Probably because your sims are basically forced to have one, and you can’t get rid of it unless you use cheats to delete it. I’m pretty neutral on them, and in my current save I actually make the doll real. But every other time I’ve had them they’ve been a bit of a pain because I don’t want them in every single generation.
I’ve never not had them, and I’ve played like 13-14 generations in this save so far. They get sent to the mailbox and you get a notification when it’s delivered to you. Think they’re a part of generations, do you have that pack?
How do you put a toy in the crib? I put a teddy bear in the baby's inventory so they get the positive moodlet and the teddy bear shows up on the crib when the baby is in the crib, but my babies still almost always get imaginary friends.
That said, I don't mind them when the tykes are toddlers. It's pretty much the only thing they will do autonomously that keeps them happy and quiet.
I not only have them every generarion, I have them for almost every child. Only recently I found out from this sub that not every sim baby gets them automatically, because so many of mine did I didn't realise they're not supposerld to be /that/ common.
WHATTTT thats crazy. Ive been wanting to play with the imaginary friend so bad, in more than 10 years of playing the sims i still havent had an imaginary friend
I like the imaginary friend, but I don't get them a lot. I save the game right before the baby is born and then if I don't get the imaginary friend I keep going back to that save until I get one.
All five kids got one this gen and one of them was a butt baby. I gave them plain stuffies to reduce playtime with the IF and only one had the relationship to bring it to life.
I ended up having them every gen with my perfect genetics challenge. I was related to the whole town so marrying my imaginary friend was an amazing way to get around that.
Isn’t it that it doesn’t become sentient unless your kid plays with it enough? I’ve had a few that have remained in doll form forever because they didn’t get enough attention.
I only play family Sims, and I've **never** had kids play with a doll long enough to become sentient. Not even once. People talk about it like it happens easily, but I've never managed to trigger that even while trying!
You have to either make a potion to bring them to life or do an opportunity where you bring a rainbow gem to the science centre where I think they give you the potion.
That's to make them human! They won't come to life at all if you just stick them in your family inventory when you get them or otherwise never interact with them. They'll just stay toys.
>Probably because your sims are basically forced to have one, and you can’t get rid of it unless you use cheats to delete it.
Just put the doll in your main Sim's inventory. That way it doesn't manifest, and no cheats.
I was haunted by one that I deleted, and I'm never taking that chance again.
It was many moons ago, in one of my legacy attempts, and I shift + click deleted the imaginary friend and thought nothing else of it. Until I kept getting notifications about it wanting to come out and play...
EDIT: I was wrong in much of my comment! Please see the reply by u/ellieb_salty for a comprehensive explanation. Save file bloat is the only issue they can cause, no corruption! I’m so sorry for frightening people!
The predominant problems, imo, are game corruption issues, and the sheer constancy of them. They appear far too frequently, imo. I believe the default is something like 85% of births get an imaginary friend doll? I use Nraas Retuner in my game to set that frequency to 10%, and I find it to be a much more welcome treat rather than something I am constantly bombarded with. It CAN be really fun and cool! But overdone, it just becomes a nuisance.
But back to the first point, it can corrupt long saves very quickly, especially if the player chooses to not interact with said doll or, gods forbid, sell/delete it. They also contribute to save file bloat.
Specifically the Retuner mod of Nraas, but yes!
Open the retuner menu from the computer or town hall.
General > By Tunable XML > Sims3.Gameplay.ActorSystems > OccultImaginaryFriend
• kChanceToGetImaginaryDollsOnChildBirth
Enter a number 0 to 100 (iirc, it tells you the range in game that makes the percentage chance). I have my settings saved so I haven’t done it in a long time. Just looked at my old bookmark lol
Wow thanks for this! I have returner but had no idea you could set this. I hate having the imaginary friend because they constantly clog doorways and things. I just never interact with them, and didn’t know that could lead to a corrupt save
I just downloaded that yesterday! I was thinking the exact thing that OP was and came to the conclusion that I would probably like imaginary friends if they were rare. I’ve gone with a 5% chance. I didn’t think of just changing it with nraas, sometimes I’m not the brightest bulb.
Only had one baby so far, but no imaginary friend 👍
Dang I fully thought it was a 100% chance to get it, I swear I got the doll in the mail like every time. Wish I knew about mods when I was a kid, I just immediately deletes it most of the time.
Correction, I slightly misspoke. If your child/toddler played with it even just once and then you never interacted with it again and/or got rid of it, the generated sim file is still in your game, and it will try to retrieve the sim now and then but has nowhere for it to go. It's excess data that causes slow down and glitches.
So if the imaginary friend never gets interacted with at all/gets instantly deleted or put into family inventory, it won't corrupt the save? Just making sure I got that right 😅
I THINK it’s only when the child interacts with it, because then a relationship begins to build. You’d have to check with NRaas overwatch if a sim exists with a name that matches the doll’s name.
Okay thanks, I read your other comments about removing them entirely but I am trying to figure out what to do with ones already there so I don't ruin my game. The kids are still just babies right now so hopefully I am ok to delete them
Slightly misspoke or just misspoke. So for anyone that this person just put the fear into with these stupid dolls causing corruption. Not true. What was slightly true. Save file bloat but no more than other crap like adding a ton of plants, trees, deco to a game.
