More Awesome Than You!

Quoting MaxoidKane from the BBS:

 Problem where some users are not able to leave owned community lots
We are looking into this for the upcoming patch. To prevent this from happening until the patch is released, do not travel to a community lot in a vehicle you own. Use a taxi until the patch has been released. If you have already encountered the bug:

1. Unfortunately, the game is in a state where you have to Ctrl+Alt+Del and kill the Sims2 task.

2. DO NOT bulldoze the offending community lot or the offending family lot.

3. Avoid playing the offending lots until the patch is released.

4. Install the patch when it is released.

5. Enter the community lot that hung, and resume play.

But - they are actually admitting that there is a bug. How many screaming posters did it take after uni came out for them to even admit there were bugs and not just "features"?

Edited to add:  I expect that games will have bugs in them. It's a business with a production deadline. What I look for is the communication from the company as the bugs are discovered and how they address (or don't address) the issue. I am pleasantly surprised with what I see as a change lately in the timeliness of communication from them regarding bugs.

 Doesn't know whether to laugh or cry at the sheer stupidity and/or audacity of putting out a game with such a major flaw  ::)  Shades of UNI?
 Methinks I'm gonna wait awhile before purchasing!

You know, I have a hard time reading posts like these about Maxis "stupidity". I'm not in bed with Maxis, but I appreciate their hard work. I wonder if people who actually DO software development for a living have the same response. As someone who has done a little bit of development of a different kind, on just my own, I am well aware of how painfully easy it is for bugs to creep in at the last minute. Even with loads of testing. Now I consider the team of Maxis developers, all having to coordinate with each other, the extreme complexity of the code, and the unknown last minute ripple effect of making changes, and I'm not surprised at all. Especially with the vast number of different systems and configurations.

I agree that it's concerning when bugs of this nature crop up, but at least they seem to be doing something about it pretty swiftly. I'm sorry I just can't chime in on the "Maxis Stupidity" chorus. If that makes me a sheep, so be it.

I agree with you Pegasys.  There is also the fact that they are under a strict deadline.  The EP is coming out on the date they say, come hell or highwater.  So it's unvoidable that the game will be released with bugs, sometimes huge ones.  If the screaming about the bugs is bad, imagine what would happen if they delayed the EP?

PS thanks ziggy for that info!

Oh please. We all know they work hard. But the fact is that EVERY SINGLE TIME that they release an EP, there are bugs in them. And most of the time, there is at lease one showstopper bug such as this. I havent encountered this problem yet, but I know people are probably upset by it. They will take their sweet time in getting the patch out. As usual.

Obviously, they don't play their own game. The way the phone works is proof of that. No sane person who stand to play the game and have a phone in their house without using the phone hack.

They got the first NL patch out fairly quickly.  Of course, they were probably already working on it when they released the game.  I'm not going to start bashing them, I'll wait for the patch.  I didn't have this problem last night when I sent my Sims to their community lot and back, thankfully.

Clarify: Marketing stupidity. Not the developers. My dad is a programmer from way way back so I know how tough it is, bugs do happen, but after the fiasco with uni I would have thought somebody at Maxis might have given a little more thought to more rigourous testing before releasing the product. More damage control on the front end as it were. And yeah, I really don't see how they could have missed this one. ::)
 Companies have been known to push back release dates on new products. Just does not seem like a sound business judgement to keep releasing EP's with these errors that have a major impact on the way the game is meant to be played.

What I find incomprehensible is that given all the hoopla about the cars in NL, this rather major component of the previous EP was somehow overlooked in the testing process of OFB. 

What it boils down to is that we are paying $30+ to be beta testers.

Sigh.  Guess I'll have to keep the Porsche garaged and take dial-a-ride to the shopping center.  How boring.

Another issue is that if a ReNu You Senso Orb is on your lot, it won't load in your hood or Uni.

That essentially takes 90% of my families out of play. Maybe more. 

So far my "gamplay" tonight  has consisted of waiting for the game to load, waiting for a lot to load, alt-tabbing out when it doesn't load, shutting down w/task manager, then doing it all over again.

