I think I'm going to have to update soon, there are a couple of minor mods I'd like to put in my game. I'm going to have the cart-removal mod on standby in case the thing shows up in my game. I'm already irritated with the yellow calendar light dot that never seems to stay off, so I definitely have to get rid of the advertisement.
I think I'm going to have to update soon, there are a couple of minor mods I'd like to put in my game. I'm going to have the cart-removal mod on standby in case the thing shows up in my game. I'm already irritated with the yellow calendar light dot that never seems to stay off, so I definitely have to get rid of the advertisement.
I wish I hadn’t been forced to update because of the Origin outage several days ago. I have a bunch of annoying new bugs now. Nothing game-breaking (knock wood), but still… argh. At least I was already used to working around the old bugs, yanno?
Well, the "test" period appears to be over as the Shopping Cart has suddenly, without fanfare or warning, appeared in my game.
Let me clear, and @EA_Cade for your pivot tables, this is unacceptable. The fact that noise has died down does not mean this bloody thing isn't a pointless, unwarranted and unwanted intrusion on our games. It needs to be gone and it needs to be gone yesterday!
I feel we've made that very clear.
Edit: Now I am adding a mod to make this thing go away. I am long past sick and tired of having rely on modders to fix EA's mistakes.
Fate is a riddle and we choose our own answer.Wyrd Girls
The cart has invaded my game as well as of today. I am NOT happy. I was considering buying some of the kits I don't have, but not while this stupidity persists.
Wow, @luciusstorm! How did it appear in your game without an update??
That's scary. I read somewhere that there has been an EA app update. But EA being able to mess with our game without an update is very bad.
I haven't opened the game since this news about the shopping cart for all appeared. But somehow I am not surprised. I guess this means EA is now officially downgrading sims to the level of cheap low quality phone games.
I will now have to be more picky with buying kits. If EA wants to so blattently tell me I am nothing more than a cash cow ready to be milked, I will have to change my behavior to show them I am in control of what to buy for my game, no matter how much they push.
EA, if you want me to spend money on this game, let me enjoy playing instead of constantly reminding me during gameplay that I have not yet spent as much as you want.
Wow, @luciusstorm! How did it appear in your game without an update??
That's scary. I read somewhere that there has been an EA app update. But EA being able to mess with our game without an update is very bad.
I know nothing about computer programming, but I’m wondering if it’s possible that with the last update everyone got the potential for the shopping cart, but it was programmed to be revealed progressively to groups of players over time? That makes more sense to me than EA tweaking people’s games without mentioning it or anyone noticing? But maybe I’m just naive.
I understand that the base game being free means money must be raised via DLC.
If the shopping cart icon made sense, I personally wouldn’t mind.
My concerns are it is pulsating (very distracting) and next to the gallery icon. It’ll be easy to click by error.
Also it looks like it suggests any DLC you don’t have as supposed to what is your play style.
I don’t want Realm of Magic so if this keeps popping up, it’ll be annoying.
I would update my game if the icon was a solid pastel colour (not bright yellow!) and move it away from the gallery icon. The suggestions should make sense to the player.
Wow, @luciusstorm! How did it appear in your game without an update??
That's scary. I read somewhere that there has been an EA app update. But EA being able to mess with our game without an update is very bad.
I know nothing about computer programming, but I’m wondering if it’s possible that with the last update everyone got the potential for the shopping cart, but it was programmed to be revealed progressively to groups of players over time? That makes more sense to me than EA tweaking people’s games without mentioning it or anyone noticing? But maybe I’m just naive.
That's probably what happened. Some kind of timer or on/off switch.
I think this was EA's plan from the beginning. They just wanted to have some data to show the effect. Even if it just adds 1% of sales for those with the cart, that would be enough for them to implement the cart in the game for everyone. Insulting long term players who have spent hundreds of €/$ is just collateral damage.
I guess people moving on to the competition that may be released before Sims 5 is acceptable collateral damage to them as well then.
