An update on the forums.

Honestly? Unless you can magically turn the new forums into the old forums I'll probably be over at reddit, and I dislike reddit

And that's actually one of the issues with these forums, they feel like they are trying to be somewhere like reddit rather than a simple, easy to use bulletin board.

ED: If nothing else, at least give us the option of seeing  posts in a thread a page at a time instead of having to click show more umpteen times to see the last page of posts. If theres a way to see for example the 1st 10 & last 10 in a long thread without seeing everything else I havent figured it.

Well, I will say that clearly, you've heard us. Still, I just can't help but be disappointed and frustrated. 

It's like every customer service tech who says "thank you for your patience" ... but I'm not patient. I'm not happy about a long soft launch journey. I don't see these as teething problems. 

Disappointed and frustrated. That's what I think, presented in the politest way I can manage.

I am so sad that the old forum is no longer used. I didn’t post much but regularly read through. This one I just don’t like at all!! I don’t know where to find the things I used to read and enjoy and keep having to press more. It’s so annoying. I hardly come here now. I just don’t like it. Please bring back the old forum 🙏 

Appreciate the update.

I think you need to prioritize these issues as the feeling I'm getting is that this transition have lost a lot of people on the way. I used to frequent the general discussions for the sims4 but people don't seem to post much there anymore.

Threads are also getting buried in bug reporting threads which I don't understand why they are a part of this site when we have Answer HQ, it just sounds like a lot of work to have another site for bug reporting.

The logout for being idle is also way too short, surely your servers should allow for people to stay logged in at the site? Why have a logout for being idle at all?

I think that the "idle" issue is a big part of why I'm having as much trouble as I am sharing story updates. Every time I spend more than an hour writing, the site starts to auto-refresh or act like I'm not logged in.

I've gotten a variety of errors from "Permission Denied" when adding an image to "Server Errors" and the site appearing to "Auto-Refresh" and delete auto-saved data. The "Auto-Refresh" typically happens after I encounter several "Server Errors" and "Permission Denied" errors. Anything written after 1 hour tends to be the most at risk because that's about when the errors start.

After several encounters with the site acting up while I'm writing, the auto-save feature completely deletes EVERYTHING I write. I have to keep back ups of back ups of back ups while writing. It can be difficult to remember to create back ups once the creativity starts to flow.

I don't have a way to "fix" things wrong in the forum, but I have found things that help when writing long bits of text. These can be helpful workarounds until the forums become more stable for long term writing. 

1. Keep a copy of large blocks of text in a Microsoft Word Document or some kind of document app.
   •  Most of these applications have built-in user-friendly features for recovering lost text when things go wrong. Web Browsers do not have this feature. 
2. Before typing a large block of text, press the Windows + V key in a Microsoft Windows Computer (Apple Might have a similar feature, but I don't know what it is). This will open up the option to enable a clipboard on your computer.  
   • The advantage of this feature built into Windows computers is that it can be a way to save your most current copy of text.
   • Use Ctrl+A to select all the text in a post
   • Use Ctrl+C to copy the text
   • Use Ctrl+V to paste the text
   • Windows Key + V allows you to access your clipboard and copies of everything you copied.
   • This does not capture images and if you copy/paste text, you will still need to add images later
   • This feature needs to be enabled before you start to write.

I typically spend 2-3 hours writing a chapter, more if I have time. It feels like the site only gives you 1 hour before it resets or auto-refreshes. Auto-Save can't keep up. My last attempt at a chapter, I lost 1-2 hours of progress. Every time I find something that helps, I've been able to cut the time down, but it's not a solution to the auto-save feature.

I do find "Starting a Discussion" to be the easiest place to write a chapter. I typically copy what I write and post it in the replies of my story thread. I just like the open space to write a chapter and having more tools to edit text in an easier place to get to them.

For the chapters I'm writing, I've started using an option to "Insert Links" to make getting to chapters easier. The links help with getting around the bulk of text and images that can't have spoilers. This doesn't solve formatting issues with the site structure, but it has made it easier to get to places that might otherwise require extensive scrolling.

A Table of Contents at the start of a story thread makes access to chapters in chronological order easier. Especially when links to the chapters are inserted.

The forums open pages based on what has the most likes. This can make chapters appear out of order if the other options aren't selected. I would recommend ordering story threads by the oldest first because that should put the SimLit in the proper chapter order.

