Please use this thread going forward: Save Game Corruption (Disappearing Lots/Error 800 or 801) | EA Forums - 5037272
@MissLjupka wrote:Would you or someone else who knows be so kind to summon up the signs of a potential corruption before it's too late?
@olga_k2 wrote:
Now only the most experienced players can notice the problem, before it's too late to roll back the save.
I did not experience this terrible corruption yet because I am extremely careful since the Release of For Rent. I must admit that I got very paranoid about lot corruption this year. It causes so much anxiety for me to the extend that it is not healthy anymore.
I would be thankful if someone could - in a few words - write down the warning signs of a coming game corruption, so I and others can notize it early enought to roll a save back before the big corruption breaks out.
Thank you.
What is the size of your current save file? For me, 130,000 KB is when the corruption starts. That is Rent DLC off or on. I can basically play the game normally if the save file is 120K to around 125K KB. I hear some people can play up to 140,000 KB before corruption starts.
Once I notice that my save file has reach 130K, I have to start deleting some lots. First is the Rental Residential as those lots take the most memory, then I start with the big lots like 40X40 and up.
For some reason, on the new Life and Death DLC, I started playing the quests and Reaper Career, the memory started to sky rocket up and starting to corrupt my lots in Willow Creek and New Crest. That's when I reload and start deleting lots. It really sucks but that's the only way I can play the game.
@karoschmitz A patch a couple of months back eliminated the exclamation marks without eliminating the problem, so you can no longer use looking for exclamations as a way of checking whether you have the bug or not, sadly. I have been periodically loading into particular lots in Willow Creek and Newcrest that tend to break first for me, just to check whether the surrounding lots look like defaults or like the stuff I've placed. That's about the only way to check for this now, I'm afraid.
I am so angry about removing the visual information that something is wrong. Now we just don't know if something is broken and I have better things in life than checking every world in the game before saving. I don't even know how I would spot it now. I just stopped playing.
Amazing how they are ignoring this thread yet are aware about this issue to the point they remove visual signs of the issue and that's it. If you don't see the problem, there is no problem, right?
Because EA/Maxis is actively IGNORING this thread and the others around corrupted saves/lots/games, my advice to friends and family who also used to love The Sims is: STOP all purchases of ANY DLC! The game code appears to be collapsing under its own weight. Save what your can and back up those saves to another location/drive/storage etc. Yes there will be some tempting new offers as EA continues to milk this franchise to death. However, adding new content/packs/etc. appears to break the game badly especially if you already have a lot of other DLCs installed.
I believe the reason they aren't responding here or on social media or Reddit, etc. is because they KNOW it's the end of the line and don't want to admit it publicly till they squeeze the last dime out of us.
See also:
https://www.reddit.com/r/thesims/comments/1cljuns/i_think_for_rent_broke_my_savefile/
The question is will there be a solution from EA? I have several save breaking bugs in my game now to the point where I can't help myself with workarounds. I even used Sims 4 Studio to clean up the save game but this led to other problems.
I would consider myself as tech-savvy and tried a lot to recover my save that I'm attached to since years. At this point there is nothing I can do and I guess many other Simmers face similar problems. It's really time for EA to find a solution for these ongoing save breaking bugs.
I've never been at a point where I can't play a game anymore due to so many problems.
Understandably enough I'm not able to purachse more content because I can't play the game due to all these problems.
Quick update on this...
This issue as reported by other simmers is not just related to 'For Rent'. Having residential rental properties exacerbates the issue but it is not the sole reason for why this bug happens. I've deleted all my residential rental properties and purchased all the latest packs and i was running the game okay for a long time. However this issue of houses disappearing, endless loading screens etc has re-appeared this week in my game since populating all the lots in Ravenwood from the new pack. As mentioned earlier in the thread, EA have removed the exclamation signs over the lots and thus made it worse by not even allowing us to identify the corrupted lots from world view! My summary is that the game doesn't like big legacy saves, or having lots of builds with lots of objects/clutter in 95% of your worlds.
