Ok this is sort of my way of venting but also asking for help so if you dont want to read about my sorrow (T_T) just skip to the end and I wont hold it against you.
I am a long-time fan of the Sims. I was a late comer to the first Sims game but I played Sims 2 from the beginning and derived many many hours of enjoyment from playing it (I especially liked that paranormal aspects which are greatly reduced in Sims 3). The Sims games have always been the kind of game that I play for a while and then stop after a while and spend a few months playing other games but then after a while I suddenly get the urge to go back and play again.
When Sims 3 came out I got it and was amazed by the improvements over Sims 2 (open neighborhood, more freedom in create a sim including the new traits system, etc) but I was also disappointed by the content that made the Sims 2 so much fun which was reduced or taken out (paranormal aspects like aliens are gone while others like ghosts are no longer a potential threat and are at worst now a minor annoyance, plus no more crazy aspiration reward objects like that one machine that could make your sim crave grilled cheese and what not). Still it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed playing it just as I did Sims 2.
When World Adventures came out I bought it too and I enjoyed most of the new content especially martial arts and photography. It was a lot of fun trying to fill the photo collections...up until the point when I realized there was a bug where certain subjects in the collection would not register when I took pictures of them thus making it impossible to complete certain collections. Whatever it was a minor bug and I can deal with it.
Then I bought Ambitions and installed it to find it buggy as heck. A good deal of the content like Consignment stores simply did not work and this pissed me off even more because there is no way a tester could possibly miss that, especially considering it was one of the new features that should be tested more than others. Of course what does EA care? Once you find the bug they already have your money. Worse the professions (ghost hunters, investigators, fire fighters, etc) were mostly just the same point-and-click adventures that WA had only without the exotic locales and tombs filled with traps and treasure to make it excited. No all this was replaced with freaking text boxes. At this point I came to a realization, EA clearly doesnt care enough to actually test their games before they send them out and I refuse to pay for a Beta product. I swore I would not by Late Night and then EA went "oh but we have Vampires now" to which I replied "...shit."
So I got Late Night and found EA got me again. The big pull of the game for me, Vampires, were practically defanged (or alternately run through the Twilight ringer). Vampires in Nightlife were much much better and EA didnt even have to mess with them, just give them an update. Worse the celibrity system quickly got old as I discovered most every sim in the city was some kind of celebrity and so I couldnt just be an average sim, nope even a sim working in the grocery store now has to be a celebrity and get followed around by Paparazzi. This led me to conclude that EA never actually had a planning meeting to consider how their new features might affect the game. So then I go "well EA you got me twice but you wont fool me a 3rd time" to which they replied "Ah but Generations will have those private schools you liked so much in Sims 2", and I went "You clever bastards..."
So I got Generations and while it is easily my favorite expansion so far due to the sheer amount of content added to the base game (not the least of which being the ability to have children and teens attend after school activities and allowing you to change how long life stages last which means I can finally make the toddler stage short without having my other sims age too much) but the promised private schools were not what I had imagined. In Sims 2 I always like the little "challenge" where you invited a dean over to your house and showed him around and served him dinner to have your kid get into private school and I was expecting something similar. Nope, now you just use the phone and send your kid offscreen for a while and they come back an adult. Way to be lazy EA! You have created a feature where you basically send a sim offscreen till they age up and sold it to me.
Well now last weekend the Sims bug bit me again and I reinstalled Sims 3 and the expansions on my computer (minus Late Night as the celebrity system broke the game for me). I first wanted to create a sort of journalist/photographer sim and go and take a bunch of photos. I finally get a camera and take a photo...nothing, my sim just sits there with the take photo action queued up but does nothing and I cant cancel the action. I looked online and found a bunch of people were having this problem and there was no fix for it so in other words I had to give up my plans to have my sim work on photography.
