[NEEDS INPUT] Rotational play causes Sims to miss work [ Edited ]

[YUKIAKITA]

As an fyi, this issue is STILL occurring. It's definitely irritating, especially if I'm setting up another sim before they join my primary household, and as I'm switching a lot to do this, they're always late to work/school. 

Edit: Also, in case it matters, I play on the ps4.

Happy 2020 y'all. 

[affewit]

My partner and I bought the game last month and were super excited to build up neighborhoods — I had a few expansions picked out for her birthday, given the fun we’ve had with it. No extras or mods, just core game.

Turns out neither of us can play more than one shared household, because switching between houses ruins the careers/school/etc we took the time to build up. She’s quit after three weeks of trying to follow the intricate dance of workarounds people have been mapping in this thread, and I’m probably gonna follow in her footsteps. Certainly not spending the money on expansions now.

Looks like this is a pretty long term issue. Is it actively being worked on, or should I put the game aside and check back in a year or two once it’s moved up the priority list? (Not trying to be rude about it — totally understand teams are stretched thin and have to prioritize — just trying to decide whether I should gift the game to a cousin or hold on to it for oncoming fix.)

[DizzyDee-K]

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@affewit wrote:

My partner and I bought the game last month and were super excited to build up neighborhoods — I had a few expansions picked out for her birthday, given the fun we’ve had with it. No extras or mods, just core game.

Turns out neither of us can play more than one shared household, because switching between houses ruins the careers/school/etc we took the time to build up. She’s quit after three weeks of trying to follow the intricate dance of workarounds people have been mapping in this thread, and I’m probably gonna follow in her footsteps. Certainly not spending the money on expansions now.

Looks like this is a pretty long term issue. Is it actively being worked on, or should I put the game aside and check back in a year or two once it’s moved up the priority list? (Not trying to be rude about it — totally understand teams are stretched thin and have to prioritize — just trying to decide whether I should gift the game to a cousin or hold on to it for oncoming fix.)

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Do I understand this correctly? When you switch between households their career/school performance is negatively effected? 

I've been playing rotationally for years (PC/Mac) without any effect on career/school performance. Performance should be static when you aren't playing a household. Neither improving nor decaying. 

How rapidly do you switch between households? 

[affewit]

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@DizzyDee-K wrote: 

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Do I understand this correctly? When you switch between households their career/school performance is negatively effected? 

I've been playing rotationally for years (PC/Mac) without any effect on career/school performance. Performance should be static when you aren't playing a household. Neither improving nor decaying. 

How rapidly do you switch between households? 

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Thanks so much for the hit back!

Correct — switching between households causes a hit on Sims’ performance. Depending on how long it’s been, work performance will go down from its highest point to either midway or red. 

I swap at least once a RL day, often more. Any household not active at the point will, upon becoming active, show employed Sims as having noticeable work performance hits. (I can’t comment explicitly on kids; she’s the only one that has them, but she says grades take the same hit.)

I see others in the thread have done experiments to problem solve, so I’ll be happy to report a clearer set of results once I’ve gotten a chance to play after work.

I’ll also note that she has played Sims 2 and 3 the same way for years and never had performance affected—we expected it to remain stable when not active, as it has in previous games. Our game’s unmodded, so I can pretty safely say it’s something related to 4’s core mechanics (or a patch issue.)

[DizzyDee-K]

@affewit 

The problem might be how frequently you're switching between households. 

Normally I play each household for a Sim week and switch around 2am after everyone has gone to bed. I picked 2am because if you have Seasons, Holidays run from 6am to 2am. Prior to that I waited for my Sims to go to bed. (Just seemed the polite things to do. ;P)

When you switch, do you leave your Sims at work or school? 

I'm looking into something else where I'm switching back and forth in a Sim Day, I guess I'll add some jobs to the mix and see what happens. 

carls-sims-4-guide (google it) has lots of useful info including cheats for PC/Xbox/PS4. 

[ArukiDaisuki]

It’s still occurring as of 03/18/2020 :/

[AdamComer01]

First post is April 2015, it is now May 2020. How has this still not been fixed. 

Playing the game on Xbox and the bug is still there. I have been playing the game and gotten into my third generation of Sims, I finally decide I want to have more than one child in my game, so have a boy and a girl. The boy grew up and inherited the original family home whilst the girl got a boyfriend and I decided to move them out into their own house still intending to play both families. I generally set out to get one household up out of bed, sort out all their needs and get them happy before setting off to work, and when they are off to work I'd switch to the other household (this means I am switching households at least once every SIM DAY). Only to find that the other household is not at work where they should be, have the "Late for Work" message and gets a huge performance loss for being late. Not only this, but they are not earning for those missed hours, so my house bills are getting to expensive to cover because my Sims aren't working their full shifts any more. Whilst switched, I can also see my other household (who I saw head to work that morning) are jogging around the area when they should be working, lo-and-behold when I switch back to them I find them at home MISSING WORK. 

The only way I can see around this is to switch households at night when none are working but even then it means that the unplayed household didn't go to work that day and we are still suffering the income loss.

This is really a gamebreaking bug and means that essentially you either have to have huge disposable savings (which kinda defeats the point in working) or be restricted to only playing one lot. 

[BiffaBaker]

This is really annoying.  I am someone who plays generations of sims in one save file.

- work and school is still an issue.  You go to another household, come back and children and adults have returned to low/average performance

- relationships with friends have decreased.  
- internal household relationships have decreased

- if someone in the household is pregnant, they will give birth without you there

- your sims suddenly make enemies whilst you’re gone 

Basically your sims should freeze like they did in the previous games until you come back.  That is unless one of your other households interacts with them.  I don’t get why the old way it worked isn’t still working?  

[Citysim9997]

There used to be a workaround, instead of going directly to your household, you go to another lot and click the visit button pick one sim and the others will be doing what they are suppose to be going. Sadly this workaround has now gone.

Is there another workaround?

[Mary-Alice7]

I start playing a couple of months ago and just noticed this issue.

I created a new household with 1 man to potentially be the future husband of my young adult daughter sim but my performance on all my sims have gotten to worse because when I'm at the single's household and playing, the members of first household aren't going to work or school and probably not even satisfying their needs as I'll always find them at "fine" status and need a lot of hours to sleep to gain energy.

This is really annoying and ultimately it results in playing with only 1 household, which is disappointing.