High school years

I never take them to school. I hate how they keep learning useless skills they normally wouldn't learn or need. (Yes, I know real life school is like that. But this is a game.) On top of that, classes are so un-interactive that they're not even worth it.

I like prom, though. Sometimes I'll take my teens to prom so they can have fun.

I love High School Years so I always have my teen sims attend school and go to prom. I honestly think it’s just really fun to follow them to school and cause drama with other teen sims. My teen sims always have a thriving social life whenever I follow them to school.

And I love going to prom too just since it gives me an excuse to have my sims wear pretty dresses and all that.

I usually let the teens just go to school on their own - the goals are so repetitive so I get bored. Prom is their night to actually go out and hang out with their classmates; I've been enjoying that still. I give them different outfits for each prom so it's like they are going to homecoming and prom each year.

Right now I'm playing the decades challenge and the school doesn't really work well with the earlier decades, so I send them without going. I will likely go with some of my future generations, at least occasionally. I get bored if I go every day, so I mix things up and follow different members of the family at different times.

As for Prom it's way too often, so I go to some of them. I wish we could edit them out of the calendar and choose how many to keep, same with career day and the other HS-events. Make them a bit more rare. I've also changed the teen lifespan to last about half the current length (I play on long lifespan, one calendar year is more than enough).

If I could wish for anything it would be the option to put school in any world we choose, so we could go to different schools in different worlds. I have yet to live in Copperdale, but think I might when it's time to send my kids to school in this save. Either that or make a dorm for them to move to.

I know when I took my first batch of teens to high school, I did follow my active household, anyway, to class. I used some of that time for my recent Global Superstar, to perform concert gigs on campus, so he wouldn't lose out on the 10,000 Simoleons per concert. Most of the time there is only a six-hour window for the concert to be performed, so it became necessary. That made for a bit of fun. Having other teens from the neighborhood, and not just the prescribed NPCs would have made it far more interesting, too. Alas, even the mod let me down, sorry to say.

If it weren't for my mod that allows me to select which students show up at High school, I would not bother.
The reason I was excited about high school years when I first heard about it was I thought I would have more time to have my teens meet and be friends with my other teens in the various worlds.

So imagine my disappointment when the game began spawning generic townies, or sims from the pack instead of using my other sims.
The mod helped a lot, so I will most likely go to school with my sim. I am not sure if I will bother with prom though. Time is too short to actually enjoy it. It's been a while since I've played the sims. I hope the mod creator is keeping it up to date.

I guess playing only one family with a teen it doesn't matter much to me which teens show up. I downloaded several families with teens from the Gallery just to add to the teen pool already in my game. It was kinda fun to show up and see which teens arrived that day.

I always follow my teen sims to high school. I'm still having fun with the pack in multiple saves. It helps me a lot if I makeover the other teens at school so they fit certain roles and makeover their homes also so it's more interesting for my sims to hang out and make friends. I have them form clubs each with different teens so they have easy ways to meet each other and hang out wherever.

After I modded the game so that I could move the school to Brindleton bay it was more fun. Currently building my own school, feels much better to have a high school in the same world that your sims live in.

Tons of questions re this pack - I added numbers to make it easier to comment on just a few :)

I can't decide whether I should get the HSY pack on the current sale - only 38%, but maybe it takes forever getting to 50% ... but - I want the world, but the pack comes with a few features I don't really fancy that much. So, I wonder how badly those features will affect my existing households and game outside of Copperdale.

1. Not to happy with micro playing like shaving and growing hair or whatever (my sims hardly cook food because their day is to short anyway). We got a teaser with a patch, causing CAS to randomly giving females a hairy chest. I need to fix that in CAS, but if the pack tries to add body hair to most of my in game sims, I'd go crazy. Is there a toggle off, or is it not as bad as I think? From a video I got the impression that sims "get a chance" to grow facial or body hair and that it can be toggled off individually. That sounds like a massive job thinking of my 640 sims, but if only a few get affected, maybe his is a smaller problem that I think?

2. I'm not very interested in playing all the personal/sexual/preferences which the game got lots of content for over the past couple years. My save is more traditional and will stay that way (I just don't want all RL aspects in my game). I think most of this came with HSY, but I might be wrong. Will this pack cause the game to spawn NPCs to be males with female body frame and vice versa, or will it still be up to the simmer to decide these things as desired in CAS?

3. Having crushes might be cute if it happens rarely, but from what I read in the past crushes got out of control, including parents asking to be their child's BFF or even their prom date. Were these things addressed?

4. I will probably not be a busy Social Bunny user. Will it still cause tons of popups re when others posting something for my sim to read? Was it fine tuned to have less impact than it had at release? Some cell phone (too many) idle animations were patched to base game already, so maybe I already got the major share of it... I just worry for getting tons of popups from a service that I don't plan to use.

5. I already made some high schools in my game (requires some pretending, but I'm fine with that), will I be able to replace some of them, or is the feature restricted to this Copperdale or to just one high school per save?

6. Do students have a private room at high school (boarding)? Or do they travel every day?

7. I read that the sports arena behind the school is quite restricted. I've seen cheer leaders practice there, but that is most likely programmed animations linked to their group meeting. Is it possible to walk on the grass, or to run courses when going there alone? Or is the entire ground inaccessible?

8. I will probably not follow my teens to school beyond testing it (and maybe I'll like it enough to follow some of my future teens occasionally). Will a student's grade be negatively affected by not being "followed" to school? Will a D student now risk being expelled? And can A students achieve "early graduation" even if they are not followed to school? Or will that be just like before, sending students off to school and outcome mainly depending on how well prepared they were?

9. Can cheer leading be a freetime interest even if I don't follow teens to school, and can it be performed outside Copperdale (either practicing or performance)? Can my Oasis Springs teen join another local teen to practice cheer leading? I assume you can win something if your cheer leading group does well, but how much time would that take? I mean, playing on rotation my teen could probably gain fun from it, but there might not be enough time to ever reach the top. Is cheer leading restricted to Teen lifestage?

10. I will not play those Influencers designing new trendy outfits etc. It looks like a NPC is involved with it, so I wonder if the trendy outfits can be ignored at all? Will NPCs walk around in silly outfits if the NPC influencer succeeds? How will it affect my game?

11. Pictures from the photo booth - what can you do with them? Is it mainly about new "crazy" teen animations? Are they too small to go on the wall? Can they be added to the postcard corkboard?

Haha, sounds like I'm far far off the target group for this pack, which explains why it is the only EP I did not yet purchase. I think I will like the world, the pillow fight and photo boot seems good, plus I like the chance of getting expelled or graduate early. And, I can always use a proper high school for story telling.