Can we once and for all retire the "I want my teen Sims to look 12 years old" thing?

Let me just say that regardless of real life, I want shorter teens. It is true that some teens are tall, but rare is the child that shoots up as fast as in the Sims 4. I want that in between stage.

Certainly it has nothing to do with thinking anyone or any size is non-existent. In the Sims, we are accustomed to jumps in size between life stages. Everyone between 18 months and five years are not the same size in real life. Everyone between five and twelve is not the same size in real life. Adding one more size difference for teens would give more variety to the game, not take anything away. For me, the young adult life stage would include 18 to 21 year olds anyway.

Height sliders or varying presets would be even more awesome as it would allow everyone to have what they want.

I do respect your opinion though!

You don't grow a lot after 16 years old but until then teens are usually shorter irl, depends on genetics too, so this "realistic" is quite subjective. Either way in a video game teens being shorter makes sense for the players, it's easier to visually distinguish from older lifestages and better gives a sense of growing while playing through generations. I don't know where you got that, but in TS4 I can only tell teens and YA apart by looking at the UI while hovering the mouse over them, just "paying attention" doesn't cut it. The current visual differences are too subtle, sometimes they even look like elders at first glance depending on what they wear or what hair color the game spawned them with.

All in all they are the same height as adults and young adults and elders because TS4 was meant to be MMO which probably wasn't even suppose to have lifestages at all. After restructuring Maxis had to cut corners where they could and rush an unfinished product to meet deadlines. Making teens a different height meant putting extra work, time and dime on the clothing assets and animations. It's not because they wanted to make them "realistic".

Yeah, honestly, I agree with you. I'd find it a bit odd if teens were much shorter than adults. I think of my teen sims as being 16-17 and most kids that age are not shorter than me. I think the real solution here would be to give sims aged teen or older different height options to choose from, but I doubt that will happen in TS4's time.

The game is more silly than realistic, so I don't need an accurate representation of teenagers. I find the game age teen and child less interesting than the other ages, and slightly more annoying; and every time I visually mistake a teen for a YA sim I get reminded of the main consumer group for this game, which puts me off. For me they could have been excluded from gameplay, but maybe I just have that imfamous trait Hates Children..

Sims2 teens felt more like 13-14 to me, while Sims4 teens seem 16-17. I don't really care either way, as in both games they keep the same look from 13-20 so realism doesn't factor.

But I do wish there was a slight difference in size so it would be easier to tell them from YA. I appreciate being able to hove the cursor over townies and get that info out in the world, but sometimes when I'm manually culling townies it would be nice to be able to tell which ones are teens from the manage households screen.

I understand your argument but I think height would be a good way to make them look more different compared to young adults... I think all that the game does is changing their body shape a bit as you mentioned? Those are details that are pretty difficult to spot.

I never wanted the teens in my game to look like 12 year olds... I just wanted them to look a bit different.

Dress my teens in children's clothes, make youthful faces. Only do it because they act very childish in The Sims 4, don't consider that older teen. My other reason is that, averagely play the old sim E.G. mother, father, cousin. It's not fun to play teens, so I don't like to put them in that main group. I'm content doing this. Not a fan of the other push for pre teen life stage... Will feel like pre teens, and big pre teens. Would deter me from family game play. Open to hear other opinions in the reply.

idk i mean it isnt as big of a thing to me as some players cause like teenagers... honestly don't interest me that much
i have enough irl traumas of that lifestage

but also i feel teens should look more different from young adults and even more act different from young adults

just because well sims is a game and aging up can be viewed sort of like leveling up

and if your sim doesn't change enough between different "levels" what is point of the "levels"

i have same issue with
ya -> adult -> elder stages
because i see no real difference between the stages i hardly end up aging my sims past young adult

like if changing my sims lifestage makes zero difference in their life why would i do that

game should encourage player to explore the new lifestage not just say "have wrinkles i guess" or " i guess your face looks bit less like sloth now congratulations"

and for some people i think the height would just feel like something that separates the lifestage so it doesnt feel complete copy of young adult stage so it would actually feel like something changes between stages though its only visual

in short:
teenagers in particular? don't care
lifestages having differences? i wish.
preteens? absolutely no thanks. I don't need another useless stage

I agree, I'm short IRL so there is maybe an inch difference to my height as a teen. I was hoping for a miraculous growth spurt once I reached adulthood but it never happened. :D I was short as a teen and I'm still short as an adult. I'm barely 5'1, so I never understood the height thing either,almost everyone's taller than me! And of course some teens are really tall. My brother was about 5'10 as a teen. My niece (his daughter) was about 5 inches taller than me when she was in her early teens. Because of my height, I was mistaken for a teen until I was in my mid 20s and still got called "kiddo" by people my age in my 30s. So yeah, so the "teens should be short" thing never really made a whole lot of sense to me but everyone's different I suppose.

"Simmingal;c-17858409" wrote:
idk i mean it isnt as big of a thing to me as some players cause like teenagers... honestly don't interest me that much
i have enough irl traumas of that lifestage

but also i feel teens should look more different from young adults and even more act different from young adults

just because well sims is a game and aging up can be viewed sort of like leveling up

and if your sim doesn't change enough between different "levels" what is point of the "levels"

i have same issue with
ya -> adult -> elder stages
because i see no real difference between the stages i hardly end up aging my sims past young adult

like if changing my sims lifestage makes zero difference in their life why would i do that

game should encourage player to explore the new lifestage not just say "have wrinkles i guess" or " i guess your face looks bit less like sloth now congratulations"

and for some people i think the height would just feel like something that separates the lifestage so it doesnt feel complete copy of young adult stage so it would actually feel like something changes between stages though its only visual

in short:
teenagers in particular? don't care
lifestages having differences? i wish.
preteens? absolutely no thanks. I don't need another useless stage

I.D.K. About no difference with elders, I am unable to play with them for fear of death. It was a poor choice in my mind, It is so sad to watch an elder in their last days, even if they are dolls virtual... :(