I read your post and was quite impressed with the information you shared with us. About the fertilizing, I almost always use the Super Fertilizer, but I also use fish my Sims have caught. After fertilizing the garden, I go back and check each plant to make sure no plant was left out and all plants were fertilized. That also includes any plant which has attained the perfect stage. But I can see where the values are a bit off thanks to you including the files which makes things more clear, and I understand it all much more than I did before. I'll visit your website later today and look at the gardening mods you have. Of course, once the update drops, everything will change with our mods. We never know if those updates will work, or how many mods will be affected. Take care @83bienchen.
Sadly I don't, @crinrict. The other plant communities (there are 17 in total, but I doubt all are relevant for the plant bugs) also cannot be checked in game. I will let you know if I find a way to make them visible for testing purposes.
@Paigesin5, I have just scratched the surface and while some of my mods make the issue less in the face, there still remain issues that aren't fixed by my mods. I'm currently checking a save file where it happens with the change of a Season for a sheltered plant at the time it would go in Season if it weren't shelterd, but only if you are not at the active lot during the time the Season changes. It's quite the task to track down these bugs and I don't blame EA for not being able to fix (all of) them yet.
Now now EA, don't be stinking up our lovely lavender bath with your shopping fart. - My TS4 mods - Gallery ID: 83bienchen
Does this happen in existing saves? Because often fixes only work on new saves and not retroactively on saves that already have that particular bug. They usually mention it in the patch notes though.
I see this a lot that fixes don't work in existing saves. Do they eventually get fixed in the existing saves as well cause I have been playing the same save for two years now and I don't want to start over.
^^ This. What is the point in claiming it is fixed when it is not fixed for existing saves. I am not starting over either and they need to find a solution to fix it in existing saves with a garden to table pack coming out.
@83bienchen Thanks for the info. I really hope the Gurus read your explanation to they can track this stuff down and fix it. You have done most of the heavy lifting for them.
I recently watched a Dr Gluon Live Play for the new pack. His Sim was watering the plants and a few of them reverted back to dirt. The gamechangers only have access to Base game and Cottage Living, so it may possibly be something with Base game. The plants in my game periodically revert to dirt, frustrating but not game changing. There doesn't seem to be a specific reason for this.
I don't think its a problem with fertilizing, at least not entirely. I hardly ever fertilize my plants, and never with dog poop, because I never have dogs (or cats for that matter). I usually have around 50-60 plants sheltered in greenhouses. I used to plant them directly in the ground, but have started using the Hydroponic planters (I've not played in months, though...). I can sit and watch while most, if not all, of my plants revert back to dirt piles. Its very very frustrating, and the main reason I haven't played in such a long time. ALL my households have gardens, usually with around 60 plants. I just can't stand playing any of them now.
Have not checked any of my saves if this issue is fixed. Just got a new PC and haven't gotten everything back how I like it (files and such)
I recently watched a Dr Gluon Live Play for the new pack. His Sim was watering the plants and a few of them reverted back to dirt. The gamechangers only have access to Base game and Cottage Living, so it may possibly be something with Base game. The plants in my game periodically revert to dirt, frustrating but not game changing. There doesn't seem to be a specific reason for this.
@bienchen83 Some really great tips for gardening...did not know sims had to fertilize perfect plants. I have many of your incredible mods and will probably get this one. I just not sure about gardening problems in an ep that one of the main features is gardening. It will be interesting to see.
In my house, dog hair sticks to everything but the dog.
I'd vote for completely getting rid of the loot_EcoFootprint_Gardening_ToNeutralSetQuality tuning, because it somehow seems to be loaded every single time you load a lot while in neutral status. This could also be responsible for plants never beeing able to be harvested, especially for players that play without the Eco footprint (as neutral is the default status).
It seems there are a lot of players who tend to not fertilize their plants at all. I think it possible that not fertilizing a plant for a long time might bring it into a status where it will not be able to evolve enough to grow harvestables before it reverts back. I also wanted to add that weeds, spring bugs and lack of moisture will harm a plant to a greater extend if they aren't fixed soon after those problems arise. I tend to water, spray and weed my plants as soon as I notice they're are in need of gardening care - that might also be one reason for my plants not reverting to dirt piles.
