I can't be the only one to notice how ridiculous ageing up is, can I?

I agree that the aging process is pretty ridiculous. That's why I've taken to turning off the aging (in the settings under gameplay) and doing it manually as I go.

Hi @thatcherjoe50 @Belladonna74,

Thanks for your feedback!

I have merged your thread to this one by @AlHollandiyah and @Hadron1776, as you seem to share a similar opinion. You might find each others comments interesting 😉

Edited: split the thread again because of next answer not being about the same topic.

-Mai

Yes, thank you. How helpful, I don't think! Typical EA response - translation: "We've got your money, now * off!" I have an ever-growing list of things, I can't believe didn't strike people as ridiculous during QA and testing but, as we're talking about toddlers let's start with a couple of biggies:

1. Parents can take toddlers out the house, dump them in the middle of the street, and they're expected to find their way back home - they're toddlers, not dogs or homing pigeons! How many 2-year-olds have you ever known who've known where 'home' is - never mind how to get there...?! Kids at that age are barely self-aware, they know nothing about their environment. Kids don't really understand where home is until they've started school. To expect a toddler to find their way back home - not to mention not getting mown down by a car in the process - is frankly ludicrous! And other adult Sims seem to think this is all perfectly normal. This would seem to me a clear cut case of neglect, more so than forgetting to feed the kid one in a while. Evidently not. 

2. How is it that a kid who can barely walk can keep their balance enough not to fall into an uncovered pool? Or climb stairs without falling. Or play with all the dangerous stuff found in kitchen cupboards without ending up in A&E? Not to mention the fact the seem to grow 2 feet when it comes to getting food off worktops. Seems the game almost treats toddlers as mini-adults, as they're expected to do many things that are beyond them - or OUGHT to be beyond them, like telling jokes that make sense, for example - even 5-year-olds can't do that. 

3. Toddlers should be learning motor skills - a 1-year-old doesn't yet have the fine motor control needed to pick up a sandwich (evidently nobody at Maxis has ever given a sandwich to a 1-year-old). It's frankly ridiculous that a kid (however old they're supposed to be) can hold a pencil to do homework, but not a crayon to draw. That activity table should be aimed at toddlers, not kids. What's termed 'motor' should really be termed 'agility'. 

4. Speech. If a kid can't verbalise before it can walk, then there's a problem.

5. Diet. Toddlers all look to have kwashiorkor, which is hardly surprising given that the standard food choices for toddler are completely devoid of any form of animal protein. 

There'll be more, trust. me. I'm just too hot and too tired to think straight right now, Frankly, I expected far more for £60 (+EPs+SPs+GPs). 

So that means then that there's * all creative for toddlers, other than the dolls house and the soft toys included in the base game? I'm honestly starting to believe that nobody at Maxis has ever been a child, let alone had contact with any! What kid doesn't play with Duplo? They don't even have access to a BRIO-style train set or mat for playing with cars on! How difficult would that have been...?! 

No sandpit, no paddling pool, no pool toys, no bath toys, no swings, no (pool) slide - we can't even teach 'em to swim or ride a bike! No bedtime routine! There's so much wasted potential - this pack really did cover the bare minimum before it was rushed out.

I'm having problems with the Voidcritter Station - despite buying all 5 card packs, it has no interactions, doesn't matter if I select kid or adult. 

A couple of things:

A Sim lives around 90 sim days total so your estimate of two years per Sim day would make them 180 years old.

Let us instead try with one year per Sim day. That makes them 90 a very reasonable life span.

So 12 days for child and teen plus 24 for YA makes 48. I would call that middle aged wouldn't you?

Then you mention your teens going to school in clothes you don't approve of. You do know that you can change their clothes right? And if you had teens in real life you would likely have had them change the clothes they wanted to go to school in on more than one occasion. 

Kids tell jokes that make little sense but you laugh anyway don't you?

Lastly do remember that this is a game that are not meant to depict real life.

Edit:

I forgot your claim that a YA couldn't have a teenager. So lets examine that.

Lets just say that the YA gets pregnant almost immediately and gives birth at 27 (24+3) 13 years later she is 40 and has a young teenager. That sounds about right to me. What about you can you see a 40 year old  being the mother of a young teenager?

Mate, just to give an example, gypsies become parents at the age of 12-13 years old. So I don't see what's your problem.

@SimCat96 The monster under the bed thing, I could see that for the toddlers but not the children or at least not the children as they are in this game. Definitely agree that they seem too old for that. At least you can put in those lights that seem to prevent the monster under the bed, so that sort of helps. Oh and the activity table... was it Sims 2 or 3 (possibly both?) that had an activity table that was for toddlers? Not sure why toddlers can't use it anymore.

It annoys me that teens are pretty much nothing more than adults in this game. I mean there are really no significant visual differences between them like there was in previous games. At least make them a shorter height so you can tell a difference, because if you have an adult standing next to a teen the only real way to know which is which is by putting your cursor over them. For example I see Cassandra Goth walking around in my current game, she is now at the Adult stage, yet whenever I see her I still just see her as a teen unless I get in real close and see the slight differences in her face.

Also, can we get more variety in the faces of children? Most children look way too similar, and look nothing like what they do as teens/adults. One other thing with children, why do they seem to randomly balloon in weight when becoming teens? My recent household had 5 children, and all but 2 ended up being overweight immediately upon becoming teens even though their weight was fine as children. Now that I think about it, can children even gain or lose weight or is their body type locked to just the one appearance? At least have the child gain weight so it makes sense as a teen, instead of suddenly making them look like a sumo wrestler.

I also deeply miss the age length customization options from Sims 3. Why can't those exist in Sims 4? I know there is some option for age length, but what I'm talking about lets you manually adjust the length of each stage.

If you're willing to use mods, MC Command Center will let you customize how long each life stage lasts.