Game Patch: 06/19/2018 (Discussion)

[Nindigo]

Holy moly!

So much of this put a smile on my face

Free Feature Updates & Adds

•   Glass Roofs! Finally! Use them to create a greenhouse or just a gorgeous new structure. You'll find these in Build Mode. Be sure to share your creations with us on the Gallery!
•   We added Cold Weather and Hot Weather Outfit categories in CAS. Whatever clothing you use here will work for those weather types. That means these categories will work with custom content and storytelling.
•   We added a Swimwear category for toddlers.
•   We added a re-traiting potion. Huh? Yup! Go to the Satisfaction Store in the Aspiration panel and spend your satisfaction points. This lets you swap out your traits.
•   We overhauled the Gardening Skill in a big way! We revised the tuning and balance to make it a little easier and more profitable. Less drudgery, more money!
•   We synchronized plants to need water, etc. at the same time of day.
•   Seed Packets can be opened if placed on the ground.
•   There is a gardening sort in outdoor activities in Build to make it easy to find all the gardening equipment.
•   You can also buy seed packets in build now!
•   Gardening Evolution has been streamlined to 5 levels with better UI, plus we made the interaction immediate.
•   Uncommon and Rare Seed packets can be purchased once you're at higher levels of the gardening skill. This means you can just buy them instead of hunting them down in the world.
•   You can research plants (new interaction) to gain info for your notebook.
•   Research tells you things like the right growing season, sell price, and more.
•   You can now sell Harvestables directly from the plant.
•   Most interactions now have an "area of effect" option at higher levels so you can garden more quickly and efficiently.

The Sims 4

•   Fixed numerous pieces of clothing that were not properly compatible or had graphical issues.
•   Fixed numerous issues related to having and interacting with a large number of objects in a Sim’s inventory.
•   Players used to be able to grab a Sim from the gallery randomly then immediately upload it BACK to the gallery, gaining sole credit. That is no longer the case.
•   We’ve been working with air traffic controllers, and as a result, birds are no longer flying through houses throughout the various worlds. It seems we were bird brains on this one.
•   The Welcome Wagon will no longer hide their fruitcake for themselves. When they come say hi, they totally will give you that fruit cake. Which your Sims may or may not hate.
•   Children no longer wake up in a panic every time they wake up. Now, only when there are monsters around.
•   You can now successfully complete the wedding event by having the newlyweds enjoy the first slice of cake!
•   Sims at a social event with failing needs will now properly return to their active lot when you tell them to do so as expected.
•   If a Sim dies while their roommate is off lot, when the roommate returns, they’ll be very sad.
•   If you try to add birthday candles to a cake, the tooltip tells you how to do so if it is currently on the wrong part of the table.
•   Active Sims won’t try to drink so dang much during a party. Once they have a refreshing beverage, they should be good.
•   The “Sims walking on their knees” issue has been fixed for toddlers who age up.
•   The Book of Life can now be read if it is bound to the same lot as the Sim trying to read it. You can now truly get a life, or at least read about it.
•   Custom Music should now work appropriately on all stereos.

Get to Work

•   Aliens and Vampires no longer adjust the colors of their beards and eyebrows when going to work. The office uniform policy has been updated.
•   Some of our fake, not approved doctors were assigning patients to beds that already had a patient in them. This is poor healthcare and we’ve fixed it.
•   You can now sell gardening produce and flowers at retail again.
•   The police chief can no longer be the suspect in a crime. OR CAN THEY? No, they can’t. We fixed it. Or…no seriously. Case closed.
•   Sims can now purchase items stored in the LICE Cold Retail Freezer on NPC owned retail stores.
•   Employee Sims will now clock in more reliably, and automatically be assigned a job task when they show up for work.
•   Doctors and Detectives will no longer receive the Go on Vacation whim so frequently.

Get Together

•   A Sim’s club progress no longer resets when transferring the Sim to a new household.

City Living

•   Sims who are resurrected after dying from eating poisonous Pufferfish Nigiri will no longer die when they eat anything else. Sorry, seems it took us longer to get all the poison out than we would have liked.
•   Sims listening to music via Earbuds (Fitness Stuff) will no longer cause a noise complaint from neighbors in the apartment.
•   Food Critics will no longer have conflicting experiences when reviewing food.
•   Squeamish Sims (Outdoor Retreat) are now properly affected by mice and natural dangers (Jungle Adventure).
•   Sims will now fall asleep after receiving the Zonked moodlet from the Bubble Blower.
•   Teenagers will no longer send inappropriate text messages regarding the Romance Festival.
•   The Scattered Panes windows now cast appropriate shadows.

