With the recent sale High School Years is 50% off. I have avoided this pack for a long time and have zero interest in teens. I personally enjoy playing supernaturals but from time to time also families (especially the younger ages). I already shortened the lifespan of teens back in the sims 2 days. I HATE how without telling us the teen lifestage was prolonged and became dis-proportionally long compared to the child lifestage when this pack was introduced . Just to nudge is into buying this pack. But here I am considering it after all. The world and Build Buy just looks so pretty. If I could get the items without the gameplay I would go for it right away.But I have a a few questions1. how bad is the body hair issue. I know there is no global on/off switch. I would have to go through every sims to disable it sim per sim. Has anyone done this? How long does it take for townies to all become hairy? If there is any mod to completely turn this off, I am willing to give it a try.2. Crushes: how do they work. Will my played sims have crushes on others or will other sims get crushes on my sims. Are there any repercussions if I don't act on them? Will sims automatically gain love interests? I hope not. Is this only for teens?3. Social bunny: again no global on/off option, has to be toggled sim by sim. How intrusive is this feature. Does it mess up my sims relationships.4. Has the issue with not being able to plan holidays been resolved?5. I heard teens kicked out of high school can never re-enroll, is this true?6. Any bugs or glitches I should be aware off? I would be mainly getting the pack for the world and the objects and not play teens any second longer than needed to get the character values from parenthood.

The only issue I have with body hair is that it's not possible to shave in one go both arms and legs. If your sim is hairy all over you will need to go into the shower twice. Would be nice if there was an option to shave entire body. But I read that the hair shaving got broken with For Rent EP.

If you are just buying it for the world and 'stuff' you should be okay. I have played for a while without attending high school (my teens go to the 'regular' high school) and it just plays like I didn't have the pack, except that I have all the stuff in my game and I get pop-ups in the notification area about new outfits at the thrift store, and suggesting my sim posts on social bunny (which I ignore).I do put body hair on some of my sims but I usually disable hair growth so they keep it at the length I choose and I have only noticed it on a few random townies (not on the created ones like the Goths). Oh, I'm not sure if the walking along/looking at phone thing came with this pack but I think it's been toned down anyway. I don't notice it to an annoying degree.It's got some great build buy stuff with it.

In my experience, if I take a sim to visit the thrift store then other sims will arrive and possibly buy an outfit, or even arrive wearing something strange. But if I keep away from the thrift store I don't see anything odd other than the usual townie fashion :D

I haven't played this pack a lot now that I realize... My answer though would be this:I don't know how to answer that for now unfortunately...Crushes seem to be tied to teen life stage (after all, crush stuff are most of the time referenced as TeenRelationshipDrama in the tuning files). These things randomly come up, but if you don't like it, you can have the teen try to overcome it. It's just a sentiment and it's up to players if they decide to go for it or not.Social bunny feature starts working when in the app you add friends there (then it may start messing with relationships a little). Otherwise, you can just make posts there to gain followers. You can also turn this application off if you want.Don't understand the question unfortunately.They shouldn't be able, yes. Sometimes you can find the high school in Join Career options. If your sim gets expelled/dropped out, they cannot join some careers or study a basic degree in universities (Made a list of the available and unavailable careers here if you're interested). However, you can get a high school degree from a computer (takes 24 hours, the progress is saved when you stop). Teens can also graduate early too.Here's a compiled list of bugs on Answers HQ. For now, it's acne staying for young adults if not remedied before aging up and teens being unable to join university organizations and after-school activities (soccer team and e-sports team) when they are in university due to early graduation. Oh, and the graduation ceremony ages up unplayed teens too. Not a bug, but an annoying thing for rotational players.But yeah, as far as I can tell, no interactions from this pack affect the character values though.

1. No body hair issue unless you care about how randomized sims look I haven't noticed any of my sims getting furry without me making them so2. yes and yes unless you turn them off which i did as I still like to pair sims myself so I don't really know 3. no turning off social bunny for everyone its by sim but i barely notice it exists until i get the " social bunny worthy things happened to sim" at which point i deactivate it for all sims in householdidk about rest since i haven't really explored either the school festivals are pretty annoying though since those show up in all sims calendars regardless of age or world they live inI like the world for occults since it has lowkey salem vibes (or thats what me, nordic bean never been to 'merica thinks it looks like)and some items are coolbut yeah gameplay is kind of all over the place and nowhere to be seen if you don't play "modern" teens that muchI say modern cause my save is still in like year 2000 or something with all these ts2 sims I have and it just feels off to me to mix my current teens up with these obviously more 2020 simsit was so weird to me to see freaking Malcolm Landgraab with these kids for example like nope pls get that guy out of there so yeah i just don't play the active school thing much yet while i have these obviously older than hsy teen sims

How intrusive is High School Years?

