More Awesome Than You!

http://tinyurl.com/35gyvg

So many of us have submitted those feedback forms time and again, only to be frustrated that nothing gets done about the worst issues, while the miniscule ones get special treatment.  But the winds may be changing, because now we have been given a direct e-mail to the sims team Tech support.  What I found interesting was that the team was unaware of the bsod issue with pets, Maxoid Sam also appeared to be confused over how the Feedback Form keeps disappearing off the BBS, and has stated that it will remain from now on.  I starting to like this guy, perhaps things will get better after all. 

My only concern is that the fanboys/girls will abuse the e-mail with nonsense that has nothing to do with fixing bugs.

How do you guys feel about this?

I think that MaxoidSam lies through his teeth, and that he's just doing this to make it appear as if he gives a damn and shut up the complainers. If he said the sky was blue, I'd look outside to check.

Sheesh... the second posting there (the Pets BSOD thing) describes what seems like an same issue I've been battling ever since the friggin' patch. Only I don't get a bluescreen, just a completely locked up PC with a black (turned off) monitor. I must've missed the initial posting of it.

Poor Maxoids by the way. They're caught in the crossfire between annoyed TS2 players who run in to bugs, and EA Games who doesn't care for QA....

I have thought about the cheat thing a lot, (and have my own transcript of last nights chat just in case) and have wondered if he just hasn't been given the right information.  Someone edited out that transcript, I remember it coming up in the chat too, and reading it again in the transcript afterwards, but was it Maxoid Sam or someone else?  We will never know.  But this guy does seem to be doing more than Tim LeTourneau did, of course there is a new EP out soon, I'm not oblivious to the timing.  But when did Tim ever post about any issues, Maxoid Kane used to do that, but she was often given the wrong information, who's to say that the same wrong info isn't being given to Sam?  There is something very strange going on at that company.

We complain about poor communication with the fans, but I think their own internal communication is sorely lacking.

So should we send them e-mails about all the things we reported already?
Most of my current irritations are to do with OFB and I can't see them adding OFB fixes now anyway.
- business data not moving with the sim
- food shopping on community lots broken
- missing LTWs
- lags and broken stuff about wages especially for teens/elders
- overload of stupid wants to hire sims who already work for you on another lot, or just because you know them.
- inventory bugginess - undo loses things!
- robots break too frequently
- wants to slow dance when you don't have NL and can't slowdance!
- athletics bus goes without my sim - if you cancel it out of the queue, the bus goes immediately.
- maids stuck cleaning fish tanks
- expresso cups strewn all over the lot.
- community lots not "upgrading" when you add OFB (clothes racks/food bins etc came down in price a lot)
- flamingo wall lights disappeared when adding OFB to base game
,.....enough already....

Fortunately you guys have fixes for a lot of things - wonder if someone is going to come and visit or lurk here like MaxoidTom! 

Send them in, I filled out a couple of feedback forms a couple of days back for OFB and Nightlife bugs.  If they can squeeze them into an EP or something that's great.  On the lurking maxoid topic though, I don't know how wise that would be actually, Maxoid Tom mysteriously disappeared after that didn't he.  He hasn't posted at MTS2 since either  :(

Stuck between the anvil of EA greed and user helplessness. I hope MaxoidTom got a real job at a company that actually gives a shit about customers.

MaxiodTom said last May he was doing another project, but still with EA.

I agree, poor MaxiodTom! I do think he's moved on to a much better place, even if still at EA! He's out of the Sims2 cesspool!

And poor Maxiods in general. *hangs head in shame* I may be one of the worst to trash them. But when one wants to state how disappointed one is with the game/EP/patch then Maxis or EA or the Maxiods gets blamed as a natural course of action. 

IF EA would just learn to LISTEN to their employees and their customers and then TAKE TIMELY ACTION on that.....

But for me, anyway, they are too late. I am so disgusted with the bugs and glitches and alll of the crap--and at the same time I miss my sims!- I will not give EA one more cent! until they have a proven track record-- which IF EVER is years away.

I clicked on the link that will remain from now on 7/24/365 and got the EA 404 page not found with a confused Sim looking for the page.

