Carl's Sims 4 Gameplay Overhaul Mod v1.6 - Public Version (Patreon)

My mods are kept compatible with the latest patches and do not break frequently. To see which mods need updated check my Mod Status and Links Post where you can also find support.

v1.6 Critical Fix - August 19, 2025

Fixed a crash on startup due to the release of the pack selector tool patch.

v1.584 Critical Fishing Fix - July 13, 2025

Stopped GO breaking buffs due to Enchanted by Nature.

v1.5839 Critical Fishing Fix - July 5, 2025

Stopped GO breaking fixing due to changes EA made in the system.

v1.5838Critical Fix - July 1, 2025

Fixed mod breakage due to Enchanted by Nature Pack Patch.

V1.581 - Regular Update -  Jan 2, 2025:

Fixed an experimental feature being overly aggressive in logging

Fixed a minor error on startup that could throw an exception toward the end of the process.

V1.58 - Critical Update for Patch -  Jul 23, 2024:

Fixed exceptions due to EA renaming classes.

V1.57 - Critical Update for Patch -  Feb 29, 2024:

Fixed tunings to not require specific packs.

Fixed For Rent mailbox not showing options menu.

V1.56 - Critical Update for Patch -  Feb 28, 2024:

Fixed an error that prevented the mod from loading after a recent patch.

V1.54 - Bugfixes:

Fixed an error related to startup that prevented certain options like new potion of youth/foods have calories from functioning properly.

V1.53 - Bugfixes:

Fixes an error where Prom might throw an LE and not finish.

Fixes duplicate menus when using the SSFT Sim filter tool i just published.

V1.52 - Bugfixes:

Fitness extends age has been temporarily removed until EA fixes age settings. The update broke this feature, and I suspect their fix may do that again.

Everything related to whims is gone, including the emotional whim slot.

Fixed a crash on startup that was stopping the game from loading.

V1.504 - Bugfixes:

Fixed an issue that would prevent travel to a few regions such as the scientist, detective, and doctor workplaces.

Fixed make sunny button missing on terrain.

Fixed a compatibility issue between GO and the SNB Bank/Financial Center Mods that prevent NPCs being assigned to jobs.

Fixed the New Potion of Youth. It failed to appear in your Sim's inventory.

V1.501 - Compatibility Quickie:

Fixed a compatibility issue between GO and the NPCC mod causing a crash on startup.

Gameplay Overhaul grew so fast with new options that at times, players were aggravated they liked a good bit of it, but not ALL of it. So, new options were sorely needed. This is something I've wanted to do for a while. Gameplay Overhaul now has a robust options menu that will help you to trim things you don't want, and will remember your settings across different save games.

I am not putting all of the v1.5 update into early access. There are 2 versions launching simultaneously. Read on to see everything found in v1.51 with its download link and the major update v1.50. You can download the public version at the bottom of this post. or download v1.51 here!

Disabling features or setting them to the game's default will eliminate their impact on your game, much like disabling settings in the game options menu. This means if you want, you can disable career difficulty and use other mods that alter careers and do so safely.

Gameplay Overhaul begins with the majority of its features ON and starts on Medium difficulty settings, which are not hard to overcome. I believe people will enjoy the slight boost to difficulty by playing on this mode and will prefer *most* features to be on, so this is the middle ground I chose.

New Features in v1.51 - Going into Early Access

New Features in v1.50 - Public Version

You can download the public version of Gameplay Overhaul at the bottom of this post. I felt that the options menu and bug fixes are too important to hold back, if I want people to enjoy my mod... so please do! And consider supporting me if you like it!

New Feature - New Options Menu: The Gameplay Overhaul options menu got a massive overhaul of its own, listing all options in one area with explanations of what they and their settings will do for your gameplay. In addition, I've greatly expanded the list of options available to make GO a more modular experience.

New Options - Relationship Changes: If you do not want my changes to relationships, such as strangers taking heavier penalties when socials fail (family/friends do not), or strangers being less interesting to talk to (filling less social) than family/friends, or do not want my changes to gains based on Charisma, you can turn this off. This will also disable the system that compares Sim traits to determine if they have conflicting ones, which makes friendship gains slower for those Sims. (Requires Restart)

New Options - Satisfaction System: The satisfaction system that awards Sims points, or causes them to lose them, based on daily average mood has always been possible to turn off. However, I now have an additional option Sims Can Lose Satisfaction. This lets you turn off the ability for bad mood days to subtract satisfaction from your Sim.

