Why do my Sims live so long?

[Mike Supafly]

I have a strange issue with my current game where my Sims are living way longer than they should be based on where I set the lifespan sliders.

For example, I set the child slider to 10 days, but my current child has already been around for maybe 5 days already and still has 14 days left of his life stage! His mother (her name is Ashley) has 31 days left as an adult and the adult slider is set to 25 days and she's been an adult for probably 15 days already!

Ashley is my fifth generation of this family, and the only occult mixed in their genetics is the imaginary friend, which I would think would have the opposite effect and make the life stages shorter, right? I wish I could say it was after adding the imaginary friend genes to the pool but I didn't catch on if this was happening since Ashley was a baby or if this started more recently.

Anyways, I don't have this issue if I move in someone from outside their bloodline or if I start a new household, so I know it's something in their genetics.

I have scoured these forums and the Internet for a solution and haven't even been able to find anyone else even having this problem, so if anyone could point me in the right direction I would really appreciate it.

Maybe normally a player would want their Sims to live a really long time, but it's not at the proper pace with the rest of the neighborhood, and I would have to manually keep track of their days per life stage and use the cake to age them up if I want it all to jive properly (which is more work than a game should be).

[SimAd]

Does the "time left" for the Sims still correspond to the "old" setting of the sliders?

[Wiry]

Have you by any chance used any Genie wishes?

[Mike Supafly]

"Does the "time left" for the Sims still correspond to the "old" setting of the sliders? "

No, I don't believe so. I have the default set at Normal and then I adjusted the individual sliders afterwards, and I don't think the normal life span is nearly as long as they are living.

"Have you by any chance used any Genie wishes?"

Yes. However, it was after Ashley was born and her parents had made the wishes.

[karlissa]

Long life from genie wishes is genetic if I recall.

[RaiaDraconis]

If you have been playing around with the age sliders that can have a huge impact. For the longest time I was running my game on a heavily modified Epic lifespan, where the elders only have a minuscule chance of dying each day past the end. I was running about 190 days at that point, but the game was still calculating the death chance off of the original 400. As a result, I had several sims still living when their children became elder, and that was without the genie (I was sans Showtime at that point)

[Wiry]

Is Ashley the one whose aging is screwed up?

The Long Life wish is genetic, definitely. My legacy (I really need to update that) is full of children born with the long life. It also affects babies that are still in the "Oven", I noticed.

[Mike Supafly]

Is Ashley the one whose aging is screwed up?

It's her and her son.

I don't think it has anything to do with the age sliders as this was happening before I really touched them. I had actually hoped that adjusting the sliders would fix it, but obviously it didn't.

And now that I think of it, I've never had a Sim wish for a longer life. I've made plenty of other genie wishes, but never that one (I'm a firm believer that every Sim needs to die sooner or later to keep things interesting). So I don't think that could be it either.

I really don't want to have to adopt for the next generation, as I wanted to keep the bloodline going, but I guess I may have to if I want to fully get around this.

[Vinyl]

Are you certain they didn't accidentally wish for a long life?  This sounds like the same situation I encountered with a family I was playing where one of them wished for long life from the genie.  The slow aging of his children drove me bonkers until much internet searching revealed the cause.

If you adjust your age sliders by a lot either upward or downward, does their time left to birthday increase/decrease?  And is it still about double the usual?  If so it sounds like they got the genie long life gift, whether they asked for it or not. 

A possible quick fix is to go to edit town, save a copy of the family to the library, kick the current family out of the house, and then move in the library version of them.  That might remove the extra long life.  I believe that's how I got rid of it from my family.  Save before you try it, and you might want to sell off your properties - they're one of the few things that won't reattach themselves to your library version of the family.  There's also a chance skill challenges might reset (number of paintings painted, etc).  Relationships and careers should remain intact, though.

Good luck with this.  I know how frustrating double-long lifespans can be if they're unintentional!

[Mike Supafly]

I just aged the son up manually and can now confirm that it is double lifespan. Maybe I did make that wish and I don't remember it. I do have a bad memory sometimes...

I'll try moving them to a new neighborhood and confirm if that will work to correct it.

Thanks so far for everyone's help.

[Mike Supafly]

A possible quick fix is to go to edit town, save a copy of the family to the library, kick the current family out of the house, and then move in the library version of them.  That might remove the extra long life.  I believe that's how I got rid of it from my family.  Save before you try it, and you might want to sell off your properties - they're one of the few things that won't reattach themselves to your library version of the family.  There's also a chance skill challenges might reset (number of paintings painted, etc).  Relationships and careers should remain intact, though.

Well, I tried this in addition to moving the household to a new neighborhood and it does not work. 

[MeestorMark]

Sounds like the situation calls for birthday cakes or age of instant potions. The 'trigger age transition' cheat can work too if that is allowed in your game.

I had a game with a glitch where an elder wasn't dieing off. She had reached 120 days I think it was without doing anything that would extend lifespans. As soon as I did the age transition and she died of old age, I received notices of about 15 other elder sims from around town that were going to die. Somehow the death transition got glitched, I guess.

[Vinyl]

Well, I tried this in addition to moving the household to a new neighborhood and it does not work. 

Dang, I was hoping that's what did the trick.  If it didn't work, it means I fixed it by making a copy of my sim in the Create-a-sim bin (I took him to the mirror and saved a copy of him).  Then I created a new household, pulled up the clone of him, and put him into the neighbourhood.  That should work.

You mentioned your sim had a kid?  If losing the family tree won't upset you, you can do the same thing with the child sim.  Save a copy to the create-a-sim bin using a mirror, dresser, or styling station.  Create a new household and make the copy of the kid (you'll have to also make a placeholder adult or else the game won't let you continue), and then merge the new household into the family in Edit Town.  You could then remove the placeholder adult from the house and continue playing.  If you want you could also move out the old child, or play with them both and consider the family as having discovered a long lost twin!  The new version of the child should age normally, as should that sim's children, grandchildren, etc.

[Mike Supafly]

Dang, I was hoping that's what did the trick.  If it didn't work, it means I fixed it by making a copy of my sim in the Create-a-sim bin (I took him to the mirror and saved a copy of him).  Then I created a new household, pulled up the clone of him, and put him into the neighbourhood.  That should work.

You mentioned your sim had a kid?  If losing the family tree won't upset you, you can do the same thing with the child sim.  Save a copy to the create-a-sim bin using a mirror, dresser, or styling station.  Create a new household and make the copy of the kid (you'll have to also make a placeholder adult or else the game won't let you continue), and then merge the new household into the family in Edit Town.  You could then remove the placeholder adult from the house and continue playing.  If you want you could also move out the old child, or play with them both and consider the family as having discovered a long lost twin!  The new version of the child should age normally, as should that sim's children, grandchildren, etc.

Hahah, I love your creativity! Well, I just may try that. I've broken the family tree a couple times moving this bloodline across neighborhoods, I just want to keep the genetics!