So it might not even be all bugged, but some issues might be due to the way the player uses the system.
Anyway, I'm still looking at the growth and evolution commodities themselves. There might be something wrong in there, considering how widely spread the amount of different gardening bugs is.
Post edited by 83bienchen on
Now now EA, don't be stinking up our lovely lavender bath with your shopping fart. - My TS4 mods - Gallery ID: 83bienchen
Thank you for the very useful info bienchen, sounds like using low quality fertilizer and having the eco footprint change a lot is not good for the plants at all.
I wonder how the game will handle the new fertilizers in Cottage Living.
I tried to look into it a bit as well but this happens so random that it is hard to trigger it down to the reason of why it does happen imo.
So far i tuned some files to be able to see the state of bugged dirt piles. In a Save form an User who has this Issue after the Patch, i could see that two piles had the states On Track (evolution) and Planted (Growth), two had Ready to Evolve and Planted. So all 4 bugged Piles went back to the Planted State which usually should only happen when not in season & outside.
So far i could not see anything specific in the tuning which would explain that issue, so i tried around a bit. I added a decay modifier to the state of plants when those are cared for (watered, no bugs, no weeds). With this i could let this Save run without any new dirt piles for two sim weeks. But like i said this is so random, i could just have been lucky. I do hope EA fixes this with the next Patch before the EP but i can image that even for them it will be difficult to find the issue if it is that random.
So, I think I might have found something weird in the commodity for gardening evolution. The maximum_auto_satisfy_time is set to 0, which is very unusual as normaly that value is set to 1440 (meaning hours, that is 1 day).
Moreover, I noticed that in the commodity for gardening growth use_stat_value_on_init is set to false while it is set to true in the other gardening commodities.
Changing these values might positively affect the issue. I've done that an am currently playing around with it.
I also tried to interpret another bit of the programming (I say interpret because I'm not sure whether it really works that way, but if it does, it would mean that plants reverting after weeding/watering/harvesting is NOT a bug, but a sign of bad care for the plant on the side of the player before it reverted (not the weeding or watering done the moment before that plant reverts, but the time span it took the player to properly take care of the plant).
So there's a tuning called plantstatusaggregate. There are 3 values for that: neutral, good and bad.
neutral - the default status. Plants will not evolve on their own in that status, The default convergence value for evolution will be set to 100, I guess that means that there is a chance to evolve the plant in a positive way while it's in neutral status, but only be fertilizing it or by reaching the green ecofootprint (because that is giving a hit in evolution).
good - this status is triggered when the plant is in a state where all its needs a perfectly cared for (no watering, weeding or bug spaying needed). Any need for care will have the plant revert to neutral plant status. While in good plant status though, the convergence value for evolution will be set to 100, meaning that the is a chance to evolve the plant to a higher status. Unlike the neutral status, the plant will evolve a little on its own just by time passing by without you doing anything (fertilizer, I'm looking at you) as long as it does not revert to neutral status because weeds, spring bugs or lack of moisture appear.
bad - this status is triggered when the plant either reaches the worst level of moisture, weeds or infestation with bugs (there are 2 levels for infestation, weeds and dry plants each, one moderate level and a second one where the plant is heavily hit by infestation/weeds/dryness). Now if I understand correctly, this status will set the convergence value vor evolution to 0, meaning that your plant will now start devolving instead of evolving. It will loose the evolution status previously gained over time and will do so faster than it gains evololution in a good plantstate. It will not stop loosing points until you bring it back to either neutral or good status. On top of that, the bad plant state will decrease plant growth by 25 %.
That way, if you send your Sim to weed/water/spray for bugs at the end of the day while the plant already spent one or even more than a day in devolution status/bad plant status, you plant will revert back to a dirt pile (evolution value between 1 and 20) or even die (evolution value minimum of 0).
If I interpreted everything correctly, this is by no means a bug though. It is how the system works.
In the bug reports it always says that people would expect to being to harvest their (perfect) plant every single day. That expectation is - without wanting to insult anyone here - a lazy one. It cannot be met.
