Things I wish I could say to people who need help..

coolcandy3001 wrote:1. The gallery has stopped working, stop asking.
2. Your CC is not our problem, stop asking.
3. Look around the freaking forum, I have seen your question at least 1000 times.

You forgot 2 things.  

OK, 5. may be a bit mean, but still.   

Concerning Mac OS and TS4, personally I would not have made this guide a sticky, unless @Phoebe declared it as working and practical, but OK. I'm not saying you should "shut off" these guides by users who are certainly well-meaning. That's not my intention. But making these threads prominent by placing them right at top (here: by "stickying" them) is also questionable. Especially if it' clear that no Mac support can be given officially. Soon after this was stickied, people started spamming both in the Mac forum, and also in the PC section (!), about their TS4 Mac questions. But this is not meant as criticism toward the Admin or anybody else: whoever made the decision to sticky this guide, I respect that decision.   What I wrote here was only my personal take on this.

Long story short, what I wanted to say with these 2 paragraphs is this: there are ways to somehow "control" the flow of discussions, by means of - for example - stickying/unstickying the "right" messages, making the right announcements in the right places, etc. Most of these "discussion flow controls" are available for Moderators and Admins only, so if you feel you have a good idea about anything in this respect, feel free to get back to them.   But in the end, you should not expect 100% perfect solutions here: there will always be people who don't properly read guides or don't use the search function, and dealing with those people is an essential part of being a team member here. And these people, as long as they stay friendly, also deserve nice and good replies.

coolcandy3001 wrote:1. The gallery has stopped working, stop asking.
2. Your CC is not our problem, stop asking.
3. Look around the freaking forum, I have seen your question at least 1000 times.

Carlos wrote:

coolcandy3001 wrote:1. The gallery has stopped working, stop asking.
2. Your CC is not our problem, stop asking.
3. Look around the freaking forum, I have seen your question at least 1000 times.

You forgot 2 things.  

4. Games4theworld does not provide official Mac OS support on The Sims 4.
5. Configuring anti-virus/firewall systems is your responsibility, in the first place.


OK, 5. may be a bit mean, but still.   

As for the gallery, SeoY put a big, fat, red notice at the beginning of his now obsolete gallery guide, plus an additional note at the end of the thread (note that the average user is most likely going to read only the beginning and/or the end of a thread !). In addition, I decided to leave the obsolete guide as a "sticky" in the TS4 Fixes-section, hoping that this would at least reduce the number of gallery questions a bit. Also, I'm not sure if you saw this post by this one guy (here), but the reason I did not move this to the "Tips"-section is that it would only cause more complications over time. Imagine the tons of people asking "where can I get an older Origin version lol" or "it's not working for me".

Concerning Mac OS and TS4, personally I would not have made this guide a sticky, unless @Phoebe declared it as working and practical, but OK. I'm not saying you should "shut off" these guides by users who are certainly well-meaning. That's not my intention. But making these threads prominent by placing them right at top (here: by "stickying" them) is also questionable. Especially if it' clear that no Mac support can be given officially. Soon after this was stickied, people started spamming both in the Mac forum, and also in the PC section (!), about their TS4 Mac questions. But this is not meant as criticism toward the Admin or anybody else: whoever made the decision to sticky this guide, I respect that decision.   What I wrote here was only my personal take on this.

Long story short, what I wanted to say with these 2 paragraphs is this: there are ways to somehow "control" the flow of discussions, by means of - for example - stickying/unstickying the "right" messages, making the right announcements in the right places, etc. Most of these "discussion flow controls" are available for Moderators and Admins only, so if you feel you have a good idea about anything in this respect, feel free to get back to them.   But in the end, you should not expect 100% perfect solutions here: there will always be people who don't properly read guides or don't use the search function, and dealing with those people is an essential part of being a team member here. And these people, as long as they stay friendly, also deserve nice and good replies.


Yes, you "can" make an official announcement that G4TW does not give Mac support on TS4, but will that put an end to the questions about "my wineskin doesn't work" ? Probably not. Likewise, you also "can" make an announcement that the gallery isn't working anymore, but it won't prevent those questions either, about connecting to the gallery.


Real-life is far from perfect, and neither is "virtual life" here.

Sim Architect wrote:

Maybe we could find a polite way to say those things, as part of the forum rules? Ah! And people asking for help through private messages is really annoying! Sometimes they justify themselves because "nobody replied to me yet", even though they PM you the very same day they came up with the question...

Be creative, and think about ways how to "make things interesting". You will not regret it, if you plan to be active on here for longer.

Phoebe wrote:Hello all,

First of all, I'd like to say The Sims 4 doesn't work on Mac right now, even with Wine or Bootcamp or etc, unless you don't buy the game. It seems working, then after few opening, suddenly it doesn't and you don't know why. And I think no one can say it's working without being able to start is succesfully three times in a row.

Also about that "How to Run Sims 4 with Wine on Your Mac" topic by wataru2 makes everything harder for us... As it doesn't help at all.

I am so tired of hearing "I can't make my Wine work" stuff too, Carlos. I can't even make my Wine work, and I don't know why..   

I think we need to tell specifically that we can't give any Mac support for The Sims 4, as there is nothing to support unfortunately.

Other than that, being a helper/moderator/Admin means having to tell the same things over and over again even if no one listens and ask again again. It's like being a mother and teacher... I don't mind, I am used to it  

In time, I guess everyone get used to it, or quit.

I am creating a word document with "default answers" to those questions, then "copy & paste"

Phoebe wrote:Hello all,

First of all, I'd like to say The Sims 4 doesn't work on Mac right now, even with Wine or Bootcamp or etc, unless you don't buy the game. It seems working, then after few opening, suddenly it doesn't and you don't know why. And I think no one can say it's working without being able to start is succesfully three times in a row.

Also about that "How to Run Sims 4 with Wine on Your Mac" topic by wataru2 makes everything harder for us... As it doesn't help at all.

I am so tired of hearing "I can't make my Wine work" stuff too, Carlos. I can't even make my Wine work, and I don't know why..   

I think we need to tell specifically that we can't give any Mac support for The Sims 4, as there is nothing to support unfortunately.

(...)

There were some other users before asking why G4TW does not do anything about Mac. Some even pointed out that "everything is on the internet already". Indeed, I believe all these people are using the same wineskin-method, but again: this is not a blog or wiki. Team members need to come here regularly and help other users. I'm not sure about you, but I haven't seen much from wataru2 after that. He or she probably had the 15 minutes of fame - "on the G4TW forum" - although I have to admit that this view is highly cynical (   ). Still I find we should re- evaluate the procedure of adding or not adding guides from normal users, to the Fixes/Tips sections. If you scroll up again to my first reply, I briefly mentioned this post about a guy who wrote about a workaround to connecting to the gallery with a pirated Sims 4. As a fun fact, he edited his post soon after and replaced the text with dots. Maybe he felt ashamed or something ...? Or he maybe expected that I move this to the Sims 4 tips ? In any case, I decided not to add this post to the official tips, because of practical reasons. That is actually the same case as with the guide from wataru2, just in a Windows context.