I haven't changed anything, my computer is the same, and I'm still using the base game and Ambitions. I've had the problems of lagging and freezing and invisibility. And documented them via screen shots, the best I can.
While I still have a few odd things happen, I'm doing pretty good right now. I was up to Week 15, Day 3 (w15d3) in Twinbrook with the Goode and Bad household. They'd both married and divorced, and we'd had floor fishing and the mirror reflection not being consistent for framed artwork.
I decided to move them to Sunset Valley, and have been playing the two lads lag/freeze/invisible free. I'm up to w9d1. We're getting into the artistic side, doing more painting, sculpting, inventing, and guitar playing. There's a full garden, they each have their own police car to drive. Ambrosia is ready when needed, plenty of deathfish in the fridge. I'm learning how the Omni seeds work (last time I threw away all the bad, horrifying, stinky, whatever grades of Omni seeds, not realizing the cruddy ones work swell for books and candles).
I've been buying/trying out the things I hadn't done before, like buying more stuff from the Consignment store. Will get around to trying out selling stuff there too.
I've changed Sinbad's traits twice, complete personality overhaul, while leaving Goodwin's traits alone.
Sinbad fell through the stairs once, and required a reset. He was complaining about it being dark and the room being unfinished. Well, you're under the house buddy, it's going to be like that. The game did try to self-correct. At first he was standing on the ground under the house, which would have had him halfway showing inside the house, but when I clicked up a level, he popped up almost out of the foundation, to having just his ankles stuck in the floor. Going back down a level had him floating above the ground. So, reset him and he's worked fine since then.
What I haven't tried yet are children. Somehow that thing with the child being drawn to the fridge to be fed or picked up messes up any game if the child's bedroom is not on the same floor as the kitchen (the toddler at the top of the stairs problem).
No one has popped over their covers yet. I consider the game doomed at that point and don't bother to try anything else.
I'm not using any mods. I'm not deleting caches regularly. I'm just playing the game. So, why is it working NOW and was one bad thing after another previously? I don't know.
I'm using the pre-made sims, that is one difference. Not trying to create a new character to interact with the characters I already am familiar with in the towns.
I'm thinking there's hope for the game to work right, as it is working pretty much right for me at this time.
There's an old saying "Many hands make light work". The more of us that DOCUMENT the problems, take the screen shots, show the errors, the better able EA and anyone else can see the problems we're running into.
Some of the people who view our screenshots KNOW what the problem is, and can then share what the solutions are. Some folks track down the specific problem areas, identifying the problem.
EA has no control over what third parties do, so it's really important to continue posting problems and their solutions.
But EA certainly has control over what their own products should and shouldn't be doing, and again, document it with screen shots.
As it is, just about every day I can find something "not quite right" happening in the game. Like yesterday I noticed that the wind power generator's shadow is fixed, and doesn't show the revolving blades. I didn't notice this before when I had a bunch of wind power generators, because I'd stuck them on the roof at the Goth house and never noticed the shadows.
Document it all, via the screen shots. I haven't had accumulating cars (that I know of) in personal inventories, but a shot of the game window would show this, if someone can do that. I don't know how to do a screen shot from within the game that shows the control panel, but I think there is a way. I just take the picture from the game window when I need to show something else.
Try to get an image of every single problem you encounter. It might help with identifying the problem and finding the solution!