If you want to be able to harvest your plant everyday, you need to take perfect care of it, tending to it pretty soon after it develops a need for something and helping evolution with valuable fertilizer.
On a side note, I'm still unsure whether the bug with plants reverting to dirt piles with the change of Seasons (or without it) after travelling is also just a symptom of bad plant care. I mean there seems to be some kind of light bug going on there, but maybe only to the extend that the plant status got stuck at neutral and get's reset after travelling, only then visuably showing that the affected plant was about to devolve to planted state but couldn't because it was somehow stuck at the visual status it had before travelling.
I mean plants will also in most cases not devolve before the weed/dryness/infestation status is lifted from them by finally caring for the plant.
With bearing in mind what I wrote in an earlier post about ecofootprint heavily affecting plant evolution, it is no wonder that there are so many people have problems with their plants reverting to dirt piles. The saves I have explored - thanks for those people providing my with test saves - all have one thing in common.
The player of that save used their garden as a means of cash grab. It was always huge, often with high value and good quality plants and then left somewhere in the corner of the lot (sometimes with the support of a gardener or butler) where it was meant to produce the family income while it's basic needs being cared for once a day.
From all what I found out, the game mechanics will not allow for such an "abuse" of a large garden as a cash grab.
That use players want to make from a "perfect garden" is not allowed by game mechanics. A perfect garden need much more love than just getting plants to perfect status and then storing them somewhere while focussing on something else.
So while we can expect the team to fix
- the problem of calling that change to neutral eco footprint being triggered so often (or simply getting rid of the massive decrease in evolution by either removing it or replacing it with are merely small hit)
- the problem of plants getting stuck at a certain plant status which then suddenly resets by travelling, revealing the devolved status of the plant
- the issue that you can not effectively queue up a Sim to fertilize several plants with the same kind of fertilizer in a row (with only the first plant actually getting the fertilizer you choose) - that one is maybe most important in my opinon because it makes fertilizing a big garden such a nuisance and might be the reason for many to not fertilizing their plants
- the other minor tuning issue I already wrote about
we should probably not expect them to nuke the efforts required to maintain a perfect garden they set up. I personally really like that you have to put these continuous efforts in a perfect garden.
All in all, gardening does not seem to be as broken as the many bug reports depict. Some of those issues are the result of false expectations. Maybe an in-game gardening tutorial that explains a little about
-plants being able to actually decay with time when in a bad plant status
-the profits of fertilizing even for perfect plants
-the way fertilizer value is calculated /(because that changed from former games, where it was the type of fertilizer that mattered and also there actually is still some (to my knowledge unused) tuning left in the game for different fertilizer quality (salmon beeing set as maximum fertilizer for instance))
might be a good idea.
As always, thanks for bearing with me.
EDITED TO ADD:
On a more technical note, I also noticed that in the object tuning of the plants, the client states for aggregateplantstatus are not list like client states are normally are properly listed. Changing that in the object tuning files of all plants might also make plant aggregate status more stable and less prone to being struck.
This is how the tuning should normally look like:
Thank you 83bienchen, for looking into this! I can't wait to play my farms but am worried about this problem with reverting plants considering that gardening is so important to this new game in order to sustain your farm. Your time and effort on this is greatly appreciated! I am afraid I don't know anything about tuning files. Hoping EA will correct the errors you have found.
@83bienchen One Question: When i debug though all Evolve States non look like Dirt Piles. The only "Dirt Pile" State seems to be the PlantGrowth Planted State. Do the Evolution States at some point trigger this state as well or how do you connect Evolve with the Dirt Piles State? Like written above, in a Testsave i checked the States of 4 bugged Dirt Piles and all had either On Track or Ready to Evolve States and all 4 the PlantGrowth Planted State. EDIT: Debug setting Evolve to Withered triggers the Dying State but not the Planted State.
It is not as bad since the patch, but even on new games it seems the flowers revert to dirt piles after about a week, they grow and then when another few days pass they go to dirt, so I don't have flowers in my games now. I noticed that when my sim gives birth or when I age up an infant, I lose 3 random fruit or vegetable plants/trees. I had three children in one game and it happened every time.
