[ARCHIVED] Game Freeze/ Extended Loading Times/ Save Game Bloating
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? 1.68.154.1020 Wha...
As EA fixed the main issue of this thread, I would ask you all to post in different threads, depending on your issues. I don't want anyone to miss out on help because they post here. There are several issues going on and it's best to keep them seperate.
I've made a new thread for the Father Winter issue here:
Yesterdays patch fixed the LE from happening which means no more Father Winters are generated in abundance.
What does this mean ?
For unaffected games: You can now have Winterfest with Father Winter again but I would still recommend making a backup before the holiday occurs
For affected games: Depending on how badly your save is affected, it may or may not be saved. I'm still testing but so far I'm not having much luck with badly affected saves. Reverting to a backup is the best option still cause fixing saves can be time consuming.
The patch notes say games should fix themselves over time .. I think this means culling will delete your extra father winters .. if you make it that far.
I'll do further testing. I personally don't need any saves at this point but QA is looking for them, so please send your badly affected ones to SimQARobo
Summary of the Issue
There's several issues going on in this thread. The main one being an endless generation of Father Winters. If you already had one in your save (has to be Clemens Frost), then you should be safe. Do backup before the Winterfest if you decided to follow through with it.
Since the game just creates and creates and creates, the game will start to lag and then freeze. It will use all your RAM (or at least a lot of it). You will have an insane number of Single Sim households in your hidden households (can only be made visible with MCCC).
Another reason for this seems to be routing issues concerning platforms. Sims try to get to a place in a (sunken?) platform and can't cause of MoveObject placement or other reasons and just keep trying and trying until the game freezes.
How do I know if I have the Father Winter Issue ?
Typical Symptoms are
Insane RAM usage
Save Game bloating (compared to the backups, your save is exponential bigger in size (this is only happening if you actually saved your game in this state)
Loading times are getting insane. Depending on your computer, the save never loads at all
The time freezes. If your Sim freeze but the time goes on, then you have a dead lock and not this issue.
You can't click on anything. No menu comes up
You had a Winterfest but Father Winter never showed up.
You get a LastException: Exception while updating the sim filter service.. (TypeError: apply_permanent_appearance_modifiers() missing 1 required positional argument: 'additional_flags')
The RAM usage, save game bloat, LE and the Winterfest with no Father Winters are the strongest indications that this is your issues, If you use mods, you can also use MCCC to check the hidden households (you need MC Cheat. Click on Mailbox > MC Cheats > Sims/NPC Household Cheats > Unhide Hidden Households
This is what you should see (depending on the packs you own). You will also see ghost + pet strays appear here. If you have LOTS of male adult Sims as well, then you have the Father Winter Issue.
How do I know if I have the platform routing issue ?
Typical Symptoms are
RAM usage is steady.
Save game size is not majorly increasing.
Loading times are normal.
The time freezes. If your Sim freeze but the time goes on, then you have a dead lock and not this issue.
You can't click on anything. No menu comes up
It only happens in certain households. Others are working perfectly fine.
If you replace the house with another, the save works fine.
There are no LastExceptions
Sounds like I have the Father Winter Issue. What do I do ?
Some folks have also had success with disabling seasons: https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/2017/03/disable-single-packs/ (Seasons is EP05). I tested this method and all it does is stop the LastException from happening and hence the new creation of Father Winters. If you only have a few now, this can solve your issue but if you already have 4000-6000 father Winters like some of the saves I tested, then the freezing just came right back. I don't recommend this method as you'll loose everything Seasons on your save, even if you just temporarily disable it to get rid of the LE and then enable the pack again (you do need to save) but I'm putting it here for completion sake.
If you don't have a backup, the best thing to do is, save all your Sims and houses to the gallery and place them in a fresh save. You'll loose all money + relationships outside the family, so that might be a huge issue for legacy saves.
Wait until EA fixes this and play another save in the meantime. Depending on how many Father Winters you already have, it's unclear if they can clean the save better then MCCC though.
Remove any Winterfests from your calendar or at least remove Father Winter as Tradition.
