Since the outsourcing of the bugs and gameplay issues forum section to the AHQ website the complains about user unfriendly design comes up regularily. Whats your experience with AHQ so far?
How satisfied are you with AHQ? 33 votes
Cant be bothered with it.
Its a nightmare to navigate.
Lets have a talk about how to improve the nightmare.
The gurus are reading AHQ?
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I hardly ever bother with it.
Went yesterday to add a 'me, too' to someone's bug report & took the service questionnaire afterwards. Really stupid questionnaire, because the multiple choice answers did not fit my situation, and they didn't have 'none of the above' or 'other' as a choice. I have no idea who that questionnaire was aimed at, but it sure wasn't us simmers going to AHQ to report bugs.
Of course, their explanations make sense, which makes it perfect--for them. They need the info they ask about our computers/packs/etc., and having all the reports provide the same info in the same format on the same website simplifies their job. But the layout is horrible (why use only the center of the page? Makes it hard to see the whole report at once, & that's assuming you were able to find the relevant report). On the TS4 bug report board itself, where the reports are listed, you can only see a few topics at a time. And somehow, the whole thing makes me feel claustrophobic. Not joking; I feel an instinctual repulsion ('run away, run away!'). Taken altogether, the cynical side of me believes it's all intended.
edited for clarity
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If the goal of this thread was to get EA to do something about what you feel are cons of AHQ, including options to show EA what proportion actually hate it vs actually love it would have been a lot better than the options given here.
Better options given the question would have been:
Very satisfied, Satisfied, Neutral/Never used it, Not satisfied, Very not satisfied. With prompts for everyone to post why they voted the way they did.
Your poll only covers the neutral to very not satisfied. Doesn't cover the good options. And even if it was limited to the negative options to give EA a means to improve the options you have aren't very useful. Which puts too much bias/useless data into the poll results for EA to get any meaningful data on it.
Yep. Exactly. Not seeing why 4 options practically saying the same thing were necessary along with one neutral response and zero positive ones.
AHQ is very different to this forum and serves a completely different purpose. Yes, you will need to take a few minutes to learn how to navigate it but it really is pretty obvious given the forum titles.
If a user can't be bothered to post a bug or contribute to a thread requesting more information on a bug, how do you expect bugs to be brought to the devs attention? It's a jolly good thing that the majority of the community don't have the same mentality otherwise nothing would ever get fixed.
So pretty much the same as the poll in this thread?
The Gurus who are active on Twitter and these forums typically do not post at AHQ. Why can't you post a bug at AHQ? Crin has written an excellent guide here on how to navigate the forums.
Actually, we encourage bug reports there. Bugs can't be looked into and hopefully fixed unless users leave feedback.
Yep I agree, I also don't like the layout. The links on the right side bar make the forum pages too narrow and less easy to view. Perhaps you could post your feedback at AHQ to add another voice?
So:
Anyway, nothing wrong with this poll, there’s an option for everyone and you can elaborate in the comments. Framing someone who is discouraged to post bugs for their own reasons as having ‘an attitude’ is getting personal and not very constructive (it’s not like people don’t want to report, they clearly do). If this poll gets a majority who says the site is ok, there is a minority that apparently doesn’t get how it works. If a majority states it’s a nightmare, they at least could look into that. Arguments why it’s a nightmare should be provided then of course. Maybe players weren’t aware Crinrict wrote that tutorial for instance? One could wonder if a site that needs a tutorial to see how it works is very functional by the way, a good website speaks for itself.
I regret by the way people can”t discuss bugs over here. I could imagine the AHQ being strictly to report and this plce for people to discuss (temporary) solutions or tips. For me this site was my number 1 place to turn to when I had bugs or issues in the past (Sims 3), as well as Crinrict’s site. Don’t really understand why it couldn’t be a side by side thing. Crinrict’s site was very focused and to the point, this place is/was rather discussing things on a player’s level.
If the purpose of the poll was to ascertain any kind of useful information then no, there's a lot wrong with it. But I sort of overlooked that seeing as how I doubt whoever this feedback is directed to is going to be reading it since the AHQ is a platform that extends beyond the community for this game. But even if they would see this, I think the discussion would be a million times more valuable than the poll would.
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Whether or not the right people will actually see this poll is not up to the person who started it. That's up to the people who run and support that site. Do they care. I hope they do.