I don't know if and how the different evolution and growth commodities are linked to each other, nor do I know if there is some kind of trigger. The plant aggregate states do affect plant evolution as well as growth, but that is not what you asked for.
While I noticed during testing that fertilizing plants regularly stops them from reverting to dirt piles I don't know where exactly that came from. Maybe the changes are stopping the plant from getting struck and thus reverting to planted stage, but that is merely a wild guess.
It could also be that the quick weeding, watering and spraying for bugs was the essential part of it. That's why I posted today about the plant status aggregate because they directly affect plant growth.
Now now EA, don't be stinking up our lovely lavender bath with your shopping fart. - My TS4 mods - Gallery ID: 83bienchen
Are haunted houses bad for plants? Because whenever I plant something there, they grow normally for about a week, even give some harvests, and then suddenly start to die one by one, so that the whole garden will be dead by the evening. I've had one or two plants died before on different places, but never the whole garden, and twice in a row. I don't have Eco and it was in the middle of a week, so no seasonal changes. Has anyone else experienced such a thing?
Thank you @83bienchen this is awesome and informative. Thank you for devoting the time to work on it.
I like your tutorial idea.
I think also there are some things in the game mechanic that give the wrong impression as the player is learning. Like, plants normally visibly change their state and produce harvestables once a day, at the very same hour every morning. That leads the player to believe that the plants also need care on this cycle, once a day.
As for fertilizer, applying fertilizer to a (outdoor) plant only moves the evolution meter a tiny bit, especially if you're a fairly beginning player who doesn't yet have an expert fishersim or expensive harvestables, or didn't think to try pet poop (or doesn't have Pets). Once-a-day watering, weeding, and spraying is much less effort for what appears to be almost as much benefit.
So at least from what's apparent to the player, it looks like once-a-day watering, weeding and spraying is what the plants are set up to need. Fertilizing looks like a mechanic that is available if someone wants to be a super-achiever.
So, I think I might have found something weird in the commodity for gardening evolution. The maximum_auto_satisfy_time is set to 0, which is very unusual as normaly that value is set to 1440 (meaning hours, that is 1 day).
Moreover, I noticed that in the commodity for gardening growth use_stat_value_on_init is set to false while it is set to true in the other gardening commodities.
Changing these values might positively affect the issue. I've done that an am currently playing around with it.
I also tried to interpret another bit of the programming (I say interpret because I'm not sure whether it really works that way, but if it does, it would mean that plants reverting after weeding/watering/harvesting is NOT a bug, but a sign of bad care for the plant on the side of the player before it reverted (not the weeding or watering done the moment before that plant reverts, but the time span it took the player to properly take care of the plant).
So there's a tuning called plantstatusaggregate. There are 3 values for that: neutral, good and bad.
neutral - the default status. Plants will not evolve on their own in that status, The default convergence value for evolution will be set to 100, I guess that means that there is a chance to evolve the plant in a positive way while it's in neutral status, but only be fertilizing it or by reaching the green ecofootprint (because that is giving a hit in evolution).
good - this status is triggered when the plant is in a state where all its needs a perfectly cared for (no watering, weeding or bug spaying needed). Any need for care will have the plant revert to neutral plant status. While in good plant status though, the convergence value for evolution will be set to 100, meaning that the is a chance to evolve the plant to a higher status. Unlike the neutral status, the plant will evolve a little on its own just by time passing by without you doing anything (fertilizer, I'm looking at you) as long as it does not revert to neutral status because weeds, spring bugs or lack of moisture appear.
bad - this status is triggered when the plant either reaches the worst level of moisture, weeds or infestation with bugs (there are 2 levels for infestation, weeds and dry plants each, one moderate level and a second one where the plant is heavily hit by infestation/weeds/dryness). Now if I understand correctly, this status will set the convergence value vor evolution to 0, meaning that your plant will now start devolving instead of evolving. It will loose the evolution status previously gained over time and will do so faster than it gains evololution in a good plantstate. It will not stop loosing points until you bring it back to either neutral or good status. On top of that, the bad plant state will decrease plant growth by 25 %.
