Most NPC and Stray Pets Sick (🙀)

[suzushka]

Nearly every stray dog and cat in my game is sick. In addition, I play several parallel households that I switch between every few weeks, and each time I transition, all pets in the newly reactivated house are sick. By contrast, pets in the currently played household rarely become sick over the course of time that they’re the primary/actively played HH (excluding the initial point of transition referenced above).

Is this a bug? Are other people seeing this? I didn’t see an entry for this in the consolidated bug list. I’m happy to create an entry if its warranted, but wanted to solicit feedback before compiling all the requisite information since my search terms may have been a mismatch or this could be intentional on the part of game developers.This is been happening for a while but I don’t think it was always this bad. 

Fwiw: I think it’s fine to have strays and NPC pets occasionally get sick but the frequency of occurrence seems to be set too high...now its more of a blanket impediment rather than a variable challenge (the former => less fun; the latter => more fun). I know that you can feed wellness treats to strays in order to heal them and I do this occasionally but I can’t really keep up with the rate of sickness without assigning this maintenance as a higher personal gameplay priority with associated time investment. 

(Hopefully I communicated this clearly, but happy to clarify any ambiguity - just lmk!)

[RandomBuzziness]

I love to play in Brindleton Bay so I also see this in every one of my game saves. Seeing sick, sad, or dirty stray animals is my least favorite part of Sims 4, but I'm not sure if it qualifies as a bug or is maybe just a poor design. I could be wrong about this, but it seems like this is just the normal way the game spawns NPCs.

When stray cats and dogs are spawned they are given random motives and/or sick/dirty buffs. Sometimes their motives are full and sometimes they are low. It's the same for regular NPC/Townie Sims as well. I think game intentionally spawns NPCs in this way to motivate them to interact with various things in the local area. The difference is when a Townie spawns hungry they can do something like eat at a food booth, or if they spawn with a full bladder they can use a public restroom. For the poor stray cats and dogs that spawn with low motives there are no public litter boxes or food bowls. Cats and dogs in this game are designed to cry for attention from their owners when they are sick or their needs are low, but for the strays with no owners all they can do is cry for a while and then exit the neighborhood.

It seems like the odds for at least one negative motive or buff being randomly generated at spawning is pretty high and it only takes one to make a stray animal look miserable (and me too as a player!). I lost three pets irl last year and the last thing I want to play is a game with sad, sick, or hungry animals, especially since there are very few things I can do to help them. I use a mod that prevents all this. Strays in my game will spawn with their needs full. They can still get hungry or dirty after a certain amount of time, but at least they do not start off that way. The only place they spawn as being sick is at a Vet clinic where at least there is a means for them to be cured. Not everyone is willing to use mods though, and console players don't even have the option, so I am Me Too with this post in hoping the devs will do something to change it.

[suzushka]

@RandomBuzziness Thx so much for your input! (also, the last paragraph is a personal response specifically for you)

I think Im experiencing smthg different - assuming I didn’t read so fast that it impaired my comprehension (has been known to happen lol) - Ive included more specific descriptions below. Could you confirm?? (As an aside, added a definition of NPC as im using it for any newbies and pawbies.)

In my game, a lot of pets that are non-played characters (NPC) at a given time (ie, are not a member of the household I’ve been actively playing) seems to contract illnesses super fast relative to the current played-character pets. This includes not only the poor strays, but even the pets of my other households which are progressing in parallel but which havent been played for a season or two. By that, I mean they all seem to be blue and/or sporting red feet/noses and/or [fill in any other visible cues for illness]. And they are encountered everywhere in my game, not just at vet clinics, but in all spaces...public or residential as well as all the navigable in-betweeny off-the-buildable-grid spaces (eg, sidewalks) that are encountered during all gameplay. Also includes my own residential lots..when I switch to a different household to play for awhile, upon first loading that household following a duration where they were allowed to progress without my active intervention, all the pets in the home are all sick and the first action with them has become a trip to the vet. Often thats the only occurrence of a clinical illness they exhibit for the remainder of the duration they spend as my active HH. I see this not only in Brindleton, but in any neighborhood so long as I am visiting a lot that’s designated as pet friendly .

re: the general spirit of your response <= im right there with you. With two big dogs and a too-smart, i’m-a-big-girl cat, I spend enough time channeling alpha dog psychology that i sometimes wonder if ive gone feral. Theres so much genuine good and joie de vivre in them tho..honestly, i wouldnt want life to be any other way. 😸

[RandomBuzziness]

@suzushka I think the issue with owned-pets that are temporarily NPC's (because of rotational play) is similar to what is going on with stray cats and dogs. The chance of them spawning with a sickness buff and/or low motives is very high regardless of location. It may be that the game mechanics were set up this way intentionally to create sick pets to support Vet Clinic game-play. From what I am hearing this is a very common problem so at least you can know that it is not just you.

The mod I use prevents all of this so if you are willing & able to use mods you might want to check out LittleMsSam's "No Sick, Dirty, Sad and Hungry Cats & Dogs (NPCs)" mod. I can't provide a link here but you should be able to easily find it through an Internet search. When using this mod my household pets will still occasionally get dirty or sick through normal game-play and their needs will still decay normally (which is realistic anyway), but I don't see sick NPC animals whenever I visit Brindleton Bay or any other pet-friendly lot (not counting Vet clinics of course, I still see sick pets/ patients there). As not everyone is willing to use mods and console players do not even have the option, I hope the developers will consider making changes so that the base game + Cats and Dogs EP will work in a way similar to this mod.

P.S. Please give your pets hugs for me  =^-^=