@Sharee
If the game is creating new Sims, it needs them, it's the way it's programmed. When you go to the vet for example, it looks for Sims that match some filter (like having a pet). If there isn't any, it will create one. Sometimes the filters are a bit more complex (traits, age, at work or not, played or not, etc), so you may lack some specific types of households, that the new EP needs.
It needs to use the townies we already have. We don't need a hundred townies. That's nuts.
Exactly.
I spent hours giving my townies pets, and the game still generates them. I don't need these sims. i really do not.
Under the post Cats&Dogs paradigm do we know how sims are selected for culling when it kicks in? Does the culling algorithm go for last in first out or choose larger households or go for single, homeless NPC sims. Any insights in to how sims and animals are selected for the culling process?
@Sharee
If the game is creating new Sims, it needs them, it's the way it's programmed. When you go to the vet for example, it looks for Sims that match some filter (like having a pet). If there isn't any, it will create one. Sometimes the filters are a bit more complex (traits, age, at work or not, played or not, etc), so you may lack some specific types of households, that the new EP needs.
It needs to use the townies we already have. We don't need a hundred townies. That's nuts.
Exactly.
I spent hours giving my townies pets, and the game still generates them. I don't need these sims. i really do not.
Initially I thought the "maximum sim count" was the population cap and essentially you would get to decide when the game would start to cull sims, so if you'd choose the 100 sims option but created 100 sims of your own and marked them all as favorites, then the game would basically stop any culling (because it can't cull favorite households) and stop random townie generations (because the population was already at its max). But I guess it was too good to be true. This option is basically useless and the name it has doesn't really help to understand what it actually does. Why not just let us favorite any households we want without having to choose how many can be favorited, it doesn't make much sense if in the end it's our choice anyway so why do we even need to set a limit? Basically the only useful thing about all of this is the favorite households feature, which is great if it works how it should, but culling and constant townie generation is still there and it's still annoying. For the life of me I can't understand why they just don't give us an option to turn it off. I can understand the game generating sims to fill jobs like a DJ, bartender, pizza guy, etc. and then either delete them or dump them in a pool of their own so they can be used next time, but why the heck does it need to force random townies to appear on our games? Oh well, guess I'll keep using mods then.
I think the new culling options are fine especially for ghosts, unless they're ghosts I like and on top of that if they're also played ones. There's at least one ghost I play that occasionally gets brought up to be susceptible to culling if not interacted with often; he's part of an older played household of mine, though I did move him into it originally through Manage Worlds instead of inviting him into it. Initially the game did fill the house he used to live in with his own ghost; back then I only had the base game and the game kept filling empty homes with just ghosts and was just annoying and I don't think it ever stopped doing that either even after I got many other packs, though it's less noticeable now.
Since this ghost is part of My Households he still does get notifications to be phased out; I was wondering if he could still disappear even if he's part of that household but haven't played them in a bit. Regardless I don't take chances and play that household for awhile when it does reappear again. I understand he is one of the oldest sims in my game but he's one of the few ghosts I'd like to keep around, and if they could've added some kind of tracker to mark their resting places I could make this easier for him, or at least if he's already existed in a household before this patch at least place his urn or something in his inventory.
Under the post Cats&Dogs paradigm do we know how sims are selected for culling when it kicks in? Does the culling algorithm go for last in first out or choose larger households or go for single, homeless NPC sims. Any insights in to how sims and animals are selected for the culling process?
There's a score per Sim that is calculated including various factors, then they are taking the mean value for each household. It's households that are culled, not individual Sims. Factors include things like relationships, last time the Sims appear, being housed, being a premade, being an employee in a business, being a service NPC.
@SimGuruNick
You said Sims in the family tree shouldn't be deleted. Is there some conditions for that ? Like a limit on the number of generations, or being a favorite Sims at the time of death ?
If I launch my game, will my non-favorite Sims keep their non-favorite great-grandparents for example ? What about great-grandparents of favorite Sims ?
ETA : From what I'm seeing, Sims in the family tree can be assigned to the MINIMUM LOD but it has a cap of 100. Is there something else to keep thumbnails in the family tree when you've got more than 100 of them ?
We only preserve favorited families. The minimum LOD that you describe is the Sim's thumbnail and name, and that has no generational limit. An unfavorited family has no protection, and could be culled instead of being set to minimum LOD.