Alright thats a set back but the other day I thought about how much I enjoyed World Adventures and how I had never quite finished all the quests or built a Cursed Sarcophagus and all that. So I went last night and created a sort of Lara Croft Tomb Raider Sims with auburn hair and an awesome tomb raiding outfit. I put her in the neighborhood and built a house with a deck and car port and most importantly a basement with torches and stone walls and floors to give it the feel of a tomb that I could hide all my treasure in and stuff. So then I start the game proper. Neighbors come over and I deal with them. Got my sim a job, worked on boosting athletics, etc. Then I finally saved up enough money to go to China so I could start learning Martial Arts. I send my Sim off and she flies to China via Loading Screen Airways...however the plane must have crashed somewhere along the line because when China loads, nothing. She is gone, she doesnt even appear in the little Sim bar where they show the sims portrait. She is complete gone. I reload the game and find that my sim disappeared from the neighborhood too. It is as if she never existed at all.
***If you want to skip the above paragraphs and get to the crux of this post read starting from this point on***
At this point I found myself shouting "FAIL!" at my monitor (poor monitor gets blamed for everything). There is no excuse whatsoever that could explain how EA could possibly have missed this bug unless I am doing something wrong or they simply do not test patch releases anymore because why bother, they already have my money. How on Earth can you miss a bug where your sim disappears if you travel to a location? I went online and found lots of people had the same problem and recently too so its not just me and its not one that there seems to be a fix for. So with photography and the ability to go on vacation not working thats practically most of the content for World Adventures gone.
So to discuss, first I want to thank you for letting me get this off my chest. Second does anyone know of any way to fix or work around the photography or travel bugs I mentioned above? Third, am I just overreacting and expecting to much by actually believing that a game should do what its supposed to and that developers have a responsibility to make sure a product they sold me actually works (minor bugs I could understand but not huge game breaking ones like this that remove large chunks of content). Fourthly...I am worried now that I am going to get suckered in by Pets just to see the Grim Reaper riding around on a black horse and silly things like that. Like an alcoholic I may need help saying no to EA and telling them that I wont pay for any more of their broken games until they prove that they can release a game that isnt broken.
I really want to enjoy Sims 3 but EA is making that nearly impossible. Everytime I start some big plan in the game they throw a bug at me that makes that plan impossible to achieve. To make matters worse Sims 3 has made Sims 2 unplayable for me. I actually reinstalled Sims 2 a few days ago and played it like I used to but found that I was noticing the graphical downgrade and the lack of a free roaming neighborhood too much. Its really depressing to see nostalgia torn apart like that so I hope I can bring myself to get the Sims 3 to actually work so I can enjoy it.
I am a long-time fan of the Sims. I was a late comer to the first Sims game but I played Sims 2 from the beginning and derived many many hours of enjoyment from playing it (I especially liked that paranormal aspects which are greatly reduced in Sims 3). The Sims games have always been the kind of game that I play for a while and then stop after a while and spend a few months playing other games but then after a while I suddenly get the urge to go back and play again.
When Sims 3 came out I got it and was amazed by the improvements over Sims 2 (open neighborhood, more freedom in create a sim including the new traits system, etc) but I was also disappointed by the content that made the Sims 2 so much fun which was reduced or taken out (paranormal aspects like aliens are gone while others like ghosts are no longer a potential threat and are at worst now a minor annoyance, plus no more crazy aspiration reward objects like that one machine that could make your sim crave grilled cheese and what not). Still it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed playing it just as I did Sims 2.
When World Adventures came out I bought it too and I enjoyed most of the new content especially martial arts and photography. It was a lot of fun trying to fill the photo collections...up until the point when I realized there was a bug where certain subjects in the collection would not register when I took pictures of them thus making it impossible to complete certain collections. Whatever it was a minor bug and I can deal with it.
Then I bought Ambitions and installed it to find it buggy as heck. A good deal of the content like Consignment stores simply did not work and this pissed me off even more because there is no way a tester could possibly miss that, especially considering it was one of the new features that should be tested more than others. Of course what does EA care? Once you find the bug they already have your money. Worse the professions (ghost hunters, investigators, fire fighters, etc) were mostly just the same point-and-click adventures that WA had only without the exotic locales and tombs filled with traps and treasure to make it excited. No all this was replaced with freaking text boxes. At this point I came to a realization, EA clearly doesnt care enough to actually test their games before they send them out and I refuse to pay for a Beta product. I swore I would not by Late Night and then EA went "oh but we have Vampires now" to which I replied "...shit."
