Late Night bugs & annoyances

[violetlass]

Everything seems to be working ok for me, I figured out the skin tone issue, but the only thing that BUGS me is how long it takes for my sim to leave their apartment. I give her a place to go (different each time) and it takes her almost a half to an hour sim time to leave her apartment. Her queue will clear up to when she is told to go and she just stands there stupified. Some times I have to tell her to go to the groundfloor and it still takes that long, like she is afraid to leave the apartment.

[shadow]

I haven't encountered any bugs yet but I play a different type game than most simmers - more family oriented. I found one thing that really annoys me - kids can't play the keyboard or piano - haven't checked out the other musical items but I'm pretty sure they can't play them either. My kid has a virtuoso trait and I was happy there would finally be something for them to do. Not happy! 

[Sarafina]

Is anyone else having issues with no mixologists being on duty?  I've been to several different bars on different nights and only the first night I went to one place did I get a mixologist.  Every other location and night there was no one, meaning no drinks or food. A lot of the time there is someone in the bar labeled mixologist, but they are never on duty.

Then at one club, The Grind, the sims were not dancing and the option was grayed out for me as it said no music was playing.  I could not figure out for the life of me how to turn on the music, as all I could do with the speakers was disable them.

I do have a few mods in, but saw the behavior in my mod free game.

I am also having the problem with no mixologist on duty.  I am running base game with all expansion packs and stuff packs.  The bouncers also appear to be absent.  I am going during the bar's operating hours.

I'm having a similar issue. They were present when I started the neighborhood, but when I Raptured everyone, the mixologists and bouncers disappeared (naturally) but the game never generated new ones. I've had sims in the bars from open to close with nobody coming to staff the place, so it's not a matter of the game just taking its time generating staff; they NEVER generate.

Hmm, well I didn't kill anyone at all, I just created a new sim and plopped her in and started playing.  I've now gone to several other clubs and those that only have speakers, and no live music or jukeboxes, never have music playing, thus no dancing.  I'm gonna test this out in a new neighborhood later, but it's pissing me off.

Also, is this EP horrible jerky and slow for anyone else?  I've never had problems before with other eps being so slow.  It seems like it's just processing so much in the background that it constantly stutters and pauses for short times making the game anything but smooth playing.  This is vanilla too.

[bloodredtoe]

Also, is this EP horrible jerky and slow for anyone else?  I've never had problems before with other eps being so slow.  It seems like it's just processing so much in the background that it constantly stutters and pauses for short times making the game anything but smooth playing.  This is vanilla too.

It did seem slower to me. I assumed the high-rise buildings were to blame. I didn't remove my cache files, though, have you?

[Claeric]

Mine wasn't jerky, but it slowly started to be. According to people on MTS it's just clutter and is solved with Nraas' Overwatch.

Apparently the game generates a lot of Taxis (Some of which may even just be there for ambiance purposes) and forgets to get rid of them, or gets rid of them but they're still "there", leading to hundreds or THOUSANDS of cars being left invisible in the world.

Someone else suggested it's the wall speakers all being on at once. There's already settings with Nraas' stuff to shut off TVs and stereos, since they aren't actively being used unless you're on the lot, so that may also be a problem.

[Beldara]

The inability to recieve tips seems to be an Awesomemod problem, but the lack of gigs is just EAs fail.

Nope not AM. It's happening as base game fail for me.

I have AM pulled unti it moved from test to live so my cc folder is waiting patiently on my desktop. 

Also has anyone noticed a lot of sims peeing themselves with perfectly good terlets on the community lots?  It is kind of amusing.  Clearly my sims celebrity power is too overwhelming for them to route to the bathroom.

[gamegame]

Apparently the game generates a lot of Taxis (Some of which may even just be there for ambiance purposes) and forgets to get rid of them, or gets rid of them but they're still "there", leading to hundreds or THOUSANDS of cars being left invisible in the world.

Overwatch cleared 1598 cars in my test save. I'll recommend Pescado look into this.

