Feedback on new Sims forum

I wholeheartedly agree that the layout is a complete disaster and a huge step back. A few suggestions: 

• Remove the sidebar, or at least make it possible for us to do so. It's absolutely useless and just take on space and distract from content. 
• Rearrange comments to be chronological by default with options to change that individually if needed - as many of the posts are stories. Imagine reading a book where the chapters are ordered from the most popular to the least popular. You wouldn't. For a reason. 
• Rework the colors to be more easy on the eyes, softer, less glaring white, gray and bright blue. 
• Fix the spoiler tags so that they can be used in posts as well as comments in an easy manner. 
• Make sure everyone can choose their own profile picture so that it's easier to tell people apart. 

The forum seems designed like a place where you can easily bury discussions and maybe bad feedback. Nothing is clearly visible or easily searchable. Also, why does the Related Posts tab on the right recommends threads from other games? I am here only for the sims.

I agree.  These things are essential for a forum where participants want to share and talk about stories, ideas, things that have happened in a game that really is a creative outlet for many players:

• We need to have unique visual identifiers (customizable avatar images that are large enough to distinguish at a glace)
• Posts on a thread need to be in chronological order so we can read and follow the full conversation.  It looks like most of us would prefer this to be the default option.
• We need to be able to jump straight to the last post we read, while still having all the posts be in chronological order.
• We need to be able to browse through pages of posts on long threads instead of having everything loading on one page.  Once there are thousands of posts on the thread, especially on threads where the whole point is to share images, that "load more comments" thing is going to get very very slow.  Pages of X number of comments are much better.  We can browse back and forth as we wish, and only a reasonable number of posts are loaded at one time.
• We need the thread we are reading to be in the center of the screen to prevent neck strain.
• We need to be able to hide distracting sidebar stuff that we don't want to see while we are reading the thread.

These are the basic things we need in order for this forum to be usable and comfortable for a community based around storytelling, lengthy group discussions, in-game creativity, sharing screenshots, and being inclusive.  The current format does not really promote that type of community behavior.

I posted some feedback on the "old" forums so I'm going to paste it here, with some clarity tweaks, for the appropriate authorities to read. EA_Failroader thank you for your time, I know this post is fairly long. 

I agree completely with all of the criticism in this thread.

I think it's necessary for me to add that it really seems like EA doesn't know its own forum community at all. (Do they care? They "claim" to.) The forums have always been skewed in favor of a slightly older and more mature crowd, who like to take time out of the day to write thoughtful posts, read the thoughts of others, and share all things Sims from criticism to creations to custom content. This community delves deeper than the "post-and-ghost" speed runs of standard social media, and the people here want substance in our communication. We build friendships, support each other, and even when we debate and argue we're more like a little dysfunctional family than a bunch of strangers who play the same game. We like to slow life down because many of us are neurodivergent, overstimulated by the crazy of social media, or just like quiet places to gather our thoughts and express them safely where we feel heard. In the last ten years, we've come to know a little something about each other, and that's what made the old forum so special. There's an emotional investment, not only to the years' worth of threads and discussions and creations, but also to the other people in this community. To take that away from us for what feels like a superficial, trend-chasing, dime-a-dozen, clutter-fest that rips away our community identities is cold and cruel. We've essentially been lumped-and-dumped on a generic half-thought that didn't seem to know what to do with us. It's depressing. 

EA always talks about wanting to lean more into the community aspect of The Sims. Well fellas, we're here. And you need to seriously consider both sides of what that means or you will inadvertently do more to ruin a great thing. We all have a passion for this game, and we want to celebrate it in our own creative and thoughtful ways. We can't do that on X, or Discord, or YouTube. We like to keep track of each other's threads and creations. The old forums are like a book, photo, and design club for us, where we take the tools of the game and weave them into our own concepts. We root for each other and support each other because the old forums make it easy for us to do so. We've learned who each other are through a single, common interest. 

Please don't take this organic collective that is our beloved Sims community away in favor of simplicity and convenience for you. If you do that, you may not need it anymore. Listen to the people in this thread and do your best to give us what we need to continue together. 

Thank you. 

Another concrete thing that I think you should look at, is the fact that you get signed off automatically after some time. I have now twice been signed out while actively editing comments, meaning I've had to start over again. My suggestion is to let people stay logged in as long as they don't actively sign out.  

