Any warnings? Haven't played in months...

So. Patch 1.92-1.93 introduced a few annoying (very) bugs. You did not say if you play on Console or PC, but if you're on Console, I would stay away until they fix it, as they ARE "game breaking" bugs.

1. The Mean Bug-
* This bug, makes all your Sims autonomously do the mean interactions to each other. It doesn't matter if you have Free Will on or not.
I played my Vanilla family for 2 Sim days immediately after this update. They were 99% friends and 60% Romantic partners when I
started my 2 days. After 2 days, they were -20 romance and -10 friends. After TWO DAYS. I have read other Simmers reports, That this
bug makes their game unplayable." and I would have to say, I completely agree with them. My Sims, when having a conversation
together, would choose the mean interactions (argue, insult, yell at, etc) 3 times in a row. It would sometimes override interactions I had
chosen, and I was unable to counter them with enough "nice" interactions to balance it out. As you see in my end relationship results, it
completely destroyed their relationship. I tested this with and without Mods, with the same result.

** There is some hope. Modder BossLadyTV has a Mean Bug mod, to temporarily address the problem. You can find it on CurseForge.

2. Need Bar Color Bug
* This bug is nothing if not annoying. When playing with your Sims, you know they have need bars, and its typically by the color that we
realize they need something. Well. The need bars are going down, but then staying the color they went down to. So, my Hunger for
instance, instead of slowly decaying throughout the day, it goes down to yellow, and then the whole bar will remain yellow. Other
Simmers have reported, "Their Sim's needs bar, not showing the correct color of their Sim, and that Sim dying or having an accident."
This has not been my experience, and I have been managing their bars with MCC for this reason. I have tested this with and without
Mods.

3. High School Student School Performance Not Increasing
* This might be tailored specifically to the new expansion pack, High School Years that just came out. I am not completely sure. I just bought this pack tho, (on Black Friday) and noticed that my Teen Sims, no longer gain any performance increases at school. It doesn't matter how much homework they do, how many notes they take, how many classes they attend, or how many exams they take. It remains the same. I have been cheating it with MCC. I have tested this, without and without Mods.

4. Aging Bug
---I did not personally experience this in my gameplay, and the claim was made that patch 1.93 fixed it, but I have seen reports from
other Simmers, that it is still a problem.
* Basically, you leave your lot, your Sim ages up. And you cannot stop it. Reports initially said it was only when playing with Aging
on. I play with aging off, so this might be why I never experienced it. I am not sure. Its a risk to take tho, if you play with aging on.
Initial reports from other Simmers were, "I left my lot, as an adult, aged into an elder, and the next time my Sim died." I've also seen,
"My Sim had a birthday as a child, left their lot for school, and immediately aged into a teen." -The "fix" was to play with aging off
until a fix could be established, then again, it also could have been fixed with patch 1.93, I did not experience this in my own
personal gameplay, and cannot really give you more on it personally.


That's all I know of for now. Some are very concerning, but the Mod Community has come thru until EA can for most of them. If its really a deal breaker for you, you can always play in Offline mode. I sometimes do this for months personally. I was on patch 1.89 prior to Black Friday when I bought the HSY expansion. XD