That way, if you send your Sim to weed/water/spray for bugs at the end of the day while the plant already spent one or even more than a day in devolution status/bad plant status, you plant will revert back to a dirt pile (evolution value between 1 and 20) or even die (evolution value minimum of 0).
If I interpreted everything correctly, this is by no means a bug though. It is how the system works.
In the bug reports it always says that people would expect to being to harvest their (perfect) plant every single day. That expectation is - without wanting to insult anyone here - a lazy one. It cannot be met.
If you want to be able to harvest your plant everyday, you need to take perfect care of it, tending to it pretty soon after it develops a need for something and helping evolution with valuable fertilizer.
On a side note, I'm still unsure whether the bug with plants reverting to dirt piles with the change of Seasons (or without it) after travelling is also just a symptom of bad plant care. I mean there seems to be some kind of light bug going on there, but maybe only to the extend that the plant status got stuck at neutral and get's reset after travelling, only then visuably showing that the affected plant was about to devolve to planted state but couldn't because it was somehow stuck at the visual status it had before travelling.
I mean plants will also in most cases not devolve before the weed/dryness/infestation status is lifted from them by finally caring for the plant.
With bearing in mind what I wrote in an earlier post about ecofootprint heavily affecting plant evolution, it is no wonder that there are so many people have problems with their plants reverting to dirt piles. The saves I have explored - thanks for those people providing my with test saves - all have one thing in common.
The player of that save used their garden as a means of cash grab. It was always huge, often with high value and good quality plants and then left somewhere in the corner of the lot (sometimes with the support of a gardener or butler) where it was meant to produce the family income while it's basic needs being cared for once a day.
From all what I found out, the game mechanics will not allow for such an "abuse" of a large garden as a cash grab.
That use players want to make from a "perfect garden" is not allowed by game mechanics. A perfect garden need much more love than just getting plants to perfect status and then storing them somewhere while focussing on something else.
So while we can expect the team to fix
- the problem of calling that change to neutral eco footprint being triggered so often (or simply getting rid of the massive decrease in evolution by either removing it or replacing it with are merely small hit)
- the problem of plants getting stuck at a certain plant status which then suddenly resets by travelling, revealing the devolved status of the plant
- the issue that you can not effectively queue up a Sim to fertilize several plants with the same kind of fertilizer in a row (with only the first plant actually getting the fertilizer you choose) - that one is maybe most important in my opinon because it makes fertilizing a big garden such a nuisance and might be the reason for many to not fertilizing their plants
- the other minor tuning issue I already wrote about
we should probably not expect them to nuke the efforts required to maintain a perfect garden they set up. I personally really like that you have to put these continuous efforts in a perfect garden.
All in all, gardening does not seem to be as broken as the many bug reports depict. Some of those issues are the result of false expectations. Maybe an in-game gardening tutorial that explains a little about
-plants being able to actually decay with time when in a bad plant status
-the profits of fertilizing even for perfect plants
-the way fertilizer value is calculated /(because that changed from former games, where it was the type of fertilizer that mattered and also there actually is still some (to my knowledge unused) tuning left in the game for different fertilizer quality (salmon beeing set as maximum fertilizer for instance))
might be a good idea.
As always, thanks for bearing with me.
I didn't send you a save because as I said earlier, my plants no longer revert to dirt piles after I started using different planters. These planters are ones that I never used before and the bug was constant in my prior games. I don't play the sims like most people play the game.
My gardens are never cash crops. I only have a huge amount of crops when I'm trying to get the aspiration completed for the naturalist trait, and I only do that so my sims can put out fires. I plant around 12 plants and complete the aspiration up to the 4th part and then I load my cheat lot for the 4th level of the aspiration. I move my sim onto the cheat lot and instantly move her / him back to the original lot and sell all my plants. Then I only keep one plant for my sim to talk to because I hate the phone harassment and the comedy skill. Then my sim would take care of the one plant inside the house when they got up every morning.
I'm still looking forward to the new pack even though I saw in a cg's video that the dirt pile bug is still there. If it's not a bug, it would not be something that only started happening in the game as patches and dlc got added, therefore it is a bug.