Boy, this EP sure is fun.   :'(

So far, no bugs incountered, just some very annoyingly retarded customers...yelling at my sims for somethign that somebody else did, really!

Ever worked in customer service? Hell, that's not a bug, that's real life!

If you open the lot in debug mode, you'll get the option to delete the Orb and then the lot loads fine after that. And if you put on back on your lot, it will open fine the next time.

Thanks for letting us know about that PattyB.

Btw, as a former "software developer" or "programmer" I also understand the difficulties of dealing with pressure, deadlines, and what not. Bugs are bound to happen when it comes to programming. And it's tough when you work in a field that is time-sensitive (financial or market/trade related) and you don't exactly have the time or man-power to do extensive Q/A testing. :P You pretty much have to be a programmer, tester, and user all at once in some cases.

Regardless of this experience, I still find it quite appalling that these EPs will be released where, as soon as the game is installed, a significant amount of the user base seems to report major probles such as these cropping up in what appears to be everyday, average, "normal" gameplay. What is frustrating is that it seems quite apparent that Maxis the company (not the programmers specifically) will put out a game that hasn't been tested to the point that "normal" gameplay does not cause problems.

Do they just start from scratch with clean installs every time they do their testing? Don't they bother to examine the effects of long term play? The "too many iterations" problem alone seemed to result from "normal" custom contentLESS (i.e. games WITHOUT hacks) play because of BASIC game Features. And by features, I mean REAL features and not "features" which are really bugs. Just like the whole jump bug being attributed to the normal progress of racking up tons of memories and building up the number of characters in a neighborhood. All of these things would have happened normally due to regular gameplay, and it's like they didn't even bother to think about potential repercussions. These are things that players would be expected to be able to do, and it's as if it wasn't even considered a possibility. :P

I think that is the root of many players' frustrations. And probably Maxis initial reaction, which from what I've read, seemed to lean towards ignoring players. *shrugs* I wasn't around then to notice this. It seems that they are more responsive now.

Anyways, I realize that there are deadlines and what not, but as a "customer" I would prefer that there be delays rather than bugs. I would gladly wait for a game that is playable and as bug free as possible, well at least free of these kind of major bugs, rather than have the game right away when I won't even really consider installing it. At least not until all my hacks are updated and new hacks have been made to fix the bugs before the patch even comes up. :P

Now I really don't want to install it yet. ::)

Ste

Hmmm.  So, just to recap, because I'm getting OFB tommorow if at all possible.

1.  Don't use cars to go to community lots.  Use the taxi.  (Does this include all community lots?  Or just the new ones in the new sub-neighborhood?)

2.  Don't have Renyu-U-Senso orbs on your lot.  (Which won't be a problem because 99% of the time I delete them right after I use them.)

From the sound of it these are the biggest bugs yet to hit this game.  I wouldn't be surprised if this patch comes out really fast.

Its really open for buggness.. not open for business.
But luckily i have no problem leaving my lot too

I've got a new bug and the only one yet in my game.
It's where a sim will sit down on the couch play a video game then they'll get up and the couch vanishes.   ???  Has anyone had this happen to them yet? Or am I the only lucky one  ;D .

BTW: I have since pulled out the video game system (in that house) and have had no vanishing acts with the couch. 

I so agree with you, I do some customer service sometimes at my job.  Luckily not all customers get to the extreme.

Welcome back by the way, glad to see you again.  :)

I don't know, the only bug I've had was the Renu-yu-senso-orb thingie, and it was an easy fix (boolprop testingcheatsenabled true, load lot, fixed).

I have used a car several times to go to a business community lot,  and I didn't have any problems, but it was in the Pleasantview base hood.

I've had one or two non-repeatable glitches as well. But so far my game has been running fine.

A major bug I'm seeing is the customers come to the shop, but buy NOTHING! they just sit around talking to each other, and nothing is ever sold. I tried that mind control thing which makes them pay to come and shop, and they still wouldn't shop. wtf.

We are EA's bitches. They know we'll keep coming back for more, as long as our pimp treats us right after they beat us half to death.

I had the same thing too, ThyGuy, but I figured it's just 'cause I don't know what I'm doing quite yet.

Do they have those shop bars that actually look like carrots dangling over their heads?

