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Patches are making the game less stable, not better
Cristiano
Posts: 138 Member
I am really frustrated. I actually love the Sims 4, but after the past two patches (today's and the previous demon baby fix), the game has become unstable for me. It has crashed for the first time, and there is now a noticeable stutter about every 30 seconds to 1 minute with the sim's animation. The screen just freezes for a moment. For example, if the sim is walking or dancing, it just stutters for a second. It didn't do this prior to the demon baby patch. The new patch did not resolve it. Now, with the latest patch, when I exit the game, it becomes unresponsive and I have to kill the task in task manager. Prior to the patches, the game ran flawlessly. Not a single crash, no stuttering, no unresponsiveness.
The Sims 3 became a mess with each patch and expansion (I never could play Into The Future for more than a few minutes, on a brand new gaming system because of all the crashes),and now the Sims 4 is following the same path.
FYI, my specs:
Intel Core i7
Windows 8.1
Nvidia 770M 2 gb
16 gb ram
The Sims 3 became a mess with each patch and expansion (I never could play Into The Future for more than a few minutes, on a brand new gaming system because of all the crashes),and now the Sims 4 is following the same path.
FYI, my specs:
Intel Core i7
Windows 8.1
Nvidia 770M 2 gb
16 gb ram
1
Comments
Number: 0
Name (driver): Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600
Name (database): 4th Gen Intel(R) Core processor graphics - Mobile Haswell GT2 [Found: 1, Supported: 1]
Vendor: Intel
Chipset: Vendor: 8086, Device: 0416, Board: 10e81462, Chipset: 0006
Driver: nvumdshim.dll, Version: 9.18.13.4052, GUID: D7B78E66-4756-11CF-0678-E530BBC2C435
Driver version: 4052
Monitor: \\.\DISPLAY1
Texture memory: 2977MB
Vertex program: 3.0
Pixel program: 3.0
Hardware TnL: 1
Opt. features: +sab +a8l8 +rgba16f +r32f +bc4 +bc5 -rawz +intz
However, nothing changed between the patches, and I don't think it is actually using that card, as it is running with everything maxed, and the only issue is that weird freeze that was introduced with the demon baby patches (others have reported it in different threads).
I have the game on my desktop that I can play when I get home, but now I'm afraid to turn it on for fear that I won't be able to play my game do to an automatic start-up of this update.
I have tried going offline, it made no difference - and again, this only started with the demon baby patch. Before that, the game was flawless for me.
And also watch out when visiting lots with your kid, when there's a fire sim will not able go to home for like 24 hours or something like that, till the fire ends. Sim was just looking for some frogs and stuff in the other hood she doesn't go inside lot, who would go strait into a fire? She barely survived :D I'm curious if it's a glitch or not.
First few days of getting the Sims 4, everything ran so flawlessly it was amazing. Now it feels like it's infested with bugs and glitches.
~ Wallin's World of Sims ~
That explains why I can't get into my game to play.
Fix it. Now.
I hope it's not too late to get a refund...I'm done.
I'm going back to WoW
It then shuts down and exits out of the game.
Didn't have any problems whatsoever before this 2nd patch. UGH! Very annoyed and frustrated at this point... and not really sure what to do... :\
Edit: I guess I spoke too soon... I went ahead and deleted the cache & tray folders then restarted my computer... seems to be working fine now.
The only problem I'm really experiencing now is that the sims themselves will freeze for up to 25 minutes (sim time). The clock will then reset back to the time where the sims had froze and they will continue where they had left off. For example: At 2:40 pm Tiffany King begins making dinner. While she is prepping the food the game freezes at 2:45 pm. The clock keeps ticking although nothing is happening until say around 3:00 pm. Tiffany will then resume cooking and the clock turns back to 2:45 when it had first froze. I hope I explained this well enough... This happens to me about every half hour (real time).
Does anyone else experience this?
Game stutters for extended periods:
My observations seem to indicate that the source of the problem was the "Origin" DRM service. I went into settings and turned off the online check. For a time this seem to stabilize the game back to it's fluidity I have been accustomed to. As long as the Gallery was not active the game ran smooth. However other odd behavior ensued.
Crash to desktop:
After todays patch the game ran for about 12 minutes then crashed to desktop. It occurred during a long stuttering pause, then the game dropped out. After un-checking the online option as indicated above, the game did not crash anymore.
An NPC family disappeared:
The family did not expire from old age. (There was a young couple and one child.) about 1 week of game time passed after I turned off the online mode. several hours in real time. Afterwards I saved and closed to refresh and too look upon the towns people as they progressed. In the edit household selection screen, I noticed the family was missing. Yet the family name and funds remained. when I tried to move them the window stated that there was no family. However, when I tried to move another family into the house it asked if I wanted to evict or move in with the ghost family that didn't exist. In the end I simply deleted the broken NPC household and plunked a new one in their place.
So the stuttering problem seems to be with the DRM connection. If you turn off the online check the game runs smooth again.
The patch itself caused a glitch that made an NPC household disappear (the avatars were gone) yet the funds and the household remained active on the map. The household remained, but the characters within were gone.
A gamers opinion:
This is yet another reason why I don't have other DRM dependent games. Only the Sims. I usually buy all my games from Steam. over 85 titles. I have only "ONE" EA / Origin game. Like everyone else I am forced to wait for a patch for a so called "Released game" When many of the Steam titles I have are early access and far more stable than this yet again EA / DRM fiasco.
I vowed never to buy an EA game. Assumption and hope that times were better made me look at the Sims 4. That error shall not be repeated in the future with any of their other titles, current or future.
You would think that Maxis made enough money in the past with their previous titles to drop EA as their publisher and seek an alternate option or remain independent. I can only surmise that Maxis has a long term contract with EA that prevents them from doing so.
Truly a shame that single player games like this require an online connection that simply serves to adversely impact the playability of the games they run on.
There are certain things one can count on. EA / origin messing up the intended vision of the development team is not only expected, it is consistent.
I will try the Sims 4 again in the future. But I am not optimistic in it's successful delivery.
For me, it seemed to be the 9/5 patch although I didn't notice a change until 9/8.
The first time I opened my game, I had it open for 68 hrs without a crash. Since then, I have had dozens of crashes. I can't go more than 1.5 hrs without a crash, and sometimes it's only a couple of minutes.
> Also the game has started unsaving stuff, so when I restart my computer, it'll reroll my save back to a previous one, even though the saved file is inside the Sims 4 folder. I don't know what's going on...
>
for the unsaving problems you should check the forum it happened to few people or more including me . There is a way to get back you save if you lost it. Check "saved game gone?! :(" I cannot yet put links in my comments :)
I was wondering if the online stuff had anything to do with it, so I disabled some but not everything since I was still trying to upload. I will have to give that a try and see if that fixed my stuttering issue as well.
~ Wallin's World of Sims ~