Please Share Your Entire Personal Bug List With Us

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? 1.89.214.1030
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? All of it.
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Play the game.
What happens when the bug occurs? Depends on which bug.
What do you expect to see? Ideally no bugs, but I'd happily settle for 'less' bugs.
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Yes
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? Neutral/Not Sure 

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Hear Me Out

Until now, we've dealt with our bugs on a case by case basis - basically one topic per thread. However, perhaps it's time we step back and look at the bigger picture. I won't pretend to know anything about computers or code, but maybe the reason bugs aren't being fixed is because we've been focused on the individual puzzle pieces rather than the picture as a whole.

I've followed this forum for years, though I've mostly kept quiet. Truth is, I've wanted to compare my experience with other Sims gamers for ages, but it's hard for my neurodivergent brain to tackle one issue per topic. I'm not hardwired to separate one glitch from another. To me, it's all connected: Problem A leads to issues with B, which in turn causes C to glitch and affect the way D happens, etc. Now, I admit that my PC ignorance could be WAY off the mark here ... But it couldn't hurt to try something new, right? Comparing issues and collecting (hopefully) relevant data sounds logical enough.

So, below, I've compiled a list of the bugs that I am currently aware of in my game. I've categorized them to the best of my abilities for easier reading. I'm open to any feedback anyone might have for my personal gameplay, and I'd also like to hear your own compiled list of glitches in your game - with as much detail as you're willing to share!

(Sidenote: I'm NOT opposed whatsoever to hearing personal frustrations with how your gaming issues affected you mentally and emotionally - Let's face it. We're all messed up in our own ways and gameplay gets enormously frustrating at times. Plus, with so many problems being botched or overlooked, venting might be our only form of consolation.

