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RandomBuzziness's avatar
RandomBuzziness
Seasoned Ace
6 years ago

Re: The game is no longer spawning custom characters on lots.

@rookiebatman Just to clarify, those custom-made Sims aren't completely gone from your game right? You can still see them in Manage Households, invite them to visit your current lot, etc? And you've ruled out CC & Mods as being the cause?

I know that traits have much to do with what type of lot that NPC Sims tend to visit, but there must be more to it than that. Maybe skill levels? I had been playing a young adult Sim (Kara) who does not have the athletic trait but I did often take her to the gym so her athletic skill is up to like 6 or 7. A couple of days ago I switched to playing a different household, which is actually Kara's parents and younger sister. Even though Kara is now an NPC, I still see her at the gym all the time. So it must be I gave her a "habit" of going to the gym by raising her athletic skill. I can't think of any other reason a non-athletic Sim would visit a gym so often. I also raised her Guitar skill and now I see her busking at the Spice Festival and I am guessing her high Guitar skill level must be the reason the game spawned her for this role.

Perhaps you could try inviting some of your custom NPCs to nightclubs, for example, maybe it will increase their dance skill levels and give them a "habit" of autonomously visiting nightclubs in the future.

Btw- were you able to try the GT club hangout idea?

3 Replies

  • rookiebatman's avatar
    rookiebatman
    New Rookie
    6 years ago

    Right, they're definitely not gone from the game, I can still visit them or have them visit me, they just don't show up randomly.

    I have ruled out mods in the sense that A) I didn't add any major new mods right before the problem started, and B) I ran the game with all mods removed and it didn't help.

    The characters I'm not seeing anymore have all been to the same type of lot before, so if it was just a matter of "habits," I can't think of any reason why it would just suddenly change. And there are some characters who seem to be constantly showing up at all the different types of lots.

    It's just so weird to me, because I survived the "update-pocalypse" (when the game has an official update, you have to make sure all your mods are updated as well, or else it'll all fall apart) and continued playing after that, and everything was working fine and nothing was out of the ordinary. And then a few days ago, after seemingly changing nothing, it's like the game just snapped and started working completely differently. It's exactly the type of quirk you'd expect after a major update, but I had already been playing after the major update and it was still working fine. And there wasn't anything else I changed after the update either.

    In fact, I even thought I just remembered one thing that did change; I added one more household full of custom characters. But I went back and checked my old saves; I have one file that was saved right after one of my main character's favorite girlfriends called him up and invited him over (which is something that just doesn't ever seem to happen anymore), and the new household is already there in that save. So, I added the household (which is the only major change I can think of before the point when it stopped working), and it was still working after that. The only changes I made since then were very minor mods (like, I added one the day after that save, that changes some animations slightly; I can't imagine that could possibly have an effect on the spawning RNG).

    I haven't tried the club hangout thing. I kinda just wanted it to go back to the way it was without me putting my thumb on the scale to favor any particular characters, but I guess that's not really feasible at this point (I even deleted and reinstalled the whole program), so maybe that would be a "good enough" work around.

  • RandomBuzziness's avatar
    RandomBuzziness
    Seasoned Ace
    6 years ago
    @rookiebatman Also just to clarify: When you removed all mods for your testing, did you delete the localthumbcache file from your Sims 4 folder before running the test? I've heard that even after removing all cc/mods that bugs can continue in a game through that file. I delete it out of habit anytime I make any changes to my mods folder.

    Yeah I hear ya. You get a game save working just the way you like and then boom something changes and it just kind of deflates you. The whims thing just about drove me insane. I even did all this:

    https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-PC/READ-FIRST-Troubleshooting-your-Game/m-p/3621199#Resetting

    Of course then I found out others were seeing a whims bug too. /☹️

    I started my current save right after the Nov. 12 patch disaster and I haven't seen anything like you are describing so I am mostly just guessing on fixes here.

    I have one more experiment I want to try to see if I can effect a change on which Sims show up whenever I travel, show up at my house, etc. I'm going to make a few CAS changes to certain characters to give their data a newer date in my Tray folder & see if that makes them appear more often. It's a long shot but I'll let you know if it works.
  • rookiebatman's avatar
    rookiebatman
    New Rookie
    6 years ago

    You know, I actually had forgotten about the importance of deleting localthumbcache, so I tried it this morning removing all the mods and that file, but the results were still basically the same (the first character that spawned on the lot was a custom, but then all the rest where the usual regulars that have been showing up all the time since the change happened).

    @RandomBuzziness wrote:
    I have one more experiment I want to try to see if I can effect a change on which Sims show up whenever I travel, show up at my house, etc. I'm going to make a few CAS changes to certain characters to give their data a newer date in my Tray folder & see if that makes them appear more often. It's a long shot but I'll let you know if it works.

    This sounds kind of interesting. I would be curious to find out if there is some way to "hack" or manage the way the game chooses who to spawn.

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