4 years ago

The problem with 'Laundry Lists' bug reports.

So if you haven't seen the new "Top community concerns" bug report that was released yesterday here is a summery:

Social Panel always saves organisation tab
Extreme Sports: High intensity slope not registering
Gallery showing wrong packs used
When Using ‘Get Leftovers’ Vegetarian Sims Get Meat Items
Sims don’t drink fish/frog pack plasma autonomously
~~Unable to complete ‘grand meal’ event after eating fish dinner~~
Mental Magister trait has no icon/should be hidden
Maker Mentor moodlet icon is missing
Traits not in Club menu
~~Show in the Rain No Longer Works~~
No dust in my haunted houses

The fact that they have been working for the past month to fix and categories what effectively amounts to as 3 Missing Icons, 2 Broken interactions with Vampires and a Gallery display bug is shocking. And remember. Maxis chooses its top priorities. Maxis chose 2 missing icons as one of the "Top community concerns" and it still takes them over a month to fix it really should tell you the state of Maxis as a whole. TS4 is not getting any better and the things that are legitimately broken (Pets, The entire Dine out pack, infinitely looping social interactions when Free will is disabled ect) are being ignored to fix icons.

The problem with Laundry lists is not only did no one ask Maxis to tell us which bugs they have acknowledged as being issues. Its the fact that the bugs they do acknowledge are the ones that take the smallest amount of time to fix yet we still have to wait over a month just to get Icons to display correctly and none of the actually real problems ever get solved. PSA to the Sims Team. The "Most up voted" or "Most reported" bugs aren't always the ones of biggest concern nor should they always be a priority.

Like if 2 broken Icons are more of a priority to fix than major issues because the forums said they were, really you need to take a hard, hard look at your team and figure out w. t. f you are doing and why even when you do choose to fix the simplest things (You just have to fix a broken texture link in code to fix an icon. Should take 5 minutes at most), it takes you over a month.

texxx78
4 years ago
What they're telling us is that they are working on the big bugs but it will take much more time to solve them, months or even years...

What i acknowledge with this is that we'll never have a game with relativelly few bugs because while they'll be able to fix some of the gamebreaking bugs, other gamebreaking bugs will be added through new packs...

If they were quicker in solving those big issues, then i wouldn't be worried with the new ones about to come. But they will just pile up until it'll be impossible to play, i'm afraid...
LiELF
Seasoned Ace
4 years ago
Try posting in the feedback section. If you want them to change the way they do things, you should be giving them direct feedback over there.
ReclusiveEagle
4 years ago
"texxx78;c-17858719" wrote:
What they're telling us is that they are working on the big bugs but it will take much more time to solve them, months or even years...

What i acknowledge with this is that we'll never have a game with relativelly few bugs because while they'll be able to fix some of the gamebreaking bugs, other gamebreaking bugs will be added through new packs...

If they were quicker in solving those big issues, then i wouldn't be worried with the new ones about to come. But they will just pile up until it'll be impossible to play, i'm afraid...

Its almost worse than TS3 at this point. When World Adventures released (1st pack) it came with excavation sites. After Late Night (3rd pack) released there was a bug where Sims could not excavate and would stand there saying they can't reach the site. When Sims 3 Pets (Pack 5) came that patch fixed them but the patch after immediately broke them again. Excavation sites remained broken for 3 more years up until after Into the Future and Patch 1.67.. The final game patch for discs (1.69 is a small origin fix and to allow disabling packs).

But do you know what Patch 1.67 broke? Ordering Omni seeds. The only way to get them now is to order and right before your Sim gets to the mailbox, cancel it and it goes through. Otherwise they will say they can't.

