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5 things that annoy me SO MUCH that it is preventing me from playing The Sims 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqYZ-ni0g4Ato sum up what is in the video:
1. The time is bugged beyond belief for me. Sometimes I can't speed 4 at all, other times the time display is bugged and most often when I stop speed 3/ speed 4 from running the time and progress that sims achieve jumps backwards. THIS IS LEGITIMATELY THE WORST THING. This has been a bug since City Living released and it's really REALLY bad. Please, please, PLEASE EA can you actually fix this? Then I will happily pay for your stuff packs even! But currently for me, this is making the game unplayable!
2. Simulation either lags or does not execute at all. I get points where sims are slow to start doing what you ordered them to do. Or points when animation completely dies as they're trying to do something. Despite having full autonomy on, when I'm not controlling a sim, they just STAND THERE! Heck, The Sims 1 had better AI! And that sentence makes me a very sad bunny
Still I could put up with this if the time jumping around got fixed.
3. Random small bugs that never get fixed, however completely kill your ability to play with the content that you bought. Sims still occasionally get stuck singing and then you have to reload your game. Trying to play Dine Out is living (afterlife fiery place where bad people go, because for some reason that is a censored word on this forum) with the cooks managing to get stuck in an animation of non stop serving people. I have heard that other people are no longer able to use the waterslide, despite it being the major draw of a certain stuff pack.
Like I wish EA stopped producing content at the rate that they're going and just turn around and fix the bugs. Even the small ones. At this rate I'm afraid that at the end of The Sims 4's lifespan it will be totally unplayable and in the end The Sims 3 will run better. Having in mind that the game is not open world and a lot of features from other games are missing, one thing that I hoped that we're exchanging all of that for is stability and bug free gameplay. 3 years into this games lifespan I'm afraid that I was very wrong on that.
4. Phone. Can I get an option to DISABLE ALL PHONE CALLS? Please! Pretty please! Seriously, in other sims games it was so much less annoying than this. In The Sims 1 and The Sims 2 I could just not own a phone and if I got called the time did not slow down to force me to check it out. So even if the phone rang a lot all you got was sound. In The Sims 3 I could disable most opportunities and things. In this game I can't. So imagine this, I'm already really struggling with time not working properly. Now I manage to actually get into speed 4 and am calmly waiting for my sims to stop sleeping/ being at work. Well at least one phone in the household rings EVERY GOOD 2 HOURS taking me out of speed 4.
The phonecalls themselves are just so random and not thought out, that it makes me think that they should not be there at all. A child sim can get called and asked to go and get "spicy" with someone, an adult sim can get an opportunity to "skip school and play hooky". I had a vampire sim saved from death by pleading and afterwards I still received good 5 phonecalls that said "I'm sorry for your loss". WHAT LOSS? WHAT LOSS GAME?
5. Musical chairs, or sims having attention deficit disorder. I'm happy that they CAN multitask, but could they stop trying to multitask without me asking them to? Eating sims will randomly sit down, stand up, walk around, choose a different chair, try to start up a conversation with someone on the street or go to a different room to listen to music. In every day play that just results in you canceling their actions a lot. However in Dine Out that often results in sims not finishing their meals, or not sitting down to order at all and blaming the restaurant.
So then, what are your frustrations with the game people?
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Also, my cat heard yours and came to investigate lol.
forums.thesims.com/en_US/categories/the-sims-4-bugs-issues
Convenient timing as usual.
The butler really need to be fixed.
I hope we can see a bunch of bug fixes in next patch.
I can't send my Sim to a lot with a bar without them drinking obsessively. The reason is there's a hidden "thirst" need we can't see, and if you don't have them drink, it's gonna be empty/near empty, not to mention multitasking constantly has sims seeking to fulfill as many needs simultaneously as possible, and getting a drink is easy. This means the problem is that same thirst meter almost relentlessly compels them to drink, to the point you will be canceling an "order drink" order every 5 seconds. It's so bad that I happen to know it's possible for your Sim to get "Order Drink" and "Wait for Drink" at the top of their queue, and even if you click them to X them out, they'll STILL move down into the current actions, your sim will perform them and THEN they get cancelled. Turning free will off...? I do not consider that a solution. No, fix your free will and spruce it up so it isn't such a pain.
