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I dislike that the game uses my played sims as working NPCs at community lots
Simmerville
Posts: 11,658 Member
It did not happen long ago. I guess it started with ECO Lifestyle, or the pack/patch before.
I have played my little community of 70+ households since TS4 release. That is 6 years, and I know these characters pretty well. My imagination goes into this, too, because in my game there is a lot going on that is not featured in the game. Such as my 5 years election. Recently the 5 Councillors were elected. They are all more or less successful politicians or business ppl, most of them from the higher social level.
It's rather disturbing when my group of UNI students visits the Gibbs Hill bar to celebrate that another term is done. Then to find one of the Councilors serving there as a bartender is breaking all my illusions. Edvin Phlum has run a successful business for many years and has now reached the regional Council, which is top of my community. He would NOT serve any bar. And why on earth should he serve a bar in Britechester while he lives at San Myshuno's Uptown? Would make more sense if the game picked a bartender from Britechester, if it is this important for the game to use played sims.
In my game there is a list of hundreds of NPC sims that was created by the game, never played by me, and never "heart-ed" by me, Why can't the game use one of those? It could in the past. I hope this is a bug and that it will be fixed, because it really harms the game. I never appreciated to see my Duchess walk the streets wearing a silly situation/festival costume, either, but it is in fact worse seeing my played sims as bartenders, vendors at the flee market, etc. Please leave it to me to decide whether any of my played sims shall serve a bar or sell globes at the outdoor market.
I have played my little community of 70+ households since TS4 release. That is 6 years, and I know these characters pretty well. My imagination goes into this, too, because in my game there is a lot going on that is not featured in the game. Such as my 5 years election. Recently the 5 Councillors were elected. They are all more or less successful politicians or business ppl, most of them from the higher social level.
It's rather disturbing when my group of UNI students visits the Gibbs Hill bar to celebrate that another term is done. Then to find one of the Councilors serving there as a bartender is breaking all my illusions. Edvin Phlum has run a successful business for many years and has now reached the regional Council, which is top of my community. He would NOT serve any bar. And why on earth should he serve a bar in Britechester while he lives at San Myshuno's Uptown? Would make more sense if the game picked a bartender from Britechester, if it is this important for the game to use played sims.
In my game there is a list of hundreds of NPC sims that was created by the game, never played by me, and never "heart-ed" by me, Why can't the game use one of those? It could in the past. I hope this is a bug and that it will be fixed, because it really harms the game. I never appreciated to see my Duchess walk the streets wearing a silly situation/festival costume, either, but it is in fact worse seeing my played sims as bartenders, vendors at the flee market, etc. Please leave it to me to decide whether any of my played sims shall serve a bar or sell globes at the outdoor market.
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Once, I saw a Sim that I had created, carefully dressed, built a home for, and provided with a career, sleeping on a bench in Willow Creek Park in a ratty old wifebeater and something that looked like house slippers. I could've sworn that there was a stink cloud and flies circling her head. I nearly rage quit on the spot.
It still hurts my Simmy soul to see Sims what I have created parading around town in the most insane outfits and photobombing my screenshots. I shouldn't have to stop and use MCCC to change Sims back into their regular outfits simply so that I can take a picture. But put my Sims into a job that I didn't give them and you're going to tick me off.
One of the first Sims that I created was a singer/entertainer. She was pretty good at it, too. These days, she's hawking chimichangas or something at a food stall in the Spice District instead of continuing her singing career in Windenburg.
TS4 is beautiful to look at, but most days, it can turn a player's carefully laid out game into hot garbage.
Also, the game has a ratio set for unemployed sims vs employed sims (which differs by age group). So for adult sims it's something like 80% employed and 20% unemployed. I found that when I had a lot of sims with jobs I had set, one day I found a whole bunch were randomly switching jobs because the game had made them unemployed.
