Sorry for the saucy title, and I am not trying to pick on anyone or anything, this is an attempt of self reflection on both sides, but I really do think we can fix this, work better with the devs, and better improve the bug reporting to get results—if some of these things are taken into consideration. There is a certain sense of lost in translation from player to devs, when expressing concern about bugs and issues—and I believe it is hindering potential fixes.I haven't been on the new Sims forum long, at least with Sims 4, but I found rather flawed system, that I keep finding issues with. These are confirmed by research on these forums, Sims4 reddit, etc. This is what I think all Simmers with complaints/bugs/issues have to understand or your concerns may never get past the "mail room" as if it were.Bugs/Issues will not be even looked at if: made as a "multi-report" (auto-locked/closed) which falls on the user/player to re-post separately, and they often don't, "missing information" such as platform or if mods/cc used (or labeled "incomplete report" and could eventually be "closed"). Enough ignored reports sent, why would people keep sending them? instead they may resort to just complains in replies, and posts in other forums? But this is hurting the process laid out for Bug Reporting.Graphic misalignment or poor quality objects (it will just be moved to Feedback).Inconsistent mapping placement issues with objects and items, as testing every item and surface when a new pack against old packs would take some time (which results to "waiting for additional reports").Internal files containing incorrect information against the games in game descriptions and details, as the average user might not notice (probably only modders) or at least might not notice for a long while (which results to "waiting for additional reports").Aggro posts. Posted with all caps, overdone exclamations marks, name calling, and overly aggressive. If not deleted, it probably will be moved to Feedback to die. Even mild, stern or simply intense posts can/could be construed this way, despite well thought out, and with valid examples basically the "baby thrown out with the bathwater" are the results. Alas, good intentions meant—aren't enough.Complaining on other platforms, "Bug Tickets" are set up on these forums, complaining or reporting on Reddit is as helpful as keeping other players apprised, but it does little to nothing to be done officially.You use mods, and either you do not test without mods, or just rather not post because you do play with mods. Yes, many mods can cause bugs, and are fixed by removing, and so many people play with mods. This makes it very difficult to differentiate between non-mod/non-cc and mod/cc related bugs—especially if the average player is expected to investigate on their own. Because of this, it really diminishes, and throws away many bug concerns, issues or complaints—unless a larger or enough backlash reports come in/continue to come it. As many Simmers post it, and walk away, think that is enough, and do not return. If they do not provide the platform, and if you used mods/cc, and it is as good as "dead letter".This highly frustrates those reading the internal files, and actually see the errors, and despite the coding error, it can remain oblivious to the average user (maybe even indefinitely), and we don't even get an investigation due to indifference."Waiting for additional reports" is probably the cruelest, it is like they (devs) admit, or know there is an issue, but why make a 3 min fix (that's how long it too me to fix one bug/issue on a tuning file as a modder) when only 1-2 people noticed it right away. It depends on people, enough people—many of whom simply do not notice.Here are examples of "Non-Start" posts unhelpful for the desired end results:Asking to blanketed "Fix Bug" in comments, replies that are not in Bug Reports, isn't the most helpful. as they are not specific.Asking to stop making packs until "Bug Fixes" is unrealistic as most of those teams tend to be separate of each other."I quit posts" (because of bugs/issues and frustration), though I am an advocate to though who want to express their upset, it doesn't exactly help those of us left behind, reporting, waiting and wanting these fixes still.Feedback about Bugs/Fixes under feedback section. I just have a bad feeling this is just not read or cared about unless it is under a Bug Report, but you also might get dismissed, and post moved to feedback section anyways.How else can we make this system better for players, moderators and devs?

While I agree with you about some of this (aggro posts, complaining on other forums, etc.), the bottom line is that it should NOT require a significant amount of time or analysis on the part of the player to report a bug. We have lives and most of us have jobs, families, and other commitments. If it is overly cumbersome to report bugs (or if the devs are going to ignore all bug reports that are not sufficiently intricate), then realistically, most people are NOT going to take hours to do a deep dive on their bug reports. Instead, they will become irritated, stop playing, stop buying DLC, and badmouth the game to other prospective players. That's just the way it is. So, yes, I think when we have recurring issues, we should make a good faith effort to provide as much information as possible, and do it in a civil manner. But at the end of the day, EA is trying to sell us a product, not the other way around.

