"Water Plant" action missing from menu on home lot

[hooverlm]

Product: The Sims 4
Platform:PC
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Often (50% - 99%)
What is your current game version number? 1.73.57.1030
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? Snowy Escape, Eco Lifestyle, Island Living, Seasons, Cats & Dogs, City Living, Get Together, Get To Work; Spa Day, Outdoor Retreat; Nifty Knitting, Tiny Living, Movie Hangout
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Plant a harvestable at home lot, click on it - pie menu has option to fertilize, or talk to plant but not water.
What happens when the bug occurs? When planting at my home lot my sim is unable to water her plants. This first occurred in Sulani after a period of time playing with established plants, now happening in Windenburg after having moved my sim and it is happening with freshly planted plants. My sim is level 8 gardening. For the sake of experimentation I added a neighbor to my household. With that sim selected (no gardening skill) the water plant menu item exists but is greyed out. However, using the "set gardening state" function to change the moisture level to "arid" does not allow the sim to water it (water plants stays grey), but it does add the option to hire a professional gardener.
What do you expect to see? plant a harvestable, one pie menu option when clicking on it should be "water plant" or "water all"
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Not now. I've removed them.
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? No

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While I did just update to the latest patch, the problem predates the patch. This is in addition to the issue where plants on public lots were not able to be watered, but is new behavior happening on home lot.
Exiting the game (either to the menu or fully) does not change the state.
I just tried loading my oldest available recovery file and that DID allow a new plant to be planted and watered. Loading the more recent recovery files does NOT fix it. Oddly the older file did not go as far back as pre-household move, and this had already been a problem when my sim moved.
Barring any other solutions I will reload from the older save and attempt to play from there. I will report back if it starts happening again.

[crinrict]

@hooverlm Does it appear if you go to another lot and back ? Do the plants die after a while ?

[hooverlm]

The issue persists when traveling to different lots and back. I was going to test if traveling made a difference on the ones that were working but just now opening the recovered save where it had been "fixed" the problem has already reappeared. It's only progressed a few sim hours since the recovery. I moved her to a new house (selling old furniture, new house bought with game default furniture, and planted a carrot that was able to be watered. I then planted a rose outside, saw the water menu option but left it unwatered and traveled to the bluffs. On returning home the water option is available on the rose, but is missing from the carrot. After watering the rose the menu item no longer exists. Since it was 3 days before the end of fall, I planted a snowdrop and a winter rose to test if they would live, but there has been snow on them pretty much the whole time and I don't know if that counts as watering?
I just also built a greenhouse 6 days in to winter to test the indoor plants. Having saved and come back the next day did not change the inability to water the outdoor plants. So far, the square box planter plants do have the water menu item still (but grey from being freshly watered) after having traveled to my work lot (scientist) and back, but the eco lifestyle vertical planter and the round planter plants both have the option missing. I don't think I checked the other planters immediately after the initial watering, so I planted something new in a round planter to check if the travel mattered, and was unable to water it even the first time after initial planting.
I have not played with the game in bugged state long enough to let the plants die if they were going to, even in my prior save file. I used the testing cheats menu to "water" them so I didn't lose them before I decided I needed to look into reporting the problem

[crinrict]

@hooverlm Merging your post with the current bug report then.

Just needed to know which one :D

[hooverlm]

@crinrict I appreciate that these are very similar, and maybe they have the cause, but I do want to stress that it's not that the thing is greyed out telling me the plants don't need water. The menu option to water them is completely missing.

[crinrict]

@hooverlm There's also this: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/OPEN-Gardening-Plants-don-t-need-water-or-weeding-in-games/td-... ? Is that more up your alley ?

(there's too many nuances of this)

[hooverlm]

@crinrict Maybe? I'm not sure it's been long enough for them to have gotten dry yet.
Wouldn't it be nice if stuff just always worked the way it's supposed to? *sigh*

[crinrict]

@hooverlm Ok. moving your post over to the other thread then. That has several symptoms I think. It's a bit of a long thread

Also send your send to EA as asked here: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/OPEN-Gardening-Plants-don-t-need-water-or-weeding-in-games/m-p...

I'm not sure they still need saves for this particular gardening issue but as said, there are many and they've asked for saves on other threads.

[hooverlm]

@crinrict This issue seems to have fixed itself in my game. My plants now get weeds and require watering again.

[crinrict]

@hooverlm That's good to hear :D