Some buttons greyed out with no text
Since the patch that brought Scenarios our main menu has been missing buttons. There are probably other missing buttons or text in game too but we've spent so much time troubleshooting a few other is...
Forum Discussion
@BitzyBanana There is no official way to force a repair. However, if you were to move or delete TS4_x64.exe, the Desktop App would likely see the game as not installed and proceed to download it. (I haven't tried this with Sims 4, but it did work this way with Sims 3.) Instead of downloading the entire game, you might be able to start the download and have the app verify the existing files, then only download whatever's missing. So if you only removed the .exe and the language strings, perhaps that would work.
It's also possible that the app would try to redownload the entire game. In case that happens, it's a good idea to copy the program files elsewhere before you start; if necessary, you can pause the download, copy them back, and resume. When people do this with Origin, it verifies the files, which can take a few minutes, but doesn't download anything else. I haven't tested it in the Desktop App, but I'd love to know whether it works here too.
Any content you own outright, as in, you paid for it separately and didn't get it as part of a subscription, will show up in both your Origin and EA Desktop libraries. You do need to own or have access to (through a sub) the base game for the packs to show up. So if you've bought a bunch of packs through the Desktop App but never bought the base game, that's all you'd need to buy for your content to show in Origin.
Of course, I'm sure you don't want to pay $40 or the equivalent for a copy of a game you can already play through GamePass. However, the Sims 4 base game is often on sale for $5, so it might be worth that much to use Origin and not the Desktop App. If not before, it'll probably be on sale again the week of Black Friday.
Thank you for the reply and suggestion. Unfortunately we tried that already with the TS4_X64.exe a few days ago and with a few other folders or files to try to force a repair or it to redownload certain parts.. All the EA Desktop App did though is report an error saying "An error on our end caused your launch to fail. Please try again a little later". Even the errors shown in that app are messed up ☹️ I don't think it does any file verification at all other than to verify you are allowed to play the game and own the DLCs. Half the time when you purchase a DLC you have to wait an hour or more for the app to even recognize you bought it and allow you to download it.
I put a screenshot below with the error it gave when we tried moving the TS4_x64.exe file temporarily so you could see the error. I know it's still in beta but right now the app seems to be just a way to advertise stuff with very little that's useful to the gamer.
I'm fairly sure the patch that brought scenarios didn't actually install much for us and that's the cause of our problem. . It said it was a huge update when we started to download it. It said something like 7.8 gigs. We checked back on it about 45 minutes later and were shocked to find it was done already. No way our connection finished 7.8 gigs of a download in less than 5-6 hours. We haven't tried the scenarios yet since we can't see what we're even trying and suspect it wouldn't work anyway since that update didn't install properly.
Thank you so much for the info on our packs moving to Origin. We'll watch for any sales of the base game even if we have to grab it from Amazon or something like that. It definitely will be worth buying the base game to move off this app. We've lurked around on reddit and a few other places trying to find information on whether the packs would transfer and had found so many different answers we weren't sure which was correct. Good to hear a long time poster and helper here confirm what we hoped was the case, that we just needed to buy the base game.
@BitzyBanana Thanks for the screenshot, and I'm sorry the approach didn't work out. The Desktop App is definitely still a huge headache at this point, but I think repairing has to be added once it moves out of beta and into full release. That might not be for a while yet though.
For what it's worth, the recent patch's actual size was more like 330 MB. Origin often reports a much larger number for a patch, and it's possible the Desktop App does the same. Even so, it's clear the patch didn't install properly for you, and I'm sorry I don't have anything else to offer.
That makes more sense then that it didn't take very long. You've helped us a lot confirming that we can buy the base game for Origin and start playing it through there. We'd nearly given up on trying to find for sure whether that'd work since we read so many different answers on that question.
We picked up the base game fairly cheap with an expansion bundled with it so we have it in Origin now, and like you said all the packs we have popped up in Origin too without us having to buy them again. In fact the Origin app detected our Sims4 install too so we didn't have to re-download anything, then it automatically verified the files, must've found problems, repaired them, and now our menu options are displaying fine and we can see the scenarios. So thank you very much for letting us know those packs would transfer over once we had the base game purchased in Origin.
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