Also, many of the things I see people complaining about are actually caused by broken mods. If more people who used them would just play in a vanilla save with mods disabled until they updated everything there would be so many fewer false bug reports. I play on ps4 pro and on pc with mods and this method always works for me.

The best way is if we all give as much info about our problems as possible. Including the update version number, what pack we see it in the most, console or pc player, mods & cc or none, cheats used or no cheats etc anything of importance I imagine really helps narrow things down for the bug team, cause just saying "this is a bug fix it" and then never replying again, like what are they meant to do with that? Like everything in life things are sorted into priority, two players in six months have noticed a particular bug so it's low priority as you rightly say and gets put on the back burner, but over a thousand players in under a month, of course that will get fixed as it very well should be, it's clearly high priority. No game is perfect and it's mainly down to us to fix them by reporting the bugs we find.

This is the long and the short of it.I understand the premise of the current format in which bugs are prioritized, and sympathize that devs can't just spend countless hours investigating every report without upvotes. But some obvious bugs/issues with not too difficult fixes ignored because the average/casual player cannot be bothered, because they have a life and they can't upvote/report every bug. The harder bugs/issues even if obvious still won't make the list as again, because the average/casual player cannot be bothered/have a life and they can't upvote every bug reported by others.It reminds me of a discussion with another site where devs were actively discussing changes with the community, but basically said "You are just the vocal minority" and ignored us, and well that is who is on your forums, why not take the reports/feedbacks from your vocal minority then, if they aren't the majority, as the silent majority is that—silent.

I make it a point to visit the Bug Reports forum just about every day that I plan to play, specifically to see what bugs people are saying they have and to see if I run into them as well, in an effort to help provide those upvotes and investigate issues. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I also find there are some users who outright refuse to believe their mods or CC could be the root cause of an issue. It's widely believed, wrongly, that CC never causes issues, and that's very much not the case, it's just significantly less often than mods having issues. As someone who plays with mods and CC myself, I always investigate bugs with a clean and fresh save, specifically so that I can rule out that variable. We all have to take a certain amount of accountability that, if we're going to use third-party content, we can't throw blame on the EA team because a patch breaks a mod. It's not EA's responsibility to code their game around what other people create for it. That being said, there are plenty of times that people assume an issue is mod or CC-related, and then you find out it's a console player who obviously cannot use either, or a PC player who has never once used any third-party content. We sometimes need to find ways to ask the right questions in order to better help others articulate how they found a particular bug, as well as not jump to conclusions when trying to help each other.I would ideally like an in-game bug reporting system, but maybe that's years of playing certain types of games which that format works for, and TS4 is a great deal more complex than some of those. Otherwise, I do think the original posters should make an effort to check back with any additional findings, see if anyone else has come across the issue or possibly found a workaround in the interim, or in cases where the devs would like more info, be able to help fill in any blanks that may help the team further investigate.

HollownessDevour

Seasoned Ace

5 months ago

Why it is partially "our fault" that issues and bugs aren't getting solved

Sorry for the saucy title, and I am not trying to pick on anyone or anything, this is an attempt of self reflection on both sides, but I really do think we can fix this, work better with the devs, and better improve the bug reporting to get results—if some of these things are taken into consideration. There is a certain sense of lost in translation from player to devs, when expressing concern about bugs and issues—and I believe it is hindering potential fixes.

I haven't been on the new Sims forum long, at least with Sims 4, but I found rather flawed system, that I keep finding issues with. These are confirmed by research on these forums, Sims4 reddit, etc. This is what I think all Simmers with complaints/bugs/issues have to understand or your concerns may never get past the "mail room" as if it were.

Bugs/Issues will not be even looked at if: made as a "multi-report" (auto-locked/closed) which falls on the user/player to re-post separately, and they often don't, "missing information" such as platform or if mods/cc used (or labeled "incomplete report" and could eventually be "closed"). Enough ignored reports sent, why would people keep sending them? instead they may resort to just complains in replies, and posts in other forums? But this is hurting the process laid out for Bug Reporting.
Graphic misalignment or poor quality objects (it will just be moved to Feedback).
Inconsistent mapping placement issues with objects and items, as testing every item and surface when a new pack against old packs would take some time (which results to "waiting for additional reports").
Internal files containing incorrect information against the games in game descriptions and details, as the average user might not notice (probably only modders) or at least might not notice for a long while (which results to "waiting for additional reports").
Aggro posts. Posted with all caps, overdone exclamations marks, name calling, and overly aggressive. If not deleted, it probably will be moved to Feedback to die. Even mild, stern or simply intense posts can/could be construed this way, despite well thought out, and with valid examples basically the "baby thrown out with the bathwater" are the results. Alas, good intentions meant—aren't enough.
Complaining on other platforms, "Bug Tickets" are set up on these forums, complaining or reporting on Reddit is as helpful as keeping other players apprised, but it does little to nothing to be done officially.
You use mods, and either you do not test without mods, or just rather not post because you do play with mods. Yes, many mods can cause bugs, and are fixed by removing, and so many people play with mods. This makes it very difficult to differentiate between non-mod/non-cc and mod/cc related bugs—especially if the average player is expected to investigate on their own.