Happy Simming!~

@Amapola76 This was basically the question I was going to ask today in my own thread, but I found yours first. So I hope it's okay for me to pop in here, too, with some follow-up questions. @s_stutler It sounds like you are confirming some of the most serious bugs I've read about are persisting. As to the "mean bug" I thought that the problem was supposed to be fixed through the SDX this week. Have you downloaded the SDX already & found that it didn't fix the issue, or have you not downloaded the SDX yet?
I also took a few months off of playing The Sims 4 while going through a move. I've been playing catch-up on the current state of the game, reading the official Sims 4 Forum as well as Reddit. I was one of the lucky few who did not update right away when that disastrous HSY patch came out. In fact, I'm on the a patch before the pre-Werewolves patch was released, and I'm not sure if I should update yet, or wait...
Based on EA patch notes & forum posts I've read, and based on what you just shared here, it appears: 1) The terrible aging bug has been fixed for some players, but not others 2) Aging up with a birthday cake is fixed for children - adults, but not toddlers, for some reason 3) Expansion pack toggles for Get Famous & Cottage Living, etc. are now broken 4) You still cannot turn Wants & Fears off, and even if your Sim is doing well in their career, they constantly get sad moodlets for a "dead end job" and other things that don't make sense 5) I'm unsure if the so-called "Groundhog Day" bug is fixed.
I became a mod user out of necessity, to fix all the problems that never get fixed. I've been playing The Sims franchise since the beginning, in 2000. In all 3 previous games, I've used some CC, but never had to use so many mods to fix issues until now. I was in the process of building a custom save file, so I only have a few mods in right now needed for setup & some limited CC. I was hoping that in the few months I stepped away, things would be fixed, but it seems it is just as bad as it was then, if not worse.
If anyone reading this is patched to the most current patch / SDX, could you please tell me how your game is working, and does it have any of the problems listed above, or any other big problems? And could you play in an existing save, or did you have to start a new one? I wanted Werewolves, but am not interested in HSY, but it seems to be applying the pre-HSY patch, even without purchasing the expansion pack, will cause mass chaos, like all my sims being obsessed with their phones.
Any feedback you have on the current state of the game would be very much appreciated! Thank you!
And if I need to start my own thread, just let me know. I rechecked the rules for posting & it said to search first for your question, so that's why I came here first to post.
Thanks!

It's nice to know that need bar color bug is being experienced by other players.
I created my own trait and career mods. I was wondering if they were the reason.

Here is the current list of open issues
https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/READ-FIRST-Compiled-list-of-reported-Issues/m-p/3445209#M223825

Here are the "top 10" from that list.

Autonomous Insulting (Patch 1.92.145)
Washer/Dryer: Can't wash/dry clothes
Jumpy Animations/Sims teleport
Plants reverting to dirt pile (Patch 1.76.81)
Sims autonomously do mean interactions for no reason
Toddlers all look the same
Wants/Fears toggle stops working after travelling
Sims washing hands in sink in different bathroom
Routing/Sit down issue on several interactions
Scientist: Plants at science lab don't produce harvestables

Note that autonomous mean actions are listed twice, and both those threads were closed after last week's SDX patch which fixed it for many people. For those still experiencing the bug after last week's SDX (26 simmers so far), a new bug thread is here, and the team is asking for saves from affected simmers.
https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/OPEN-Autonomous-Insulting-After-SDX/m-p/12101836

The need bar color bug is caused by the Slice of Life mod for most people.
So far 14 simmers have been affected by this bug without mods, and the team is looking for saves, so if @CK213 @s_stutler or others have this bug in an unmodded game, please consider sending in your saves so the team can work on a fix
https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/NEEDS-SAVES-Needs-bar-doesn-t-change-color-Unmodded-Games/td-p/11705210

Yeah, the sameface toddler bug is the one that has been bothering me the most, personally. They've finally said they're gonna try to fix that by January, though. Which is pretty late, as it has been an issue since Werewolves, but at least they're finally doing something about it.

@Magdaleena I forgot that I read about the same face toddler bug! It would drive me nuts to update & then get that, as I play families. It's almost like another version of the "first born syndrome" in The Sims 2.
It's disconcerting to see that there are already 26 players still experiencing the rude Sims bug, despite the SDX that was supposed to fix it.
It's really alarming that they still haven't fixed the gardening/plant bug by now, given almost everyone has it. I know a modder created a fix for it, so EAxis should be able to provide us with an official fix by now.
The sink issue seems to persist, and I forgot I had seen the washer/dryer one mentioned a few times.
I would really like to get official fixes so that I can decrease my ever-growing mods folder to fix the bugs. I'm getting the feeling that it's never going to happen, after 22 yes of being invested in this franchise. They fix mostly CAS issues, like a Swatch or hair colour, because it's easy, and we're lucky if we get a single bug fix that doesn't cause several other things to break, too. It's hard when their are new packs & game features that I want that come with a patch or SDX, when the flip side is updating may cause me new, potentially worse issues than ever before.