Both of those things has been in the game since way before Eco Lifestyle. One thing I find immersion breaking is the new tendancy in recent packs to re-use sims for pseudo-jobs (it doesn't change their career, but puts them in a role of an NPC temporarily). Like for Eco Lifestyle, that's the NAP Inspector – there's no actual NPC career for that, it just seems to pick a random unemployed sim. In Get Famous, it does the same thing for bouncers guarding VIP doors. In Island Living, it does that a bunch for island events (but those are usually OK story-wise because it uses island sims "volunteering" to do things like run stalls for the community or be a lifeguard).
LOL
Makes zero sense.
Anyway, i really wish they would add a UI to the manage worlds to let us add/remove/edit who we want to be in each npc role and a warning that we can toggle on/off to tell us when one of them is dying so that we can add a new one.
Supposedly Sims favorited by clicking the heart won't be given NPC roles, right? Perhaps I'm mistaken and they're only safe from being culled? Anyway, I rarely see game generated, unplayed, unfavorited townies with interactive NPC roles. They're mostly gardeners, anglers, homeless bench warmers, etc. The only interactive roles I see exclusively for game generated townies is as spellcasters in the Realm.
I'll have to try your suggested fix @jackiejoy Thanks for posting about it. I hope it still works!
I do still have fun playing my vanilla game almost everyday. I try very hard to just ignore it all. But lately, the bugs and basic borked mechanics of the game piling up with no fixes in sight, are pushing me toward using Mods. I shouldn't have to and don't want to do that. But even someone patient and understanding such as myself can only take so much before throwing their hands up to say, "Enough!"
I'm living on the edge as Stephen Tyler would say.
Happy Simming anyway...
Now, this explains my original episode, but it raises another question - why on earth (or in SimNation) did EA think it was good idea to place a copy of saved households in that "other households" bin? Those sims are used by the game to populate streets and community lots. It's nothing new, and think I started another thread about it earlier. I dislike that as well... Be aware; when you play a sim, and run into someone familiar, it might actually be their copy, not the real sim. That might explain why some relations seem wonky in the relations panel - someone you expected to have a strong relation might turn out not to have met when you switch households.
Thanks for input!
This never worked for me. Ever. Maybe they fixed it at some point, idk.
I use the "cas.fulleditmode" cheat before entering CAS through shift-clicking a sim. Not sure if the cheat is needed if you use the "manage households" menu, but I would think so.
You can then edit genetics, and also add family relatio to new sims, but it must be a sim that has not been played. Merging two existing sims to edit their relation will not work.
6+ years, still waiting for a townie job manager so I can assign careers to NPCs *and* they will stick to it ... I know it's possible because you can do it with MCCC freeze career flag and NPCC.
But giving us tools to play the game our way seems the lowest on the list of priorities.
NPCs seem to have an expiry date, in line with the truly awful culling mechanic to give the appearance of story progression, so if you've disabled culling, sims previously in a townie job will no longer have it, nor be drafted for anything new, and will sit uselessly in your other households tab forever.
Great coding guys !
I appreciate your insight. However, in my particular case, I don't think that's the issue. I've never created an erratic Sim.
@Simmerville You may be onto something. I may have changed that Sim a bit by using the CAS cheat. I don't remember, however, it's entirely possible. I'll check my list of "Other" Households to see if there's another Sim that looks like her. Thanks for the lead!
Two or three years ago this was happening again, and not result of any mods or cc. Didn't have any.
"WE own" these computers the code runs on NOT EA. I am not disputing EA's rights regards the code, I AM disputing their rights in MY home and on MY computer.
As this game now stands, we may as well be watching TV, as we have little to no control over the game and our own sims any more. Personally I haven't bought a pack of any kind since University was released.
And @ Cinebar the problem is how someone merged the patches. they got an older copy of the code and backdated it instead of updating it. Seen it happen in other big projects with complex intertwined code like this. Typical careless sloppy work.
IIRC, this started happening with GT, then they patched it to stop played Sims from taking jobs like cashier etc. And they were never supposed to get vendor jobs at the festivals later. It's so disppointing if I ever want to load my TS4 again, I'm going to have to deal with broken patches and more bugs and glitches than the last time I played this game.