Doers and Whiners! All I,m trying to say, Is there are so many people that don't seem to happy with Sims2, That rather than post complaints here, Write Maxis, Or EA Games and let them know!! Sitting on your hands Won't Change a thing! I wrote EA Games, and I got feedback from them. And if enough people did the same, Then you might see some results about them releasing some cool stuff for the game! Dosent hurt to try!!!:winks: And I,m not saying Forums are not the place to air your opinions, Its the perfect place to start, Without Forums we would never know about alot of things, be kind of DULL without the Forums!!! But then take your Gripes to the Game Makers! They DO Listen!
I can remember being perfectly content with my TS1 game for...months...actually, well until after I had a few expansions I think. I wasn't first on the bandwagon when there were signups for discovering the awesomeness of fan sites. But when I did, I was owned by them. I've even gone to a counseling center because of my obsession. >.> At any rate, I've realized with this game that I've almost come to depend on these fan sites to entertain me with new things. And I'm one of the billions that never donates to any of them. So for me, I'll just sit on my hands and wait for someone else to figure something out...because I'm content to wait for the free stuff.
How does THAT help? Where's the FUN in that? Meh. Forgiveness may be divine, but vengeance is much more fun.
Why would you assume that just because people complain here they haven't filled out bug reports or sent in complaints to EA, too? I can't imagine that people so vocal on a chatboard wouldn't be compelled to share those opinions with EA as well! lol On the flip side I hope those thrilled with everything share that opinion with them, too. When's the last time you called your local pizza place to thank them for delivering a perfect pizza? I do because it happens sooo seldom. Good service and attention to detail seems to be a lost art..I acknowledge it profusely when I come across it. On a chatboard, you can express likes and dislikes whereas an effective complaint to a corporation must include facts, statistics, and specific examples. "I think", "I want", and "I feel" are pointless to a company as large as EA. I would think that JMP's letter of complaint would include so many specifics they'd have it copied and thumbtacked to every programmer's "things to do" board! lol I complain occasionally to see if I'm the only person that is bothered by something. Perhaps I'm just whinning and need to suck it up. Other times it makes me aware that it is a real problem that needs to be addressed. I send in complaints when I'm sure I know what I'm talking about!
Actually, I've found that traditionally, they ignore my highly-specific lists, because if they actually started listening to them, it would set an unrealistically high standard for doing things that they'd be unwilling to meet. I mean, if they used *MY* lists of what was wrong, the patch would be here YESTERDAY. Since they obviously can't have that sort of thing going on all the time, since then nobody would believe their claims of difficulty when they wanted to slack off and play Doom III for the rest of the week, they just throw it into /dev/null and forget about it.
You'd be surprised at how many times I've asked someone who's complaining if they sent in a feedback form and they said they hadn't done it. Many people assume (especially on the official lists) that if they complain there, that's good enough. However, even with the help of the moderators, the board complaints are no where near as helpful as the people who fill out the reports. That's because the report asks them for the kind of specfics on their problem that can help Maxis figure out why it's happening. Just saying "I can't get this to work" doesn't help nearly as much. But you are certainly right about people being far less likely to say what they are happy with. Most complaint letters represent maybe 5-10 people with the problem. A praise letter represents 10 times a many because people are so much less likely to point out the good in things. One of the things I've noticed that I really feel is an improvement over TS1 is the pathing. No longer do they go the long way around things or take what looks like a sailing "tack" to get across a room. They walk diagonally, even stepping over small things in their way. They don't sit at the bottom of a staircase waiting for it to be entirely clear, but go up at the same time as someone comes down. While they ask another Sim to move and sometimes obviously wonder where they Sim they were meeting is, they don't have nearly the number of "move" messages that they used to. (They even dodge around each other in smal bathrooms, which I found quite humorous.) Also, there are a lot of details that are pretty special. For instance, the Sims don't just lie like corpses when they sleep. Couples sleeping together will snuggle/spoon. Children roll over, throw their arms into odd positions and curl up in their beds just like real children do. Even when napping on a couch, they drape themselves, not just using a single position. It adds a lot of realism.
They also won't let you complain unless you register, and given that I wanted to complain about the registration system, that DOESN'T HELP. Nah, they still do that. It just happens somewhat less often, since they no longer consider other people to always be impenetrable obstacles. In comparison, TS2 Sims are much more likely to simply give up on than TS1 Sims, which WOULD reroute across the entire house. There also seems to be the removal of the "door" quirk: A TS1 Sim would never go through a door to reach anything in the same room. So if you built a house with a gap in the back wall, perhaps due to lack of funds, the Sim would never pass through the front door: Instead, he'd go all the way around to the back. I suspect this is due to some sloppy shortcuts in the pathfinding algorithm. The tacking, though, the tacking was realistic. It's much easier to walk upwind if you tack. I do this all the time. Yeah, they're almost too good about this sometime. I put the car in the way and told a Sim to run through in hopes that it would trip and fall, but it didn't. Meh. I still want to see if it's possible to make Sim fall down the stairs. That'd be funny to have if a Sim's energy ran out while he was going up the stairs, he'd pass out and tumble down the stairs and possibly die. In some respects, staircase behavior is actually slightly worse than TS1. In TS1, a Sim heading down the stairs would, if it found the stairs occupied, simply seek another set of stairs, which you often installed anyway, just to improve stair bandwidth. If all else failed, they would just wait. In TS2, Sims heading down stairs will, if they encounter the stairs blocked by a second person travelling in the SAME direction as them, instead of rerouting to the parallel set right next to them, whine, and then abort their queue. I do not consider this an improvement. Napping on couches isn't what it used to be, I tell you. In TS1, I had Sims that could live comfortably on a couch. Survival was much, much cheaper in TS1: You could build a full house capable of meeting a single Sim's every basic and skilling improvement need in a 5x5 box, for an expenditure of often less than 75% of your basic 20K. In TS2, it's hard to manage this on anything less than an 8x8, and even the "basic box" will leave you without luxuries like interior wallpapering and flooring. The primary reason for seems to be the fact that you can no longer effectively live on the Space Recliner. The TS1 version was like Energy-6, but in TS2, they're all like energy-2 and barely provide any energy at all.
HEAR, HEAR. I haven't been able to register yet. It says that my cdkey is in use already--I have NOT registered already. Although from what I've seen on the official site, there's not a big reason to. I guess I vaguely would like the halloween objects, but I really can't care that much. I don't know avbout you, but this was NOT my expeirence with TS1. Despite having three staircases or more, my sims would often take hours of game time to navigate stairs. They always wanted to use the same staircase, and when they found another person on the staircase they would stop and wait or find something else to do. Getting three or more people on the second floor down to work in two hours became an impossibility for me. I eventually gave up on multistory houses for families with more than two people. I hear that. peace
You don't have to register to complain. The manual, which comes with the game, on page 73 has an address where you can mail your concerns. So, *that* particular complaint is invalid.
You expect me to pay $0.39 so that my complaint can be PHYSICALLY ignored, rather than simply routed off to /dev/null? You're kidding, right? The dubious privilege of being ignored on paper, thus forcing them to actually physically throw it out, is not worth paying more money for.
I considered trying that the next time I passed by a public phone. However, that could be months. I sure as hell ain't placing that call from MY phone.
