My main complaint with the pack so far is that it's so... Gen Z. I get that that seems to be the Sims' target demographic right now and the only generation that's in high school in real life right now, but I was hoping for something a little more generic that spans multiple generations. Prom, pranks, American Football, and Cheerleading are all generic enough and the kind of stuff was hoping for/expecting but pronouns (especially with one of the main characters having multiple she/they pronouns), the Trendi app, the thrift/boba tea shop and the whole "influencer" thing definitely feel like Gen Z concepts and I'm worried about the relatability of this pack since it seems so different than my own high school experience.
Now, before anyone comes at me and says that "everyone has pronouns" or that "thrifting has been around forever" or anything like that, I know they have but I'm simply saying that I feel none of these things were super relevant or ingrained into our culture until the past few years or so. Or at least they weren't where I grew up. I graduated in 2016 and live in a rather small, more rural town. When I was in school stating your pronouns simply wasn't a thing and I didn't even know Nonbinary was a thing, like existed even until about 2018 maybe? And thrift-shops weren't something "cool" or popular when I was in high school either. They were places you either shopped at because you were poor or because you were looking for costume pieces and didn't want to spend a lot. This whole "substantial fashion" movement I don't think even existed either. And influencers DEFINTELY weren't a thing when I was in school.
I also noticed a lack of cliques? (Except for maybe the cheerleaders and football team.) At least as far as the trailer goes. Maybe I'm just so out of the loop these days despite graduating what I thought was fairly recently but cliques were DEFINTELY still around when I was still in school.
I'm also concerned about how many of these things are going to be tied to the teenage lifestage directly. Some things of course should be like prom and sneaking out. But others like football, cheerleading, sitting cross legged... should be accessible by YA+ as well. Football and cheerleading for instance are still a big part of American colleges and although Britchester is supposedly British inspired I would like to have the option for cheerleading and football for my YA Sims as well, but I have a bad feeling I may need to depend on modders to do that.
To be fair no implementation will ever match your personal experience. For example my university graduation was a cleared out room, a table in the middle with a stack of diplomas and a guy who called students alphabetically, gave them their diploma and shock their hands. No fancy dresses, no hats you throw into the air, no band or party.
(it was a technical university, not a "true" one even though the degree was the same).
The pack seems to aim at the Hollywood High School experience you know from movies and series coupled with how middle aged men think todays teenager are. And personally I think that is an legitimate approach.
I read through the leak (which sounds credible as it seems to be an article that was released to early) I am still not convinced that the pack will give much value to me, but the low amount of classes a day would at least allow some social interaction.
The only thing I am impressed about are the negative consequences of not graduading. You can work around them but this is imo a step into the right direction.
The patch that comes alongside the DLC seems to be the real highlight and I hope the article is correct and EA implements those mechanics well (and makes them optional)
I have no idea why people want active school classes.
Me neither...dont know about others, but my classes were rather boring, listen to the teacher, take notes, raise hand if you got a question or answer...try not to fall asleep, doodle out of boredom...
Am I missing some sort of great activity other people do during a class?
One time during a danish class my classmate tried to burp the whole alphabet, guess that could be something?
I have fingers crossed that if this pack can deliver a good active high school that we can have active elementary schools. I would love to see active uni classes, but that requires a pack refresh and it looks like pack refreshes have been abandoned.
May I ask you what an active class would entail for you?
What would you want your sims to do, other than sit there and listen, cuz I just cant see how classes can be fun, especially given how long sims take to do anything...like I could see something like doing experiment during chem class, but how long would that class have to be 2-3h...cant have many classes in one day then😅
I have fingers crossed that if this pack can deliver a good active high school that we can have active elementary schools. I would love to see active uni classes, but that requires a pack refresh and it looks like pack refreshes have been abandoned.
May I ask you what an active class would entail for you?
What would you want your sims to do, other than sit there and listen, cuz I just cant see how classes can be fun, especially given how long sims take to do anything...like I could see something like doing experiment during chem class, but how long would that class have to be 2-3h...cant have many classes in one day then😅
I agree as this may be boring unless there is a lot of activities that makes them more active where you can interact with them.
