The Sims Team has released an official statement regarding the Simulation Lag in The Sims 4 in their latest Sims 411 blog post.
In case you don’t know what a Simulation Lag is, it’s an issue where Sims would become unresponsive to certain interactions that you set them to do and just stand around for a few seconds until they finally respond.
The issue has become more persistent over the last few years and many have wondered when is The Sims Team going to address it and fix it.
In their latest statement they’ve acknowledged the issue and stated they’re actively working on fixing the issue. However, they will need your help with sharing the save game files and information on the Simulation Lag that occured in your game. They’ve also shared a workaround how to make the issue occur less often which you can all check out down below!
When will the ‘Simulation/Autonomy Lag’ be fixed?
We’re on it! Particularly, what we’re doing right now is identifying what the root cause of this issue is. That means, we’re investigating what specific actions during gameplay do lead to the lag? This is the first step we need to take because the simulation/autonomy lag is not the actual issue, it’s rather a symptom that can have dozens of different causes. If the lag has happened in your game, you’ve probably experienced the following most common manifestations of this symptom:
- Sims standing around doing nothing
- Sims not doing anything on their own (with free will set to max)
- Sims take forever to do a given command
- Time jumping backwards after fast forwarding to Ultra Speed. The Sims will usually freeze while fast forwarded.
- Sims come home late from school
- FPS Drops
Once we identify what specific actions and circumstances lead to the lag, we’ll know what we need to work on. And the best way to find out, is by analysing your save files! The more save files we can analyse the higher the chance we’ll be able to find the cause soon. That said, please continue your awesome support and keep sending us your save files whenever you experience the lag!
How to share your save files
Please provide the following information when sending your save files. You can send your info through this form or DM SimGuruNick directly on AHQ.
- Basic Information about your computer (CPU, Operating System, Amount of RAM, Graphics Card, Hard Drive Space). This is not to blame your computer for the issue but to see what kinds of systems this issue is occurring on)
- How big is your save game ?
- Does the issue also occur on a new save for testing purposes
- Video of the issue happening. Just upload to youtube and post the link in this thread. You don’t need to list it
- Please add the following files to a .rar or .zip archive and share with QA
These files can all be found in the following folder: DocumentsElectronic ArtsThe Sims 4
- lastException.txt (if it exists. If there is more than one, please include all of them.)
- lastUIException.txt (if it exists. If there is more than one, please include all of them.)
- Config.log
- the entire saves folder
Things you can try in the meantime
- Empty out your Sims inventories (all households you have ever played)
- Reduce the amount of objects in your house
- Play in a smaller house with less art pieces and stuff lying around
- If you over-clocked your computer, check how it goes if you revert that.
- Once the freezing occurs, try saving your game (save as), go to your options and back or press M or to go to the world map and back
- Lower Graphics settings
- If you play with higher resolution than 1920×1080, try lowing to 1920×1080
- Go to the Audio settings and remove the check next to Enable Mood Sting
- Make sure you fulfill the minimum requirements of the game
- Reduce the amount of mods and cc you use
- Start a new game (completely shut down the game, then restart it and start a new save game)
- Move your Sims to a new game