So I got Late Night and found EA got me again. The big pull of the game for me, Vampires, were practically defanged (or alternately run through the Twilight ringer). Vampires in Nightlife were much much better and EA didnt even have to mess with them, just give them an update. Worse the celibrity system quickly got old as I discovered most every sim in the city was some kind of celebrity and so I couldnt just be an average sim, nope even a sim working in the grocery store now has to be a celebrity and get followed around by Paparazzi. This led me to conclude that EA never actually had a planning meeting to consider how their new features might affect the game. So then I go "well EA you got me twice but you wont fool me a 3rd time" to which they replied "Ah but Generations will have those private schools you liked so much in Sims 2", and I went "You clever bastards..."
So I got Generations and while it is easily my favorite expansion so far due to the sheer amount of content added to the base game (not the least of which being the ability to have children and teens attend after school activities and allowing you to change how long life stages last which means I can finally make the toddler stage short without having my other sims age too much) but the promised private schools were not what I had imagined. In Sims 2 I always like the little "challenge" where you invited a dean over to your house and showed him around and served him dinner to have your kid get into private school and I was expecting something similar. Nope, now you just use the phone and send your kid offscreen for a while and they come back an adult. Way to be lazy EA! You have created a feature where you basically send a sim offscreen till they age up and sold it to me.
Well now last weekend the Sims bug bit me again and I reinstalled Sims 3 and the expansions on my computer (minus Late Night as the celebrity system broke the game for me). I first wanted to create a sort of journalist/photographer sim and go and take a bunch of photos. I finally get a camera and take a photo...nothing, my sim just sits there with the take photo action queued up but does nothing and I cant cancel the action. I looked online and found a bunch of people were having this problem and there was no fix for it so in other words I had to give up my plans to have my sim work on photography.
Alright thats a set back but the other day I thought about how much I enjoyed World Adventures and how I had never quite finished all the quests or built a Cursed Sarcophagus and all that. So I went last night and created a sort of Lara Croft Tomb Raider Sims with auburn hair and an awesome tomb raiding outfit. I put her in the neighborhood and built a house with a deck and car port and most importantly a basement with torches and stone walls and floors to give it the feel of a tomb that I could hide all my treasure in and stuff. So then I start the game proper. Neighbors come over and I deal with them. Got my sim a job, worked on boosting athletics, etc. Then I finally saved up enough money to go to China so I could start learning Martial Arts. I send my Sim off and she flies to China via Loading Screen Airways...however the plane must have crashed somewhere along the line because when China loads, nothing. She is gone, she doesnt even appear in the little Sim bar where they show the sims portrait. She is complete gone. I reload the game and find that my sim disappeared from the neighborhood too. It is as if she never existed at all.
***If you want to skip the above paragraphs and get to the crux of this post read starting from this point on***
At this point I found myself shouting "FAIL!" at my monitor (poor monitor gets blamed for everything). There is no excuse whatsoever that could explain how EA could possibly have missed this bug unless I am doing something wrong or they simply do not test patch releases anymore because why bother, they already have my money. How on Earth can you miss a bug where your sim disappears if you travel to a location? I went online and found lots of people had the same problem and recently too so its not just me and its not one that there seems to be a fix for. So with photography and the ability to go on vacation not working thats practically most of the content for World Adventures gone.
So to discuss, first I want to thank you for letting me get this off my chest. Second does anyone know of any way to fix or work around the photography or travel bugs I mentioned above? Third, am I just overreacting and expecting to much by actually believing that a game should do what its supposed to and that developers have a responsibility to make sure a product they sold me actually works (minor bugs I could understand but not huge game breaking ones like this that remove large chunks of content). Fourthly...I am worried now that I am going to get suckered in by Pets just to see the Grim Reaper riding around on a black horse and silly things like that. Like an alcoholic I may need help saying no to EA and telling them that I wont pay for any more of their broken games until they prove that they can release a game that isnt broken.
I really want to enjoy Sims 3 but EA is making that nearly impossible. Everytime I start some big plan in the game they throw a bug at me that makes that plan impossible to achieve. To make matters worse Sims 3 has made Sims 2 unplayable for me. I actually reinstalled Sims 2 a few days ago and played it like I used to but found that I was noticing the graphical downgrade and the lack of a free roaming neighborhood too much. Its really depressing to see nostalgia torn apart like that so I hope I can bring myself to get the Sims 3 to actually work so I can enjoy it.