It is not as bad since the patch, but even on new games it seems the flowers revert to dirt piles after about a week, they grow and then when another few days pass they go to dirt, so I don't have flowers in my games now. I noticed that when my sim gives birth or when I age up an infant, I lose 3 random fruit or vegetable plants/trees. I had three children in one game and it happened every time.
Weird, it sounds like there must be so many things that affect plants. I play with aging off, but have a large rotation. My gardeners always have their watering, bugs, and weeds under control. I may not always fertilize them, but should they be reverting to dirt piles because they aren’t fertilized? The last time I did fertilize plants, they were the two that ended up reverted back to dirt. Rather than the ones that were weren’t fertilized. Why in the past did plants not revert? Why has that been something from just the last year or two? I have played the same game ( with save as every once in awhile ) since 2014, and I never had problems with plants reverting to dirt piles, When I think about it, I think I have only had problems with dirt piles since about the time Eco lifestyle came out ( that is, in season, or inside a green house ), except one time after seasons when I built a green house after seasons came out, around plants I already had, and for some reason it would not let me plant because it said it wasn’t in season ( while in the greenhouse ), but I remember them actually fixing that problem. Now it seems like there are a host of reasons why. plants in a greenhouse are reverting. I think plants have got too complicated, I have never had a problem with plants before seasons came out at all. Maybe my playing rotationally is causing problems, but, I have played rotationally from the beginning, and have always taken sims to visit other lots fairly often and never had these problems.
@83bienchen I made a small tuning mod to check plants states. All Dirt Piles had the Evolve State "On Track" or "Ready" so far. Would that confirm your Theory?
Comments
@Paigesin5, I have just scratched the surface and while some of my mods make the issue less in the face, there still remain issues that aren't fixed by my mods. I'm currently checking a save file where it happens with the change of a Season for a sheltered plant at the time it would go in Season if it weren't shelterd, but only if you are not at the active lot during the time the Season changes. It's quite the task to track down these bugs and I don't blame EA for not being able to fix (all of) them yet.
^^ This. What is the point in claiming it is fixed when it is not fixed for existing saves. I am not starting over either and they need to find a solution to fix it in existing saves with a garden to table pack coming out.
I will go grab your mod in the meantime.
In which of his videos did you see it, @LoriTSp?
Edit: Nevermind, it started to happen once I started using fertilizer. That's not good.
Have not checked any of my saves if this issue is fixed. Just got a new PC and haven't gotten everything back how I like it (files and such)
Gallery: Kathykins
AHQ - Game help and Bugs
The Sims 4: Cottage Living Early Access - The Chicken Fair Part 03 approximately 16 minutes into the video.
It seems there are a lot of players who tend to not fertilize their plants at all. I think it possible that not fertilizing a plant for a long time might bring it into a status where it will not be able to evolve enough to grow harvestables before it reverts back. I also wanted to add that weeds, spring bugs and lack of moisture will harm a plant to a greater extend if they aren't fixed soon after those problems arise. I tend to water, spray and weed my plants as soon as I notice they're are in need of gardening care - that might also be one reason for my plants not reverting to dirt piles.
So it might not even be all bugged, but some issues might be due to the way the player uses the system.
Anyway, I'm still looking at the growth and evolution commodities themselves. There might be something wrong in there, considering how widely spread the amount of different gardening bugs is.
I wonder how the game will handle the new fertilizers in Cottage Living.
So far i tuned some files to be able to see the state of bugged dirt piles. In a Save form an User who has this Issue after the Patch, i could see that two piles had the states On Track (evolution) and Planted (Growth), two had Ready to Evolve and Planted. So all 4 bugged Piles went back to the Planted State which usually should only happen when not in season & outside.
So far i could not see anything specific in the tuning which would explain that issue, so i tried around a bit. I added a decay modifier to the state of plants when those are cared for (watered, no bugs, no weeds). With this i could let this Save run without any new dirt piles for two sim weeks. But like i said this is so random, i could just have been lucky. I do hope EA fixes this with the next Patch before the EP but i can image that even for them it will be difficult to find the issue if it is that random.
Moreover, I noticed that in the commodity for gardening growth use_stat_value_on_init is set to false while it is set to true in the other gardening commodities.
Changing these values might positively affect the issue. I've done that an am currently playing around with it.
