Hi! This is for the team at EA who are hopefully picking up on feedback and looking to constantly improve these new forums.
What I’d like to stress, and ask for from all us lovely Simmers, is that this isn’t a place for being overly negative, aggressive or angry towards the team or specific staff. I’ve seen quite a few reactions that are just that and if we want to improve things, while we don’t have to be overly positive either, we need to be constructive at least.
Having been a member of the original Sims forums and the newer rendition in recent years, I think it’s fair to say what keeps the forums running is the sense of community. So a few things I think that would help this would be:
customisation for profiles - avatars, signatures, adding social media links or blogs/websites so we can find each other elsewhere.
Paying specific attention to each rendition of the game, the Sims 3 community is massive and has been around a lot longer. So please consider us when making changes! I can see the sims 4 forum/threads already have plenty more tags and options than ours do as well as sub forums that we haven’t been able to keep. We have a whole community of storytellers that benefitted from the stories and legacies subforum and whether the game is 15 years old or not it deserves to live on.
Changes to the formatting of threads and replies. I’ve noticed it is already hiding multiple replies under a “show more” filter which limits conversation. Also nesting replies is confusing, the original board style was much easier to navigate and chat on, which is what these forums are all about. As already highlighted, changing the automatic filtering by likes to newest would make it feel more relevant and conversational as a quick fix in the mean time.
I personally miss being able to bookmark threads, especially since the sims 3 forums have lost our sub forums and all the migrated ones are in the franchise discussion (please rectify this!). I can’t navigate to what I want to read and am losing track of what I’ve chatted on unless I get notified.
Could we also have a list of the rankings just out of interest? I have no idea what a traveler is but apparently I am one 😂
As always, super grateful to the team for taking feedback on board and looking forward to improvements and developments as they come!
I get an error message when I try to like other people's comments, and it does not update to give them a like. I was able to give one person a "like" and then it would not let me like any more comments after that. I assume this is a glitch, but it should probably get fixed.
I tried to make some changes to my profile and preferences via the "settings" option (found in the drop down menu when I click on my name in the upper right corner). I can make changes... but then there is literally no save changes button. I looked all around the screen, I asked my partner to look and he couldn't find one either. I tried just going to a different tab, and it told me my changes were not saved. It asked me if I wanted to go back and save them. The only options were "go back" and "discard changes". I clicked "go back" so I could save my changes, but there still was no save changes button anywhere. I tried many times, I finally gave up and left the settings page without being able to save the changes I wanted to save. If there really is a way to save changes we make to our settings profile and preferences, please make it way more obvious and easy to find.
I would also like to add my voice to those who have commented that having the default sort method be "by most liked" rather than chronological really does feel like a popularity contest is considered more important than having a flowing conversation. In my experience, when posts are set to be sorted by popularity, it becomes extremely hard to follow what is actually being talked about, it makes some people look way more important than others, and it often degrades into people just trying to get lots of "likes" or upvotes by performing to a crowd rather than having thoughtful and considerate discussions. Having this type of popularity sorting method set as the default sets the wrong kind of atmosphere. I think it can still be an option, but I don't think it should be the default option.
Yes, I completely agree with you. On the old forums I had it set up to only be notified when following a thread or when someone mentions (quotes) me, but from everything I can tell there isn't any way to control any of that right now.
Since we were asked to leave feedback here for the new forums, here goes. I don't hate them, but they need improvement.
I already miss the sub forums that were grouped together like all of the creative topics being further broken down by building, sims, video, stories, etc. Too many things are jumbled together.
I don't like at all that the default for replies is by likes which I feel says the posting is a popularity contest and the more popular you are the more deserving of attention your posts (and you) are.
The post nesting is something to get used to. I like that I can reply to the original poster but I can also reply to another poster in the thread with out totally derailing a thread. I does make things harder to read.
I'm really hoping that after the initial we will in time be able to customize our avatars. I can understand the restrictions now as I remember very well what happened during the launch of the original Sims 4 board (I don't ever want to see that again!). Hopefully things will go more smoothly this time and restrictions will ease soon. It would be nice to have a ballpark on when that might be.-
Additionally, I don't like that the follow feature is set to automatically follow any thread you post on. I only want to follow certain threads, such as the stories I read or discussion threads I plan to be actively involved in on a regular basis. I don't want notifications about every single thread I leave a comment on. And I don't want to have to go and click "unfollow" every time I post a comment on a thread that I don't actually want to follow. I would prefer it to be the other way around. I would like the default to be that I am not following threads unless I choose to click the button to follow.
