While we may love The Sims 4 for the fun simulation abilities it grants us, we do also feel like it could be a bit more realistic at times. We’ve gone ahead and compiled a list of some of the best Sims 4 realism mods you can add to your game to enhance your experience!
Realistic Sims 4 Mods
True Happiness
It doesn’t really seem true to life how easily happy sims are all the time. This mod makes it so ‘Happy’ is no longer the default state for your sims and instead achieving happiness will have a lot more meaning.
The roles of Happy and Fine states are changed, Happy is now a full positive mood and Fine is a boosting mood for other states. Being Happy also has additional benefits, including gaining satisfaction points over time, a bonus to all skills, a briefly boosted mood, and a bonus to career performance is in a career’s associated mood.
It essentially makes the moods of your sims a lot more complex, instead of Happy just being the norm with not a lot of variety in how they achieve that happiness. It will add more depth to your sims and make it a lot more satisfying when you keep them content.
Realistic Sims 4 Mods
Game and Movie Replacements
This collection of hyper-realistic mods are so fun because they replaces the EA games your sims play within The Sims 4 with real gameplay footage of other popular titles on the sim’s game consoles.
These mods requires City Living to function, and your sim will have to max out their gaming skill level in order to see all the possible options.
The first pack only features Nintendo games including Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Animal Crossing: City Folk, Hyrule Warriors, Mario Kart 8, Pikmin 3, Splatoon, Super Mario 3D World, and Yoshi’s Woolly World.
For the second pack of more recent titles on consoles like PS4 and Xbox One, the games include Stardew Valley, Overwatch, Fallout 4, GTA V, Resident Evil 7, Far Cry 5, Little Nightmares, and Hitman.
From the same modder is the ability to play real children’s movies and TV shows on your sim’s TV as well . Some of the movies include The Incredibles, Shrek the Third, Coco, Harry Potter, Moana, The Little Mermaid, Tangled, and more.
Seeing your sims watching and playing things you do in real life as well is sure to make their world feel a little more real to you as a player.
Realistic Sims 4 Mods
Slice of Life
The Slice of Life mod is one of the most infamous inclusions in the community due to its ability to adds tons of realism to your base game. Firstly, it adds more options for sim cell phone usage and applies to not just playable sims but NPC sims as well.
There are more options for texting and some will only appear if you have a certain relationship with a sim or are in a certain mood, and new apps will allow you to build specific skills whenever you use them. The Slice for Life mod also offers a ton of appearance changes including:
- Teary eyed when sad
- Blushing when flirty or embarrassed
- Red cheeks when drunk
- Red face when a sim has to puke
- Bruises on face when a sim loses a fight
- Pimples
- Gaps when losing teeth when young
Other smaller inclusions are a chance for stinky breath when your sim has low hygiene and your sims feeling drunk when drinking in-game alcohol.
Seeing your sims blush while watching a romantic movie is the cutest, and who can’t relate to a rush of pimples during puberty as a teen?
Realistic Sims 4 Mods
Weather Realism Overhaul
This mod has undergone a total overhaul of The Sims 4 weather systems so there is a lot more realism and variety.
It requires the Seasons expansion and adds rain in winter, four types of rain showers, simultaneous blizzard and thunderstorms, more unpredictability with weather forecasts, and much more. Clouds and fog also look much better, and a lot of the visuals for weather have been updated for realism.
There is also another great weather-related mod that the weather patterns offered in the Seasons expansion so they are unique and distinct depending on the community your sims live in.
For example, Windenburg is more likely to have snow in early spring, Willow Creek is hotter year round with little snow, and San Myshuno will have cold weather in late to early spring but hot summers with little rain.
We recommend downloading both to really get a full, realistic weather system both in appearance and function.
Realistic Sims 4 Mods
Lower Salaries
For some realism in your sim’s financial situation, this mod lowers the salary and career bonus amounts by either 25% or 50% depending on your choice. Therefore, managing money will become a much more meaningful thing and will require you to have a bit more forethought when purchasing items.
There are also separate files for lowering the amounts for teen careers, active careers, regular adult careers, and the careers added with both the City Living and Seasons Expansions.
This mod will be perfect if normal playthroughs have felt too easy lately, and you want to make your financial planning a bit more realistic.
Realistic Sims 4 Mods
Animated Animals
Sure there are sims animals in The Sims 4, but overall the game is lacking in realism with ones found in nature.
One talented modder Bakie has become very skilled in created animated animal objects for you to place on your lots to make them feel a bit more real. These animals include:
- Sharks
- Chipmunks
- Iguanas
- Bats
- Flamingos
- Pigeons
- Squirrels
- Sand Pipers
- Channel-billed Toucans
- Koi Fish
- Frogs
- Snakes
- Seagulls
- Whales and Dolphins
- Butterflies
- Alligators
- Mice
- Ducks complete with ducklings
- Macaws
- Lobsters and Crabs
- And even mythical Sprites
Download a few of these and suddenly your lots will come to life with critters big and small. What’s nice about having these animals as objects is you never have to worry about taking care of them or anything, they are just like little moving statues for you to enjoy.
Realistic Sims 4 Mods
Balanced Death Moodlets
This mod fixes some issues The Sims 4 can have when giving sims moodlets for NPCs they didn’t know well or even cared about after they die.
Say, for example, you have a sim that is very popular and has a lot of friends they don’t necessarily keep up with. As your sims gets older and those friends start dying, your sim will receive a call getting the news and soon will be sad all the time with the continuous string of people they know passing away.
This mod makes it so a sim’s reaction to a death is more balanced depending on the actual relationship between them and the person who passed away.