[Claeric]

It cleared around 500 for me, and there was a performance improvement, but I still get jerkiness with pretty much no cause. Just ran process monitor and found nothing being loaded excessively, either.

[claudiasharon]

Mine's pretty jerky too, I just figured all the high rise buildings were to blame. And perhaps a graphics card upgrade was needed.

[Claeric]

The buildings aren't that bad, and they have low detail modes, AND they're not affecting your performance when they aren't visibly being rendered, and the jerkiness is persisting for people no matter where they are on the map or what they are looking at.

[Sarafina]

So yeah, still having the no mixologist issue when I plop an ea club into another neighborhood, although it does recognize the music is playing, so I can click for my sims to dance on the dance floor.  Alas, they jump out of the interaction right away, so that is still borked.

I played around my other neighborhood and there is much less jerky-ness, although more so than before.  Bridgeport is pretty much unplayable with all the stuttering even with overwatch.

[uknortherner]

And the annoyances keep coming...

I stared a new 'hood because frankly, my previous Bridgeport was buggered to hell. I also decided to create a new sim, rather than import one from one of my other hoods this time around, and I hit a new problem. I picked the same el cheapo apartment as before and realised I wanted to buy my sim a car. Problem? No bloody car park! Oh sure, there's a layout of lines at the rear of the apartment building that look like parking spaces but that's it. They simply look like them. There's no driveways there!

So, I thought to myself - no problem. I'll pop into build mode and add a space or two. The game's having none of it. "You can't build outside your apartment boundaries!" it cries. Sod it.

So, I tried using public transport instead. What a royal fuck up that turned out to be. For instance, a taxi trip from the apartment to the nearby dive took my sim 2 in-game minutes (I'm on Twallan's Relativity mod here, so assume 15 standard in-game minutes, including using the elevator) to complete the trip. Great, I thought. So I sent my sim back home and what happens? Well, the sim gets a taxi to the nearby subway that took her further away from the apartment block, and then she walked the rest of the way. FFS, 17 in-game minutes (Relativity) or whatever the hell that is in standard game time.

I've not experienced the stuttering that's been reported on here, but I have had lockups and CTDs. For the time being, I've gone back to playing my old, pre-LN hoods which seem to be more stable. I've added NPC-generating bars to the existing hangouts, and although it took a while, they did eventually spawn mixologists, as well as paparazzi for some reason. It seems that rather than dragooning existing sims, the game generates new ones for these roles.

ETA: Another thing. It seems that the professional bars might be borked too. Earlier I had trouble serving meals to customers, but now on a clean game, I'm having trouble actually ordering food at these bars too.

[Beldara]

yeah the public transport and no car spaces is kind of a mess, you can't put a bike rack outside your apartment either due to the build restrictions.

I found the easiest workaround so far was to buy a bike rack, plonk it down in the middle of the unit, buy a pushbike, then drag the bike into the sims inventory and delete the bike rack.

I did a test of two sims that live at the same apartment and sent them to a club on the other side of town. 
The one that took the bike got there significantly faster than the sim that took the cab/subway/walk etc.

[Claeric]

Use RestrictBuildBuyInBuildings False and just build and buy outside of your apartment.

[Bababorg]

My unactive sims all leave to go to the plasma club immediately after they arrive somwhere regardless of whether it is open or not.

[Chain_Reaction]

I don't have any major issues, updated my mods and all seems to have went well. I have noticed the jerking and freezing though. It does seem like it's just trying to keep up with too much now.

Don't have the issue of clubs being empty. I went to one club and it had about 9 sims in it and several outside. The problem was they wouldn't move out of the way so by the time my sim got in the door and in the elevator, down and out, the club threw him out because it was closing time. There was two bars and only one had a mixologist. My sim has no celebrity level but the bouncers let him in. It was a dance club so I'm not sure if those are suppose to be easy to get into or not.

I've also noticed it taking forever to get out of the apartment. It literally takes them a sim hour to get out of there. Most of the time the carpool has left when they reach the street. It's worse because the apartment has 3 sets of stairs and sims take ages to use stairs. Walk, stop, think about it, move, repeat.