My laptop is a pretty good spec (have upgraded RAM etc over the years) so i've got some heavy builds in my game from creaters like soulsistersims and don't have an issue with performance. However it doesn't matter, as the game definetly has some 'memory cap' on what it can process. The only way to fix this is by deleting builds in your worlds that aren't important to you and leaving the deleted lots as empty 'residential' with no households in it.
EA really are shameless...
@rachelwolfeThanks a lot for the hint!! When you are checking in Willow Creek and Newcrest, is there a pattern about which lots tend to break first? Are these especially big lots or just always the same lot locations? I wonder where I should load into to see if I have this issue yet, I randomly loaded into 1 per neighbourhood in Willow and Newcrest and all surrounding lots still look like the one I had placed. Is it mainly these 2 worlds where it's good to check regularly? And are you visiting them in live mode or build mode when you observe the surrounding lots to be wrong?
I can answer some of your questions. For me houses disappear when there are too many lots/sims in the worlds. There is some kind of threshold of lots and sims for when the game gets buggy and the lots disappear. I haven't found out when this happens exactly and I don't play with big lots.
My workaround with this issue is to not play with every pack and to delete lots in worlds I don't use. It's best to just focus on a few packs and worlds and then you should be save from this game corruption. The more packs and worlds you use, the faster your save will get corrupt. Hope this helps.
@karoschmitz The ones that tend to break first for me are Oakenstead in Willow Creek (most common) and Asphalt Abode in Newcrest. But I've seen other people further back on this thread say it started for them in Magnolia Promenade, or I think even in Del Sol Valley for one person, so it isn't completely consistent--but it's not completely random, either. Lots of people get Oakenstead first, specifically. So I guess check there on occasion?
@indywaraThanks so much for sharing! 🙏
I remember Sims 3 had this work around that it asked you to only use a few packs at a time, but for Sims 4 this has never been communicated by EA, which makes me think it is not intendend that way and will hopefully be still a bug they fix. (fingers crossed!)
The main reason why I buy all packs is to have more worlds in my save and all the gameplay additions to extend my gameplay with at the same time. It would be really really sad to have to remove packs, especially as I only play with 1 save (I'm playing rotationally). It wouldn't be an option for me, but then again when the save corrupts I would also try to find ways to save it, even if it meant deleting some lesser used lots..
But ultimately I think I would stop playing, as this would be an issue that frustrates so much, that it would outweigh the happiness and relaxation of playing.. 😔
I wonder if it is naive to hope for a fix from EA after all this time now..
I wish EA would at least communicate to us, what insights they have so far - what the actual limitations are, so we can work around them instead of risking to ruin our saves because they didn't share their information..
More bad news from EA. Looks like they won't be working on this bug on the next update.
See also the last several pages of: :
@karoschmitz I just load the lots in build mode, and look for whether the surrounding lots look like defaults or like what I've placed. This is super easy to spot in Newcrest, because if the surrounding lots are blank again, I've got the bug. Oakenstead is more common to break first, but more tricky since there's only one other lot in that neighborhood, so you have to make sure you replace the Spencer-Kim-Lewis house with something really distinctive in order to check there.
Has anyone who hasn’t downloaded lots from the gallery had this bug? The gallery seems like very much a common theme
Clearly all saves always keep the copy or original lots. That makes me think that, for each lot, the game is only storing a reference to the new lot. Perhaps, when the new lots are downloaded from the gallery, it stores them differently somehow, and eventually loses the reference.
It would be quite common to do a check/condition like this in the code: if reference is not null then grab the referenced object. Else, grab the default. That would explain why it reverts to the default.
I haven’t played this game for ages, so honestly can’t even remember if any of non-gallery-downloaded lots was ever corrupted (most of my lots were from the gallery)
From the latest patch:
Memory Efficiency
Various enhancements have been made to save memory across all platforms, helping the game run more smoothly and reducing crashes.
Would anyone be willing to test if this helps with any precorrupted saves or corrupted saves?
The reason I ask is because a lot corruption may be tied to memory, especially with how protobuffers are handled by the game. Updates in regards to memory may not help fix already broken lots but if someone has a save that they know is close to corruption, they may be able to test if the changes have prevented corruption from occurring
Unfortunately the new update hasn't fix this bug. I tried putting another lot in Willow Creek and right away my other lots disappeared and turn into default lots.
