If you just want to get playing right away, then this is the list you need! Here are the absolutely ESSENTIAL sims 4 gameplay mods for realistic gameplay.
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Gameplay mods are truly some of the best sims 4 mods.
They change the game in such drastic ways that even if you’re feeling bored, they reignite your love for the sims and fuel all new stories!
And as you can imagine, after 8 years of being released, there are SO many mods you can download for the sims 4.
But in all honesty, you really don’t need that many gameplay mods to make your game more fun & interesting to play.
So today, I’m letting you in on a little secret and telling you the only 10 gameplay mods you actually need.
These are the mods I ALWAYS have in my mods folder. The essentials, if you will.
All of them are highly focused on creating realistic gameplay in the sims 4, improving features of the game that fall short, and overall, giving the gameplay more depth.
Best Sims 4 Gameplay Mods
1. Complete Cooking Overhaul Mod by SrslySims
If you’re a foodie like me then you’ll really appreciate this mod! 👩🍳
Srsly’s Complete Cooking Overhaul is exactly what it sounds like. It overhauls the recipes already in The Sims 4, adds custom ingredients with custom recipes, and adds grocery shopping to the game.
It expands upon the entire cooking system to make everything cooking-related feel more immersive and realistic.
One of my favorite things about this mod is the reworking of baking in The Sims 4.
Nothing is more annoying and confusing than baking a cake but it counts as cooking…
With this mod, all desserts are now considered baking. Yay!
2. Relationship & Pregnancy Overhaul Mod by Lumpinou
If you don’t have this mod in your game, what are you even doing?!
I’m just kidding.
But really, this is one of the best sims 4 gameplay mods of all time!!
I can’t play without it. The amount of depth and new content this mod adds to the game is unreal.
It reworks the entire pregnancy and woohoo system, cheating, divorce, teen pregnancy, adoption, and more.
I love it so much that I even made a mini challenge to explore all of the features.
You have to have this mod in the sims 4. Just trust me on this one.
3. Career Overhaul Suite by Kuttoe
This mod is PERFECT if you like realistic gameplay!
It’s an overhaul of the game’s career system with an emphasis on making the careers more engaging by increasing their difficulty.
Pay rates are lower and skills needed to level up in the career are now higher and more complex.
And if you have The Sims 4 Discover University, most careers will now require a degree to reach the top of their field.
One of my favorite parts of this mod is that sims will now passively meet their coworkers. I love this because I always found it weird that sims wouldn’t know anyone they work with unless you manually made them interact with their coworkers.
{RELATED POST: 31+ Absolute Best Sims 4 Career Mods (Free to Download Sims 4 Job Mods)}
4. Talents & Weaknesses Mod by Lumpinou
I don’t hear this mod talked about a lot, but it’s seriously one of my absolute favorites!
How is it that our sims can quickly become good at almost everything they try?
Seems pretty unrealistic to me. All of us have our own special talents & weaknesses.
With this mod, you can assign talent & weakness traits to your sims (or auto-assign them!) to make leveling up in a particular skill either easier or harder.
For example, if your sim is naturally talented at cooking, then they will level up in the cooking skill much faster; however, if they aren’t super athletic then it may take them extra time to level up in fitness.
In my opinion, it makes for much more realistic gameplay in the sims 4.
5. Education Overhaul Mod by adeepindigo
As I’ve said time and time again, I’m all about family life gameplay in the sims 4.
This mod helps expand upon my realistic gameplay style by making school more in-depth.
The Education Overhaul mod adds TONS of new features to the school system, but so you can quickly get the gist of it, here are my favorites:
- Homework that builds specific skills when being completed
- Class field trips
- Preschool for toddlers
- Virtual School & Boarding School options
{RELATED POST: 17+ Essential Sims 4 Toddler Mods for Realistic Family Gameplay}
6. The Hopes & Fears Mod by missyhissy
This a more recent addition to my list, but has quickly become one of my favorite mods.
I was a HUGE fan of wants & fears from The Sims 2. My gameplay was dictated entirely by my sim’s wants.