That's because MaxoidSam (or at least whoever posted that thing)'s a noob.

He linked to http://thesims2.ea.com/community/qa_form.php. (http://thesims2.ea.com/community/qa_form.php.) — the working link is http://thesims2.ea.com/community/qa_form.php (http://thesims2.ea.com/community/qa_form.php) (no trailing dot).

*de-lurk*

I just read Maxoid Sams blurb and to me it seemed to be saying "Don't trash the game on a public forum where potential buyers may see that it's riddled with bugs". Maybe I'm just too jaded by EA releasing broken games year after year, I can't believe anything they say anymore.

Okay taken completely out of context I found it humorous when he said "we are always happy when people find bugs in the game...". Really? Is this why they include so many of them???
Damn, there must be a lot of happy Maxoids then!

Oh, and riddle me this: Why are they still called Maxoids when Maxis has absolutely nothing to do with EA anymore?

I think this tends to be as good as you often get from any large organization, especially if there is no dedicated in-house push towards really excellent customer support. And these days, what high-tech related company is dedicated to good post-sales tech support? I'm sure they exist, but they're the exception, not the rule.

That said, having worked for a large organization, I can guess that every once in a while somebody in the company gets the idea that they need to do a better job with the customer feedback and some guy or group of guys will be designated to wade through the complaints, some coherent and many not, to see what can be done about them. The easy changes get done first, because well they're easy. The hard problems get put off, because the guys in charge of fixing this stuff (assuming anybody has been put in charge of fixing the stuff) have a ton of stuff on their plates and this sort of thing isn't sexy, fun, and is probably pretty thankless to boot. Plus some of their more knowledgeable playing customers have freely made fixes available to them that are most likely to create a fuss, so why bother?

I'm wondering, however, if the NVidia BSOD problems haven't finally kicked off some alarms. I know that I probably would have bought a 8800GTS by now if it weren't for my own BSOD problem for several months after I installed OFB, a problem I circumvented on my own by throwing more hardware at it. After all that, I hesitate to try yet another Nvidia card. That's $400 that's probably going into ATI's pocket later this year, rather than Nvidia's.

I read his blog... they want you to attach pictures or movies of the bugs. Why not error logs? Wouldn't that be more informative? I do realise then they'd have to teach the sheeple how to create an error log, but really what information of bug causes will they get from a picture?

Maxis is still a part of EA. The take-down of Maxis.com was temporary. Something even with LS said something along the lines of "made by Maxis for EA.."

Anyway, Maxoid Sam is supposed to be the one in charge of TS2 right now. He took over shortly before Pets released. When the transcript was edited (and I too saw it in the transcript to begin with, since I missed that chat) he was already in charge. It wouldn't have been edited without his knowing about it, and if it was, it's his JOB to find out about it. Just like it was his JOB to know the cheat was in there, in the first place.

Just like he doesn't know where the feedback forms disappear to? Hello, once again, he's the one in charge of the division, and he's trying to say he has no way of knowing what happens to them? They magically disappear just like the cheat magically appeared? Riiiggghhttt.

He also permabans people, and not the ones who need to be banned.  ::) He does it if he just doesn't like what's being said.

This latest transcript for Seasons was already partially edited, and for something completely stupid. He came in and said "hello all" and didn't say "let's get chattin'"  I remember because I thought it was odd that they launched straight into the chat. He had it edited to make him look like less of a moron.

I wish they'd send him back to EA Sports. Tim was a moron, but he wasn't an asshole.

EA obviously subscribes to the same philosophy as Microsoft. Lie to people about the quality of your software, deliberately confuse the specs and insert code that you know is buggy, then keep your customers running the upgrade treadmill. If Maxoids say anything different, it's because they are worthless sacks of shilling shit.

EA could easily fix all the bugs that are in the Sims and they know it, and I wouldn't be surprised if many of them are deliberately placed there. Feel free to quote me anywhere you like.

The other reason easy things get fixed first is that people get set simplistic targets like "fix 10 bugs".  If your bonus depends on meeting targets - who in their right mind is going to pick hard bugs to tackle?

