How do you all handle the "Broken" mods issue? Why use mods at all?

It definitely does take effort and some amount of commitment to keep up with, especially if one has a lot of modded content. For some (me, for one) it's simply part of how they play, and it isn't really considered as an either-or kind of thing. That doesn't mean that there are never problems, but solving them is part of the reward for that kind of gaming lifestyle. If a player doesn't want to deal with that, it's certainly better to play the way they do want, because no way is "right" or "wrong" except in direct relation to each individual's enjoyment.

I don't necessarily think that mods make Sims 4 "better" (that's too personal an opinion to be truly objectified) but I do know that I'd have no interest in playing it any longer if I could no longer mod it. I've already played it vanilla and it was okay for a while, but it's just not quite the kind of game that keeps me interested long-term. Modding it helped to change that, which is why I'm still at it. At least for now. :)

I like the the way I can modify and tweak various things with my mods. I am not a big CC person though I do have some. Mostly I use mods to help tell the stories I live to create in my game.

To help put I always make sure to remove my mod folder after a patch or update and then repair my game. I wait a few days then slowly add them back in. Usually one at a time until I get them all back in. As I use folders to keep it organized, if there is no change I just drop that folder back in. If there is a change I downloaded the updated mod.

I also use mods that help fix some of the bugs or annoying autonomous actions. Like can someone please tell me why my Sim gets up in the middle of the night to go clap at a table or whatever because they like it. Real people don't wake up at 2 in the morning and go yeah I love that table out of a sound sleep lol.

Playing the game with mods that fix bugs and nuke annoyances is better than playing a buggy game any day. The only bad time I have with mine is when a new update comes along. And nearly two thirds of my mods broke after the Cottage Living one. That hurt. Most times I just play off line when new updates are announced. Then I can take my time updating my mods, keeping them in a new folder on my desktop until all have been updated. Then I pull my old 'In Game Mods' folder out of my main Mods folder and replace it with the one containing all the updated and unbroken ones. We have an awesome community of mod creators that works very hard to keep their mods up to date so it all goes fairly quickly. I find it much easier to use mods from a small group of seven mod creators who all have their own web sites, too. And @luthienrising does a fantastic job with her threads listing all the broken and updated mods every time we get an update. Her hard work makes my task a lot easier. Believe me, I'd rather not have to use mods at all, but sometimes the bug fixing team takes too long to fix something and I find it less stressful to just use a mod and be done with it. I use only three game play mods. But I have over 120 other mods that fix bugs, stop autonomous actions and other things such as adding hygiene to swimming. Which the teams should have added but didn't. With quality of life mods my elders have a happier life and aren't walking stooped over, don't tire as easily or get those sudden aches and pains that make them grumpy all the time.

The trick is to start slow with a few must-have mods. It might seem daunting at first, but it won't take long before it gets easier to manage. After Seasons came along I began using a few. I think I had ten at that time. Then after Island Living dropped my game was so borked it took me nearly four months to get it back on track, and my mod count soared to over two hundred. I haven't had that happen again, but for some reason that pack hated me and my game. But it became a mission to find ways to regain my control. Retaining control of the game is what keeps me using mods. I don't mind the time it takes to keep the mods I use up to date as long as I have a say in what happens with my Sims. The AI in Sims4 was done very poorly. But that doesn't mean you're stuck and can't change some of that. Mods give you the freedom to tweak and manipulate nearly everything until you find that sweet spot where the game matches your vision of the game. Sims4 will never be perfect. No game is perfect. The beauty of Sims4 is it's so easy to modify. Take advantage of that and use it to your benefit. That will require some trial and error on your part. But the rewards are so worth it in the end.

I handle it by being EXTREMELY organized with my mods. I have a bunch of folders and subfolders and everything is properly tagged with both the name of the thing AND the creator. Every piece of CC is accompanied by a picture so I know at first glance what it is. This way, it's very easy to figure out what's broken. In the case I still can't figure out what a piece of broken CC is, I put it on a sim/in an empty lot and I look at it with the Sims 4 Tray Importer. That program tells you what CC all sims/lots in your Tray folder have and allows you to open the folder it's in, so problem solved! ^^

"Goblincore;c-17959718" wrote:
I handle it by being EXTREMELY organized with my mods. I have a bunch of folders and subfolders and everything is properly tagged with both the name of the thing AND the creator. Every piece of CC is accompanied by a picture so I know at first glance what it is. This way, it's very easy to figure out what's broken. In the case I still can't figure out what a piece of broken CC is, I put it on a sim/in an empty lot and I look at it with the Sims 4 Tray Importer. That program tells you what CC all sims/lots in your Tray folder have and allows you to open the folder it's in, so problem solved! ^^

Same here. I used to have over 11,000 files of mods and CC and my game had plenty of bugs, errors, etc. So I decided to finally stop playing and sort/delete stuff that was broken and/or I never use and organize it all into subfolders. This took about 4 months and to this day, I am still not finished, but now my game is much more stable, cleaner, and much easier to trouble-shoot. I haven't had a last exception in weeks. So to anyone reading this who might be interested in starting to mod your game:

Organize it from the get-go. It just saves so much headache in the long run.

I use cc and light mods, not gigantic mods like MCCC. Even though I have thousands, they don’t break very often. When one does, I just use the 50-50 method to find the problem mod.

Absolutely, label and organize. Every time there is a game update Luthienrising has a thread in the General Mods section that keeps track of Mods that were broken or need updating. You should be able to easily maintain your mods.

As others have mentioned, organizing your mods folder is the best way to keep track of what mods need to be updated.

I like to organize my mods folder with categorized, blank folders:

https://i.imgur.com/pDqfrnF.png

My CORE mods and GAMEPLAY mods usually need to be updated for a new patch, and it's easy to tell with this setup. Most mod authors are quick to update their mods so it's never that much of a hassle.

Organized mods folder, using Better Exceptions to help locate problems, and just accepting that it's part of the cost of getting to play a game in a way that's more what I want. :)

A very organized folder, I might have mine over-organized, but it helps to keep track of everything. Also, I limit my mods so I don't have a ton in my game. I think I have about a solid dozen, maybe 20, that I play with total, but only five or six are big mods.