Dorm Life: Little situations you like.

I just finished playing through my first term (yay, my twins both got a B+, I'm stupidly proud of them lol) and I found that they did the dorms really well. The unplayable roomies are always busy doing 'normal' stuff like eating, playing music, doing homework, showering, chatting. They have friends round, they throw parties - I love that it is all so vibrant.

This was a gathering at Foxbury Commons, I don't remember what it was called - something about mixing with the Britechester students, but I thought it was great as there were plenty of sims there and the mascot also turned up. Someone brought a keg along and poured drinks and then the party got underway.

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/66398kpnfojzex2/11-19-19_1-25-51%C2%A0PM.png?dl=0

"elanorbreton;c-17319901" wrote:
I just finished playing through my first term (yay, my twins both got a B+, I'm stupidly proud of them lol) and I found that they did the dorms really well. The unplayable roomies are always busy doing 'normal' stuff like eating, playing music, doing homework, showering, chatting. They have friends round, they throw parties - I love that it is all so vibrant.

This was a gathering at Foxbury Commons, I don't remember what it was called - something about mixing with the Britechester students, but I thought it was great as there were plenty of sims there and the mascot also turned up. Someone brought a keg along and poured drinks and then the party got underway.

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/66398kpnfojzex2/11-19-19_1-25-51%C2%A0PM.png?dl=0

I believe I saw something about a mixer pop-up when I was playing my sims.
It was tempting, but my first term sims were hitting the books hard with no time for side activities.
They will enjoy college life more after they have established a solid GPA for the first couple of terms.

It will be interesting to see how the roomies behave in my custom dorm.
I like the extra visitors: friends, family, and dormie friends and love interests.
The dorm feels really alive.

I love that trophy case, great idea! I haven't been playing so much as redoing all of that hill town, forget the name, I remodeled all but the ones that weren't occupied. I tried to send my spellcaster sim to the dorm and she didn't last past one day, lol. But then again she was used to all her stuff in her house so a tiny bed and desk along with 17 sims in that tiny Darkwing house that we both almost lost our minds. :D She spends her time on campus and at the Magic Realm and actually has time for both. She'll be attending from home until she graduates.

In both student centers I made a small room for spellcasters. It's not much bigger than the rug under the cauldron but it has some shelves for storing potions and that's all I need. Now to go make a special room for the vampires complete with coffins. :D

"DanmanNefarius;c-17626882" wrote:
hmm that's a difficult question....since i generally do not like it at all!! but i do like the authenticity of it and the fact i do not have to babysit every sim in there but yeah… i hate the fact the game just generates more stupid random sims to serve as roomies which are nothing but a nuissance and now i also found out the game can force romance onto my sims without my permission and unless i shift click reset my sims there is absolutely nothing i can do to prevent this meaning i have to lock my sims in their room to prevent this from happening????? yeah that's just another huge reason for me to just get my degrees at home! i do not really enjoy the game forcing my sims into romances with sims i do not want to be part of my gameplay. i prefer the random townies to stay out of my gameplay and yeah...forced romances aren't things i enjoy

"CK213;c-17320760" wrote:

It will be interesting to see how the roomies behave in my custom dorm.
I like the extra visitors: friends, family, and dormie friends and love interests.
The dorm feels really alive.

pretty much this: the dorm lot is more alive than any lot so far in this game though yeah….since i absolutely hate the extreme dominance of the random townies in this game it just doesn't make it enjoyable enough for me to bother because yeah...95% of the visitors are also nothing but randoms….

At one point I was really enjoying it.
I had made over the dormies that had joined my sims and they were really cool sims.
I really liked my sims getting to know them and it was funny that they had love interests, which I made over as well because they were too odd.


My custom dorm was also very enjoyable to play.

But as the semesters went by, I lost them and got more randoms dormies.
I did treat the new students as freshmen and had my sims take advantage of them.




But it was a bummer losing the original students and hardly ever seeing the again unless I called them up.
You should at least see them roaming around campus. and I was getting sick of all the randoms and making over their oddness.
My time with Discover University was a test run as I built and tested all my custom dorms.

I had big plans for a prep-school for my teens prepping for uni.
I did complete it, including an administrator and student guidance counselor, but I lost interest in playing TS4 after Eco Lifestyle came out.

I added a refrigerator and microwave to my dorm (so they could get quick meals) and found it a great place to drag the random food so it didn't spoil so fast. I actually liked dorm life; my Sim had both Observant and Incredibly Friendly, and had earned Good Manners as a teen, so she made friends really fast (and could figure out which ones were okay). She's now living with her university boyfriend who has his degree in Drama, so I have him in the Acting career; they're sharing an apartment in San Myshuno but I'm planning to move them to a house sometime after their first child is born.

"CK213;c-17320760" wrote:

It will be interesting to see how the roomies behave in my custom dorm.
I like the extra visitors: friends, family, and dormie friends and love interests.
The dorm feels really alive.

Yes, I saw you made a lovely build for uni in another thread.

I added a few custom bits to the Foxbury dorm, one item being a yoga mat (a tip I saw in another thread) and my sims used it to keep from getting fat and to become focused for homework. One of the roomies used it now and again.

Another little thing I like about the pack is that my sims would get a thought bubble about someone back home and it said they were thinking about a family member. And, as you said, family coming to visit them.

@elanorbreton The family thought bubbles actually came with Parenthood pack I am pretty sure! :)

Everything @DanmanNefarius said. My happiest memory of the one time I had a sim live in a dorm was when he got his degree and the game told me I could move out. :D I did like it when some random people came in bringing food for everyone, because it meant not having to sit through a loading screen to get something to eat at the cafeteria, but that wouldn't even be an issue if we could have proper kitchens in dorms. :D

So yeah, I'm afraid dorms aren't for me. Something I still have to try, though, is living in one of the normal houses on campus. That way you get to experience life on campus up close with all its festivals and stuff, but also with your own kitchen and without the annoying NPC roommates who won't leave you alone all day. I imagine that could be fun.