Potential BUG of Mayor Rating?

[Antarena 9]

I don't know what happened but it seems I cannot improve my Mayor Rating any further. I have substantial park, police, fire, medical, education coverage, smooth traffic, full employment, and low tax. I finished many U-Drive-It missions that says MR would be improved, but no. I waited for several months and the bar is still red. Is this a BUG? How can I improve my Mayor Rating?

 

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

2 hours ago, Antarena said:

Is this a BUG?

It might be.

In the past couple or three years we've been learning about potential phantom data in the city tile save game structure. The parts we've learned the most about is when something is grown or plopped, the city tile saved, then a plugin which overrides that item is added to plugins and which has different values for exemplar properties, and in the game the grown lot is bulldozed or replaced by natural game playing or a plopped lot is bulldozed. What happens is that the differences between the two sets of data gets left in the city save and can be positive or negative depending on which way the difference was.

Now, considering your city is in January of year 07, I'm going to guess the above isn't a likely scenario, but if you have made plugin additions or changes midway thru, do let us know.

 

2 hours ago, Antarena said:

How can I improve my Mayor Rating?

It could be you simply need to run more time for your Sims to really appreciate all of the infrastructure you've put in place for them. Since you are in year 07, set your graphs to the 10 year scale and post a pic of the Mayor Rating trend. (Preferably in JPG format.)

Sample of what we are looking for:

 

Next post a pic of your Parks Aura:

 

And a pic of the MZ City Hall queried panel:

 

Ofc, for the simplest test: Load your city tile (so you have a save checkpoint for it) and then run Cheetah game speed for a couple dozen years while watching the Mayor Rating graph. No need to save after this speed burst, but you are looking to see if the trend changes any.

[Antarena 9]

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Sample of what we are looking for:

I just came to realize that I took the wrong screenshot, but I can describe the curve after running the city without interference for 10 years: The Mayor Rating plummets to -60 or so immediately after buildings started to grow. I have to deal with 3 riots during these time.

 

Quote

Next post a pic of your Parks Aura:

As you can see most of my residential area, with the exception of some small 'villages' on the edges of the map, has very good Park Aura rating.

Quote

And a pic of the MZ City Hall queried panel:

I have to use "You don't deserve it" cheat to unlock city halls because I never met the criteria for building them. Come to think of it, is my problem being caused by using cheats? I have a habit of setting everything up straight before running the city (Let's face it, I'm terrible at budgets and have to rely on cheating business deals to keep myself afloat. I use the BSC texture lot that gives you 50000 each month.)

@CorinaMarie Thanks for the instructions

[Antarena 9]

@CorinaMarie I ran the city again and got these new Mayor Rating curves. This time I have a plugin called Denmicster's Fountain of Fortune, which gives you $50000 per month and have a limited radius of positive effects, and I believe MR is included as this time the area surround the Fountain actually have "High" Mayor Approval, but the radius is extremely small.

[Antarena 9]

This is ridiculous! I scuttled all my work and started from scratch, and NOW the mayor rating is starting to make sense! It seems that SOMETHING of that particular file is causing all the problems.

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

10 hours ago, Antarena said:

The Mayor Rating plummets to -60 or so immediately after buildings started to grow. I have to deal with 3 riots during these time.

This is certainly an indication of something awry. Back when I tried the Nasty Challenge (in vanilla), I had to work very hard to get a -60 mayor rating and below.

 

10 hours ago, Antarena said:

I have to use "You don't deserve it" cheat to unlock city halls because I never met the criteria for building them.

That should be fine and in and of itself won't cause the mayor rating bug as far as I know. (Btw, there is a Village Hall in the rewards menu with no requirements when using our MZ version.)

 

10 hours ago, Antarena said:

Come to think of it, is my problem being caused by using cheats?

If properly modded, they shouldn't be the cause of the trouble. While I haven't used the ones you mentioned, I did use @Palpatine001's Money Park gnome towers (the ones in the second pic there) quite a bit when I first started playing and they were never a cause of any problems.

 

4 hours ago, Antarena said:

This is ridiculous! I scuttled all my work and started from scratch, and NOW the mayor rating is starting to make sense! It seems that SOMETHING of that particular file is causing all the problems.

Yep! That absolutely proves something in your plugins is the culprit. Ofc, what it is might be difficult to track down.

[Antarena 9]

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

but if you have made plugin additions or changes midway thru...

 

Yep! That absolutely proves something in your plugins is the culprit. Ofc, what it is might be difficult to track down.

I checked your words again and I believe this is why. During the build up of this city I've gathered various plugins. Couple of days before I have been installing plugins dozens of times daily. I think this is why this particular file is corrupted. 