Sometimes Sims randomly decide to wave at other Sims, and it's impossible to cancel this. If I go to Willow Creek's park and order a child to play on the Jungle Gym, the child may randomly run waaaaaaaaaaay to the back of the park near the fishing spots, wave at someone THEN run waaaaaaaaaay back to the Jungle gym. Canceling and re-assigning the wish to play on the Jungle Gym does nothing in this case; you are completely at the game's mercy for when this glitch occurs.
Sims obsessively queue up to socialize with each other. Something about the multitasking AI seems to seek productivity and seems to try and juggle as many tasks as it can at once. This is obnoxious, because in actuality multitasking rarely makes tasks go by faster, but rather it cycles between them. If my sim is dancing and chatting, his fun and social bar are never raising simultaneously, but rather when my sim is speaking it's social that goes up, and when he's listening, it's fun from dancing. It becomes very annoying when your Sim needs to eat breakfast quickly before work, but because another Sim exists within a 10 mile radius, they insist they MUST chat to fill up their....already full social needs bar, and now they're eating only half as fast. If you cancel this social desire, it'll be back in five seconds, meaning you as the player have to relentlessly babysit your Sims 4 sims for constantly having desires that don't profit them.
Just from playing the game, I feel I have a pretty good understanding of Musical chairs, so it's a mystery why the Sims team has never done anything to tone this down. The issue with Musical chairs is basically that Sims constantly constantly constantly CONSTANTLY seek to sit directly next to each other while chatting. Yknow, it's like someone acknowledged that in real life, we do like sitting next to each other while chatting, so they tried to provide that in the game as well. Unfortunately, it's more of a headache than it's worth. The problem is that sometimes the game does not prioritize one sim moving seats over another, so Sim A will move to Sim B's table while Sim B moves to Sim A's table. Likewise, this system does NOT account for additional tasks at all. Let's say Sim A and Sim B are chatting, but mid-convo, Sim B wants to go order a drink. Sim B will likely sit at the B while waiting for his drink, and this will cause Sim A to follow and go sit at the bar as well. Once Sim B gets his drink, he might desire to go back to the pre-existing table, and Sim A will follow. Once he gets BACK, Sim B might have a delayed response of recognizing Sim A is at the bar and move there again, and sure enough Sim A follows. This same problem can occur involving any interaction that can happen while sitting: ordering food, watching TV, listening to music, etc etc etc. And of course, even if you cancel all social interactions to try and keep your sim alone while sitting, new socials will constantly queue up. Musical chairs could honestly be killed IMMEDIATELY if they just killed the Sim's desire to sit DIRECTLY next to their speaking partner. Dunno if it'd create a new problem, but Musical chairs would definitely be dead.
Time is just horrendous. The rule of thumb is never never never use Speed 3, because it creates time distortion and input lag. However....this is just ridiculous. Speed 3 has been a feature in every Sims game, and it's never been a problem. Even Sims 3, with all it's lag, never suffered additional issues just because you had the audacity to utilize this feature. Time in Sims 4 is seriously screwy, and it needs a fix. I've seen a SimGuru already provide the tip of avoiding Speed 3, but that's a workaround, not a solution. Also worth mentioning is that certain neighborhoods, such as Windenburg's island and apparently all of San Myshuno, are extra susceptible to lag and time distortion. Something about those areas just has time distortion from the get-go.
It's not easy to get the super speed going 'manually' and I get fed-up with time slowing down when my Sim's at work because the mailman turned up. Then I have to fiddle about to get it to speed up again.
Time does wind backwards, too. But I only try and slow it down in the mornings when I want my Sim to get up so it's not all that problematic. It just would be nice to see it working more efficiently.
The loading screen at the start of a game - I think I've occasionally lost about an hour (Sim time) of controlling my Sim because the game started before the loading screen went away. I 've even seen Reward Points floating up the loading screen and had to guess that my Sim accomplished some wish or other.
The phone - where to start? The unreasonable time Sims call to invite my Sim out but just let me dare call them around 11pm and I get a snarky little retort that they're sleeping. Even the vampires.
And how do you tear your Sims away from the phones? I've always got Sims on my ear 'ole because they want some fun (as if I care) so I put them in front of the TV even though I'd prefer them to be studying or doing something useful. What happens? They start mucking about on the phone. Every time I take my eye off them, they're at it. It's worse than Kicky Bag.
Fun - gaaaaaaaah. How can I play when the fun meter plummets so quickly and anything I offer them isn't good enough? They won't play chess or paint because they're far too precious umm 'tense' to do that. I have to buy a Reward before they'll find fun in jogging or working out.
