October 2019
October 2019 - last edited October 2019
TBF, the fill empty lots has never worked. The option has always been there, but no matter how many sims the game generates, they have always been "not in world". Just like unplayed families never procreate and die out as a result. I've gotten used to occasionally snatching sims from the exchange and throwing them into the empty houses to fill them up, or just using some of the "not in world" sims for the same purpose. Have to do stuff like this anyway to make kids for my kids to play with and fall in love with and such. The living world part of the game just don't work, especially compared to how well it worked in sims 3.
I make new saves every time one of my sims age up, get promoted, change jobs, I remodel the house, or whatever. And then eventually I delete the oldest saves so I only keep the last four. After 5 years I've just found the save system to be so unreliable that sticking to one save is a really, really bad idea. Oh, and I have a separate set of saves for each and every family I play.
November 2019
Just posting to confirm that I'm also having this issue and it isn't fixed yet. I'm on WIndows 10, and have never downloaded any custom content. :/
November 2019
This actually works for me now! I don't know whether a patch fixed it or what, but I am no longer having this issue. I didn't change anything myself.
November 2019
Good Luck
Crin
I don't work or have any association with EA. I give advice to the best of my knowledge and cannot be held responsible for any damage done to your computer/game.
Please only contact me via PM when asked to do so.
Important Threads
February 2020
Still doesn't work for me. New saves don't help. I've got the option checked, and I've got no mods. I moved my sim into Newcrest (and methodically put residential houses all around, which took forever), and the entire neighborhood is just dead. I hate it.
I like to play with entirely different worlds, so I don't want to bother with manually creating and populating sims every time I want to start fresh. This is extremely frustrating and generally kills any interest I have in playing the games, since I just keep meeting all of the same sims every time.
February 2020
Good Luck
Crin
I don't work or have any association with EA. I give advice to the best of my knowledge and cannot be held responsible for any damage done to your computer/game.
Please only contact me via PM when asked to do so.
Important Threads
April 2020 - last edited April 2020
I just noticed this happening with me, now that my original sim is ready to die and his kids have kids.... no one is populating the empty houses. I did move in some folks from the Not In World option, but most of them are just about depleted.
Here is the save game. I suck at building homes, BTW. Please don't judge me on that house They're located in Sulani.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nPReu-EoVeMK88ZqRPhmDDbJVAhtOcrD
April 2020
Good Luck
Crin
I don't work or have any association with EA. I give advice to the best of my knowledge and cannot be held responsible for any damage done to your computer/game.
Please only contact me via PM when asked to do so.
Important Threads
April 2020