The Sims 4's notification system has received what might be its most meaningful quality-of-life pass in years. The update targets phone spam in Live Mode, a problem players have complained about for as long as expansion packs have been stacking up.
The silence phone button actually works now
The existing "silence phone" feature has been expanded to cover recently added in-game content and, according to Maxis, now "prevents calls on any topic." Previously, the button was inconsistent across packs, leaving players buried in unwanted interruptions regardless of whether they toggled it.
What calls have been removed or restricted
The patch makes targeted cuts to specific call types that had no gameplay value:
- Unfamiliar Sims no longer ask for personal life advice. Only friends will do this now.
- Freelancer Sims stop receiving calls and notifications about careers they are not pursuing.
- Festival and trip invitations now come only from Sims who are actually friends with yours.
- A Sim asking to visit can only repeat the request after two in-game weeks instead of calling endlessly.
- Sims already on the lot will not phone your adult Sims to discuss childhood experiences.
- Offers to go dancing or to a bar are less frequent across the board.
Three pack-specific notification lines from Get Together and Get Famous have been disabled outright, including the "They say you and so-and-so are friends/enemies now" messages that triggered constantly in social-heavy households.
Per-world festival notification settings
A new "Festival Notifications" section has been added to the game settings. Players can now configure which worlds' festival alerts they want to see, which is a small but welcome addition for anyone running packs like City Living, Seasons, or Cottage Living alongside each other.
Mac loading improvements and file changes
Continuing work that started with the March 10 patch, the developers moved Scratch files from the Documents folder to AppData on PC. This change prevents conflicts with cloud backup services like OneDrive and iCloud, and Maxis reports that "endless loading" occurrences on Mac have decreased as a result.
If you missed the initial breakdown of this update, we covered the full scope of the June 30 patch, including the Grim Reaper recruitment changes when it first landed.
For players who have endured years of irrelevant calls and pop-ups interrupting their gameplay, this patch finally addresses the root of the problem rather than just offering a mute toggle that half-works.
Source: ixbt.games via Google News - The Sims 4