They can't even have fun with another Sim. No Kicky Bag or Redhands for a quick fix. I can't believe I'm even saying that, I had mods to get rid of them in Sims 2.
Ah well, I did discover that reading a book on Rocket Science will do the trick but there's another gripe. You can't leave them to read a book any more. As soon as you Fast Forward they're off to do something else.
And another thing. You can get Rewards so your Sim barely needs to eat or pee or socialise or whatever. But there's nothing to stop them wanting fun
The Sims are so needy. I'm happier playing a single Sim but what an eye opener when I tried a larger household. Getting them sitting down to eat is a nightmare. Sim A is having dinner when Sim B walks in. What's likely to happen? Either Sim B will go to the fridge for food and Sim A will get up and stand right on top of him by the fridge door and they'll eat like that instead of going to sit down. Or Sim B will want to hug Sim A who will abandon their dinner in order to accept the hug.
The problem can be largely solved by telling the Sim to eat and sit in a particular place but telling them to sit shouldn't be necessary. Plus I don't always remember.
I do actually enjoy the game very much and I'm trying to keep mods to the minimum but some things just cry out to be complained about
Oh, one more. In one household there was a mess on the floor so one of the Sims went to clear it up but there was no bin in the house. However, on the pavement outside the house was a perfectly good public trash can. And, no, he wouldn't use it. I had to fork out for a bin of his very own.
Some time later, in another household, I'd placed the super-duper bin that pays you for discarded plates. Imagine my horror when the Sim left the house with the rubbish and walked the length of a wall to find the gap in it, then walked down the other side to reach a public trash can. That's an ongoing problem for that household because the house and trash can are next to each other with the wall blocking easy access to the bin. Not to mention losing money if I can't catch my Sim fast enough.
Do not forget the completely woeful filters and lack of sorting.
Relationships list and associated lists:
We can only filter on: All, Friends, Household, Romantic and Clubs
We CANNOT filter on: Co-workers
We CANNOT filter on Ages – Elder, Adult, Young Adult, Teen, Child.
We CANNOT sort the filtered lists – Alphabetically, level of friendliness, length of time we have known the other Sims (ie oldest friends to newest).
It is the same with:
Using the Phone to Chat or Send Text
Plan a Social Event
Take Photo With
Take Photo Of
Travel With
Invite To Hangout at Current Lot
The Club system brings in a new filter: Acquaintances – ie it gives us an additional filter that the main Relationships list and other lists do not have - Eh? Why is this?
The following equates to a total FAIL:
We CANNOT sort any lists.
We can’t sort by Life Stage.
Why is this a FAIL?
Internally, the game knows who our Co-workers are - it shows that on EVERY SINGLE list. The game already has this – they just haven’t implemented it as a FILTER
Here is a good TEST to try:
Try throwing a party and ONLY inviting Teens.
THE GAME HAS ALL OF THIS INFO INTERNALLY - IT IS THERE.
WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO FILTER AND SORT LIKE A BOSS - THEY WON'T LET US DO IT.
Filtering results is one of the basic requirements of programming. You go back decades and programming books all had examples of sorting - Bubble sort being such an obvious example.
I rest my case.
A comparatively minor nitpick on top of that:
I've always though the two best clubs for giving a lot more ambiance are a Mafia club and a Woohoo club. Problem is, the Woohoo club will be rather awkward and obnoxious, because Sims make no distinction about who to hit on. Part of it is they don't gravitate towards established partners as much as they should, and the other far more avoidable problem is that they don't filter by gender, so everyone in the club is immediately bisexual. It's rather annoying that you cannot really include someone like Don Lothario - the Sim that's synonymous with "womanizer" in this franchise - without him immediately becoming bisexual and liking men too. That too would be a very simple fix, but I have serious doubts they'll ever bother including it since going back to include this doesn't directly profit them and I have a basic understanding of how game developers patch priorities work.
So here I am, I enjoy going to the bar I have the Mafia assigned to because it's always interesting to watch the fights, but I avoid making a Woohoo club, simply because I'd have to come up with eight Player Sims (the reward trait) that all seem like bisexuality suits their character.
Can't you make two Woohoo clubs and set the club rules to woohoo with the other one ?
That would work, now that I think about it, though again the aformentioned improvement would be nice. I mean there's obvious benefits to including gender as another filter in the club system. Means I can make a club that goes around picking fights with little old ladies, or maybe one of those "self-help" groups for teaching men how to date that goes to a lot and hits on women. With your workaround, the problem is no more than 8 sims will ever be the target of the action, so it's not quite as elegant as simply patching in a gender filter.
