The Sims 4 Needs to Address the Elephant in the Room Before Enchanted by Nature

The release of The Sims 4‘s next expansion pack, Enchanted by Nature, is just around the corner. This will be The Sims 4‘s 19th expansion pack, and Enchanted by Nature promises to bring a whimsical charm by adding new plants, fairies, an apothecary skill, and the ability to grow plants indoors. While the addition of fairies has been long-requested, the expansion of gardening is likely to be more controversial, despite the popularity of that activity in other video games.

The Sims 4 has the potential to have one of the best gardening systems in the genre, but it’s held back by bugs and glitches that have plagued it for close to a decade. These issues are likely to be made all the worse by Enchanted by Nature’s additions, which will expand on gardening in several fundamental ways, as building on a broken foundation is a recipe for disaster.

The Sims 4: Enchanted by Nature is a Timely Reminder for One of its Strengths

The Sims 4’s Enchanted by Nature expansion reminds fans of some of the biggest reasons behind its success throughout the decades.

Gardening in The Sims 4 is Broken

Gardening in The Sims 4 has, essentially, been broken since the release of the Seasons expansion pack in 2018, and the following issues can occur when engaging with the feature:

Plants grown by Sims have a tendency to revert to dirt piles.
Sims will ignore commands to tend, water, or weed gardens.
Plants are unable to evolve.
Crops harvested by Sims multiply by the hundreds in their personal inventories.
Plants will glitch and become unselectable.

Gardening has always been a core feature in The Sims. While it is possible to garden in The Sims 4, despite the bugs, the changes Enchanted by Nature will make to the system will likely only compound the problems, rather than fix them. As The Sims 4 continues to add content, more systems break, while others go ignored, and it would not be surprising for this to occur again with the release of the upcoming expansion pack.

Despite the fact that glitching plants have been a problem for nearly a decade, an issue that The Sims 4 community has frequently complained about, no steps have been taken to rectify it. It seems that this trend will continue with the update that will accompany Enchanted by Nature’s release, as there is no mention of it fixing the glitched gardening.

Enchanted by Nature Cannot Inherit a Broken Gardening Mechanic

Not fixing gardening before the release of Enchanted by Nature likely won’t work out. The Sims 4 has already released an expansion pack based on farming, Cottage Living, and the glitched gardening system created issue there, with plants often not working as intended on crop plots. Even more problems could arise as a result of the new features in Enchanted by Nature, such as growing indoor plants in pots. Indeed, it’s very possible that this feature, which is being advertised as a main component of Enchanted by Nature, will not work at all, and it may never get a fix.

While this may sound dire, it’s not unrealistic. The Sims 4 has several packs that were broken at release and have yet to be fixed, including Dine Out and High School Years. There is also My Wedding Stories, which did receive a fix but still has major features that just don’t work.

The worst offender, though, is For Rent, which has a game-breaking glitch that causes entire saves to be lost. Despite the fact that For Rent can cause save file corruption issues, a problem that has existed for well over a year, a fix still hasn’t been announced. If Enchanted by Nature is to avoid this fate, it needs to fix what’s broken before adding fuel to the fire.