Dag Dag to Lag: Improving The Sims 4 Performance

Alongside our ongoing efforts to bring you closer to what we’re working on with our save file investigations and Quality of Life roadmap, we wanted to take a moment to share some behind-the-scenes info about how we make The Sims 4 the best experience it can be for everyone. Our team puts love and care into each pack and update we create, running meticulous performance tests to ensure they run smoothly on across many platforms, including min-spec machines.

Here’s the fun part - we’ve learned a lot from our QA testing that can help you make the most of your game! We have advice on how you can build, utilize cheats, and experience the game in more performant ways. This is important information for all players, but especially those who may be exceeding hardware limitations and heavily utilizing in game systems as this increases the chances of resulting in error codes, lots failing to load, or other memory related issues. Read on to learn more!

Signs That Indicate You Should Make These Changes  

You may want to make these changes in your game when you see things like long loading times, various error codes when saving or loading your game like ‘Error Code 140:95e2d14f’ ‘Error Code 34’, etc. or when you experience lagging and freezing in either Build/Buy or Live Mode. If you can hear your computer struggling, it’s probably time to take some of the steps below. 

Keeping your System Up-to-Date

No matter what hardware you use, it is always best practice to remember to keep your system software and drivers up-to-date. This is best practice for any game. 

• How to keep PC up-to-date
• How to keep Mac up-to-date
• How to keep Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One up-to-date
• How to keep PS4 up-to-date
• How to keep PS5 up-to-date

Technical Explanation on Performance

Beyond your computer’s hardware, two main things affect how well The Sims 4 runs:

• How much the game has to draw on screen.
• How many interactive objects are in play.

Every visible object, piece of furniture, or part of the environment takes power to display. The more the game has to show at once (like nearby lots or heavily decorated builds) the more your computer has to work. 

Similarly, each object that Sims can use (like stoves or sinks) takes processing power, even when not being used. The more complex or versatile an object is, the more it impacts performance. For example, kitchen counters are surprisingly heavy on performance because Sims can do so much with them.

Performant Lot Building Best Practices

There’s no “one way” to build a lot, but if you’re ever curious on how you can build a more performant lot, here are some helpful tips and guidelines: 

• Wallpapers - Multiple types of wallpaper on a Lot will impact performance more, especially wallpapers with edges.
• Mirrors - Multiple mirrors in a single room will impact performance if their reflections are bouncing off each other.
• Doors that have glass, transoms, or sidelights will impact performance more. The more of these a door has the more impact it has.

• “Portal” Objects - Portal objects are any object that transitions a Sim from one room/level to another. Large numbers of portal objects increase Sim routing time. Portal objects include doors, arches, fence gates, platforms, ladders, stairs, and more. The more portal objects a Sim must traverse to get somewhere the more performance is impacted.
  • Pools and Platforms - Platforms are much like pools as Sims can get in and get out of a pool or traverse a platform at any location, so they have a lot of portals! The larger the pool or platform, the more portals. The smaller the pool or platform is, the more performant it is.
    • Note: Fountains are quite performant, because you can’t get in or out of them.

• Fridges and computers - These have high simulation costs because they have so many interactions. Kitchen counters are an additional example due to the amount of hidden autonomous interactions available when using them. 
• The more unique items used on a lot, the higher impact on performance. Clutter, lots of different pictures, lots of carpets, window types, light types, plants, etc. all add up.
• Ponds - The larger and more complex a pond is, the less performant it is. Small ponds with simple shapes are very performant. Large ponds with irregular shapes are less performant. 
• Small ponds are about 8 x 8 tiles. 
• Large ponds are about 19 x 19 tiles. 
• “Simple” means smoother edges and simpler shapes like an oval or circle.
• Number of Sims - Be mindful of the number of Sims on screen at any given time. The more active Sims in a lot, the less performant your game will become as more resources are used.
• Large Lots - Whether a lot is big or small it has the same object budget. If you are building a large lot and want to keep it performant, our tip is to try to find a way to fill it in using creative object placement that isn’t dense or tile designs. Decorations cannot be as dense as they can on a small lot. 
• Occluders and Visible Objects - When you load a lot with other lots around it, objects inside buildings on the other lots aren't visible. This is because the solid walls of the building act as “occluders.” If these objects are placed outside of the house walls then there is nothing to occlude them when loaded into another lot and the game has to draw them, which can result in a dip in performance. Most games work this way! Glass Walls, large Glass Windows, Glass Roofs also do not act as occluders because you can see what’s happening behind them. Seeing objects when loaded into another lot isn’t problematic, unless a nearby lot is very full with objects.

