Forum Discussion

Chessack's avatar
7 years ago

Disobedient Sims are driving me crazy

I have experienced this to some extent before, but the last few days playing Sims 4, my Sims are driving me up the wall with disobedience. Before anyone asks, yes, I leave autonomy on. And I know this leads to them having minds of their own. To some extent I like it.

But... when I give them a direct order to do something that has a defined duration, such as taking a shower, cooking a meal, eating a meal -- I expect them to follow through with that activity until it completes. And up until a week or two ago, they did that the majority of the time.

Now, however, especially over the last few days, it seems like I can't get them to do almost anything other than a skill activity (like making an end table at the workbench) without them canceling it the second I switch to another active Sim. I will have a Sim with yellow hygiene, and tell her to "take a shower" and she will walk over to the shower. Figuring that's done, I will click on another Sim and tell him to "ponder chess moves." Once he seats himself at the table (having all needs in the green and thus no urgent needs), I will switch back to the first Sim. She's not in the shower but now petting the cat. I figure wow, that was quick, but check needs and she did not take the shower! Argh! So I order it again -- I have taken to clicking the Take Shower command FIVE TIMES to fill up her queue and ensure the activity. Then I switch back to the 2nd Sim and he's reading a book -- not pondering chess moves! ARGH!

And today, even my active Sims are being disobedient. I had to tell my Gen 3 Legacy heir to eat a meal like 4 times to get her to finish it. She kept taking a bite, putting it down, and trying to do something else (usually -- go to the card table, the pool, or the computer...). It took her like 3 in-game hours to just finish eating.

It's become so ridiculous that for the first time in probably 11 years of Simming, I am thinking seriously about just turning autonomy off and leaving it off. I don't really want to do that -- because I enjoy seeing what they get up to when I am not controlling them. As long as, when I issue a direct order, they follow it (which has been true, generally, in the past). But if they're going to disobey direct orders... I may have to rethink my strategy.

Anyone else having fits with this? Or do you all just play with autonomy off?
  • It still baffles me how something that worked so well in prior editions is such a bloody mess in this one. On the assumption that the actual techie types are at least as smart as we are, it seems that either someone in management was incredibly stupid in choosing the game engine or that EA is deliberately giving us the 'green weenie'.
  • I doubt it was designed on purpose to do this -- to have Sims refuse direct orders of the players. It's just so baked into the incompetently programmed engine now that they probably can't even fix it without massive overhauling.
  • keekee53's avatar
    keekee53
    Seasoned Newcomer
    Honestly, this is one of my pet peeves with this game. I get SOOOOO annoyed with these sims sometimes.

    Here is my favorite example because it happens to me a lot.

    My sims wakes up in the morning. Hunger in the red, shower and toilet in the yellow. Naturally my sim wants to fill the hunger need first so the autonomy kicks in to grab a serving. I cancel because I want them to pee, shower and then eat because we all know they may pee themselves before they can finish the meal. My sim goes all the way downstairs to the fridge opens and closes and then walks all the way back upstairs to pee and shower. WHY DO THEY DO THAT OMG!?!?!?!!?
  • "keekee53;c-16693258" wrote:

    My sims wakes up in the morning. Hunger in the red, shower and toilet in the yellow. Naturally my sim wants to fill the hunger need first so the autonomy kicks in to grab a serving. I cancel because I want them to pee, shower and then eat because we all know they may pee themselves before they can finish the meal. My sim goes all the way downstairs to the fridge opens and closes and then walks all the way back upstairs to pee and shower. WHY DO THEY DO THAT OMG!?!?!?!!?


    Yes the refusal to immediately cancel the action you just x-ed out is incredibly frustrating. I saw a toddler trying to go up the stairs the other day and he was down stairs in the hallway. I hit cancel and switched his action to playing on the tablet, downstairs in his room. He crawled all the way upstairs, then turned around and came all the way downstairs. Then he self-canceled the tablet action (apparently) and tried to go back upstairs again. This went on until I finally made the Sim he was trying to go upstairs to see come downstairs so he would finally cut it the heck out.
  • Well, I am not going to quit Sims 4 at this point over it (though I can certainly see doing so).

    But I think I am going to modify how I do Legacies in the future. For example, I may just allow myself to reload if the heir dies. I know that's not supposed to be done in Legacies, but, if you relax that rule, then you don't need spares, which lowers the # of Sims you need in a household by quite a bit (you end up with 4-5 at a time instead of 7-8).
  • I play with full autonomy on... below that there is another setting to disable autonomy for selected (played) sim. It works really well for me.
    I'm not sure it will work for you as you play it @SimChessack since you jump from member to member pretty fast by your description. It works for me because I usually focus on one sim for awhile. Like if I start them reading or doing their homework or something else that normally locks them in for a bit.. like practicing an instrument. I can switch to the other without much worry that the unplayed sim will stop soon. Then again if I forget about them they will at least find something to do on their own.
  • Yes, it is true that I hope pretty quickly from Sim to Sim.

    Although one reason I have learned to do that is how relatively dumb they are... how if I don't micro-manage them they tend to do really stupid things like go to bed with a yellow bladder.
  • Well, I started playing TS4 when it launched but stopped within a short period (a month, maybe?) due to bugs and lack of features such as toddlers. I came back about 2 months ago. So I am only noticing this now because, well, I'm only playing it now. And in particular get becomes exacerbated in over-large households, which tends to happen in Legacies if you play by the rules (not allowing reloads upon disasters/untimely deaths forces you to have spares, etc).