I want to offer some feedback... I've tried. I really have, but I don't think I can use these forums.They are cluttered, from the "sidebar" that occupies almost a third of the screen to the "preview" text, to the choice of glaringly bright colors. With so much being shoved at me at once, it becomes physically painful for me to try to read or post. I'm getting headaches trying to use them forums.They do not appear to be designed to support discussion, but rather tech support style question-and-answer posts. The way replies are sorted, and nested, and the lack of "page numbers" in favor of "show more" all combine to make it extremely difficult to follow a chronological progression of comments in a thread. I genuinely feel that these forums are the wrong tool for the job... they're like using a hammer to cut wood. You can do it, but you shouldn't.

With all due respect, all of these concerns have been voiced months ago -on the official sims forum- as soon as we were notified that a new EA forum was to be launched. Why were these concerns not taken into consideration? Why were features such as the use of personal avatars and signatures not prioritized, among other things mentioned here? I'm not familiar with the rest of the gaming communities, but I feel that the sims community has been completely overlooked. If anybody did any research into how the sims community (which are all creative people) utilizes a forum, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Yes I'm staying calm, but I'm also very confused. One size fits all only works for community managers, not the actual community. I really hope people's feedback will be taken on board. It would be sad to see people who have been active members for years leave, because they're lost and no longer feel welcome.

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.

Feedback on new Sims forum | EA Forums

MonaSolstraale
Seasoned Veteran
4 months ago
LiELFI don't know how I missed your post for 11 days, but it's so easy to miss something in this template. I think your analysis is very accurate and I was almost a little touched by reading it.
If the purpose of inviting us into a test environment is to gather feedback, then it should provoke thought. I am afraid it does not. 🙄
Aaleyn
Seasoned Adventurer
4 months ago
I agree. I'm shocked at how this new forum looks and feels... It feels difficult and unconvenient to use. I find it hard to follow the threads and discussions. The lack of page numbers and that the posts are not in chronological order makes it hard to follow what's been talked about or shared all in all.
I really hope that these concerns and feedback are taken into account and improvements are made to make this new forum a more functional, easier to use and pleasant community place for everyone (as the old Sims Forums was).
EA_Failroader
Community Manager
5 months ago
Hello and thanks for the feedback! While we are currently making sure things are working, we're also concerned with how well they are working as well. We want to provide a forum that is inviting but also functional so giving us solid opinions about the features and tools helps us understand which direction we need to continue focusing our efforts.

Feel free to keep trying out things out on the EA Forums and leave any feedback you'd like to pass along too!

#keepcalmandgameon
- CAPTAIN_NXR7
  Seasoned Veteran
  5 months ago
  With all due respect, all of these concerns have been voiced months ago -on the official sims forum- as soon as we were notified that a new EA forum was to be launched. Why were these concerns not taken into consideration? Why were features such as the use of personal avatars and signatures not prioritized, among other things mentioned here? I'm not familiar with the rest of the gaming communities, but I feel that the sims community has been completely overlooked. If anybody did any research into how the sims community (which are all creative people) utilizes a forum, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Yes I'm staying calm, but I'm also very confused.
  One size fits all only works for community managers, not the actual community.
  I really hope people's feedback will be taken on board. It would be sad to see people who have been active members for years leave, because they're lost and no longer feel welcome.
  - GlacierSnowGhost
    Seasoned Hotshot
    5 months ago
    Thank you for saying this CAPTAIN_NXR7 . As soon as the "new forum is coming" hit us, we all asked questions, voiced concerns, and explained what features we cared about for the Sims forum. And there was quite a lot of consensus about what those features were. It feels like none of that was listened to.
- Rob199x
  Rising Adventurer
  5 months ago
  The feedback is recurring and simple. Whatever backend you picked isn't suited for the intended usecase. We want a slow moving forum usefull for chronological story keeping in the case of the sims. not Reddit. This place is not for finding solutions, we always get forced to AHQ for that even within the discords of games.
  
  Now i don't know if there was forums before for the other games, but the Sims community is being migrated from an actual historic forum (and that got migrated from forum to forum with every sims generation). This feels like several leaps backwards in function
- luciusstorm
  Seasoned Veteran
  5 months ago
  Respectfully, I can't help but feel that if I can't read and understand a thread because it's completely out of order, the site doesn't really work because it doesn't do the task it needs to do.
crocobaura
Seasoned Ace
5 months ago
Can we please have more relevant posts in the Related Posts section on the right? I mean, if it has to be there, at least please make it relevant. I am browsing the sims forum and it suggests threads from other games forums and what's worse, they are not even recent, they are several years old.
Outgrew
Seasoned Newcomer
5 months ago
Agreed, these forums are abysmal.
MonaSolstraale
Seasoned Veteran
4 months ago
WhatCobblersYes to everything you point out. I agree! 👍🏼