My Sims Keep Disappearing!

@simgurulyndsay Adding to this. I moved a sim and her husband and daughter out of my current household to another house in town. After a few sim days I was going to invite them over. But when i clicked on the relationship panel The sim family I moved out of the house was no where to be found. They were relatives. So i went into manage world and click on they're home.

The game wouldn't even load the household. it only zoomed in but stayed in map view. I clicked on "evict family" and the portrait was blank. So I am a little bit confused. When I reload the game, the dark bold sims plump bob is over they're house indicating them being a playable hosuehold but when i click on it. no one is there.

Weren't their reports in the Tech Support thread about sims going off to work and never coming back too? And not just the Secret Agents! One more to add to EA's 'to do' list.. :-0

@SimGuruLyndsay My Sims also disappear when I play another lot and come back. I have no clue where they went. Also, my sims kids are always showing up as a roommate or a sister/brother to their parents..

@SimGuruLindsay, there are several threads on this topic and I've been tracking them. I think there are multiple issues here, but I'm convinced that most of these disappearances are related to saving/loading practices.

Where to start ...

Okay, first, people who follow these steps do not seem to be having the problem: Use "Save As" rather than "Save"; always "Save As" and then exit (never "save and exit"); always Save As on the family's home lot (not a public venue); always load the game from the saved games accessed by clicking the icon at the top right of the loading screen (rather than clicking the "play" arrow at the lower right); always choose the most recently saved game (unless you want to go back to a point in time); NEVER load the autosave.

- No one understands how autosave works. When you looked at the saved games to load, there is always only one autosave, and it is time-stamped at the time of your last save/save as. There are not multiple autosaves accessible where you could go back in time to a certain restore point (although there appear to be multiple autosaves in the Saves folder). When I've experimented with loading the autosave, it's never quite where I left off; things are slightly different. I haven't lost any Sims. However, I notice when I experiment with loading from the play button, it seems like it is loading the autosave and not my last "Save as" game.

- I think some people who use Save As don't understand how that works. The Save As always associates the name of the family you were playing with the save. I think that some people, when they've played another family and want to go back to the original family, are going back to old saves associated with that name. There would be an understandable disappearance of Sims/progress in cases like that.

- I'm not sure everyone understands the aging settings. For whatever reason, I know when I first got the game I did not see the "Active household only" aging function. I just saw "no aging" or "aging for played families." When using the latter, any family you've played, even for a minute, keeps aging. Sims grow old and die. I know, theoretically they should still be in the relationship panel, unless the game is releasing their spirits to the other world by default.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I follow the saving/loading procedure I outlined. I have aging set to the Active Family Only, and unplayed Sims set on no aging. I'm playing multiple families and haven't lost anyone (yet, knock wood).

I may be totally off base, but I'm hoping that maybe it will give a direction to look.

I've been following all this and still my families disappeared. I rotate round a few families each has their own save file and yes when I come to play another I load the newest one first. It all started with the Goths. Alexander had moved in with my legacy family cause I was curious to see what his kids would look like and Cassandra had a husband at the house she shared with mum and dad. They had a child.

Anyway everything was running fine till I moved one of the legacy children, now a young adult out the family home and moved his girlfriend who is Olivia from the Spencer-Kim-Lewis household in with him. When Thursday at around 2am roles around no matter which lot I'm on the Goths and half the legacy family disappear. Okay if I'm on my legacy lot only the people I move out disappear. My saves are before this happens but no matter how I try the game just wants to delete these people. Like @Cindyjo5477 when I hover over the Goth house no family show yet there is a plum there to say sims should be in there. I've tried going to manage households and even editing their household but none show up. When you click to enter the house the game just zones in on the house but loads nothing.

I really hope this can be fixed even if it means I have to start over. at the moment I don't feel like starting over knowing this could happen again.

"ddgangel2009;12690515" wrote:
When Thursday at around 2am roles around no matter which lot I'm on the Goths and half the legacy family disappear. Okay if I'm on my legacy lot only the people I move out disappear. My saves are before this happens but no matter how I try the game just wants to delete these people.

Now that's just plain creepy and disturbing :-/ My condolences! Every Thursday at 2 a.m. ........ wow.

I saw in another thread some speculation that the Goths were a common element in the disappearances. I haven't played them yet. Hmm. Maybe I should try and see what happens. I can always go back and not play them if they turn out to be the problem.

Hi:
The sim I have I've played from day one when I got the game disappeared. I thought maybe I had lost her or maybe had a corrupted file or something but then I had also switched over to Oasis to look around but when I switched back she was gone. I tried a lot of things like restarting the game and several others then I remembered I had read in one of the other posts to use reset sim like you could in TS3 and it worked for me.

I am not having a problem with played households disappearing but the premades I did manage world and added kids, spouses through CAS and most of them disappeared, out of world or in houses. I made a group of males in a household but they were in out of world until I built a lot for them and while playing my single girl she did get to know one of them and next time I opened the game the household was gone from out of world, replaced with a lot of elderly women. I really didn't want my flirty sim causing break ups of the married males in the game but looks like that is what the game wants. I can't keep a household of singles for my sims to meet and marry.

I am not an age bigot but I would like to have them around longer than a sim week after marriage. :) All the bars are like retirement homes. How do out of world and unplayed households managed by the game and how do I take it over?

The same thing happens to me! They disappear! When i go to manage worlds and hover over their house nothing shows up! usually it would show a picture and the family name but nothing shows up! and when I try to click the play button, it just zooms in on the house and it freezes! IDK WHY! and then when i try to go to manage families and try to edit the family, it takes me to create a new family! the game deleted my family from the game.

@MsPhy I'm starting to think it may be a manage world issue. Just having a test on my legacy family without moving their son out and so far all families seem intact. Played past Thursday 2am and still have all families in the game. Going to try moving him out via manage words now but I have a feeling I may lose the families again. If this is the case then I hope it's fixed asap. I'd also like to know if others have noticed this when moving family members out of the family home.