But moral of the story at least in TS3 they attempted to fix bugs multiple times (Even if they broke other things and it was 2-3 years in between fixes for that specific thing). In TS4 they ignore almost all non-game breaking issues. And by game breaking I mean crashing.
DukeOfAntwerp
4 years ago
But how buggy is this game? I had a few crashes on PS4 but haven't really noticed this game being very buggy. I bought Dine Out yesterday, expecting a bugfest but did not notice any bugs in my short restaurant gameplay. You could call me new to game so not sure what people mean with buggy game. Compared to Cyberpunk this is a treat :) Do you have to be really invested in the game to start noticing the bugs?
texxx78
4 years ago
"Antwerpo;c-17858767" wrote:
But how buggy is this game? I had a few crashes on PS4 but haven't really noticed this game being very buggy. I bought Dine Out yesterday, expecting a bugfest but did not notice any bugs in my short restaurant gameplay. You could call me new to game so not sure what people mean with buggy game. Compared to Cyberpunk this is a treat :) Do you have to be really invested in the game to start noticing the bugs?

You need to be invested in a specific gameplay to notice, i think... for instance, people has been ranting about the gardening issues since eco lifestyle came out, but i have only noticed it when i decided to have a farmer sim this year...
ReclusiveEagle
4 years ago
"Antwerpo;c-17858767" wrote:
But how buggy is this game? I had a few crashes on PS4 but haven't really noticed this game being very buggy. I bought Dine Out yesterday, expecting a bugfest but did not notice any bugs in my short restaurant gameplay. You could call me new to game so not sure what people mean with buggy game. Compared to Cyberpunk this is a treat :) Do you have to be really invested in the game to start noticing the bugs?

When Dine out first came out customers would sit, eat no problem. Now they take 2 hours to sit, clean up your plates ect ect. Also if you own a restaurant that never worked properly. Guests wouldn't sit down. Take for ever to order. Start blocking waiters, cooks don't cook ect ect. Too many to list. And that's only if you have Dine Out only. For the longest time Vampires would be stuck attacking your Sims at a restaurant
ReclusiveEagle
4 years ago
"texxx78;c-17858774" wrote:
"Antwerpo;c-17858767" wrote:
But how buggy is this game? I had a few crashes on PS4 but haven't really noticed this game being very buggy. I bought Dine Out yesterday, expecting a bugfest but did not notice any bugs in my short restaurant gameplay. You could call me new to game so not sure what people mean with buggy game. Compared to Cyberpunk this is a treat :) Do you have to be really invested in the game to start noticing the bugs?

You need to be invested in a specific gameplay to notice, i think... for instance, people has been ranting about the gardening issues since eco lifestyle came out, but i have only noticed it when i decided to have a farmer sim this year...

Yeah its like this with most things. On the surface people don't notice if they barely use the feature but if you know how it should be or how it was when it came out/intended to be, bugs are glaringly obvious. Like when they fixed toddlers in a patch I was like "Toddlers were bugged and I missed it?"
Tellimini
4 years ago
EA needs to bite the bullet and hire some super talented programmers to fix this game. I just started playing at 10:45 this morning and in 10 minutes I saw:

Loading screen music still playing in live mode.

Simulation lag

Conversation box at top of screen show the incorrect mood for targeted sim

Action icon stuck showing a generic white icon

and my personal pet peeve - sim repeatedly cooking and not eating.

10 minutes - 5 bugs identified.

If EA is serious about keeping this game running for years to come they need to stop with all the kit nonsense for the time being and focus on fixing their game. The only things kits are doing right now is just adding more bugs.

And I apologize if I sound curt. I'm still waiting for my coffee. :)
logionX
Seasoned Hotshot
4 years ago
They are either not prioritizing bugs that are top reported on Answer HQ, or they are understaffed, because some of the top reported bugs should have been fixed months ago or they should have been picked up by QA so they never happened in the first place.

I think they should expand the laundry list with more information about the bugs that they are working on that might not be fixed this month and prioritize the top reported bugs on Answer HQ.

As for the understaffed part...I dunno, work on your charisma skill and try to convince the people in charge that you need more people to help you with bug fixing and quality control. You should probably also look at the routines you have in place at your company.
drake_mccarty
4 years ago
They’ve been investigating the bigger bugs for years now; if they are still in the investigation stage they clearly aren’t making any progress.

Laundry lists exist to make people forget that *zero* progress has been made on the bugs the community has actually made top concerns. If the devs put as much effort into fixing bugs as they did useless marketing lists (which these ARE just marketing) they might make some progress, but in most cases they already got the $ for the broken content they just want to make more broken content for people to buy.