Dine Out

•   New recipes from Cats & Dogs now function as expected in restaurants.

Perfect Patio Stuff
•   Uhntz uhntz uhntz uhntz ALL RADIOS CAN NOW PLAY THE ELECTRONICA STATION uhntz uhntz uhntz uhntz

Cats & Dogs

•   Male stall vendors who work in Brindleton Bay and San Myshuno no longer wear high heels. Nobody appreciates our fashion choices!
•   Vet clinic staff will now work AS EXPECTED even if a TV or computer are on the lot. We had to update our staff policy.
•   We unfloated the objects that were floating at the Pupperstone Park location.
•   Cats will no longer receive a Flirty Moodlet from Flirty Paintings. They’ll have to look elsewhere to find love. Mee-yow.
•   Spayed cats will no longer become pregnant after an adventure from the Free Spirit trait. Now they’re super fixed.
•   Pet toys will no longer stick to cats when they’re finished playing with them. They’ll stay on the floor, as they should!
•   Fixed situations where Sims were unable to adopt cats or dogs.
•   Sims who belong to played households can no longer be employed by the Vet Clinic.
•   Sims now face the right direction when fishing in Brindleton Bay. The water is thataway!

Romantic Garden Stuff

•   When a new child is successfully summoned using the Wishing Well, the child is now actually added to the household. The magic had to be tweaked, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

Vintage Glamour Stuff

•   We’ve added an interaction to send the Butler to sleep so that time will speed up when everyone in the household is now sleeping.
•   You can now remove Vanity Makeup with a new interaction on the vanity table.

Laundry Day Stuff

•   The maid will no longer put folded clothes back into the washer and dryer. They were just trying to help…badly.

Fitness Stuff

•   Earbuds now raise a Sim’s fun need while music is streaming directly into their ears.

Bowling Night Stuff

•   Sims can now socialize with each other while bowling, because it’s not like they’re breaking a sweat with rigorous athleticism.
•   Sims will level up their bowling skill more quickly now.
•   Sims can now choose between 3, 5, or 10 frame games of bowling, with the winning Sim’s score shown at the end of the game.

My First Pet Stuff

•   Sims, and especially pets, will now be a bit less obsessed with their rodents.
•   Sims who owned a rodent will become sad for a period of time when their rodent dies.

[scoed]

It comes with a bunch of bugs that took the smile right off my face. Well it is sims lose a few bugs gain a few bugs. At this point I think of bugs in this game as a feature adding randomness to the game.

I would list some of the issues I am having but there is already a tread for that.

[Playalot]

Getting good bug fixes is always a plus! And this patch did fix a lot. The Book of Life was a much waited for fix so that's a good one for sure.

Have to laugh though as the chief being a perp might be fixed but in my new testing game Vlad is the Chief lol.

[Nindigo]

Have to laugh though as the chief being a perp might be fixed but in my new testing game Vlad is the Chief lol.

That's a good one, yeah. But being chief makes it perfectly alright for one to break into people's homes and drink their plasma. Didn't you know?

@scoed It sounds like you're having a very glum period with the game. We all do, I think. Then we perk up and become fond of it again. For a while. Then depression sets in again. Still, I hope the new pack will make you smile even just a little bit once in a while

[scoed]

@Nindigo Not really a glum period sim wise for me. I expect new bugs and issues each and every patch, pack and expansion. In sims speaking of bugs you gain a few, lose a few, and a few old ones make a comeback. Has been that way since The Sim 1 and will likely be that way for all future incarnations of the game. I even found a few more bugs since I last typed but they to already have an active thread. As I said I am to the point I think of bugs as Sims as a feature adding randomness as long as it doesn't crash my game or make it unplayable. None of the bugs so far qualify as making the game unplayable. This isn't even that bad. After Cats & Dogs, now that was another story.

Besides we are getting 4 new deaths including death by flowers. That alone excites me but we are also getting attack bees, walking scarecrows, angry destructive gnomes and I get to beat up Father Winter all coming soon. What is not to be excited about?