Cheats are another performance variable to consider. Remember that cheats can impact your gameplay negatively if your specs aren't high enough, and it’s always best practice to backup your saves before trying any cheats, especially those that remove restrictions.

Things that Will Affect Your Memory and Performance and Might Result in Bugs if Overutilized:

There are many tools The Sims 4 provides the player to enhance creative options! We don’t know your exact software, however, and overutilizing these tools can result in poor performance, or memory issues (like corruption or failure to load issues). Mods are another aspect to consider when playing performantly as we can’t account for their resource costs when developing content for The Sims 4 as they are developed and maintained by the community. Please use these tools at your own risk and responsibly. These are also cumulative. Meaning, if you are doing all of these, then that adds up.  That’s why sometimes bugs around crashes, freezes, and failing to load things can be difficult on our end to investigate - each one can be very dependent on how it came about. 

• Graphics Settings
• The best practice is to be aware of your settings in relation to your system’s capabilities and don’t increase Graphics Settings beyond your system’s limitations. On PC and Mac, The Sims 4 has a benchmarking system where the game automatically optimizes graphics settings on first launch and allows the player to adjust. Exceeding the determined graphics settings can cause performance issues on lower spec systems. 
  
  
• Build Cheats like vertical move cheats, scale cheats, or bb.moveobjects. 
• These move cheats alter the navmesh (what Sims use to know where they’re going) and make it more complex. When this happens, the game has to do extra calculations which takes up extra performance and memory. Doing this a handful of times is normally perfectly fine, but if you have a Lot where this is happening hundreds and hundreds of times, that can be very hard on most computers.
  
  
• Using the bb.showliveeditobjects Cheat
• When we ship objects in a pack (the ones you can find normally in Build Mode or as rewards for gameplay), we have built and tested those objects to be performant. If you use LiveEditModeObjects, these objects are not performant when player-placed. Placing a handful of these items on computers with capable hardware is perfectly fine! This is why we wanted to provide this cheat as an option to you. However, if overused or if used by lower spec hardware this could cause a lot of memory and performance issues. This also applies to laying multiple objects together.
  
  
• Maximum Sim Count Game Options
• This is an option in the Household Manager menu. By default this is set to 80 Sims for played Households in a Save. This is best for players with Min Spec computers (and honestly healthiest for all computers). However, Mid to High End computers can reasonably upgrade to 150 Max Sims. 
• Choosing the 200 or Unlimited options are things we’ve given you the option to do, but are not recommended in most instances. Please do this at your own risk. 
  
  
• Super Stuffed Lots
• How much you can pack into your lots really depends on your specific hardware. If you fill every lot to the brim (and skip the performance tips here), you run a higher risk of encountering slower performance, crashes, or other issues. There’s no single “right” amount as every setup is different. If you find that you can build Lots with full, detailed spaces and your hardware can handle it, great! The key is finding a good balance that keeps your game running smoothly.
  
  
• Have Too Many Farm Animals 
• Chickens, Mini Goats, and critters like these are super cute! However, depending on your hardware, having too many (not 10-15, but in the 30-100+ range) can cause the game to lag heavily, though we have made changes to try to decrease the effects of this.
  
  
• Mods that Allow Increased Sim Cap Limits
• We have a limit on how many Sims can appear at a time in a neighborhood for performance reasons. If you increase this using Mods, this is happening at your own risk and can greatly impact performance and memory.
  
  
• Screenshots Folder, Custom Music, Mods
• The more content you have in these folders, the more content that needs to be loaded and run. Having an overabundance of content on certain hardware specs can result in performance and memory issues. This is particularly relevant to mods, as much we love them!
  
  
• Running Other Apps and Programs
• Having other resource-heavy programs running on your computer while playing The Sims 4 can impact performance. Closing those extra apps can free up resources and make your game run more smoothly, so your Sims can thrive without any hiccups. 
• You can easily see any programs that are configured to start running as soon as your computer does for Windows here, and here for Mac. 
  
  
• Other Instances
• There are probably other ways a game can become inefficient and have memory issues based uniquely on how it is played. As always, the best advice is to create judiciously based on your computer hardware, listen to the game (if it starts chugging, or your cooling fans start ramping up, it isn’t happy), and follow a “moderation” is key approach. These things above aren’t off limits! But should never be overdone.

Ultimately, The Sims 4 offers an incredible range of creative possibilities, and we love seeing the unique worlds you build and stories you tell. However, every creative choice comes with a performance cost, and understanding those limits helps ensure your game stays fun and stable. By balancing creativity with moderation and keeping your hardware in mind, you’ll enjoy smoother gameplay and fewer headaches, crashes, and load times. 

As always, if you have any questions or concerns you can reach out in our Technical Issues section of The Sims forums here for additional assistance.