Looks like I have the platform issue, What do I do ?
Locate any (sunken) platforms in your save and see if anything in them was placed with MOO. Other reasons could be a narrow platform and something that causes the Sims to route there like a speaker on the wall but not enough space to dance.
Try deleting stuff and replacing until you find what's causing.
It's often somewhere Sims want to go on their own but can't, not user directed.
Unfortunately you can't switch Sims once the game froze and if you have NPCs on the lot, it can be them. Sometimes you get lucky and see which Sim has a stuck interaction in their queue. Go look there.
I'm still looking into this to verify the theory, so if you need help, you can send me your save and I'll take a look. Instructions in my signature.
I don't think I have either of those issue. What do I do ?
Bit unsure how to handle this currently cause there are a lot of issues going on. I think for now it's best to use the tech forum of your platform.to post instead of here. Do state that you don't think it's the Father Winter issue but something else. Make your own thread and provide your specs. Describe what symptoms you are seeing and if you can isolate it to a certain save game, provide that as well.
I am having the exact same issues on Mac, I can still click on other sims but time is completely frozen and it appears to be happening at night time the most as the clock does not go into super speed. The loading screens are excessive and my game crashed because a notification came up saying my application memory was full, and the sims 4 was using 64GB of running application memory, which is definitely not normal.
I have been having this problem also, I have 5= packs I have downloaded but not the university one. But every time I load into my game everything is fine I can interact but not even 2 mins in I can interact and my sims continue doing what they are doing and time moves on but my sims have frozen. I exit and save the game and the colourful bubble appears so I have to force quit every time, this issue has been happening for 5 days and I really want to play one of my favourite games of all times but can't. I got this laptop a month ago and its one of the new MacBook Pros so I doubt my laptop is the issue. EA HELP! I WANT TO PLAY THE SIMS!!!
Product: The Sims 4 Platform:Mac 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?N/A What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed?Discover University Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves?Load the game What happens when the bug occurs?Anytime I try to create a Sim, Edit my Sim, build a house, edit a house, after 5 minutes I get the colorful spinning bubble, and then everything freezes and I have to manually shut down my computer. When I go back in the game I have over 5 saves of the same Sim family, and the game continues to repeat the exact same part that I initially left off from the previous week. When I initially downloaded the game I downloaded a few mods/cc, but after the first crash I completely deleted all mods and have uninstalled and reinstalled game, repaired game, patches, updated to Sims 4 Legacy addition and deleted any saved games. As well as I have deleted unnecessary files from Sims 4 folder, tried placing certain files open on my desktop, and other tips and tricks that I found online but it continues to freeze and has done so for almost an entire week now, I just downloaded the game last Thursday night. What do you expect to see?Computer freezes/crash Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods?Not now. I've removed them. Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system?No
Hello, I updated my game with the update before Snowy escape came out. I had issues with it crashing like every 10 mins or so. I did the emergency update when it came out the other day and everything was fine no more crashing I was actually able to play. I played all day yesterday without any issues but this morning I tried to play my game and now I'm experiencing long load times, and once in the game and able to load my save game file I get to my sims but my sims don't do anything no matter what I tell them to do they just don't move. I can forward time but they don't MOVE at all I can hear sounds as if its playing but nothing is happening. If I press pause sometimes the timer will pause other times things are going on in the background and the sound is still going. I try to exit the game w/o saving and it just hangs still nothing is happening so I have to force quit out of the game. I have repaired the game so many times today. I have uninstalled Orgins and re-installed it. Can anyone give guidance on what to? I am very frustrated and so very disappointed. I am playing on my MacBook Pro 2020 Os BigSur.
Having the same exact issue and can't find anything posted about it. I basically can't play the game because it only goes a couple of minutes before this happens.
I am experiencing the same issue. The clock in the game and sims both freeze and I can't do anything. I can't switch between sims or click on objects. The game simply isn't playable. If you start a new game everything works fine for a while, but then the same issue appears. I tried repairing my game, deleting cache files etc. and nothing helped.
