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Jehane40's avatar
Jehane40
Rising Ace
5 days ago

What is wrong with this household?

For context: In Fall '23, I created a household consisting of two female Sims. They were married from the start, and both have the loyal trait. They are both family-oriented. This was the second household I added to this save, a couple of months before Lovestruck was released.

However, from the very beginning, both had this inclination to flirt with other Sims - which I didn't let them do. One of them accidentally complimented another Sim on their clothes, but that was just the one time, and I have avoided similar actions ever since. Whenever these two interacted, both had the dialogue option "confess betrayal" even though nothing had happened.

I tried to ignore this, though it really started to annoy me after a while. I have autonomy on, and at some point, I disabled neighbourhood stories for all my played households. I can't remember the exact date, though, but it's been a while. 

When Lovestruck came out, things got even more annoying with this household because whenever I didn't play with them, they showed up somewhere in the world stargazing with someone else. One of them even took off to stargaze with someone else while I was playing with them. I disabled attraction so they wouldn't be attracted to other Sims but only to each other. Romance bars are full. 

I disabled the option to have Sims from my gallery show up on the dating app because at one point, the game duplicated one of them and put her clone on Sulani while the other one showed up on the dating app. Fun fact: the game did this only with these two. 

Nothing worked. By now, they are both getting options to hit on their best friends, ask random Sims to enter a woohoo partnership, flirt with pretty much everybody... and just now I found out that one of them got married to an NPC Sim somewhere along the way. I have absolutely no idea when, how or why this happened. I didn't even know it was possible for a Sim to have two spouses, and I have no idea who this NPC Sim even is because I don't pay attention to random townies. 

Something about this household is SO broken, and I can't figure out what it is. This is pretty much the only household that's behaving completely illogically, and not just when it comes to romance. Recently, I sent both of them to the Realm of Magic to discard their magical powers; they were not honing and using those anyway, so I figured they no longer need them. However, one of them can still use her broomstick for flying, even though her magical abilities are gone and the broomstick is no longer in her inventory.

At this point, I am so annoyed with this household that I hardly ever play with them at all, yet I don't want to abandon them completely because they are part of the world and the storytelling I created over the past years (the save's turning 3 in a couple of months). 

If anybody has any idea where these problems might come from and how to solve them, I'd be really grateful. Especially for a solution to the stupid "oh no, I cheated even though I didn't do anything"-bit. Granted, the one who got married to a second Sim off-screen DID cheat, after all, but like I said, the fretting has been there right from the start for both her and her real wife. Since my save is growing and I keep adding households, these two will very likely end up sharing a Sim week with another household which will minimize the annoyance for me. Still, I'd really like to get to the bottom of this.

Oh, and I don't use any mods or CC. I play plain vanilla, verify the files regularly and clear the EA app's cache. 

advice
discussion
gameplay issue
never cc or mods

3 Replies

  • Jehane40's avatar
    Jehane40
    Rising Ace
    1 day ago

    I think I figured it out. I went back into the game yesterday and removed all preferences tied to romance for both Sims. However, they were unable to interact romantically with each other afterwards - no flirting, no physical interactions other than offering a massage, nothing. Both were still in a flirty mood, though, and when I checked their social contacts, they both were listed as romantic partners for the other one. For some reason, I clicked on "show profile"... and that's when I saw that for some reason or other, the game considered them to be siblings AND spouses. There was no way to change this in CAS, so I quit the game without saving, then went back in. Only one of them was labeled "sister" for the other, and only in CAS. The second I removed the romance-related dialogue options, both profile cards flagged them as siblings. Deleting the second spouse from the world didn't do anything to change that, either.

    Now I haven't dealt with resetting their relationship yet, but I suspect that the "sister"-label may have been there from the day I created them. It would explain why they have been behaving erratically from the start. For all I know, I accidentally clicked "sibling" for one of them in CAS and "spouse" for the other one, then saved them both without making sure I had chosen the correct options. Or maybe it's just that infamous sibling bug.

    Either way, I was unable to remove the sibling bit via CAS, or cheats, and since I don't want to use the workaround where I save one of them to the library, then delete her from the household, re-download her, and fix all her relationships, I've now installed MCCC to get rid of the sibling label. Once that's done, I'll move that household to the bottom of my priority list and only play them for a bit when I feel like it. I was running out of ideas on what to do with them anyway, so in terms of gameplay and storytelling, paying them less attention won't be such a big deal. 

  • Jehane40's avatar
    Jehane40
    Rising Ace
    4 days ago

    Thanks! That might be worth a try. I'll try a couple of other things before that, though:

    - delete the localthumbcache.package file
    - delete any copies/clones of that household that may still linger in the Gallery - I assume there are a few because I more or less regularly save my households to the Gallery in case anything happens
    - use the cheat console to remove the loyal trait
    - maybe remove that townie one of them married just in case
    - check their likes/dislikes in CAS and disable every single one that might mess with them

    If none of this works, I'll try the remove/delete/redownload approach, even though that means all their relationships with other Sims are lost, including friendships, but at this point, that's probably a small price to pay.

    In any case, I have decided to keep my playing time with them to a bare minimum = don't play them on every rotation. After almost three years playing this save, I have 18 households with 35 Sims total, and these two have started to feel a bit like a chore even before things got completely out of control. I think that's because some of my other Sims have become way more interesting and have better storylines, so checking in with them only occasionally won't feel like I'm missing out on something.

    On a side note:  I just found a thread on Reddit that addresses the problem of constant flirting. It seems it is related to Growing Together and the likes/dislikes system. I also just realised I created these two in Spring 2024, not in Fall '23. At that point, I had bought Growing Together (didn't have it when I created my first household), so maybe there's a connection there  🧐 It still doesn't explain why one of them got married off-screen, though. 

    I'm usually fine with the madness the game throws at me, like finding out one of my Sims had an alien baby after I left him. I usually roll with these, but in this case... nope. There's only so much madness I'm willing to handle. 

     

  • SatchenS's avatar
    SatchenS
    Seasoned Newcomer
    4 days ago

    If you upload the Household to the gallery. Remove the Household from the lot and delete them and then redownload the Household from the gallery back into your lot, does the issue persist? Because that’s really weird and it’s even weirder that they seem to be the only household in the save with the issue.

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