Carl's Sims 4 Gameplay Overhaul Mod - Public Version (Patreon)

Formerly known as Carl's Difficulty Mod, the heavily updated Gameplay Overhaul mod evolved to the point it needed a name change. It seeks to alter how things work on a fundamental level with many systems and add depth where there was none. It also improves various features to make them more enticing.

New Update and Discord

Patrons $5 and up can now access my Discord and directly influence the mod, get early previews, and participate in polls etc. to help change the direction of development.

EVERYTHING Carl's Gameplay Overhaul changes:

In the Patron-only ($5+) Version:

You can download the patron-only version here 

• My Dine Out Reloaded:
• Chef Bug Fixed
• More Sitting!
• Faster Cooking
• Paparazzi NOT Allowed
• No Singing Autonomously
• No Viewing Paintings
• No Celebrity Hype
• Kids Cannot Make Messes
• More Customers
• Less Dropped Food 
• Dating: Sims interrupt others who are dating less often
• Dating is about how Sims FEEL not Goals
• Good Date: If both Sims are happy, you get a good date.
• Benefits: A good date will help for 3 days! The two Sims will have an easier time with romance interactions during this time.
• Good Date is a fine buff that will not impact your Sims' emotions.
• LEAVE Function: Sims can be told to LEAVE immediately. This does not work only on dates, but everywhere on any NPC. You might be careful with it in some scenarios where an NPC is essential!
• Goals can still be pursued on dates, but they will not be a factor on whether the date was good or not. The Mod's Satisfaction System must be enabled to use these new features.
• Gardening: Gardening actually takes a a bit of work, requiring more frequent watering.
• Gardening: Sprinkler range increased by 60%.
• Gardening: The garden bots from Discover University do their job much better.
• Gardening: Splicing plants is once again useful for getting rares.
• You can download the patron-only version here

In the Public Version:

The free version can be downloaded at the bottom of this post. This is the entire mod, just a few versions behind the Patron version.

V1.39 Update:

• All foods have calories. This evens things out. Many had 0.
• Fitness: Sims now have a basal metabolic rate, meaning they burn calories every day.
• These two combined mean Sims can lose weight through both exercise AND DIET.
• Elders who have average fitness are able to work out longer
• Elders are able to swim more now, despite EA seemingly thinking swimming is more dangerous for Elders. IRL it's a great activity for them. Easy on the joints eh.
• The New Potion of Youth will restore Sims to the youth, but also reduce their body fat if it's high, making them a fit young adult.

Plus all previous updates:

• Important things like Go Here and Open Fridge are always in the #1 spot.
• The Social Menu is reorganized and greatly improved.
• Emotion: Bad moods hit harder and last longer. Difficulty settings are available on the mailbox. Default hard, medium in between and easy = base game. Of course.
• Financial: Gains of money are halved, but this can be disabled on the mailbox.
• Financial: Bills are increased substantially, to force your Sims to budget. Set this to easy on the mailbox to disable it.
• Satisfaction: is tied to happiness. Having a really good or bad day can add or subtract from a Sim's current satisfaction. Satisfaction is given at 7am each day.
• Satisfaction: gains from Aspirations are reduced a bit to reflect their low difficulty.
• Relationships: It takes time to build friendships. Sims can only gain so much each day.
• Relationships: Having matching or opposite traits helps determine compatibility between Sims.
• Relationships: Friends and family are more forgiving of failure in socials than strangers.
• Relationships: Friends and family are the best way to gain social.
• Relationships: Less calls from Sims who are not friends. It's required to invite you out.
• Relationships: There is a new Hang Out party type with no goals. It eases bad moods to be with your friends and helps slow social decay.
• Relationships: Hang Out will give Sims satisfaction the following day.
• Relationships: Charisma increases the amount of friendship a Sim can gain in a single day.
• Careers: These now have a difficulty setting. Defaults to hard, but can be set to medium or easy (base game level). Hard slows gains but friends and logic can help.
• Careers: Logic helps with all careers, giving this skill a purpose.
• Careers: Meeting coworkers is more reliable.
• Careers: Having friends actually boosts your career gains, especially with Coworkers.
• Fitness is now a useful skill, and provides Sims daily satisfaction gains when they've "had a good workout" and not gotten too fatigued.
• Fitness:  Failing to level it will lead to aging a bit faster after adulthood. However...
• Charisma and Logic: are both improved. Logic helps with career gains, charisma helps with friendships much more.
• Potion of Youth: Greatly improved and now takes a Sim back to Young Adult at a higher price tag.
• Be Careful: Fires are a bit more likely to spread to objects if not extinguished quickly.
• Naps: Naps did little, so now freeze your energy decay for a couple hours after taking one. This helps you get a bit more oomph out of using them.
• Less Sniffing: Sniffing the air (Bust the Dust) and other repetitive routing events happen 75% less often.

