Bug, possibly linked to population management, 191 Sims.

[texeganjane]

So I was having a time freezing issue that I couldn't seem to resolve, and it only happened in save files that I had been playing for over 100 or so hours. It does, in fact, happen to every save file that I have for that long. I have 400 or so hours in the game, so this is not an exaggeration by any means.

I went through this problem at great length with luthienrising on the Sims 4 forums. Here is a link to said conversation: http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/821091/fix-or-clean-up-corrupted-or-buggy-save-files/p1

I was looking for a fix to clean up save files, and she ended up downloading my save file to try and replicate the issue in a fresh install of the game with no other contributing factors. Here is a link to my save file exactly: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5byr9izt664jpvh/SaveSlot1Hollis.zip?dl=0

Once she was able to replicate the issue, she discovered that my population in my game, even after dumping a bunch of sims in the town, including some ghost townies, was at 191, over the 180 limit. That causes a time freezing issue where my sims will move for a certain period of time even after I attempt to pause. Time seems to continue and it is quite frustrating.

Here is a quote from her exactly after being able to replicate this issue:

"Okay, so I can reproduce the problems in that save file with speeds not changing properly after starting a social event. It wasn't just pausing - the second time it happened, I was trying to switch between unpaused speeds. I tried getting rid of all the ghost households, did a Save As on that, and then tried a social event again, and the problem seemed to be gone. I still felt like the loading screens were long compared to mine (though my current savegame is way old in hours played) and like I might have overlooked some shorter lag of the kind you described, so I used the getpopulation mod and found a population of 191 - above the 180 limit, and that's after I'd evicted 5 ghost households (I deleted a townie ghost household after doing the getpopulation, but that didn't speed up the lot loading time). There aren't remotely close to that many living Sims in your population, and no dead Sims in the family tree, plus 5 dead Sims in the friends' list of the Sim I played. All that I can think is that somehow there are dead Sims piled up in the population count messing with things."

This is a very frustrating bug, as this game seems to encourage people to play with multiple generations, which should allow for you to play with one save file at great length. This creates an issue where you can either deal with the time freezing bug, or you can save your sim and start a whole new save file, which means you will lose all of the things that the sims unlocked through their careers through the multiple generations, as well as your family inventory, paintings, collectables, garden items, everything.

You do keep your skills and traits, which is nice, but it shouldn't have to come to this.

I really appreciate any feedback on how to resolve this issue and how to manage my population so that this bug does not keep happening to all of my save files after a certain period of time.

[crinrict]

Your issue is the same as this: http://answers.ea.com/t5/The-Sims-4-Bug-Reports/BUG-Time-freezing/m-p/3806607 right ?

Just confirming so I can merge the threads.

Thanks for the save game.

The game starts purging after 180 Sims but it's normal that you can have more cause it only purges homeless Sims and not Sims living somewhere.

[texeganjane]

That user makes no mention of his population in his game. If you look at the troubleshooting that luthienrising and I did, you will see that the game shows that I have 191 Sims, but there are no more than 20 or so actually living in my game. Even after purging ghost townies. It shouldn't show that I have that many Sims.

I can confirm that I have experienced the same issue as that user, and you can replicate that issue easily by starting a party in my save file, but I believe my issue may be directly related to the amount of Sims showing up in my game. I believe that my game is stockpiling dead or ghost Sims somewhere and that is what is causing this issue.

It is possible that the other user has the same problem, but that user is swearing up and down that it is happening to all of his saved games, I am confirming for you that it only happens to my saved games after I have played them for some time. I do believe our issues should remain separate, but that is just my opinion.

[crinrict]

It could be one of this, it's just a symptom with many causes issue like the map reloading one.

I do not know how population is counted to be honest. I had over 200 Sims in my game although they were all purged and lost due to errors on many occasions and I did not have that many Sims.

I'll leave it separate for now

[texeganjane]

So what should I do then? At the moment that save file is virtually unplayable. The time freeze bug happens so very frequently that it's hard to get anything done. Do you have plans to test that save file at all to see if there is a fix for this?

[crinrict]

I don't know. It's up to EA to fix this bug, there's nothing I can do about it. I'm just collecting.

I take it the new patch didn't help ?

[texeganjane]

Unfortunately the patch did not fix the problem, I could immediately reproduce the issue after updating. :[

[crinrict]

Added this next to the other now

[GamerGuySteve]

The patch notes do mention a fix to a performance issue regarding population levels:

• Fixed a performance issue that was resulting in too many unique Sims being created due to a previously created Sim being added to a "Don’t use me" list for far too long when they were needed. We have shortened the "Don't use me" list length.

While it makes no mention of changes to existing games, it sounds like the fix should prevent something like this from occurring in the future.   If the max list length has been shortened, this may also result in the number of existing unused citizens being culled.

[texeganjane]

I did notice that, and I actually recreated my game, in a way, in a new save file. I moved all of the Sims and houses that I wanted to keep. It's running a lot smoother now, and hopefully this issue won't come back!