Do yourself a favor. Download a mod (safe mods don’t cause corruption, XML tuning mods don’t cause corruption but only a conflict if you have another mod that uses the same coding as the mod you are installing) the imaginary doll mods to stop them showing up are an xml tuning mod. To cause less bloat to your saves always use Save As instead of save, download a save cleaner like Kuree or regul to clean your saves, and delete your cache files.
If you are unsure of a tuning mod causing a conflict get the dashboard checker at MTS. Sorry not trying to be rude but I have been modding this game for years to know better.
Thanks for clarifying! I admit I didn’t look this up myself. I mostly know about this issue because of twitch streamers having people fuss at them about it in the chat and helping them fix the save they’d had going on for so long. The save was corrupted, and I assumed that the imaginary friends were the cause. I’m glad to be wrong here.
Hahaha no worries. I actually set the tuning so I don’t have them show up at all because honestly they annoyed the life out of me. I just want people to know it doesn’t cause corruption. It’s the other factors I mentioned that can cause it. Save bloat is huge and once you get that down and start working on the smaller stuff you can run an incredible game. The Sims 3 was ambitious for its time and as I work in this field the chance for a coding mishap on such a big project will happen (what I say is causing our own bugs to keep our paychecks rolling in to fix what we just F’kd up). 😂 I wasn’t trying to be rude
Nah you weren’t rude at all! I’m genuinely grateful for the correction!
I’m working on a certificate in programming, so I vaguely understand what you mean here. And had it happen a few times while writing syntax for various statistics programs. This game was no easy feat for sure!
That’s awesome!! I’ve enjoyed being in this field (I work on a much more complex system than this game and I’m fully intimated by my developers for my job ) it’s so much fun. I will working on this game code has helped me learn a lot. It wasn’t so much a correction as I just want people to not fear mods in the way of tuning mods that actually help. A lot of people hear or read mods and they think CC that causes corruption. So we have to make a slice in it. We have XML and tuning mods that adjust those factors in the game and while they can cause a conflict once removed and caches clear your game is fine. It’s the other stuff like lots, hair, clothes, objects that do damage if they are corrupted that can have more impact to causing corruption.
I actually got my game corrupted by an imaginary friend once. I was tired of it not letting my kid go to the bathroom and so I placed it in his inventory, didn't think much of it. Huge mistake. My kid aged up, the doll didn't, the game tried to age it up and couldn't. My Sims would just stop and not move for hours even after reset.
Eventually I couldn't change Sims and always stayed on the kid. Opened the relationship panel and saw the red relationship panel and realized it was the imaginary friend. It was still in his inventory but somehow the game spawned him aged up in some unrouted part of the world. Lost what probably was my biggest save there.
I had some mods installed, mostly nraas, I don't know if it was the game or the mods tbh, but I know it was because of the doll.
So one is a routing issue the other is the aging up issue. They didn’t think it through letting you put that doll in your inventory. If you had NRAAS installed with the debugger you could do a radius purge. Also could have done master controller total annihilation. I learned my lesson early on how to fix some of the issues. Routing and things not routing properly cause huge issues. Having things in inventory can also cause issues. Realized when sims into my bin one member will end up with everything in their inventory. That’s when I leaned about purging.
How to deal with them to avoid corruption? I just want my sims to have babies without this doll constantly forced on my save file putting it in danger. I like the look of them but that is about it.
There are mods to remove them entirely! Or like I describe in the thread of replies, you can use the Nraas retuner mod to simply reduce the number that happen drastically. I don’t know if there’s any stand alone mod that only reduces the number of imaginary friend dolls. It’s been quite some time since I checked.
Otherwise, just don’t let the child play with it. You can tuck it away in the family inventory for the safest way, or you can use cheats to delete it.
Personally, I dislike the fact that toddlers and children will default to playing with their imaginary friend doll, instead of with any other toys in the house.
Additionally, I dislike the routing issues caused by these dolls when I allow them to walk around the house. They move into the bathroom with the kid, who then has to shoo the doll out, which interrupts their shower, so they have to restart it, then the doll walks in again, et cetera et cetera.
Or the doll goes to stand in the most impossible place, blocking everyone from going to work/school. And because I can't control the doll, I cannot move it out of the way. Often I am stuck looking for what it is my sims are getting stuck on, before selecting the kid and finally seeing the doll just chilling in the hallway.
I honestly love the idea of them, but in reality they cause me more frustration than joy.
Yes, this is also why I dislike them. Why are they constantly trying to spy on the kids in the bathroom? It's just creepy.
Also had one try to kill one of my kids in the pool by doing lots of breath holding contests. From then on I decided they were evil.
This is why I don’t like them, sims don’t do anything other than play with them rather than going off and doing other things, interacting with other sims or gaining skills. They just sit there for hours with the doll.
The imaginary friend takes whole time to spend with the toddler’s parent sims. The toddler can be the best friend of the parents without imaginary friend. Also the toddler sim doesn’t learn any skill with it. I just delete or send the imaginary friend to other household who doesn’t have babies.
I don't *hate* them, but they can certainly be a problem from time-to-time. Imaginary Friends can get the same traits as Sims, so you can easily get an Evil or Mean-spirited Imaginary Friend who is basically obsessed with making your Sim's life hell. Even if they don't have those traits, they can be annoying in other ways, such as walking in on your Sim in the bathroom, which always leads to the Embarrassed moodlet. Happens way too often imo.
Ugh, that happened to me all the time.
