An update on the forums.

Does anyone know what this is, that keeps trying to download? It happens every time I come to this site.

Are the Friday Highlights from the old boards still happening?

graceymanors  Do you not see options when clicking your avatar under My Settings > Personal?  Or do you mean the larger number of premade avatars on Answers HQ?  I do think that more avatars are coming to this site too, but it's probably a low priority right now considering all the performance-related issues this site still has.

I know heroes are the only ones who can use custom avatars. But what happened to the premade ones that we were able to select from?

Thanks for the update, but when are you going to begin implementing these changes?  It has been two months since the rollout  of this new section of the forum and I haven't seen any improvements yet.  If you want us to believe you are serious about making  why not begin by changing the "most liked" sort order to "newest" as has been requested by almost everyone who have responded. That would be a good start and a relatively quick and easy change. 

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

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 🙏 

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

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

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.