Let's talk about roommates, for a moment...because I have a feeling we are going to need it.

My private investigator sim is married, has one wife, one baby, and one roommate. After a few days the roommate paid for his share of room & board. (It was about $900 something. So that was nice, I guess.)

I've noticed that the guy occasionally tags along whenever my sim goes somewhere. (I guess he stopped going to his regular job, because he hardly ever leaves the apartment.) My sim did a stakeout at the library over in Bridgeport, and the guy decided to tag along. Of course, he later started to complain that he was sleepy, and my sim had to share one of his elixirs with him from my sim's private stash. Then, he didn't even stay for the full stakeout. He went back home!

One day, my sim and his wife were invited to a party. They hired a babysitter, and the roommate, apparently, was already at the party. Before the party ended, the roommate went back home and dismissed the babysitter. The baby needed a diaper change and a bottle, and he took care of it. So that was nice as well.

After a while of playing, though, my game crashed. I am not sure how long it was running, and it was about that time. When I rebooted the game from the point of my last save, I found that the roommate is no longer a roommate. He is officially now a part of the family. He still has his old job, so I guess he is going to have to start going back to work.

Well, that story doesn't give me the warm and fuzzies over having a roommate.

So, the roommates are borked. Big, big surprise. I'll just wait for Twallan and the the other modding geniuses to fix this like they've done with just about everything else.

Buggy roommates, now I have two of them - even though I used to have one, but after I switched the household and got back to it, the roommate became a fully functional family member, and I had to kick him out. Regardless in the relationship panel he remained as a roommate, and after I invited another person to be one, the previous still sometimes comes back and uses the toilet, eats my food and then leaves for a week or so. Dang it, EA, do something about it!

Sorry, stupid question...what EP do roommates come with? I've never heard of this feature.

Base game, patch 1.50.

How do you get them and what's supposed to be the point? Once I finish fixing my game, I'd like to see how they work.

the interaction is under friendly. The Sim you are going to ask needs to be on your home lot at the moment of asking. And I guess it needs to be your friend, but I'm not sure about it.

Yep! Also, I discovered that it isn't enough just to be friends; you have to work them up to it. Just like you have to work a sim up to woohooing.

Edit: And I don't know what the 'point' is...other than having a roommate. They only just sprung this feature on us, and we are all figuring out how it works (or doesn't).

How is this different from "Ask to move in"?

They don't show up in your family panel (well, until you switch the family or exit the game, there's a glitch then), and pay rent weekly.

My own goal was to later make an old folks' home, but I don't want to get stuck with them being part of my actual family. So, I'm a little bummed.

Well, my game is broken so I can't play with the roommates . But it still seems pointless. I've been giving my sims roommates since the beginning, and no they don't pay rent, but they have jobs that bring in money and it all goes to the same place.

These are NPC roommates; you don't have to control them.

The point of them is to get some help with chores and bills... without having them in your household. Might be worth it if they weren't so buggy :/

There's a lot more discussion in the Patch 1.50 thread: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=497232

I have decided that I will not use that feature until either EA or a modder figures the problem and fix it. I don't like having sims thrown upon me in my household.

I do want to continue reading this thread to see what you all have come up with. This is how I learn.

Sigh... I just reloaded my roommate test game... exited normally last time, no crash, but the roommate is now part of the family >< Hadn't quite absorbed that all you have to do is exit for that to happen.

Not just a cheaply executed feature, but badly badly bugged

I wondered if that was going to happen to you or not, Srikandi.

This is just plain sad. I haven't even preordered University, and for them to release such a buggy "feature" in a pre-EP release does not inspire me in the slightest. If it had been done right, it could have been used for marketing. Instead, it's giving me serious warning signals.

Before 1.50, I'd create a housemate as part of my active family and then just make them an NPC using Debug Enabler. Same concept, except they don't pay rent. Guess I'll just keep doing that, since EA's roomies are buggy. Don't really care if they're paying rent anyway, as long as they're bringing in some sort of extra income. EA!

It is possible that the roommates system was not supposed to be available in the base game without university installed. All the other roommates related interactions and stuff other than "Ask to be a roommate" is gated by having the university EP installed, so the only thing that roommates do now is act like a unselectable NPC in your house.

With regards to the issue of roommates becoming part of the active household after reloading the game, perhaps the roommates system only works on a specific residential lot type? For instance, one of the new dorm/frat lot types that university is supposed to introduce. We'll know soon enough when university launches and we can see how the roommates system is supposed to work with the EP installed.

I have learned over the years to NEVER install a new patch until the Mod Gods have deemed it safe.

They did tell us that any homeworld sim would be able to rent out a room... not just students. So I guess that was, at least at some point, the intent. May be missing some pieces of code that come with Uni, maybe none of it was supposed to be in the patch... who knows *shrug*.

And are we really surprised when we read that an EP patch comes with features that will only work properly with the EP installed and will probably bork any game that does not have the EP?
I recall the Pets pet food in restaurants glitch, the Supernatural gardening and horror novel glitches, the Seasons telescope, space rock and attraction gift glitches, the Showtime firefly collection journal glitch and the Showtime patch destroying any insects collected previously, The Late Night wish to buy a hot tub and all those other things I may have missed.

Honi soit qui mal y pense.

This feature is awful. I got a roommate and played for a couple of sim days until I just wanted to get rid of the roommate. Tried the change household trick for getting rid of the roommate, which makes the roommate a part of the family and just kicked the sim out. Except next day I got a new roommate. Tried to change households again to get rid of it. New roommate the day after. Made a completely new family in CAS and moved into a house. Day after? Roommate! I got a roommate in a family I had not played in and that had not asked for a roommate. Not only that, but ALL of the roommates adopted a cat that ended up being added to my household, so I think I had to give up the SAME CAT 4 times for adoption. I deleted the whole savegame and just started over in a new world. We need a mod for roommates.

Show off!

Except that's not what that Old French motto means, is it? "Shame be to him who thinks badly of it", i.e. don't think bad things of EA? Not what Babele was getting at I think!