As usual, EA over did it with the ambient sounds. Not all apartment neighbors are that freaking loud 24/7. And there's no "knock on wall" option to make them STFU.

Something else I noticed: They stopped that obsessive fast forward. If all sims are at work or asleep, it goes to speed 3. If I clicked to make it stop, it wouldn't take no for an answer and keep flying back. Now, it does it once but stops if I say no, just like Sims 2. That was annoying the hell out of me. I like going around the neighborhood while they are asleep and the game lags enough without it trying to hyper speed.

Overall impressed though, it seems somewhat well done.

[ElectricSimmer]

Sims keep getting stuck in elevators.

Neighbours are loud and annoying and are lacking 'bang on wall' option that was worked in AL.

Lack of gigs still frustrating but i'm getting tips now.

Plasma 501 and The Prosper Room are poorly built. The elevator areas are anyway, overcrowding leads to Sims getting stuck many times.

Thats it for now.

[claudiasharon]

Sims keep getting stuck in elevators.

Neighbours are loud and annoying and are lacking 'bang on wall' option that was worked in AL.

Lack of gigs still frustrating but i'm getting tips now.

Plasma 501 and The Prosper Room are poorly built. The elevator areas are anyway, overcrowding leads to Sims getting stuck many times.

Thats it for now.

Yeah I'm not getting many gigs either, I think I've had two now. I don't have an overcrowding problem, I have lack of sims at clubs. Sometimes even the NPCs don't show up, which makes it hard to complete opportunities.

[ElectricSimmer]

Oh and the game keeps freezing up randomly.

EDIT: And townies/inactive families Sims would rather tip my lvl 3 drummer/ lvl 2 bassist or lvl 4 guitarist than me, a level 10 guitarist.

[uknortherner]

yeah the public transport and no car spaces is kind of a mess, you can't put a bike rack outside your apartment either due to the build restrictions.

I found the easiest workaround so far was to buy a bike rack, plonk it down in the middle of the unit, buy a pushbike, then drag the bike into the sims inventory and delete the bike rack.

I did a test of two sims that live at the same apartment and sent them to a club on the other side of town. 
The one that took the bike got there significantly faster than the sim that took the cab/subway/walk etc.

All the more frustrating when time in-game moves so quickly to begin with.

Use RestrictBuildBuyInBuildings False and just build and buy outside of your apartment.

I'll give this a try tonight. Even so, whoever built these lots went to the trouble of laying down tiles that looked like fake parking spaces. How much of an effort would it have been for them to actually put the markers in?

I've also noticed it taking forever to get out of the apartment. It literally takes them a sim hour to get out of there. Most of the time the carpool has left when they reach the street. It's worse because the apartment has 3 sets of stairs and sims take ages to use stairs. Walk, stop, think about it, move, repeat.

...

Something else I noticed: They stopped that obsessive fast forward. If all sims are at work or asleep, it goes to speed 3. If I clicked to make it stop, it wouldn't take no for an answer and keep flying back. Now, it does it once but stops if I say no, just like Sims 2. That was annoying the hell out of me. I like going around the neighborhood while they are asleep and the game lags enough without it trying to hyper speed.

They did this with the base game patch and I'm glad of it. It was frustrating every time my sim went to work that the game would kick into third gear regardless of how many times I switch back to normal speed. Now, if only EA could do something about the AI - more specifically, how it insists on constantly queuing the same interaction mere nanoseconds after I cancel it. Also, make the Free Will slider actually DO SOMETHING! Low Free Will should not function the same way as no Free Will.

Also, if you're not running it already, use Twallan's Relativity mod here to slow down time in-game. I've set it to 10 and now have a lot more time to play with, especially with those slow elevators and dodgy public transport choices.

[MissKitty]

So my sims are bugging all over the place, which is my own fault for continuing to play bugged sims after I knew they couldn't be repaired, bad me. But the routing, I won't take responsibility for. I have two sims and a toddler living in that 43k~ simoleon 2BR apartment, and sometimes when I ask one of the parents to pick up the toddler, they will walk out the apartment (and the toddler will follow), take the elevator down, and then pick her up.