As of writing this, Spoliers are not working properly. There is a tendency for Spoliers within a post to overwrite the content within another Spoiler. It's like a game of Whack-A-Mole for the user. Fix one thing only for something you just fixed to get overwritten by something else. I've only been able to get one spoiler to work within a post, but it would be ideal to use more than one spoiler to organize content and make it easier to access. For my story thread, I'm looking forward to the day I can add more Spoilers so the text doesn't require as much scrolling.

As of posting this, the Spoilers still aren't working, and I could not even update my thread with a new spoiler.

I might see if I can insert links to sections of a thread within my story thread to see if there is a way to save time scrolling.

All and all, there are many threads I want to follow and a lot of people I want to catch up with, but writing a chapter is eating up so much of my time that I can't spend time in other areas of the forums. While I've made progress working around the problems, these are not solutions to the problems.

I'm hoping this information helps others, and I look forward to expanding what I do here when things get easier to manage.

Thanks for the update.  We desperately need pages on here. I was reading or trying to read the positive thread about Lovestruck yesterday. I was reading it for about an hour and because of having to press the show more all the time. It just froze I never got a chance to read the whole thread. I just came off the forum after that. I don't enjoy being on here. It's giving me a headache. The worse thing is I can't be bothered to play The sims 4 at the moment. I have joined Sims creative. May be that forum will get me interested in playing my game again. Thank you 

I've also noticed the process of following threads is way too complicated not at all obvious. Why do you hide it next to that cog in the top right hand, which looks like it might have forum settings, not where you report a thread. Its also a really dumb place to put report thread. Either have them at the top or the bottom of the first post like normal forums do.

How on earth could you mess up out basic functionality like that? 

Up until right now I thought to couldn't follow threads & was extremely annoyed I couldn't follow The Screenshot Spammers Thread, Townie Fashion Police or What's happened In Your Game Today? All threads I could easily follow on the actual forums.

Also to echo what luciusstorm  said, this wasnt a soft launch, this was throwing us in to drown. If I were more cynical Id think EA is hoping to drive everyone away so they don't need to keep any forums open

ED Another thing, it doesn't mark edited posts as edited as far as I can see, which is a really bad thing on a forum & any other social media.

And while I'm editing, the post in that related posts box are not just irrelevant but usually so old they should be locked

A further thought, I know its been mentioned many times, but we really needs more user icons/PFP's or the ability to upload our own. Where's the yellow, orange and red plumbobs? And other games have even less than Sims 4.

And to emphasise again this site is sloooow. You cant even use the excuse of it hosting discussion for a lot of games, AnswerHQ covers just as many, probably more more and is really snappy. And I hate to say this buts its also more functional as a forum. But that's not saying much. 

Also, ATM I cant change my profile, it says it saved changes, then when I exit the profile it says it want saved. Changing other settings works fine

OK, so it's been three months since you took our forum from us and forced us into this hot mess.  I have yet to see ONE improvement in that time although you claimed to be working on it two months ago.  What a huge disappointment this forum has been and obviously will continue to be.  There used to be a community of simmers who enjoyed being together on a friendly forum where you didn't have to be a "hero" or "staff" or a nobody.  Posts were easy to find and reply to.   Now everyone has split up and gone their separate ways into smaller groups at other forums.  I fear this is as good as this forum is going to get and that you are not working to bring us the changes we have all requested.  As a result, I will be hanging out at Sim Creatives, a very friendly site created by SnuffyBucket and moderated by MonaSolstraale.  See you there!

Dear EA_Nils

if there was an update it didn't fix one major issue: since the launch I haven't been able to see the forum on my ipad or iphone (IOS is up to date). I get the pages with the blue banner and text boxes but white blank content (see picture)

then while trying to go back I saw something appear and disappear. I recreated the flash, by clicking on the reload / refresh arrow (after a few tries I managed to take a screenshot of the flash)

This made me realise that the forum was live and the problem was from my end. (the text only appears when I click refresh and disappear within a second)

I tried on safari and chrome, same issue.

I tried on my iphone, same issue.

I tried contacting you via the letter but when I clicked on the pencil, there was no text box for writing a message. (see that the pencil is greyed out on the image - when I'm tapping on it)

Then today I tried from my computer (macbook) and here I am, finally able to ask for help.

Hope this can be fixed