Observations as a Toddler to a Teen
My first teen is about to take the brave step into young adulthood, and to her I say, "congratulations, now get a job!" This experience has left me with some thoughts I'd like to share with all of yo...
Forum Discussion
The furniture babies are, of course, terrible. Relics from a time before toddlers when EAxis couldn't be bothered with more than two age groups: children and... the rest that comes after children clumped together without much distinction.
Toddlers get very little attention when it comes to new game play, interactions, cas items, distinction between boys and girls (mostly being distinctly boys - girls have plenty of cas assets that allow you to make distinct girl toddlers, but for boys everything seems to be pretty much unisex, which boys aren't), and objects in new game content released since their introduction in Sims 4. Save that one stuff pack I suppose, but by now we're due for a second toddler focused stuff pack just to catch up to all the stuff toddlers missed out of in the other packs since. (I'm looking at you no-fish-tail-merfolk-toddler).
Since children have been around as a distinct age group since launch, they're the most fleshed out, but could use a bit more refreshing new game play every now and then.
I wouldn't want this though: "making about 50% of children and 33% of teens Scouts". Scouting is not a thing everywhere in the world. And condemning a large swath of youths in my game to this activity as a standard ingame default would not make me happy. I never understood players complaining their sims never meeting other sims or their sim worlds being "empty". All worlds come with premade sims that wander around in these worlds, sims 4 even generates random sims to populate the worlds. But if you want to increase a specific demographic, just roll what type of sims you want more of in your game in cas and let them loose in your worlds. You want your teen sim to know more other teen sims, make more in cas, add them to the world as an unplayed household, have your teen visit a park and there are bound to be plenty of other teens they can meet (this goes even faster if it's a teen hangout). Any random sim I play ends up with a whole list of new acquaintances in their social interface after just visiting a park, gym, and/or bar and interacting with all the other sims that will spawn at these places.
One of the things that annoys me the most about teens is their homework. They always get new homework/have their homework requirements reset during schooldays. Never a day without homework. It's always the same amount. And it always takes the same amount of way too much time. Even a genius teen doesn't do their homework faster. I wouldn't mind if there was more variation in the time a teen has to spend on their homework. I've tried a single teen household and it's basically go to school, take care of basic needs other than sleeping when they return, do homework, sleep for 8 hours, repeat until you actually get to do something else with that teen during 2 days of the weekend (unless they're scouts, because then they also have to do stupid scouting stuff. Of course they could also lose a lot of time with a job instead of having fun, but that means they at least earn some simoleons to afford having fun).
The other thing that annoys me about teens is when they go into a "phase", meant to simulate a teen's "hormonal imbalance", giving them mood swings. Seriously, have you ever met a woman or a millennial? These phases are so not restricted to teens in real life. In the sims they are also way to random, each phase hits every teen the same way, lasts the same amount of time, and as players, or the rest of the household, we seem to just have to ride out our teens' phases as there doesn't seem to be a way to prematurely end one of these mood swings with interactions, potions, objects, etc (at least I haven't found one). If sims were to have, oh, I don't know, personalities maybe, then the way a certain phase affects a sim could be different from sim to sim, with some not being affected at all and others anywhere between mild and maybe once or twice during that age stage to extreme and often based on their personality.
Toddlers get very little attention when it comes to new game play, interactions, cas items, distinction between boys and girls (mostly being distinctly boys - girls have plenty of cas assets that allow you to make distinct girl toddlers, but for boys everything seems to be pretty much unisex, which boys aren't), and objects in new game content released since their introduction in Sims 4. Save that one stuff pack I suppose, but by now we're due for a second toddler focused stuff pack just to catch up to all the stuff toddlers missed out of in the other packs since. (I'm looking at you no-fish-tail-merfolk-toddler).
Since children have been around as a distinct age group since launch, they're the most fleshed out, but could use a bit more refreshing new game play every now and then.
I wouldn't want this though: "making about 50% of children and 33% of teens Scouts". Scouting is not a thing everywhere in the world. And condemning a large swath of youths in my game to this activity as a standard ingame default would not make me happy. I never understood players complaining their sims never meeting other sims or their sim worlds being "empty". All worlds come with premade sims that wander around in these worlds, sims 4 even generates random sims to populate the worlds. But if you want to increase a specific demographic, just roll what type of sims you want more of in your game in cas and let them loose in your worlds. You want your teen sim to know more other teen sims, make more in cas, add them to the world as an unplayed household, have your teen visit a park and there are bound to be plenty of other teens they can meet (this goes even faster if it's a teen hangout). Any random sim I play ends up with a whole list of new acquaintances in their social interface after just visiting a park, gym, and/or bar and interacting with all the other sims that will spawn at these places.
One of the things that annoys me the most about teens is their homework. They always get new homework/have their homework requirements reset during schooldays. Never a day without homework. It's always the same amount. And it always takes the same amount of way too much time. Even a genius teen doesn't do their homework faster. I wouldn't mind if there was more variation in the time a teen has to spend on their homework. I've tried a single teen household and it's basically go to school, take care of basic needs other than sleeping when they return, do homework, sleep for 8 hours, repeat until you actually get to do something else with that teen during 2 days of the weekend (unless they're scouts, because then they also have to do stupid scouting stuff. Of course they could also lose a lot of time with a job instead of having fun, but that means they at least earn some simoleons to afford having fun).
The other thing that annoys me about teens is when they go into a "phase", meant to simulate a teen's "hormonal imbalance", giving them mood swings. Seriously, have you ever met a woman or a millennial? These phases are so not restricted to teens in real life. In the sims they are also way to random, each phase hits every teen the same way, lasts the same amount of time, and as players, or the rest of the household, we seem to just have to ride out our teens' phases as there doesn't seem to be a way to prematurely end one of these mood swings with interactions, potions, objects, etc (at least I haven't found one). If sims were to have, oh, I don't know, personalities maybe, then the way a certain phase affects a sim could be different from sim to sim, with some not being affected at all and others anywhere between mild and maybe once or twice during that age stage to extreme and often based on their personality.
Featured Places
