More Awesome Than You!

I have a sim family that cannot successfully visit China any more. One couple did several times, and one of them has a level 3 visa with China, but when I tried to go again, after loading Shang Simla the camera just zooms down to the base camp. Time passes and people walk around, but there are no sim thumbnails on the left side, and they do not show up. View my sim doesn't move the camera at all. I entered 'edit town' to see if I could then return to the active family, but there was no option to do so. It seemed to treat it like a town before I had moved in a playable family.

I tried again with a few different individual sims to see if the game didn't like one of them going, but this happens for everyone in the family.
I then tried a different destination (France), and it worked fine.

I am confused by this. I thought maybe I should buy a vacation house and see if it would let me go there instead of the base camp (maybe just the camp is borked??) but apparently you have to already be on vacation in that location before the buy vacation house option shows up under the phone menu.
The family didn't purchase a home when their visa level hit 3 because they didn't have enough cash for one.

I am having the same problem except with all the vacation spots! My guy has lots of kids there has that messed anyone up?

BFBVFS?

This. Your game a splode.

I had the same problem every time a household went to leave Egypt, even after reverting to a pre-vacation save and sending them there at a later time. The only fix was to pack up the family and move them to a new save.

I had exactly the same issue. I was wondering if it was the cross-hood quests that were doing it but as someone pointed out, many people do those quests without any real issue. The only other things I can think may be a contributing factor is the fact I had Sims leave objects in the neighborhood in both cases right before I had both issues-in one case I was in the middle of making wine, in the other case I'd left a laptop my sim was in the middle of using and I HAD ignored the rule about not marrying foreign Sims.

I'm wondering if either factor caused the issue?

However it may just be random glitches, and may not be anything to do with either factor.

Do not marry foreign Sims. It's a simple rule and if you break it you will break your game. Any kids you have will be borked anyway, so its just not safe. Go to a save before the marriage and try again.

I'm aware of that. However, I really had no issues with my game until that point.

I'm also interested to know if everyone else who had the same error had made the same mistake, it would suggest that caused the error. If they didn't, the two things are likely not related.

I thought it was OK to marry foreign sims and/or produce babbies with them, as long as you take them all back with you to the home world. Maybe someone else can weigh in, but this is what I recall Pescado saying.

I also had sims disappear while trying to return home from France. AFAIK, I did not leave anything in the middle of completion and one of my sims had her laptop in her inventory. It WAS a family of 3 generations of about 12 sims as I recall, with a big-assed house and two basement levels. I suspect some borkage related to those issues instead of blaming in on particular objects, but it seems to be something that happens to others with regularity since there have been long threads posted about it on the EA BBS.

Not a single marriage to a foreign sim has taken place in my game, ever.

My main family has invited several foreign sims to stay in the home land, then the marriages have taken place while the sims are visiting. I haven't had any problems I've noticed. The kids are grown now and all is well.

I think this is some esoteric form of long-term corruption that sets in, although its cause is unknown and this is purely speculative.

I've had a sim get knocked up by a foreigner of each vacation spot; the only trouble that happened was when I stupidly did this midway through the vacation. As soon as the game recognized she was pregnant, everything slowed and not even falconpunching her helped, so I reverted to an earlier save.

I'll keep that in mind. If they become corrupt, perhaps the data will be useful.

Like Witch, I've invited foreigners to visit and have them move in and marry that way. I, too, have not had any problems doing it this way.