"ignominiusrex;c-18109269" wrote:
I'm really interested in what people who might know, can share on this! You're so right about how chinchy the space is. Very little scope for doing and building.
Yes it is. If I were the lead designer, I'd taken this obvious into consideration. Instead of creating 2 schools, create a single University with 2 colleges. The college of liberal Arts (Brichester U) and the College of Engineering & Science (Foxbury). Allow sims to take classes freely between these colleges. This would give you more build/buy space to place lots, dorms/Greek houses, and off campus residences for your sims to have a superior Uni experience. Why did the design decision for Uni in TS4 have to become so ridiculously complex? Why not stick to a formula that actually WORKED for over a DECADE? If the devs were so set on creating 2 competing schools, then why not create TWO neighborhoods for each University? Allow simmers to decide whether they want to turn on progression in the non played Uni hood like you can in any other hood? And if that's the case, guarantee that all YA sims in the unplayed Uni hood graduate with a minimum of a B grade?
This traditional design would've worked far better for sim relationships. Just ask any simmer who plays large families like me.
It's virtually impossible to progress your 4-6+ Brady Bunch household in the 2 Uni school setup. So if some of your big sim family are geeks v. social butterflies, you're screwed. Any sandbox goals to give your geek & social butterfly sims the best career starts is insanely challenging. Because it's practically impossible to keep your Tech & Liberal Arts major sims in superior academic standing when you're busy switching between the schools. So they'll end up flunking out of their distinguished degree programs. Because the game stagnates sim degree progression once you switch between Unis. Where's the bloody *headdesk* smiley when you need it??? >:)
And because of this stagnation, you can't enjoy the whole point of college. Which IMO, is the dorm life & larking around the campus hood.
All fundamental QoL game mechanics which EIGHTEEN YEAR OLD LEGACY GEN TS2 continues to put TS4 to shame. Even if your sims are living together in the Gibbs Hill townie neutral zone, their socialization opportunities are still limited. My weak workaround for this gamebreaker was to form a social/adventuring club. Which would kill 2 birds with one stone: instead of studying electives, have my sims do social club oriented activities each weekend. Activities that would give my sims the same career/socialization skills they'd get from studying additional class electives. Traveling to hoods like Selvadorada and Mt Komorebi each weekend to improve my sims fitness/athletic, charisma, logic etc skills while socializing to keep their relationship status. Hell I got so desperate, that I used Zero's longer Uni terms to give my tech and social butterfly sims a gap year. Had them all travel to Evergreen Harbor regardless of their major. Where they would put their skills to use working on a green SimEarth humanitarian project. Helping their fellow Sim Citizens clean up polluted Evergreen Harbor and save the environment.
But NO. Thanks to academic/degree progression stagnation, I'm forced to waste this precious little R&R time on the weekends making my sims keep up their grades. >:) >:) >:)
Nothing beats trying to reward your stressed sims for a tough week of classes with a well deserved vacation to Sulani. Where they can get a brief respite from relaxing on the beach. And working on that much needed tan. Only to cringe when you realize
ALL of them have degree progression PTSD. So the instant you've switched off a sim after giving them a recreational activity, they're instantly driven to be responsible. They promptly ditch their Kava juice/sunbathing R&R/pool floatie/beach towel, head for the nearest table on the lot, whip out their homework from their butts, and then proceed to study. :s >:) Hell if it weren't for Arckange's show grades mod, every one of my sims would've flunked Uni with an F to date. And those were sims I was actually aggressively playing!
So even if they attend the same Uni school, socialization and trying to maintain good relationships is near impossible. Festive events like Spice Market, seasonal holidays etc. are pointless. All the free time they have is on the weekends. Where my poor sims end up with starring roles yet again in The Breakfast Club in detention. Just so they can catch up with their homework....
That remained the case even if you keep your adventure club sims local hanging out in Gibbs Hill. Even after I took that big waste of space library lot. Transformed it into the 5 story + basement Gaia sized obelisk sky scrapper of an architectural aberration aka the current Mall of Briechester. If I didn't know better, I'd swear the townes of Gibbs Hill have been secretly voting to fire me as The Builder since I constructed that thing. Because no it's not a generic lot type. But yet the leviathan thing has remained underutilized and mostly vacant by townies like the Pleasants to date...
This degree progression stagnation & poor QoL out of class issues were NEVER an issue in TS2 or TS3. Simply because your sims ALLL attended A SINGLE UNIVERSITY/COLLEGE in a SINGLE Uni college town. Smh. /end of rant>
