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heyimbriel's avatar
heyimbriel
Seasoned Newcomer
2 months ago

[FR] R-Rentals Causes TOOL placed world items to disappear

Description:

There is a critical issue with the Residential Rental lot type in The Sims 4. When you load into a lot of this type, all world decorations and objects disappear permanently, breaking community-created custom saves.

Details:

  • The issue occurs even when all mods are removed.
  • Other players have reported the same problem, so it’s not an isolated case.
  • This may have started happening after a recent update, but it’s not confirmed.
  • When using the TOOL mod, any objects placed outside the lot boundaries also vanish permanently after turning a lot into Residential Rental. However, removing mods does not fix the issue.
  • Tested in multiple worlds, including a brand-new empty save with only two Residential Rental lots — the issue still persists.

Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Place debug decorations or "normal" objects from the catalog outside the lot boundaries using a mod (e.g., TOOL).
  2. Change the lot type to Residential Rental.
  3. Load into that lot.
  4. Check the surrounding world decorations and placed objects — they disappear permanently.

Expected Result:

World decorations and objects placed outside the lot should remain intact when loading into a Residential Rental lot.

Actual Result:

World decorations and objects outside the lot boundaries disappear permanently after visiting a Residential Rental lot.

Impact:

This bug is breaking custom saves created by the community, where players personalize worlds with extra decorations and share these saves with others. Once the issue occurs, these customizations are lost permanently.

Attached are images showing the before and after of converting a lot into a Residential Rental lot:

EDIT by crinrict: Removing the 'mods removed' tag from this thread as it doesn't happen with non-mod placed items. Also added pack tag and adjusted title to reflect this is about TOOL placed objects only. 

Note by crinrict:

this thread is about TOOL placed objects. It will probably either get merged with the object thread or moved out to mods. I'm currently still waiting on the Community Managers to tell me how Maxis wants to proceed with this.

If you have issues with collectibles and/objects from festivals and placing smaller inventory objects disappearing, make sure to use this thread: [CL] [DU] [FR] [ECO] Objects cluttering worlds/Collectibles disappearing 

10 Replies

  • EA_Solaire's avatar
    EA_Solaire
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
    2 months ago

    Hey there heyimbriel​ 

    Does this happen on a vanilla save that doesn't have any TOOL placed objects? 

    If you have TOOL added and they disappear, do only the TOOL placed objects disappear or also vanilla world objects? 

  • heyimbriel's avatar
    heyimbriel
    Seasoned Newcomer
    2 months ago

    Hey! Thanks for reaching out. 🙂

    It only happens with objects placed outside the lot using the TOOL mod. The original world objects remain unaffected. It seems to be a bug that specifically affects items added beyond the lot boundaries.

  • Hi. As a long time player and having tested a lot of stuff related to that issue, it's not related to the TOOL mod only. In an unmodded game also, it's any object you place outside your lot, like for example if you have a keyboard or an easel and you decide it to place it in the world (using the interaction to do so from your inventory), and you load a residential rental, the object is gone.

    From what I know, having TOOL installed will prevent objects from disappearing, as TwistedMexi included a fix in TOOL to prevent that (I wish it was available as a standalone for players who don't want TOOL in their games). But in an ideal situation, no fix would be needed.

    The original issue where all of that was discussed is here. At some point, there was a new issue added on the top of that that caused all those objects in the world (placed trough regular gameplay or TOOL) to be cloned and this clone to be un-selectable and un-deletable. To solve this issue, they made it so those objects were not visible anymore, but still bloating up save files. 

    There seems to be a lot of stuff managed strangely with residential rental lots, for exemple, how inventoried objects such as books or toys are handled. Something in this whole system is messing things up, I don't know if that's connected, but it's an issues that should be explored in depth.

  • Hi heyimbriel​ 

    Technically this is a mod issue and should be reported to the creator of the mod if you haven't done so. As Down-in-Simsland​ said though, there are issues with objects disappearing so I also wonder if they are related. The other issues have been occurring since FR came out and didn't start with this patch.

    Anyways, I have a few questions too.

    1. To be sure, this happens whether you have TOOL in or not ?
    2. Did you talk to TwistedMexi about this ?
    3. Did you check if the objects really disappear or just become invisible ?
    4. Please add a tag for the platform you're playing on.
  • Down-in-Simsland's avatar
    Down-in-Simsland
    Seasoned Hotshot
    2 months ago

    So technically what I was saying is that's not a mod issue actually 🤗

    TOOL makes it easier to place objects outside lots and makes it possible for objects you can't carry, but the issue itself of object disappearing (the one the author is reporting) is related to how the game handles objects outside the lot when loading a residential rental.

    When the issue was first observed, I was among the people reporting that to TwistedMexi and they added this fix into their mod, it makes sense as placing objects outside the lot is a key feature of TOOL, so it makes that issue even more impacting for players using it. But the issue itself is from the game and can affect people that haven't used TOOL to have objects outside lots.

    For checking if the objects became invisible, it's something that the average player cannot really do (as it requires knowledge on how to use Sims 4 Studio to check objects on a specific zone). But for the issue about those invisible objects, it's not the object itself that became invisible, it's a copy, the real object is deleted when loading a residential rental 😊

  • crinrict's avatar
    crinrict
    Hero+
    2 months ago

    But we have a thread for that. We don't need another and as said, that's happening for a long time and not just since the patch.

    This report is specifically about tool and not the other issue.

    The way they reported this, I was hoping they have the knowledge to check.

    Did you add the part about the invisible being a duplicate to the main thread ?

  • Down-in-Simsland's avatar
    Down-in-Simsland
    Seasoned Hotshot
    2 months ago

    Yes I think the issue could be merged as it's related to the two issues that are still on-going :

    • Objects disappearing - related to residential rentals (the subject of this topic)
    • Invisible duplicates cluttering save files related to residential rentals, apartments, penthouses

    In this case, the topic specifically talks about the first issue when using TOOL, but the root cause and the bug to solve by the developers is not related to TOOL.   

    I was really active on those threads at some point so I think I gave this information, but I'm not 100% sure 😅 Anyway, it's be going on for months and I feel like as now the issue for the invisible duplicates is not visible to the average player, it's hidden under the rug and it won't be solved any time soon.

  • crinrict's avatar
    crinrict
    Hero+
    2 months ago

    I'm going to hold on on merging. Letting CM make that call :D

  • Scorpio1959's avatar
    Scorpio1959
    Seasoned Scout
    2 months ago

    You are right. It doesn't make any difference whether e.g. an apple tree is placed in a neighborhood by the game or by T.O.O.L. All stuff will be moved to the zone object data when entering the lot.

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