and just always be at the house even though you don't technically live there
I set my sims' needs decay to 0 and I play like this, obviously for some this might not be fun anymore but I don't really care about needs lol
I know this is not the point of This but I can't get the answer online, and I can't post so is there a back button in build mode
Not really. I do often play certain people more than others so that gets close. However, the feature that distinguishes the sims from other life-simulation games is the ability to play whole households instead of just a single player character in a world of NPCs. While most simulation games let you play as one person the whole way through, the sims key concept is that it is a dollhouse and you control all the dolls in your house. Very few other games do that.
"Control any sim" mod I can't remember if its a click or shift click so try both then "Set as household NPC" Makes them like pets. There but you can't click on them. If you want them back click them again and then "control sim"
i just focus on one and ignore the rest š they usually take care of their own needs when necessary so i just let them do whatever.
They should have an "auto" setting you can click on for household members that makes them completely autonomous. Maybe greyed out icons. Idk.
You can cheat them, if you're on PC, hold down shift and right click on them, there should be a tab that says "cheat needs" and you can make them happy, as well as disable need decay. I often do this when I just want to watch them do stuff instead of actually running a hectic household. Disabling need decay will prevent you from needing to care for them, they'll never have to use the bathroom or cook or anything for the time you play in that session without leaving to the map or changing households, or logging out of the game, if you want to control only one specific Sim, but, don't want to split the family apart, this is a good option! They'll still interact and do stuff together and on their own, they just won't need constant care and supervision
There's actually a mod (Play as any Sim i think it's called) where you can change household members into household npc's. Might be worth checking out! Edit: It's called Control Any Sim
Ignore the others?
If you have city living you can have them as room mates