Hey Howdy Hey Tappers!
So ever since the Tap Ball Removal hit our App Stores we’ve been seeing LOADS of reports from you guys saying you’re having all sorts of bugs/glitches/crash issues going on in your game after downloading the update. Including MANY of you with reports overnight of connectivity issues. So I figured let’s get a post together with some basic troubleshooting and one centralized place where you guys can report your issues, and see that you’re not alone in them. 🙂
So let’s dive right in, shall we?
First up, let’s talk about Now let’s talk about the Crashing Issue. This is the number 1 issue impacting many of you right now.
Does this sound like you? You’ve downloaded the new update from the app store and the game just crashes on you constantly. You visit neighbors..crash. You set tasks…crash. You scroll around your town…crash. Sucks doesn’t it?
Right now I can tell you, just from the comments, this is wide spread. So know that you are not alone in the crashing.
I can also tell you, we’re seeing a lot more reports of this on iOS right now than Android. That doesn’t mean Android isn’t crashing (mine was earlier), it just means that it seems to be impacting iOS more than Android users.
So that being said…if you’re on iOS and you’re crashing…first make sure you’re on the latest iOS version. That could be causing the instability. Also, if you have an older iOS device…that could be an issue too. I know some of the older devices will have issues loading the game. So it could just be a device issue.
Now for everyone (iOS, Android or Kindle)…if you’re crashing try these steps first:
1. Uninstall TSTO.
2. Restart your device.
3. Reinstall TSTO.
This will re-download the game and all the files on your device. It’s entirely possible the crashing is caused by a corrupt file from the App Store update. So deleting, restarting & reinstalling will ensure a fresh copy of TSTO is put on your device. (Note: this could take a little bit of time, as it has to redownload all the files onto your device. So even if TSTO installs quickly, it may be a little bit before you’re back into the game as it’ll download the game files once you start TSTO up)
For those worried…as long as you have an Origin Account backing up your game you will NOT lose your Springfield from an uninstall/reinstall. The Origin Account backs up your game, so once you reinstall just log back in and it’ll bring your Springfield right back to you.
A word of advice…if you’re reinstalling at work, make sure your Media Volume is turned all the way down (despite your previous settings) because sound will happen when you start up TSTO for the first time. And yes, you will have to reset your sound settings (music, SFX) if you have them down regularly (like I do).
For many of you, myself included, the uninstall/restart/reinstall is correcting the issue. BUT if for some reason it does not correct the issue, the next step is going to be to contact EA…
You can contact EA here.
We ALWAYS recommend doing the Call Me option if it’s available, and you can, the phone techs are always better than the chat ones.
I will warn you, the first thing they’ll tell you to do is uninstall/reinstall. Let them know you already did and it still did not correct the issue. (sometimes you may have to be persistent. Depending on who get you, know that they’re reading from a script. So just insist that you’ve done it several times and it’s still not working).
The more people that contact EA, the quicker the issue will be resolved. So light them up if you’re still crashing after the uninstall/restart/reinstall.
And that covers the crashing issue…
Next let’s talk about the connectivity issues that took place overnight. MANY of you were talking about not being able to get into your games for hours. It appears that the Origin Servers were down for hours last night. Usually this happens when they’re doing maintenance or something else.
If you’re repeatedly seeing the Bart Screen saying you cannot connect double check these few steps first:
Most Important…DO NOT PANIC. They’ll come back up, they always do.
1. Check the clock. If it’s after midnight Central time in the US it’s usually related to Server Maintenance. The Servers will come back up when they’re done. (Confused about time zones? US Central time is GMT -5hrs during Daylight Savings Time (March-November) and GMT-6hrs when Daylight Savings time Ends (November-March))
2.If it’s not during those times, check the Origin Server Status. That will tell you if there’s a bigger issue going on. You can check the Origin Server Status here.
3. If it’s not around midnight central time, the Origin Server Status says it’s up…Try visiting a regular web page (like TSTO Addicts!). If it loads extremely slow, or not at all, the problem could be with your connection and not Origin or EA. Double check your internet connection and make sure it’s working correctly (or that you’re getting a strong enough signal).
There is one thing you should NEVER do when the Servers are down…
DO NOT try to create a new account with the same email (even if you’re prompted to do so). That’s one way to ensure you’ll lose your Springfield or misplace it for the unbearably long time it will take for EA to find it again.
So there you have a couple of basics to do when you see the dreaded Bart Screen….