As I said though, I may have to settle for it. The fact such a workaround exists means a gender filter would be low on their priority list and probably never get included.
You can include more than 1 club as the target of the club rules, so you could make 10 clubs with women, and a male club with a rule that include all these 10 clubs. I've found it work better if you stick to smaller/more numerous clubs if you want them to show up autonomously, because 8 Sims-club will fill your venue real quick. I'm making dating clubs with 4 Sims, and they all meet at the lounge. It works quite well and I usually have a good number of them showing up, with a bit of randomization in the process (I have 8 clubs of 4 Sims in total, which ones are picked vary). What I'm not sure because I haven't tested it, is how that will work for jalousy.
Still not as elegant of a solution. Through culling or simple aging, I'd constantly have to manage ten clubs whereas the proposed patch would simply mean any male or female would be targeted by club actions. Also means that if I saw a guy that I wanted a female club to potentially hit on, initially they can't until I switch to the household with the male club leader, find that guy, add him, THEN switch back to play the female club.
And jealousy is still in play. Initially it seemed like they wanted to prevent it cause I seem to remember several patches back that jealousy half-worked (relationship hit but no emotional response), but now it's always in play.
I wish we had a way to edit the clubs without loading individual households
I've never found a woohoo club that works. They always get jealous. Sometimes they flat out reject them when one of the club rules is say to flirt with other members or kiss or hug or whatever.
Random calls usually first thing from strangers inviting my sims to a party at the bluffs. My sim barely knows these sims, just go away!
Texts congratulating my stay at home sim on her promotion. Texts from ghosts. Vampires constantly plaguing my sims with texts during the day!
If sims cheat on their spouse and their children witness it? No reaction. They don't care.
My sim with the hates children trait is obsessed with her toddler nephew and constantly checks on him even though it makes her tense. She checks on him more than his mother does!
I can only speak for my own experience, but better traits seems like a rising demand. This has slowly become more common of a request around here. I would not be surprised to see this be the next most requested thing after we get Pets and Seasons.
In Sims 3, a Sim that had commitment issues would never ever ever ever EVER wish to be in a relationship or to get married, and if you put them in one, all it took was one negative interaction with their spouse before they rolled a wish to break up. In Sims 4? Noncommital sims wish for relationships just as frequently as normal sims.
Sims 3? A Sim that hated children would never ever ever ever ever wish to have children. It was stricken from the wish pool and not possible for them to get it. Sims 4? They'll get it just like everyone else. To my knowledge their only difference is they get positive moodlets when a pregnancy test is negative, but what the heck, why is a sim that hates children even attempting to have them in the first place!?
So many of the traits are just absolutely meaningless in the grand scheme of things, and do nothing to make a Sim actually perform in a unique way. The best example of a trait that actually does something has to be squeamish. It doesn't actually do anything beyond give your sims a +3 uncomfortable moodlet after they catch a fish or the like, but that uncomfortable moodlet is often enough to interrupt and prevent them from fishing any further. (the game does not allow you to fish while your sim is that uncomfortable) It's a good trait, because you'd have to REALLY make an effort to make them get involved with nature, but sadly it's pretty much the only trait in the game that feels so meaningful.
EDIT: Looked it up, Squeamish is actually a +5 to +10 uncomfortable moodlet for doing almost anything with nature. It's very very difficult to override such a sizeable trait, so I'm glad they did this. I really wish they'd do more dramatic traits like this.
It's just very strange. I am currently playing TS3, and I'm noticing there are NOWHERE near as many bugs as TS4. In fact, I don't think I've experienced a single bug. It's just lag from poor optimization if anything. But TS4's lag is entirely different -- it's simulation lag. How do you design a Sims game to be incapable of sufficient simulation??
Really, it just goes to show that a closed world set up does not make everything better. The Sims likely lacks decent funding, developers, highly skilled devs, or all the above.
Yeeeeaaaah I would likewise like to contest the idea Sims 3 is buggier than Sims 4. For me? What matters is that both are in unacceptable condition. I honestly don't know and don't care which one is buggier, because both of them score a failing grade on stability, in my book. If one scores a 27 and the other scores a 42, you don't start praising the 42 for being better.