If the competition offers a better deal it would be hard to get those customers back. The more stunts like this EA pulls, the less attached customers will be to the brand, the more they will look for alternatives.
And this shopping cart is like the last drop in a bucket of bad decisions that have alienated the fan base. I mean, from what I understand, most people are not optimistic about the next game.
If the cart button is staying can you please remove the flickering from the little button in the corner. Also the one from the calendar as well. Every time I load my game they come on again. I did not want to say that I have migraine trouble but thought I should mention it
I also hate the calendar and plopsy dot. It is so annoying. The shopping fart is worse, though.
I got money to spend on the EA App for my birthday in February, yet I didn't touch it ue to the state of the Game and Lack of communication.
My child and toddler Sims are still often times unable to eat anything. Reloading fixes the Problem only for a short time. Oh well, there are far worse bugs than this. At least I was able to fix most of the issues that occurred after the moodlet bug with quite some effort.
Now now EA, don't be stinking up our lovely lavender bath with your shopping fart. - My TS4 mods - Gallery ID: 83bienchen
So they really enabled this for everyone now?! I'm so grateful for modders that have made it possible to disable it. I feel sorry for the Simmers on console who can't use mods :-(
They still haven't got rid of it even after the latest patch. This is extremely disappointing. TS4 is not a mobile game. I don't want that shopping cart on my screen, and I shouldn't have to install mods to get rid of it. Wow, what a way to treat loyal fans by shoving this in their face. Sorry, EA, but this is a huge let down. Like what if you already own everything? Still, do we need to be looking at that annoying shopping cart!? Can you at least make an option for it to show it on the screen?
They really seem bent on trying to ignore the problem and hope it will go away. I meant my words though. I am not starting up the game until it's gone, and will remove the game before the end of this year if that cart does not get removed. It should not require a mod, I refuse to in any way endorse these actions.
They really seem bent on trying to ignore the problem and hope it will go away.
Yes, my opinion, too.
I won’t buy anything from EA again as long as they hold on to that cart button. Neither for any Sims game nor any other game.
EA keeps the button - they can keep their games - and I keep my money.
Phillipa Erdnuss
Mayoress of SimCity and all associated districts
They really seem bent on trying to ignore the problem and hope it will go away.
And sadly, it seems to be working. They're back to making silly posts instead of hiding away and limiting what they say. They've moved on because people are too tired or have given up on hounding them. And I don't blame people. But I feel like the battle has already been lost.
We're just frogs in a pot of boiling water, and they're going to turn up the heat.
The Sims 4 hasn't introduced a new musical instrument since 2017
They really seem bent on trying to ignore the problem and hope it will go away.
And sadly, it seems to be working. They're back to making silly posts instead of hiding away and limiting what they say. They've moved on because people are too tired or have given up on hounding them. And I don't blame people. But I feel like the battle has already been lost.
We're just frogs in a pot of boiling water, and they're going to turn up the heat.
That’s not good… but I’m not sure what we can do. This is a corporate decision and I don’t want to always comment on this shopping cart when devs from this company release something new.
But it’s difficult to not feel that this shopping cart was a response to people not buying their packs. I never bought horse ranch and every time I boot up the game I get an ad for it. I never bought for rent and now I have a shopping cart bugging me about it.
This is a customer relationship issue which doesn’t look good. The company only seems to care about me wanting to buy their packs and the content that they are selling doesn’t feel like it’s coming from a studio with over 200 people.
The Sims 4 might be a game about being friends with other people but it doesn’t feel like the game itself is handling that very well when it comes to the players.
At least not the players who don’t buy everything and are not good friends with the shopping cart.
They really seem bent on trying to ignore the problem and hope it will go away.
And sadly, it seems to be working. They're back to making silly posts instead of hiding away and limiting what they say. They've moved on because people are too tired or have given up on hounding them. And I don't blame people. But I feel like the battle has already been lost.
