Re: [ARCHIVED] Quality of plants not/very slowly progressing/ No evolve

Hi @Infynyx

The bug template seems to be back in working condition. Could you edit the first post for me and add all the info ? Thanks 

I might have some more insight on this issue. It seems to me that there's a few problems here. I've also tested with no mods and they occur.

1. Fertilizing the garden sometimes the fertilizer doesn't stick. I can tell my sim to fertilize the same plant over and over sometimes it just doesn't stick. I do line up 2 or 3 at a time, I don't know if that matters since they perform the animation over the plant I assume it's handled. Also my plants are all in 2x2 planters in a line (as close as they can be) indoors. It would be nice if I could fertilize the whole box instead of single plants.

2. I've noticed 3 separate times now plants showing the evolve sparkle, but then the sparkle vanishes and they're back to 2/3rds or 1/2 the way towards evolving. This always happens between excellent and magnificent (or perhaps that's just where I personally am sticking) which means nothing progresses past excellent unless I am watching and catch it and my sim gets herself over there in time. It's VERY subtle.

3. When I fertilize plants within a sim hour many want to evolve but if I don't make it in time the plants evolve thing vanishes.

4. Bees and fertilizer appear to have no effect because of the vanishing evolve status (It's VERY SUBTLE, you wouldn't even notice the sparklies in time if you weren't watching only the garden)....however so far bees have only triggered evolve on a handful of plants in my garden which suggests that maybe some plants are broken and others not.

5. Hiring a gardener and keeping the plants tended appears to have no effect. I have noticed that the plants don't appear to have wet soil a lot in my game unless I specifically water all versus tend garden.

I forced my rose to evolve into magnificent and it's not moved an inch past half way towards the next level, despite fertilizing it twice and also despite being loved by bees and tended daily. It evolved to that point and has not budged since. I really hope this info helps.

Wow. I haven't had ANY of that occur on mine. And I use gardening all the time.

It's very annoying. I've done a game repair and folder refresh as well on multiple occasions. Also you wouldn't notice the evolve vanishing, it is so subtle you would think you were crazy. I only noticed because my rose finally had the sparkles. I clicked on it to be sure and evolve was there but I wanted to finish what my sim was doing with the bees first..when she was done I clicked the rose and it was gone. If I hadn't been checking the rose every time my sim was gardening and gardening at that exact moment I'd never have seen it. It only flashed once or twice before vanishing.

Yes to all of those. I even started a new household in CAS and went and harvested the old one (to start with better harvest). I definitely have checked without cc because you shouldn't be reporting anything here without checking that first. I have started new saves but I did import my old family from the gallery with the harvest on them. I've started a couple of new saves. This broke for me with one of the updates but I can't remember which one. It used to be pretty frequent that plants needed evolving so much so that I got an evolve all mod because it was annoying LOL. I removed that last week to double check it wasn't causing any issues though and no changes. Also played for two seasons (spring and summer) without mods after my refresh.

Theoretically it could be a save issue but I think it's a game one because new saves only evolve up to excellent as well. Wish I could figure it out.

@yuk75

Well, it's not a game issue because then it'd be doing it for everyone else. I've got well over 3,000 hours in The Sims and I've never seen anything like that in mine.

The only thing else easy I can think of is remove all your mods and CC, everything from the mods folder. Then start a new world with a new household and see if you get the same results.

If you've tried all of that, and it STILL has the issue... I'd consider doing a clean data folder. Basically back up your entire Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4 folder somewhere and wipe the entire thing and start clean. It's a bit extreme but you've tried everything else, right?

I've literally done all of that, nothing helps. It could be something specific with my game versus yours because I am seeing lots of complaints online everywhere about this ranging from plants not evolving to wanting a fertilize all button because they're having trouble getting perfect plants. 75 of those people clicked me too on this issue as well. It could be a specific combination of packs or that I once paid for deluxe but don't now. It could be the order I bought the packs or maybe an update just borked on some people. Who knows, it's obviously rare and unclear what the issue and cause are but that doesn't mean it's not real. It could be a specific game item or way we're building or placing them. It could be pure chance and all but 4 of my plants have it and only one of yours has it and therefore you don't notice. Look close at your plants and see if any of them don't evolve past any level...you might be surprised to notice your garden of a long time has only low level plants.

I've heard people say to me it's because of an old update changing plant values and fertilizing so I got new plants. I've heard people say debug plants are buggy so I made sure not to use those. It could be an error or something tripping for me or who knows what. I've seen software error for different people for no real reason before. I used to work with forums and I've seen some weirdness just because it didn't like the server or a file transferred as ascii instead of binary or someone didn't end the file right and left off ?> which shouldn't matter but for some servers meant the website broke completely. We all have different environments...the game won't behave the same for everyone in every situation.

@yuk75I just did it twice more on two different saves. 1 sim week from normal to perfect. All plants evolved just fine.

Some of them I used fertilizer, all of them used the beehive. They evolve just about daily until they hit perfect in about a week. One was an alien sim who was a spy, one was a sim I had in the acting career. Different lots, different saves, both in Newcrest.

I don't know. I've done gardening so many times I know it backwards and forwards. I've never had anything not evolve. In fact it's far too fast. 1 week to evolve all plants to perfect? I might write my own mod that nerfs it quite a bit.

Mind sharing your save?

That's exactly how I play too, since I started the game I've been trying to achieve a perfect garden. It's gone through hundreds of sims and saves being passed down each generation and I restart it with new saves.

