So I bought TS4 basegame and City Living back when Double Deluxe (this isn't TS2) Digital Deluxe was at 66% discount. I thought I'd give it a try. I experimented with it that day a bit and I came to the conclusion that, while it could be fun for some things, overall the gameplay felt less challenging and interesting as the gameplay in Sims 2. I quit TS4 when I found out my Sims were aging on their own (then I complained around here and was told that I could change auto-aging in the settings). Yesterday, however, I decided to give it another shot. Again, I had fun playing it. Festivals were decent, even though I haven't played with them enough. I also liked the whole social media thing. But I got annoyed way too many times.
Annoyance #1: Neighbours. Penny, I'm sorry, I tried to like you, you and my Sim are Best Friends, but can you please, for the love of God, STOP the damn noise? Why do my neighbours - and Penny Pizzazz in particular - keep making noise, day after day, no exceptions, after I've repeatedly ask them to stop (to which they responded that they would try to keep it down). Either there's something I'm missing (I get along nicely with the other tenants) or apartment living is just plain impossible.
Annoyance #2: Kids. And not just toddlers, children as well. Every day there's a monster on the bed. Every day they have nightmares, more than once a night, sometimes. Toddlers will refuse having their diapers changed. They will sometimes not eat the food I give them at all and then get sad because of low hunger. Also, children and toddlers alike are constantly sad. Am I just terrible at Sims 4?
Annoyance #3: This could be a glitch or, again, another thing I just don't understand. Sometimes, Sims will just be unable to do anything except sleep, even when they say they're energised. Initially I thought this happened because they were uncomfortable, but it has happened with other emotions as well, and I am especially baffled by the energised one. Actions drop out of queue, "sleep" is pushed on onto them, no one does anything I tell them to do and motives go down because they don't do anything.
Tell me, what am I doing wrong? I only have less than 20 hours of Sims 4, so I might not be as familiar with the workings of the game as I am with TS2.

1. neighbors are annoying indeed. I couldn't play in SM without a mod to stop the madness of annoying neighbors
This mod is by Coolspear, which is on hiatus, and I'm not sure if it will work with today's patch, as I still haven't updated my game yet (waiting for the many mods I'm using to be updated first)
you need to sign up for his site in order to see and download it
http://simsasylum.com/tfm/index.php...city-living-ep/

2. There's a night light which designed to stop the monster from showing up under kids beds. it's called Coolala - the Defender Wall Light
you need to place it right above the bed's head and make sure it turned on.
you can disable bed monsters alltogether using MCCC (major mod), but currently the mod resported to be broken and needs an update.
and if you want a more peaceful toddler which won't refuse to everything you want them to do, give them the angelic trait.

3. if sims doesn't move at all and seem stuck while the time is moving, they need to be reset.
to do that click ctrl+shift+c to open the cheats bar, type testingcheats on. then shift click on said sim and choose Reset Object.

- sims which are uncomfortable or sad, won't be able to do certain things.. so the best option would be to take care of them to remove this moodlet, depends on why they are having this moodlet to begin with.
for example, if the house is too dirty, make them clean it.
if they broke up with someone, or someone died and they are sad about it, you can make them call the sadness hotline, talk about their problems with other sims, cry it out etc..
until they are good to go and can do more things that require better moods.

Also, for the energized weirdness, it seems sims can be energized and still be really low on energy and need to sleep as soon as possible, because moods and needs don't always go together. (Or that has been my experience anyways)

In apartments, pay attention to those little lot traits. The place your sim lives in where Penny is the neighbour has the "loud" trait, I believe, so yes, in that case it is pretty much impossible to get her to keep the noise down without doing either 1) get a mod, or 2) try to change the lot traits in build mode. (Never tried this myself on ready-made lots, but it should be doable?)

The bed monster isn't the only thing that makes toddlers sad or throw temper tantrums, unfortunately - low needs do the trick as well (either sad or angry), or being told what to do if they have the independent trait, but also weather (yes, even indoors), getting new siblings or realizing they had one, not being around family, being taught something for too long, going potty, sometimes playing... the list goes on. Toddlers are just hard to please overall, though I guess the angelic trait might be easier.

Teens occasionally gets mood swings in general, and occasionally will only eat a specific thing, so that might be what displeases them about the food. That or they're vegetarian I guess.

Same with all the Sims games, buy the best bed you can afford which fills their energy bar fastest. Lock the front and back doors for everyone except household to stop visitors and Vlad (Vampires) getting in. Keep it simple at first so that they don't have much to do except cooking, and studying and something to play with.......Keep one Sim (preferably a good hearted Grandma) at home to do the housework and look after the kids......

I haven't posted on here in a hella long time, but all I can really say about TS4 is that it honestly seems like EA is trying to make the entire game and every game pack/expansion pack like the polar opposite of TS3, where it was extremely resource heavy, elaborate, and had plenty of extra gameplay features. It's like they're trying to make these packs as small and streamlined as possible, sacrificing a lot of the extra features that we've come to expect.

It's sad that EA is treating The Sims like this, because there are some aspects of TS4 that I absolutley adore. I think TS4 has the best CAS by far, I love how we can edit community lots while our sims are on them, making it a very good storytelling tool. TS3 and TS2 have TS4 smacked down to oblivion in terms of gameplay and fun factor though.