Oh, and some more info that @SimGuruEugi shared with me, I know some of you were asking about the culling timer on ghosts. It lasts a total of 90 Sim-days, and that should be the same for all Sims. When you receive the TNS, warning you that you need to strengthen your connection, that indicates that the timer has 14 Sim-days left. Strengthening your connection should reset the timer fully, back to 90.
I think I may have mistakenly said before that the TNS (warning you that a ghost is about to be culled, and you need to strengthen your connection) only appears for housed Sims. You actually get the notification for all Sims in your world. The idea being that you can meet the ghost in the world and socialize with them, and that extends the timeout.
Another clarification, for anyone having issues finding their dead Sim's tombstone/urn. Any ghosts that existed before the November 7th patch (like in an older save file) will not have a tombstone generated. So in other words the feature is not retroactive. And this is by design.
EA CREATOR NETWORK MEMBER — Want to be notified of patches, new Broken Mods threads, and urgent Sims 4 news? Follow me at https://www.patreon.com/luthienrising.
> @SimGuruNick said: > I think I may have mistakenly said before that the TNS (warning you that a ghost is about to be culled, and you need to strengthen your connection) only appears for housed Sims. You actually get the notification for all Sims in your world. The idea being that you can meet the ghost in the world and socialize with them, and that extends the timeout. > > Another clarification, for anyone having issues finding their dead Sim's tombstone/urn. Any ghosts that existed before the November 7th patch (like in an older save file) will not have a tombstone generated. So in other words the feature is not retroactive. And this is by design.
Thank you for this insight! I do have one other question concerning that: If I were to say convert the ghost back to life (either by ambrosia or cheats) then placed them back to ghost (through cheats), then what would exactly happen with this timer? Reset as usual but still no urn/tombstone to generate? Do I have to naturally kill them off instead to get one? Very curious question since I have my favorite ghosts (and one of them had even started as a ghost).
Hi, I don't know if anyone else has had his issue, but all the ghosts whose spirit I "Released to Netherworld" before the update have magically come back, and won't go away. This really annoys me in my Legacy household, because I want the Graveyard on my family's home lot to remain there, but not have ghosts popping out every night, as in this save file I play 'realistically'. But there's no option to release them, and I don't want to completely delete them because I want their relationship levels to my alive sims to remain, same with their name on the tombstone and them to be in my family tree. Any idea what I can do? I just don't want them coming out of the graveyards and wrecking all my furniture and interacting with my sims & pets in this particular save.
Hi, I don't know if anyone else has had his issue, but all the ghosts whose spirit I "Released to Netherworld" before the update have magically come back, and won't go away. This really annoys me in my Legacy household, because I want the Graveyard on my family's home lot to remain there, but not have ghosts popping out every night, as in this save file I play 'realistically'. But there's no option to release them, and I don't want to completely delete them because I want their relationship levels to my alive sims to remain, same with their name on the tombstone and them to be in my family tree. Any idea what I can do? I just don't want them coming out of the graveyards and wrecking all my furniture and interacting with my sims & pets in this particular save.
Can confirm. My sim's boyfriend came back after having released him to the netherworld, which surprised me because I thought he was deleted for good.
Don't manhandle the urchin. He's not for sale. FIND YOUR OWN! - Xenon the Antiquarian, Dragon Age II
Race Against the Clock: Can your elder sim turn back the clock before their time runs out?
> @HugoBee said: > Hi, I don't know if anyone else has had his issue, but all the ghosts whose spirit I "Released to Netherworld" before the update have magically come back, and won't go away. This really annoys me in my Legacy household, because I want the Graveyard on my family's home lot to remain there, but not have ghosts popping out every night, as in this save file I play 'realistically'. But there's no option to release them, and I don't want to completely delete them because I want their relationship levels to my alive sims to remain, same with their name on the tombstone and them to be in my family tree. Any idea what I can do? I just don't want them coming out of the graveyards and wrecking all my furniture and interacting with my sims & pets in this particular save.
To my knowledge you don't have to destroy them after, and I believe you can still add them into the household inventory should you find it too annoying but still want to keep them for future use. Storing them ensures they won't ever pop up again, least until you place it back.
> @paradiseplanet said: > > To my knowledge you don't have to destroy them after, and I believe you can still add them into the household inventory should you find it too annoying but still want to keep them for future use. Storing them ensures they won't ever pop up again, least until you place it back.