Did you have your plants indoors? I think that might be part of my problem. They're supposed to take longer indoors but they just stop.

Save here, go to Forgotten Hollow and then click the big house on the right side, should have Rochelle Grissom in it and her man and baby. The rose stuck on magnificent is in the front row. This garden came from her mother and from my sim before that who came from another sim so this garden should have better plants by now.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lbCL1SLF5yZ_pxSypF6whLvuKs7brAMe

Hoping @SimGuruNick or @crinrict can also see my earlier posts regarding what I think the issue is and can take a look too. I hope it sheds some insight. If it's perfectly working for you all then I don't know what I will do I will have to completely wipe my system. It happens for me with and without mods.

@yuk75I just looked into the tuning files. I was hoping I could slow mine down some. It appears plants evolve and grow 400% faster outdoors, and I always have mine outdoors. The high speed is likely due to the fact that most plants only grow 1 season a year. I know they (most plants) spawn more fruit/flowers outdoors also, which is why I always have them outside.

I'll look at your save and see what I can tell is going on.

I think I solved this @crinrict @Psychotps

So tonight I bought dine out, spa day, outdoor retreat, and jungle adventure leaving the ONLY pack I don't have as strangerville. I specifically chose these because I wanted the first two and I know OR adds herbalism and new plants so I wanted to ensure I had all the plants the game has.

On loading the game (after updating mods of course) 3 plants said evolve me. I evolved them, these plants were not ready to evolve before then. The next day 4 or 5 more evolved. Today is day 3 and my whole garden is sparkly evolves and my rose has gone up to almost evolve level from half way past magnificent!!!!!!! This is the first time my rose has EVER moved past excellent since I've had these issues!!!!! I've played for generations with this plant and it's been the same.

I have a hunch it's outdoor retreat. I obviously can't prove that because I wanted all the packs at once LOL. Please if one of you has the power please add this info to the topic, this is a real issue even if it is rare. 75 people me-too'ed this and I see posts about it all the time. If it really is that some update broke plants if you don't have one of these game packs you can probably fix it pretty simply....at least now you know for sure and I gave insight into the evolve triggering then vanishing in an earlier post.

For the record my sims both have super green thumb and every sim I've worked with has this. Their lots always have good soil. They've always fertilised with growfruit. Until I started testing this heavily they all had gardeners who had super green thumb trait. They would talk to the pants, keep bees, etc too. All of my sims have maxed garden skill and same with gardeners. There's no reason for my rose to have not budged in sim years (where seasons are weeks) and then to suddenly when I install these packs to actually have some movement. And the rose isn't the only one it was all of my plants bar maybe 4 total, it's just easier to track one. I will come back and complain if it stops again but for now it seems to finally be moving forward. Getting perfect plants has been my one goal since this game started and now it finally feels achievable.

Oh and please try my save, let me know if it works in your game or not. And let me know what packs you have :D.

@yuk75I have all packs.

I played it for 2 sim weeks. I never fertilized any, just relied on the bees. They all were evolving just fine. It was pretty slow. Granted, you have a LOT of plants, over 50. Although, even indoors, I was expecting the evolve rates to be much higher than it was. I think it was due to the sheer number of plants. I'm wondering if the game only evolves a certain number of plants per day? Everything was working fine though.

As a test, I removed the walls and ceiling around the greenhouse area to see if the rates went up being not "sheltered". It went up but not nearly as much as it is in my own saves. That may reinforce my theory that it only evolves a few per day. I never got more than 4 evolves a day.

I never usually have more than 14-15 plants and they evolve like lightning outdoors. I've never had 56. I may try a LOT of plants on one of my own households some time to see if the evolve rates are lower.

In your save, during the first week I had 20 evolves. After week 2 four of them were perfect. So, it's working fine.

I'm not sure what the problem was, something by not having certain packs? Not sure what that could be. 

I really think it's outdoor retreat. Since installing it (and admittedly those other packs) I've had ALL of my plants evolve some of them 2 times in just 4 days of gameplay. I think it might do 4 at a time, but it's happening all day, I think I had 8 total on day 1 and close to 16 or more on day 2. I REALLY hope that this provides the insight they are looking for. I don't know why it's causing issues NOT to have OR, but it's doing it. Also the amount of plants as you said maybe that's causing issues too.

If you do a search for people looking for auto fertilizers you'll find a LOT of simmers with this problem but they just don't know it's this problem they are trying to evolve through fertilizer but it's not working, they think it's them missing plants and want to get a fertilize all option..The error/issue is SO SUBTLE you genuinely wouldn't notice it on a normal playthrough. You'd only notice if you were sitting there staring at it (which I was doing because I had to solve this).

You don't know what a RELIEF this is for me. I play my game this way with plants every single time and to find out my garden isn't even past nice in 3 generations was genuinely soul crushing. I build them all pretty close to the same way also. Now I have OR I'm going to need a bigger garden LOL. My rose is SO CLOSE to evolving and I am terrified it won't now but I'm doing everything I can to push it forward :D. I have a chance now, if this is really solved :D.

Jungle Adventure also has several new plants.

I did add that one also because of the plants, but it came out a while after the error started for me so I didn't think it had anything to do with it...but because it did have plants I didn't want to risk it.

Also hoping that other me too peeps can confirm the packs they have.

I've all packs and plants indoors that are "sheltered" don't seem to evolve, ones that are outside do progress.