I would like to have: -Custom avatars -Signature banners -A way to hide the panel of stuff that's on the right side so that the main text area becomes centered on the screen instead of being shoved to the left side of the screen -The option to make the font size slightly larger (as a personalization option) -Sub-categories within the categories (for example, "Sims Creative Corner" divided into stories, lots, sims etc. like we have on this forum) -A quicker way to return to the Sims 4 main page after looking at your own profile (currently, once you open your own profile, you can only jump back to the EA Forums page and then have to re-click on Sims 4 to get to the Sims 4 page) -A way to jump straight to the last comment that you read, but still have all comments be in chronological order (like we can do here) so you can continue reading the discussion from where you left off. -A way to turn off the snippet text below the thread names so the list of threads showing on a category's main page doesn't look so overwhelmingly cluttered. I just want to see the names of the threads and who created it not the first paragraph of each thread in that list. -A way to turn off the automatic line skip when hitting "enter". I would like to control whether a line gets skipped or not myself, not have it be automatic.
I am very disappointed by: -Images in threads that were imported from the old forum no longer being seen as images. A lot of the threads we nominated to be moved here were nominated because we wanted to preserve all those screenshots people shared. The story threads and screenshot sharing threads in particular are completely ruined because all the pictures are not visible. To expect us to go back and re-link each and every image in thousands and thousands of comments is very frustrating.
Things I do like: -The tool bar is at the bottom of the text box instead of the top. This is awesome. When creating a long post, I don't have to keep scrolling back up to the top of the box to use the tools. -Being able to actually see the images I include in the post as I am writing and putting them in (rather than only seeing the link until I post the comment). This is really helpful for making sure I linked the right image.
More detailed comments:
I find the new forum very cluttered, in a way that makes it feel unpleasant to me.
The main reasons are: -too many things on the screen (especially the side panel on the right needs a way to be hidden from view) -the main panel is shoved to the left (off center, making it feel uncomfortable to read) -the lists of threads have lengthy snippets that make make the whole thing feel overwhelming and cluttered to me. It gives me that off-putting "wall of text" feeling that makes me want to just leave.
Old forum, list of threads is centered. There is nothing else on the page besides the list. The list is just titles, so many titles fit on the screen, and it is easy to read what the titles are.
New forum, list of titles is shoved to the left side of the screen because of the unnecessary panel of tags and highlights and featured stuff that I don't even want to see when I am looking at the list of threads in this category. And each thread has a lengthy snippet that makes it so I can only see a couple titles at a time, and I also just feel off-put by how much text there is.
The same problems occur even when reading just one thread.
Old forum, nice and clean, centered, just the thread I'm reading.
New forum, cluttered and off-centered.
For me, it feels unpleasant and makes me not want to stay and try to read anything. I feel overwhelmed by sensory input, and just generally uncomfortable. We need some options to hide the side panel, hide the snippets, and to make the main thread or category list centered in the screen. Different people will probably have different preferences, so it would be nice if these options could be personalization settings for our own accounts.
I also find it difficult to read lengthy threads such as long ongoing discussions, and serially posted stories. Using the "by oldest" sorting option puts things properly in chronological order (this is good), but then I have to scroll and scroll and scroll to get to the part I haven't read yet (this is bad). The "by newest" option puts things in reverse chronological order (which is useless because then the story is backwards). I would like an option to put things in chronological order and then jump straight to the posts I haven't read yet.
It's like if you have a book and your only options are start at the beginning and read forwards, or start at the end and read backwards. You have no option to start where you left off last time and continue reading forward.
In general, this new forum doesn't feel as inviting for having discussions and sharing things as the old one does. It feels more like a forum to ask questions and get answers. Obviously, we can still use it for discussions, but it just feels like it's not set up with that use in mind.
Yes, but we're supposed to get notifications. I haven't gotten a notification all day and I'm following one of the busier threads in the new sims forums. (I do have e-mail notifications turned off, because I don't need that kind of spam.)
I don't think it's useful to subscribe or auto-subscribe to threads. First, you get spammed with all kinds of notifications and some threads can be very active. Secondly, maybe you don't want to closely follow all threads and want to only engage with them occasionally. Regarding the forum ranks, they need to space them out further, I got five e-mails with notifications regarding new rank gained and one e-mail about new badge gained and I only made about four posts in this forum.
Yeah I’ve been using this but don’t find the interface very user friendly at all. At least on mobile Chrome I’m finding that my notifications aren’t consistent and I’m also getting notified when I’ve posted on a thread that I follow 😂 I much prefer being able to see a list of them on the same page rather than having to load a new page of all my subscriptions. The interface on the previous forum felt more intuitive.
