Sims lost their autonomy or free will

[ocorreia]

I started a new neighbourhood recently after I installed Pets, and everything has been running fine ever since.

However, there is always a however with EA, after I adopted a dog, Sims somehow lost their autonomy and they just stand tapping their feet (no routing issues though) and they will just fulfill their most basic needs when it's getting very low (hunger and sleep). Their autonomy runs fine if they are in a community lot.

So, the problem must be in their current household, which was just fine when I started the new game.

Any suggestions to what could be causing this? I only have store content and mods that have been updated to 1.26. And according to Dashboards, no conflicting mods.

[TheScribbler]

I've got a few suggestions.
1. Try looking at your autonomy/free will options in Gameplay Options, you might find that it's on low free will.
2. Try moving them into a new house if their autonomy is fine on community lots.
3. Get rid of the dog, or if you really want to keep it then save it into the sim bin, get it from the bin in CAS and make it with a random sim, merge them with your current family and evict + delete the random sim.
4. If it still doesn't work then remake the entire household. Save each member (including the dog) to the sim bin when in CAS and just get them altogether in CAH, make the family, move them in and if it still doesn't work... Well I have no idea but hopefully it'll be fixed by then.

[Birdhouse]

Try looking at the game options. I think something might be there.

[ocorreia]

I checked the options, and free will is at the maximum.

I started a new game, and everything was fine, but after a few sim-weeks of gameplay, sims started to lose their autonomy again.

[Jasumi]

This always happens to me when there are too many people in the neighborhood.

What happens is the game will keep spawning service and homeless sims, which puts extra stress on the CPU.

I've seen the game spawn up to 200 of these sims, and freewill had taken an all-time low.

Try using Twallan's Mastercontroller (http://www.the-isz.com/nraas/index.php?/topic/2029-the-mastercontroller-phase-five-version-71-updated-2011-nov-22/) to delete them when this happens again.

[ocorreia]

Service and homeless sims are not a problem. I use twallan's mods, so NPC's are not just spawning unnecessarily. Currently, I have 50 service sims, which is in line to what it used to be before I had problems with autonomoy / free will.

Anyway, I realised that the culprit was my sim's dog. Once I gave it back for adoption, my sims recovered their autonomy.

So, I wonder what was wrong with my sim's pet... Anyway, I'll give it a try with a small dog and see what happens..

[hannahmh87]

Hmm that is strange, the dog must have been corrupted or something...

[KaiRuh]

I have the same problem with large dogs.. my Sims are fine when I have small dogs, cats, and horses, but for some reason they seem to go on low autonomy when there's a large dog in the household. :(

[ocorreia]

I have the same problem with large dogs.. my Sims are fine when I have small dogs, cats, and horses, but for some reason they seem to go on low autonomy when there's a large dog in the household. :(

Glad to know I'm not the only person with this problem! ;)

I even moved out to another lot, and still my sims would be very low in their autonomy. So, it's not a problem with my current lot.

I guess I have to get rid of the dog! :(

Are you using any mods or custom content? I wonder if this bug is EA's fault or caused by any mods / cc?

[hannahmh87]

I have 2 large dogs and my sims are fine.

I have quite a lot of mods.

[KaiRuh]

I mostly have Twallan's mods, plus a couple of Buzzler's, and a few tuning mods here and there. I have lots of CC (by my standards.. but nothing compared to what most people seem to have, lol.)
I haven't tried playing without mods to see if it works. Mostly because I'm very picky about my mods, so every single one of them is something I can't imagine playing the game without. :s So even if it worked without the mods, I would just go on playing with them and just avoid large dogs, lol.

[hannahmh87]

I mostly have Twallan's mods, plus a couple of Buzzler's, and a few tuning mods here and there. I have lots of CC (by my standards.. but nothing compared to what most people seem to have, lol.)
I haven't tried playing without mods to see if it works. Mostly because I'm very picky about my mods, so every single one of them is something I can't imagine playing the game without. :s So even if it worked without the mods, I would just go on playing with them and just avoid large dogs, lol.

It can't be twallan or buzzler because I have most of theirs and my dogs work fine.


...I don't blame you for not wanting to play without mods ;) :P

[ocorreia]

Kairuh,

I agree with you! I will just avoid large dogs for the time being, but I will not play without the mods I have at the moment. I have Twallan's, Shimrod, Twoftmama and a couple of other mods, and it wouldn't be possible for me to play TS3 without these mods. I also have some CC, mainly store and premium content, but nothing too much compared to other simmers (around 200 Mb).

Do you have the LE Pet Store? I had a custom Pet Store in my neighbourhood (I mean, not the original one, just a highrise that was converted to Pet Store) and I'm starting to think it was the culprit. My game was freezing quite often, and after I deleted this Pet Store, it is working fine. I have not tested to play with a large dog, though.

[jrhamilton]

What is interesting is here we are, a few days from 2013, and this is still a problem.

My household adopted a puppy from the adoption service (so one would think, no cc-related problem or anything) and everything was fine. Taught the puppy to go outside, chew on toys not furniture,

Puppy grew up into a young adult dog, and then the household Sims quit moving except as ordered or if a pet wanted something from them.

Put dog up for adoption, second the adoption lady took him away, Sims went on with their lives.

You'd think EA would have fixed this, and the obvious memory leak. Yes, there is still a leak, I can see it on my G19 keyboard's LED display set to Performance Monitor mode, over a few hours the memory used bar moves toward the max use of memory direction.

[DarkoniRiku]

Is there no one who knows of a cause or solution to this? Because not everyone has the problem but many do. It's quite frustrating not being able to play pets expansion pack the way I'd like :/

[kaylinpickles]

i have the same problem. i have a few households, with or without dogs they would just either stand around tapping their feet not doing anything or spend whole day in the pool. or if they visit a club they would just stand at the entrance after the club closes and not go home. i haven't looked at the options on free will yet, will it help? i'm sick and tired getting them do mundane things i can't enjoy the game at all!

[leokilo]

YES! I am experiencing this problem and it is annoying! My wife just stands there only filling basic needs and not doing anything. This is really annoying because I want a cat and a dog together with the family but now it seems impossible!

[springfairy556]

I thought I was the only one with this issue.Its really annoying! My sim can't have a pet now.

[zacatack_8]

This has been plaguing me for years now! I was told has something to do with bathtubs or store bathtubs, but I'm not sure.