We're just frogs in a pot of boiling water, and they're going to turn up the heat.
This definitely feels as if EA is ready to move on and pretend no one ever complained about the shopping cart.
I don't think there is much point left in complaining. At least I have decided to no longer waste energy on it. I will focus on playing and enjoying the game as it is now with the DLC I already own.
Does this mean EA won? Probably. But I feel this is a fight I cannot win. I have better things to do with my life than waste energy on this to the point where I become frustrated in real life. The upcoming competition of life by you and paralives means I might get alternatives to sims in the future.
But the shopping cart did change my shopping behaviour. I have reevaluated the money I spend on this game. I have a fixed rule to never buy for low quality, free to play mobile games. The sims has now heavily shifted towards that category. I will not buy the new kits. I probably would have considered it if the shopping cart never happened. But in my opinion this shopping cart is a flashing warning sign for a company trying to get as much money from me as they can.
But it’s difficult to not feel that this shopping cart was a response to people not buying their packs. I never bought horse ranch and every time I boot up the game I get an ad for it. I never bought for rent and now I have a shopping cart bugging me about it.
This is a customer relationship issue which doesn’t look good. The company only seems to care about me wanting to buy their packs and the content that they are selling doesn’t feel like it’s coming from a studio with over 200 people.
Maybe sales go down because the sims 4 just reached a saturation point. simmers already have so much DLC. On top of that the latest DLC often have serious bugs and few features compared to earlier DLC. So simmers are wondering if they should spend even more money. Personally I was planning on getting for rent at release at full price but the game corruption bugs stopped me. A shopping cart icon in my game is not going to convince to buy it. DLC without serious bugs and enough features to make a difference in my gameplay, that's what might convince me to buy something.
Interesting that you mention customer relationship. I think that is part of the problem here. A lot of simmers react very emotional to the shopping cart. I think how they feel treated as customers is a big part of that reaction.
They really seem bent on trying to ignore the problem and hope it will go away.
We're just frogs in a pot of boiling water, and they're going to turn up the heat.
With EA and even more so with Windows. Windows is the default OS to play the Sims and the boiling water is getting hotter even faster with Windows than EA. If EA would allow us to play offline, we could just use an old version of Windows. The combined greed of these two companies will make it impossible to play the game that we all love and what they offer as an alternative will not be the same.
The whole world is changing rapidly. Maybe in context of these bigger changes, I will not even care about the Sims anymore. I hope that I can at least play some over this summer when I finish my classes. It is futile to look past summer I think.
Yeah, I figure all I can do is vote with my wallet and leave it to others as to whether they will do the same. Right now, I by no means feel alone in my decision to stop buying. Time will tell whether EA starts to notice (i.e., in terms of sales, not feedback, which they ignore) and if they do, what they will do about it. Will they decide again that we just forgot how to buy packs and devise another strategy to push them at us while we're playing the game (live in-game pop-up ads, anyone?) or will they finally invest in fixing the game we already have so that it's actually feasible for us buy new packs again?
I know what I think is more likely, but maybe they'll surprise us in a good way for once. In the meantime, I'm having fun doubling the number of mods in my game. I even have a functional pool table now! 😁
Voting with our wallets could have an impact... but what I think it's good when doing it is that you are distancing yourself from the product and that makes it easier to say no to other packs in the future.
Me in 2018 would have bought horse ranch and for rent at release, just as I bought every new pack at release. But once I started stopping buying packs at release it was easier after that to stop buying packs at all.
Look... I get it, the game is free to play now, EA wants sales, Rene looks nowhere near close to finished and they have investors they have to promise every year that they will make more money than last year, but this shopping cart is not the solution to that. To make money you have to spend money, spend money in making good packs, take time to fix bugs before release and make content that people want and you will build up a player base that will support you.
