Before I say anything else, I sincerely hope I wasn't the one on Answers HQ who reacted to you not wanting to patch the game. I will say that in certain situations, not all, the fact that a poster reporting an issue is playing on a prior patch level makes things unnecessarily complicated, for example if the overall feature that's breaking has been modified in one of the newer game updates. And a bug report should always be about the current patch level. Having said that, no one should have yelled at you, and I'm sorry you felt that way.

The General Discussion section of Answers HQ is a good place to have a single conversation, particularly around a new feature, but it's not a good place to hang out overall, at least not now. There isn't enough traffic, and most of it involves people asking for help or sharing an opinion and then only sticking around until the conclusion of that thread.

The official forums are not what it sounds like you're looking for by default, but they could be if you found your niche. The Sims 3 section is kind of dead overall, but there is one mega-thread, called "What happened in your Sims 3 game today?" that gets a lot of traffic. From what I've seen in other threads (I could never keep up with that one), the regular members are generally very welcoming and supportive and go out of their way to respond to others' posts. But it's also a small-enough group that you do need to like the people there in order to have a good time.

My impression of the Sims 4 sections is that they're wild and fast-moving and attract a lot of toxicity that gets cleaned up as soon as the EA people catch up to it. There's no censorship per se, but as an example, there were quite a lot of frankly disgusting opinions after custom pronouns were introduced, and those posts and many of those players were removed. There are still a LOT of negative threads present, but you can also ignore those if they're not your thing. There are also lots of "share your stuff"-type threads, for both gameplay to creations, and my understanding is those are generally very supportive as well.

My guess is that if you showed up with screenshots of your furry sims in random other threads, you might get some negative comments. But if you found the right threads or the right people, you'd be fine. And the comments that were abusive rather than merely disinterested would get removed. One other note: I don't know anything about the mod itself, but if it happens to contain adult content, that's also not allowed; the forum rules are what a somewhat strict American parent would want for a 12-year-old kid.

As for "getting in," the forum has a requirement that you have made 15 posts and earned 25 points, and that your account is at least 24 hours old, before you're a full member and can start your own threads. This is to deter spammers and alt accounts; prior to the rules, it was a massive problem. You get one point per reaction to your post, and points for X numbers of posts and reactions, so it's easy to get to 25. And current members often go out of their way to react to new members' posts to help them along.

Having said all that, I drifted away from the officials months ago because I'm not really interested in talking about my game these days, and troubleshooting on that forum can get a bit frustrating.

SimAlot79 wrote: ↑

April 2nd, 2023, 4:42 am

(I hope it's OK to only share pictures and not make things available on the gallery. If I become a member I will ask a moderator about this).

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That's definitely fine, and I think the only time players are expected to upload and share is when they're participating in a contest or other activity where other players would want or need to download the creation. Examples would include a contest or gift exchange. There are definitely no site-wide rules about sharing.
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SimAlot79 wrote: ↑

April 2nd, 2023, 4:42 am

So there is toxic behavior on the forum? That's quite sad to know but as long as it gets cleaned up I guess it's OK. And yes, there is always an option to ignore the threads where such things can occur.

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I think there's a lot less toxicity on that forum than most others, I mean it is the internet, after all. But it's not a special problem on that site. If anything, the moderators are aggressive in removing borderline content.

As for your furry mod, I'm sure some people would be accepting and others would react badly, but that's what the Report button is for. And for your own threads, you can just say this is what I'm doing and if you don't like it, you don't need to respond. People do that all the time.

I hope it works out.

I think you might have luck with Tumblr- which is often grouped in with social media, but at the end of the day it's more similar to the blog hosting of yonder like Wordpress, Blogspot, etc. The main thing separating it from other sites is that you only see content from blogs you follow on your feed- you aren't shown an algorithm of suggestions. Meaning you can carve out a space for yourself that looks pretty much however you want it, no matter how niche.

I haven't had one since I was a teenager, because I also don't use social media. But I'm very familiar with it and the Sims community there- which is known as Simblr. The audience for your posts would be narrower than a public forum, but that also means it's easier to make sure that audience are kind and share an interest in the type of mods you like. It can be as sims-specific as you want, with the freedom to include other topics or just participate in the furry community in general.

I'll be making a new tumblr blog myself soon, because I have a lot of modding/CC projects to release and there are a few I'd rather host myself than upload to MTS. It will also be a screenshot and devlog diary, for showing my ingame screenarchery and progress on projects- for an example of how specific you can be with the type of content you want to share.

Because I'm so familiar with it already, I'd be happy to help you get settled and give recommendations for existing simblrs to follow if needed. It will take a fair amount of time to find people who will follow and engage with your posts, but the community is welcoming and 'new simblr' posts circulate to help connect everyone quite often.