Unfortunately, Sims 4 doesn’t place a huge emphasis on wants, and they really didn’t add that many related to all the different expansion packs and game packs that have been released.
But with this mod, you’ll get new wants based upon your sim’s traits, aspirations, careers, and even based on what’s happening in their life like a bad day at work or a cheating spouse!
It adds so much realism and takes me back to my wants-based gameplay style. I LOVE IT!😍
Be sure to check the requirements for this one, because you’ll all need the custom wants mod by missyhissy.
7. MC Command Center by Deaderpool
If you know anything about the sims, then I’m sure you already knew mc command center had to be on this list!
It’s hands-down one of the best sims 4 mods and the one I always download first if I’m restarting my mods folder.
It gives you SO many options for customizing your game.
And pertaining to gameplay, there’s an entire gameplay settings section where you can alter the maximum number of sims allowed in a household, change how motives decay, change how difficult skills are, and much, much more.
My main use for this mod is to edit the lifespans of my sims down to the exact number of days for each life stage, and to quickly access create-a-sim while in-game.
8. Dynamic Teen Life Mod by adeepindigo
This mod was released after The Sims 4 High School Years came out to expand upon the new teen content, specifically teen social life.
If you’re really into family life gameplay, like me, then you need this mod.
Here are some of its best features:
- SO many more after-school activities.
- A popularity system that’s affected by the activities your teen does, their skills, their personalities, and their social groups.
- Parents can now decide whether a teen is allowed to date or not.
- A social group system with groups such as Womp Jocks, Artist Collective, Nerd Brains, etc.
- More teen activities like going to the mall, going on group dates, and taking classes.
{RELATED POST: 31+ Absolute Best Sims 4 Trait Mods to Create More Unique Sims (Sims 4 CC Traits)}
9. Simdeed Recruitment Services Career Mod by midnitetech
I absolutely LOVE custom careers in the sims 4. They’re an easy way to add newness to your gameplay.
However, it can be quite annoying to have a career menu that’s a mile long with all of the career mods you’ve downloaded!
With the Simdeed Recruitment Services mod, it puts over 20 custom careers under one career option.
First, your sim will sign up with the recruitment services as an applicant.
Once they’ve proven themselves to the agency, they can choose from a wide variety of realistic careers (dentist, real estate, customer service, food service, etc.!)
Each career is three levels with its own unique hours, pay, and promotion requirements. So cool!
10. Keep Sims in Home Region Mod by Kuttoe
In my opinion, this is one of the BEST sims 4 mods for creating more realistic gameplay.
And the funny part about that is you won’t really notice it’s in your game until it breaks or you take it out of your mods folder for some reason.
This mod allows you to edit the settings of which sims show up in which worlds.
Townie sims will only be seen around their own neighborhoods unless it’s a place like a festival, where tourists would visit, or a restaurant/retail location.
Doesn’t that make so much more sense than the way it is now??
You can even go in a mess with all of these settings for each world and determine who should be seen where and where homeless townies should live.
It’s a TOTAL necessity!
BONUS: Dine Out Reloaded Mod by Carl’s Guides
If you own The Sims 4 Dine Out then you absolutely need this mod!
I recently stumbled upon this mod by Carl and immediately knew it needed to be added to this list.
I now refuse to play restaurants in sims 4 without it! So here’s a BONUS gameplay mod for you guys.
It’s a complete overhaul of Dine Out and without it, let’s be honest, the game pack is nearly unplayable.
Here are some of the mod’s best features:
- Restaurant Owners can now work in their own restaurant
- Restaurant customization options like having guests seat themselves or go up to the counter to get their food
- Waiters operate more smoothly and won’t drop food
- Sims can bribe the host of a restaurant to serve them first
This post was all about the Best Sims 4 Gameplay Mods.
I’m SO excited to get your opinions on this list of mods. Which of these mods do you find absolutely essential to your gameplay? Are there other mods you would add? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
For more of the best sims 4 mods, cc lists, and gameplay ideas click HERE to see my latest posts.
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