Urn & Family Tree Issue

[snackrafice]

I had a Sim pass awhile back during my gameplay. After my Sim passed and the Grim Reaper left I placed the urn on a table in the house. My Sim's ghost never came out while I was playing that particular household. One day I clicked one of my Sim's family tree and my dead Sim was gone from the family tree. The family tree showed that the Sim who's family tree I was examining had a grandmother (it had a generic, empty profile picture. Kinda like an icon you would see if you were on Facebook and the user had no profile picture selected) but her name and face was nonexistent. I had a "WTF" moment and after I closed the family tree I went to the urn and clicked it and there was only an option for me to put in inventory. No mourning or writing epitaph option was available for me to click on. I don't download custom things from the internet (I have pretty standard gameplay, so to speak) and I have never had this happen to any of my other dead Sim's. I feel there is nothing I can really do at this point that will fill the urn with my Sim's ghost again or show her on the family tree, but I am curious to know what could of caused this so I can avoid this happening ever again in my Sims 4 gameplay, I enjoy seeing all the Sim's involved in the family tree and having deceased Sim's reappearing on my lot as ghosts. Answers or thoughts on this issue would be greatly appreciated! <3

[Playalot]

It seems that the game culls sims and ghosts at certain intervals. I don't know the exact game mechanics of it. I had thought it had something to do with too many game-generated sims etc but considering that this culling just happened in my most recent dynasty file which is only a relatively new game file I don't know. Over the course of my longer games the culling started to happen every night where game-generated sims were wiped out including sims in my friends panel etc and of course ghosts. Eventually even the blank portraits were wiped from my family tree too so that it appeared as if my dynasty heirs had never even married. The urns would then only have the option to place in inventory or destroy.
So, I can't tell you what to do to avoid it happening, but this culling is a right pain!

[snackrafice]

Ughhhhh! This blows! >.<

Thank you btw for your input. It is frustrating that this is happening and I hope it will eventually get resolved with an update or something.

I always like having ghosts haunting about and the option to bring somebody back from the dead to spice up any story I may have going on in my Sim's lives. I am still pretty ticked about having no community graveyard so I don't have to check on every active Sim household I have that has an elder so I can be sure I have their urn and ghost. Oy vey!

[Sonshine]

Hi, if you go to MTS, they have a no culling mod there. Check it out.

[ManiSims]

The game culls Sims when there's over 180 Sims in the world, so I periodically will go to the Manage Households tab and delete unwanted Sims to prevent culling. I think the no-culling mod removes the cap, so you can have a bunch of Sims in a neighborhood but I'm not sure if that will cause a lot of loading time issues or not.

[snackrafice]

I try to avoid using mods if I can. I think I will manually delete the random game generated families in my neighborhood management every now and again. One of the things I enjoy about TS4 is it loads sooooo much faster than TS3 and I want to try to keep it that way. So I don't think I should download the mod available to remove the cap. Thanks to everybody who commented for the help!

[RunAmokSims]

Ughhhhh! This blows! >.<

Thank you btw for your input. It is frustrating that this is happening and I hope it will eventually get resolved with an update or something.

I always like having ghosts haunting about and the option to bring somebody back from the dead to spice up any story I may have going on in my Sim's lives. I am still pretty ticked about having no community graveyard so I don't have to check on every active Sim household I have that has an elder so I can be sure I have their urn and ghost. Oy vey!

You're not alone. There is a petition in The Sims forum requesting cemeteries and funerals.

http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/820482/petition-for-cemeteries-funerals-75-signatures/p1

I do have hope because one evening Sim Guru Daniel popped into a thread and when I asked him about it said that cemeteries were on his to do list.

I was aware of the cap on Sims and the culling of the excess but it was my understanding that the game would cull unplayed Sims.  Like you I enjoy ghosts bumping around so I was building a family plot on my lot.  My cemetery was played Sims who had died or had  "an accident" with a cow plant.  After The last March patch all the tombstones were blank and all the Sims had been culled.

[snackrafice]

You're not alone. There is a petition in The Sims forum requesting cemeteries and funerals.

http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/820482/petition-for-cemeteries-funerals-75-signatures/p1

I do have hope because one evening Sim Guru Daniel popped into a thread and when I asked him about it said that cemeteries were on his to do list.