Yeah, but my issue is that I have a family graveyard. Like, a literal graveyard on display (tombstones), that I'm actually quite proud of. I think i'm on 5th gen, and after the patch, BOOM! The ghosts were all causing havoc in my sims house! 5 generations of sims's ghosts wandering around at night destroying everything! It's chaos and I REALLY want them gone, but not permanently deleted so that the game forgets about them/erases their prior existence. It happened to one of my friends too, and I think someone above said it happened to them. I just need them to be 'released' and stay released, but the option isn't there since the update, but I definitely released their souls before the update and now they're just...... back. Thanks for your advice though!
> @paradiseplanet said:
>
> To my knowledge you don't have to destroy them after, and I believe you can still add them into the household inventory should you find it too annoying but still want to keep them for future use. Storing them ensures they won't ever pop up again, least until you place it back.
Yeah, but my issue is that I have a family graveyard. Like, a literal graveyard on display (tombstones), that I'm actually quite proud of. I think i'm on 5th gen, and after the patch, BOOM! The ghosts were all causing havoc in my sims house! 5 generations of sims's ghosts wandering around at night destroying everything! It's chaos and I REALLY want them gone, but not permanently deleted so that the game forgets about them/erases their prior existence. It happened to one of my friends too, and I think someone above said it happened to them. I just need them to be 'released' and stay released, but the option isn't there since the update, but I definitely released their souls before the update and now they're just...... back. Thanks for your advice though!
EA CREATOR NETWORK MEMBER — Want to be notified of patches, new Broken Mods threads, and urgent Sims 4 news? Follow me at https://www.patreon.com/luthienrising.
Regarding the issue that others above are posting where ghosts are being resurrected on their own and appearing as alive in family trees, household management, or as another user has reported, the game moving a bugged ghost into a house...
Well i have tried to download the MC Command Center , but this one came:
403 Permission Denied
1.You are not logged in. Fill in the form at the bottom of this page and try again. (Actionly, i was logged in as well)
2.You may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system? (by the way, if its not there anymore, than just remove it please)
3.If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation. (my account is not blocked)
Thanks for writing all of this, and also explaining how the new Culling System actually works...looks like we still need No Culling mods. X-D (Yay for the raised base population cap, though!)
~*~ Star light, star bright, I am StarryMight! ~*~
Does the console version reflect these new culling updates?
The console version doesn't affect the coding of the PC version. I don't know what the culling system in the console version is; I suspect it is the same.
EA CREATOR NETWORK MEMBER — Want to be notified of patches, new Broken Mods threads, and urgent Sims 4 news? Follow me at https://www.patreon.com/luthienrising.
What I don't get is why can't we just turn off culling all together? MCCC allows us to turn it off and implement our own culling rules. If I think I need more space I can delete sims on my own or remove relationships that don't need to be there. If a mod can do it, why can't y'all just implement that in the base game?
This is really helpful. I recently got into rotational play, and I never quite got my head wrapped around culling mechanics and relationship decay... Especially the latter. This thread is going to make my experience with my rotational save a lot nicer than it already was.
Comments
I spent hours giving my townies pets, and the game still generates them. I don't need these sims. i really do not.
Initially I thought the "maximum sim count" was the population cap and essentially you would get to decide when the game would start to cull sims, so if you'd choose the 100 sims option but created 100 sims of your own and marked them all as favorites, then the game would basically stop any culling (because it can't cull favorite households) and stop random townie generations (because the population was already at its max). But I guess it was too good to be true. This option is basically useless and the name it has doesn't really help to understand what it actually does. Why not just let us favorite any households we want without having to choose how many can be favorited, it doesn't make much sense if in the end it's our choice anyway so why do we even need to set a limit? Basically the only useful thing about all of this is the favorite households feature, which is great if it works how it should, but culling and constant townie generation is still there and it's still annoying. For the life of me I can't understand why they just don't give us an option to turn it off. I can understand the game generating sims to fill jobs like a DJ, bartender, pizza guy, etc. and then either delete them or dump them in a pool of their own so they can be used next time, but why the heck does it need to force random townies to appear on our games? Oh well, guess I'll keep using mods then.
Okay! I am going in to my game tonight and
Since this ghost is part of My Households he still does get notifications to be phased out; I was wondering if he could still disappear even if he's part of that household but haven't played them in a bit. Regardless I don't take chances and play that household for awhile when it does reappear again. I understand he is one of the oldest sims in my game but he's one of the few ghosts I'd like to keep around, and if they could've added some kind of tracker to mark their resting places I could make this easier for him, or at least if he's already existed in a household before this patch at least place his urn or something in his inventory.
