[OPEN] Check baby interrupts all attempts to care for baby

[DoodleSmack32]

I've noticed this has been happening since I got the "Growing Together" pack. When we first got the infant update, my sims weren't spamming to check on them so much. 

[Renasai3]

Product: The Sims 4
Platform:Xbox Series S
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Every time (100%)
What is your current game version number? 1.71
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? All except growing together.
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Play as one adult sim with one or more infants. Disable autonomy.
What happens when the bug occurs? I cannot control my sim if she has an infant. My parent sim will not do anything I tell her to without being interrupted by infant-related actions that pop up automatically. My commands immediately get pushed aside and/or canceled for my sim to go "Check Infant". She CAN'T eat. I've had to click her plate of food 9 times before she finally finished the last bite because my command kept getting canceled for her to go check on an infant that was fully fed, only upset. It's impossible to care for more than one infant as one adult sim without cheats. I'll tell my sim to go feed one of the hungry infants that she left on the floor and she'll just completely ignore my command and go check on or pick up the other infant that was sleeping in their crib. I've had to tell her to feed her infant, that was MUCH hungrier and dirtier than the sleeping infant she kept trying to check on, multiple times before I had to just give up and reset her and the infant on the floor. After doing all of that, she'll stand idle for several in-game hours while the other infant stays hungry and dirty on the floor. I repeatedly tried to bathe one of my infants and she kept canceling my command just to go get her finger bitten 49 times instead. The automatic "Check Infant" action keeps interrupting my commands when trying to care for my sim and my sim's infant. It makes caring for any of the sims take forever and is almost impossible... Either my sim will die trying to care for her infants or her infants will get taken away for starvation because of how many times I have to cancel the game's automatic pop-up actions just to do one thing. If it weren't for the "Reset" cheat, I would've gotten my infants whisked away or my adult sim would've died. The point of controlling a sim as the parent of an infant is to play as the parent of that infant, not for the game to play itself. The game should not be forceful in doing tasks for me. It's not helping, it's making it difficult to play.
What do you expect to see? When autonomy is disabled, automatic pop-up actions from the game should NEVER override the player's commands. When trying to care for my adult sim's needs or my other infant's needs, that should ALWAYS be prioritized over any automatic pop-up actions and said automatic pop-up actions should immediately cancel. My sim can't take care of her infants if she's starving, wetting herself and constantly passing out from lack of food and sleep because she keeps automatically checking on an infant without my control or a way to cancel it without resetting.
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? On console - never used.
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? Yes
Please describe the patch or change you made. 1.71

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The player's commands are more important. No one should be forced to use cheats just to control their sim.

[dreamwalkertara]

I completely agree with you and have had the exact same problem. I would go even further and say that if you have free will turned off, your sim should NEVER do anything...at all. They shouldn't take care of their kids or themselves on their own. Pee on the floor. Have your baby taken away. If I have free will turned off, I should be the only one in control. It's making the game almost unplayable because the parents of the newborn/infant won't do anything except take care of their kid (even though I have free will off). And I'm trying to tell a story in the game that the game won't let me tell. Please, please fix free will!

[Heddelviven]

I'm experiencing similar problems.

I tell my sim to put the baby to bed, but my sim takes out the baby right after to put in on the floor.

I tell my sim to breastfeed the baby, but my sim decides to put the baby in the high chair first and feed it before feeding it again.

What's also very annoying is that my sim is constantly putting the baby on the playmat and a can't cancel that action, my sim wil do it anyway.

Whats makes this even more annoying is that not all options are available while the baby is on the play mat, like learning to crawl, and my sim wil wave their arms in the air because they cannot perform the action anymore because they themselves decided it was a good idea to put the baby down on the play mat in the first place.

These pack's interactions are just so badly tuned.

I hope EA fixes this soon.

We need less autonomy. And the autonomy that sims do have, has to be purposeful.

[bluefairy286]

@Renasai3 Yes let me play the game. I wanted to change the baby's diaper before I put them to sleep but my sim insisted on putting the baby to sleep and I couldn't stop her.

[jazzpus]

I was so unlucky as to get triplets with a single mom living alone with a dog as my first experience with infants, and let me tell you, it's been a nightmare.