Why would they do that?

So they can sell EPs that fix them of course. :p

Yes, remember the fun when they sad they weren't going to release a stand-alone patch for one of their expansions?  I forget which.  Their excuse was something along the lines of "It's too hard to fix the bugs in a stand-alone patch, so we're just going to put it in the expansion."

Not really all they need to do is show them where it located.  Whether or not debug mode is on or not an error report is generated. Believe me I never turn it on and get an error report everyday about my incompatible sound card.

The EP's don't fix them, so your theory doesn't hold up. That was true in TS1, but not in any of the EPs with TS2. The most you can say is that OFB tightened up the code and made the whole thing run better than it ever did, but the same old bugs are there unless you patch. Installation of a new EP forces you to patch the base game- from the website, but nothing else.

I don't believe they intentially put the bugs in the game but i do believe their a bunch of lazy useless people and their testers are a bunch of monkeys that can't tell the difference between cheese and iron.  90% of bugs should NOT make it past the beta testers, ASSUMING THEY EVEN BETA TEST.  Most of them are so serious and so easy to pop up that any fool who actually plays the game would come across them.  Their never going to fix all the problems with patches because there is no money in it and its a waste of resources for them.  The only reason they bother patching anything is because if they at least patch some of the minor problems most of the sheep will think hey we got a patch they fixed stuff they'll keep doing it.

Heh and lets not forget whenever they patch something they usually break it with the next patch or EP anyway.

Anyway thats my take on the situation.

When you have a whole bunch of people working on the same project, not necessarily putting helpful comments on their code, it's not hard to see how bugs are introduced.  It's not necessarily the case that there's a programming error, but a lack of foresight on the part of someone who simply wants to get his day's work done and get home.  When more code is laid down which then calls ClockWatcher's code, it too seems to work at first glance.  By the time the game or expansion pack in finished, his code is firmly entrenched by routines which call the routine which calls it.  You change his code, you have to change everything that follows from it.

When the game is played by people who have hours upon hours to experience the full range of bugginess, the shortcomings of ClockWatcher's code finally reveal themselves.  Rather than admit the mistake when it comes to light and come up with a fix either the offending code is superceded in the next expansion pack, or some sort of plastering-over of the cracks is introduced.

Basically if you want something done right and not according to some rigid timescale, you've got to hire people who don't declare victory so soon.

I read somewhere that when they test a new EP, they only test it with the base game loaded.   Well, hell, no wonder there are so many bugs.    ::)

 If they wanted to find out if it is compatable, then they should test it with all the EP's installed.    But that would be too much trouble for them and besides we don't want them to do anything that makes sense.   It would send us all into shock.     :o         rofl

EA has a bad repution for the way they treat their programmers (look up EA spouse), and QA departments. For EA QA apparently means ONLY check for global crashes and if routines exist, not if they necessarily work. Can you name a single recent EA game which did not require patches?

If EA had a real QA department which was allowed to do their job, they would have found the obvious bugs like the hair colour bug introduced by the Pets patch. Unfortunately the release date is all that matters, and QA seems to be an afterthougt.

Ahh, I didn't realize that Maxis was still part of TS2, I thought they had been gobbled up by EA.

Also I have missed something despite reading these boards almost every day. What is this cheat that you are refering to and why was it denied it existed?

I agree with Marvin Kosh. Having worked for large corporations in the past, I know firsthand how difficult (read: impossible) it is to get all of the different divisions within a company on the same page. Each team has its own way of doing things, and thinks that this is the *only* way to do them. Meanwhile, the other teams/departments are doing things their own way, and this is almost guaranteed to be completely different than the way that the other team(s) are doing things. Trying to get all of the teams to cooperate and, more importantly, COMMUNICATE is an exercise in frustration. The end result is that nothing gets done properly, wasting time, money, and resources in the process. Sound familiar?