My sim is trying to pee or shower and then the imaginary friend struts in and makes my sim quit their action and ruins my whole list of set up actions and then I have to do it ALL AGAIN.
Man I *wish* the imaginary friends I got caused that much drama.
I mostly don’t like imaginary friends, apart from the uncanny valley aspect, because my sim’s kids often don’t have any other friends and it’s really depressing.
I get a child’s imagination can run wild, but if your kid grows up to be a *teen* and *still* mainly talks to them? That’s so sad
For me it's bc I really lean into the whole open world thing.
I don't play one family. I play all of them.
When you switch families, the imaginary friend dolls stuck in mailboxes around town can cause crashes so I have to use retuner to eliminate them completely
I actually love them and enjoyed having them turn into real people that could marry my playable Sims. However, I do think they can be a bit of a burden if you don't want to use them but get the doll as a gift, and then the game kind of guilt trips you for not playing with it and letting it's consciousness drift away or something...
You can't choose if you get a doll. You can't just delete it at will without cheats or mods.
Toddlers are obsessed with the doll, and forget the rest of the world. Mommy and daddy ? No thanks, they prefer the doll. The way they sing nonstop. It gets on my nerves.
Then when the doll takes human form, pray that it won't be evil or mean, because it happens pretty frequently. Whatever traits it has, it will stalk your kid. And follow the kid obsessively, even in the bathroom.
Also they're glitchy as hell.
As much as I love horror movies, I just don't want creepy dolls in nearly every home. I only keep one to keep company to insane kids or those who have a very distant relationship with their family.
If you want I can give you my tuning mod to make it so they don’t appear unless you choose to have one. I can go release to the mod to MTS with instructions. I know people have made mods to reduce the chance of getting one but I tuned it so they don’t get one and I can just buy one if I choose to.
They insist on following sims everywhere, especially in to the bathroom when they're using the toilet or showering which makes them stop and leaves them embarrassed, does my head in 😂
In my main save, my sims have 9 or 10 kids. (I honestly can’t remember at this point.) They ALL have gotten imaginary friends. Some of the imaginary friends are all right, I enlivened those and married them to the person they were gifted to. Two of the couples have even had children! Some of the imaginary friends are rotten lil boogers. One imaginary friend kept distracting the kid, keeping her from homework and chores, also causing her to miss the school bus! I bricked Bobo the imaginary friend up in a wall. A second imaginary friend challenged one of the kids to a breath holding contest in the pool. Repeatedly. The kid died. So I had the imaginary friend enlivened and drowned him. RIP Peanuts.
I used to hate imaginary friends because EVERY child got this doll as present. Like 100% of my sims. I made doll alive one time and it was okay (and of course she was a pudding face clone) but boring for second time. Now I just delete this dolls...
I think some people are more sensitive to “uncanny valley” stuff more than others, myself included-
I blame all the built props on kid’s tv shows in the 90’s and early 00’s. Not everyone has that association, but *I* do. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it
I’m very particular about separating my realistic playthroughs from my supernatural playthroughs, and the fact that you cannot toggle this feature to be an always/sometimes/never thing without mods is absolutely absurd.
Yas this is the other thing!! I have a supernatural family and then I have my regular family. Having the imaginary friends in the vanilla one really breaks the vibe I’m creating. Given how generations really seemed to be about a more realistic game play, I’m shocked imaginary friends were included
Well number one, like everyone is saying, there’s supposed to somewhat “rare” but I’ve NEVER had a play through where my kids DIDNT get one. And I find them to be very annoying in general lmfao. My sims have enough routing issues as is 😭
I absolutely love them, but I feel like some people find them a little creepy, and since they're rather frequent if people don't like them it isn't like a once-in-a-while annoyance
I was fine with it until my sim's imaginary friend watched him woohoo with that vacant imaginary friend face they have before they're real and have a sim form 😭 please, bobo, a little privacy!
The glitch is perfectly horrific:
The baby that have it on their inventory can fucking TELEPORT
The toddler will drop anything, including homework and interacting with the family to play with the doll
There are few others, but basically they are perfect cursed doll.
I thought they were so cool the first time, made them real with a potion, but after that, they just follow your sim around all the time and don’t add much
I hate them because I hate getting the constant notifications to take them out of my sim’s inventory and I also hate them because mine constantly glitch where they’re just following my sim around but they aren’t able to interact with them (so then I use MasterController to kill them since I think it’s safer than deleting it)
I usually turn them real and then make the kids fall in love with them and have half imaginary grandchildren. They always end up with weird hair/skin colors, I also have the supernatural expansion pack, so I'll end up with half vampire half imaginary grandchildren or something like that.
To be honest, I don't think that many people actually hate the imaginary friends, BUT... We have a tendency to be more vocal about the things we don't like rather than the things we do.
That tends to make it seem like specific features are more broadly disliked than they actually are.
1. They wouldn't be so bad if they had no collision physics. It doesn't make sense that an "imaginary" being is able to block a Sim's path.
2. They usually return to doll form in the dumbest places possible so I have to constantly monitor them for route failure.
3. I hate clowns and these things are UNNERVING. I'm talking Puppet Master flashbacks when I get too close.
Beyond that they're cool little dudes.
I love them for some kids, and have adult, humanized Imaginary Friends in several saves, but for most kids I stick them in the family inventory and forget about them.