Now for a few other issues we’re seeing popup…
My Game Crashes When I Visit This One Neighbor..
If it’s only crashing when you visit that one neighbor…not to sound obvious…stop visiting that one neighbor.
This happens from time to time, and can be caused by a variety of things. Usually it’s on your neighbors side. They have too much stuff in their town and it’s just cashing a drain on your game. (this used to happen all the time to me I visited Wookiee way back when Addicts first started. He’s since nuked his town and rebuilt, with less 2D decorations. Thus, no more crashing)
So for now, I’d hold off on visiting that neighbor. Check again in a week. If it’s still going on delete them and move on to someone else. Who needs a neighbor that’s crashing their game anyway? 😉
My Icon For Quick Tasks in the Top Left Is Glitching Out…
Either the icons are showing half a face, the back of a characters head, showing up super small, just randomly rotating between characters or not showing anything (some examples below)…
how it should look…
How they’re looking with the glitch…
If this is happening to you, you can try hard closing and restarting your game.
(Hard close means to physically shut down the app via the task manager. On iOS and various other devicesthis is done by double tapping the home button.)
If it’s still happening, the quick set still works. If you tap on it it’ll still bring up the characters task, you just won’t know who it is until you bring it up. But it does still work.
If it’s bugging you a great deal and the hard close doesn’t work, contact EA and let them know. They probably won’t be able to do anything right away, but I’m sure it’ll expedite a patch for it.
Spray Paint Glitches
Our friend Larsyuipo posted this over on the EA Forums:
1. Randomly crashing glitch
-Game crashes at certain area in your town. This area most likely contains a spray painted Moe’s, this causes the crashing.
(It’s not known if this happens to the town hall, police station and school aswell but I’d suggest that you store them if storing Moe’s doesn’t work)
-How to solve: store Marge or more
2. Neighbour crash glitch
-Game crashes when spray painting a building. It’s also possible your neighbour hasn’t updated.
-How to solve: avoid tapping school, Moe’s and townhall
Honestly, I do think this will get resolved if you do the uninstall/restart/reinstall mentioned above for crashing. Since doing that I haven’t had any issues with crashing.
Well I think that about covers all of the major bugs/glitches we’re seeing!
Do you have any issues since uninstalling Tap Ball that we didn’t cover here? Any solutions for players having these issues? Did the uninstall/restart/resinstall help solve your crashing issues? Have you contacted EA about any of the above issues? Sound off in the comments below you know we love hearing from you!
Uggh. I had to contact EA today about missing 48 donuts. I wouldn’t. Of done it but this is 3rd time this has happened and its starting to bug me. The guy got back to me in 5 minutes.and gave me back my donuts. Cant believe it was that easy.
HOW did manage that?!
I NEVER got through.
I lost about $20 worth of donuts on a Gil deal & never got any response.
🙁
Hello! I didn’t take the update until last night because I was close to one more round of bonus donuts. Ever since I’ve periodically had the glitch in my free character box although it isn’t constant. The big problem I had was this morning when I logged in for the first time I wondered where I was at with my Daily Tap In now that the event had ended. I was pleased to see I was on the Mystery Box but when I tapped it . . . Nothing! No box! I’ve checked my inventory and there is nothing new or out of the ordinary there. I just got shafted on my Mystery Box. Darn! Anybody else?
I’m having connectivity issues over and over again. It’s not the time, the origin server appears to be online, and so is my connection. Hard closing and restarting the game usually solves the problem, but it’s still a drag.
Yea, I’ve been getting it too.
Have they said anything about fixing the glitches on the galaxy note 4? I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled the whole game like some support posts say to do but still glitches bad. Characters flip flopping, unresponsive clicking and moving, fences and other decorations glitch and disappear and reappear. Any one else having this issue?
Nope, not that i’ve heard.
I’m pretty sure I only see the icon glitch when it’s supposed to be showing characters in Stonecutter outfits. I haven’t rigorously tested it but I don’t remember seeing it with anyone else.
After the Springfield Heights update, I noticed I’m not getting friend points for clearing handshakes. I’m at around 3600 FP, so it’s not an issue of being full. Anyone else?
It’s going around. Only some buildings are giving them, while others aren’t. Not sure why. Best thing to do if it’s really bothering you is contact EA
http://tstoaddicts.com/2014/01/14/troubleshooting-101-contacting-ea/
I just saw that…started getting FP again. Haven’t seen any not giving FP after I posted this. When it happened this morning, it was on buildings close to the tunnel…wonder if that has something to do with it.
