TL;DR:
Improved Autonomy: Focus on improving Sims' autonomous behavior, including Sims maintaining eye contact during chats, using bathroom sinks instead of kitchen sinks, and low-energy Sims no longer waking up to do random tasks.
Bug Fixes & Stability: 95+ bug fixes including 10 significant crash and stability improvements, top community issues from the EA Forums like Married Sims reverting to partners, and Sims getting stuck in interaction queues.
Relationship Balancing: Tuning to Lovestruck (slower romantic decay, no satisfaction changes for inactive households) and Growing Together (improving dynamic frequency and making low-compatibility Sims realistically avoid one another).
Looking Ahead: Our October Base Game update will shift its focus toward Food, Dining, and Drink improvements.
Hi Simmers!
Welcome to the Laundry List, where we share the fixes coming in our next game update on September 22.
This update releases with 95+ bug fixes! Plus, following our Sims autonomy improvements earlier this year, we’re continuing to improve Sims autonomy. We’ve updated autonomous behaviors, focused on Sims interacting, and tuned a few relationship-themed features so your gameplay feels more realistic and intuitive. We also continue to fix top-reported issues from players, including crashes.
Join us later today, September 15 for a special Dev Q&A in The Sims Discord, where members of the development team will talk through these updates, and answer questions live.
The Sims Team
Coming in our September 22 update:
Top Upcoming Fixes
Here are the top-requested fixes coming with this release:
[EA Forums] Married Couples will no longer revert to Partners when entering CAS through Custom Tattoo planning or Plan Outfits.
[EA Forums] In August we addressed an issue with the Gallery server where content failed to load and showed a "No Results," "Slow Loading," or "No Connection" error. We’re sharing this for visibility because it was addressed on the server and was not part of a patch.
Sims getting stuck or freezing and interactions resetting are major pain points for players that we focused on for this update.
[EA Forums] We've addressed an issue where Time and Sims would freeze when the environment continued to animate. This was connected to a Sim trying to use an object while another Sim was in their spot. We believe this issue may have been hardware-specific.
[EA Forums] We fixed a major instance of interactions getting stuck in a Sim's queue relating to interaction priority and completion time for certain interactions. Our fix specifically relates to 'sleep' and 'chat' (specifically group chats) interactions, so we'll continue investigating to see where else this fix can be applied.
[EA Forums] We made some adjustments to interactions that are 'tending' objects, which resulted in Sims waiting on an interaction to complete. Going forward, if new instances of this are found, we’ll need to address them individually with this solution.
We fixed an instance where Sims would become idle and frozen after WooHoo if an autonomous interaction was queued during WooHoo.
We’re still investigating bugs that relate to Sims Freezing [EA Forums] or interactions getting canceled [EA Forums]. These issues can present similarly to the one above we fixed, but we need to continue untangling them so we can address each one individually- it’s a ‘6 raccoons in a trench coat’ sort of thing.
[EA Forums] We addressed a few issues where Infants could be placed on top of each other or pop out of their Playmat or Crib after reloading a lot or save. This also resolves certain interactions on infants being canceled or blocked.
[EA Forums] We’ve improved how roof trim segments work so nearby geometry does not incorrectly clip or invalidate the trim. This addresses a visual issue where platforms or half walls were placed close to a roof with inward-facing eaves.
We addressed a handful of bugs that were causing ‘Sims Dancing’ to be too frequent:
[EA Forums] We've addressed an issue where stereos could cause Sims to spam dancing interactions in their queue. This is not-retroactive and only fixed in new saves.
The "Dance Interaction" will no longer be autonomously queued when a Sim is painting.
Based on feedback from our Discord Dev Drop-Ins, Sims who dislike dancing will no longer dance autonomously and will stop if a song they dislike comes on.
Crash Fixes
In this patch, we focused heavily on improving game stability. We targeted and fixed around ten notable player crashes using automated reports. These kinds of fixes are particularly tricky to track down because, in many cases, we don’t have exact steps to reproduce them in-game. This means we often have to rely entirely on player crash data to piece together what went wrong. We’ll keep a very close eye on our automated reports following this release to verify that these pesky crashes have officially been resolved! We also plan to keep fixing more in the next update.