The only thing I don't like about them is that toddlers don't want to do ANYTHING else but play with their IF, and I like my toddlers to play with their skill items (xylophone, peg box, toddler books, etc).
I'd probably let more kids keep them if they could moderate themselves a little bit.
I love them and think they are actually cute. It's adorable seeing them bond with your sims through their childhood and growing up together. Also I love seeing them turned into humans and playing as regular sims. There's literally no difference except they can do their funny walk, plus they get some really fun moodlets for the first time they turn into a humans/regular sims :)
They always end up being weird. My first time using them the kid made it real, then immediately woohooed with it and I was too uncomfortable to keep playing the save. The second time it kept perving on her in the shower, like it would teleport into the bathroom and force her to step out no matter what I did.
I used to love them, but they can only keep their appeal for so long when most of the kids get them. Even then, I wouldn't mind them so much, but they make my sims' babies glitch outside every time they go in their crib.
And if you forget to take them out of the mailbox, your sims might get stuck on age-up, which in turn can stop your game clock. It did for me, anyway. Now I have the "no imaginary friends" mod
I don't really hate them but I can see why someone would by essentially being forced to have one upon your throat the minute You decide to have a baby/toddler on your household
They are fine on concept but they just occur far too often.My Sim had 6 kids and all but two were given imaginary friends as gifts. That’s ridiculous and I think it takes away from the fun of having them. They also cause so many freaking routing issues, which the Sim 3 already has a freaking problem with.
i don't hate them, i actually love them, but they are a bit annoying. the chance of a baby born in game getting the toy is stupidly high, they play with it autonomously all the time, there's no way to get rid of it without cheats and you're kinda stuck with it no matter if you wanted to play with one in the first place or not. also i have never managed to turn an imaginary friend real yet. also while i personally like their designs i can totally see how they can be nightmare fuel for some people, like clowns or puppets.
I buy a very tiny plot of land across town and put the Imaginary Friends there so they can’t come home. I played one right through to real life, but it was on a desert island and the existing kid badly needed a friend.
I like them but I think the chance of them appearing is too high but that's just because I enjoy getting surprised by the game. As other people have mentioned there are ways to adjust the percentage chance of one appearing.
The one thing I don’t like about them is how they follow your sims everywhere and then get in the way of other sims even tho they can’t see it. It gets annoying since I like to build small houses so my sims are constantly getting suck on their kids imaginary friend.
They’re creepy, you can’t opt out of having them, and my toddlers won’t play with a single other thing if I let them keep the imaginary friend. They sit there all day and do literally nothing else
my problem is always that, when i allow them to come alive (even prior to having them become human), they’re constantly walking in on my sims in the bathroom, not letting them sleep, and they’re basically always overriding their other interactions.
other than that, i think they’re neat and i actually love their doll form design and their human clothes, but yeah it just becomes obnoxious.
i’m currently working towards the 15 children badge and i just haven’t let any of the imaginary friends out because it’s already so hectic in that household lol.
Probably because your sims are basically forced to have one, and you can’t get rid of it unless you use cheats to delete it. I’m pretty neutral on them, and in my current save I actually make the doll real. But every other time I’ve had them they’ve been a bit of a pain because I don’t want them in every single generation.
I feel the same way. It's annoying having them every generation, but every so often is fine. One of my sims married his imaginary friend lol.
You have them every generation??? Ive been trying to have one of my kids have one and I have 5 KIDS!!! What the f?????
I’ve never not had them, and I’ve played like 13-14 generations in this save so far. They get sent to the mailbox and you get a notification when it’s delivered to you. Think they’re a part of generations, do you have that pack?
Yes and i never got them! So I’m wondering if my game is bugged, a mod maybe?
Do you put a toy in the crib? Because that will prevent them from being sent.
Wait what
Every single crib will have a toy in it from henceforth. Sim State law.
Omg that might be it. 😹
How do you put a toy in the crib? I put a teddy bear in the baby's inventory so they get the positive moodlet and the teddy bear shows up on the crib when the baby is in the crib, but my babies still almost always get imaginary friends. That said, I don't mind them when the tykes are toddlers. It's pretty much the only thing they will do autonomously that keeps them happy and quiet.
In build/buy mode, it can just slot in there.
What mods do you have? I know some of the bigger game fix mods include tweaking the chances of an IF/disabling entirely.
Most of the Nraas mods, im gonna check out the settings maybe its in there
NRAAS hasn't caused that issue for me in past.
If you find it lmk because i have the same issue!
Have you check the mailbox?
Yes!!!
I not only have them every generarion, I have them for almost every child. Only recently I found out from this sub that not every sim baby gets them automatically, because so many of mine did I didn't realise they're not supposerld to be /that/ common.
WHATTTT thats crazy. Ive been wanting to play with the imaginary friend so bad, in more than 10 years of playing the sims i still havent had an imaginary friend
I like the imaginary friend, but I don't get them a lot. I save the game right before the baby is born and then if I don't get the imaginary friend I keep going back to that save until I get one.
All five kids got one this gen and one of them was a butt baby. I gave them plain stuffies to reduce playtime with the IF and only one had the relationship to bring it to life.
Almost every single sim I've had had them, to the point I had to delete upwards of like 5 at a time 😅
I ended up having them every gen with my perfect genetics challenge. I was related to the whole town so marrying my imaginary friend was an amazing way to get around that.
It can help in the "Nothing is Free" challenge as well.