The default when someone dies is a sad moodlet for two days, but now if it was just an acquaintance your sim will have a fine moodlet for a few hours, and if it was their husband or wife they are going to be extremely sad for days. When someone dies that your sim didn’t like, then they will get a happy moodlet, even if the person that passed away was a relative.
Realistic Sims 4 Mods
Better Romance
This mod totally updates the ways in which the game views sims who can interact with others in a potentially romantic way.
When sims greet each other romantically, the game only checks what status they are at in their relationship such as First Kiss, Married, etc and therefore it can cause sims to greet other romantically when it might not be appropriate or wanted by the player.
This update makes it so a sims must first pass the the autonomous behavior checks instigated by this mod and have a “success” score graded upon past romantic actions between the two sims.
For example, if two sims are in a clear relationship that fits even the base game’s definitions they will greet each other romantically no problem. However, this would prevent sims who do not have a base romantic relationship before greeting each other in this way.
If Sim A tries to romantically greet Sim B who is in a relationship with Sim C, it will negatively affect Sim A and B’s relationship. Before, it didn’t really matter if you sim interjected themselves into another relationship, nor did it have more consequences.
Autonomous behavior is determined by the given sim’s traits, so non-committal and flirty sims are more likely to accept romantic greetings than, say, a family-orientated sim who loves commitment. This adds a whole new layer where traits will have more meaning when creating sims as well.
Realistic Sims 4 Mods
More Realistic Trees
Purely for aesthetics and to make your game look just that little bit better, this mod makes all the trees in The Sims 4 look more realistic by removing the fade on them when you get closer in live mode.
This mod also works on bushes, and functions when in camera mode as well. Be warned though, this mod will not work if you have the FakeHousesIRealAwesome mod or Nothead mod installed as well. Make sure to delete those more outdated ones so this one can run effectively.
Small changes like these will really make you notice how much better the game looks if just tweak a couple small things relating to lighting and clarity.
Realistic Sims 4 Mods
Parenting Interactions Upgraded
Not only does this mod allow tons of new interactions between parents and their children, it also works between other close family members such as grandparents and grandchildren, uncles and aunts to nieces or nephews, and between siblings as well.
In the vanilla game, every member sort of feels like just another sim on the lot that you have a few special interactions with depending on how they were related. Examples include helping your child with homework and encouraging them to work hard in their life.
This mod will ultimately make your family feel a lot more realistic in how they act and talk to each other. For once, the way they interact as a family will actually depend on how they are related to each other instead of just all using the same interactions.
Realistic Sims 4 Mods
More Slots in Cabinets
It’s always fun to add our personal touches to sim households by placing smaller items on shelves to add more detail. The only problem is sometimes you wish you could add more items to really use up all the available space on the lot.
In real life, most people like to add more to their tables and desk than just one lamp or potted plant.
These two mods added more slots into both hutches/cabinets as well as TV stands and tables. Essentially, you will have a lot more flexibility with where you can put items to make your sim’s spaces feel a lot more lived in.
Even just with the image above, you can see just how much more you can add to even small surface areas.
Realistic Sims 4 Mods
Food = Calories
Sure your sims can gain weight when they eat food in The Sims 4, but it feels like they would have to eat an excessive amount in order to see any weight gain on their actual body.
This mod allows you to choose from three different speeds in which food affects weight gain for your sims. ‘Small’ will show slower and more natural change, ‘Medium’ is a little quicker but might take a few days of eating with no exercise to notice, and ‘Large’ will have your sims gaining weight pretty much with every meal.
This will give you more cause to get your sims to the gym, instead of just using the machine to increase the Athletic skill.
Realistic Sims 4 Mods
Explore Mod
This next mod offers tons of new stuff for your sims to do in their communities from one handy “Explore” interaction.
60+ different places have been added, with different events in those lots occurring depending on the season. In order to access all these new things to do, your sim will first have to go to the DMV to get either a license or bus pass allowing them to travel whenever they wish.
It will allow your sim to leave the lot without you, and they come back with skill increases, relationship increases, motive increases, and more. Some of the actions include:
- Going to the doctor.
- Going out to eat.
- Doing temp work for extra money.
- Having surgery that actually changes the appearance of your sims.
- Take a cooking, parenting, paintings etc. class.
- Getting your sims nails done and sims come back with custom nails on.
Along with these new ways to explore a sim’s community, this mod also adds a Gambler trait and skill, with an interaction at the cards table that lets you make bets.
Realistic Sims 4 Mods
More Best Friends
In real life, it’s not unheard of to have more than one best friend. This mod mirrors that by allowing any sim to have multiple best friends in-game.
It also lowers the cooldown from 60 to 10 minutes for the “Become Best Friends” Interaction to appear again, so your sims can rack up BFFs quicker than ever.
This mod is sure to make Popularity aspiration a lot easier to achieve. Also, it will allow you to have a closer friend group than just one primary friend with a bunch of lesser secondary ones.
Realistic Sims 4 Mods
Credit Cards and ATMs
This mod would pair well with the aforementioned realistic salaries mod, as your sim can sign up for a credit card to use when money gets tight. How much more realistic to real life can you get?
Once installed, you sim can place and use ATMs and use credit cards ranging from standard to diamond status. Depending on the card you will have a higher or lower spending limits.
There are also five different credits values ranging from $2,500 to $50,000 you can request from the ATMs, and they can only be used one at a time. Every day, you will have to pay a daily rate until the full amount is paid back in full.
Those were some of the best Sims 4 realism mods! For more memorable Sims 4 mods, check out some more of our mods here.
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