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I think my main annoyance with an Active school day is that I expect there will be a pop-up every day at 8 asking if I want to join my sim at school or send them alone (or something similar) - possibly multiple times if I have multiple teens. So even if I want to just send the teens off and focus on the adults in the house - or maybe work on a toddler's skills, I have to pause and say "Send alone" for each teen each day.
And as I play on Long (or a custom twice normal length) that is going to get tedious.
I have fingers crossed that if this pack can deliver a good active high school that we can have active elementary schools. I would love to see active uni classes, but that requires a pack refresh and it looks like pack refreshes have been abandoned.
May I ask you what an active class would entail for you?
What would you want your sims to do, other than sit there and listen, cuz I just cant see how classes can be fun, especially given how long sims take to do anything...like I could see something like doing experiment during chem class, but how long would that class have to be 2-3h...cant have many classes in one day then😅
I agree as this may be boring unless there is a lot of activities that makes them more active where you can interact with them.
So "actually not like class, at all"?
(Edit: Tho it would be kind of entertaining if they implemented active classes and the whole thing was getting your teen Sim to sit still and read a book for 6 Sim hours; and the more times they stopped reading or walked around the lower the grades would be)
The rest of it looks good but the actual school looks very empty.. There seemed to be only about 10 sims on the lot which made it feel very bare and lifeless, hopefully a modder will find a way of massively boosting how many sims spawn on the lot
The rest of it looks good but the actual school looks very empty.. There seemed to be only about 10 sims on the lot which made it feel very bare and lifeless, hopefully a modder will find a way of massively boosting how many sims spawn on the lot
The rest of it looks good but the actual school looks very empty.. There seemed to be only about 10 sims on the lot which made it feel very bare and lifeless, hopefully a modder will find a way of massively boosting how many sims spawn on the lot
I already use a mod for that. I think the current coding only allows about 20-30 Sims on a lot at a time.
Looks like no way to build schools on other worlds or control which teens go to school here . I don't want sims from random world showing up here. I like other bits of the pack but this is making me less likely to play with the actual school.
I feel like there should be 2 different phone options. Every sim shouldn't have the upgraded phone app version. I have a few phone mods that I suspect will break too.
Lil' bit disappointed that there's only one school that sims could attend! I would've really liked to have made all sorts of different schools to reflect the different worlds and neighborhoods. Its not a deal breaker, but I was hoping for this. > 3<
Looks like no way to build schools on other worlds or control which teens go to school here . I don't want sims from random world showing up here. I like other bits of the pack but this is making me less likely to play with the actual school.
This was very disappointing to hear because I know simmer's have created their own schools. Hopefully, We are asked to enroll in Copperdale and they just won't send our teens there if they need a student role fulfilled.
Most of the lot sizes in the new world feel really small, and the team continues to place lots with huge amounts of empty space around them and no way to edit those spaces.
The gurus tried to show off sims sitting on the ground to interact in the stream. Both sims sat down, then immediately stood up and hugged and never sat back down again. What a feature lol!
Looks like no way to build schools on other worlds or control which teens go to school here . I don't want sims from random world showing up here. I like other bits of the pack but this is making me less likely to play with the actual school.
Well that's just disappointing, EA still limiting the game's creativity.
Time to snap back to reality.
Although I think I will enjoy this pack, it's not going to reach its potential.
And I think Plumbella probably has the gist of it. https://youtu.be/0JKzYZqWRF4
Plumbella made a point of Career day. It seems a total waste of time.
But EA missed a great opportunity, you should be able ask about the careers and university degrees and skills at this event.
One of the things I dislike is that although they gave us an "send all teens alone" button, they didn't include a "skip school" one. Right now I can just cancel out "go to school", my kid's grades willl drop and that is it. Now it seems I have to first select "Follow to school", go through a loading screen, arrive at school and click "leave early". That's probably realistic (the teen in question would pretend to go to school in the morning) but also a bit tedious.
I guess I'll put this post here instead of elsewhere. More neutrual and showing off my planning ideas for when I eventually get this pack waaaaay down the line.