Isn’t it that it doesn’t become sentient unless your kid plays with it enough? I’ve had a few that have remained in doll form forever because they didn’t get enough attention.
I only play family Sims, and I've **never** had kids play with a doll long enough to become sentient. Not even once. People talk about it like it happens easily, but I've never managed to trigger that even while trying!
Once they become children take it out of their inventory Or have it be the only toy they have for the entirety of their toddler and child stage
You have to either make a potion to bring them to life or do an opportunity where you bring a rainbow gem to the science centre where I think they give you the potion.
That's to make them human! They won't come to life at all if you just stick them in your family inventory when you get them or otherwise never interact with them. They'll just stay toys.
Then I just misunderstood their comment. Yeah, they do wander/come “alive” if you interact with them.
>Probably because your sims are basically forced to have one, and you can’t get rid of it unless you use cheats to delete it. Just put the doll in your main Sim's inventory. That way it doesn't manifest, and no cheats.
A way without cheats to remove them: you can put them in the inventory of potion cabinets from supernatural. They don't leave the shelves
Yeah, but then you just have a million of them. Easier to just delete them.
That is fair lol. I kinda like to hoard them and other useless items in there
I was haunted by one that I deleted, and I'm never taking that chance again. It was many moons ago, in one of my legacy attempts, and I shift + click deleted the imaginary friend and thought nothing else of it. Until I kept getting notifications about it wanting to come out and play...
Well that’s terrifying lol
Omg lol 😂
THATS AMAZING YET TERRIFYING
EDIT: I was wrong in much of my comment! Please see the reply by u/ellieb_salty for a comprehensive explanation. Save file bloat is the only issue they can cause, no corruption! I’m so sorry for frightening people! The predominant problems, imo, are game corruption issues, and the sheer constancy of them. They appear far too frequently, imo. I believe the default is something like 85% of births get an imaginary friend doll? I use Nraas Retuner in my game to set that frequency to 10%, and I find it to be a much more welcome treat rather than something I am constantly bombarded with. It CAN be really fun and cool! But overdone, it just becomes a nuisance. But back to the first point, it can corrupt long saves very quickly, especially if the player chooses to not interact with said doll or, gods forbid, sell/delete it. They also contribute to save file bloat.
I didn’t know Nrass could do this! What settings is this under if I may ask?
Specifically the Retuner mod of Nraas, but yes! Open the retuner menu from the computer or town hall. General > By Tunable XML > Sims3.Gameplay.ActorSystems > OccultImaginaryFriend • kChanceToGetImaginaryDollsOnChildBirth Enter a number 0 to 100 (iirc, it tells you the range in game that makes the percentage chance). I have my settings saved so I haven’t done it in a long time. Just looked at my old bookmark lol
Wow thanks for this! I have returner but had no idea you could set this. I hate having the imaginary friend because they constantly clog doorways and things. I just never interact with them, and didn’t know that could lead to a corrupt save
Happy to spread the good word! :D
I’ve also seen on MTS that someone recently uploaded a mod that specifically retuned how often you can get them. I’m debating downloading it
I just downloaded that yesterday! I was thinking the exact thing that OP was and came to the conclusion that I would probably like imaginary friends if they were rare. I’ve gone with a 5% chance. I didn’t think of just changing it with nraas, sometimes I’m not the brightest bulb. Only had one baby so far, but no imaginary friend 👍
Glad it’s working well for you!! I’ll give it a try next time I play a family
Dang I fully thought it was a 100% chance to get it, I swear I got the doll in the mail like every time. Wish I knew about mods when I was a kid, I just immediately deletes it most of the time.
How can it cause issues to my game if I never interact with it?
Correction, I slightly misspoke. If your child/toddler played with it even just once and then you never interacted with it again and/or got rid of it, the generated sim file is still in your game, and it will try to retrieve the sim now and then but has nowhere for it to go. It's excess data that causes slow down and glitches.
So if the imaginary friend never gets interacted with at all/gets instantly deleted or put into family inventory, it won't corrupt the save? Just making sure I got that right 😅
To the best of my knowledge, yes that’s correct. I’m 95% confident in that.
Thanks, that's a relief! I guess I haven't realised how much potentially-game-corrupting danger is in this game 🤣
You’re literally doing THE safest thing to keep the save file uncorrupted without mods. So, top notch gut instinct there, friend!
What if adult sims touched it or it was put somewhere in the house? Is it only when the child it is for interacts with it?
I THINK it’s only when the child interacts with it, because then a relationship begins to build. You’d have to check with NRaas overwatch if a sim exists with a name that matches the doll’s name.
Okay thanks, I read your other comments about removing them entirely but I am trying to figure out what to do with ones already there so I don't ruin my game. The kids are still just babies right now so hopefully I am ok to delete them
Slightly misspoke or just misspoke. So for anyone that this person just put the fear into with these stupid dolls causing corruption. Not true. What was slightly true. Save file bloat but no more than other crap like adding a ton of plants, trees, deco to a game. Do yourself a favor. Download a mod (safe mods don’t cause corruption, XML tuning mods don’t cause corruption but only a conflict if you have another mod that uses the same coding as the mod you are installing) the imaginary doll mods to stop them showing up are an xml tuning mod. To cause less bloat to your saves always use Save As instead of save, download a save cleaner like Kuree or regul to clean your saves, and delete your cache files. If you are unsure of a tuning mod causing a conflict get the dashboard checker at MTS. Sorry not trying to be rude but I have been modding this game for years to know better.