There's a score per Sim that is calculated including various factors, then they are taking the mean value for each household. It's households that are culled, not individual Sims. Factors include things like relationships, last time the Sims appear, being housed, being a premade, being an employee in a business, being a service NPC.
We only preserve favorited families. The minimum LOD that you describe is the Sim's thumbnail and name, and that has no generational limit. An unfavorited family has no protection, and could be culled instead of being set to minimum LOD.
Another clarification, for anyone having issues finding their dead Sim's tombstone/urn. Any ghosts that existed before the November 7th patch (like in an older save file) will not have a tombstone generated. So in other words the feature is not retroactive. And this is by design.
> I think I may have mistakenly said before that the TNS (warning you that a ghost is about to be culled, and you need to strengthen your connection) only appears for housed Sims. You actually get the notification for all Sims in your world. The idea being that you can meet the ghost in the world and socialize with them, and that extends the timeout.
>
> Another clarification, for anyone having issues finding their dead Sim's tombstone/urn. Any ghosts that existed before the November 7th patch (like in an older save file) will not have a tombstone generated. So in other words the feature is not retroactive. And this is by design.
Thank you for this insight! I do have one other question concerning that: If I were to say convert the ghost back to life (either by ambrosia or cheats) then placed them back to ghost (through cheats), then what would exactly happen with this timer? Reset as usual but still no urn/tombstone to generate? Do I have to naturally kill them off instead to get one? Very curious question since I have my favorite ghosts (and one of them had even started as a ghost).
Can confirm. My sim's boyfriend came back after having released him to the netherworld, which surprised me because I thought he was deleted for good.
Race Against the Clock: Can your elder sim turn back the clock before their time runs out?
> Hi, I don't know if anyone else has had his issue, but all the ghosts whose spirit I "Released to Netherworld" before the update have magically come back, and won't go away. This really annoys me in my Legacy household, because I want the Graveyard on my family's home lot to remain there, but not have ghosts popping out every night, as in this save file I play 'realistically'. But there's no option to release them, and I don't want to completely delete them because I want their relationship levels to my alive sims to remain, same with their name on the tombstone and them to be in my family tree. Any idea what I can do? I just don't want them coming out of the graveyards and wrecking all my furniture and interacting with my sims & pets in this particular save.
To my knowledge you don't have to destroy them after, and I believe you can still add them into the household inventory should you find it too annoying but still want to keep them for future use. Storing them ensures they won't ever pop up again, least until you place it back.
>
> To my knowledge you don't have to destroy them after, and I believe you can still add them into the household inventory should you find it too annoying but still want to keep them for future use. Storing them ensures they won't ever pop up again, least until you place it back.
Yeah, but my issue is that I have a family graveyard. Like, a literal graveyard on display (tombstones), that I'm actually quite proud of. I think i'm on 5th gen, and after the patch, BOOM! The ghosts were all causing havoc in my sims house! 5 generations of sims's ghosts wandering around at night destroying everything! It's chaos and I REALLY want them gone, but not permanently deleted so that the game forgets about them/erases their prior existence. It happened to one of my friends too, and I think someone above said it happened to them. I just need them to be 'released' and stay released, but the option isn't there since the update, but I definitely released their souls before the update and now they're just...... back. Thanks for your advice though!
That might be a bug. I'd suggest reporting it here: http://answers.ea.com/t5/The-Sims-4-Bug-Reports/bd-p/The-Sims-4-Bugs
Also pinging @SimGuruNick on this one.
This bug has been reported, so I'll leave a link just in case anyone else comes to report it here: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/TO-TEST-Dead-Sims-look-alive-in-the-familytree/m-p/6433445
Well i have tried to download the MC Command Center , but this one came:
403 Permission Denied
1.You are not logged in. Fill in the form at the bottom of this page and try again. (Actionly, i was logged in as well)
2.You may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system? (by the way, if its not there anymore, than just remove it please)
3.If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation. (my account is not blocked)
Thanks for writing all of this, and also explaining how the new Culling System actually works...looks like we still need No Culling mods. X-D (Yay for the raised base population cap, though!)
The console version doesn't affect the coding of the PC version. I don't know what the culling system in the console version is; I suspect it is the same.