If it's any consolation the setup is atrocious for trying to provide tech help too. Threads should be properly organised with the OP at the top and all replies in chronological order underneath. The "sort by" feature doesn't help anyone. When providing tech advice it is often  back and forth with the OP and helper. This isn't currently possible which makes it irrelevant for trying to provide any tech advice at all.

I agree, the right sidebar is a complete waste of space and provides nothing of value to any conversations happening here. What is the obsession with it both here and at Answers HQ? If someone desperately loves having a sidebar then fill it with helpful things such as links to other forums, not some randomly generated posts that a half written algorithm has determined.

Co-signing most of the feedback above. I really enjoyed popping in to the old forum, easily finding the categories I was interested in and browsing well-ordered discussions. This forum is so very "cold" and random. After YEARS of being a member of the old forum, I'm no longer inclined to visit at all and will see what comes about in a few months. I hope EA will not just "listen" to member feedback, but USE it to every extent possible.

P.S. And my rank!! "New Spectator"... Geez. Even in something as simple as a user forum, losing "status"/rank is such a bummer (just a psychological thing; nothing serious).

I used to check the forums everyday and spent alot of time reading through various threads.  With the new forum, I have not been here for at least a week and have come to the conclusion that I need to just move on from here.  It's too difficult to follow any topics without rereading everything countless times.

This place used to be  a great place for simmers.  The new forum is nothing like that.  I'll check back in a few months to see if anything changes but as it is, EA has silenced another voice as I will not use this place.  Such a shame.

I agree completely with the accessibility issues luciusstorm and LiELF have raised. The new forum does not feel neurodivergent friendly, which I am quite shocked about being that we have such a large neurodivergent community on the forums. 

I'm not a marketing expert but from observing the old forums, I would analyse that these customer/user values stood out the most:

Detail and specific detail. People are looking for specific subject matter that they are interested in. Having multiple, detailed lists of subcategories within categories helped people find what they were looking for much more efficiently and quickly. 

Lots of space to speak/discuss. Sometimes people want to have ongoing and often in-depth discussions about their favourite subjects. Or they might want to write chapters of an ongoing story for people to enjoy. Have just noticed that if you take too long to write on here, you get signed out of the forum (not dyspraxic friendly). Let's not forget that the key point of the Sims is CREATIVITY! Which brings me to my next point...

Chronological order, structure and organisation. This is often a particular need for people with neurodivergencies such as autism (I have an autistic sibling, have mild threads of autism myself and have worked with a lot of autistic people in care). I also find this helps with the mildly dyspraxic side of my brain. Having things in specific, chronological order not only helps to keep up with a discussion, it is also essential for posting story chapters and updates which is a huge part of the Sims community! 

Just want to feedback also my irritation at how the forums' subcategories and user post menus are organised by what's been liked the most, what's new, what's old and what's had no response. What about everything in-between?! I just want to see what's on here, not what has been posted recently. What's 'most popular' has absolutely zero interest for me. 

If I could ask EA to change one thing, it would be please re-phrase and re-organise all of the subcategory menu headings, and the category headings for our own posts, by SUBJECT MATTER, not according to how many likes everything has. 

I am finding it visually confusing to work out what each category means when checking my old posts and threads because nearly all of the categories they have been sorted into start with a vague 'Most...'  What was wrong with just listing them as: Discussions, Comments, Preferences, etc. You know, using actual vocabulary. 

Overall feedback: Whoever was in charge of creating this forum has either not researched its community and how they use it, or not bothered with considering their customers' needs and preferences and just decided to go with what they think is best. They certainly need to consider (and perhaps educate themselves about) accessibility for multiple neurodivergent needs because, at the moment, it is severely lacking. 

My thoughts:

1. The new forum must become much faster and more responsive. The time until a thread has loaded is like 30 years ago, especially on mobile phones.
2. Let threads be organized with the newest post first by default. I see that most Simmers want a chronological order, but in long threads that would be impossible without page numbers. The current "Most liked" system is senseless.
3. Don't hide multiple answers to a post, let them be visible all at once.
4. Bring back custom avatars asap and hide the Hero signs. The system of selected Heroes makes sense at AHQ, but certainly not here. I predict that this two-class society will become toxic very soon.