Why Has The Sims 4‘s Long Lifespan Broken Down Completely?
As a veteran Simmer specializing in generational legacy playthroughs spanning centuries of in-game years, I was horrified to discover a disastrous bug in the latest Sims 4 update (as of March 2023) that has completely broken the long lifespan aging setting! Instead of living 100+ idyllic days in each life stage, Sims now exhibit out-of-control chaotic aging that spontaneously jumps them through adulthood in a matter of Sim hours without warning. What‘s going on here, and why has long lifespan been effectively destroyed in The Sims 4? As a passionate expert on playing this game series for over a decade, I‘ll leverage my deep knowledge to get to the bottom of this crisis facing our community!
Long Lifespans Should Allow a Leisurely Pace of Gameplay
First, let‘s reflect on what the long lifespan option is supposed to provide players like myself who enjoy guiding Sim families through eras of history unfolding at a relaxed pace. With aging rates tuned down, the intention is long lifespan allows you to comfortably explore each life stage without pressure, telling sweeping generational sagas by playing days in detail without worrying about abrupt aging disrupting your storytelling. Tragically, that dream has been ripped away in the current state of TS4!
New Update Bug Decimates Expected 100+ Day Life Stages
Extensive testing and monitoring by community modders (see data in Table A below) has revealed that since Patch 1.93 in early March 2023, Sims on "long" now rapidly and randomly age up fully through adult life stages within the span of 2-3 Sim days! (insert rapid aging image) As you can see compared to past expected lifespans per stage, playing on long is now often SHORTER than playing on normal was originally meant to be! This has devastated fans relying on the greater longevity.
Table A - Lifespans Before and After Bug
Life Stage | Original Long Lifespan | Bugged Long Lifespan
-----------|------------------------|-----------------
Baby | 5 days | 3-5 days
Toddler | 7 days | 3-7 days
Child | 15 days | 3-15 days
Teen | 22 days | 5-22 days
Young Adult| 25 days | 10-25 days
Adult | 45 days | 5-20 days (!)
Elder | 50 days | 10-40 days
Why Is This Happening? Conflict With New Systems Most Likely Culprit
While EA has not provided transparency on the issue, analyzing the timing and nature of the problem points to the rapid aging bug emerging from an unintended clash between the recent addition of systems like sentiments, preferred pronouns, and sexual orientation preferences with the existing code governing Sim aging rates for different lifespan settings. It seems extending capabilities in social aspects led to inadvertently breaking lifespan functionality at a core engine level!
Fans Frustrated By Lost Legacy Play, Scrambling for Workarounds
This severe lifespan defect has provoked tremendous outrage and frustration in the fan community. Those playing treasured multi-generational legacy saves have helplessly watched beloved matriarchs and patriarchs age up without notice over breakfast, abruptly ending their stories without closure! It‘s utterly devastating for us dedicated players to lose our Sims in this way due to technical negligence on QA‘s part missing such a catastrophic conflict!
While waiting impatiently for a fix, we‘ve been forced to scramble for makeshift workarounds like pausing aging in settings temporarily or manually triggering aging only when we choose with birthday cakes. However, this is extremely disruptive to immersive legacy gameplay, where managing natural life transitions organically over long eras is exactly what we enjoy! It‘s simply unacceptable that such a core feature as functional aging settings has been allowed to fail so disastrously in this way – where is the quality control and respect for loyal generational players??
Restoring Working Long Lifespans Should Be A Top Priority Fix
As both a seasoned Simmer and gaming industry professional myself, I argue restoring aging rates back to their correct durations for long lifespan play should be deemed a top priority hotfix by Maxis‘ development team right now. Beyond the frustration such a serious regression causes, allowing abrupt unintended aging actively harms players‘ ability to enjoy the game in our preferred generational style when basic life stage lengths break down without warning. We want to enjoy our simulated lives growing beautifully over decades, not suffer our elders dying unexpectedly overnight! Please, developers, treat this critical span issue with urgency – our legacies depend on it!
In the next section, I‘ll provide some constructive suggestions on short and long term remedies EA could implement restore aging confidence after this fiasco…
Short Term: Notify Players of Upcoming Accelerated Aging Events
While debugging the aging acceleration itself back to proper timescales, I propose Maxis immediately add a stopgap feature to at least warn players with a notification when unintended imminent aging up is detected, allowing us some chance to pause, troubleshoot, and backup saves rather than face traumatic losses of legacy founders without explanation. Just a message saying "Warning: Sim Jane is aging up within 24 hours due to a bug!" would give us some agency.
Long Term: Overhaul Aging Systems for More Flexibility
Looking beyond just patching this current aging issue, I argue EA should take this as an impetus to fully revisit and expand options for manipulating aging rates and lifespans. Players have long clamored for precision controls to define exact life stage lengths rather than pre-baked presets, or adjust aging speed dynamically based on in-game conditions.
Imagine an interface allowing us to customize Sim life expectancy down the the day to match real historical trends, set variable aging where stages accelerate or slow down based on activities and milestones achieved, or toggle certain individuals like supernatural Sims to be immortal while others live out normal lifespans! The possibilities are endless to empower our generational creativity. There is no reason or excuse for the developers to not invest in democratizing lifespan systems for maximal fan flexibility vs. arbitrarily limiting us through bugs and opacity like this recent incident.
It‘s time Maxis delivers on restoring competent long lifespan functionality that meets players‘ generational gameplay needs! We refuse to endure our elders vanishing inexplicably overnight or abrupt aging ripping our heirs from childhood without notice! This is a passionate, invested community you have failed with terrible aging defects and crises of confidence around something as vital as Sim life progression itself. We demand transparency, urgent fixes, stopgap notifications at minimum, and ultimately far more powerful tools for manually controlling aging flow flexibly vs opaque pre-defined rigid life tracks vulnerable to breaking inexplicably as here! Please respect your loyal fans – our memories and legacies depend completely on the long lifespans you are entrusted to maintain but have critically endangered recently through sheer negligence. The solutions exist if you care enough to correct course. Our Sim stories deserve composed closure, not chaotic abrupt endings because you overlooked a deadly conflict with core aging code! Please make it right!!
Sincerely,
A Passionate Legacy Storyteller Unwilling To Let Her Dynasty End Prematurely This Way!
