I agree with you completely, nickibitsward. It cannot be possible that the game developers are entirely unaware that there are major flaws somewhere in the base of this game. How could they not know, when from the start back in 2009, customers have been sharing their experiences here on the forums concerning save file corruption in various shapes and forms, whether it shows up after playing for 20 Sim weeks, after changing active households a number of times, playing in the same neighborhood for a substantial period of time, traveling to France, China, or Egypt one too many times, etc., etc. There are so many different instances we have encountered save game corruption, and almost all of them have been addressed either in a patch (which may or may not have fixed anything), or a post here in general made by a Guru that someone, somewhere, is aware of the reported problems and it is under further investigation.
Even these problems, with invisible Sims, have been addressed by SimGuruHydra, though that was months ago, in my opinion not helpful at all, and did not actually seem to consider most of the problems that tend to go along with the mentioned "invisible sims issue". But at least, it was said that they are aware of the problem. And as mentioned in this thread, one of the previous patches (possibly the patch that caused these problems in the first place) listed all our issues in the things-being-fixed-in-this-patch info. I for one didn't even have these problems before that patch, though I barely played before then because I was still unhappy with losing my first household because of World Adventures and save error corruption. So I find it extremely hard to believe that they don't know about our problems. They know. We are just being left completely in the dark with our unplayable games.
Another thing I want to say - I appreciate all the suggestions having to do with playing a certain way to avoid these problems. I am very glad that some of you have been able to adapt your gameplay to enjoy playing without these problems showing up.
But, I am not going to change the way I play just to try to get around these problems. I would not buy Mario Kart to only play as Toad, drive in reverse, and only use green shells. I would not shell out the money for Rock Band, a guitar, a drum set, a microphone, and a keyboard, only to play Hip Hop songs on bass. I hope I'm making my point clear. :P It may work for some, but I think it is well within our rights as paying customers, having invested so much money into this franchise, to be able to play the way we want to play, especially when one of the larger selling points of this game is the freedom that exists to get creative with the way you play.
That said, I will not even consider paying for Generations, until I see evidence here that these issues have been solved. I might not even spend the money then. :(
