Forum Discussion

AlHollandiyah's avatar
AlHollandiyah
Seasoned Ace
9 years ago

Age span childhood/adulthood is very unbalanced

I posted this on the Sims Forum as well, click, but IMHO the balance between childhood and adulthood is very unbalanced at this moment in the sims. I am doing a Legendary Legacy challenge and with the current amount of days it takes a kid to be born and become a YA, the parents are almost elders by the time they've reached it. Assuming you don't cake your way through. I would like to see a bit more of multiple generations at the same time, and that made me look at the exact number of days that each age group has.

Here it is broken down in numbers. I have not taken the elder lifestage into account because all I get googling that is "varies per sim".

Days per life stage:

  • Long => B: 12 - To: 28 - C: 52 - Te: 52 - YA: 80 - A: 80
  • Normal => B: 3 - To: 7 - C: 13 - Te: 13 - YA: 20 - A: 20
  • Short => B: 1.5 - To: 4 - C: 7 - Te: 7 - YA: 10 - A: 10

Days of childhood vs adulthood.

  • Long => Child: 144 - Adult: 160 => 47%
  • Normal => Child: 36 - Adult: 40 => 47%
  • Short => Child: 19,5 - Adult: 20 => 49%

Some people say toddlers knocked the balance over, but even without toddlers you got this as a balance:

  • Long => Child: 116 - Adult: 160 => 42%
  • Normal => Child: 29 - Adult: 40 => 42%
  • Short => Child: 15,5 - Adult: 20 => 43%

If you compare this to real life, and take for example 18 as young adult at a total of 80 years, then you would get a percentage of around 22%. Now I understand that that is not viable as you need time in the child lifestages to get certain things done, but still I believe the balance could use some tweaking towards something a bit more realistic. My best bet would be to make the young adult and adult stages longer, to compensate.

* On a sidenote, there also seems to be a Huge Gap between 'long' and 'normal', is that on purpose?

10 Replies

  • AlHollandiyah's avatar
    AlHollandiyah
    Seasoned Ace
    9 years ago

    Could you explain what you mean by 2 bonus days? On top of what? Everywhere where I google lifespans it says Elder: Varies per sim. I assumed it was just like when your sim is in their 3rd trimester you also don't get a set time or date for when they are due. Something like that. Some take longer and some shorter.

    Either way, I would propose to A] Double the amount of days for young adults and adults so that the childhood takes about roughly 1/3rd of a sims life instead of half. And B] Less important but maybe add a lifespan that is in between normal and long, like twice normal. It's not that bad to have 4 instead of 3 options!

  • Hadron1776's avatar
    Hadron1776
    9 years ago

    Every age group has its normal transition threshold: That's what you see in "days until age up: X". Then they get 2 "bonus days" so you can plan a birthday party etc. That's the time when the age bar is sparkling and the sim hasn't aged up yet. You won't see "days until age up" on elders, you'll see "number of days lived" instead. However, you can still guess at the age progress because the age bar is still there. Elders are the only age group that can get more than the 2 bonus days everyone else gets. Having the active trait gives 10%, the long lived trait gives 25%.

    The percentiles are based on the total number of days the Sim has lived, but it doesn't account for life resets. You can also drink cowplant essence for an additional 10 bonus days, and the wishing well from RG can get you an additional 5 bonus days if you wish for youthful vigor and get the right outcome.

    Hope that helps!

  • AlHollandiyah's avatar
    AlHollandiyah
    Seasoned Ace
    9 years ago

    Thanks for that information. However as that does still apply to all age groups that still doesn't change that it isn't really balanced that the sims spend almost half of their life getting to the young adult stage. So while I do think what you say is a partial workaround, the original point that I am posting here still goes. What I have currently done is change the days of the YA and A life stages from 20 to 40 in MC Command Center, which I believe makes it much more balanced out. I still hope the devs will read this topic and tell us their point of view on these numbers!

  • Hadron1776's avatar
    Hadron1776
    9 years ago

    I will say that due to those numbers, the toddler patch did increase sim lifespans 🙂

  • AlHollandiyah's avatar
    AlHollandiyah
    Seasoned Ace
    9 years ago

    I agree, they definitely made it worse, but I think if you look at those numbers they were already quite unbalanced even before the toddlers IMHO.

  • EA_Mai's avatar
    EA_Mai
    Icon for EA Staff rankEA Staff
    9 years ago

    Hi @AlHollandiyah @Hadron1776,

    In today's patch, Young Adult and Adult lifespans have been increased by 4 days each to accommodate the addition of Toddlers.

    I know that's not exactly what your feedback is about, @AlHollandiyah, but I thought you would like to know.

    Thanks for your feedback on this topic! 🙂

    -Mai

  • AlHollandiyah's avatar
    AlHollandiyah
    Seasoned Ace
    9 years ago

    That is actually  a little step, I assume you mean 4 days on normal lifespans? I still believe that doubling the amount suits the balance a lot better though, but thanks for this update!

  • Hadron1776's avatar
    Hadron1776
    9 years ago

    4 days on normal lifespan. This translates to 2 days on short and 16 days on long lifespans :D

  • AlHollandiyah's avatar
    AlHollandiyah
    Seasoned Ace
    9 years ago

    Ah, ofcourse, thanks! That is the general formula. Well that would make the numbers like this:

    • Long => Child: 144 - Adult: 192 => 43%
    • Normal => Child: 36 - Adult: 48 => 43%
    • Short => Child: 19,5 - Adult: 24 => 45%

    That does indeed almost bring it back to the pre-toddler days. Still I think spending nearly half your life as a kid is not very realistic and also means that unless you pull out your party tricks with cakes or cowplants most grandparents will not be around to see their grandkids growing up. So I think some more days for the adult stages wouldn't really hurt, but hey that's just my opinion! In the end it's the devs who decide ofcourse! In the meanwhile I am just trying to find a good balance myself using MC Command Center.