This shopping cart does the exact opposite, it doesn't make me want to buy or support the game, it thinks that the reason why I haven't bought a pack is because I didn't know it existed and it's apparently so important that it has to be in the UI when we are playing the game.
I don't even want to click on it, because I know it's going to end up in some data mining somewhere that they are somehow gonna use to say that this shopping cart is a good thing. It's not.
Instead of a shopping cart they should have instead worked on packs people actually want to buy if they find the sales disappointing.
The packs I did not buy tend to be the ones I would not even want for free. The ones I did get where always in a sale because full price is never worth it, always costs too much for what it offers.
Comments
I wish I hadn’t been forced to update because of the Origin outage several days ago. I have a bunch of annoying new bugs now. Nothing game-breaking (knock wood), but still… argh. At least I was already used to working around the old bugs, yanno?
Let me clear, and @EA_Cade for your pivot tables, this is unacceptable. The fact that noise has died down does not mean this bloody thing isn't a pointless, unwarranted and unwanted intrusion on our games. It needs to be gone and it needs to be gone yesterday!
I feel we've made that very clear.
Edit: Now I am adding a mod to make this thing go away. I am long past sick and tired of having rely on modders to fix EA's mistakes.
@PandoraTO, an excellent question to which I have no answer.
I only know that it was not there yesterday and was there today (until I grabbed the mod and now I don't have to see it).
I just opened my game for the first time in days and I have the cart now too. Sigh. I think I'll go play Stardew Valley.
That's scary. I read somewhere that there has been an EA app update. But EA being able to mess with our game without an update is very bad.
I haven't opened the game since this news about the shopping cart for all appeared. But somehow I am not surprised. I guess this means EA is now officially downgrading sims to the level of cheap low quality phone games.
I will now have to be more picky with buying kits. If EA wants to so blattently tell me I am nothing more than a cash cow ready to be milked, I will have to change my behavior to show them I am in control of what to buy for my game, no matter how much they push.
EA, if you want me to spend money on this game, let me enjoy playing instead of constantly reminding me during gameplay that I have not yet spent as much as you want.
I know nothing about computer programming, but I’m wondering if it’s possible that with the last update everyone got the potential for the shopping cart, but it was programmed to be revealed progressively to groups of players over time? That makes more sense to me than EA tweaking people’s games without mentioning it or anyone noticing? But maybe I’m just naive.
If the shopping cart icon made sense, I personally wouldn’t mind.
My concerns are it is pulsating (very distracting) and next to the gallery icon. It’ll be easy to click by error.
Also it looks like it suggests any DLC you don’t have as supposed to what is your play style.
I don’t want Realm of Magic so if this keeps popping up, it’ll be annoying.
I would update my game if the icon was a solid pastel colour (not bright yellow!) and move it away from the gallery icon. The suggestions should make sense to the player.
That's probably what happened. Some kind of timer or on/off switch.
I think this was EA's plan from the beginning. They just wanted to have some data to show the effect. Even if it just adds 1% of sales for those with the cart, that would be enough for them to implement the cart in the game for everyone. Insulting long term players who have spent hundreds of €/$ is just collateral damage.
If the competition offers a better deal it would be hard to get those customers back. The more stunts like this EA pulls, the less attached customers will be to the brand, the more they will look for alternatives.
And this shopping cart is like the last drop in a bucket of bad decisions that have alienated the fan base. I mean, from what I understand, most people are not optimistic about the next game.
I got money to spend on the EA App for my birthday in February, yet I didn't touch it ue to the state of the Game and Lack of communication.
My child and toddler Sims are still often times unable to eat anything. Reloading fixes the Problem only for a short time. Oh well, there are far worse bugs than this. At least I was able to fix most of the issues that occurred after the moodlet bug with quite some effort.
Yes, my opinion, too.
I won’t buy anything from EA again as long as they hold on to that cart button. Neither for any Sims game nor any other game.
EA keeps the button - they can keep their games - and I keep my money.
