YA vs Adult?

"JoAnne65;15517291" wrote:
(I'd rather call the stages adult and middle aged by the way, because there's some confusion as YA in Sims 2 means something different than it does in Sims 2)

"luthienrising;15517236" wrote:
I hope they'll differentiate by more than they do now - which is by appearance and by who gets attracted to venues (more YAs at nightclubs, more Adults at bars). I also like being able to limit a club to younger adults or older but not elder adults. Speaking as an Adult, I do like that there's an appearance shift partway between not-Teen-anymore and Elder. Not keen on the Sims 3 "midlife crisis" back, but I could live with it if I could cheat it away for individuals where it makes no sense to in my headcanon. Not really sure what else would make for meaningful new differentiating gameplay. Lower fertility chances, maybe?

I do like the idea of the midlife crisis, because I like anything that sets a life stage apart, but I can't say I use it much. The looking in the mirror, counting wrinkles, and checking the love handles I like as a detail. I also like how midlife crisis doesn't happen to every sim, though it sometimes does feel off that the game decides for me which sim will have one (which is probably what you mean when you say you'd want to be able to cheat it away..., isn't it a moodlet by the way?). So basically I like the idea, I wonder though if they could do it in better ways. More fun than just getting wishes to earn LTR points for sims that - for me anyway - already have all the LTR they can wish for. It's nice the game hands ideas, challenging the player to make the middle aged do certain things some middle aged do. I'd like the lower fertility idea, and no more fertility after x days into the life stage.

I also want a much bigger difference in appearance, sims really looking older.

Yeah, I found that midlife crisis seemed the norm in Sims 3. But I don't see how they could design a reasonable system to predict which Sims I think would get one and which wouldn't, you know what I mean? I do sometimes see my peers going through this sort of thing - worrying if they'll have accomplished anything by retirement, etc. Now and then someone buys that flashy motorcycle. But there's just not a whole lot of gameplay there, in the end.

I'd like to see Sims worry more over their appearance, but then I also am not keen on how that normalizes Appearing Adult = Bad. One of the things I like about Sims is that they don't discriminate based on appearance. They don't feel bad because they need glasses, or because they're not skinny. So why should they feel bad because their skin or hair aged? (FWIW, I see my peers embracing their grey/white hair or taking advantage of it to dye fun colours without needing a bleach step.)

So yeah, not so helpful.

Maybe if some Sims showed a bit more aging earlier than others? More early grey in particular. Even if it just happens at the turns-Adult moment. (We don't all play with aging on.) Almost everyone my husband and I went to school with is going grey (he's not, but he's got weird hair genes).