Ambitions: What's borked

[J. M. Pescado]

I suspect it's the loss of all pre-Ambitions career history, because careers were massively changed.

[Claeric]

I am assuming this is an ambitions problem, but basements are fucked and building them is complete bullshit. I am getting constant "Ground level too high to build stairs on basement" errors or "cannot level ground" errors or "Cannot place stairs inside foundation" errors, even when ther ground is completely flat and surrounded by emptiness, or the ground is already completely level, or the stairs are NOT being built inside a freaking foundation.

[Dienvae]

"Cannot place stairs inside foundation" errors

Yes. I get this damn error when I try to build a basement next to a foundation even if I build away from it. It will only go away if I build two squares away from the foundation. I don't get it.

[Claeric]

It's not a big issue if you can actually manage to get the stairs to work, but it really makes building in a good looking way impossible. Basement stairs next to a foundation looks nice, but basement stairs in the middle of the yard looks idiotic.

Thanks to Friezes I can build a nice mausoleum-type "shed" to put the stairs in (foundation with two friezes on top, fence with a gate at the front, looks pretty nice), but even then, stairs themselves are broken and always have been- they can't "intersect other objects" even when the other objects aren't intersected or intersectable- like windows. What in the world made them think it would be a good idea for windows and stairs to somehow be incompatbile?

[jezzer]

You can bypass the window/stairs conflict with "moveobjects".  The same cheat will let you overlap the door footprint when you place them, so you can have a door right by the end space of stairs.

[cwurts]

I've always had problems with stairs.  Also if you try building them at the same spot but on a different floor than certain objects, it doesn't work.

[shadow]

So, it's an AMB problem. I thought I just didn't know what I was doing!  Which is also a possibility but at least I'm not the only one.

[Roux]

I was playing a fireman today in Twinbrook and got a call to put out a large house fire at one of the houses by the water with those one-square foundation supports. Had my sim put out fires and rescue folks, and when I got to the end I realized that there was a remaining fire *inside* the foundation.

The sim couldn't route to the fire to extinguish it (queue-dropped), and deleting it in debug mode did not register in the progress box, presumably because it was the last bit of fire on the lot. I also couldn't delete the square of foundation- maybe because of the fire, maybe because the flooring above it was covered in ash from fires that had already been extinguished.

I didn't want to get a failing score, so I just quit without saving. Pure EA bork: fire should not be permitted to spawn in or spread to unroutable areas.

[Jackathyn]

I haven't even had a chance to see most of this borkedness (trying to enjoy this game for the third time now... see if it sucks any less) because of the epic fucking lag that's come with this EP. I could play basegame and WA without much issue, but this EP killed it.

[Drakron]

What lag?

Besides longer loading time in the neighborhood  loading screen, the game seems to handle better streaming that leads to less "lag" but its still going to have streaming problems moving the camera from a location to another using the map menu (that already happened before).

Longer loading times is not lag and they will always go up as EP and SP get released are there are more files and date for it to search and load, this is hardly new as it also happened in TS1 and TS2, expect it was worst in TS2 due to "leaving lot-loading" that make playing outside the home lot a "staring at the loading screen for 10 minutes" event and TS1 was not that much better.

[Claeric]

Most people seem to be experiencing significantly improved performance. Since they said they could play Base and WA "Without much issue", I think it's safe to assume their graphics card and computer aren't the best, and now that the requirements bumped up a bit, they're starting to feel it.

[Jackathyn]

My specs could be better so that's most likely it. I guess I'd half-hoped it was EP-related or some factor of poor optimization that I could fix easier than upgrading my computer. Bah. Guess I shouldn't play with graphics and general eye-candy settings all the way up anymore.

[IgnorantBliss]

I seem to be having a problem with purchasing real estate. From what I've read, I understand that you should be able to buy most of the non-residential lots as long as you have enough money. My sim who has 50,000 simoleans of cash still doesn't get the purchase option with most of them. The option is there only for some fishing spots and a beach. How expensive exactly are the junk yards and laundromat, are they really over 50,000?

[Claeric]

Use the phone to Check Real Estate. You can view a list of them and sort by price. Even the smallest most undecorated lot is usually around 20k.

[IgnorantBliss]

OK, I'll have to give that a try. Won't have access to my game for a couple of days but will try as soon as possible, I want to start building an empire that owns most of the town.

[Claeric]

Real Estate is a great money-sink, as far as I can tell it isn't broken in any way, either. Which is pretty impressive for EA considering it allows you to, without cheating, edit community lots using your sim's own money, and it has a goal system for upgrading the lot to earn more from it weekly.