[Nindigo]

@scoed *cackle* Sorry for being a worry-rat And I agree on bugs being a feature. Some of them do make for interesting gameplay. That even goes for other games, too! Last night when I played Skyrim, a dead giant suddenly fell from the sky right in front of my character

Anyway, though I don't look for forward to new deaths as such, I might try them with some of the annoying Sims. It'll be released later today (I'm in Europe), so I'm sure I'll be busy checking things out soon.

[Spiderkeys]

This is a real annoying patch.

Stuck Objects I can't remove because cheats no longer work, yet I could go on and on.. here

[oshizu]

...and I get to beat up Father Winter all coming soon. What is not to be excited about?

Horrors, @scoed !
You would beat up the father of your sim's children? rofl

[scoed]

@oshizu Well he did knock up my one of my sims wife and he has yet to visit his kid nor has he paid a dime in child support. He is the very definition of a dead beat dad. PLus he broke into my home once. I say he earned it.

[oshizu]

Oh yeah, your Father Winter definitely deserves a smackdown!

[Rangervegas]

Well this finally managed to bring me back to the game after a while away. This gardening overhaul has been a long time coming especially with all the problems they have been having with the splicing system so I am completely jazzed about this.

I am curious about something though. On the SimsVip website they have a review and one part of it says "All plants grow faster than before." So I dident see that specifically said anywhere else, particularly on the post that SimGuruGrant made. So I'm thinking it's more of a statement by SimsVip about the general decrease in time needed for gardening overall perhaps?

I am curious because I have always felt like the grow and harvest time for alot of the plants was far too long. Thankfully I reviewed Carl's new guide updates and saw the one about someone who told us splicing slower growing plants onto faster growing ones speeds up the harvest growth time. I am not sure by how many factors though. Since you spliced the slow grower onto the existing fast growth plant does it simply take the speed of the new plant it's on or does the game system actually factor the two growth periods together and come up with a time length average between the two or something?

And has anyone noticed any baseline growth speed increase with anything yet? The current game I am playing I was not into gardening at all due to my past frustration with it; so now I am adding it into my gameplay; but I havent had a chance yet to do any growth tests because she's only lvl 2 in gardening so far. 

Nice to see alot of familiar faces again after being away for a while. But all the improvements made to gardening got me too excited to see how well it works now. 

[Playalot]

The facts are, growth times are only very slightly increased as now all plants grow-up at around 5am in the morning. Sheltered plants take 4 times as long, spliced plants now have a ridiculous 1/600 chance of producing the expected spliced result...I could give you many more facts but over all sounds like the other fansite simply has it wrong.

Plants now require to be fertilized 7 times before they will be ready for evolution and only if in Season (i.e. not sheltered as they take longer). So the changes to gardening have made reaching the Perfect garden very slow, and grindy. Sure you can now weed and water areas of effect but this only stops your sim from gaining gardening skill, so in my eyes, a negative.

The weed vacuum is not a real object in the game and never appears in your sims inventory, it is just magicked into your sims hands when they begin to weed an area of effect. Not a huge negative but previous iterations had this item as an upgradable object.

Plants need very little water now, (only once every 4-5 sim days) making getting the 10 plants weeded or watered at the beginning of the Botanist aspiration take sims weeks instead of a day if you don't plant a huge amount of plant in Season or sheltered immediately.

The Research Plant is often the only action your sim can take in the garden due to plants not needing as much care so instead of watching your sim weed, water and fertilize you now watch them spam 'Research Plant' repeatedly to level up - boring.

Plants at the most will only produce 6 harvetsables now with many plants always producing less than 5. Probably a good change now that plants in Season will grow produce a lot more often than before.

Interacting with a bonsai plant (build mode) will increase gardening skill but at a slightly lower rate than before as it now also gains florist skill.

A spliced longer growing plant will grow the same rate as the plant it is spliced to and will produce at the rate of the plant it is spliced to.
All of Carls timings are still correct but take into factor of simultaneous growth at 5am of each day so before perhaps the plant would have become fully grown at 7pm that night...now the game forces it at 5am (this is just a random example.)

http://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/skills/gardening/

Gardening has been radically changed ad although having bees nearby give a substantial boost towards decreasing evolution times as does an excellent fertilizer, it still takes a long time to grow that perfect garden.

Rotational players will struggle even on life setting long, a one household played game will struggle on live setting short. I'm not sure I'd hail the changes as great.

