Pitfalls of early graduation from high school (may be spoilers)

University club activities thing sounds like being teen is the problem. Could be that they wanted to change it and something went wrong so maybe reporting it on Answers HQ bug report could help. But they didn’t program kids to have pillow fight which is weird at best so maybe it was on purpose after all.

"Olalla1986;c-18170334" wrote:
University club activities thing sounds like being teen is the problem. Could be that they wanted to change it and something went wrong so maybe reporting it on Answers HQ bug report could help. But they didn’t program kids to have pillow fight which is weird at best so maybe it was on purpose after all.

Yes, being a teen is the problem. It would take all of 2 minutes to change the club ones (and probably the e-gamer and soccer), all it needs is to have teen added under ages. So it would be hard to believe they just left it out accidently. My guess is it had to do more with some weird belief that clubs for teens were "inappropriate" or "Unrealistic" or something. But it's possible that no one thought of or spotted it due to lack of play testing.

As to the pillow fights, it's like when they added bikes; this pack was aimed at teens, and adding kids would have meant adding another set of animations. Even though they should have; stupid and cheap not to. Maybe even two sets since you'd have to have teens/adults (teens/adults/elders are interchangeable due to height) vs kids, too. And despite the hefty price tag on the pack, they hate doing new animations.

Interesting fact; the two college spirit corps are called "Party" and "Prank" in background. Maybe that was all they could come up with, but they might have even been different types of clubs at first.

I see.

Graduation Ceremonies aren't supposed to happen to early graduates. In fact, one of the things the game tells you when asking whether you want to graduate early or not is that the graduation ceremony won't happen. These graduation ceremonies only happen on Sundays when the sim ages up to young adult, though going there will age up other teens too (as a rotational player, I hate it).

I have a theory why dropping out message also shows. Dropping out is high school equivalent of quitting a career and getting expelled is high school equivalent of getting fired from a career. But you can't "graduate early" from a career. In fact, it removes your sim from the high school. So, the game sees that your sim is removed from the high school and also sees that your sim isn't expelled, thus dropping out message will be shown.

That is disappointing. Teens can't join the university activities. And university organizations are excluded too? Come on! Teen werewolves can join werewolf packs!
And excluding children are really disappointing. The only new things they can use are the Ferris wheel and the Haunted House (Love Tunnel will show a message that it's not for children). That's it. Rabbit holes! The world even come with new pre-made children! Like come on! Even Discover University had more things children could do (play with the soccer ball)!

The different college spirit corps have an interesting code-naming instead. "Party" is for UBrite spirit corp while "Prank" is for Foxbury spirit corp. I don't know why these are named so.
Another code-naming fact is that UBrite is known as "Art" and Foxbury is known as "Science". The name reason is simple: the distinguished degrees. This full name comes in handy when you use cheats to make your own professors. In addition, degree traits with "BA" are from UBrite while degree traits with "BS" are from Foxbury. The letters A and S are simple (Art and Science respectively), but I guess the B is for Bachelor.

You're probably right about the dropping out message, but it is bad programming (or lazy at best). Could have put in a separate message if it HAS to kick one out, like "____ is finished with High School" instead of leaving players to wonder if something got borked. And yeah, I knew graduation wasn't going to happen if I graduated early (not a bug, and it makes sense); more of an infomercial to other players considering it. But you really should get a diploma in the mail, and I never did (bugged or not I have no idea).

"ravynwolvf;c-18170476" wrote:
You're probably right about the dropping out message, but it is bad programming (or lazy at best). Could have put in a separate message if it HAS to kick one out, like "____ is finished with High School" instead of leaving players to wonder if something got borked. And yeah, I knew graduation wasn't going to happen if I graduated early (not a bug, and it makes sense); more of an infomercial to other players considering it. But you really should get a diploma in the mail, and I never did (bugged or not I have no idea).

That is true. In fact, if your sim ages up to young adult, you'll also get a notification that their high school diploma will arrive through mail tomorrow. That message didn't come when my sim graduated early. In fact, my sim didn't receive it too.

Well, one theory may be that there isn't a diploma in game for graduating early. We have normal diploma, with honors diploma, and valedictorian diploma, all available in the normal build mode (no diplomas in the debug). Though why not have early graduate diplomas is beyond me...

Interesting. I allowed the youngest Teen in my household to go ahead and graduate early, and she got nothing but accolades thrown her way. Now, so far no graduation ceremony, but she never got the Drop-Out moniker either. Unlike her older Teen brother who slogged his way through until he aged up just to be branded a Drop-Out. Now, he was able to go online, (I checked) and could, for 250 Simoleons, get his diploma so he could find a descent career, but since he's already a Global Superstar making Simoleons hand over fist, why bother? It's just annoying to me. I removed questionable mods, that I thought might be interfering and rolled back to just prior to his aging up, and yet he still got labeled a Drop Out, despite his checking on the computer the night before to learn he was carrying Straight A's! So, you tell me.