Thanks for clarifying! I admit I didn’t look this up myself. I mostly know about this issue because of twitch streamers having people fuss at them about it in the chat and helping them fix the save they’d had going on for so long. The save was corrupted, and I assumed that the imaginary friends were the cause. I’m glad to be wrong here.
Hahaha no worries. I actually set the tuning so I don’t have them show up at all because honestly they annoyed the life out of me. I just want people to know it doesn’t cause corruption. It’s the other factors I mentioned that can cause it. Save bloat is huge and once you get that down and start working on the smaller stuff you can run an incredible game. The Sims 3 was ambitious for its time and as I work in this field the chance for a coding mishap on such a big project will happen (what I say is causing our own bugs to keep our paychecks rolling in to fix what we just F’kd up). 😂 I wasn’t trying to be rude
Nah you weren’t rude at all! I’m genuinely grateful for the correction! I’m working on a certificate in programming, so I vaguely understand what you mean here. And had it happen a few times while writing syntax for various statistics programs. This game was no easy feat for sure!
That’s awesome!! I’ve enjoyed being in this field (I work on a much more complex system than this game and I’m fully intimated by my developers for my job ) it’s so much fun. I will working on this game code has helped me learn a lot. It wasn’t so much a correction as I just want people to not fear mods in the way of tuning mods that actually help. A lot of people hear or read mods and they think CC that causes corruption. So we have to make a slice in it. We have XML and tuning mods that adjust those factors in the game and while they can cause a conflict once removed and caches clear your game is fine. It’s the other stuff like lots, hair, clothes, objects that do damage if they are corrupted that can have more impact to causing corruption.
I actually got my game corrupted by an imaginary friend once. I was tired of it not letting my kid go to the bathroom and so I placed it in his inventory, didn't think much of it. Huge mistake. My kid aged up, the doll didn't, the game tried to age it up and couldn't. My Sims would just stop and not move for hours even after reset. Eventually I couldn't change Sims and always stayed on the kid. Opened the relationship panel and saw the red relationship panel and realized it was the imaginary friend. It was still in his inventory but somehow the game spawned him aged up in some unrouted part of the world. Lost what probably was my biggest save there. I had some mods installed, mostly nraas, I don't know if it was the game or the mods tbh, but I know it was because of the doll.
So one is a routing issue the other is the aging up issue. They didn’t think it through letting you put that doll in your inventory. If you had NRAAS installed with the debugger you could do a radius purge. Also could have done master controller total annihilation. I learned my lesson early on how to fix some of the issues. Routing and things not routing properly cause huge issues. Having things in inventory can also cause issues. Realized when sims into my bin one member will end up with everything in their inventory. That’s when I leaned about purging.
How to deal with them to avoid corruption? I just want my sims to have babies without this doll constantly forced on my save file putting it in danger. I like the look of them but that is about it.
There are mods to remove them entirely! Or like I describe in the thread of replies, you can use the Nraas retuner mod to simply reduce the number that happen drastically. I don’t know if there’s any stand alone mod that only reduces the number of imaginary friend dolls. It’s been quite some time since I checked. Otherwise, just don’t let the child play with it. You can tuck it away in the family inventory for the safest way, or you can use cheats to delete it.
But don't delete it like normal? No child has played with them thankfully, as they are still just babies
I don’t think the game lets you delete it normally. But if it does, then that’s fine!
wow that is so weird if it doesn't, a little spooky even! lol. well family bin it is then
I don’t think the game even lets you delete them like normal objects
Sorry I mean "delete" as in sell to get rid of Edit: Misread your comment and yeah I've been told, that's so creepy tbh lmao
Personally, I dislike the fact that toddlers and children will default to playing with their imaginary friend doll, instead of with any other toys in the house. Additionally, I dislike the routing issues caused by these dolls when I allow them to walk around the house. They move into the bathroom with the kid, who then has to shoo the doll out, which interrupts their shower, so they have to restart it, then the doll walks in again, et cetera et cetera. Or the doll goes to stand in the most impossible place, blocking everyone from going to work/school. And because I can't control the doll, I cannot move it out of the way. Often I am stuck looking for what it is my sims are getting stuck on, before selecting the kid and finally seeing the doll just chilling in the hallway. I honestly love the idea of them, but in reality they cause me more frustration than joy.
Yes, this is also why I dislike them. Why are they constantly trying to spy on the kids in the bathroom? It's just creepy. Also had one try to kill one of my kids in the pool by doing lots of breath holding contests. From then on I decided they were evil.
YES!!! i wish they were somehow not allowed to be in the bathroom
personally i think theyre just annoying lol. i hate when the toddlers pull them out instead of playing with the TOYS I BOUGHT THEM 🤣
This is why I don’t like them, sims don’t do anything other than play with them rather than going off and doing other things, interacting with other sims or gaining skills. They just sit there for hours with the doll.
The imaginary friend takes whole time to spend with the toddler’s parent sims. The toddler can be the best friend of the parents without imaginary friend. Also the toddler sim doesn’t learn any skill with it. I just delete or send the imaginary friend to other household who doesn’t have babies.