Carl's got a video out on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TYh_dxkwIQ

[scoed]

Well Playalot, Gaining gardening skill is as easy as ever with the analyze or study plant option raises and it can be spammed. Planting 10 plants inside guarantees 10 plants to water. With bees and large fish as fertilizer getting perfect plants isn't that hard in a normal life span, you just need to have a fishing sim with your gardening. And Rotating plants in and out of sheltered states helps a lot as well.

Thing is gardening is radically different. A serious gardener needs to fish, have an indoor and outdoor garden, keep track of seasons, keep bees, and as a whole it is much more complicated. But I enjoy the challenge now I understand the need to rotate plants in and out of protected states based on season, the value of the best fertilizers, and how to maximize the effects of bees. It is a puzzle in its own right.

I just wish they didn't nerf splicing. It is now in my opinion a waist of time to do so other than to fulfill aspiration requirements or to have the reciped spliced plants on your lot for fun or completeness. Seed packets are now the best way to get the rare plants as splicing is a joke. I have yet to get Cow Berry from my Dragonfruit/Snapdragon/Cow berry spliced pant. Thank goodness for fishing. What a joke.

[Playalot]

Watch Carl's video as he explains the mechanics of the bees pollination in there. And yes, it is different and yes, if you like shuffling plants around every week or two weeks then more power to you.

I'm not a fan and I won't pretend to be, however, many of the percentage chances around splicing really need addressing, a 1% chance of getting the expected rare from splicing/grafting isn't that great.

If you start in winter with no cheats it is difficult to get 10 plants as there are little to harvest in the wild. Most of my games I start with zero funds and no home... playing this way, with the changes to the gardening skill, is not easy. Sure you can open seed packets after you manage to scrape togther some funds but to me that is not using the gardening skill...seed packets to me are a 'cheat' and why bother gardening if all my sim is going to do is spam open seed packets.

I'm yet to see these changes as an over all positive thing. I know many players love them, great and that is wonderful for those players however this is supposed to be a sandbox game where all playing styles are catered for. I do think the addition of bees is fab, their fertilization ability actually stacks on your sims fertilization, so this can make evolution a bit quicker.

Some changes are good, I can see the game play in shuffling plants around and grafting for seasons and so on but even there this is simplified, simply graft everything to one of the plants that are always in season and boom, a perfect garden in weeks. Not much of a challenge there though.

[Rangervegas]

Wow....what a difference a few weeks makes. LOL Oh well.

I wonder if the fact I don't have Seasons will change any of the ways I approach gardening now other than the obvious things I don't have like the bee box and such. Bee Box sounds great, sprinkler sounds useless, at least until you've got an almost finished garden and you don't want to have to take care of it much.

I'd have to say right off that almost ANY system where the ** grafting works correctly is an improvement over what was before, but I see your and Carl's point about alot of things that seem to have been made needlessly more difficult about it.

The 1% chance to get the right fruit/veg/flower from a special graft is insane, although I assume once you've got it you can plant that one and all harvestables will still be only that type. I wonder how deep into grafting people can get. Like, if you graft a tomato onto a plasma pack tree (or vice versa, i'm still a little confused about which way the speed benefit applies) then when that plant produces again, if you plant THAT produce, would it result in a faster producing plasma pack tree or does it jump back to original plasma tree stats because it's a single plant type again? Yes these are the things that keep me awake at night. 

I do use some cheats but I try to minimize it for my main non-challenge households, like even if there was a mod for it, I doubt i'd use one that says "evolve plant to top level immediately" or something like that, but I do use ones like "make happy" to keep sims in a good mood so they don't want to run off and do other things while I want them to garden. I think I also thank god that I did the growfruit challenge on another sim in the household so I don't ever need to worry about fertilizer and the perfect growfruit pot hopefully still speeds up plant production time.

I am also curious if fully researching both plants increases the likelihood of getting a special fruit mutation out of a splicing. I have noticed I have to research more than once to get the full information about a plant, i'm not sure if that's tied to repetition or your gardening level or both perhaps.

All in all it sounds like this is more like a "one step forward, two steps back" update at least until they tweak some things on gardening. Oh well, i'm just glad they got the splicing to at least work finally.

Anyone know of a main EA support poll or request thread about the new changes and what things people don't like I can go "Me Too"?