"ravynwolvf;c-18170583" wrote:

"GalacticGal;c-18170574" wrote:
Interesting. I allowed the youngest Teen in my household to go ahead and graduate early, and she got nothing but accolades thrown her way. Now, so far no graduation ceremony, but she never got the Drop-Out moniker either. Unlike her older Teen brother who slogged his way through until he aged up just to be branded a Drop-Out. Now, he was able to go online, (I checked) and could, for 250 Simoleons, get his diploma so he could find a descent career, but since he's already a Global Superstar making Simoleons hand over fist, why bother? It's just annoying to me. I removed questionable mods, that I thought might be interfering and rolled back to just prior to his aging up, and yet he still got labeled a Drop Out, despite his checking on the computer the night before to learn he was carrying Straight A's! So, you tell me.

I use a fair number of mods; mostly my own I've made. And I've found that when a new pack comes out, easily 75% of the things that aren't working right are bugs in the pack, even without updating the mods. There are just so many errors in packs like High School that they don't even compare to what mods or even outdated mods cause.

That drop out business, who knows? It may even depend on how you choose to graduate early. I did it on the PC, but I think you can do it by accepting the phone call invitation to graduate, too (which I'd modded off, because I was sick of getting it every day). Maybe with the call you don't get the drop out bit.

That is indeed true. I'll bring out some awesome bugs I've seen!

• If you have a table (or other surface) under a bunk bed, the objects on/attached to the table disappear when you load back into the lot. I have seen it happen when I've the pre-September purchase exclusive objects and the new computers on my lot.
  
• Graduation ceremony is a mess. I had the valedictorian give speech, then the principal gave a diploma to the valedictorian, then that was it. I had to direct my sim to get her diploma because otherwise she would miss it.
  
• I do love seeing Social Bunny posts from the siblings on the same lot. You're having a pillow fight? No! You're eating a meal with your family!
  
• My teen goes to the school and gets a call from their their parent asking their child if they should try for baby. I don't know if I want a sibling right now, I'm trying to learn at school!
  
• Teachers aren't there because their décor preferences. Students skip classes because of their décor preferences. It's worth skipping classes because this table is beautiful/ugly. Priorities, man...
  
• A child with no maxed social skill goes into the Ferris wheel and gets their Mischief skill boosted. As social need wasn't maxed, nothing actually happened...
  
• Why can I take romantic selfies with siblings? With Moschino stuff, sims that were related cannot be put in romantic pose when you take a picture of them.
  
• People report sims randomly getting expelled. People report grades never raising. The cheat to raise the grade doesn't work anymore.
  
• Excuse me, why can't children use photo booths and play with footballs? They can in previous games!
  
• Sometimes two sims go to the photo booth to take a photo. They'll never get a photo...
  
• If you want to make a grown-up room, don't use a door. Use that escape window instead!
  
• I sold a Trendi outfit for 5,555,555 Simoleons! I won this game!
  
• Trendi outfits that are for sale are being used as a sleepwear.
  
• If there's a fire drill before lunch, you won't be getting that lunch anymore!

I should at some point make a BugFest 2022 discussion (and include a link to EAHelp so it won't get closed)...

Hmm… since I would rather avoid the graduation ceremony not having to do it if one is done early is a feature. Good to know.

As I suspected, it took me all of ten minutes to mod my teen the ability to join clubs in University. He's already done what he wanted to as an e-gamer, and is now on the spirit, debate, & art squads/clubs and the soccer team. Works perfectly. It just feels like if you had two diehard sims players/gamers on the team just to try the games with the packs they would at least be so much more complete.

So I realize I'm playing the game kind of unconventionally right now, but. So as I posted in the opening, I graduated my teen early. He then went on to Britechester and got a degree. Then I saved him to my library, because I wanted to put him in a fresh world with brand new sims. Well, MOST of it worked okay, except now the game thinks he (the copy in a new world) still is a high school student, even though he has a college degree. So something doesn't save to the library right graduating early. It would be interesting if anyone has a sim who just graduated this way but hasn't gone on to college yet to try and save the sim and put him in a new world and see if it also thinks he/she's still a high schooler.

All I know is my college educated sim isn't keen on going back to high school (insert 80's whacky movie here) but doesn't want to age up for fear of being labelled a drop out. And he still can't get an adult job, either.