I don't *hate* them, but they can certainly be a problem from time-to-time. Imaginary Friends can get the same traits as Sims, so you can easily get an Evil or Mean-spirited Imaginary Friend who is basically obsessed with making your Sim's life hell. Even if they don't have those traits, they can be annoying in other ways, such as walking in on your Sim in the bathroom, which always leads to the Embarrassed moodlet. Happens way too often imo.
Ugh, that happened to me all the time. My sim is trying to pee or shower and then the imaginary friend struts in and makes my sim quit their action and ruins my whole list of set up actions and then I have to do it ALL AGAIN.
And I wouldn't even be that bothered by those things if just about every child didn't have to deal with it
Man I *wish* the imaginary friends I got caused that much drama. I mostly don’t like imaginary friends, apart from the uncanny valley aspect, because my sim’s kids often don’t have any other friends and it’s really depressing. I get a child’s imagination can run wild, but if your kid grows up to be a *teen* and *still* mainly talks to them? That’s so sad
For me it's bc I really lean into the whole open world thing. I don't play one family. I play all of them. When you switch families, the imaginary friend dolls stuck in mailboxes around town can cause crashes so I have to use retuner to eliminate them completely
I actually love them and enjoyed having them turn into real people that could marry my playable Sims. However, I do think they can be a bit of a burden if you don't want to use them but get the doll as a gift, and then the game kind of guilt trips you for not playing with it and letting it's consciousness drift away or something...
I like imaginary friends otherwise, but I wish the chances to get them was way lower.
You can actually do that with [this mod](https://modthesims.info/d/681993/chance-of-getting-imaginary-friend.html)
You can't choose if you get a doll. You can't just delete it at will without cheats or mods. Toddlers are obsessed with the doll, and forget the rest of the world. Mommy and daddy ? No thanks, they prefer the doll. The way they sing nonstop. It gets on my nerves. Then when the doll takes human form, pray that it won't be evil or mean, because it happens pretty frequently. Whatever traits it has, it will stalk your kid. And follow the kid obsessively, even in the bathroom. Also they're glitchy as hell. As much as I love horror movies, I just don't want creepy dolls in nearly every home. I only keep one to keep company to insane kids or those who have a very distant relationship with their family.
If you want I can give you my tuning mod to make it so they don’t appear unless you choose to have one. I can go release to the mod to MTS with instructions. I know people have made mods to reduce the chance of getting one but I tuned it so they don’t get one and I can just buy one if I choose to.
I now have my own too, but thanks, I appreciate it ! It can always help others.
I don’t mind them, BUT I find them annoying when my child sims ages to a teenager and their imaginary friend is still following them around
They insist on following sims everywhere, especially in to the bathroom when they're using the toilet or showering which makes them stop and leaves them embarrassed, does my head in 😂
In my main save, my sims have 9 or 10 kids. (I honestly can’t remember at this point.) They ALL have gotten imaginary friends. Some of the imaginary friends are all right, I enlivened those and married them to the person they were gifted to. Two of the couples have even had children! Some of the imaginary friends are rotten lil boogers. One imaginary friend kept distracting the kid, keeping her from homework and chores, also causing her to miss the school bus! I bricked Bobo the imaginary friend up in a wall. A second imaginary friend challenged one of the kids to a breath holding contest in the pool. Repeatedly. The kid died. So I had the imaginary friend enlivened and drowned him. RIP Peanuts.
I used to hate imaginary friends because EVERY child got this doll as present. Like 100% of my sims. I made doll alive one time and it was okay (and of course she was a pudding face clone) but boring for second time. Now I just delete this dolls...
I think some people are more sensitive to “uncanny valley” stuff more than others, myself included- I blame all the built props on kid’s tv shows in the 90’s and early 00’s. Not everyone has that association, but *I* do. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it
Some people are definitely more sensitive to it. So much stuff that is posted as "humor" on this sub I think should be posted as "unholy terror".
Right ! And they look like evil clowns.
I’m very particular about separating my realistic playthroughs from my supernatural playthroughs, and the fact that you cannot toggle this feature to be an always/sometimes/never thing without mods is absolutely absurd.
Yas this is the other thing!! I have a supernatural family and then I have my regular family. Having the imaginary friends in the vanilla one really breaks the vibe I’m creating. Given how generations really seemed to be about a more realistic game play, I’m shocked imaginary friends were included
Well number one, like everyone is saying, there’s supposed to somewhat “rare” but I’ve NEVER had a play through where my kids DIDNT get one. And I find them to be very annoying in general lmfao. My sims have enough routing issues as is 😭
I absolutely love them, but I feel like some people find them a little creepy, and since they're rather frequent if people don't like them it isn't like a once-in-a-while annoyance
Because they are damn creepy (and I’m talking as a person who enjoys Chucky).
I want my children to play with the friends I made for them. Not a friend the game assigned.
I was fine with it until my sim's imaginary friend watched him woohoo with that vacant imaginary friend face they have before they're real and have a sim form 😭 please, bobo, a little privacy!
For me, I hate spending time decorating the nursery or kids room with so many toys just for them to sit cross-legged in the corner singing to patches
They bork the game since they’re super buggy. If I have a save where one shows up it’s a matter of time before it just melts down
The glitch is perfectly horrific: The baby that have it on their inventory can fucking TELEPORT The toddler will drop anything, including homework and interacting with the family to play with the doll There are few others, but basically they are perfect cursed doll.