Have you set the items as sellable by using the wholesale thingie (sorry can't remember name of it now... you click the item to be sold and it turns bright yellow in buy mode)?

SO that's what was causing my lots to refuse to load!

I was fixing it by moving the family out and back in again.

If this is the one I encountered where the "owners" get in their car and "leave" the lot but the game fails to transition back to their home lot and save/return to neighborhood is grayed out, the Debugger fixes this quite nicely. "Reenable controls" immediately sent it to the load screen and then to the home lot.



Yeah, and it seems that you have to do this every time you add something to sell, unless you are just "restocking".

Try Jfade method below :
Turn on boolprop testingcheatsenabled true at the neighborhood screen.
Load the lot that normally freezes for you.
Click delete when the object error comes up. (May happen more than once.)
After you click delete on all object errors, it should load the lot just fine, you can save and turn off the boolprop testingcheatsenabled true cheat and enjoy your game, and the loading problem shouldn't happen again.

The problem with the ReNuYu is if they were on a lot saved prior to installing OFB.  Any orbs placed on the lots after installing OFB should not cause a problem, at least this is what was reported by some players who were among the first to narrow the problem down to ReNuYu. 

I'm still not sure if the Car problem is the same as the saving at a community business problem.  I'm kind of afraid to try saving at a comm-business.

But in regards to the original topic, I am pleased with what appears to be a reformed attitude by EA/Maxis.  The second Nightlife patch surprised the heck out of me, and I'm sure the issues that patch caused (lmao!) will be addressed around the same time as the OFB 1st patch.  The increase in feedback on the bbs by MaxoidKane on behalf of the team is surprising, and not at all unwelcome.  This is how it should be :-)

LOL me too! Then I figured out you have to actually put the items up for sale. ;) And for a while after that, I wondered why I was losing money until I realized I wasn't buying at wholesale.  :-[

Thanks for the info on the debugging tool; I've gone through my 12 families and deleted the orb.  There is also a problem with a "computer game/video player" but I've no idea which one it is.

However, if the orb is in the inventory of a Sims, the lot will load fine.

I did notice that if your play on a particular lot ended during a school/work schedule, all of your Sims are going to be at home, not at work or at school.  I sent my Sim to work and she was reprimanded for being late - even though she was at work when I exited that lot.  Am guessing the grades will drop for the kids who "missed" school because of the EP install.

So if you haven't installed the EP yet, you may want to get everyone home from school and work first.

This happens for every expansion installation. A good thing before installing an installation (if this sort of thing bothers you) is to make sure that all sims are home and no visitors are on the lot when you save. I like to go to each lot, get each one into bed and asleep and then save just before "morning". That way when the lot refreshes after the installation of the expansion, they are more or less where they would have been in their normal routine.

Heh, a couple of my Sim kids got their first Ds because of various popping back after NL installation (though I think there must have been some other reason, too, because it happened more than once). It's so easy to get them As, I kinda liked it :P

Alas, I remember that only after I've installed each EP [smacking forehead].  Luckily, most of my families were in bed this time around.  One of the exceptions was Erik Swain, who happened to be taking a shower pre EP and now can be seen totally in the buff - no censor.   ;D  Got to capture that in a photo before I release the pause button.

Another oddity I discovered is that any photobooth pix that may have been on a wall is face down on the floor and if rehung, there are no characters but rather a metallic blue that flashes. 

Maybe I'll open a gallery and sell them for big bucks as kinetic art.

While Maxis does have a deadline, there was actually an extra cushion between when the game when gold and when it was released.

It went gold on the 14th, and was released 2 1/2 weeks later.  It only takes about a week to make the game and box it.

So basically they could have worked on it for another week to 10 days or so.  Which is perhaps not a lot, but enough to have caught the Orb problem at least, which was found and diagnosed almost immediately by fans.

So, I can't drive my car to my business and I can't take a taxi to downtown.  Interesting. 

So far I haven't had any issues with driving owned cars to owned businesses.  But within days of loading NL I discovered that if my Sims took a taxi to downtown when they left instead of loading their homes the game reloaded the downtown lot in a mode like buy or build, without those tabs enabled.  I could exit and go to my Sims lot and all was okay.  If they drove their own vehicle all was well.  I hoped that with OFB that would be all fixed, but it isn't.  Does anyone know what is going on?  I should maybe do a search, eh?