Universal Gameplay Issues

- Nasty issues that seem to be affecting a majority of gamers -

⦁ TODDLERS! ... Need I say more? They have been glitchy since the day they were released, most particularly in regards to their needs, which decay rapidly, fill slowly, and are plagued with routing and action queue failures. They essentially require a stay-at-home parent or live-in player-controlled babysitter, otherwise face the consequences of their two care options. The option of sending them to daycare means to neglect their needs for the duration that they're there. Gone for a couple of hours, they'll be fine, but gone for a full work shift, and they'll need most/all of their needs immediately addressed when home. And going on vacation without them is a guaranteed way to get out of parenthood, as child services will take them away as soon as you return home and see your toddler has starved to near-death. Option two isn't as lethally buggy as the first option, but it requires a typist to gamble. Calling a nanny means opting to play glitchy-NPC-Roulette, where your toddler MAY be taken care of, but those odds are just as likely as the nanny not showing up at all, or the nanny showing up just to watch TV and ignore the household minors as they slowly perish, or the nanny won't leave when their services are no longer required (and nothing short of deleting them from world will get them out of the house). Essentially, the best toddler caregivers are controllable characters - and even they suck.
⦁ Acquiring collectibles has become quite a chore over time, whether because of design or bugs. Either way, simmers have complained about it now for years and it's only gotten worse. The collectibles found in the wild take several days to respawn, if they respawn at all. And seeing as how collections are important to certain aspirations, it shouldn't be as hard as it is. For example, to complete the frog collection, it took my sim around 70 in-game days to finish, because logs and pumps just wouldn't respawn, despite camping at one for several days. I ended up having to stalk ponds, purchase them from venders, and breed them like crazy to finally get it done. The tediousness was not fun gameplay as it left little time for me to do much else. Other collections can only be achieved by cheats, like the wands and brooms from RoM. You can visit vendors, search around, and dual to your hearts content, but there are a handful of items you'll never see because they're impossible to collect.
⦁ The CAS skin sliders are unforgiving and unaccommodating when it comes to biracial children. The idea of incorporating so many skintones is a beautiful sentiment, but the categorizing of the colours needs a lot of work. The current design lacks the ability to discriminate shades against races. The skin colour options for biracial offspring need to be able to include shade boundaries, while excluding colour differences. A black person with no red undertones and a white person with no red undertones shouldn't be having children that look like lobsters - that's NOT a midpoint.
⦁ Like many others, my sims have this unquenchable desire to socialize with others (especially others that aren't even on the lot). Their action queues are constantly being disrupted by chatty people on neighbouring lots, or if there's a gathering larger than 1x1. They prioritize unsolicited socialization with random townies before responding to actual necessary commands I've given them - some of them being basic needs. Being late for work/school became such an issue that I now have to have a collection of solitary activities littering my lawns, that I can set them up with an hour before they have to leave and they won't be distracted by the hot gossip. The price for this little workaround is curb appeal ... it looks like crap, and it pulls me out of the realism of gameplay.
⦁ I haven't been able to have a job as a doctor or a detective without using cheats since the expansion launched. The scenarios required to receive the accompanying promotion are inconsistent at best. I've accompanied countless doctors to the hospital for their shifts; Spent too much time and energy on performing trivial tasks to keep their performance bar up, and still after weeks of patience, the scenario is never triggered. Released on March 31, 2015 and seven years later, I've yet to see a sim needing a baby delivered, and have only performed about ten surgeries in all that time. Meanwhile, I'd had good luck with the detective career for a year or two after it launched, but then it also glitched. Most of the time, the suspects aren't in the vicinity I've been sent to arrest them, and on the couple of occasions they were, they wouldn't spawn back at headquarters for the interrogation.
⦁ ............... And do I dare even mention the uber-glitch with RESTAURANTS? Because honestly, I don't even care anymore - I just simply DO NOT CARE! A couple of years ago, I cared a lot, as the most pleasure I had in playing the Sims 3 was from owning my own businesses. And so like an idiot, I waited patiently on the promised bug fixes that had made my game unbearable to play. After all, EA/Maxis recognized their responsibility for the issues in the game, so I felt confident that a solution would come ... I could never have predicted how much they'd let me down. If nothing else, EA has taught me that recognition of one's faults does NOT go hand-in-hand with accountability. Essentially, they sold us a janky product, spent years promising their consumers that they'd fix it, only they didn't fix it, and instead launched twenty NEW products, and some of them were as inoperative as that first unplayable game. Me, like so many others, were literally caught in the cycle of abuse, though rather than physical or emotional pain, we were being taken advantage of financially - the realization made me honestly question my consumer loyalty. In the end, I stayed with my offender ... obviously. But at least it's not out of false pretenses this time. I realize (as I'm sure many of you do, too), that our relationship with EA is one-sided. We aren't viewed as people who play games, we are seen as dollar signs that may or may not be people. Coming to terms with this notion allows me to avoid most unpleasant thoughts about the company, and relieve them of any expectations I might have had. --- With that out of the way, I will quickly list my game bugs so that I can return to pretending the pack doesn't exist:
— My hosts often don't show up, which means nobody can be seated
— If my host DOES show up, there's a good chance I'll be missing other employees
— Even when my cooks DO show up, it takes a few sim hours for them to enter
— About 1/2 the time, meals don't get delivered to their tables
— Sims are too busy walking around and chatting to actually eat their ordered food
— Sims finishing their drink before their food stop eating, don't pay, and won't leave
— In the rare event that a customer actually makes it through dining, waiters rarely autonomously clean up, and when they do, they leave stacks of dishes everywhere

(and yes, I've been sure not to have ANYTHING on the walls anywhere near sinks, dishwashers, waiter stations, etc.)

