The new EA Sims Forum

I absolutely hate that this site does not allow to read in a chronological order. It gives me anxiety. Nested responses and having to read backwards after selecting "Newest first" is just a joke. 

How am I supposed to read a story thread this way? 

This site isn't a forum, it's just a standard Q&A site which absolutely does not fit the Sims community.

EA_Spectre  Allow me to illustrate a problem with the notifications. I choose to use pictures because sometimes they tell more than words.

On the bell I can see that a notification has come to me.
Now a whole series of notifications from threads I follow opens up. 

I would like to follow the comments in this group and now I expect the notification to take me directly to the latest comments, but instead I end up on the front page.

It is a very active thread which, as you can see, was created 9 years ago.

If I choose to sort by Oldest, I now have to scroll through 2843 answers.

If I choose to sort by Newest, you can see my own answer that was transferred 5 months ago as well as the two newest answers that are in reverse order and several layers.

How should we continue such a conversation?

We can of course create a whole new thread, but since we are, as I said, a fairly active discussion group, we will quickly end up in the same problem.

Some new feedback... I can no longer follow the discussion on this relatively short thread.

I'm being told there are 2 new posts since the last time I read it. I simply cannot find them. Are they the newest posts that appear under replies? No, because I've seen those a few times before. Are they buried in nested replies? Maybe... but I can't find them.

This is short thread... only 30 replies at the time I'm writing this. On the old forums I was used to threads with hundreds of replies, some with over a thousand. I can't imagine trying to navigate those threads here. 

I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here, but I think it needs a few more whacks. For someone like me, this is a critical issue. This is a "can I use these forums at all" level critical issue. I don't want to walk away from this community but I'm being forced to by these new forums. I may not have a choice... and I once again wonder - how did we get here? 

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/1014450/the-all-new-ea-forums-are-live-now/p8 We're being asked to redirect our comments/feedback here to the new forums, but in all honesty it's hard to figure out how and where best to do so. Many other people are probably going to be confused as well once they realize that this is where the staff members are gathering suggestions. It would be my guess that starting a new thread for each individual concern would probably not be preferable.

The original poster has already outlined most of my top concerns, but I'd like to add a few additional details.
* You're obviously hearing this a lot, but having the ability to recognize each other by way of personalized avatars and a customizable profile page is extremely important to a lot of people. The old forums do an excellent job in that respect, so if it's possible to do the same here that would be much appreciated.
* As already mentioned, it would be definitely be helpful to have the newest posts show as the default option. However, even when sorting posts that way, having to read posts in what seems to be reverse order is extremely difficult. Page numbers and post numbers would be a lot of help to remedy that problem.

Would it be possible at some point to recreate a specific "off topic" section for random topics and forums games? That is where I've spent 99% of my time over the past several years on the old forums, and there are others who have done the same. Having those threads grouped into "The Sims Franchise Discussion" section isn't particularly convenient.

If a member of the EA staff happens to see this comment, I want to say thank you for your patience and effort. Clearly you have a lot to deal with right now, and it personally means a lot that you're already making so much effort to listen to everyone's feedback. It's completely understandable that it will take quite some time to sort everything out and make needed improvements and additions to the site.

Same. I can't tell what replies are actually new. Even the notifications are useless because they don't take you the new replies. Then you have to change 'most liked' to 'most recent' and it's still not clear. Maybe there could be a better way to distinguish what posts are read and unread. Like an icon or a border around the new posts. 

Rather than starting a new discussion, I thought I'd jump in on this one to echo the feedback from others in this thread.  While overall I like the new forums, I find them very difficult to navigate for the exact reasons mentioned above. Its difficult to find the unread posts in a thread I'm interested as the sort options dont allow me to read them chronologically from where I left off last time.

I also find it quite difficult to see which threads have new posts in them since there is no obvious visual indicator of that. I liked the big yellow NEW sign on the old forums that immediately showed me that a thread I had viewed had new posts. It didn't require me to "work" to find those tiny little numbers in the bottom of the topic in a pale font that say how many new posts.

Finally, the design where everything is almost the same color and font weight, makes it difficult to distinguish the thread titles from the description texts (that are far to long in my opinion), and therefore make it hard to scan a page to get a quick overview of threads. To me it just looks like a giant wall of text.

Hope this feedback helps these forums improve over time.

Thanks for making this thread. I have a number of issues with these new forums as well.

• Show more loads slowly or not at all. We really just need pages with a set number of replies shown. Similar to AHQ.
• Pages reset at completely random moments. 
• I get logged off automatically, sometimes even less than a minute after clicking on something. 
• I have unread replies on threads even though I have read everything. 
• Notifications are late and/or reset. This is not a cache/cookies issue. This happens on my desktop where I always have history and cookies removed when closing the browser. 

And I agree that we need a functioning method to view post chronologically and be able to see which posts are new. I also want custom avatars back.

I've twice had posts/edits disappear even though I'm sure I posted them, this should definitely not happen. I've actually now copied this post because it might just go missing because I probably got logged off while writing this long-ish post. 

What I would really like is :

• a show only unread posts option
• a way to mark forum threads completely read like on AHQ
• $100,000 and a jet on the tarmac to take me to Monaco

 Any two of these items would be a sufficient improvement for my enjoyment of these forums.
Thank you for your consideration. 

                                                                                                                                      
Cheers
C.
Traits: 🐶Dog Lover, 🎨Creative, 😑Loner
My Stories:🤷🏻🐕Simmer Tales | 🌐A Sim's Life | 🌌Galaxy Far Away  
My CC: 🎨Caerfinon's Sims 4 Custom Content

EA_Nils Thanks for your reply. I have also cc'd you in a reply I just sent regarding frustrations with layer upon layer replies.
I'm afraid I don't fully understand all the technical stuff, maybe because of the language barrier, but I understand from your answer that some of the basic structure and settings are determined by the forum host. Among other things. the sorting by Likes and Most.
I also understand that you as employees are doing your best to create a good forum for everyone.

I miss the structure in the old Forum with clear headings and subgroupings. It's easy to find your way around.
In this Forum, random topics are on the front page according to their instant popularity and it's hard to find your way in. For me, topic-based hashtags will be a poor solution.
I would also say that costumed profile pictures and signatures are a big wish from users. I don't quite understand why this poses a security risk? I hate to mention X because it is a volatile medium, but you are allowed to create your own profile after all.
I would like to say that I am happy for your responsiveness. Since I wrote my feedback three days ago, I have moved from being a very frustrated and disappointed user, to having more faith that solutions can be found.

Hey MonaSolstraale that's exactly the kind of feedback we are looking for. The last thing we want is for you feeling that you are not important here. Because you are important to us. We see you! 👀

Would you prefer having the newest posts showing as the default option?

We'll make several smaller design changes over the course of the next months and I'll keep your feedback in mind for that.

/Spectre