So I took some time off from Sims 4 to let some expansions come out. Magic and Eco Life have dropped so I figured I'd fire up my game again. Here is the sad part, my FIRST thought was there were expansions so what are the new bugs? I find that very disappointing but at least the game has one thing going for it, consistency. Sure enough I've already encountered two new bugs.
1st bug. Some actions just never complete. This seems to happen OFTEN with eating meals. The sim will sit, eat and there hunger will fill up, but the plate of food never loses food and the eating action never completes. The sim just sits there forever spooning food into their mouths. Fortunately this is easy to fix, you just cancel the action and trash the plate and your good to go, but this happens to sims visiting your lot as well. Since you don't have direct control of these sims there is no way to cancel whatever stuck action they have so you have to use the console to resetSim, otherwise they'll eventually starve to death on your lot. This is also happening with the "Watch Movie" interaction on a TV. The movie starts, the sims sit to watch, their entertainment goes up, but the movie will NEVER finish.. they will sit there forever.
2nd bug. Decorations are simply not working at all anymore in any situation, the entire system for decorations is now completely broken.
Does anyone else find it sad that the first thought with new expansions isn't "Oh my god, new stuff to do, I'm so excited!!" Instead, your first thought is "What bugs are going to be introduced to my currently working game, and is it going to be game breaking?"
Add to this the total lack of any amount of urgency in fixing these bugs. Remember the good 'ol days when a game company would take a bug in their game as a personal insult and usually roll out a patch within a week? I don't know if those days are simply gone or if that attitude in game development is not conducive to how EA does business, regardless ... it's disappointing.
The saddest part of all of this is it's totally no surprise at all. As soon as EA sucks in a game developer, that developer's product ultimately suffers as a result.
Here's to hoping Maxis can shake off the shackles of EA long enough to actually fix these bugs in a timely matter, but I seriously doubt it.
Praying I'm wrong,
An extremely dissatisfied customer
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Comments
The recent base game before Eco living dropped was an extremely ambitious one and with that has come a host of bugs and glitches that will need to be patched out. The team has worked quickly on the most extreme ones and I'm sure is gathering data and working on a host of others. The Sims 4 has overall been a lot more stable for me than The Sims 3 was.
Even though this has been a consistent issue with each generation of The Sims I have played, I don't consider it sad. I like The Sims because of all the options and stories it lets me tell. In my experience, games that afford that level of choice often also come with their share of glitches Skyrim, Mass Effect also offer a lot of choice and have had quite a few glitches over the years sometimes after big overhauls and updates. It happens.
I hadn't noticed the eating one actually, but I prefer to keep my sims needs full via cheats (or even more often with the reward trait that keeps them always full) so they rarely eat haha!
tbh, it's never been my first thought and I rarely encounter any bugs in my game. I do remember one last year-ish where todders got stuff stuck to their hands that caused me issues because I play toddlers mostly... but it was fixed quickly.
@SimGuruNick is wonderful and tagging him here to let him know too. Whole QA team and honestly I have been reporting bugs since my cupcake crash bug in February 2015, so I know Sims 4 is totally not bug free because well bugs love me. But yes please keep reporting bugs. Complaining about bugs and reporting them to the QA team in detail is the best way to make the game get better. Anyways happy Simming and hope that you get your bugs fixed soon. I had one regarding gardening I had to report.
https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/NEEDS-INPUT-ECO-Hydroponic-Planter-seeds-disappear/m-p/9239491#M142790
Crinrict is amazing volunteer and sweetheart on the bug forums. Deaderpool discord is a really cool place too if you have any questions about mods, CC, and stuff: https://deaderpool-mccc.com/#/
People are actually still waiting for urgent bug fixes since the 5th of June and it is now the 26th...
As was the way with Sims3, Sims4 is heavily modded and manipulated in ways that suit me and my style of play. My Sims4 game does not resemble what the teams had in mind when the base game was released. Or even now, nearly six years later, after the release of over thirty packs. I chose what features in those packs I wanted to build on, then left the others behind. That's the beauty of having a community of brilliant mod creators who love the game, and work tirelessly to make the mods that allow us to have the kind of game we want to play. I fought the idea of being forced to use mods for a long time. I also believed it was up to Maxis/EA to give us what we want when we paid for those packs and expected more than what we actually got for our money. So now I seldom pay full price for a pack because I know better. I did buy EL on release day because I wanted it, and I was willing to take my chances. It isn't a bad pack. It has it's issues but most of those have been taken care of with a couple of mods. But I am not sad about using mods. I am sad EA is what it is and can't see anything except numbers and dollar signs, though. But I haven't let that slow me down as far as me enjoying this game. I am not saying everyone should ignore the fact disappointment is a real thing with Sims4. I am not saying the way I am handling it is right or wrong. I am just saying EA doesn't care. I simply chose to get even instead of being angry or sad about the game's shortcomings, and waiting for the teams to do something about it.
If you want to look at the bright side if things you can expect to pay 80$ for a buggy and empty Sims 5. Of course there are always positive things but when people have tons of bugs and EA doesn't do anything about it, it is not an opinion anymore, it's a fact.
I don't think it is a coincidence that they missed that you can't take care of the insect farm in Eco Lifestyle for example because I think no one wanted to play with it.
But they do care about other things so I think it is important to not only focus on the negative. A lot of things still work pretty well in the game and mods help me focus on the more positive things. I can remove the horrible outfits, the weird behavior and other things.
@jmac2727 The decorations buffs have been changed due to player complaints, it's not a bug. They now have a countdown so they don't give a constant happy buff, only a temporary one. They used to be extremely annoying because they would constantly keep Sims in the "happy" zone and it would end up overriding other emotions.
They have also added a decorations debuff if your Sim has a poorly decorated environment. I imagine that this was done to add balance.
I personally don't like having decorations influence anything at all, I think they should only be tied to materialistic Sims. But having a countdown timer is a big improvement because it makes more sense to me. I mean, who goes around their house in a happy euphoria, grinning at their decor day after day?
Otherwise. Yes they tweak and change things due to player complaints and input... and sometimes it's for the worse for some players and better for others, but that doesn't make it a bug because gameplay has been tweaked and changed. For instance I hated it when they took away the ability for my playable sim to do everything they wanted to in an NPC home without complaint from that family (showering, sleeping, cooking). They made it so you basically needed the Always Wecome trait to do that after lots of complaints and threads that it isn't appropriate to be able to do that. So it's the first reward trait most of my sims get now.
My favorite new change is the new door possibilities so vampires or neighbors are disallowed although I'm sure someone out there might be unhappy about that?
You might want to use the reporting a bug process about the eating thing though that sounds annoying.
Oh and about the bug farms.. you can take care of them it just takes a lot of effort to get them thriving @logion I have two characters that keep them and actually get them thriving everyday. I do hope they tweak down the amount of bug nurturing you have to do though it is too much in my estimation.
Most of the bugs that annoy me right now have to do with plants not sure if they are universal or not though I need to go view the reports and check off some me too's soon.
I am experiencing a lot more dropped actions. I have to watch my sims like a hawk to be sure they complete a task.
I have hit the "me too" in report bugs in the past and it does not change the count no matter how many times I hit it. Maybe it is bugged for me also. Guess I should go check it out again.