On the note of MTS, I try to help out there quite frequently, but the declining activity hasn't done it any favours in being welcoming. I'm sorry it's not a better choice for you, but I also agree on that assessment. Most people there mean well, but just being there for community or sharing your gameplay is very intimidating. I don't see much more than the same circles of active users, so there's definitely less of a feel of community as it is a feel of crawling onto a life raft that has 7 people on it already
I find it pretty bizarre that they can be so critical of over-enthusiastic new users when it is so quiet there otherwise, it's not like niche posts are tanking important new threads out of view these days- so chipping those users off the block is just making that metaphorical life raft even smaller. I digress, but those forums do make me pretty sad sometimes.

If the Tumblr suggestion isn't a good fit for you, I wish you best of luck looking for somewhere else.

I would suggest trying out the new EA forum when it's available. I's being built fresh and separate from Answers HQ, and it's meant to host fan forum-style content, not just problem-solving or creative showcases. Maybe it won't be at all what you want, but the truth is that none of us know what it's going to be at this point, and the people who show up first will probably influence how it turns out at least to some extent.

The rule about linking mods on Answers HQ was changed a few months ago: names and links are allowed as long as the content doesn't raise the game's rating, e.g. a certain mod with the initials W and W. So things are changing, sometimes for the better.

The things I do know is that you'll need an EA account, but you won't need to install the EA App, since the forum has to work on people's phones; and that EA people will moderate it. For the latter issue, if you disagree with a moderator's approach, you could always PM them to ask about it or to clarify what you meant. I know it's not ideal, but less-than-perfect moderation is better than none at all, and as you're seeing now, no one else has stepped in to fill the void.

My sense is that those who want a forum-style experience and would rather not deal with EA anymore are retreating to Facebook, but I don't have an account and don't want to make one just to look around. Other than that, they have their own sites where they host their simlit and people can message them, but not forums per se.

In case anyone is interested (probably not), I had and for all I know still have two zero-point warnings on my record on the EA forums. One was for openly discussing EA forum moderation policies on a thread that I temporarily forgot was open for the public to see as it was really meant for Tech Responders. The other, something like a day later, was because I tripped over myself trying to describe either Woohooer or No CD, I forget which now, even when not mentioning them by name.

The response I got from the at the time one visible EA moderator when I apologized by PM and asked how those posts could be fixed rather than deleted was entirely dismissive and I thought bordered on rude.

That's not why I left the forums many years later, but it still sticks in my memory as a not very happy experience given how much time I was spending trying to help players with tech and game issues, make them laugh, etc. over there. The other Tech Responders just shrugged and said the equivalent of, "Oh, well." From what I later understood, this kind of thing was very common back then, but it felt like I was being stalked if not by the one visible moderator then by someone reporting everything I ever said to them.

I can also understand not being in a tremendous hurry to repeat EA managed forum experiences even though management staffing and policies have changed somewhat since that many years ago. But the new forums may indeed offer more of the experience sought after including more light-hearted "what happened in my game today" types of chats vs. technical and mod specific assistance. That is, if what will be the TS3 friendly area takes off and gains some traction among enough players.

I'm always interested.

I'd also be interested in why you decided to leave, igazor, but understand it's not my business.

I got one not-really-a-warning back in the day, from Mage of all people, where she basically said she was going to choose to interpret my post in the most charitable way (not her exact words). I hadn't really thought about where I was, which was talking with another Sims 3 regular in Off-Topic Chat, and used a tone that was common in the TS3 sections but perhaps not elsewhere on the forum. I was actively upset at the time and for about a week afterwards, and I stopped posting in that section.

I hear the pre-Mage days were much darker, on both ends of the spectrum, but don't have any firsthand knowledge as that was before my time. I have seen that the current moderation leans heavily towards policing expressions of intolerance, for example the negative reactions to custom pronouns I mentioned before. Which is not to say that it's perfect or even ideal, only that the intentions are good. It can be hard to convey tone through text.

I hope that the Sims 3 section of the new site stays alive for a long time. I have no idea whether that's going to happen, but a few players from the officials have already come over to the newly-created Creative Corner on AHQ and started engaging with each other there, which is good to see. The same is true for Sims 4 as far as I can tell, but it's still somewhat quiet. What happens with the changeover in July feels completely up in the air.

The Sims 3 PC tech forum on AHQ is still somewhat busy at times, but not all the time; it seems to increase with school holidays, which I guess isn't surprising. Your presence would always be welcome there, on AHQ itself or on the new site. Whether you'd want to engage is a separate question.