Culling - is this not good in an introduction kind of way?

plopppo · June 2016

There's been tons of people complaining about culling. I've never noticed it as I don't play enough - so, it's not something that affects me.

However, it seems culling is vital for gameplay.

I just set the Party Animal as a new aspiration for a Sim. The first ladder of Party Animal is for your Sim to introduce themselves to 10 Sims - so culling is vital - you can only introduce yourself to strangers.

My Sim knows a ton of Sims - I've now got to find 10 that he has never met.

Culling seems the way to go here - cull that Sim and spawn a new one.

Or have I misunderstood this?

LosaruTaiyo · June 2016

I don't have issue with culling as much as if there's a townie sim I want to keep around, I usually move them in somewhere. I have a ton of my own NPCs to have my sims interact with. There does seem to be an issue with culling of employees for restaurants (and shops?) though. I haven't tried that yet so I'm not sure. I can understand why some don't like it though as it can sometimes get rid of townies that maybe a sim is trying to build relations with and then BOOM! Sim gone!

The thing that bugs me is relationship culling as, yes, I understand my sim may not know another very well, but I shouldn't have to introduce that sim to another over and over. Luckily there are mods to remedy that so I am not as aggravated. Can be even more frustrating for those that rotate between households.

That is just my takes on it.

elanorbreton · June 2016

Oh dear, plopppo. No! Just no! Culling is BADDDD!

I guess it depends what a person wants from their game. People do not enjoy playing their sims, getting to know someone, maybe even thinking about marrying them or something and then -poof- they've disappeared.

Ghosts in the family trees get culled.

Staff working at restaurants get culled. Someone might have paid to train them up and got them working well and then they disappear.

Of course, there are work-arounds for some of the culling aspects but IMO culling should be optional and not forced upon anyone.

Simanite · June 2016

There are always new Sims to introduce yourself to though, like NPCs. It doesn't mean they have to delete everyone.

GalacticGal · June 2016

I'm playing a ghost in my household for the very first time (and I have been playing Sims since 2005) because I didn't want my Founder to get culled after he passed away.

LosaruTaiyo · June 2016

@elanorbreton Ah true. The culling affecting the family trees. It's too bad they can't make those not connected. I mean by all means list the family members, but their names should still exist after they past, ghost or none. I mean it doesn't happen IRL. That's why some use Family Echo for tracking their families I think.

Again, I shall leave this topic now I think as I don't have too much to weigh in on the subject. For those that are really affected by it, I do hope for something official in the future that would make things better.

Wazowski_Vegeta · June 2016

Ah the culling, the only way I went around it was to use mc commander with culling off. It pains me every time someone gets erased from my family tree, specially in legacy playthroughs

. Anyway, you shouldn't worry about it much because it tends to happen to deceased sims mostly, in my game, the only ones getting deleted are the dead ones, ghosts just disappear after a few days. But as I mentioned you can go around the issue if you are comfortable with mods.

drake_mccarty · June 2016

Culling is vital to keeping the game performing like it does on low end hardware.

Culling is not a player driven mechanic, it's a game process that deletes data without informing the player, or giving the player options for what to keep/delete.

For a long, long time culling had serious ramifications on regular gameplay. Some users say these issues (such as ghosts and family trees becoming deleted) were fixed, I still have problems with them so it's up in the air at this point.

At the end of the day culling has been met largely with negative responses, but it's very clear culling was put in the game for a reason and it's unlikely to change.

Currently a rather aggressive form of culling exists in the form of relationship culling, where your sims will lose all relationships with sims for absolutely no reason. This was similarly met with very negative responses, but Maxis has not removed it or commented on it. Before the GT patch relationship culling did not exist in the game, which says it's presence is not necessarily vital to gameplay or game performance but is something the development team snuck into the game for reasons undisclosed to us.

Terra · June 2016

@plopppo - There are many other ways to have new Sims for your Sim to meet. Even when you have culling modded out (like with MC Command), the game will continue to generate new townies - it just doesn't replace the friends your Sim has already made by doing so. You can also always create new Sims for your Sim to meet - with the Randomize tool handy if you don't want to spend much time on it. The later stages of the social aspirations involve forming deeper friendships, beyond simple introductions, and culling plus relationship culling actually make this much more challenging to complete.

crinrict · June 2016

GalacticGal wrote: »

I'm playing a ghost in my household for the very first time (and I have been playing Sims since 2005) because I didn't want my Founder to get culled after he passed away.

If he died when you were playing him, he's save from culling

Polyrhythm · June 2016

It's easy to meet 10 sims you've never met since the game is steadily generating townies...unless you've met nearly every townie out there, which is still near impossible with relationship culling.
If the goal said meet 100 new sims then maybe it'd be vital

EnkiSchmidt · June 2016

In my opinion culling is not needed.

Sometimes one wants to get rid of sims for whatever reason, but then it is much fairer to the player if he can choose which ones and how many have to go. Taking this out of our hands only leads to negative feelings. As for performance problems, a simple paragraph in the game options or during loading screens would take care of this. It could read "If your game lags slows down, you may want to delete some sims to make it run smoother again". That way players have the advice they need and can act on it if desired.