Maybe it's more constructive to start talking about that site (what do you consider clear, what do you consider not clear; maybe people can give each other tips even (like guiding to that tutorial)?) than about this poll (meta-discussion). Like I said, it represents all possible opinions.
No offense, but I think you completely misread what I said. I never stated that the gurus post on AHQ, but that communication with the dev team (not necessarily back and forth communication, but I would hope that they are reading the bug reports) is now mostly limited to Twitter and AHQ. Also never said that I can't post a bug on AHQ, but that we aren't allowed to post bugs "here," as in, on this forum.
While Mods are great and all, about 90% of the problems with Sims 4 are caused by outdated Mods. Now, this doesn't mean don't use Mods, but when you see an announcement here that a new patch is available one of the first things you should do is to check the sites where you got your favorite mods from and make sure that they will still work with the latest patch or wait until those sites announce the latest update. I never patched my Sims 3 until I read that Twillian had update the mods to work with the latest patch.
I know people are frustrated with certain bugs not being fixed, but finding the cause of those bugs isn't always an easy fix. Everyone has different graphics cards and processors and add ons, etc. Certain combinations could be the cause of the issue (as an example), but until people continue to provide information, these issues won't be fixed.
If you think the Sims forums at AHQ need to be given different headings or organized differently, please provide examples. The Community Managers (CMs) are willing to listen.
@crinrict and @BluebellFlora can only do so much to help you. While I know the Official forums are comfortable and you knew where to get your information, AHQ seems scary and unorganized at first. But once you know where to go, it's no different than here. You subscribe to the threads you want to keep track of and you will receive an email whenever someone new posts in it. If it seems like it's been a long time since there was any movement in a particular thread, it's ok to ask additional questions to move it back near the top again.
English isn't my first language, so please excuse any mistakes.
Valid criticisms have been made, but many are mixed with what amount to personal attacks, and that's not ideal.
Also, it's a better system than these forums when it comes to organising and prioritising bugs imo. I just think these forums should have a direct link to the AHQ though, pinned in the first post of TS4's General Section, or maybe it's already there and I don't know.
I don't want to improve the nightmare. I want the nightmare GONE.
Yes, if it were better written it would be useful. This one isn't telling anyone anything though, besides that the person who created and most of the people who voted on it don't like the AHQ. There are zero options for anyone that does like the AHQ ("it's ok" is not positive, it's neutral.) It's basically asking "Do you think the AHQ is flat-out garbage, or do you just think it's okay?" Nothing above or below or inbetween.
It would be, but plenty of the people who don't like it haven't been very constructive thus far as to why:
I mean, and this person was asked exactly what they find nightmarish about it and this is what they chose to reply instead ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Things like "it's a pain to navigate" or "I can't 'get in'" or "it asks me too many questions" don't really explain to someone who doesn't have those issues why they're a problem. People have to go into more detail.
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Yup, this way is convenient for EA. It's not convenient for me. Therefore I don't bother reporting bugs, most of the time. I don't consider it my job; it's EA's job to do bug-testing. They've successfully outsourced that, for free, to their paying customers. That's how it is, and that stinks.
When people post bug reports on this forum they dont give any information. 90% of the time the bug is caused by someone using mods who thinks "this cant POSSIBLY be due to any of the mods I'm using!" and posts anyway. It's also much harder to search for existing "bug reports" on these forums and as a result people make multiple topics over the same bugs. The forum does not facilitate the process at all. It just allows people to make lazy bug reports as opposed to the AHQ which requires more information to be given.
You don't need to think of reporting bugs as your job but at the same time they don't have to fix the bugs. We already know with the past three sims games that they have no problem moving onto the next version while the previous version still has a massive list of bugs. So the mentality that its not your "job" to report bugs is such a bad one to have if you want anything to be fixed.
As for the other--I don't like corporations conditioning me for their financial advantage. They've successfully conditioned their customers to accept buggy games, do bug-testing, etc. Many of you are willing to do the latter. I cope with the former, and I'll on occasion do the latter if it's not too inconvenient. They make it unnecessarily inconvenient. Eh.
I know AHQ is a big change from this forum and we're happy for you to let us know what you like and don't like about the space.
Saying that, the forum rules will always apply here. This wasn't conducted in an constructive manner and there were posts that weren't ok. I've closed this thread as a result. I might sound a bit like a broken record at this point but I'd say it again, please be polite and kind with one another. You can disagree on things but there are many ways of having a discussion without attacking each other for these opinions. Let's keep things friendly.