No Adventures in France

[Sportsfan]

So I have a level 2 visa in France and I want to know why I am not getting any adventures from the board. The only ones that I am getting make me go to Egypt, and those rarely pop up.

[Seabody]

Is this your issue?

[Sportsfan]

Yes thanks but am I missing something or is there no way to fix it? I am all the way patched up.

[Seabody]

Is it only the one family that has the issue? (Create a new sim and try to get adventures)

[Sportsfan]

I think it's just that one but I can't test now til next weekend.

[Seabody]

Then I'd say it's a corrupted family, though we can't be sure until you test.

[Sportsfan]

It's always the dynasty lol

[Ricalynn]

My dynasty went through the same problem that's why I made sure the person who was going for the Visa had opportunistic so that I would get more Visa points per adventure.


It's worth a shot.

[Hosfac]

I am relatively certain (although I have no way to check for sure) that this is related to quest givers dying of old age. 

It always happens after you've been traveling a while, and never occurs when you first start.  If you have friends in a foreign country, occasionally you'll get the "Witnessed Death" moodlet immediately upon arrival.  While they do sometimes die while you're at home, they will occasionally die when you first land as well, so it is safe to assume that people that you don't know die at this time, too.

Do you remember how merchants used to be?  Before they fixed it, if a merchant died of old age you couldn't shop at the register they worked at for the rest of the trip.  You would have to go home and when you returned, the merchant would be replaced by another as the location loaded on your next trip.  It was thought that this was a bug, but really it was just an unforeseen flaw in the way story progression affected WA locations.  I believe that something similar is happening with quest givers, but it's harder for players to pin down what the problem actually is because it's difficult to remember who the quest givers in the chains you've done actually are. 

While there are some basic ones that seem to pop up randomly, most of the major quests have specific quest givers.  The Dutiel family in France will always give you that "Lost Garden" quest, for example.  And once you start the chain, you will always get quests in that chain from the same person.  Thus, my theory is that the actual mechanics of the game relies on the existence of the quest givers rather than available quests.  If the quest givers have all died of old age, the story board has no NPC's to place you in contact with and thus there are no quests available.

This theory comes from two observations:

1)  If you keep clicking on the adventure board, you will eventually get one of the minor random quests.  These include, but are not limited to, the quickie quests like the tourist photographs (Egypt), match maker (France), and the telescope (China) quests.  This is because the quest giver is decided when the quest becomes available.

2)  If you leave the location, you can sometimes pick up a major quest chain on your next trip.  This would indicate that, while loading the location, the game notices the loose end with no quest giver (like the old situation with the merchants), and assigns a new one.

This is just a theory that happens to fit the known facts, so take it with a grain of salt. 

[Sportsfan]

Actually that makes perfect sense hosfac. Everything fits.

It is far enough into my dynasty that all of the first generation have died of old age.

I don't know much about the old merchant bug as I got WA recently. (and sims a couple of months before that)

[MoMoll]

What you say makes sense Hosfac; but, I have recently had problems with quests in China that I never had until this latest patch and I'm playing with aging off, so no one is dying.

I tend to think it's a glitch. They fixed the excavation; but must have messed up the quests.

[Hosfac]

What you say makes sense Hosfac; but, I have recently had problems with quests in China that I never had until this latest patch and I'm playing with aging off, so no one is dying.

Do you have story progression off, too?  Unless you do, people will move out as more and more eternal babies are born.  This will seriously limit the number of possible quest givers as well, which will exasperate the problem.

As with any bugs, they don't always affect everyone the same way every time.  While you might not have ever had problems in China, other people have.  In fact, it's a close second to France for the most problematic adventure board.  The last time I went looking for Pangu's Axe, I had trouble picking up the quest chain in the middle of it.  I eventually left, and got it on my first try on my next trip.  Egypt seems to have the least amount of problems, but that could be because of the sheer number of major quest lines there.

My theory continues on the age ranges in the different countries.  China has some elderly Sims when you first start, however France does not (seem to).  Thus, when the Sims in France start dying of old age, they all die around the same time.  China is more gradual, but since it still has a heavy concentration of younger Sims, there will come a point to where there will be a massive change of Sims.

But like I said, it's only a theory that appears to fit the facts.

I don't know much about the old merchant bug as I got WA recently. (and sims a couple of months before that)

It was a simple, yet costly situation.  Between trips, some or all of the merchants would have died or moved away, rendering their registers useless.  The game would not replace those venders until you went back home and returned on your next trip.  EA simply changed the mechanics to where if it detected a register without a vendor, it would designate another NPC as the vendor, and they would rush to their workstation upon your arrival.

[MoMoll]

No, I always leave story progression on, it adds a kick to the game.

the problem has been, that after completing a quest, you can't seem to pick another until you return home for so many days. After a sim week or more, then you can find another quest. My sim could die of old age at that rate if I turned aging on.

[Hosfac]

No, I always leave story progression on, it adds a kick to the game.

Turning aging off and leaving story progression on is a really bad idea, as the two are quite literally linked with each other.  What you're not realizing is that the "kick" this is giving to your game is square in it's guts.

Your towns (WA locations included) can only hold so many Sims.  When you install the game, it decides on numerous things based on your computer specs, and the number of townies is one of those things.  When the population surpasses this limit, the game will remove Sims from the town in an effort to keep your game running at optimal performance.  It does this by either killing Sims in an "accident," or moving them out of town. 

When you turn aging off without turning off story progression, Sims continue to live their lives as normal:  they find jobs, they quit jobs, they form relationships and have babies.  The one thing that they don't do is age.  This means that any new babies that are born/adopted will stay babies forever...but they still count as a Sim for purposes of determining how many Sims are in the town.  So once this causes the number of townies to surpass the designated number, townies will either die in a tragic accident or move out.  If an adult dies/moves, it will never be replaced by another adult...but since the number eventually drops below the designated number of Sims in town, it allows more babies to be born.  And once the number of townies surpasses that magic number again, the process repeats itself.

While babies can die in these "accidents," they cannot move out without an adult (meaning that if you lose a baby in this way, you also lose an adult).  Thus, when the game initially decides to remove Sims, the chances are dramatically better for an adult to be removed than it is for an eternal baby to be removed.  So after a while, infants in town will outnumber the adults.  Infants cannot fulfill the roles of co-workers/schoolmates, friends, and will not be able to give you opportunities (including quests).

This could very well be the heart of your problem.

Doing the opposite is equally bad:  Sims age and die, but are never replaced by a new generation.  New families will move in, but it seems that these families will be fewer and farther in between as the generations continue.  It removes the legacy of the townies, and will eventually turn your game into a ghost town.

[skybaker]

Sportsfan, have your sims moved from one town to another?
I experienced the same problem before once I have a save in Sunset Valley with some quests of WA completed and move the household to Twinbrook thereafter.