Mayoress of SimCity and all associated districts
We're just frogs in a pot of boiling water, and they're going to turn up the heat.
The Sims 4 hasn't introduced a new musical instrument since 2017
That’s not good… but I’m not sure what we can do. This is a corporate decision and I don’t want to always comment on this shopping cart when devs from this company release something new.
But it’s difficult to not feel that this shopping cart was a response to people not buying their packs. I never bought horse ranch and every time I boot up the game I get an ad for it. I never bought for rent and now I have a shopping cart bugging me about it.
This is a customer relationship issue which doesn’t look good. The company only seems to care about me wanting to buy their packs and the content that they are selling doesn’t feel like it’s coming from a studio with over 200 people.
The Sims 4 might be a game about being friends with other people but it doesn’t feel like the game itself is handling that very well when it comes to the players.
At least not the players who don’t buy everything and are not good friends with the shopping cart.
This definitely feels as if EA is ready to move on and pretend no one ever complained about the shopping cart.
I don't think there is much point left in complaining. At least I have decided to no longer waste energy on it. I will focus on playing and enjoying the game as it is now with the DLC I already own.
Does this mean EA won? Probably. But I feel this is a fight I cannot win. I have better things to do with my life than waste energy on this to the point where I become frustrated in real life. The upcoming competition of life by you and paralives means I might get alternatives to sims in the future.
But the shopping cart did change my shopping behaviour. I have reevaluated the money I spend on this game. I have a fixed rule to never buy for low quality, free to play mobile games. The sims has now heavily shifted towards that category. I will not buy the new kits. I probably would have considered it if the shopping cart never happened. But in my opinion this shopping cart is a flashing warning sign for a company trying to get as much money from me as they can.
Maybe sales go down because the sims 4 just reached a saturation point. simmers already have so much DLC. On top of that the latest DLC often have serious bugs and few features compared to earlier DLC. So simmers are wondering if they should spend even more money. Personally I was planning on getting for rent at release at full price but the game corruption bugs stopped me. A shopping cart icon in my game is not going to convince to buy it. DLC without serious bugs and enough features to make a difference in my gameplay, that's what might convince me to buy something.
Interesting that you mention customer relationship. I think that is part of the problem here. A lot of simmers react very emotional to the shopping cart. I think how they feel treated as customers is a big part of that reaction.
With EA and even more so with Windows. Windows is the default OS to play the Sims and the boiling water is getting hotter even faster with Windows than EA. If EA would allow us to play offline, we could just use an old version of Windows. The combined greed of these two companies will make it impossible to play the game that we all love and what they offer as an alternative will not be the same.
The whole world is changing rapidly. Maybe in context of these bigger changes, I will not even care about the Sims anymore. I hope that I can at least play some over this summer when I finish my classes. It is futile to look past summer I think.
I know what I think is more likely, but maybe they'll surprise us in a good way for once. In the meantime, I'm having fun doubling the number of mods in my game. I even have a functional pool table now! 😁
Me in 2018 would have bought horse ranch and for rent at release, just as I bought every new pack at release. But once I started stopping buying packs at release it was easier after that to stop buying packs at all.
Look... I get it, the game is free to play now, EA wants sales, Rene looks nowhere near close to finished and they have investors they have to promise every year that they will make more money than last year, but this shopping cart is not the solution to that. To make money you have to spend money, spend money in making good packs, take time to fix bugs before release and make content that people want and you will build up a player base that will support you.
This shopping cart does the exact opposite, it doesn't make me want to buy or support the game, it thinks that the reason why I haven't bought a pack is because I didn't know it existed and it's apparently so important that it has to be in the UI when we are playing the game.
I don't even want to click on it, because I know it's going to end up in some data mining somewhere that they are somehow gonna use to say that this shopping cart is a good thing. It's not.
Get rid of it.
The packs I did not buy tend to be the ones I would not even want for free. The ones I did get where always in a sale because full price is never worth it, always costs too much for what it offers.