During one of the chats, a Maxoid promised us that there would be a new cheat in Pets that allowed us to increase the number of Sims on a lot.  Then the guide came out, with no mention of it, followed by the game, with no mention of it anywhere either. So someone else asked about it on the BBS, and I backed her up, saying that I remembered it too, and swore it was in one of the chats. MaxoidSam said no, he'd asked around, it didn't exist and we were never told that, it wasn't in the transcript- we must have imagined it or read it somewhere else- sorry we were disappointed. I'd remembered telling kellinjar about it after reading the transcript via IM, so I looked up my IM history, and sure enough, the date I told him was the same day as the chat, a couple hours later. I posted about this odd coincidence *cough*, and MaxoidSam got all irate about it, guaranteeing that no one ever edited the transcript, and basically how dare I suggest such a thing.  I let it drop, but a couple days later, one of the usual people who poke around inside the game, discovered three cheats to adjust the total of Sims per lot, and the division of Pets and Humans within that total. There was no response to my suggestion in the BBS thread that I must have imagined them into everyone's game, then.  ::)

How very 1984 . >:(

Thanks for clearing up the mystery for me.

Honestly, can anybody here point me to a recent computer game that didn't require patches? In the past year I've played both Oblivion and Neverwinter Nights, both of which had at least one patch issued for them, and both of which have forums filled with disgruntled players complaining about various bugs and/or game design decisions. I probably would have bought Gothic 3 if it weren't for the reviews commenting on how the varous bugs made the game almost unplayable on various rigs. Granted, I'm not a big PC gamer, but any new game release for the PC seems guaranteed to contain a certain degree of bugginess. For the Sims, and the other games I've played this year, the overall gaming experience was positive for me, despite the various bugs. If the aggravation of the bugs exceeds the pleasure I get from the game, I stop playing the game.

I would think that extensively beta testing the Sims would be problematic, given the number of optional expansion packs and the variety of computer setups. The worst bug I've had to cope with is the Nvidia OFB crashes, but there are a lot of Nvidia card users who had no BSOD crashes. I hope EA/Nvidia comes up with a working solution to this that doesn't entail turning down my graphics, but it's not something I would have expected them to have caught prior to releasing the game.

I do think EA could stand to pay more attention to cleaning up the various bugs and problems after releasing an expansion pack. We can get decent fixes within a reasonable amount of time on the MATY forum, doesn't seem like it should be too much of a stretch for a company like EA to commit to clean and tighten the game code on an ongoing basis.

I used to think that way, but it's been over 30 months since the initial release and there are still critical bugs in *that* code. It's not for a lack of reporting them that they haven't been fixed, nor can they use the excuse that it's because of incapable testers or coders or that they aren't motivated.

In the same amount of time, by way of example, the Linux kernel has gone through 8 major revisions, fixing thousands of bugs, implementing support for hundreds of devices as well as kernel-based virtual environments, and is a far more complex set of code to boot.

How do you get a picture of a game crash?  My game likes to freeze and hourglass, and then crash while whining bout there not being a dirextx9-compatible graphic device (which is bullshit because I have DX10 and upgraded my vidcard).  I can't exactly snap a photo of it when it's frozen.  *head-shake*  Idiots.  And, of course they can't replicate it, because they have ultraswish machines and assuredly not the same specs.  Besides, when the only answer one gets is "take your hacks out and don't touch woolprop," one gets a little disgusted... Especially when the same damn thing happens in a hack-free game.

So to speak.

Linux is also Open Source, and has a lot more people working on it than TS2 does, both paid and volunteer. It can hardly be judged by the same standard.

I should have said, "release day patches to make an unplayable game, playable". I am all for patches being released of course, but if the gold master is an incomplete and buggy product which requires an often substantial download to even make playable, I am annoyed.
The gold master of a game should be a finished product, meaning that it should have at least all obvious bugs fixed. Not so often with EA: they release based on preplanned shipping dates, regardless of game state.

Vista problem. Vista currently does not have a really working DirectX 9 emulation yet, so you tend to run into stuff like this.
How to get a picture? Camera.

What about using "print screen"? or did Vista break that, too?

If your system is locked up, I think you'll find that print screen is not exactly helpful. The clipboard is memory only, thus wiped on reboot. Even if the system could respond to it.

