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Pitfalls of early graduation from high school (may be spoilers)
ravynwolvf
Posts: 1,073 Member
I just did it, and so far this is what I've found.
You don't get to go to a graduation ceremony (doesn't seem to be working for a lot of people, so probably doesn't even matter). You also don't seem to get a diploma (anyway, I didn't), although you can buy one with hidden objects turned on.
I'm not able to join adult careers. This may be a bug related to the the adjoining message you get when you graduate early saying your sim just dropped out of school. But I don't know. With the jobs it says my sim can't get an adult career until he completes his ged online, which I don't have an option to do. So kind of feels like I'm graduated AND a drop out at the same time. He's going to university now and we'll see what that does when he graduates still as a teen, but I don't have high hopes it's going to do anything but still force him to age up to get fulltime work. Because every real job in the game still doesn't have teens as an age that can do it.
And speaking of college, even though he's enrolled, he's unable to join any extracurricular activities, like soccer, e-gamer, spirit squad, etc.. Which seems to be because they didn't bother to go in and change the age requirements on them, or give him a pass because he's an early graduate. Could be wrong, but I can't do them and it feels like how they program every cross pack thing, half baked and underwhelming.
So, so far, the only advantage I can find for graduating early is to stop going to high school or to shave off a few weeks on aging while in university. Trading that off against a shallow university experience if you normally like to do the extra clubs and such.
One odd quirk is that even though my sim is graduated, he still has the option of going to pre-prom and prom every Saturday. Plan on doing that when I get around to it and see how much trouble I can cause as a crasher.
You don't get to go to a graduation ceremony (doesn't seem to be working for a lot of people, so probably doesn't even matter). You also don't seem to get a diploma (anyway, I didn't), although you can buy one with hidden objects turned on.
I'm not able to join adult careers. This may be a bug related to the the adjoining message you get when you graduate early saying your sim just dropped out of school. But I don't know. With the jobs it says my sim can't get an adult career until he completes his ged online, which I don't have an option to do. So kind of feels like I'm graduated AND a drop out at the same time. He's going to university now and we'll see what that does when he graduates still as a teen, but I don't have high hopes it's going to do anything but still force him to age up to get fulltime work. Because every real job in the game still doesn't have teens as an age that can do it.
And speaking of college, even though he's enrolled, he's unable to join any extracurricular activities, like soccer, e-gamer, spirit squad, etc.. Which seems to be because they didn't bother to go in and change the age requirements on them, or give him a pass because he's an early graduate. Could be wrong, but I can't do them and it feels like how they program every cross pack thing, half baked and underwhelming.
So, so far, the only advantage I can find for graduating early is to stop going to high school or to shave off a few weeks on aging while in university. Trading that off against a shallow university experience if you normally like to do the extra clubs and such.
One odd quirk is that even though my sim is graduated, he still has the option of going to pre-prom and prom every Saturday. Plan on doing that when I get around to it and see how much trouble I can cause as a crasher.
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Comments
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.
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.
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...
http://www.getfreeebooks.com/star-trek-original-series-fan-fiction-trilogy/
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!
I should at some point make a BugFest 2022 discussion (and include a link to EAHelp so it won't get closed)...
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.
http://www.getfreeebooks.com/star-trek-original-series-fan-fiction-trilogy/
You get a few things - your teens aren’t required or prompted to go to school anymore, you get a diploma in the mail (household build mode item), you get a small boost to careers same as if they were A students but less than valedictorian and you can go to university.
You don’t get certain things that seem tied to life stage - can’t start an adult career, can’t join university clubs, can’t go to graduation ceremony and get the graduation photo.
Your main reason to do this is just to remove school from your teens or to get an early start on university if you’re playing with normal lifespan. I’m thinking of using it because I want my sisters to be long term teenage witches but don’t want to keep having to skip school or take days off. I could drop them out but this is a better option if i age them in future.
The biggest loss to me is the graduation photo, those are quite nice.