Why Is This By Design? Non CC Lot is Flagged as having CC
Hello. This is constructive feedback for the Sims 4 in regards to "Paint by Reference" paintings, and photos that you get from the base game Photography skill.
But before I elaborate, I wanted to answer some common questions.
"Do you have Mods or Custom Content?"
No
"Did you repair your game?"
Yes
"Did you clear your localthumbcache?"
Yes
"What are you playing on?"
PC, Windows 10, through the Origin Game Launcher
"What version are you on?"
1.67.45.1020
What packs do you have?
- Expansions: Get To Work, Get Together, City Living, Cats and Dogs, Seasons, Get Famous, Island Living, Discover University
- Game Packs: Outdoor Retreat, Spa Day, Dine Out, Vampires, Parenthood, Jungle Adventure, Strangerville, Realm of Magic
- Stuffpacks: all stuff packs except Nifty Knitting, Tiny Living, Moschino Stuff and My First Pet Stuff
"Did you try in a clean new save?"
Yes
"Did you use cheats?
testingcheats on
bb.moveobjects
motherlode
bb.showhiddenobjects and bb.showliveeditobjects
I used debug objects to decorate the lot
Issue Number One: lots that have pictures from the photography skill ("Take a selfie," "Take Photo," "Take Photo of..." and "Take photo with...") on the lot flag the lot as having Custom Content or Mods, when no cc or mods are present. It does the same thing to "Paint by reference" paintings where you instruct a sim to paint something by reference.
Photos
My sims 4 folder
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My sims 4 Mods Folder
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Screenshots of the issues
My Garden Essence lot renovation without the photographs on the wall
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A room in my Gallery that I've saved that has the photographs i want to use to decorate my house. Notice how it is filtered under Custom Content.
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A close up shot of the photos that I want to use in my build
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What happens after I upload this to my library after decorating my build with my photos
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How Did This Happen: I tested two ways.
The first way was that I was playing the game in live mode and I had my sim take photos. I took the photos from her inventory and put them up onto the walls of the house, then I went into build mode and saved it to my library. The custom content flag still existed.
Another time I put the photos onto the wall, saved and went to go manage worlds and tried to save the lot to my library from there. The custom content flag still existed.
What I expect: I expect my builds to not be flagged with "contains CC" when I'm using built-in features in the game as intended. I'm using the photography skill to take photos and decorate my builds and tell a story. I'm not using the photography skill to cheese the gallery and reupload custom content paintings and i'm not trying to steal other people's work. If this is by design, I don't really understand why.
Some Consideration: I know there was a patch in the past that changed how paintings and photographs work to combat against players uploading paintings and photos to the gallery who would put down Custom Content paintings (either made by themselves or stolen from legitimate CC creators) and they would "Paint by Reference" these images and upload them to the gallery so everybody could download them. In most cases, it was stealing and very unfair.
My Feedback: however, I take issue with the way this was implemented because it "punishes" EVERYONE and limits creativity and flexibility. I don't really know how to solve the problem though. There's a conflict of needs: I want to be able to tell the stories I want and be creative, but we can't have people stealing CC paintings and reuploading them onto the gallery by using the "paint by reference" feature. I know that there are technical limitations with the game and that there isn't going to be a perfect solution, but this doesn't really help.
