Re: Sims 3 Riding Skill Not Improving (Mac)

I tried this but it didn't work. The skill is  not improving and the bar still doesn't show up.

just for testing purposes  ( and to rule out a save game corruption) go to edit town save a copy of your household to the libiary start a new game and palce your saved household from the libiary into that game and see if the skill starts to  skill up again

Still didn't work. The skill did not improve.

Can you try another Sim.

Well she is the only sim in my household. But I can create another one and test the skill.

Or just switch households and try a premade.

I switched households to a premade but there was no skill bar and no skill increase.

I’m having the same problem

@kyacase  Did you try moving the sim out of the house and back in via Edit Town?  Have you tried anything else?

Hello, I'm having the same problem but running on PC. My Sim's riding skill won't increase no matter what I do. I've tried evicting them and moving them back in, trying a new game, running without any custom content or mods, and reinstalling the Pets expansion. I'm at my wit's end. No matter what I do my Sims cannot learn riding skill from simply riding their horses.

@443243b2f972d3ae  You could also try sending your sim to the equestrian center to take a class; that should unlock the first level of riding skill.

If that doesn't help, try pulling your entire TS3 game folder out of Documents and onto your desktop.  When you launch the game again, a clean folder will spawn with no content.  Try out the riding skill with a new sim or family.  If it works, you can move your existing saves and other content into the new folder from the old one, and then test out the sims in those saves as well.

@puzzlezaddictThank you so much for your quick reply! I tried moving my TS3 game folder out of documents and restarting the game. I made a test Sim and sent him to the Equestrian center to take a class, and told him to go for a ride on his horse afterward. He gained the skill from the class, but there is still no skill bar above his head when he's riding his horse. ☹️

@443243b2f972d3ae  I looked for answers from the best sources I know of, and they all say that this particular bug has no fix within the constraints of the game.  Reinstalling usually doesn't help, nor does moving sims out and back into their houses or otherwise resetting them.  The only solution is mods, specifically a function within NRaas Overwatch.  If you're not into mods, then you might not want to bother with this one, although it's pretty low-maintenance as mods go.  But if you're interested in learning, here's a tutorial on how to get started:

http://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Installing_Sims_3_Package_Files/Setup_and_Files

And this is where you find Overwatch:

http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Overwatch

I'm sorry that I can't find a different way to fix this issue, but like I said, there doesn't seem to be any other approach that works.

@puzzlezaddictThank you so much!! I'm very familiar with mods and with NRaas in particular! I'm so glad they made something that could help! 

I'm not sure whether I'm using Overwatch correctly, though. From what I understand it runs a lot of cleanup and repair commands automatically. I had my Sims take a class to learn the first Riding Skill point, exited and reloaded the game, and using Overwatch did a reset check, cleaned up skill modifiers on my Sims, and ran auto and alarm commands. I evicted them and moved them to a new lot. Still no skill bars when they go for a ride.

@443243b2f972d3ae What you're looking for is in fact "clean up skill modifiers."  I'm not sure why it didn't work, but could you try quitting and reloading after running the Overwatch commands?  Sometimes these things need a fresh load (and a clearing of the five cache files in your game folder) to become fully unstuck.  If that doesn't help, it would be useful to know whether a new household in a new save makes a difference.  After that, maybe try a new save in a clean game folder.

As long as you're adding mods to keep your game running, ErrorTrap is also quite useful.  But it's a core mod, so it'll conflict with other core mods.  Be sure to get the version that corresponds to your install, as ET will complain if its internal number doesn't match your patch level.

@443243b2f972d3ae  Okay, after a consult from someone who's a lot better with mods than I am (and who may yet show up; we can always hope), I should clarify that there's no reason to manually run any Overwatch commands, as they would have automatically run on startup.  However, sometimes this kind of thing (sims not gaining skills) needs a few days to sort itself out.  I know it's annoying to wait, but apparently that's often all it takes, I mean, besides Overwatch.

Thank you so much for your quick and informative replies, and for trying so hard to help 🙂 I downloaded ErrorTrap and tried the Overwatch commands but they don't seem to work. I'm going to wait for a few days and see if anything changes. 🙂

I'm very sorry @Tremayne4260, but that is not correct. MasterController is a great mod to have, no argument there, and it's worth having for its ability to reset sims properly alone where the testingcheats kind of reset really doesn't do much except get sims out of impossible situations. But it is not required for any of the other NRaas mods to work. MC doesn't actually do anything at all after the game loads up except present its menus of commands for the player to select from or ignore, as needed, unless you count the optional CAS version replacement.

This is why we support the mods at NRaas. I would suggest the player bring their issue to us over there if Overwatch does not fix the skilling issue on its own after a few sim days of running.

Cool, thanks for correcting me. I thought it was needed, but not going to get rid of it. 🙂

Thanks for the advice! I'm already running MasterController and I love it 🙂 I've tried to use it to fix this issue but still haven't found a solution yet.

@443243b2f972d3ae  MasterController won't fix this issue.  If Overwatch doesn't resolve the problem within a few sim-days, then igazor is right—you should ask for more help over at NRaas.  The people there are still providing help for their mods and can give you a better idea of how to proceed.

Thank you all for your help 🙂 It's been a few Sim-days and my Sims are still not learning riding skill when riding their horses, however the horses will learn racing/jumping while being ridden. I did make a wikispaces account to try and post in the discussion forum for Nraas Overwatch, but I'm not able to create a new discussion for this topic. :/ @igazor would you be willing to help me here, or help me bring this issue to the proper people at Nraas?

Thank you so much!!!

@443243b2f972d3ae  You'll have to ask to join NRaas as well.  The admins there are pretty good about approving new members, although given how late it is, you might have to wait until tomorrow morning.  But yes, this issue is probably better addressed at NRaas, where there is much more mod-specific advice available.