Right now, it’s just a minor annoyance, so I’ll hold off on contacting EA. I’ll see if I can identify if it’s due to location, specific buildings, or just random. Thanks!!!
I was gonna post that too, I haven’t gotten any XP since the 2nd patch hit.
But as for doughnuts, I wasn’t sure I was missing any, and today I saw a pop up saying 20 doughnuts were added to my game!
I guess I did loose some doughnuts because i was sure I had 37 before all the patching and I’m back to where I was, I guess I was so upset with not being able to play for a day that I didn’t see them missing, but I guess they knew everyone was missing 20 because I didn’t have to ask them to put them back,
My glitch is……. Once i click the app screen ….reads “There’s a problem with your land. Contact support”…yay!
That’s going around too…
My doughnuts have disappeared. Almost 50 of them.
It’s a known bug, EA is working on a patch. BUT you should still contact them and let them know…
http://tstoaddicts.com/2014/01/14/troubleshooting-101-contacting-ea/
Alissa, is this patch for replacing the donuts people lost or simply preventing more being lost in the future?
My understanding is it will replace the missing ones. But honestly, I haven’t had a chance to talk to EA directly about it. I’m going off of what players have reported
The game patched earlier and I must went to play and the game seemed normal, and I sent them on their tasks and sent Mr Nirns to get a tuxedo for 8 hours, but when I just went to play even though it hasn’t been 8 hours yet, the game did another in game update, it started normally, but I heard the task finished sound even though nonthing was clicked, I clicked Marge on the task bar because she was on a random task, but when I finished her task. The Mr Burns getting a Tux task and the other guy on a task with him disappeared too and he still has an hour to go.
Has anyone else had this happen?
Did his task somehow finish early even though he’s stil doing it?
Did the 2nd in game update change something?
Playing on iOS iPad Air 1
Another glitch I noticed, when you have cash above your buildings and characters finished a task (thumbs up), and you hit them, then you collect both the cash and the character’s payment. At first I thought it was my fat fingers, but I noticed like 10 times, which pretty much confirm it is a glitch.
Mine does this too, but I assumed it was a new feature and not a bug.
I don’t think that’s a glitch, I think that’s part of the new changes with the new update. I for one like it. Makes collecting after I’ve been away for a while much easier.
Mine did that for a few hours then it went back to having to click on the thumbs up and cash separately. Did anyone else’s do the same or can you still click once and get it all?
I just waited it out over night and was able to log back into the game this afternoon (lesson learned – when you see Bart Simpson Holding Plug screen? Just wait it out (lol) 😉
I’m glad I haven’t updated out of tap ball yet…besides the extra bonuts and fences (my original reason for not upgrading), I figure I’ll just let y’all suffer though these annoyances and hopefully, by the time they force the upgrade on me, they’ll have most of all of the kinks worked out! 😉
With you 100% here. No hurry to update, as I’m still cranking along on the double bonut exploit. I’m a happy tap baller, and will be til Halloween or they force me out. Except I’ll run out of cash way before then…already down about $3M. I’ve still got a few days’ reserve left, so keep bringing on the bonuts!!!
My game is working fine now except the upper left bubble that shows free characters keeps changing without my touching it. Sometimes it is showing the backs of characters. Lol! At one point it was showing the craftable cell phone as a playable character.
It seems to me that’s part of the new game setup. It seems that area will tell you when people or areas in heights especially are ready to collect as well as charachters that are free.
I haven’t had crash issues but do have the icon glitch, not that big a problem. I did notice that when I visited my neighbors today there were no spray cans on any of their buildings. Was really hoping that EA decided to stop having that feature!
Glitch in on daughters ios, she can’t do the furniture or coffee tasks, locking her out saying not enough storage…. Help
She needs to increase her storage. Not a glitch. She needs to unlock more characters to perform tasks, that’ll increase storage. More details are here
http://tstoaddicts.com/2015/07/22/springfield-heights-update-is-here/
Couldn’t play all day until after the Springfield Heights update. Hallelujah! No troubleshooting worked–I was in a panic!! I did contact EA—no help there–but he gave me 15 donuts!! But boy, it was a lonnnng, rough day!
I had the spraypaint issue crashing my friends towns, gave up and came back after getting a good nights sleep and now there are no spray cans in any of my friends towns. Don’t know if you cannot graffiti anymore or if it is a temporary fix for the crashing issue.