Yes, and on the rare occasions when I crash, it's not just the game that goes, it does lock up the whole system.

As for bugs, in order to capture them, you have to know they are coming. Unless you can create the same error every time, this is a wee bit hard.  ::) Plus, how do you take a screenshot/picture of, say, the jump bug? Unless you're doing video capture 100% of the time when you play, his suggestion is nonsense. All it can possibly help them fix are the tiny things they've been fixing all along.  ::)

This is interesting and dumb. I'm not trying to nitpick, I'm just curious...is it possible that he just doesn't know what the fuck is going on? It seems like a lot of work to cover it up. I ask because my bf works for a giant software company and he's surrounded by people who don't really know wtf technically, and other people sort of carry them. They will talk out of their asses in this fashion at any given moment, and it's not a conspiraracy, it's an attempt tp preserve their status.

Is it possible to go over Yosemite Sam's head? Why deal with the inept?

It might be more to the point to go under him.  He's sounding like the kind of manager who thinks he doesn't need to understand the technical bits because he has people for that.

Ahh, but I don't have Vista, I have XP.  (Nor do I have a camera.)


Yes, exactly!  Can never tell which one of the slowdowns is going to do it, either.

The only stable Nvidia drivers for TS2 are way too old to work for your card, even assuming there are DX10  card drivers that are at all stable, period.  For TS2, you really need to run on ATI cards if you want to avoid some of these headaches. Nvidia doesn't seem interested in fixing the problem and I don't think EA is capable of fixing it.

As for MaxoidSam being merely incompetent, rather than a liar- if he'd just not known about the cheat, then okay. But saying that the transcript hadn't been edited, when it clearly had as based on electronic evidence? The same way he claims he doesn't know hooooowww that feedback form disappears? That goes beyond incompetent and into slimy.

My own card is running TS2 awesomely now with the nvidia drivers, but I have a gx2 so the latest drivers fully support it.  Just wanted to throw that in there because it's been seeming to me over the last year or so that Nvidia's drivers are getting less and less backward compatible with the older cards, possibly to force people into upgrading to the higher priced ones.

It's possible they mean for the type of bugs and glitches that can be captured with snapshots/screenies and video, stuff like the lighting suddenly going fubar and making whole areas blacker than black, that sort of thing.  Some people have a real problem with des ribing problems, I think this is a good thing giving us the ability to show them what we are trying to tell them.   Of course many issues can't be recorded like that. 

Maxoid Sam also made a post in the pets section in someones thread, and it was about fish.  Now here is what I can't get my head around.  I had a GeForce FX 5600 video card, and I was always able to see the fish, until a certain expansion or patch came out, at which point, like many others the fish became invisible. 

Now in his post a week or so ago, he added the list of compatible video cards that would support seeing the fish, the GeForce 5600 was there, I looked specifically for it out of curiosity.  Later he came back and edited a number of those cards out. including my old one, saying they weren't supported.  How does it go about that a video card that was supporting the dang fish, suddenly stops with a new EP, and it's the hardwares fault?

When you mentioned perma-bans there, I thought for a moment that Twain had bought the farm, but no, I see he's still alive and kicking thank goodness.  Isn't 'Search' wonderful.

I hadn't really been back to the BBS since that run in with MaxoidSam, so apparently I missed vibrateforyou being banned for 2 weeks without warning for sharing info from the Prima guide for Pets, after being given express permission to do so as long as she paraphrased, rather than directly plagiarizing. The subject came up today in a thread about the Seasons guide being delayed by EB/Gamestop. They banned her and wouldn't even tell her why when she tried to get it out of them.  She said she hadn't been back much since, the same as me.

Needless to say, when I get my guide, I guess the only info sharing I do will be from the relative safety of RetardoLand and Malaysia.  ::) And maybe wake up Simtelligence by leading the sheep there, not here.  :o Somehow, I'm pretty sure kellinjar would tell EA and Prima where they could stick it, too.  ;)

That's a stupid thing to ban someone over, I guess that elevates him from moron to Dickhead then.  People have been posting from the Prima Guide ever since TS2's release, it was something that bound the community together, and they had to go and ruin it for everyone.

