I have lost all interest in playing my game due to the way you have changed the save option menu. Half the time there aren't any Sim faces on the saves. Yes, I understand how to use 'save as' been doing that since TS3. However, more than not this is messed up and I have many different games in my saves. It is making it impossible for me to find the correct ones. And half the time the wrong picture of Sim is on the wrong name as of late. Please, like MS Windows, in folder options, give us back the 'detail' list of date and time and name and remove these Sim icons. It's like swapping from detail in folder options to large icons...no, it's too confusing and annoying.
ETA: It's not just me, it's a lot of us who find this new setup annoying and bugged.
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/918433/im-confused-i-think-i-messed-up-my-saves#latest
ETA: You guys should know better, you never change the UI mechanics after three years into a game. (People get condentioned and changing the UI is a deal breaker)
Comments
I like to build stuff
That's all well and good for you, however, it's not very efficient for people who play ten different games and may have forty to fifty different dates and times on those saves per game. Understand? In a vertical 'detail list' as before it was easier to locate due to date and time. I tell you what, go into your folder options in windows and look at your own document lists, now change all that to gigantic large icons and tell me if that is more productive or makes it harder to find something you did last week? It's the same principle.
ETA: Clarity, it's the difference of scrolling downward to find a different named game as oppsosed to going horizonally flipping thru hundreds of Sim giant icons with mostly no faces in them anyway. It's annoying as all get out.
Example: Previous style/scrolling downward
DS109
DS108
DS107
etc.
To this, hundreds of icons scrolling horizonally looking for Building10 (file named for different game for building only) thru hundreds of DS109, DS108 etc. with wrong icons and faces or none, too darn time consuming.
Exactly, this just happened to be big time this past Sat. and I'm pretty fed up with it.
@Cinebar , I love the new icons because I am a visual person and it is easier for me (and I have well over 100 Save Games in TS4). But I understand your frustration with old games not having an icon! I hated that too, but there IS a fix, albeit a tedious one! To fix it I had to go back and play/re-save every single save game and then I had a picture of each family. I only had one case where the pictures were swapped with another save game, and it was easily remedied! Also all of my saves are still in order of most recent saves at the top and oldest at the bottom. I don't know how they are showing up in your game or anyone else's, but for me I was able to fix all the icons and am now very happy! I hope you find a way to fix the issues you have!
I'm glad you haven't ran into this bug, but it is real. It happens this way, you write what you are going to call your game and the game somehow changes the name and overwrites a different one....I lost one whole game that way.
@Cinebar , no wonder you don't like the new system! It is horrible to loose a game like that!
So it sounds like there are 2 issues here, one being that they changed the system, and another being that there is a bug in the new system. While I love the new system, I hate the possibility that a bug can wipe out entire save-games! Regardless of the system they implement, there should never be such an error like a bug that erases your saves! I hope they fix this fast!
It doesn't help me too much as I only play with two characters so all my icons are of the same two XD But properly naming files is what gets me through finding them. So simple pffft....naming "wedding" or "bowling" well, yeah, I don't need a picture to tell me what those consist of. Doesn't matter anyway since the entire thing is screwed up. We could have the best of both worlds, but now we have none.
The only other problem is that I might name a household's file something like "Newcrest O'Brien" or "Enemy Siblings" but the game overwrites the files' names with the generic "Save Game 26" or "Save Game 139" , etc. This is an annoyance that shouldn't happen, but is no where near as problematic as the game file itself being completely overwritten or deleted!
It has been suggested on the EA site forums by another player that "For me it seems as if the "Save" option overwrites the save that was created last no matter which save you're currently playing in. I've had the same issue before and I've tried without any mods but it doesn't make any difference for me."
I think they are correct. Hope this info helps!
Thanks, yes this has happened to me, too. Then add upon that if the game should do that to three or four different games inside the save files each with their own different names and sub folder saves, the horizional look of things can be way too time consuming let alone the game naming some saves (even if a totally different game) My Save 55 etc. It can make a player just scream.
Family Tree
Playing Mod & CC Free
I always do save_as. With the old system I just clicked the save slot I wanted my save to go into and it preserved the slot name (for example "Windenburg2"). Nowadays I have to type in the desired name at every single save_as. Annoying.
Another issue is that I keep around ten to twelve savefiles all the time. Three of these are for my rotational save, the rest are challenges and legacies. Anyway, whenever I load my game I stare at on average 40 colorful sims and must orientate myself in this mess. It isn't helped by the fact that the game chooses the family last played to represent a given save. So if that is a relatively minor family I sometimes have no idea what save they are to represent, at least not at first glance. A list of names (Windenburgbay, Windenburg1, Windenburg2, StarWars, Legacy, Story, SettlerChallenge, ...) leaves no room for guessing or need for interpretation. It tells you what is what in under one second.
Also, I have lost two older saves now by using "Save As" to attempt to create a new save. Instead of creating a new save, the game seemingly randomly overwrote one of my older saves and retains the older save's name on the new save file. Pretty scary and means I won't be using "Save As" until it gets fixed. Note that I didn't do anything weird in my save as steps, such as canceling or anything.
@BryonyRae , I have the opposite approach from you... because I don't build hardly at all in TS4, I mostly have my saves as different families so it matters less to me what I name a household -- it matters more which Sims are in that household! LOL But there are exceptions to this (like I have a few families that have multiple save files due to testing purposes). But I totally agree with you that the saves should be displayed with both a picture and text, because this would accommodate both systems for both types of players!
Unfortunately, all of this is a moot point since the main problem is the overwriting of previous saves without our permission!
Your saves get automatically put into "albums," relevant to the unique game id (assuming there is one). Then you can click on an "album" thumbnail to open it and it'll have all your saves attached to that game in it.
That would certainly cut down on how many Icons I have to go through to find a particular game. I don't think they realized people have more than one game in their games. I don't mean just saves, I play four entirely different games, and having those in their own folders then with their own sub saves inside them would clean it up a lot, on the face of things, but that still won't fix the bug of the game overwriting a different game or save.
I really like the new system after I got use to it. I have around 10 different saves and it helps me find the one I want in a lot shorter period of time.
They are listed as: My Saved Game 4... 5... 6... 7 in game.
Interesting. I only had one save for the last sim I played on that date. But today I have 3 saves with his icon, plus 1 with an icon of a sim I hadn't played for ages. All in my files as being edited on the same date in my file folder outside of the game.
I don't know if I'm making sense. What I'm trying to say is long before this update, I had one save that is now 3 with different names and different times. I also have one save I never played on that date that shows up as if I played it on that date. All this is what shows in game. Something is definitely wrong. I'm not inclined to test this out further as it is rather obnoxious from a database point of view. It's also untrustworthy.
EDIT: I have no idea why they did this. There was nothing wrong with the old system. If it ain't broke; don't fix it! So much for me wanting to give this game another chance if I can't even tell where I left off.
This happened to me. I had not played the Stoddard household the one day but next time I loaded my game it said they were the last family I played with the icon over their house to continue with them. I had actually played in a different game for building. It's getting to be a bigger mess every day.