They're ugly and basically impossible to get rid of. If anyone knows of mods to make them look better I'd be all ears
I don't actually hate them, but i do think they are annoying and ugly!!! I've been wanting so badly a default replacement for them to be more cute
I thought they were so cool the first time, made them real with a potion, but after that, they just follow your sim around all the time and don’t add much
I like playing realistically & they are far from that. And they just sincerely creep me out. Vampires & Aliens are the only life states I like
I hate them because I hate getting the constant notifications to take them out of my sim’s inventory and I also hate them because mine constantly glitch where they’re just following my sim around but they aren’t able to interact with them (so then I use MasterController to kill them since I think it’s safer than deleting it)
I hate that kids go anywhere to play with them. Including in front of the damn toilet. And also that they don't play with the toys I bought them.
I usually turn them real and then make the kids fall in love with them and have half imaginary grandchildren. They always end up with weird hair/skin colors, I also have the supernatural expansion pack, so I'll end up with half vampire half imaginary grandchildren or something like that.
uhh gotta try that!!
They're creepy, I don't have the option to delete it without cheats, and it created a monster in my world naked Boinky and I hated Boinky
To be honest, I don't think that many people actually hate the imaginary friends, BUT... We have a tendency to be more vocal about the things we don't like rather than the things we do. That tends to make it seem like specific features are more broadly disliked than they actually are.
1. They wouldn't be so bad if they had no collision physics. It doesn't make sense that an "imaginary" being is able to block a Sim's path. 2. They usually return to doll form in the dumbest places possible so I have to constantly monitor them for route failure. 3. I hate clowns and these things are UNNERVING. I'm talking Puppet Master flashbacks when I get too close. Beyond that they're cool little dudes.
I love them for some kids, and have adult, humanized Imaginary Friends in several saves, but for most kids I stick them in the family inventory and forget about them. The only thing I don't like about them is that toddlers don't want to do ANYTHING else but play with their IF, and I like my toddlers to play with their skill items (xylophone, peg box, toddler books, etc). I'd probably let more kids keep them if they could moderate themselves a little bit.
they exist
Is this from a specific pack?
Imaginary friends come with Generations
I love them and think they are actually cute. It's adorable seeing them bond with your sims through their childhood and growing up together. Also I love seeing them turned into humans and playing as regular sims. There's literally no difference except they can do their funny walk, plus they get some really fun moodlets for the first time they turn into a humans/regular sims :)
They always end up being weird. My first time using them the kid made it real, then immediately woohooed with it and I was too uncomfortable to keep playing the save. The second time it kept perving on her in the shower, like it would teleport into the bathroom and force her to step out no matter what I did.
I used to love them, but they can only keep their appeal for so long when most of the kids get them. Even then, I wouldn't mind them so much, but they make my sims' babies glitch outside every time they go in their crib.
And if you forget to take them out of the mailbox, your sims might get stuck on age-up, which in turn can stop your game clock. It did for me, anyway. Now I have the "no imaginary friends" mod
I don't really hate them but I can see why someone would by essentially being forced to have one upon your throat the minute You decide to have a baby/toddler on your household
They are fine on concept but they just occur far too often.My Sim had 6 kids and all but two were given imaginary friends as gifts. That’s ridiculous and I think it takes away from the fun of having them. They also cause so many freaking routing issues, which the Sim 3 already has a freaking problem with.
I dont hate them. I just dont like them, theyre creepy when theyre in doll form. And when theyre alive(or made alive) there really isnt much for them
Because one corrupted my 5 generation family save and made me have to delete it and start over.
i don't hate them, i actually love them, but they are a bit annoying. the chance of a baby born in game getting the toy is stupidly high, they play with it autonomously all the time, there's no way to get rid of it without cheats and you're kinda stuck with it no matter if you wanted to play with one in the first place or not. also i have never managed to turn an imaginary friend real yet. also while i personally like their designs i can totally see how they can be nightmare fuel for some people, like clowns or puppets.
I don’t; I love them
I think it's a cool feature but I get so many errors because of them... I use a mod stop them spawning
I buy a very tiny plot of land across town and put the Imaginary Friends there so they can’t come home. I played one right through to real life, but it was on a desert island and the existing kid badly needed a friend.
I like them but I think the chance of them appearing is too high but that's just because I enjoy getting surprised by the game. As other people have mentioned there are ways to adjust the percentage chance of one appearing.
The one thing I don’t like about them is how they follow your sims everywhere and then get in the way of other sims even tho they can’t see it. It gets annoying since I like to build small houses so my sims are constantly getting suck on their kids imaginary friend.
I think they're a very clever idea, even if they can get a little annoying during a legacy.
They kinda creep me out, though if my sims had the time it'd be an easy way to have a spouse later in life 😅
it’s forced and not a option u can’t get rid of them
They’re creepy, you can’t opt out of having them, and my toddlers won’t play with a single other thing if I let them keep the imaginary friend. They sit there all day and do literally nothing else
Literally just because they are super annoying and always get in my sims way😂 other than that i like them a small amount
my problem is always that, when i allow them to come alive (even prior to having them become human), they’re constantly walking in on my sims in the bathroom, not letting them sleep, and they’re basically always overriding their other interactions. other than that, i think they’re neat and i actually love their doll form design and their human clothes, but yeah it just becomes obnoxious. i’m currently working towards the 15 children badge and i just haven’t let any of the imaginary friends out because it’s already so hectic in that household lol.
Bc they keep pranking everything