In addition to Automated crash fixes, we also fixed a series of reproducible crashes, which will be outlined in the patch notes.
During our investigation, we discovered that our top automated crash report was stemming from a conflict with outdated mod files. Since custom content and mods are such a huge, vibrant part of The Sims 4 experience, we want to help you keep your game running as smoothly as possible. If you use mods, we highly recommend checking out our comprehensive Mods & Game Updates Guide on the EA Forums for the best ways to update your files and safely get back to playing.
Improved Sims Autonomy
For this release we wanted our major focus and theme to be around improved autonomy. We addressed top voted autonomy-related issues from EA Forums as well as feedback we received on Reddit, Discord, and in our recent Discord Dev Q&As. We hope these improvements, changes, and fixes make your game feel more realistic and fun!
Here is a taste of some of the autonomy improvements coming your way:
[EA Forums] Sims now face each other during conversations… eye contact unlocked!
[EA Forums] Sims will now use a sink in the same bathroom as the toilet. Your kitchen sink can finally rest.
[EA Forums] Sims with low energy will no longer randomly wake up and perform unrelated actions.
[EA Forums] Couple Sims Walkbys introduced in Lovestruck will no longer engage in obsessive couple activities like Sky Gazing or kissing in the Library or other Non-Residential Venues. Get a room. (Lovestruck)
When their bladder needs are low, Sims will walk a little faster during the "needs to pee" animation.
+ More in Patch Notes
Relationship Balancing Passes
Based on feedback, we also did some balancing passes for two of our ‘relationship’ themed features: Relationship Satisfaction (Lovestruck) and Family Dynamics (Growing Together).
[EA Forums] [Lovestruck] Relationship Satisfaction will no longer change for inactive households. Their feelings can wait.
[EA Forums] [Lovestruck] Romantic Satisfaction should now decay slowly over time. Relationships take work, but maybe not that much work.
[EA Forums] [Enchanted by Nature] Sims with bad luck will see fewer negative relationship impacts while socializing. Unlucky not unlikeable.
[EA Forums] [Growing Together] Some family beef is best served from a distance. Sims now agree. Sims with awful compatibility and Difficult or Distant Family Dynamics will now rarely initiate socials, avoid each other, and keep conversations short.
[Growing Together] Per player feedback, we reviewed analytics data on the Family Dynamics feature and found some imbalances in how often certain Family Dynamics were awarded. We've made the following changes to improve the balance of this feature:
The "Compliant" Family Dynamic will now occur less frequently.
The "Jokesters" Family Dynamic will now occur less frequently.
The "Distant" Family Dynamic was rarely seen. We've updated this Dynamic so that when Sims run malicious interactions or fight there is a chance that they will receive the option for this Dynamic.
Upcoming Quality-of-Life Updates
Next month our team will turn its attention to Food, Dining, and Drink improvements. This update will include many little bug fixes within this theme (across Basegame and All Packs) that when combined should make these experiences noticeably better, a comprehensive tuning pass on calories and food pricing, plus a helpful, new quality of life improvement feature relating to [redacted].
We’ll also continue to address top community issues, including;
[EA Forums] Controller’s stopping functioning. We’ve been investigating, but are still trying to pinpoint the exact cause for this.
[EA Forums] Infants not falling asleep until Energy Motive is low.
Investigations into other bugs that relate to Sims Freezing [EA Forums] or interactions getting stuck or canceled [EA Forums]. Plus, more testing to see if we can identify other interactions where our fixes noted in this update can be applied. We’ve made good headway, but more can be done to improve this experience.
More crash investigations to further improve stability.
For the latest news, follow Sims Direct on X and join our Discord community - we’ll share updates as they’re available.
Thank you for your patience and for all the helpful reports. Please keep posting any issues you encounter on The Sims 4 EA Forums. We’ll keep checking in, and together we’ll make this game the best it can be.