Forum Discussion

GymeaLillie's avatar
GymeaLillie
New Spectator
10 months ago

Highschool graduation causing other teens to age up.

The high-school graduation ceremony ages up other teen Sims. I am a rotational player - surely I am not the only one. It is quite distressing seeing my other teen Sims being forced to grow up without properly completing highschool, having their own birthday, or experiencing their own graduation traditions. Is there any way to stop other teens aging up?

(I am sorry if I have posted this incorrectly or done something wrong. I am an older player who hasn't used any kind of forum in a long time).
  • "SheriSim57;c-18349301" wrote:
    So, how do you graduate without going to the graduation? I play rotationally too, but keep aging off and haven’t taken any sins to graduation yet. I don’t use mods.


    @SheriSim57

    I never used mods either, until now. This one is a huge issue for me, so this is my first exception.

    I have just had my first teen graduate since getting the pack. She was sent her graduation certificate early for some reason, but from what I have read that doesn't always happen. However, she was Valedictorian and had rehearsed her speech, so I really wanted her to go. Plus, this is a game feature I've paid for and I am tired of skipping features due to glitches or oversights.

    Regarding "but keep aging off" - that is the problem. Even if we have aging off, some teens will age up at graduation.

    The mod was really easy, just put that one file in the mods folder. I think you can just put it in when you have a graduation and leave it out at other times, if that helps.


    @EgonVM Thanks for this information too. A lot of my households that have been played are marked "unplayed" by me on purpose for a gameplay reason. I don't play every single household each round, so I need to age up "unplayed" households for one week at the end of every round to make everyone age evenly. Households with key gameplay moments get played, but others wait until another round. From what you have explained, I have caused teens without an upcoming birthday to be at risk. So at graduation, I could go through every single household with a teen and mark them "played", then change it all back afterwards. I guess only homeless townies would appear at the ceremony? This mod file takes a lot less time just to pop in when I need it. I appreciate the explanation though. I haven't seen that mentioned before.
  • You can totally put the mod in just shortly before the ceremony starts and delete it after graduation.
    It's like with the mod that gets rid of pimples that have been stuck on a young adult Sim.

    If you don't attend graduation, I had it happen that my Sims didn't get the graduation traits and/or diploma. That might be an unrelated issue though. The Sims 4 isn't great for rotational gameplay.
    I do have quite some Sims struck with midlife crisis goals and no midlife crisis to complete (also no milestone for getting through Midlife Crisis) because I rotated away from the family with the midlife crisis moodlet still active. I will certainly not do that again because it bothers me a lot.

    Back to graduation: I did have issues with the graduation ceremony not loading at all when I set all teens in my save to 'played' before the ceremony. That was before I decided to do a mod for it, though, so it's been a while.

  • SheriSim's avatar
    SheriSim
    Seasoned Hotshot
    Thank you all for the information about graduation and @83bienchen the information about Midlife crisis too! I personally would rather not have the game play features than have to worry about the glitches and bugs with them. I have had to cheat away lifestyles that my sims were not supposed to develop. And I cheat my dirt pile plants all the time now. I may just have to break down and figure out how to add and take out mods like your graduation one when I decide to have sims graduate. I was trying not to get into mod use, But so many of the features they are making in the sims 4 now are so bugged. A few expansions ago, I could download new expansions, and not worry about anything. With For rent it’s been unplayable with my rotations because I don’t want broken lots and things. I’m certainly going to have to think a bit before playing sims 5 when it comes out. I’ll be keeping a close eye on the competitors coming out, and how well and quickly the sims team are fixing the content for the sims 4. With them opening up the game free to people, and new people downloading broken packs that take months to fix, I can’t see how that is going to be a very positive thing for sims 5 going forward…..
  • "GymeaLillie;c-18349328" wrote:
    @EgonVM Thanks for this information too. A lot of my households that have been played are marked "unplayed" by me on purpose for a gameplay reason. I don't play every single household each round, so I need to age up "unplayed" households for one week at the end of every round to make everyone age evenly. Households with key gameplay moments get played, but others wait until another round. From what you have explained, I have caused teens without an upcoming birthday to be at risk. So at graduation, I could go through every single household with a teen and mark them "played", then change it all back afterwards. I guess only homeless townies would appear at the ceremony? This mod file takes a lot less time just to pop in when I need it. I appreciate the explanation though. I haven't seen that mentioned before.


    Yes, only teens generated randomly would age up.

    The played and unplayed households is a different story. You can always use a birthday cake to age sims up earlier (bake a cake and add birthday candles), but I wouldn't make my played households into unplayed for several reasons:
    • Unplayed sims lose more relationships than played sims.
    • Unplayed sims may lose their mobile phone cover and umbrella preference.
    • Unplayed sims may be put in a NPC position (especially the unemployed ones). If the position requires a skill, they will get it. My retired sim once got into this predictament. She was then retired not from the business career, but from reflexionist career. Don't know how it is now, with Neighborhood Stories doing its things...
    • Building in unplayed households allows you building with infinite funds and no household inventory (like with community lots!). It could be a money exploit though...


    The game has changed so much so I don't know a lot of unplayed effects, but essentially, unplayed sims tend to get reduced in their data so that the save file wouldn't get big. Thus unplayed sims seems to be meant for sims players doesn't care about...
  • SheriSim's avatar
    SheriSim
    Seasoned Hotshot
    "EgonVM;c-18349393" wrote:
    "GymeaLillie;c-18349328" wrote:
    @EgonVM Thanks for this information too. A lot of my households that have been played are marked "unplayed" by me on purpose for a gameplay reason. I don't play every single household each round, so I need to age up "unplayed" households for one week at the end of every round to make everyone age evenly. Households with key gameplay moments get played, but others wait until another round. From what you have explained, I have caused teens without an upcoming birthday to be at risk. So at graduation, I could go through every single household with a teen and mark them "played", then change it all back afterwards. I guess only homeless townies would appear at the ceremony? This mod file takes a lot less time just to pop in when I need it. I appreciate the explanation though. I haven't seen that mentioned before.


    Yes, only teens generated randomly would age up.

    The played and unplayed households is a different story. You can always use a birthday cake to age sims up earlier (bake a cake and add birthday candles), but I wouldn't make my played households into unplayed for several reasons:
    • Unplayed sims lose more relationships than played sims.
    • Unplayed sims may lose their mobile phone cover and umbrella preference.
    • Unplayed sims may be put in a NPC position (especially the unemployed ones). If the position requires a skill, they will get it. My retired sim once got into this predictament. She was then retired not from the business career, but from reflexionist career. Don't know how it is now, with Neighborhood Stories doing its things...
    • Building in unplayed households allows you building with infinite funds and no household inventory (like with community lots!). It could be a money exploit though...


    The game has changed so much so I don't know a lot of unplayed effects, but essentially, unplayed sims tend to get reduced in their data so that the save file wouldn't get big. Thus unplayed sims seems to be meant for sims players doesn't care about...


    I also noticed a couple of times when I marked played households as unplayed and then later put them back to played, that one sim in a family list her job, and with another household one of the sims career changed. The career change one was before neighborhood stories came out. My two rotational saves have neighborhood stories turned off too.