Extra Details

Income

First, incomes are halved from all sources that count as income. Anything from selling a painting to career payouts and insurance payments after a fire. This is to slow down the early game and make you think about what you want to buy, and enforce some budgeting.

Bills 

Bills are increased substantially, primarily via property tax. I wanted it to be this way because not everyone owns Eco Lifestyle. Rich Sims will need to keep money flowing in order to maintain their lifestyles. What's rich? Well, Bob and Eliza Pancakes' home will cost them about 8k a week up to 10k if Neighborhood Action Plans are enabled. Their default is only 4k.

Relationships

Sims will suffer heavy penalties to relationship gains and losses, but only with strangers and acquaintances. Family (not just household members) and friends will not be as heavily penalized. Sims will gain less friendship and lose more on a failed social, so don't spam them without regard for conversation tone, the emotion of your sim and the emotion of the target.

A New Purpose for Friendship

Sims don't gain much social need from Sims who are not friends or family, starting at friend and up. You'll only receive half social when talking to strangers, encouraging your Sim to socialize and maintain friendships.

Career Gains

All career gains are reduced by 40%, making it harder to get promoted in a single day. This will make reaching level 10 a bit harder, and heavily penalize your Sim when they got into work in a bad mood. You'll still gain some performance, just not very much. If you skip work, you'll lose 1.5x the usual work performance. Both the gains and losses can be offset with Logic and Charisma (read on)

Emotions

Emotions ill be a bit harder to manage, in particular on other Sims. Major life events such as divorce and the death of a loved one will have their durations tripled. All negative moodlets that are weak are twice as strong in order to overcome the massive amount of happy sources in the game. If the duration is under 6 hours, it's doubled. Those with a duration longer than 6 hours are tripled. Strong moodlets like a bladder failure have a single point added to them to make it a bit more dangerous but are not doubled thanks to player feedback.

A New Purpose for Charisma and Logic

It's a very minor thing, but Charisma and Logic are rather boring so I've given them a tiny extra feature. First, Charisma will help you to regain some of the relationship penalties. Each level will add about 2% to your gains and subtract 2% from your losses. This will not bring it to base game levels, but it'll offset those penalties a good bit.

Charisma also joins Logic in the Careers system. Having Charisma will reduce the amount of work performance you lose when skipping a day. Logic increases work performance by a couple percentage points per level, giving you some reason to bother with it.

Things I Hate

I dislike how often the game does things like sniffing with the vacuuming pack, or slipping on ice/mud. I've reduced the frequency of these events to only 25%

The camera exploit has been removed from the game and you'll lose half a point of friendship for using it because I'm a jerk. It's not a big loss if you really want to take a picture, just a slap on the wrist to let you know not to do that =)

Things YOU Hate

Sims you barely knew - and pets you were neutral toward - will no longer give a 2-day +2/3 sad debuff. This is ridiculous. My mod knocks this down to about 8 hours +1 only. It should no longer last your toddler's entire childhood if the maintenance man dies and the mod will make it hit +2 only. Previously it was hitting at 6 days for +4/+6 YIIIIKES.

Overall Goal

You will need to budget, plan, and care for your Sim's emotional state much more. In order to get rid of negative moods, you'll need to actually make use of the emotion decay activities like punching bags when angry or talking to others about how you feel in order to get rid of those negative moods. Sims you talk to are much more likely to be in a bad mood, making success rates drop and making them harder to befriend. Careers and Relationships are tougher, but investing time into logic and charisma can help reduce the difficulty a little over time. 

HOW TO INSTALL

If you already have the mod, delete all files related to it - the config, log, package and ts4script files from your mods folder. Four files. Download both the ts4script and package files and place them in your Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/Mods folder. If asked, choose yes to overwrite/replace existing files if you are updating without following instructions lol.