The Sims Team dropped the latest Laundry List on September 15, previewing a hefty patch arriving on September 22. The headline numbers: over 95 bug fixes, around ten crash fixes pulled from automated player reports, a focused pass on Sim autonomy, and relationship tuning for both the Lovestruck and Growing Together expansions.
Here is what to expect when the update goes live.
Sim freezing and interaction queue fixes
Several of the most requested fixes address Sims freezing mid-action or getting stuck in their interaction queue, a long-running frustration the team says it treated as a priority this cycle.
- A bug where time and Sims would freeze while the environment kept animating has been fixed. The team notes this was connected to a Sim trying to use an object while another Sim occupied the same spot, and may have been hardware-specific.
- A major interaction-queue bug has been resolved for sleep and group chat interactions specifically. The underlying cause related to interaction priority and completion time. The team says it will keep investigating whether the same fix applies to other interaction types.
- Sims that became idle and frozen after WooHoo (when an autonomous interaction queued during the act) should now recover properly.
- "Tending" interactions on objects, which could leave Sims waiting indefinitely, have been adjusted. Future instances will still need individual fixes as they surface.
The team compared the remaining freeze and interaction-cancel bugs to "6 raccoons in a trench coat," noting these issues can look identical on the surface but stem from different causes that need to be untangled separately.
Autonomy improvements
Following the autonomy overhaul earlier this year, this patch continues refining how Sims behave on their own. Some highlights:
- Sims now face each other during conversations instead of chatting at odd angles.
- Sims will use a bathroom sink after using the toilet, rather than walking to the kitchen sink.
- Low-energy Sims will no longer randomly wake up to perform unrelated actions.
- When bladder needs are low, Sims walk a bit faster during the "needs to pee" animation.
- Couple walkbys introduced in Lovestruck will stop doing obsessive couple activities like sky gazing or kissing in libraries and other non-residential venues.
- Stereos could cause Sims to spam dancing interactions in their queue. This is fixed in new saves only, not retroactively.
- Sims who dislike dancing will no longer dance autonomously and will stop if a song they dislike starts playing.
- The dance interaction will no longer be autonomously queued while a Sim is painting.
The autonomy changes were informed by feedback from the EA Forums, Reddit, and recent Discord Dev Q&A sessions.
Relationship balancing for Lovestruck and Growing Together
Two DLC-specific tuning passes are included in this update:
Lovestruck: Relationship Satisfaction will no longer change for inactive households, which should stop those frustrating moments where a couple you were not playing suddenly tanks their own relationship. Romantic Satisfaction decay has also been slowed down across the board.
Enchanted by Nature: Sims with bad luck will see fewer negative relationship impacts while socializing.
Growing Together: Sims with awful compatibility and Difficult or Distant Family Dynamics will now rarely start conversations, actively avoid each other, and keep interactions short when they do talk. The team also rebalanced how often certain Family Dynamics are awarded after reviewing player analytics: the Compliant and Jokesters dynamics will trigger less often, while the rarely-seen Distant dynamic now has a chance to appear when Sims run malicious interactions or fight.
Other notable fixes
- Married couples will no longer revert to Partners when entering CAS through Custom Tattoo planning or Plan Outfits.
- A Gallery server issue from August that caused "No Results" or "No Connection" errors was fixed server-side (not part of this patch, but the team flagged it for visibility).
- Infants could be placed on top of each other or pop out of their Playmat or Crib after reloading. This has been fixed, and it should also resolve certain infant interactions being canceled or blocked.
- Roof trim segments have been improved so nearby platforms or half walls no longer clip or invalidate inward-facing eaves.
Crash fixes and a mod warning
The patch includes around ten crash fixes sourced from automated player reports. These are the kinds of bugs the team cannot reproduce internally and has to diagnose entirely from crash data, so they plan to monitor reports closely after the patch to confirm the fixes hold.
Notably, the team's top automated crash turned out to stem from outdated mod files. If you use mods or custom content, the team recommends checking their [Mods & Game Updates Guide](https://forums.ea.com/blog/the-sims-game-info-hub-en/mods, game-updates-best-practices-and-getting-you-back-into-the-sims-4/12938569) before updating.
What is coming in October
The Sims Team previewed that the October base game update will focus on Food, Dining, and Drink improvements across the base game and all packs. Expect bug fixes within that theme, a tuning pass on calories and food pricing, and a new quality-of-life feature the team is keeping under wraps for now.
Still under investigation for future updates: controllers stopping mid-session, infants refusing to sleep until their Energy motive bottoms out, and additional interaction-freeze bugs.
This follows a busy stretch for Sims 4 quality-of-life work. The June 30 update added the ability to silence your Sim's phone and toggle festival notifications per pack, and the September Gallery Showcase just dropped a free high school lot and teen versions of classic Sims.
A Discord Dev Q&A with the development team was scheduled for September 15 in The Sims Discord to walk through the changes and answer player questions. Full patch notes will accompany the update on September 22.
Source: Sims Community via Google News - The Sims