The most disastrous choice ever made.
Alright, so here I go. I figure this is the best forum to put this as it will get the most eyes.
Sometime ago, the "Marketplace" was announced. And with it would come a new game currency called "Moola" which would be used to purchased kits and "creator packs" once it came out. This was met with great skepticism in the community, and with good reason. Any game that requires a transaction using real money to purchase fake money to then purchase game add-ons, is generally looked at as being greedy. But, fine. There are a million bugs in this game at the moment, completely unrelated to mods/cc, that have caused players to run to other games rather than have their experience ruined, yet the choice was made to add this whole new feature.
What a shock. The rollout has been a utter disaster. First, the update broke all mods and cc. Now, we as a community have come to expect this with every update. (Which is saying something else), So there are quite a few players who choose to play offline until mods get updated, and any bugs caused by the update get fixed. This was fine for that one day. But then the "hotfix" came out and broke the ENTIRE GAME for quite a few players. See all the posts about missing CC, failure to launch codes, etc. The problem was that that update WASN'T OPTIONAL. Those players (by and large) were forced to log into the EA app (being told they had "been offline a while" and need to prove it was their account by signing in. Once again, fine, whatever, BUT THE UPDATE STARTED AUTOMATICALLY, even with Auto-updates turned off. This was the importance that was put on this "Marketplace". Players were given zero-option to opt-out until the bugs were addressed to their needs as players.
So now, you have a large group of players that could have been enjoying the game, maybe creating content for it (CC, Mods, Videos, etc.) being told they are not able to play a game they paid good money for until next week. Why? FOR A FEATURE NO ONE ASKED FOR. What makes this even worse is that within two days, there have been mods released to take it off the home screen of the game and even to remove it entirely. On top of that, someone already took the time and effort to "jailbreak" all the packs that debuted with it. I have yet to see anything positive about the marketplace (people may like some of the items and/or creators associated, but even then, it's been luke-warm at best amongst a few), and exactly no one thinks it will improve with time.
Bottom line: You (EA/Maxis/Whichever-**bleep**-in-charge-that-thought-this-was-a-good-idea) forced a buggy update on the community, fostered a whole, whole lot of ill-will amongst your own player base (one of the most dedicated and loyal in gaming), and when problems were initially reported, the responses went from: "Oops, destroying your ability to use mods and cc was totally unintended", to "This is on the mod and cc creators to update their stuff." and finally today, "Oh, its still a problem, we'll get to it in a few days." There was even a message on the Sims Direct X account stating how important modders and content creators were essential to the community, blah blah blah. NO ONE ACTUALLY BELIEVES THAT A NEW FEATURE ADVERTISED AS A WAY TO GET CC-CREATOR CONTENT, WASN'T DESIGNED TO BREAK EXISTING CC. If it was truly a surprise to anyone involved that mods/cc would be adversely affected, FIRE THEM TODAY. That's incompetence, nothing else.
ROLL THIS WORTHLESS UPDATE BACK. Then get back to fixing the thousand and one other bugs that plague this game. Rant over.
P.S. For anyone that claps back with a "it's just a game", you're 100% correct. Life goes on. But, if let's say you dropped a significant amount of cash into say a laptop (not necessarily gaming, but a daily use item), you take it to a computer shop to upgrade the RAM. (The March 17 update) They say it'll be ready the next day. You come back to pick it up. It looks the same, so you boot it up. It fails to load. You look at them and say "what happened, it was working fine before I brought it in". Their reply is: "Oh we thought you'd like a new video card." (The "hotfix" on March 18) "But the whole thing doesn't work anymore." "Well, you should wait until the operating system gets updated". You reply, "How about you take this video card out that isn't working instead, and give me back my functional computer with the old video card?" The person behind the counter stares at you blankly for a day and a half before finally saying "If you leave it with me for the weekend, we could maybe have it fixed by next week". Would you be upset? A little bit even? Probably. Now maybe you'll get it.
