After saving up some money I bought the horse ranch expansion pack directly off of origin today (full price, no bundle deals nothing). It downloaded fine and when I first played it at home it worked as it should. Now, I usually play sims on my two hour train commute, so offline. I've never had a problem with that and all my eight other expansion packs work and show up fine.
With horse ranch it doesn't show up as owned pack in the game and obviously I can't play my current save with it. As soon as I get home and connect to wifi it works fine. I know, that EA prefers us to be online when we play but I feel like if I pay 40€ for a game that in theory works offline I should be able to use it!!!
I'm playing on a MacBook Air M1 and use the origin app.
Does anyone know how to fix this? I'm heartbroken!
I wish I had an answer to your problem , unfortunately I don't. the fact that EA bill their games as capable of being played offline when clearly that is not the case is blatant misrepresentation of the facts, under UK law that would be a clear breach of the Trades descriptions act and you would ( in theory) have legal right of redress. I would suggest players that are being affected with this misrepresentation find our what legal remedies exist in their respective countries and , where the law allows press for full refund on games bought and not conforming to the description claimed by EA.
This is such a problem for a lot of players that they are looking for alternative solutions, and that demand IS being met. EA only have themselves to blame if people start looking elsewhere for a game that actually functions in full conformance with the stated specifications.
(EA, IF YOU AR E MONITORING THIS THREAD EITHER FIX THE ISSUE THAT PLAYERS ARE RAISING OR MAKE IT EXPLICIT IN THE SPEC THAT A PERSISTANT CONNECTINIS REQUIRED AND THE REASON WHY,SO THAT PLAYERS CAN MAKE A PROPERLY INFORMED PURCHASING DECISION)
@kerjo2000 I just tested this myself, on my Mac, and couldn't reproduce. Even opening Origin my wifi already disabled (and no wired connection), Horse Ranch loaded fine for me. I'd suggest trying again in case this was a one-off situation; you can disable wifi while at home to see.
If this keeps happening, please run the Origin reset tool:
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/origin/origin/how-to-reset-origin-on-mac/
and repair the game: open your Origin game library, right-click Sims 4, and select Repair. Then launch the game once while online, and try offline again.
Worse case scenario, you can use your phone as a mobile hotspot for the time it takes to sign into Origin and launch Sims 4. You could then cut the connection once you've loaded your save, or perhaps just after you've signed into Origin. You shouldn't have to this at all, but if this is a temporary glitch on your end, that would be an effective interim workaround.