Could be that the publisher/author howled and made threats of copyright litigation if EA allowed the copyright violations to continue.

Wouldn't work, anyway, quoting passages out of a book is considered to be "fair use".

One thing I have discovered as a librarian is that very, very few people actually understand what fair use means. It's a shame, too, because there are some cheap and easy books on the subject. I think most people would rather not even skirt the issue. People seem to like complete avoidance of trouble over a little research.

And, as THEY THEMSELVES had told her before, it's not copyright violation as long as you aren't even quoting passages, just giving the information out in your own words. Apparently with one of the early guides, they'd contacted her about quoting passages, and came up with the agreement that it was okay to paraphrase- she'd PMed me with the heads up when I was the first to get one of the guides, but I'd worked in the college library, and I already knew how to stay out of trouble  ;) To change the policy without telling anyone and then ban people for it is just being a petty dictator. Which happens when you give a moron a little power.

My experience of MaxoidBullSam is that he is a liar and a petty tyrant. I think katenigma was lucky not to be banned.

Maybe.  Maybe not.  It's a slippery slope.  See 17 USC 107.

I agree. I think I only escaped it because it was so early on after he'd taken over.

Either that, or I was banned and just never knew it because I was so disgusted with him that I didn't go back to the BBS for months- it's not as if they always bother to tell you that you've been banned, let alone the reason for it.

Well, the feedback form and the e-mail link will soon be put to the test.  I already came across something on a german forum (using google to translate) that I don't like the sound of.  Two things actually.

1.  The drop down walls has apparently been changed, at the moment the walls in front of you all drop, but the new change makes it so all outer walls drop and only the inner walls are cutout.  I haven't seen anyone else mention this on the BBS as yet, though I got to the german site via a link in a thread there.  They were only looking at the pictures though and not trying to translate.  Until I try this changed feature I can't say how bad it's going to tick me off yet.

2.  They changed how the autolighting works, and I don't mean daylight/nightime, I mean the way lamps etc.. turn on.  I had a bit of difficulty understanding the translation on this one, but from what I gathered... Currently when sims walk into a room at night, the light comes on for that room right?  Well between the hours of 2am and 6am this doesn't work anymore, at least I think that is what the post said.  It's somewhat minor, but I dont' like it anyway.  It's not clear whether manually turning the light on between those hours works or not.

**edit** heh, was just trying to locate the links for this and found a new reply about the walls from someone who understands german.. they said the issue with the walls was due to greenhouse walls being used and once they were replaced with normal walls it was fine again.  So that's nice to know.
http://tinyurl.com/2d9592 This is the forum with the pictures and the german posts about the issues.
http://tinyurl.com/ywq6bs  This is the BBS thread I found the above link in, and in which HugDopey explained about the walls.

Lies and propaganda. The game doesn't even exist yet, so all babble about it is nothing more than recycled speculation from the Prima Guide.

The light issue they discuss is basically the following:
-light went out at 2am, except in the bathroom for some reason, but it did not go on at 6am.
But this user uses some greenhouse walls, so probably the game thought their inside was actually the outside. I wouldn't pay too much attention to this. Greenhouse walls are simply weird.

There are no "greenhouse" walls. This is clearly simply a made-up rumor. LIES AND PROPAGANDA!

Thankyou Jordi, so both are related to the greenhouse walls.  Well damn, now I have to go looking for some more problems to worry over  :D

And Pes, I don't have the Prima Guide :P  BTW, you do realise you will be able to 'rain fire' on your poor sims with this EP right?

I wish Pirate Bay would put the darn thing up already, so we can move on from the Lies and Propaganda stage.  :D

Anyway, the guide did mention that Greenhouse walls work differently than regular walls for cut aways, but didn't say anything about lights. The greenhouse is supposed to BE inside- that's the point, it doesn't get the bugs or weather. But I guess it's probably designated as a separate category- not inside or outside, but both, since it does get sun, and if you want to plant things inside without greenhouse walls, you have to put up sunlamps.