I also think forced updates should be removed. If you haven't bought something new, you should be able to maintain your game in a pre-patch state, even if in doing so, you forfeit some support. There are too many updates that break core features of the game, sometimes for days on end. You should have the ability to wait out the community-testing phase until the game is returned to a playable state. Until EA starts pre-release testing these updates properly, we should be able to easily delay updating.
Absolutely, I agree. Forced updates can be really frustrating, especially when they don’t work properly and break mods, CC, or other features players rely on. Giving users the option to stay on a pre-patch version—or stick with their current version—would be really helpful, letting them decide if and when to update, even if some resources or support aren’t fully available. A community-testing phase would also be valuable, giving players a chance to see the impact of updates before committing. EA really needs to improve their testing before pushing updates live.
An actual community-testing phase that isn't "we're releasing it to everyone so they can complain to us until we fix it" would be incredibly useful, I think. I believe I've heard they have something, but it's clearly not as robust as it should be.
Yes, definitely! That would be incredibly useful. I’ve seen people mention that The Sims has testers, but I’m not sure how true that is or how thorough the testing actually is before updates are released.
