Here's some throwback drama from the TS2 BBS days! This was a discussion in regards to removing a hack to prevent spawning of redundant NPCs, as in J. M. Pescado's anti-redundancy hack. The significance of this was that in an unpatched version of the Bon Voyage expansion pack, there was a bug where Tour Guides and Unsavory Charlatans (aka the guy who would pickpocket your Sims while they were on vacation) would be created endlessly, inevitably resulting in neighborhood corruption due to the hard limits of character files a neighborhood can have. The limit was around 32,767 character files, and if you go over that limit, the game effectively deletes the first character file to create a new one, corrupting your neighborhood save permanently.
The drama part was when MaxoidSam (Maxoids are Sims staff that also post on the BBS, compared to how SimMasters were just volunteer moderators, and how now the SimGuru title is used for Sims staff who post on social media or their forums) gets defensive about the game in a hostile way against a BBS member in regards to how that bug was fixed in the patch, and thus claiming that hack wasn't needed anymore:
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I'm not sure how this fares compared to today's drama in The Sims community, but it was a relic that I remembered about, and remembered to save that just in case. The zip file is if you want to see that in .htm format.
That was a lovely relic, indeed. Thanks!
I am not up to date on what’s going on with The Sims 4, but I can see a lot of similarities, such as total distrust on EA/Maxis as game developers from the players, and the ensuing drama. Maxoid Sam is not that different from Sim Guru Grant, TBH.
I would have loved to see Maxoid Sam post at MATY.
Every time there is a new EP or patch, the simmers worry and riot because it is guaranteed something will be broken, starting with mods and custom content. I think the gender patch broke pretty much all Create-A-Sim custom content, for example, and as far as I know that is the safest content you may have in your game.
The good news for Sims 2 and 3 players is that EA can’t break the game anymore, so any new mod does not need to be updated constantly. I have The Sims 4, but I play it CC-free because I don’t want to deal with broken mods anymore and, unlike The Sims 2, the game looks fine just the way it is.
Sims 2 players put the game in a pedestal, but the truth is that the vanilla game looks awful and gaudy, so you need a lot of CC to make it look decent, from lighting and defaults to Mods and even hood templates that prevent game-breaking character bloat, even after the final patch. Oh, and you also need an older computer because it is not compatible with Windows 10.
It seems Bon Voyage was a messy release, between SecuROM and this bug. I vaguely recall people suggesting not installing it until it was “safe”. I also find endearing the fear of Mods from some BBS members and making a big deal of keeping antiredundancy in their files. It is a tiny file that has a single function. I wonder what they thought about messier mods like Insim and Inteen (which I never tried, as I found the fixation with pregnant teens rather creepy).
But my favorite part of this mess was Skye’s signature: Fur is more actively protested than leather, because it is easier to harass rich women than biker gangs.