The random decisions to 'pick up' and/or 'put down' is the cause of about 70% of my frustrations. Don't know how many times I've yelled: JUST LEAVE THE KID BE!!!! or DON'T PUT THEM DOWN ON THE FLOOR, I SAID INTO THE CRIB!!! Sometimes these actions gets prioritized before other things I've told them to do with the same kid or antoher kid with worse needs. And it's extra annoying because you can't always do anything about it and if you do try to cancel or reset the sim it will most likely disturb the plans you had anyways or end up with kid being left on the floor. This can make something so basic as putting and infant into bed take soooo much longer

The 'check infant/toddler' interaction I would say cause about 30% of the frustrations I have. This is less disruptive if you just stay on top of it and pause regularly to cancel these. It's still annoying, but at least I understand the importance of this happening autonomously. But it should have some sort of condition. Like if there is some sort of actions in the queue that involves care for an infant/toddler, the 'check'-action should not appear, cause it probably means the player is on top of it.

I also find having another caretaker around, like a nanny will complicate matters. If you tell your own playable sim to go feed an infant they will stand around and wait because apparently the nanny is on their way to interact with the infant. Interactions with NPC should just get cancelled if the player has queued an action with a playable sim

From what I myself experience and observe from gamers on Youtube, queue management in Sims 4 is pretty bad in itself with actions or sometimes the entire queue just randomly getting cancelled and sims sometimes taking ages to decide to finally do what you told them. By now I don't think there's any hope of this getting fixed though :'( It seems to be something with they way they've made it and also multitasking is probably not making it easier.

[sfe959]

Same problem here. I tried without any mods thinking that mods might be the cause of the issue. My sims just won't do the actions I ask them to, even with Autonomy off, resulting in the infant not being taken care of, the adults having their needs too low and total chaos in general. Very disappointing, I'm hoping there will be a fix soon.

[cheekyimp]

Same, tried with mods and without, the parents and nanny constantly check on infant and then get stuck in a put down infant loop, usually after I've just told them to put infant to sleep in crib, seconds later they are putting the infant down on the floor or play mat, more often than not my infant sleeps with the dog on the floor as I can rarely get a parent to leave them in the crib where I told them to! I can some times get them to stop if I have another action queued up immediately after put infant in crib which distracts them (go here, go to bed, go shower etc), but often when I check back after seeing to another sim, they went back and put infant down on floor, again. Its not game breaking but its frustrating! 

[TwynHouse]

I have turned off autonomy but am still having major problems with this same issue and a few other things.

We have twins and if one parent goes to take care of a fussing baby, the other often gets an unfulfilled "Check Infant" or "Hold" for that baby & it will NOT go away, even after repeatedly cancelling it out. Meanwhile baby #2 needs fed or changed and the "free" parent just stands there waiting to hold the first baby, even when he's already been taken care of and put down to nap. This persists even after baby has slept and the next series of care takes place. 

The playmat creates problems for me too -- keeps popping up in the queue constantly, even if other actions are already queued up. Trying to cancel it out usually does not work, and I have to wait for the infant to be put down, then cancel everything and restart what I was trying to do in the first place. I often queue up 5 or 6 actions in order to then start the other parent handling the 2nd baby.

The routing is also a bit strange for giving the infant a bubble bath. Both times I've done this, the parent has taken the baby out of the tub, put him on the floor, then walked to the sofa and sat down before returning to do the next action in the queue.

(This could be because I have a very small but full bathroom, with tub and shower sharing space???)

Also ... after "Blowout" I have had the Sim-parent who's changing the diaper (using changing table) get stuck in the animation for a VERY long time and I cannot cancel out. I've had to use the "reset" a few times on this now, which I really don't like to do. Don't have this problem with normal diaper changes. Does a "blowout" need to be handled differently, perhaps taking the infant directly to a tub or sink to clean up?

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Playing on X-Box-One

V. 1.71+ 

Have pretty much everything except a few stuff packs & some kits.

[kaitzi]

Ditto, this needs to be fixed!

i understand the priority of the interupt - forcing parents to care for the infants but this is insane.  Parents of multiples regularly have to * and triage needs.  This constant stopping to check an infant and canceling essential things like feeding is madness