 

Well I guess THAT particular save is doomed... But what should I do if, say, I encounted some very interesting plugin and I want to install it midway thru? Is it like a gamble?

 

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

Money Park

I've been looking this lol. This is actually the very first cheat plugin I've used when I first played this game back in 2010 when I just graduated from elementary school. I've played this game on and off for couple of times in these years, and each time, I must say, I have new understandings of the game and its mechanics.

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

13 minutes ago, Antarena said:

Well I guess THAT particular save is doomed...

We might be able to counter the trouble with a couple of modded lots I could make and then you would follow a specific sequence I'd specify. We'd want to make a copy of the city tile as it is right now and place it outside its region folder as a backup. It will be awhile before I could get the lots ready and write the instructions so if you could play in other city tiles until I have time, I believe we could fix the mayor rating trouble.

 

39 minutes ago, Antarena said:

But what should I do if, say, I encountered some very interesting plugin and I want to install it midway thru? Is it like a gamble?

For the most part, that's safe to do and experiment with. The ideal way is to make incremental backups of city tiles where you experiment with new content so you could revert to an older version if something like this happens again.

More specifically, read any info they write looking to see if they say it's an override for Maxis content and if they say you must bulldoze any existing plopped Maxis versions before installing the new content. This is usually most important for police stations, fire stations, educational buildings, and medical buildings which have funding sliders. However, it can apply to other things as well and there is the potential for the phantom data which no one knew very much about until recently. Because of that, there might not be a warning message in their documentation since it wouldn't have been know when they were created.

[Antarena 9]

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It will be awhile before I could get the lots ready and write the instructions so if you could play in other city tiles until I have time, I believe we could fix the mayor rating trouble.

Thank you so much! Take your time and no need to worry.

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

5 minutes ago, Antarena said:

Thank you so much! Take your time and no need to worry.

As it happens, @Cyclone Boom created the lots to my specifications. We've been testing and this plan will work, but do make sure you create a backup copy of your city tile.

We've successfully created the negative phantom Mayor Rating influence so a new city tile had -58 then did the steps for fixing it and have it back to an inherent +35. Ofc, you'll prolly need to plop more than we did, but I'll outline the steps for you to do it and you can repeat the scenario until you get the rating where you believe it should be.

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

Attached at the end of this post is a .zip file which contains two lots. You will use only one at a time.

Step 1: Place the CoriBoom Test Lot - Mayor Rating +10.dat file anywhere in your plugins.

Step 2: Load your city tile and put it on pause if it isn't already.

Step 3: Find some empty area and plop 9 of the new lots. They should show up at the top of the Airport menu. (Less crowded there.)

Step 4: Save your city then quit the game.

Step 5: Remove the CoriBoom Test Lot - Mayor Rating +10.dat file and add the CoriBoom Test Lot - Mayor Rating 0.dat file to your plugins.

Step 6: Load your city. You'll notice the texture verbiage changes on those plopped lots. Bulldoze them all.

Step 7: Save then quit.

Step 8: Remove the CoriBoom Test Lot - Mayor Rating 0.dat file from plugins.

Step 9: Load your city and run time and watch the Mayor Rating graph.

If it doesn't increase as much as you believe it should, repeat the steps. But do keep in mind you might only want to plop 3 or 5 or 2 or such on the subsequent time. One thing we noticed in our test is that it doesn't seem to be a one to one relation with the amount logic says it will increase. In our test we tried to create -90 initially and only got -58 then when bulldozing we expected to come back to exactly 0, but it went to +35.

If anything seems wrong (like way too much newly fixed Mayor Rating), copy in your backup of your city tile and try again with less of the lot plopped.

 

Here's the attachment: CoriBoom Test Lots - Mayor Rating v1.0.zip

[Antarena 9]

50 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

If it doesn't increase as much as you believe it should, repeat the steps.

It barely made MR to 10 or so, thus many reward buildings become impossible to get... I guess the problem is I didn't plopped "enough" of them?

Originally I thought I have MR of -60, so nine of +10s should make it to 30 or so.

[CorinaMarie 29,884]

2 minutes ago, Antarena said:

It barely made MR to 10 or so, thus many reward buildings become impossible to get... I guess the problem is I didn't plopped "enough" of them?

We wondered about that since there seems to be other factors at play. They key thing is it did make a difference which lets us know we are on the right track.

So yes, just do all the steps again and see how that goes. You can do it as many times as needed with as many plopped lots as you care to test. Then once you know the total required, like say 23 (or whatever), you could reload from your backup of your city tile and do the steps again while plopping that many. Ofc, you don't need to load from your backup if you are happy with the final result. I only suggest that in case you'd rather not have extra time run in your city.