20 Replies

dianed485
Seasoned Ace
2 years ago
1) You can indeed disable body hair for any sim in cas but you have to go through each category (arm hair, leg hair, torso and back).
The most traumatic to me is when I forget to do that and my female sim ends up with gorilla legs or even worse, a hairy back :lol:
Also there’s no way to shave everywhere at once, so, say your sim has hair on their arms, torso, legs, and back, you have to do four different shaving interactions.

2) You get a pop-up saying your sim has a crush on someone. For some reason my sims always have crushes on same-sex sims, even if I set it up differently in CAS.

3) You only see Social Bunny stuff if you open the app on your sim’s phone, otherwise it doesn’t change anything.

4) I didn’t have the issue.

5) Yes unfortunately it’s true and extremely annoying. They can’t re-enroll at all. I have several teen that are « stuck » out of school now, and I didn’t even do anything to get them expelled, they just had bad grades or maybe got caught doing mischievous interactions autonomously ? I don’t know for sure because it doesn’t say why your sim is expelled and I hadn’t been following them at school when it happened.

6) I was gonna mention point 5), but you already know.

I really like this EP but I do play with teenagers a lot.
elliebreton
Legend
2 years ago
If you are just buying it for the world and 'stuff' you should be okay. I have played for a while without attending high school (my teens go to the 'regular' high school) and it just plays like I didn't have the pack, except that I have all the stuff in my game and I get pop-ups in the notification area about new outfits at the thrift store, and suggesting my sim posts on social bunny (which I ignore).

I do put body hair on some of my sims but I usually disable hair growth so they keep it at the length I choose and I have only noticed it on a few random townies (not on the created ones like the Goths). Oh, I'm not sure if the walking along/looking at phone thing came with this pack but I think it's been toned down anyway. I don't notice it to an annoying degree.

It's got some great build buy stuff with it.
atreya33
Legend
2 years ago
"elanorbreton;c-18350599" wrote:
If you are just buying it for the world and 'stuff' you should be okay. I have played for a while without attending high school (my teens go to the 'regular' high school) and it just plays like I didn't have the pack, except that I have all the stuff in my game and I get pop-ups in the notification area about new outfits at the thrift store, and suggesting my sim posts on social bunny (which I ignore).

I do put body hair on some of my sims but I usually disable hair growth so they keep it at the length I choose and I have only noticed it on a few random townies (not on the created ones like the Goths). Oh, I'm not sure if the walking along/looking at phone thing came with this pack but I think it's been toned down anyway. I don't notice it to an annoying degree.

It's got some great build buy stuff with it.

Oh, I didn't think about the thrift store. I don't plan on using it. Will this do anything if I never make outfits. What worries me a bit is that townies can walk around in thrift store outfits. Is that a thing? I know the base game fashion career allows players to create outfits for townies to wear but has no way to get rid of those trends. Is something similar going on with the thrift store?
elliebreton
Legend
2 years ago
In my experience, if I take a sim to visit the thrift store then other sims will arrive and possibly buy an outfit, or even arrive wearing something strange. But if I keep away from the thrift store I don't see anything odd other than the usual townie fashion :D
atreya33
Legend
2 years ago
"elanorbreton;c-18350674" wrote:
In my experience, if I take a sim to visit the thrift store then other sims will arrive and possibly buy an outfit, or even arrive wearing something strange. But if I keep away from the thrift store I don't see anything odd other than the usual townie fashion :D

That's good news. As long as I stay away from this, my sims will be fine
LiELF
Legend
2 years ago
This is a very interesting thread, as I also don't own the pack but have considered it for parts of the content but didn't want more invasive features that I know I don't like. It's nice to know that the Social Bunny app isn't automatic. I play with a "no autonomous phone" mod anyway, which is glorious, but still has some fears. I definitely don't like situational or automatic outfits that the game chooses for my Sims, so that's a concern for me as well. Body hair and acne do sound like a headache though, and I'm not interested in either of those invading my rotational play. That's a lot of Sims to micromanage. ? I also really hate the T-pose behavior. Putting that in a video game that has a tendency to have a lot of bugs just seems like it wasn't thought through very well. It just ends up being distracting nonsense that would irritate me.

Not sure yet if I'll ever get the pack but I really appreciate seeing everyone's input. There used to be an awesome high school mod that I played with a long time ago and I loved it, maybe I'll look it up, see if it still exists. ?
EgonVM
Seasoned Ace
2 years ago
I will say that though. Mostly as I read that you skip the teen stage and prefer to play with younger stages.

There are no new activities for children.
Yes, the only thing they can do is going on the Ferris wheel and haunted house attraction. They can't play with that football (they could in previous games), they can't use the photo booth (again, they can in the previous games), they can't order Boba tea (they can drink ones left out, but they'll stretch out when inserting a straw, almost like they don't have animation for it), they can't use the escape window (use this knowledge to build adult-only rooms) etc.
And at first, they couldn't do pillow fights too, but Growing Together solved that one.

