Sims 4 High School Year's Negative thread

"Coconut27;c-18248478" wrote:
Since playing with the GwT pack in my game, i’ve gotten more into going to high school with my teen sim and as i play i’ve gotten more background on the functionalities of the HSY pack. I do kind of love the concept of it and i’ve actually been going with them to school everyday after i addded a mod to allow more HS students (makes school more lively) and now I have more thoughts on it.

1. I do enjoy the different classes they take each day BUT i wish there had been different “ask question about…” interaction with the teacher for each class subject.
2. wish there was a “study for exams together” option for teen sims who are friends so they can study during free time.
3. Career day is ok…but even just one extra little thing like “take career pamphlet” from each table with a tiny written pop up describing the job while the sim “reads” the pamphlet would’ve done and i’d have been happy.
4. The sports. they are so so boring. the animations for cheer are really cool, but that’s all it is. just some cheer moves. no pep rallies on the football field. They could’ve had that during cheer day and have a cheerleader sim “start pep rally” or something where they cheer and others near them on the field join in on watching and shouting/clapping along with excitement. Football is just tossing a ball. pointless. I wish there had been more to it, either on the field or a rabbit hole building for sims to “attend football game” and then they get like a “school spirit” moodlet and we learn if the team wins or loses. that’s it. just SOMETHING else.
5. I don’t understand at all why they can’t have a PT job AND be in an after school club. My sims influencer job is from 5:30-7:30am.
6. The pier. it is always deserted. it is the most unlively part of ANY world in the game i’ve ever encountered. Also idk if it’s a mod conflict or a known glitch (i’ll have to look into it) but my sim can only ride the rides alone, there’s a routing issue that won’t allow them to ride with someone else.

these are all my current thoughts after playing more in depth. it had so much potential to be a reallyyyy fun and game-changing pack for the teen life stage. This pack is the one i’m most upset about because i love playing as teens in the sims games. they are grown up enough to do more things yet don’t have to deal with adult life yet.

Agreed. though with sports, it would be hard to program a whole sports game event...

Classes are indeed such a missed opportunity. You either attend it and nicely take notes or skip it and try to avoid the principal patrolling the school or otherwise you'll get detention. And then there are also chance cards that are more interesting than classes itself.

If I'd were to design the classes, I'd do like so:

• Class tones: learning hard, normal, goofing off, trying to talk to sims, not paying attention, sleeping etc. So that they affect the performance and fun need. Plus goofing off, sleeping, and constantly trying to talk with classmates could lead to detention.
  
• Interactions during class: Trying to talk to classmates, asking questions, quickly checking the phone etc.
  
• Sometimes there are group assignments, which sees students working together on one project during the lesson.
  
• Ability for good students to give lessons themselves (I gave an English lesson once in middle school).
  
• Sometimes students get out laptops for a class to study (especially in Computer Science). If a class is assigned to a room with computers on the desks (let's say it has to be enough for all the students), the students will use the computers during the lesson.

Agreed about part-time jobs. You can either have them early in the morning or at weekends. So additional times would be great.
What is funny is that the same issue was in The Sims 3: teens in after-school activities could only take up part-time job in the Mausoleum due to it being the only job not to go against the time of after-school activities.

"Childrenofhurin;c-18249041" wrote:

"JustinB113;c-18248674" wrote:

"Childrenofhurin;c-18248671" wrote:

"Elisdream;c-18244574" wrote:
The rides in the amusement park should have been activities and objects that you could find in build mode and place in other worlds.

You should be able to build your own school.

Teens height should have been toned down.

We could have gotten at leat two different heights and body presets to simulate teens and pre teens.

I honestly don't care about having a whole process of growing hair, etc. (body hair should be base game anyways, >skin details). I feel like that's wasted energy and money, they should have put it into fixing more basic features.

In my opinion High-schools should be more like the University, you have classes that are rabbit holes but you can actually attend them and walk between buildings. And the rest, the fun things, like soccer games, clubs, etc should be real events inside different locations in the high-school campus.

I agree I wish we could build schools in other worlds. I get that the festival events are tied to the school neighbourhood, but personally I would rather forgo those and put schools anywhere.

I think the lot itself is an issue too. It’s a huge lot and there’s a lot of decorations off the lot as well. Not only are we tied to one specific world but I’d say we’re tied to having a big USA style high school. Which wasn’t the experience for many of us. Schools are more diverse than universities. My school was a very small two story building that would take up a fraction of this lot.

I decided just to not send my country living sim there because I couldn’t believe it was in the same country. Which isn’t a problem sims usually has. I could kinda ignore the cheerleading etc, but cant ignore the big football field and the big yellow bus and the huge car park. You can’t make a realistic British or Japanese school experience in Copperdale really.

Yeah I agree with this, I’m disappointed they made the school so narrowly focused to the US. Even as an Australian (which is very similar to the US in many respects) I found it surprisingly unrelatable.

I kind of wish they had made active schools in previous sims games- this pack felt very much like a first attempt, in a way that university really didn’t (I really like the way university works in TS4, IMHO much better balanced and more flexible than previous versions).

Agreed. Though my high school was voluntary (thus little to no bullies in my school), some international element could be there too.

My high school though took the "preparation for university" approach. That meant the following:

• Sometimes we had to study independently. Sometimes the teacher was sick and we were given materials and told to study. Plus there were three days in the whole school year where we studied independently at home (or whereever else besides the school).
  
• Elective classes. Plus the requirement to take enough classes to graduate.
  
• Actually free cafeteria food. Though I always opted to go home during lunch to eat there.
  
• A research/practical project that had to be done during high school years (otherwise you couldn't graduate).
  
• Guest lectures.
  
• "Detention" wasn't forced and wasn't there for punishment and to take away some time. Rather, it was voluntary and there to redo a test, whether it was because you were absent or got a bad result (or just wanted to boost your ego by getting a better result).

Though I do understand the approach: I don't exactly know how high schools operate elsewhere myself, so I can only rely on my experience and some snippets of others' experience to build my own in-game high school system.