EA Tech support is absolutely useless A lot of you may have been following the post I put up about my problem with custom houses in the neighborhood screen. Well, I finally found the way to e-mail EA tech support. What a waste of time! This is the e-mail I sent to them and the response I got back: "Hello, Thank you for contacting us here at Electronic Arts Technical Support, Some of the house in the exchange are not supported because most of them are uploaded items by gamers like you. Most of these things came from third party website that the sims 2 doesn't support. And the issue about the slowness of your game is due to the fact that the sims 2 isn't or hasn't really been tested on laptop. It might work on some laptops and it might not on some. its not also guaranteed to work on its best on laptops. Should you require further assistance about this or any Electronic Arts games in the future please visit our website and review our extensive Self Help knowledgebase." That was the response I got to the following message I sent: "System Specs: (DirectX information attached) Sony Vaio laptop PCG-GRT100 2.8 gHz Pentium 4 Processor 512 MB RAM 40 GB Hard drive, 15.3 GB free w/ TS2 installed NVIDIA GeForce4 420 Go(Sony) w/ updated driver version 4.3.6.4 DirectX version 9.0 w/ updated driver All hardware drivers are up to date. Running The Sims 2 DVD Special Edition In the neighborhood screen only, houses that I have built from scratch or Maxis houses that I have altered in build mode show up in pieces, with a "stack" of 2D graphics next to them. Currently, this occurs with 3 houses in the Pleasantview neighborhood - the only one that I have played. I only have 2 families in the neighborhood that I created, the rest came with the game and I left them where they were. Gameplay is not affected - I can enter the houses and play the family in them without any problems at all. I am able to download houses from the exchange and install them and they also look fine. It is only when I use build mode to alter the structure of the house or change windows and doors, landscaping, etc., does the problem occur. All Maxis-made houses look fine also. Problem started before I tried installing houses from the exchange. I had no custom content at all, no "mods" no "hacks". Only the objects/textures/etc. that came with the game when it was installed. What I have tried that didn't work: (in no particular order) Graphics have always been running at lowest setting. Tried changing graphics to higher settings, and different combos of settings. Tried changing the gameplay screen resolution to lower setting. Tried running the game in a window using the -w target alteration. Tried updating NVIDIA driver. Tried updating DirectX. Disk cleanup and defragmenter. Moving houses to houses and lots bin and then restarting my computer before replacing them onto the lot. Ran Norton to check for viruses. Shut down all background tasks. Tried building without the family moved onto the lot. Tried running in 256 colors. Tried removing all "effects" from neighborhood screen. The only thing that I can think of that I have not tried is uninstalling and reinstalling the game. I would like to avoid this if I don't know that it will fix the problem so that I don't lose what I've done so far. Any ideas as to what's going on and how to fix it?" Does anyone else see something incredibly wrong with this? I tried e-mailing them back to say "Umm....could you please re-read my question, because you obviously didn't get it the first time." I have yet to get an answer.
lol True Tech Support. It's especially great when you pay a company and call them, and they know less about computers than you do! I'm sorry to hear about your problem. I haven't a clue about how to go about to fix it. It's obvious they didn't read it. They probably have a program that scans their incoming e-mails for certain words, and e-mail back a prepackaged answer. Sorry!!
What tHATS INSANE serously i bet they had more than one complaint and didn't even boter any more ,thats messed. Did they e-mail you back ?
No, they still haven't e-mailed me back. I know that a lot of people are seriously aggravated by both this game and EA. I have no sympathy for people who complain when they didn't read the system requirements, or didn't understand them. There are a million people complaining about how high the requirements are and blah blah blah. No sympathy. So I understand that EA Tech Support might be feeling a little frazzled when they get the same questions over and over again. Which is why I chose "Other technical support" instead of "graphics problems" - I figured they're probably just ignoring all the emails that have that in the subject line. I have searched high and low for another case of this happening and various things to try in order to fix it. I'm sure that someone else has had this problem, and it's probably on the BBS. But the freakin TS2 website runs so SLOW that it takes 40 minutes for a single page to load sometimes. UGH. And I have DSL - every other website takes less than 2 seconds to come up. So no, I don't have very much patience as far as researching the BBS to find someone who had the same problem. The question now is, if no one on the web has any idea how to fix it, and EA Tech Support sucks as much as they seem to, now what do I do??? It's not like I can't play the game, so I can see why it's not high priority. But it's still annoying when you put in all this time to build or re-build a house and then it looks like garbage in the neighborhood screen! Should I just give up?? There HAS to be a way to fix it!
i dont want to sound patronizing or anything, but have you downloaded the patch for ts2 yet? If not, i suggest youd do, it might solve a few problems.
That is true EA-style copy and paste "solutions". Well, one thing you can say is that it's way better than Atari Tech Support, believe me! I don't know what else you could do. Have you tried posting in the Tech Support board on the official BBS? Sometimes Maxoids try and help people out. It's worth a shot. Just copy and paste the email you sent to EA.
Yes, I downloaded and installed the patch for TS2. I actually downloaded it a second time after I started having the problem just to make sure that I had, in fact, installed it. I also have already posted on the BBS Technical Support threads. I tried posting there before I found this site, and I still have not gotten one single reply. Lots of people have read it, no one seems to know the answer. Which is odd, because I thought I remembered something like this happening with Sims 1 - like if you built a huge mansion type house, sometimes it would look all screwy in the neighborhood screen. Maybe it's just my imagination, but I thought that happened to my game. (Which was on a completely different computer). Someone, maybe even me, figured out how to fix it, but I can't for the life of me remember how.
I can agree with all the problems you are having with Tech Support. I cannot count the number of times that I've had trouble with a game/product and have sent emails to the company asking for help and have not even gotten a response! In fact, after Christmas I had sent an email and left voice mail on a company site regarding some MP3 players I'd bought my kids that wouldn't load (the driver they sold with them for Win98SE didn't work). It is now nearly the end of January and I haven't heard a word from them at all! The same with a computer program I'd bought over the internet for my husband. We downloaded it and paid for it but it keeps telling me I can't access their site as it doesn't recognize our serial number, etc. No response from the company at all. This isn't the first experience we've had with companies that never bother to respond. I feel like some companies get your money but don't feel any obligation to keep their customers happy after that point. :(