Sims 3 had issues where it was subject to file bloat and, famously, the Nraas mods are a "requirement" to keep files from bloating too high too quickly (after ~2 generations). Certain parts were especially bad, such as Isla Paradiso, and I personally had similar freezing and lagging in Twinbrook due to routing issues. Towns like Sunset Valley and Midnight Hollow were fine though. The amount of bugs in day-to-day gameplay were pretty minimal though. The most significant spike in bugs was probably when traveling to World Adventures, that's it.
Sims 4 has stability issues, file bloat AND day-to-day bugs in basic gameplay. It may not have file bloat on the same scale as Sims 3, but it definitely has it. Anyone remember the Sims 4 bug where you'd get like error 22 or something and couldn't save your game, forcing you to close the game and lose progress? That error had a habit of popping up after like an in-game week's worth of gameplay. Sims 3? You could get file bloat that did the same, but this was something that happened conclusively and waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay into the game. I'm talking multiple generations. It was fairly avoidable too, so long as you cleared out the graveyard, turned off the memories system and didn't do anything crazy to bloat the file. In one game you'd eventually run into problems saving if you didn't manage the file properly, in the other...? It happened during mere hours of gameplay, though luckily they patched it last year.
As I said, both have extremely bad bugs and flaws in their own ways, but I admit I get very sick of watching some members of the community say "YA BUT SIMS 4 GOT AN F+ WHILE SIMS 3 GOT AN F-," as if it really matters...
Why should people be expected to pay for new content when the existing content doesn't work properly? I'd say this thread is perfectly timed. I wonder what parts of this bowling pack are going to be broken and buggy and what existing content it is going to break. And of course most of these problems will go ignored by Maxis.
That is so cute!
I have participated in the bug forum a lot. My game is unplayable since about City Living and nothing has been done about it. In the bug forum I was directed to a different EA forum to press "me too" on a bug that I'm experiencing, so I'm assuming there's not enough "me toos" for any of this to be a priority. Which is frustrating and definitely not the way a game company should do things. If I can not push myself to play the game because in large part due to how bugged it currently is, then that is a consumer lost. I wish that they would indicate that they will at least take a look at lots of bugs, but they do not say so. Which is why I made this discussion in general, where currently it is nice and visible (well by now they moved it to feedback, but it is still a more visited forum than "bugs").
I always play cheat free
I actively stayed away from TS3 due to performance issues. Now that the game is done with all content, I can get it to somewhat run with NRAS. The saddest thing for me is that no mods fix what is wrong with TS4. And developers seem to only prioritize bugs that are new, or happening the most often. Meaning at the end of TS4 lifespan we will likely be able to give it an F on the ability to run, while TS3 could get a D.
Most of my issues were actually caused by City Living, but I can not uninstall that one expansion pack, because unlike TS3 that will let you run without specific expansion packs, origin tries to auto-download everything you own.
I still can not excuse what a mess TS3 was, but TS4 is shaping up to be a much bigger mess and that is just sad
- No step-parent / step-child relationships, at least as recognized as family relationships. Step-parents and step-children are "roommates" and even can develop romance. It's immoral and disgusting !
- Tiny family trees and no recognition of distant relatives.
- Death by emotions can happen much too easily, leaving the player in a permanent paranoid state, fearing that it could happen at any time. Not saying that it shouldn't happen, but it's supposed to be extremely rare.
- The game doesn't generate enough diversity of townies when it comes to ages. It's a problem for toddlers, children, teens (and elders in the beginning or if aging is off) when it comes to making friends.
- Some categories of townies that are present where they shouldn't be. Like, ghost doctors, alien vendors.
- Obsession with basketball.
- Children can't autonomously read books in bookshelves and in inventory, they only browse them.
- Children getting trapped under stairs, and various other routing bugs.
- Children wake up screaming every morning as if there were a monster under the bed.
- The AI handles romance, mean and mischievous interactions about the same as friendly interactions. There aren't enough restrictions about how and when these interactions should be unlocked. All sims are serial cheaters by default, and even good sims can become horribly cruel just because they're angry.
- Not enough trait slots. I know this isn't a bug but this is a big issue.
- No graveyards, condemning to irremediably losing ghosts of friends and distant relatives just because these sims weren't present in the currently played household when they died. This isn't a bug either but it's a huge issue too. It's so annoying to me that I refuse to play with aging on as long as this isn't solved.
- Sims' weight and muscle fluctuate much too fast, and muscular sims look like they're on steroids. Due to a lack of baseline metabolism, sims that don't exercise are condemned to gaining weight whatever they eat.
- And one of the most important things : lag. It's getting worse and worse and I'm fearing about how much lag this game will suffer from after release of future patches.
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