New Options - Fishing Overhaul: Disable the fishing overhaul portion of Gameplay Overhaul, if you would prefer to use other mods to change how fishing works or do not like my own changes. This includes things like fish getting new bait, rares requiring bait, ponds being fishable in all cases, and increases to the viability of fishing as a money-maker. (Requires Restart)

New Options - Gardening Overhaul: Disable the gardening changes in Gameplay Overhaul, such as rares/uncommons spawn evenly on grafted plants, changes to the frequency of plants needing watered, and extended sprinkler ranges. (Requires Restart)

New Options - Autonomy Changes: Disable Gameplay Overhaul's list of autonomy changes, such as toddlers making messes, less celebrity hype, sims no longer viewing paintings unless at a museum, and things like that. (Requires Restart)

New Options - Fire Difficulty: Fires were set to hard by default in GO and this could not be changed. Now you can choose Easy (normal), Medium, or Hard, to make fires spread faster and in a larger radius. (Requires Restart)

New Options - Food Calories Overhaul: If you do not want all foods to have calories, turn this to off and it will disable my fix for EA's forgetfulness that calories are a thing in Sims 4. Most foods from after the base game have 0, while base game foods have tons. It's inconsistent, so I evened it out. (Requires Restart)

New Options - Fitness Basal Metabolic Rate: To counter the above, Sims can diet using Gameplay Overhaul. Without this setting, Sims lack the ability to lose weight through calorie restriction like a human and are forced to exercise to shed weight. If you don't like this change, you can turn it off. (Requires Restart)

New Options - Fitness Extends Age: Disable this if you do not want high-fitness Sims to age a bit slower. IRL, being fit expands your lifetime expectancy and this gives another purpose to the fitness skill which sorely needs a purpose other than winning pointless fights. (Requires Restart)

New Options - New Potion of Youth: The original potion of youth has been restored to the game. If you like, you can turn off my new/improved potion of youth that is more expensive but lets Sims age back down to Young Adult, much like potion of youth/ambrosia in previous Sims titles. The New Potion of Youth has had its cost cut to 3500 so you do not need to do an entire high ranking aspiration to afford just one. (Requires Restart)

New Options - Kids Bad Moods Decay Faster: A feature of GO to counter the emotional difficulty setting. Sims children can have bad moods, like a death, that persist the entire childhood and this seems wrong to me. For this reason, I gave kids a buff that doubles how fast their bad moods decay. If you don't like it, disable it here. (Requires Restart)

New Options - Automatically Purge Friends List: This isn't really new, but it's a little known feature of the mod. Turn this on if you'd like GO to occasionally eliminate all friendships that sit at 0 from your relationships panel. This may help keep that panel nice and quick in longer games. (Requires Restart)

New Options - Less Invites if Not Friends: This option can be disabled if you do not like my changes that require Sims to be at least +25 in Friendship if they are going to call to invite you to hang out. (Requires Restart)

New Options - Emotional Whim Slot: This defaults to on, because the Emotional Whim Slot is always on. What this does, is let you turn it off so that you will have 1 more regular whim slot that will offer up a more wide variety of whims. The emotional ones are very limited in scope so this was a player-requested feature. (Requires Restart)

Bug Fix - Removed the pop up when starting a new game reminding players to be a Patron. I'm sorry. It will come back in a less intrusive way in the future and not appear to be a last exception.

Bug Fix - Fixed a bug where children could not alter gameplay settings.

Bug Fix - Further lowered the likelihood children will make messes with my autonomy changes setting on.

Bug Fix - Stopped Werewolves and Celebrities (again) from spawning in as Burglars and Detectives. The game sure likes to break its own rules, sometimes!

Bug Fix - Fixed a bug where Sims would show 'Fine' while having another moodlet. This was because of hidden buffs, and lessons were learned.

Base Game Bug Fix/QoL Improvement - Fixed a longstanding bug with the base game's auto-solve motives feature (where you click the needs panel and hunger or bladder). This now lets you use this with a mixture of these auto solve and more direct actions without it throwing away what you told it to do. Also increased the range so the Sim is more likely to find something appropriate to fill a need.

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.

Important Notes - Restarting Your Game for Changes to Take Effect

Nearly all of the new options will require you to restart your game to take effect. This is because a lot of changes take place during startup. Some things such as career difficulty, money, bills, and relationship difficulty can be changed on the fly but the others are too complex to bother. Simply install GO, set it up in game, restart and you're good to go.

Installation Instructions

Unzip the file and Install in your Documents/ Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/Mods folder and ensure that script mods are enabled in Game Options > Other. Please restart your game after making heavy changes to the settings on the mailbox.