I just purchased the expansion pack after not playing for a while due to bugs because the EP looked fun. Honestly, I should've known better.
CAS was working fine, as usual, and I move my sim into the new world on a lot. Since trying to start the game, every single aspect of it has been bugged.
She wouldn't walk from the sidewalk into her own house, so I restarted the game.
She walks into the house finally, but won't sit in a chair no matter how much I debugged her, so I restarted the game.
She finally sits in the chair, I get the book to research nobility, only to find out that entire interaction is a known bug. Debugging her won't stop the interaction of her just standing there looking stupid while not holding a book despite a book icon being in the lower left corner showing she's 'reading' it, so I restart the game.
The event triggers and I'm able to watch the news, but I try to greet the envoy and have to restart the game twice because even debugging both sims several times doesn't stop them from standing there frozen. Meanwhile a weird cellphone icon appears in her inventory.
Finally she greets the envoy somehow between me quitting the game and starting it back up and is standing there dancing with the envoy though that isn't at all the queued action, though apparently she manages to talk about a certain dynasty while doing that. Great.
Then I place an easel and try to get her to paint. She puts a canvas on the easel while still standing near the envoy and they all freeze again. I debug both of them several time and it fixes nothing. The skill bar above her head and the painting progress bar are still going. I delete the cellphone icon and the painting finally finishes, but she's still frozen and the painting doesn't count toward my event task.
I delete the event easel and buy the regular one, which still doesn't fix the problem, though now she can walk over to the easel at least. I put it in her inventory and travel to the park in Willow Creek. the cell phone icon appears again and she glitches again. I debug her several times, then try to get her to put the easel in the world to paint. She takes two steps, freezes. I debug her again and repeat the process. She takes two steps, freezes. I delete the stupid cellphone icon again. She takes 5 steps and does the hand motion to pull something out of inventory... except the easel never appears in the world and she freezes again. I debug her twice more, then give up.
tl;dr: the new EP is bugged to the point of being unplayable and I'm getting very, VERY tired of EA putting out new content without fixing the game, and their updates breaking the game further. I never had these issues with Sims 2 or 3 - no bugs, no lag, nothing.
Before you ask, NO, I do NOT have mods on, and no, I didn't search to see if this bug has already been reported. This game is constantly broken and I don't have 3 hours to spend searching through bug reports just to make sure it's not already been reported.