I was aware of the cap on Sims and the culling of the excess but it was my understanding that the game would cull unplayed Sims.  Like you I enjoy ghosts bumping around so I was building a family plot on my lot.  My cemetery was played Sims who had died or had  "an accident" with a cow plant.  After The last March patch all the tombstones were blank and all the Sims had been culled.

OMG! I hope this is true and somebody at EA is working on bringing back cemetaries! It is getting annoying having to keep tabs on my elder Sims. If I have a household I play, but am currently active with a different one, I have to pop in every now and again to check the age bar to see if it is close enough to where I need to stick around and wait for the Grim Reaper to arrive. The things I do to be sure I have Sim's ghosts.

[oshizu]

I'm now playing a household in its eighth generation and experiencing a lot of culling in my game.
I meet three "in the world" sims one day, and become good friends with them all, woohoo'ing with one of them who becomes pregnant.
The next day, only the pregnant sim remains and the other two are gone.

I read somewhere tonight (forgot where)  that the 180-sim cap includes ghosts. After 8 generations, my sims' relationship panels contain more ghosts than living sims.
I'd rather not use the no-culling mod and I'm playing a challenge so I can't go into Manage Households and just delete ghosts and old people.

My question is: How do I get rid of all the ghosts in the relationship panels?
I wish the game would give us an option on which ghosts would be culled so I could simply delete any ghosts unrelated to my own sims.

@Playalot I remember you writing about this issue of culling in the Immortal Dynasty thread.

[Playalot]

@oshizu  Yeah, the later stages of a dynasty experiences a lot of culling. You'd have to ask the challenge team what strategies are allowed. I know you can evict ghost sims from houses but that was a solution for another issue (empty towns with only ghosts in houses). I basically just ignored the culling as best I could and made sure I used an in-house sim for gen 7's spouse.

You're so close to the end of your dynasty now though and there is no requirement for gen 8 to marry or produce an heir so really the culling is just annoying and not game breaking thankfully.

If you are not playing a dynasty the best thing to do to get rid of ghosts from a sims relationship panel is delete all ghosts using manage worlds>manage households and any other unwanted sims such as an excess of elders maybe or a household structure you don't want in your game. (i.e. the  'single, mum, teen, child' that gets generated when visiting a park.)

The culling limit was lifted with a recent patch to 220 sims (from memory) so there is little more room for 'extra' or unwanted game generated townies, but not much. It's still quite a low threshold in my opinion.

[oshizu]

@Playalot

Thank you for your very detailed response.
Actually, I went back and read your posts in the IDC thread earlier about how your sim would make good friends during the day who would then get culled at midnight.
Then I posted my questions about culling, wondering if the game had improved since the time of your post (apparently not).

You're right about my being able to finish my dynasty as it stands now.  I still have some townies in houses and don't foresee any issues with meeting Gen8's friendship requirements.
Yet it's so annoying to open the relationship panel and see more ghosts than sims!  My founder has over 100 ghosts in his panel and only 19 living sims.
But I agree; the culling can be managed by working around it; there's no need to use a mod.

Thank you for the tip on using Manage Households for non-challenge saves and the info about the 220-sim cap.
I just don't understand why the game would have an achievement for 25-26 generations (I forget how many) if we can't preserve the family tree and friendships without using Manage Household.
Or maybe that's how Manage Households is supposed to work.

[Playalot]

@Playalot

Thank you for your very detailed response.
Actually, I went back and read your posts in the IDC thread earlier about how your sim would make good friends during the day who would then get culled at midnight.
Then I posted my questions about culling, wondering if the game had improved since the time of your post (apparently not).

You're right about my being able to finish my dynasty as it stands now.  I still have some townies in houses and don't foresee any issues with meeting Gen8's friendship requirements.
Yet it's so annoying to open the relationship panel and see more ghosts than sims!  My founder has over 100 ghosts in his panel and only 19 living sims.
But I agree; the culling can be managed by working around it; there's no need to use a mod.

Thank you for the tip on using Manage Households for non-challenge saves and the info about the 220-sim cap.
I just don't understand why the game would have an achievement for 25-26 generations (I forget how many) if we can't preserve the family tree and friendships without using Manage Household.
Or maybe that's how Manage Households is supposed to work.

I know, it seems really strange. Least the Dev's have openly acknowledged that culling is something they have as a high priority and are constantly looking for ways to improve. <<rough quote!