Lags & Invisible, Frozen & Stuck Sims --> Post here if you have the issue.

I've never used mods with Sims games before because I never wanted a problem down the road with patches and compatibility, but it seems many of you are having success with the issues I have by installing overwatch.

How sad is it that we need to use outside sources and mods to get a game we paid for to run properly without even an acknowledgment from the company that there IS an issue with their game?

I'll continue to try to play what I have already purchased, but the company needs to put some effort into finding a solution/patch for these issues and confess the screw up is on their end and not ours before I would even consider buying anything else from them.

Hi 45rpm: I'm on Week 6, day 3. Found a townie in his foundation and reset him, and another one stuck outside one of the apartment buildings so I reset him. The game keeps giving some of my townies the stylist career or other Ambitions careers which they cannot follow through on without me playing them, the one stuck outside the apartment building was in the stylist career. He had gone to restyle another Sim I guess and the action disappeared.

Just went into one of my families this morning, he was in the basement inventing.
All of a sudden about six townies popped up in his house - maybe he put out party invites on his own when I wasn't there - but there was no party bubble over his house? Sent them all home. No other problems.

I think in this open community of the Sims 3 everything that happens to the townies impacts our families and not in good ways. Doubt EA can ever fix it.

Going to keep my fingers crossed and see if I can get past Week ten without
any of my families Sims going invisible.

I have made some other changes - no foundations on any houses so no one gets stuck hopefully and no more apartments - just seems to glitch the game with stuck elevators. I have made up my own clubs and they seem to be working. I have also taken away all the townie cars and given them the Kenspa, which they now ride everywhere so no cars spawning.

Too bad I have to "redo" the whole game just to be able to play.

45rpm wrote:
This may sound dumb Caspin and Nicki but do I still have to remove
my mod if people somehow got the patch and the mod is still working

Speaking of working I still get time stops in WA BUT it always starts
again but only in WA. I bet you hrrrrm a pattern that this patch
is just a update so the new game can play then we will wait another
month and they will roll out a patch that will fix something or another.

There I think the most cyncial of the lot and Nicki look what I put on the Store
technical LOL Well our dollar is worth more and yet we are charged more
for junk not that I buy it. But its the point I wonder if they will answer
Hrrrrm NO

We should move out the mod before updating and then download the updated version from the Nraas website. Then the mod will be the right version for your patch. If I was buying Generations then that is what I would do. However since I'm not buying the game, just getting the associated patch, there's no urgency for me so I'll wait for Twallan so that I can move old mod, patch, reinstall updated mod straight away.

I saw your message about the Canadian dollars and will bump it with a further comment about British pounds :)

@ caspinwall: downloaded the patch and everything is working again! Thanks for your advice.

simmom65 wrote:
I began having all the issues mentioned in the title of this thread. It happened when I bought and installed Late Night back in December. I could start a family and play for about 20 sim days, then my sims would get stuck, disappear, or the game would start lagging so bad that it became impossible to play. And it wasn't just the one family I was playing. Once it began happening to the family I was playing, the same things would happen to any family in the entire town. I can't tell you how many families I made and ended up deleting and new towns I made that became unplayable.

I spent countless of hours on the phone with different EA support people and uninstalled and reinstalled the game over and over again with different patches they suggested, not to mention all the clean up I did to my computer trying to get the game to work. Nothing worked. And BTW, I do have a good, fairly new computer and don't have any issues with any other programs or games using this computer.

Since the game is unplayable, it's been collecting dust on the shelf for the past 7 to 8 months.

Today I noticed there was an update for Sims, so I installed it. I figured it can't hurt. It's not like it can make things worse since I can't play the game anyway. I haven't gone into the game to see if solved the situation, but I have a sinking feeling that that it's not going to do any good anyway.

So here is my question. Did this patch solve this problem for people who have been experiencing these issues? Or did any of you buy Generations hoping that it take care of these problem and allow you to be able to play the game again and it worked? I'd be willing to buy Generations if my game would work again. I do miss playing the Sims, but I don't want to just throw good money after bad.

Hi - my problems all started with either the update prior to/or LateNight as well and I had to keep starting new games after about ten Sim weeks, otherwise my Sims would starting freezing and then disappearing. Reset Sim worked for a while but it was not a permanent solution.

I did install the update but haven't noticed any difference although I have taken "measures" to ensure my Sims don't freeze or go invisible by keeping tight control over my town and the townies. It's my opinion that when a townie get's stuck or something else happens that is not supposed to, it affects the entire town, including my Sim. I've had frozen townies, townies stuck in the foundations of their houses, or on the stairs. So much for "open" community.

From the postings I read after people installed Generations (I did not buy it or TownLife because of my problems), the stuck and invisible Sims only got worse and started happening to more people.

Every EP and SP released seems to impact on the ones before - EA does not seem to take into account the previous EP's (like Ambitions borked excavation in World Adventures - never fixed - and Generations apparently wrecked travelling - Sims come home cloned - not fixed).

I would not hold my breath waiting for a fix from EA for any of these problems which they have never acknowledged and after all this time, probably have no clue how to fix.

