So far, nothing. I do take breaks from playing, and I still haven't tried the gameplay that comes with For Rent. I constantly encounter bugs and glitches but have come to accept that as part of the game.
There are a few things I find very annoying, like my Sims still wanting to flirt with another Sim even though I've disabled attraction so they only focus on their partner, and ever since Lovestruck, relationships are actual work. Last time I played, it took me about an hour IRL to fix my main couple's relationship because for some stupid reason, their romance bar emptied rapidly even though I made them do romantic interactions. I was ready to try couple's councelling with them, then decided to send them on a date first. That did the trick. I don't mind the new gameplay elements that come with Lovestruck, most of them are actually really cute, but it's very, very annoying to spend thirty to sixty minutes on fixing a relationship that has been picture-perfect ever since I created those Sims.
Another thing I really can't stand is the change in bodyshapes. My main household has five kids, and every single one of them was obese when they aged up to teenager, even after I threw away the popcorn machine and made sure they only ate healthy meals and exercised. It seems to be a thing for that one household because when the kid of another household aged up to teen, he ended up with an average body - not superthin, not overweight. This may be terribly shallow, but except for that one teen in the second household, I had all the others drink that slimming potion because I was so annoyed 😁
Oh, and speaking of bodyshapes - when my first Sim kid went to college (Foxbury), all her room mates in the dorm were overweight. Every single one of them. When her sister went to college (Britechester) a little while later, they were all either very slim or had average bodies. Maybe it's related to the college but it doesn't make any sense.
In any case, doing regular backups is a must, and I save at least every hour when I play, sometimes more often, depending on what my Sims have just achieved. And because I'm paranoid, I have backups in OneDrive and on an external harddrive, just in case 😁
Previously, I also took breaks from playing when there were big patches and new expansion packs. However, the current time limit forced me to update. And I recently tried a new save file for less control gameplay. That's why I realize the effects of game bugs much more than before.
Lovestruck is the one that made me concerned about hidden game mechanics because I found some auto romantic introductions even though I used a mod to disable romantic autonomy a long time ago. Now I found another small mod to disable this introduction. It's still safe right now.
I haven't experienced rapid romantic relationship decay because I avoid playing a couple of sims after the latest patch. I played the single university student sim instead. Reading about your experience made me aware of it. I have plenty of lover couples in a main save. If that decay affects unplayed sims too, that would be too much to fix.
About body shape, mod is the only solution because I don't want any slight change of it. I keep a variety of body shapes in the population (except pear-shaped males). I found that some in-game born infant's fat is max since first aging up. I haven't tried to age up a child to be a teen in my game, so I am not sure about random changes during the age-up. I think sims in TS4 are more likely to be fatter if not take care of their lifestyle seriously.
Talking about University, I played Uni recently and let the game generate various new student townies. Both Uni created a variety of body shapes, there is a variety from obese to skinny. My Ubrite dorm luckily has an average-body roommate and a decent face that I don't have to fix. I prepared to delete some if it's too eyesore but ended up happy with all of them.
Things that are different from each university are patterns of traits and skills. UBrite students usually have art skills. And most of my dorm roommates have foodie traits.
I do backups like you do, saving every hour if not forgetting, and copy the saved files to the cloud (I use Dropbox) daily. I did that before because my old PC was too old and the game crashed too frequently. But it's good for safety as well.
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Sorry for the long reply, I want to reply to every topic I read. Thank you for your experience sharing.