@AalyahReed the more the merrier!

Thanks, all, for the insight. I only ended up playing a little while. I didn't encounter any of the bugs or issues others have mentioned, so that was a relief, but the lag has become just unreal. It was taking me 20-30 minutes to load a small household (1-3 sims on a small, minimal-clutter lot), which is approaching TS3 territory, but without all the added features TS3 had.

"Amapola76;c-18208411" wrote:
@AalyahReed the more the merrier!

Thanks, all, for the insight. I only ended up playing a little while. I didn't encounter any of the bugs or issues others have mentioned, so that was a relief, but the lag has become just unreal. It was taking me 20-30 minutes to load a small household (1-3 sims on a small, minimal-clutter lot), which is approaching TS3 territory, but without all the added features TS3 had.

Hm... My game is packed with cc, I own most of the larger packs, and I still play the 2014 save with 500? sims played. My computer is 6? years old, and was low-end even back then. I don't see much lag when entering lots, except from the real big lots like my royal palace. The smaller lots are still quite fast to load.

So, maybe you should see if you need to free up some space on your drive? Or, deleting some old saves and old posts in your local gallery? Maybe you have outdated mods that slow down things? Travel a bit, if other lots load faster there might be a problem with cc item on that specific residential lot? I'm pretty sure you can help on the situation rather easily. I recall just removing my screenshot folder helped a lot ;)

@AalyahReed - I did not add the SDX fix. I'm actually not sure what that even is. XD My game is updated with the most recent patch (1.93), and I am still using Origin (due to many reports of problems with the new loader) - and Origin is not telling me I need to add anything?

I am confused what this SDX is or where to get it.

@mightysprite - I do not play with the Slice of Life mod. I do not like some of the aspects of that Mod. I know others deem it "essential" to their gameplay. I do not. I am still experiencing the problem with my need bars.

@JustinB113 - Their school performance isn't increasing. Not the performance bar, no, going from B to A.. yes that. I am having to cheat their grades as of now with Mods. XD

@s_stutler SDX has to be enabled in your game options / settings. You can turn it on to download whenever there is a new one, or you can turn it off and choose when to add its content & features. It is a way EAxis can occasionally add bonus content to your game, like new recipes, or CAS items, but they also have been sneaking in little bug fixes with the SDX - sometimes they work, sometimes they make things worse. That is why I have turned SDX off of automatic updates for now - not because of the free content, but because their "fix" sometimes destroys the game. Also, a few months ago, the SDX update changed the entire Goth family, to be replaced in every new save.

The most recent SDX was supposed to have a fix for the "mean Sim" interaction bug, where every Sim is mean to every other Sim, despite their personality traits or their relationship with another Sim. It was making the game completely unplayable for some. From what I have read, the SDX "mean bug" fix helped some players, but also did absolutely nothing for others.

I'm getting very worried that I might never be able to safely update my game again, and it is just best to leave it at patch 1.87, before some very major bugs were introduced. I would love to have some of the new features & bug fixes, and buy new packs, too, but not at the risk of making my game unplayable. Its very frustrating to have spent so much money on this game & then not be able to trust the company that makes it to quickly & effectively fix bugs without causing further issues. I feel like I spend more time reading about the issues & how to fix them on various forums rather than playing the game! This franchise has always been a stress-reliever, and an escape for me since Sims 1 in 2000. Now it feels like a full-time job just to keep the game working. That shouldn't be a responsibility hoisted on to the dedicated & loyal players of this game.