General problem people are seeing

- Sims get stuck in bed and on other furniture. Reset sim helps once, maybe twice then it stops working
--> Possible Workaround posted by zerobandwith
- Sims get stuck on each other, leaving large groups of Sims in one space
- Sims turn invisible, only leaving the thought bubbles visible
- Lags because of the stuck Sims or temporary cars that don't get cleaned in the streets and inactive Sims inventories
- Toddlers get stuck on top of the stairs while trying to interact with t/ya/a/e
- Sims get stuck in two locations in Bridgeport behind the hospital in Bridgeport for this should be an inaccessible area but isn't
- Frozen Game where only the animations go on.
- Invisible Objects that block the Sims path
- Sims are getting reset and send back home.
- Sims are getting reset from work and are now standing outside some rabbit hole
- All sims get drawn to one spot
- Sims getting stuck in elevators
- Ultimate loss of your save game: Missing GUI (this can be caused by uninstalling an injector mod the wrong way but that's not always the case)

Play style, system info, Mods/CC status
- Most people in this thread have more then adequate systems, are up-to-date and have tried everything from reinstalling to reformatting and nothing works. The error can't be point pointed to any group of hardware. It occurs on all OS, including Mac. The more EPs you have, the faster you have it.
- Most people in this thread do not have any cc or mods although it shows that people that are using Twallan's mods are inclined to have less problems
- People have different play styles but lots seem to keep to one household, playing legacy style.
- The error seems to occur around week 10 or a little later into the game. Once you have it, it seems to infect other save games, also new ones.
- This problem has been around since the beginning but seems to get worse with every EP/SP that's coming out, LN making it a problem for a lot of people. You don't NEED LN to have the problem and it's not only happening in Bridgeport.

Invisible Sims - Reasons
This info is speculation and might or might not be true
So far I think there are three problems that can render your Sim invisible:

- Large crowds, stuck sims that make your game laggy and because of this the graphics have trouble actually displaying the Sim. This is only a temporary invisibility and they can turn visible any time. Overwatch gets rid of crowds in front of community lots because of star opportunities.
- Broken outfits. No clue what breaks them but Twallan pinpoints them on cc that is being uninstalled from the game. That's certainly true for invisible babies when you uninstall bad cc. Could be other reasons. Fix Invisible Sims on DebugEnabler fixes those
- TestBrawlError. The error occurs at a point in time where the other sims are leaving rabbit holes, buses or other actions that make them temporarily invisible. Because of the error, the game bounces and the Sim does not get visible. ResetSim makes those visible again but there could be other problems following (like the stuck in bed issue). Overwatch and ErrorTrap get rid of the TestBrawlError

Mods, that actually help with all those problems (don't solve it)

All Mods are by Twallan. There are others around (Google: NRaas, ISZ).

Overwatch --> Getting rid of temp cars, broken relationships and family trees and the Sims get drawn to one community lot problem, also has many more fixes, refer to Twallans forum on the details.
MasterController --> Ability to reset the whole town (Sims & Objects)
DebugEnabler --> Ability to fix invisible Sims with faulty outfits
ErrorTrap (CoreMod) --> Fixes dangling references and can help with the missing UI problem and more.

A solution to the routing problem in Bridgeport can be found here: Bridgeport Routing Fix

If you decide to use a mod, make sure you remove them before patching your game. Overwatch, DebugEnabler, MasterController and ErrorTrap are save to remove without any special instructions. Simply delete the files and remove your cache files.

ErrorTrap is a CoreMod and can only be used with the Patch stated in the Twallan's post.

For instructions on how to get a mod into your game, please check this thread: http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/217955.page

to be continued ..

Kadasho
You would think they could delete one message
instead of the whole thread. It had over 10k reads and multi messages
If they cant delete one message perhaps they should get that option.

Not a word said by EA even though the thread was massive.

The problem is still here and I hope everyone posts

I still have sticky frozing disappearing sims and Ive done all you have said
EA and it still returns. When is a fix coming... We have waited for a very long time.

I found cache clearing and saving often helps me but it eventually acts up again
I learnt that trick from another player

Hmmm, a troll. Very convenient. Thanks for restarting this, Crinrict.

Okay: My game worked perfectly - not a hiccup, lag or momentarily pause, except for some reason, sometimes while vacationing in France, since the day I installed it. I have all the EP's and SP's except FLS.

I DO NOT HAVE CC or mods. Nothing off the exchange, only Store items.

When I received LateNight, I automatically checked the launcher first to see if there was an update I should install before I installed the EP (made the mistake of not checking once and it destroyed my game so I always check and install any
update first then the EP).

Installed LN and played around a bit in Bridgeport getting used to things. No glitches, no problems with butlers or mixologists or people not showing up to clubs. Just worked fine.

So I started a new game with my favourite Sim (a copy of him from the bin) and
he wanted to learn the mixology skill so I got him the books. We were good until Level 7.

There he was, sitting in his chair, no longer turning book pages. Sitting and
not moving while everything else went on around him. Stuck fast. I tried to reset him and poof, gone.

Nothing I have done since that fatal day, months ago works. I reinstalled it all, decided to stay out of Bridgeport and played Sunset Valley. New Sim. New
house. New everything. He's all skilled up, high along in his career and looking good. Tell him to get the mail. Hear the mailbox open - wait a minute?
Where is my Sim?

It doesn't matter what Sim, what family, house or town. In about ten Sim weeks,
the Sim I am playing (not the game) will freeze or just vanish. They are not, in my opinion doing anything specific that might cause them to vanish, like working on a invisibility spell...the last one was talking to the maid.

I have also had NPC Sims get stuck in park benches on the community lots. A buildup of cars and stereos in inventories, etc., etc.

None of this has been addressed by EA and it is really too bad that this thread has sat here for so long, ignored, while so much effort was put into it by so many people trying to help each other since, obviously EA cannot or will not, only to have it deleted because of one stupid post!

(EA sure noticed that post among all the others - wonder if they even bothered to read the thread.)

Could we keep this on the subject, please.

They have deleted my threads and I don't think it has anything to do with the content of the old thread. I saw what the troll posted and it was disgusting.

The thread got reported by many, including me, that's why they knew that something bad was in it.

Hi Crinrict: I did see the posting but couldn't see any pictures, just the little boxes with the "X" in them so whatever was posted was lost on me. And it's been so long, I didn't even remember who started the thread. Still not fair to delete an entire thread.