I also tried to interpret another bit of the programming (I say interpret because I'm not sure whether it really works that way, but if it does, it would mean that plants reverting after weeding/watering/harvesting is NOT a bug, but a sign of bad care for the plant on the side of the player before it reverted (not the weeding or watering done the moment before that plant reverts, but the time span it took the player to properly take care of the plant).
So there's a tuning called plantstatusaggregate. There are 3 values for that: neutral, good and bad.
neutral - the default status. Plants will not evolve on their own in that status, The default convergence value for evolution will be set to 100, I guess that means that there is a chance to evolve the plant in a positive way while it's in neutral status, but only be fertilizing it or by reaching the green ecofootprint (because that is giving a hit in evolution).
good - this status is triggered when the plant is in a state where all its needs a perfectly cared for (no watering, weeding or bug spaying needed). Any need for care will have the plant revert to neutral plant status. While in good plant status though, the convergence value for evolution will be set to 100, meaning that the is a chance to evolve the plant to a higher status. Unlike the neutral status, the plant will evolve a little on its own just by time passing by without you doing anything (fertilizer, I'm looking at you) as long as it does not revert to neutral status because weeds, spring bugs or lack of moisture appear.
bad - this status is triggered when the plant either reaches the worst level of moisture, weeds or infestation with bugs (there are 2 levels for infestation, weeds and dry plants each, one moderate level and a second one where the plant is heavily hit by infestation/weeds/dryness). Now if I understand correctly, this status will set the convergence value vor evolution to 0, meaning that your plant will now start devolving instead of evolving. It will loose the evolution status previously gained over time and will do so faster than it gains evololution in a good plantstate. It will not stop loosing points until you bring it back to either neutral or good status. On top of that, the bad plant state will decrease plant growth by 25 %.
That way, if you send your Sim to weed/water/spray for bugs at the end of the day while the plant already spent one or even more than a day in devolution status/bad plant status, you plant will revert back to a dirt pile (evolution value between 1 and 20) or even die (evolution value minimum of 0).
If I interpreted everything correctly, this is by no means a bug though. It is how the system works.
In the bug reports it always says that people would expect to being to harvest their (perfect) plant every single day. That expectation is - without wanting to insult anyone here - a lazy one. It cannot be met.
If you want to be able to harvest your plant everyday, you need to take perfect care of it, tending to it pretty soon after it develops a need for something and helping evolution with valuable fertilizer.
On a side note, I'm still unsure whether the bug with plants reverting to dirt piles with the change of Seasons (or without it) after travelling is also just a symptom of bad plant care. I mean there seems to be some kind of light bug going on there, but maybe only to the extend that the plant status got stuck at neutral and get's reset after travelling, only then visuably showing that the affected plant was about to devolve to planted state but couldn't because it was somehow stuck at the visual status it had before travelling.
I mean plants will also in most cases not devolve before the weed/dryness/infestation status is lifted from them by finally caring for the plant.
With bearing in mind what I wrote in an earlier post about ecofootprint heavily affecting plant evolution, it is no wonder that there are so many people have problems with their plants reverting to dirt piles. The saves I have explored - thanks for those people providing my with test saves - all have one thing in common.
The player of that save used their garden as a means of cash grab. It was always huge, often with high value and good quality plants and then left somewhere in the corner of the lot (sometimes with the support of a gardener or butler) where it was meant to produce the family income while it's basic needs being cared for once a day.
From all what I found out, the game mechanics will not allow for such an "abuse" of a large garden as a cash grab.
That use players want to make from a "perfect garden" is not allowed by game mechanics. A perfect garden need much more love than just getting plants to perfect status and then storing them somewhere while focussing on something else.
So while we can expect the team to fix
- the problem of calling that change to neutral eco footprint being triggered so often (or simply getting rid of the massive decrease in evolution by either removing it or replacing it with are merely small hit)
- the problem of plants getting stuck at a certain plant status which then suddenly resets by travelling, revealing the devolved status of the plant
- the issue that you can not effectively queue up a Sim to fertilize several plants with the same kind of fertilizer in a row (with only the first plant actually getting the fertilizer you choose) - that one is maybe most important in my opinon because it makes fertilizing a big garden such a nuisance and might be the reason for many to not fertilizing their plants
- the other minor tuning issue I already wrote about
we should probably not expect them to nuke the efforts required to maintain a perfect garden they set up. I personally really like that you have to put these continuous efforts in a perfect garden.