Because of this, it really diminishes, and throws away many bug concerns, issues or complaints—unless a larger or enough backlash reports come in/continue to come it. As many Simmers post it, and walk away, think that is enough, and do not return. If they do not provide the platform, and if you used mods/cc, and it is as good as "dead letter".

This highly frustrates those reading the internal files, and actually see the errors, and despite the coding error, it can remain oblivious to the average user (maybe even indefinitely), and we don't even get an investigation due to indifference.

"Waiting for additional reports" is probably the cruelest, it is like they (devs) admit, or know there is an issue, but why make a 3 min fix (that's how long it too me to fix one bug/issue on a tuning file as a modder) when only 1-2 people noticed it right away. It depends on people, enough people—many of whom simply do not notice.

Here are examples of "Non-Start" posts unhelpful for the desired end results:

Asking to blanketed "Fix Bug" in comments, replies that are not in Bug Reports, isn't the most helpful. as they are not specific.
Asking to stop making packs until "Bug Fixes" is unrealistic as most of those teams tend to be separate of each other.
"I quit posts" (because of bugs/issues and frustration), though I am an advocate to though who want to express their upset, it doesn't exactly help those of us left behind, reporting, waiting and wanting these fixes still.
Feedback about Bugs/Fixes under feedback section. I just have a bad feeling this is just not read or cared about unless it is under a Bug Report, but you also might get dismissed, and post moved to feedback section anyways.

How else can we make this system better for players, moderators and devs?

discussion

13 Replies

logionX
Legend
5 months ago
I am not a moderator, but I would assume that they are more knowledgeable about how the system works.
The impression that I am getting is that while some posts might ending up not being reported or followed up on... the system is working as intended, unhelpful reports or posts like you mentioned are being removed or moved or ending up further down the list and helpful reports are getting votes and moved further up.
They could probably improve the error searching by adding an AI assistant. Users could type errors like "my sims are standing still" and it could link to existing reports. That AI would have to be trained on common errors though which could be difficult, as many errors are kind of unique and it's difficult to know what the error is based on just a description. The moderators are already doing a very impressive job sorting these reports and I don't want to tell anyone what they should do.
Something that I do wish that we had though and I listed this in a a post Cade made a while back is that bugs are being prioritized based on severity as some bugs are very prevalent during gameplay (like the weather bug that we had or the bug which caused animals from cottage living to die of old age despite that setting being turned off). But it looks like they might do that sometimes as several of the bugs that I listed in that post have been solved, so I am thankful for that.
RheaFallout
Seasoned Ace
5 months ago
The best way is if we all give as much info about our problems as possible. Including the update version number, what pack we see it in the most, console or pc player, mods & cc or none, cheats used or no cheats etc anything of importance I imagine really helps narrow things down for the bug team, cause just saying "this is a bug fix it" and then never replying again, like what are they meant to do with that? Like everything in life things are sorted into priority, two players in six months have noticed a particular bug so it's low priority as you rightly say and gets put on the back burner, but over a thousand players in under a month, of course that will get fixed as it very well should be, it's clearly high priority. No game is perfect and it's mainly down to us to fix them by reporting the bugs we find.
artemis9865
Seasoned Veteran
5 months ago
Work together and work... nobody wants a surtain in it, But yeah bug fixes are great, like LAG, to long and stuff

Forum Discussion

Why it is partially "our fault" that issues and bugs aren't getting solved

13 Replies

Featured Places

The Sims 4 Feedback & Ideas

Recent Discussions

Degrees of like/dislike...

Give an Option to Order Replacement Birth Certificates & Diplomas

The Sims 4: Jade Realms Expansion Pack

Neighborhood multiplayer

Non-binary?