Audio_5urf · June 2016

Thankfully my world is loaded with sims i've made or hand picked so townies are just background fillers like in a sitcom or movie set.

I do wish my sims filled the roles of random townies more often on community lots since 110 sims out of the population cap are mine and the premades.. but oh well.

Wouldn't mind if the ones generated were not mostly elders.. so culling benefits me since townies have no impact in my game since most are elders and need to be culled anyway.

stilljustme2 · June 2016

With a combination of MC Command Center and manual culling (deleting households from Not in World once a Sim week plus moving Sims into houses) I've been able to keep the automatic culling to a minimum. But I agree that culling was originally designed to keep the game feeling "fresh" by rotating out Sims so you're always meeting new people. Being able to 'mark" Sims so they're not culled (which you can do with MC Command Center) is a big help -- also Sims that have either been played or are part of a played Sims family tree should not be culled; their portraits should remain in the family tree. Since family trees weren't in the original game (they came in the ghosts patch, IIRC), it's possible the developers didn't take into account how culling would affect that feature.

thesimsisepic · June 2016

plopppo wrote: »

There's been tons of people complaining about culling. I've never noticed it as I don't play enough - so, it's not something that affects me.

However, it seems culling is vital for gameplay.

I just set the Party Animal as a new aspiration for a Sim. The first ladder of Party Animal is for your Sim to introduce themselves to 10 Sims - so culling is vital - you can only introduce yourself to strangers.

My Sim knows a ton of Sims - I've now got to find 10 that he has never met.

Culling seems the way to go here - cull that Sim and spawn a new one.

Or have I misunderstood this?

What was misunderstood is that your issue is more of the fault in the way TS4 aspirations work. Unlike better aspirations in TS2, 4 makes every aspiration have the same goals for every sim with no variety. Quite honestly, if you can't find 10 new people to meet, that means your party animal knows more than enough to have a good ol Gamescom 2015 party. In TS2, not every family sim had wanted to get married or have kids, and not every romance sim dreaded those things. It was also dependant on the sims' personality and memories/life experiences. TS4 apsirations are just another thing that shows the true shallow nature of the game.

catitude5 · June 2016

Keep a copy of them in your library, an up to date one of your favorites. Just put them back.

SiliClone · June 2016

It depends on how you play. If you populate the town, culling is a problem once you hit the max population limit because the game likes to spawn new townies instead of picking the ones in world. If you focus only on your sim and don't care for townies, then culling is a feature to keep the town fresh.

SimLover4ever · June 2016

I just bought Get to Work a few days ago, and I had a sim buy Paddywhack's Emporium. I hired Pammy Swain, a wife I created for Sammy, and she did a marvelous job. For two days I had a very successful operation. She was happy, my sim was happy, and the store was making loads of profit. On day 3, she didn't show up for work. I tried to get in touch with her and she was gone. Kaput. Her husband as well. Sammy was on my nonplayed lists for ages, and Pammy had been there for months.

I had to hire someone else and all she did was play on her phone and ignore the customers. I was running around trying to do it all myself and several got mad and left. I fired her before end of shift because I figured I was just wasting money.

I just hired a recently generated sim who seems to be qualified, but haven't opened the store yet. It's just getting too frustrating.

Cement · June 2016

I understand that the game has to cull sims. I just wish the cap was bigger because it's really small. It's not hard to reach max cap after a few generations in a legacy, which I find is a problem. Because there's no way to let go of the dead without it affecting family trees, some people like myself have to have no culling as an option to protect those trees and the family ties.
I'd also be really annoyed if my game were to cull the excess townies I have, since I tend to bring all of them into CAS and edit them manually. I can't stand letting them walk around all ridiculous. LOL
As a note, I have a total of 614 sims right now, with a quarter of that amount dead. It'd be nice to let go of my ghosts of some townies I wasn't too fond of, but it's either all or none. I don't experience ridiculously long loading screens, but that's only because my computer can definitely handle it.
Luckily, I have enough sims in my town with high enough skills so it rarely, if ever, generates a new mixologist or any NPC job sims. It also pulls from the mass amount anyway, so I'm glad about that.

kingkong192 · June 2016

I don't like it

Sid1701D9 · June 2016

The game won't cull sims that are playable playable in the Sims 4. If the game asked for a level 10 mixology and there was non present in town the game would spawn one, now the game is not that absolute, if the game calls for a level 10 mixologist it will also pick level 7, 8 and 9, but limit them.

halimali1980 · June 2016

Every sim is important in the game because every sim can be interacted with. Player created or game generated.
So the debate of "put your sim in houses" or keep marking everyone as playable etc is absurd.

It is not the player's duty to get into these small details to preserve his sims. If a player has to go that deep then that means the developers have failed in their game design.

I have nothing else to say

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Culling - is this not good in an introduction kind of way?

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