Personal Gameplay Disturbers

- Distressing issues that seem to be affecting only a few people -

⦁ Babies' portraits often appear dark-skinned, even when both parents are white and/or the baby appears white during gameplay.
⦁ The game lags anytime menus are accessed. Depending on which menu it is dictates how long it freezes. Social menus can take a few seconds to load, while using the fridge or stove causes the game to seize for around ten seconds.
⦁ Sims are constantly 'trolling the forums', even when they have personality traits that contradict a desire to be mischievous, and/or regardless of their social or fun needs.
⦁ Sims excessively seek out sinks to pour themselves a glass of water to drink. Sims with autonomy leave empty glasses all over the house, and their obsession with drinking water often disrupts their previously lined up action queue.
⦁ If there is a coffee/tea machine on the lot, autonomous sims always want to fill it. However, sims rarely drink it once it is brewed, which leads to spoiled contents in the machine, that will then require a sim to clean out, and then when left with a clean and empty machine, the autonomous need to fill it will strike again and set off the vicious, neverending cycle.
⦁ Sims' body templates in CAS are randomly changed during gameplay, effecting structural components such as foot length, shoulder/hip width, beast size/buoyancy, etc (This is NOT a fat/muscle issue, that can be corrected by adjusting the sliders - It requires going into fulleditmode, re-selecting the body template they originally had and editing their body details manually). This is hugely detrimental to a legacy game, as it's impossible to emulate every body detail that descendants may have inherited from previous generations; In other words, sims can't reliably pass their body genetics down to their children ... And meanwhile, passing on genetics is half the fun.
⦁ DISHES! ... Need I say more? ... Can't have cabinets, shelves or decor items placed above a sink or dishwasher otherwise they render the item useless. Also, it seems that almost all sims prefer leaving their dishes out unless they specifically have the 'neat' trait, and when the sims ARE directed to wash dishes, every dish must be selected individually. The process might be more tedious if not for the bug that causes sims to leave the majority of their dishes specifically on a coffee table, regardless of how many open surfaces there are in between the sim and said coffee table. And, there are also times that gamers can't even direct sims to clean the dishes because the menu option doesn't recognize the garbage cans that are easily made accessible on the lot, prompting the typist to drag and drop the item manually in the trash (which I consider a step above cheating), use another sim who doesn't have the option greyed out, or wait out an unspecified amount of time before the option decides to become available again. Sometimes it doesn't even take long to recognize the can - at least it's time comparable to the bathroom-sink-bug, where the sim bypasses using any sink or dishwasher close to them, and instead use the sink furthest away from them ... However, none of these bugs is as big of a nuisance as the hidden-dish-glitch, where the active sim is charged with cleaning up the pile of dirty dishes, and all they manage to do is pick them up and set them back down again, which is indicative of a dirty dish that is not accessible for a sim to reach. Often times, the dirty unit is placed down by a glitchy toddler in a place it shouldn't be ... and the only solution is to find it, which isn't always easy. After searching the entire house with a fine-tooth comb, you end up locating them on an utterly high shelf, underneath tables or desks that don't even have free slots to place additional items, a half-wall, or just randomly floating somewhere between objects or near the ceiling/roof, not attached to any surface whatsoever. So many bugs with a seemingly simple task!
⦁ The neighbourhood story options are too aggressive, whether by design or not. It creates townie drama so obtrusive, that it's distracting (and detrimental) to the active household. Every single day, it causes a handful of townies to die in accidents, another handful to get pregnant, and a few more to either adopt a child or a pet (every household, whether in-world or not, seems determined to achieve maximum household occupancy) . Odder still, it uprooted most of the townies from their home lots in favour of being homeless. And worst yet, the option to disable the feature isn't working properly, so the simmer has no choice but to play alongside the needless sideshow.
⦁ TODDLERS! ... Again, need I say more? Adult interactions with toddlers are problematic and the option to take care of them with a playable character wouldn't seem so ideal if the other options weren't so atrociously bad. You can't have high chairs around, unless you constantly prevent the adult from excessively putting the toddler in one, nor can you give them a sippy cup or put them to bed without them refusing to nourish or sleep undisturbed. All the while, every action queued to take care of them will be interrupted by their own autonomous actions and inability to walk (even after maximizing the movement skill), as well as anyone in the house that is autonomously and excessively using 'check toddler' - a bug that disrupts the toddler's queue even with they're receiving care from another.

General Annoyances

- Issues that are irksome, but doesn't interfere with gameplay to ragequit -
⦁ Can't view a number of gallery lots properly, due to the foliage in the thumbnail obscuring the image of the lot.
⦁ Almost every upload I've made to the gallery has been marked as 'modded', though I've never downloaded a single CC content item in all the years I've been playing.
⦁ Most of my townies are Asian(ish)-looking with Asian names. It's not the worst glitch in the game, but it does get boring when I want to track my family tree's generational development ... and after only one or two generations, my descendants all appear to be Asian (despite the inclusive role that race plays in my played household). No Europeans, no Africans, no Natives - No diversity.