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BiffaBaker's avatar
BiffaBaker
6 years ago

Multiple household gameplay flaws in single save file (rotational play)

I’ve seen some bug threads already, where most of the responses is it’s normal.  But I’d like to give some feedback on rotational game play. What I mean by that is multiple households in one save file where you switch between them. 

Previous Sims households would ‘freeze’ when you played another household in the same save file.  You can change aging only for active household, but the world still moves on. 

- work/school performance will go from good or excellent to average or poor.

- if you return in the middle of the day, you’ll find your sims are missing work or school

- if you have DU, any time passed means you’ve missed classes and usually you’ll return to that household to find you’re either on academic probation or suspended 

- pregnancies will move on without you.  Including giving birth and the baby will get a randomly generated name (note, the baby won’t age up if you leave the household alone)

- your family relationships take a hit and decrease the longer you’re away (even though time is frozen?)

I just don’t understand why this happens when every other sims game would freeze your household.  It makes multiple households in one save file really aggravating.  Now I have to have new save files and can’t really do generations anymore.   I don’t think this was a good addition to the game personally. 

gameplay issue

2 Replies

  • CGrant56's avatar
    CGrant56
    Hero+
    6 years ago

    @BiffaBaker  Are you playing with aging on for the non-active households and NPCs?  You can shut that off in Game Options - Gameplay by changing Auto Age (Played Sims) to Active Household Only and unchecking Auto Age (Unplayed Sims).  That way, only the active household will age.  Work and school performance will be unchanged from when you played a household last.  You will still return to a lot and find the sims standing outside but you can just send them on their way from the career panel and there shouldn't be any performance drop.  One way to avoid some of it is to always switch households in the middle of the night or on a weekend.  the game does use playable sims that are not in the active household to fill a number of roles like walkbys, dance parties, etc.

    Pregnancies will continue though so it's a good idea to just wait to switch households until after the baby is born and named.

    DU forces you to play through a term once started so you should play until you get the grades for the current term before switching.

    If you are playing on a PC or Mac and are willing to use a mod, MCCC will stop the relationship decay.  Nothing to be done about the motive drops except to cheat them with the debug Make Happy cheat.  

    I play a sort of rotation, just not a strict one on a firm schedule, and have a lot of households and always deal with these things when I return to a household after playing several others.  Sometimes I play households a week, a season or even a full year.  Other times I play to a certain event like a birthday or just after a holiday ends.  But I always try to avoid having things happen in a household when I'm off playing another one. 

    Hope this helps.

  • BiffaBaker's avatar
    BiffaBaker
    6 years ago

    NPC aging is off.  Active household aging is on.

    So I now have to plan when I return to households when in previous games they would freeze in time.  This is my exact point.  Pregnancies shouldn’t move on, friendships shouldn’t decline, work performance shouldn’t decrease.  That’s my point.

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