I adore most of the world from what I can see of Game Changer overviews. Might shift the residental home and the park and perhaps shift the rental into a residential, I dunno. We'll see. The theme park seems nice and all but it doesn't feel like a full visit, get a few days out on vacation sort of thing. We'll see again because those descriptions for if-a-world-has-a-vacation-thing does help but -shrug-
The big thing is going to be shifting Thrift-tea over to Magnolia Prominade instead of being something in this world. I more want to represent the small town vibes I grew up with, and venues in small towns more serve the community at large, rather than being lazer-targeted at teens. So I'd more fit in a cafe instead of Thrift-Tea. Though since boba tea is a big thing, my plan would be to add those boba bars to Waterside Warble, which does feel somewhat more teen-friendly and perhaps the Windenburg cafes? Perhaps? Maybe?
I guess I'll put this post here instead of elsewhere. More neutrual and showing off my planning ideas for when I eventually get this pack waaaaay down the line.
I adore most of the world from what I can see of Game Changer overviews. Might shift the residental home and the park and perhaps shift the rental into a residential, I dunno. We'll see. The theme park seems nice and all but it doesn't feel like a full visit, get a few days out on vacation sort of thing. We'll see again because those descriptions for if-a-world-has-a-vacation-thing does help but -shrug-
The big thing is going to be shifting Thrift-tea over to Magnolia Prominade instead of being something in this world. I more want to represent the small town vibes I grew up with, and venues in small towns more serve the community at large, rather than being lazer-targeted at teens. So I'd more fit in a cafe instead of Thrift-Tea. Though since boba tea is a big thing, my plan would be to add those boba bars to Waterside Warble, which does feel somewhat more teen-friendly and perhaps the Windenburg cafes? Perhaps? Maybe?
I don't see boba tea as a teen thing (particularly since it's been trendy for closer to two decades than the one decade they mentioned in the livestream. (I mean, I'm solidly middle-aged, and we were going out for boba in my younger days). Thrifting was also trendy all the way back in the 90s, and never stopped being a thing for lots of people (I wasn't super into it, but some of my friends were and still are.)
Unfortunately, it looks like you can't just do thrifting as thrifting; they've wholly integrated it into the Trendi app, which I don't want to have anything to do with. So I may just rename the shop, rip out all of the thrifting objects, leave the boba bar, and add ice cream and/or baked goods and maybe a coffee bar to make it a little more of an all-purpose hangout for the town.
Like the only thing that's "new" about boba tea is posting pictures of it on Instagram, and even that's not particularly new at this point.
The rest of it looks good but the actual school looks very empty.. There seemed to be only about 10 sims on the lot which made it feel very bare and lifeless, hopefully a modder will find a way of massively boosting how many sims spawn on the lot
There are a few mods for that. The sims doesn't have low spawn count because of the engine, it's just so that everyone's PC can handle it. But for anyone open to using mods,they will have your world packed with sims. I use a combo of mcccomand and little miss sam mod but there are others too. My parties are always packed with like 50 sims. And there is another to make sims spawn more through out the entire world. My pc can handle it though.
Comments
Now, before anyone comes at me and says that "everyone has pronouns" or that "thrifting has been around forever" or anything like that, I know they have but I'm simply saying that I feel none of these things were super relevant or ingrained into our culture until the past few years or so. Or at least they weren't where I grew up. I graduated in 2016 and live in a rather small, more rural town. When I was in school stating your pronouns simply wasn't a thing and I didn't even know Nonbinary was a thing, like existed even until about 2018 maybe? And thrift-shops weren't something "cool" or popular when I was in high school either. They were places you either shopped at because you were poor or because you were looking for costume pieces and didn't want to spend a lot. This whole "substantial fashion" movement I don't think even existed either. And influencers DEFINTELY weren't a thing when I was in school.
I also noticed a lack of cliques? (Except for maybe the cheerleaders and football team.) At least as far as the trailer goes. Maybe I'm just so out of the loop these days despite graduating what I thought was fairly recently but cliques were DEFINTELY still around when I was still in school.
I'm also concerned about how many of these things are going to be tied to the teenage lifestage directly. Some things of course should be like prom and sneaking out. But others like football, cheerleading, sitting cross legged... should be accessible by YA+ as well. Football and cheerleading for instance are still a big part of American colleges and although Britchester is supposedly British inspired I would like to have the option for cheerleading and football for my YA Sims as well, but I have a bad feeling I may need to depend on modders to do that.