All in all, gardening does not seem to be as broken as the many bug reports depict. Some of those issues are the result of false expectations. Maybe an in-game gardening tutorial that explains a little about
-plants being able to actually decay with time when in a bad plant status
-the profits of fertilizing even for perfect plants
-the way fertilizer value is calculated /(because that changed from former games, where it was the type of fertilizer that mattered and also there actually is still some (to my knowledge unused) tuning left in the game for different fertilizer quality (salmon beeing set as maximum fertilizer for instance))
might be a good idea.
As always, thanks for bearing with me.
EDITED TO ADD:
On a more technical note, I also noticed that in the object tuning of the plants, the client states for aggregateplantstatus are not list like client states are normally are properly listed. Changing that in the object tuning files of all plants might also make plant aggregate status more stable and less prone to being struck.
This is how the tuning should normally look like:
<L n="client_states">
<U>
<T n="key">8797<!--PlantStatusAggregate_0_Bad--></T>
</U>
<U>
<T n="key">8798<!--PlantStatusAggregate_2_Good--></T>
</U>
<U>
<T n="key">9076<!--PlantStatusAggregate_1_Neutral--></T>
</U>
</L>
<V n="default_value" t="reference">
<T n="reference">9076<!--PlantStatusAggregate_1_Neutral--></T>
</V>
</U>
<V n="default_value" t="reference">
<T n="reference">9076<!--PlantStatusAggregate_1_Neutral--></T>
</V>
</U>
While I noticed during testing that fertilizing plants regularly stops them from reverting to dirt piles I don't know where exactly that came from. Maybe the changes are stopping the plant from getting struck and thus reverting to planted stage, but that is merely a wild guess.
It could also be that the quick weeding, watering and spraying for bugs was the essential part of it. That's why I posted today about the plant status aggregate because they directly affect plant growth.
I like your tutorial idea.
I think also there are some things in the game mechanic that give the wrong impression as the player is learning. Like, plants normally visibly change their state and produce harvestables once a day, at the very same hour every morning. That leads the player to believe that the plants also need care on this cycle, once a day.
As for fertilizer, applying fertilizer to a (outdoor) plant only moves the evolution meter a tiny bit, especially if you're a fairly beginning player who doesn't yet have an expert fishersim or expensive harvestables, or didn't think to try pet poop (or doesn't have Pets). Once-a-day watering, weeding, and spraying is much less effort for what appears to be almost as much benefit.
So at least from what's apparent to the player, it looks like once-a-day watering, weeding and spraying is what the plants are set up to need. Fertilizing looks like a mechanic that is available if someone wants to be a super-achiever.
I didn't send you a save because as I said earlier, my plants no longer revert to dirt piles after I started using different planters. These planters are ones that I never used before and the bug was constant in my prior games. I don't play the sims like most people play the game.
My gardens are never cash crops. I only have a huge amount of crops when I'm trying to get the aspiration completed for the naturalist trait, and I only do that so my sims can put out fires. I plant around 12 plants and complete the aspiration up to the 4th part and then I load my cheat lot for the 4th level of the aspiration. I move my sim onto the cheat lot and instantly move her / him back to the original lot and sell all my plants. Then I only keep one plant for my sim to talk to because I hate the phone harassment and the comedy skill. Then my sim would take care of the one plant inside the house when they got up every morning.
I'm still looking forward to the new pack even though I saw in a cg's video that the dirt pile bug is still there. If it's not a bug, it would not be something that only started happening in the game as patches and dlc got added, therefore it is a bug.
Here is my cheat lot.
https://www.ea.com/en-gb/games/the-sims/the-sims-4/pc/gallery/7A01F1AFE41111EB83EA1188C4E77F67?category=all&searchtype=ea_origin_id&sortby=downloads&time=all&searchquery=DragonAge_300905&max=50&maxis=false