I do, that's my job.  If I released a product with the stability issues that most of the Sims expansions have had, I'd have been fired long ago.  Some bugs are inevitable but a bunch of the bugs that people have reported are what we call show-stoppers.  A product shouldn't go gold with showstoppers in it.  Period.

That said, I also know that much of the time it is higher-ups that would make the decision to release the product in that condition.  So the blame probably rests on management rather than the developers.  Given the infamous way EA treats its employees, it wouldn't surprise me that they impose unreasonable deadlines and don't give a shit whether the product they're releasing is ready for prime time.

Luckily my employers have a lot more ethics than that.

I worked in QA for a number of years for a company that wrote and sold anti-virus software.  Every last dinky bug we entered into the database was reviewed and assigned a priority, and you could be damn sure no new builds went out that contained showstoppers (though, things were more lax for beta builds, since our external testers knew what they were getting).

I remember working around the clock at times, waiting for the next build to hit the server so we could test, test, and retest all over again, and finally getting a gold master set and us being told to go home.

I think the worst problem I ever ran into during those years was a constant refrain from our programmers of, "But it works on my machine."

Still, I think EA/Maxis really needs to shape up a bit.  I don't know if it's EA that's the real problem, or what, but it's sad to see such glaringly horrific bugs make it into a release build of a product--bugs that even the most lacking of users can replicate on demand.

On the other hand, having been used to years of my old Win 98 machine spontaneously rebooting and simply having got used to it, sometimes I think I'm just too laid back when it comes to bugs.  I know someone out there, either Maxis or a modder, is going to fix it for me, so I just don't usually sweat it.

I didn't realize the orb problem...that explains some of my lots.  Will have to remember to load each lot in debug until I reenter them all again.

Also didn't realize the buy wholesale thing...heh heh..good to know..maybe some of my sims will MAKE money now lol

Anyways..no I don't think they test the game out well at all.  But we got through this with every EP.  It obviously isn't going to change anytime soon.  Unless you make the entire community and it's millions of players band together and refuse to purchase the thing until we're somehow 100% certain Maxis is going to release an un-buggy product..haha...yeah right.

The whole taking cars to the community lots I have experienced no problems with..but then again I am also not saving on the community lots.  This seems like a dumb feature to me anyways..but that's another story  :P

Heh, I know I've said that a time or two - it's the defensive reaction when you see a bug that shouldn't have made it through unit testing.  But often times (esp. with web based applications like the ones I build these days) there are configuration issues on the test web server that don't get updated properly or with traditional desktop apps like games, the testing needs to be on multiple operating systems and on non-"clean" machines as well as freshly ghosted ones, and also on different hardware as the Civ IV video card debacle proved last year.

Oh, I know.  We had a wiley bunch of programmers. :)

We had a complete network of machines set up with multiple servers, and our machines were set up (I had several on my desk) with removable drives, so I could yank out Windows 98 and put in Win XP (in German, French, etc.).  Gah, installing Windows in a foreign language was not my idea of fun, never mind testing the software in it.  We only ever rebuilt those if the hard drive died on us or something else happened to make the install unusable.

It's a bit different when we're talking about games though, I understand.

I used to take great delight in having a gaggle of programmers clustered around my workspace so I could show them exactly how to replicate a bug.  Fun a lot of the time, but frustrating too.

In contrast, the job I had doing support (which morphed into testing as well) involved a single programmer who I sat down with once a day with a list of issues reported by our customers.  He was an amazing guy.  Always listened, never gave anyone grief, always assumed it could be done if I showed up with a problem, and then proceeded to fix it.  I really liked him.

Well, that's the thing: If the programmer cannot reproduce the bug, it becomes that much more difficult to track. Although it certainly may exist, and not simply be some kind of user error, it's harder to pin it down if you can't watch it happen. This is why we like exact steps of how you caused it.

Yup, but as anyeone said, sometimes it's a defensive reaction.  Then they'd give me a coy smile and act all innocent. :)