This is happening to me too.
I just updated (iOS) and was going through Springfield Heights tasks and happened to notice that I lost about 20 to 25 donuts sometime during this whole process. Anybody else lose donuts? I have no idea when I lost them, and I certainly didn’t spend them, but they’re gone! 😕
Best thing to do is contact EA. Seeing several players state this. Contact EA let them know, see if they can restore them for you
Yes, I lost 45. Have no idea how. Poof, gone, grrr
I just updated. It takes me to the log in screen where my details are, click to continue, then synchronising appears on screen, then the game starts from the beginning with the video.
Hard close and restart, see if that helps. If not uninstall and reinstall.
Please ignore my post from a few minutes ago. After I blew up the tunnel, I was going through all my characters and now Apu’s task is back at the top in yellow as it should be. Have no idea what fixed it.
I am at the part of the Declan quest where we send Apu to feed the octuplets. However, when I go to Apu’s task list that job is at the bottom… Grayed out…locked. And says Required: Job
Am I missing something simple? Anyone else with this problem?
that happens when his wife has the octuplets. Once she finishes her task you can send him on his. You’ll see her task is now grey.
Mentioned before, but (so far) only new-ish bug I’m receiving is the one where it is showing “new” icons for the tap ball player skins, but when you go to tap them, it selects a different character. On a side note, haven’t got far into it, but so far I’m loving this new expansion though.
I’m like 99% sure I’m missing donuts! I swear I had like 155 and now I’m down to 105…have donut spend notification on and haven’t been drunk in days so really not sure what’s going on!?!
Seems to be going around. Contact EA let them know. See if they can restore them for you
Still crashing today no problem with any other game downloaded update got three quarters of the way through then that cannot connect to server came up again
That could be related to too many people updating at once. I’d say contact EA at this point..
i am terrible at keeping track of my donut count, but i’m pretty sure it was around 70-80 before i got rid of tap ball and let the springfield heights expansion come in. i didn’t notice until springfield heights that my donut count is ZERO. is this possibly a glitch?? don’t have time to contact EA right now, but will later. i definitely don’t remember spending donuts, and even if i did, it wouldn’t have taken me down to zero exactly?
It’s possible it’s a glitch. You’ve got to contact EA let them know and see if they can restore them
i have contacted them, and it is a known glitch. they said several others have reported it in as well.
i’ll take any kind of glitch, but not one that robs me of donuts!!
There’s a thread in EA Game Discussion about this issue. Not sure about posting the link, so just look for the title “Missing Donuts….”
My game was constantly crashing, and after a few times I noticed that it was when I was near Money Mountain. I put it in my inventory and it seems to be ok now. I still crashed at least once while visiting a friend since I did that though. I might try to reinstall.
Roads, pavement and rivers are completely misaligned in my springfield.
mine, too! i just posted on this thinking no one else had this particular issue.
EDIT: contacted EA and spoke with someone on the phone. they tried several troubleshooting steps with no luck. after everything they said there are many issues and they are working on an update to fix everything at once… Hopefully sooner rather than later. Hang in there guys and be patient. they also said there’d be extra donuts waiting for me for the inconvenience which I must say was really nice. I don’t know if that’s across the board or for those who call in with issues. hope this helps.
I have the same issue, I have roads on my beaches that cannot be removed, rivers and roads under my buildings and props(trees and what not), pavement completely moved to who knows where… Fun times ahead to re-align everything, I say it will take a couple of hours lol
Yeah I have the same issue. I have roads and pavement on my beaches that cannot be removed now, water, roads, and pavement under buildings and other props, and pavement completely out of whack (not sure where some of it shifted from). Probably will only be a couple of hours to delete and realign everything again.. Fun fun! Lol
Still holding off on updating. Racking up as many free donuts I can before it forces me to do so. The whole event, I’m up to 33 so far.
I’m holding off as well. Because of all the bugs.
Expatrie-
A lot of great info, thank you for the post. Thankfully I have not seen any glitches this time, I only ran into the “cannot connect to server” problem that lasted for hours. I’ll have to remember to refer back to this page whenever I come across any glitches in the future.
I wish I knew about this before. I had the connectivity issue last night and thought it was the game forcing me to install the tap ball removal update, so I just installed it (which didn’t solve the problem, of course). I was hoping to get one or two more stadium fences before the forced update…
lol we’ve got about 3 posts on the site all with the same Origin info. problem is they’re older posts, so sometimes they can be hard to find