Seriously.

After a while I figured out that I could cancel the action if they were headed that way and then try again to make them actually do the sane thing and pick her up on the spot, but... I just... what the fuck!?

Oh, and not a bug but a feature, but I am very much over that whole rumour 72-hour debuff where everyone thinks worse of the sim. Happens too often. It even happened to my sim child on her very first day of school.

[uknortherner]

The routing crap is definitely annoying, especially when you try to get a couple of sims to hold a conversation. I'm fairly certain that in TS2, one sim would walk up and the conversation would commence, so what is with all this damn shuffling about in TS3?

Then there's the psychic abilities that all sims seem to possess. Every time the postman appears on the lot, my sim, in an apartment four floors up, suddenly realises she needs to talk to him for no apparent reason and will drop whatever it is she's doing and head straight for the elevator unless I cancel the action. Cancelling the action ends up being fruitless though as the game instantly queues it up again and won't let me cancel until she exits the elevator.

Oh, and whose bright idea was it to have the paper delivered outside the communal entrance instead of outside the apartment door?

[J. M. Pescado]

The reason sims display "psychic" abilities is because of the way the AI works: Basically, it looks at every possible interesting move it could make in-game, and picks the thing it believes is most interesting based on its score. Since your sim wants to do something Social, the interaction it picks is naturally with another sim...but the interaction tests don't actually see if a sim has any reason to be aware of the presence of that other sim. It wouldn't make sense to add a visibility test for EVERYTHING, since this would result in really stupid behavior, such as a sim not knowing a terlet exists because it can't see it immediately, but the result is that sims tend to develop the apparently psychic awareness of transitory interaction availabilities that they would have no realistic reason to be aware of, like the appearance of a random sim to harass. This sort of behavior existed in TS2, too, with the psychic random stalkers, but I put a kibosh on it there with the NoPedoStalkers hack to impose a requirement that an unfamiliar sim be visible before choosing it for random interaction, with the result that strangers no longer would stalk you from across the lot despite being unable to see you.

[violetlass]

Oh so thats what the NoPedoStalkers hack does, I heard it mentioned once or twice but never heard the purpose of it. Thats a "nifty" idea, so if I get bugged by those "psychic" sim's queues  I will have to remember that, thanks Pescado for clearing that up for me.

I haven't found anything else to add due to non playing of game this past weekend, getting up at 5am to work at 7am kind bites when you end up passed out in your bed with the laptop next you at 10pm

[myskaal]

Apartment living related annoyance: There seems to be no "invite inside" for visiting sims. Perhaps I am doing it wrong.

I decided to go ahead and try out Bridgeport, start racking up a bug list of my own. Moved a sim into the apartment building on 19th street. First go, she couldn't enter the building. I had to RBBB off (yes the RBBB actually works for me) and replace the doors to clear the path. Shell issue no doubt.
At about, 11 am?ish, a welcome wagon of 3 showed up. They milled about outside the apartment building talking on their cell phones. Attempting to click on them from either inside the actual apartment or the lobby or the grounds outside only gets the introduction pie menu. No way to invite them inside. Friendly introductions then gets the socializing pie menus. Still no invite inside interaction. I also notice as soon as my sim steps outside her apartment door she gets the "go home" arrow on her portrait. Visiting sims still just stood around outside the building randomly chatting to each other and on their cell phones.

So for the hell of testing it out I decided to try the form group thing. Group-joiner #1 immediately headed up the elevator to the apartment to watch some t.v., #2 stayed outside, the game is now frozen (for exactly 15 minutes) mid invite of the third and final member. (1:54pm game time.) My poor computer sounds like a jet engine trying to take off. End tasking in a moment.

Stuttering does indeed appear to be related to derelict vehicles. I towed a group of 72 at within the first hour of playing, game ran smooth for a bit. 2 sim hours later things got junky again and I towed another 48.