I get that this pack was made to improve teen life stage, but seriously, I don't get these exclusions (and Discover University even gave children the ability to play with the soccer ball!). And years back I praised The Sims 4 Get Together for allowing children to interact with dart boards, football tables, diving boards etc.
elliebreton
Legend
2 years ago
@LiELF I think the t-pose is limited to the high school. At least, that is the only place I have ever seen it happen and not even very often then. If you are not following teens to high school I doubt if you would ever see it.

Although the main aspect of this pack (going to high school lol) is boring, repetitive and a waste of time IMO, at least they have made the annoyances pretty unavoidable if we want to avoid them.
LiELF
Legend
2 years ago
"elanorbreton;c-18350793" wrote:
@LiELF I think the t-pose is limited to the high school. At least, that is the only place I have ever seen it happen and not even very often then. If you are not following teens to high school I doubt if you would ever see it.

Although the main aspect of this pack (going to high school lol) is boring, repetitive and a waste of time IMO, at least they have made the annoyances pretty unavoidable if we want to avoid them.

Thanks, that's good to know about the T pose. ?

Yeah, I would want my teens to go to highschool but it seems kind of dull and mundane. I want to see anxiety and drama! I want Sims to fight over the same boy, or skip class and get detention, or spread rumors about each other and get upset, or forget their homework and have a stress meltdown. I want to be entertained, lol. I know I've seen a variety of mods for the pack, maybe there's a good teen drama one.
atreya33
Legend
2 years ago
"LiELF;c-18350683" wrote:
This is a very interesting thread, as I also don't own the pack but have considered it for parts of the content but didn't want more invasive features that I know I don't like. It's nice to know that the Social Bunny app isn't automatic. I play with a "no autonomous phone" mod anyway, which is glorious, but still has some fears. I definitely don't like situational or automatic outfits that the game chooses for my Sims, so that's a concern for me as well. Body hair and acne do sound like a headache though, and I'm not interested in either of those invading my rotational play. That's a lot of Sims to micromanage. ? I also really hate the T-pose behavior. Putting that in a video game that has a tendency to have a lot of bugs just seems like it wasn't thought through very well. It just ends up being distracting nonsense that would irritate me.

Not sure yet if I'll ever get the pack but I really appreciate seeing everyone's input. There used to be an awesome high school mod that I played with a long time ago and I loved it, maybe I'll look it up, see if it still exists. ?

I also have the no autonomous phone mod. The phone usage went crazy with the high school years patch, even without the EP. I think a later patch mentioned it being toned down but I haven't removed the mod. I have no interest in my sims hanging on their phone all day, with or without HSY

I also don't get the T-pose thing. Glorifying a bug in the game after simmers have only had bad experiences with T-poses?

"EgonVM;c-18350718" wrote:
I will say that though. Mostly as I read that you skip the teen stage and prefer to play with younger stages.

There are no new activities for children.
Yes, the only thing they can do is going on the Ferris wheel and haunted house attraction. They can't play with that football (they could in previous games), they can't use the photo booth (again, they can in the previous games), they can't order Boba tea (they can drink ones left out, but they'll stretch out when inserting a straw, almost like they don't have animation for it), they can't use the escape window (use this knowledge to build adult-only rooms) etc.
And at first, they couldn't do pillow fights too, but Growing Together solved that one.

I get that this pack was made to improve teen life stage, but seriously, I don't get these exclusions (and Discover University even gave children the ability to play with the soccer ball!). And years back I praised The Sims 4 Get Together for allowing children to interact with dart boards, football tables, diving boards etc.

Too bad there are so few activities for younger sims in this pack. Sims DLC seems to be a hit or miss when it comes to younger ages. Some packs care about them (for example letting them ride on horses, yay) and some just ignore them completely. All I can say is RoM is my favourite DLC despite absent kids gameplay. If children could participate in the magic the pack would have been better as a whole. I wish every pack would consider all sim age groups. Anyway the fact that there is almost nothing for age groups other than teens is probably why this is about the last EP I am missing (besides for rent which isttoo buggy and too early for a 50% sale)

"elanorbreton;c-18350793" wrote:
@LiELF I think the t-pose is limited to the high school. At least, that is the only place I have ever seen it happen and not even very often then. If you are not following teens to high school I doubt if you would ever see it.

Although the main aspect of this pack (going to high school lol) is boring, repetitive and a waste of time IMO, at least they have made the annoyances pretty unavoidable if we want to avoid them.

Thank goodness the T-pose is limited to the high school. The intentional T-pose I should say. Active high school sounds fun for a few times but if it is like regular careers I will switch to sending them alone after some time.

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