EA_Arcadia
EA Staff
EA StaffBugs and The Sims 101 - Everything you need to know! - Discussion
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I've been told that I'm excessively sanguine about the whole thing, but...
In my don't-work-for-EA experience, they will likely have a series of meetings where they discuss our feedback, maybe send it back to software design for Wants and Fears and maybe send it to QA for bugs, schedule teams to work on creating a new set of functional requirements (assuming they decide to implement changes), and assign developers. This will not be a fast process.
I do believe that our feedback matters--unless they've decided that Haters Gonna Hate; I like to think that they know I'm not a hater by now! I also think it'll be slow. ☹️ The bigger the company, the slower and more risk-averse they tend to be.
Whatever you do, Sims Team, please hug your QA people (and maybe hire more, assuming budget).
Thank you, it's just that in my opinion, if we were clued in a bit on what's going on, it would help things greatly. (I'm trying to be optimistic, when there isn't much these days for me to feel that way about.)
I know. I understand that random employees can't speak on behalf of the company and make promises to us, and that official statements come slowly because that's kind of the nature of a big company that moves slowly, but also from a user standpoint it's kind of disheartening. ☹️
I keep thinking I'm focusing too much on my broken game when there are real life issues to worry about, but the fact is it's so much time, effort and money that's gone into it. Not to mention a LOT of devotion and creativity. The sheer cost of having most packs puts a massive pressure on me to play it, I feel like it's money wasted if I don't play it (during a national fiscal crisis). But for large parts of this year I've not been able to play it and right now I dare not even switch it on, it just crashes. So I'm playing a game that works instead but daily thinking do I play a game with no noticeable bugs, or do I battle the bugs in Sims 4 instead because Sims is more important to me.
So yes it is very disheartening.
I also don't want to be rough on the devs as I can see the love and effort that they put into it too and everyone wants to have pride in their product and doesn't want to have the internet mad at them. HSY was a really good idea and I steadfastly support their efforts regarding inclusivity and progress.
I'm trying to figure out the new changes from posts on here, for when I can actually play it and that's a really weird situation to be in after 20 years or so of playing. I've never known it to be in this state personally. I already hate Wants and Fears and I've not managed to play them yet.
I keep pinning my hopes on a massive bug fix but that was what I hoped the last patch would do and look where we are.
As is the case with the majority of folks commenting on AHQ, I am not an EA employee. I do not know how many Community Managers or Quality Assurance personnel are here dedicated to the Sims. Based on what I've seen, there aren't that many and you only have to go to the main TS4 page here to see there are tens of thousands of posts. I realize it can be frustrating to not get a direct response from an EA representative but I imagine it's near impossible for the few CM's and QA's to respond to every post. I try to look at it from the perspective that they must priortize. There are the most important issues, the ones causing the most problems for a majority of users and those that are of concern but may be related to specific situations, such as varying system specifications or mod / CC use. From my experience, I'm confident in saying that no issue, not one, is being ignored. As @xochiquetzl_xkvn suggested, there is likely a very tedious process for addressing these issues. Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather have a bug free game but I also understand that nothing is ever perfect.
This is the best advice I can give for anyone having trouble in their game.
1. Research your issue to find if anyone else is having the same or similar issue. It's not always obvious when issues are related. (Hint: Use Google or some other search engine for this because the AHQ search is not exactly reliable or intuitive.)
2. If you find an open bug report / discussion post / technical issue, click "me too" on the first post to make sure it gets the most visibility and also share relevant information from your game.
3. If you do not find an existing report, create one and include that relevant information to include screen grabs or videos so that your issue is as clear as possible.
4. Be patient. This is probably the hardest part. Just know that your issue is being looked at.
Trust me, I know how difficult it is to keep hope that issues will be resolved, especially when there are many that have been ongoing for some time. Personally, I just try to focus on what I love about the game and I try to find ways to work around the issues when possible. This may involve avoiding certain aspects of the game or using cheats / mods where applicable. It is not my intention to diminish anyone's feelings about this but I hope it helps!
