8 years ago

NPCs not taking care of their needs

Product: The Sims 4
Platform:PC
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Often (50% - 99%)
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? City Living, Get Together, Get to Work, Parenthood, Vampires, Dine Out, Spa Day, Outdoor Retreat, Bowling Night Stuff, Vintage Glamour Stuff, Backyard Stuff, Kids Room Stuff, Romantic Garden Stuff, Movie Hangout Stuff, Spooky Stuff, Cool Kitchen Stuff, Perfect Patio Stuff, Luxury Party Stuff, Holiday Celebration Pack, Grim's Ghoulish Guitar
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Interactions with or the observation of townies/npcs that live outside the immediate residential lot (i.e a different apartment complex or another home lot).
What happens when the bug occurs? NPCs not on the immediate residential lot do not take care of themselves and end up dying due to starvation or other circumstances. Vampires stand out in the sun and burn, or die of thirst. Neighboorhood is quickly filling up with ghosts as sims die. The more the played sim leaves the home lot and meets townies, the more they seem triggered to stop caring for themselves and begin the process towards decay.
What do you expect to see? Sims getting stuck in action loops or idling for long periods of time as needs decay.
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Never used.
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? Neutral/Not Sure

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NPCs not on the immediate residential lot do not take care of themselves and end up dying due to starvation or other circumstances. Vampires stand out in the sun and burn, or die of thirst. Neighborhoods are quickly filling up with ghosts as sims die. The more the played sim leaves the home lot and meets townies, the more they seem triggered to stop caring for themselves and begin the process towards decay. At first, I thought the deaths were merely caused by old age until the vampires started dropping dead all at once. The first death occurred when I started my game, met an elder and she died 3 days later to which I assumed it was her age. But now that my entire neighborhood is dead except my single neighbor Rasoya, I realize, it is not from old age. I was going to include a screenshot of my NPC household management menu, but it would seem that all of the dead neighbors are already being replaced by new townies. The only ones left are my neighbor Rasoya, and NPCs I have not met yet. Rasoya is not aging as rapidly as every other NPC as well (he is not a vampire). Also noteworthy, none of the ghosts are listed in household management but I know they are in the game as I can interact with them when playing, not certain if this is normal as I know ghosts used to be listed.

11 Replies

crinrict
Hero+
8 years ago
There's this thread for vampires: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/OPEN-NPC-Vampires-stay-out-in-the-sun-too-long/m-p/5851121#M33790 ..

By the sound of it it also happens to non-vampires ?

Would you be willing to share your save with me ?

If so, please zip your saves folder and upload it somewhere like dropbox, mediafire, googledrive or OneDrive and PM me the link.

Ghost are not listed unless they live in a household (anymore ?). They are if with MCCC (but as you never used mods, that's probably not what you are referring to) so I don't remember how it was before cause I used MCCC before.
Jessemyn
8 years ago
Yes, this is happening to everyone in the neighborhood as far as I can tell. I haven't done much inspection on the households in question.
To give an example of the extreme variation between sims, the neighbor that lives in the same apartment complex has aged from Young Adult to Adult in the time I have played, yet everyone that my played sim has physically encountered has aged through their entire lifespans, some even dying of old age. Others are dropping dead for seemingly no reason at all and it was the vampires that gave it away as a lack of care. Not to mention the very obvious idling that NPCs are doing in public spaces.
I think the issue has to do with action looping or getting stuck in a repeated action loop when needs become low as my played sim has encountered this multitudes of instances now. The action queues and then cancels instantly, sometimes so quickly that the icon stops showing in the action bar but the sim gets locked in place with the action queue sound repeating. The only way to remedy it has been to exit the save and reload.
I will work on getting you my save file shortly.
Also, some of my neighborhood ghosts should still be in a household with the remaining living members I think? But they are not showing.
crinrict
Hero+
8 years ago
If they were added to the actual household, then yes. If they're just dead on that lot, then no.

@Jessemyn wrote:

Also, some of my neighborhood ghosts should still be in a household with the remaining living members I think? But they are not showing.
crinrict
Hero+
8 years ago
Hi @Jessemyn

few questions about your save:

Do you remember a Sims that died of starvation in there ? So far, I've only found Sims dying of old age.

Are you saying they don't age at the same rate? Like some are aging faster than others ? If so, can you give me names ?

Do you actually see them being miserable when you meet them or is it just the rate of death in your game ?
suzushka
8 years ago
I have noticed a similar problem with my played household. When one sim leaves the lot, those remaining at home experience continuous decay of all needs. This has begun within the last few weeks. I have no mods, am fully updated/repaired, and own all content.
crinrict
Hero+
8 years ago
Hi @suzushka

that's a different issue though

There's a thread in the tech section for that. It seems that the care for self doesn't work properly if you don't actively choose it (switch to something else, then switch back),
suzushka
8 years ago
OK, tyvm for the help! I did search reported bugs before posting a new thread, but apparently not long enough. (:
Im not sure if this will be helpful here, and its not a new observation, but the NPC vampires I create dont autonomously recharge their energy, although other needs do get taken care of while not played.
crinrict
Hero+
8 years ago
That would be this issue, I assume: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/TO-ADD-V-NPC-Vampires-no-energy-gaining-points-no-runs/td-p/6418981/jump-to/first-unread-message
Jessemyn
8 years ago
Sorry for the delay, I created an entirely new save and did a full repair (3x) to see if that fixed the issue so I haven't actually done any more inspection of the save I sent to you. The issue with inspecting the dead/ghost sims was also them disappearing soon after so I could not tell you who to look at in terms of researching those that are dying due to need decay.There was a vampire that had died of thirst that was still hanging around the last time I went to a ghost bar event just prior to saving and exiting, but I have no idea if he is still in existence.
I have confirmed in the new save file that a majority of the issues are being caused by the action queue being canceled. Some of which was caused by vampiric bat form and others by red zoned needs triggering the autonomous Go Home action. Sims are becoming locked in place by repeated auto-queueing of autonomous actions to take care of needs while simultaneously canceling those same actions. Thus far, I have not found a fix.
crinrict
Hero+
8 years ago
So you might wanna post in those threads instead of making it a new issue ?

We have one for the go home one, we have one for the vampires not taking care of needs and I think there's one for canceling actions as well, although I don't know if it's newer or older.

I used a mod to check on your save. SimsInfo lets you check on the state of your sims and gives you their death. Didn't check all of them but yeah, Vampires are special.