(it was a technical university, not a "true" one even though the degree was the same).
The pack seems to aim at the Hollywood High School experience you know from movies and series coupled with how middle aged men think todays teenager are. And personally I think that is an legitimate approach.
I read through the leak (which sounds credible as it seems to be an article that was released to early) I am still not convinced that the pack will give much value to me, but the low amount of classes a day would at least allow some social interaction.
The only thing I am impressed about are the negative consequences of not graduading. You can work around them but this is imo a step into the right direction.
The patch that comes alongside the DLC seems to be the real highlight and I hope the article is correct and EA implements those mechanics well (and makes them optional)
Am I missing some sort of great activity other people do during a class?
One time during a danish class my classmate tried to burp the whole alphabet, guess that could be something?
May I ask you what an active class would entail for you?
What would you want your sims to do, other than sit there and listen, cuz I just cant see how classes can be fun, especially given how long sims take to do anything...like I could see something like doing experiment during chem class, but how long would that class have to be 2-3h...cant have many classes in one day then😅
I agree as this may be boring unless there is a lot of activities that makes them more active where you can interact with them.
And as I play on Long (or a custom twice normal length) that is going to get tedious.
So "actually not like class, at all"?
(Edit: Tho it would be kind of entertaining if they implemented active classes and the whole thing was getting your teen Sim to sit still and read a book for 6 Sim hours; and the more times they stopped reading or walked around the lower the grades would be)
I would set the game aside if it does.
My biggest fear about this pack and it came true.
I already use a mod for that. I think the current coding only allows about 20-30 Sims on a lot at a time.
This was very disappointing to hear because I know simmer's have created their own schools. Hopefully, We are asked to enroll in Copperdale and they just won't send our teens there if they need a student role fulfilled.
The gurus tried to show off sims sitting on the ground to interact in the stream. Both sims sat down, then immediately stood up and hugged and never sat back down again. What a feature lol!
Although I think I will enjoy this pack, it's not going to reach its potential.
And I think Plumbella probably has the gist of it.
Plumbella made a point of Career day. It seems a total waste of time.
But EA missed a great opportunity, you should be able ask about the careers and university degrees and skills at this event.
I adore most of the world from what I can see of Game Changer overviews. Might shift the residental home and the park and perhaps shift the rental into a residential, I dunno. We'll see. The theme park seems nice and all but it doesn't feel like a full visit, get a few days out on vacation sort of thing. We'll see again because those descriptions for if-a-world-has-a-vacation-thing does help but -shrug-
The big thing is going to be shifting Thrift-tea over to Magnolia Prominade instead of being something in this world. I more want to represent the small town vibes I grew up with, and venues in small towns more serve the community at large, rather than being lazer-targeted at teens. So I'd more fit in a cafe instead of Thrift-Tea. Though since boba tea is a big thing, my plan would be to add those boba bars to Waterside Warble, which does feel somewhat more teen-friendly and perhaps the Windenburg cafes? Perhaps? Maybe?
I don't see boba tea as a teen thing (particularly since it's been trendy for closer to two decades than the one decade they mentioned in the livestream. (I mean, I'm solidly middle-aged, and we were going out for boba in my younger days). Thrifting was also trendy all the way back in the 90s, and never stopped being a thing for lots of people (I wasn't super into it, but some of my friends were and still are.)
Unfortunately, it looks like you can't just do thrifting as thrifting; they've wholly integrated it into the Trendi app, which I don't want to have anything to do with. So I may just rename the shop, rip out all of the thrifting objects, leave the boba bar, and add ice cream and/or baked goods and maybe a coffee bar to make it a little more of an all-purpose hangout for the town.
Like the only thing that's "new" about boba tea is posting pictures of it on Instagram, and even that's not particularly new at this point.
There are a few mods for that. The sims doesn't have low spawn count because of the engine, it's just so that everyone's PC can handle it. But for anyone open to using mods,they will have your world packed with sims. I use a combo of mcccomand and little miss sam mod but there are others too. My parties are always packed with like 50 sims. And there is another to make sims spawn more through out the entire world. My pc can handle it though.