Sims make nonsensical choices about bike riding
Product: The Sims 4
Platform:PC
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? 1.112..481 1030
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? Seasons, Island Living, Discover University, Snowy Escape, Growing Together, Movie Hangout, Bowling Night, Spa Day, Dine Out, My Wedding Stories, Outdoor Retreat
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Give a sim any bicycle in their inventory, no matter if it's from Discover University, Growing Together or the Reaper's Rewards Event
What happens when the bug occurs? Sims ride bike in situations that make no sense. See below.
What do you expect to see? Sims to only use their bikes outside of buildings, and preferably for larger distances than halfway across a 30x20 lot's garden
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Yes, but even with mods removed their biking choices aren't better.
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? Technically when the reaper event gave me the first bike, but that's probably only because I did not have bikes before (I bought Growing Together and Discover University at a later time).
Making a new thread because all threads with similar or the same complaint I could find are marked as fixed.
So I quite enjoyed getting bicycles for my sims, but they are making extremely bad choices for when to ride these bikes.
Examples:
- Riding bikes indoors. This is the top offender IMO. Sims should not get their bikes out of their inventory to ride across the living room to the bathroom. In smaller rooms (like, you know, bathrooms) they often get stuck on them as well, because there is not enough space for the sim to get off the bike and/or put it back in their inventory, so bikes frequently get stuck blocking sims' path and have to be moved by entering build mode. So the sim gets off the living room couch, gets out their bike, bikes through the house to go to the bathroom, and then ends up sitting on the bike in front of the toilet, unable to get off the bike and actually go use the toilet.
Sims should just not use bikes indoors. Nobody uses bikes indoors! That's not a thing people do.
- Getting on their bikes indoors when you ask them to go home or do another travel off the current lot interaction. This isn't as annoying or sometimes game breaking as the previous point, but I find it super weird and kinda immersion breaking if my sim is at the nightclub, I tell him to go home and he gets out his bike right there on the dancefloor and rides it through half the club and then out the door. The first time this happened I nearly died with laughter, but after a couple repetitions it just became really weird. Or when I tell him to go home while he's visiting with friends or family, and he just hops on the bike in his sister's kitchen and rides off. Super rude honestly! Again, sims just should not use bikes indoors. Bikes are for outdoors. The game technically knows what is indoor and what is outdoor, it can apply temperature effects after all. Why not bike usage?
- Using bikes to move extremely short distances. It just doesn't make sense to move around in the garden behind your house on a bike. If my sim is in his garden and wants to go from the grill on the terrace to the swingset a little back by the hedge, getting on a bike to go there is not a smart choice anyone but a sim would make. It is also not faster! For these short distances (usually for travelling on lot, except for extremely big lots), sims jogging reach the destination faster than sims on bikes, because getting on and off the bikes takes so long. If for example two sims are chatting and one asks the other to push them on the swing, and one sims jogs there and the other rides the bike, the jogging sim spends a lot of time waiting for the bike sim to arrive, because bike sim has to get out the bike, get on the bike, bike there, get off the bike, put bike back in inventory. Sometimes that's so many steps that bike sim has forgotten why he biked somewhere in the first place.
- At the same time, sims that have bikes in their inventory will frequently choose to just walk or jog even long distances, such as halfway across a neighbour to the despawn points when travelling/going home. The top left lot on the Windenburg island for example has a long way to the despawn point and my sims frequently choose to walk there in spite of having bikes. Instead they choose to ride their bikes inside the living room.
Ideally I would expect sims to 1)only bike outside and 2) only bike for distances that are so long that the bike ride including the "place in world" and "put back in inventory" parts is at least as fast as jogging.
This is about autonomous bike use btw. If the player tells a sim to bike somewhere and that makes no sense it's the player's fault after all. My complaint also doesn't include the "ride bike around" action. Sims can ride in circles on a small lawn, whatever, funny. But they should autonomously only bike outside and when it's more than a handful of steps IMO.