[J. M. Pescado]

Real estate doesn't really function as a money SINK because if you invest in it, you get more money OUT of it, which eventually just compounds the problem. Money sinks are where there's some completely unprofitable, largely uneconomical tchotchky that you just have to have, like 110K cars. There's little you can get out of one of those that you can't get at a more reasonable cost, but they are COOL. The fact that they *ARE* actually better justifies buying them at all, but the ludicrous price tag means that they're not really an economical way to spend that money. In contrast with other things, which have such blatant insuperiority that you should NEVER buy them, even at their lower cost, and should instead simply make do with nothing if the real thing isn't affordable, because you should ACCEPT NO KEWIAN-BASED SUBSTITUTES.

[Claeric]

Well, when you invest in a lot, you don't really get that much money from it. plus the intent is for you to build it up. Depending on how you play it could be an enormous money sink, because your goal could be to massively beautify the whole town single-handedly spending your own money, or something.

Though yeah, for the most part, money doesnt go anywhere. Which is why mods to make bills much more expensive are pretty much necessary to keep you playing, otherwise you just start to drown in money with nothing to spend it on and no reason to keep playing.

[JamesNine]

They aren't money sinks. You gradually accumulate a profit from them over time. It's doubtful any property purchase will ever pay itself off but I believe you can sell them at the purchasing price. In the end, you still gain any profits they accumulated (in the thousands). That being said, there are much better ways to spend money. I think you could use property as a sort of savings account if you wanted (with large investments).

[J. M. Pescado]

Though yeah, for the most part, money doesnt go anywhere. Which is why mods to make bills much more expensive are pretty much necessary to keep you playing, otherwise you just start to drown in money with nothing to spend it on and no reason to keep playing.

Doesn't really help. If bills become crippling, you simply take up bill-evasive gameplay. For instance, the empty lot gathers no bills. Additionally, this replaces it with "grind" gameplay in which many simdays are basically deadspace as you grind for more money to do anything with, without actually truly increasing the challenge level, as each day is no more difficult than before, just more repetitive. Plus if you can't afford to upgrade in the first place, you can't actually get increased bills. Ultimately, sims gameplay must move away from money. In real life, extra money can be spent on worthy money-sink goals like World Domination, but none of these things exist in the Sims.

[Roobs]

I've also been experiencing the basement stair placement problem. One house wouldn't let me place the stairs at all, despite absolutely nothing being around that section of the house (I took out a massive chunk of foundation). The game only lets me place the stairs in the middle of the lawn, away from the house.

[J. M. Pescado]

Basement stairplacement can be a bit tricky: First, NONFLAT lots severely screw up, well, everything. Second, if you're trying to build a basement on a house with an existing foundation, hollow out the foundation and make the first level of "basement" in oldschool TS2 style.

[Klinn]

The sim couldn't route to the fire to extinguish it (queue-dropped), and deleting it in debug mode did not register in the progress box, presumably because it was the last bit of fire on the lot. <snip> Pure EA bork: fire should not be permitted to spawn in or spread to unroutable areas.

I've seen a similar issue with Ghost Hunting. While attempting to capture a ghost, it repositioned itself on the second floor porch of a house. The problem was there was no door leading out onto the porch, so the ghost hunter sim did its route failure foot stamp.
 
Well, if the game's going to cheat, so will I. Teleported outside to capture it.

[Baarogue]

Anyone else that's experiencing the EAxian quirk where the job tracker for Firefighters or Ghostbus- er, Ghost HUNTERS aren't showing up (I don't know if other jobs make use of the tracker), I figured out today that you can get it to show by pressing the "Show/Hide Job Tracker" button in the lower-left corner of your sim's Career tab. You may have to press it twice. Once to turn it "off", since the game thinks it's on, and the second time to really turn it on.

[ciane]

I think Ambitions broke my sims career histories! ...

Since I cannot test any pre-Ambition saved games that were built without those hacks, I am wondering if someone who has any pre-Ambition saved towns, who also has Ambitions installed, who has sims with career histories and who built towns without those hacks can check and see if their sims still have their career histories or are they gone also? ...

I wonder if this is happening with all pre-Ambition saved towns or is it only happening with pre saved towns that used core mods.

... And if it is not mod related but Ambitions related, then perhaps EA can be made aware and will fix it in a patch.

I don't have Ambitions (or WA or HELS either, for that matter), but the latest patch broke the career histories. This has been mentioned on the EA site for the last week, so EA should be aware of it. Whether they will fix it in a patch is another matter.

As I play with AM installed, I can't personally test your theory. I can say that others on the EA forum claimed they played with a straight EA game. So, it looks as if EA broke it all on their own.

On that same note, my jack of all trades not only lost her career history; but after making it to level 5 in yet another job, her lifetime want icon does not reflect 1 of 4 completed even though this latest job is now registering in her career history.