Forum Announcement, Click Here to Read More From EA_Cade.
Universities and how surprisingly well they could work in this game.
JumpingTrains
Posts: 442 Member
Hi, I recently realized that universities could work really well in this game as a vacation type world, just like Granite Falls.
It also provides stuff for kids and teens. As a whole, you could call it an Education EP (Get To Class? lol).
This is unfinished, just a basic concept.
So here are my ideas:
-Three types: College, Trade School and University.
-Every day you go to one of these schools, you have to pay money. This adds more of a challenge by replicating how education in real life is not cheap. It's a grim reality, but the Sims 4 could use some more grittiness to it. It is a life simulator after all
.
-University will be the most expensive, and Trade the cheapest.
-You can go to the university as many days as you'd like, but you have to live on a dorm. The dorms can work just like the rental lots in Granite Falls, where the more fancy the dorm, the more expensive it is.
-College is it's own "secret" lot, like the hospital and police stations in GTW. Your sim will go back home every day and essentially pay less money for education, but will have less jobs unlocked once they graduate.
-Trade School will act the same as College, but will unlock unique jobs that the other two schools don't unlock.
-Sims who don't have that much money can receive financial aid.
-Sims can get a scholarship for each of these:
Being adopted, getting an A+ grade in school, being an Alien, being a Vampire, having a single parent, both parents passed away and the sim lives with a guardian/grandparent, maxed out any skill, completed an Aspiration.
The types of jobs that can be unlocked by graduating:
University:
-Education
-Architecture
-Movie Producer/Actor
-Supernatural/Medium
College:
-Education
-Graphic Designer
Trade School:
-Mechanic
-Fire Fighter
Some perks from these jobs:
Education:
-Do your kids homework, bribe their teachers for higher grades.
Mechanic:
-Create robots!
New traits:
-Studious: This sim loves school and gets happy moodlets from being at school. Gets tense if they don't do homework/ have low grades.
-Cool: This sim is too cool for school, gets tense/bored while at school and is able to skip classes and school days entirely for a confident/happy moodlet.
-Lucky/Unlucky: These two work in polar opposites of each other. Lucky makes your sim able to receive random raises from work, more likely to find rare collectibles, live long lives and cook great meals.
Unlucky makes your sim able to get fired due to outsourcing of jobs, make poor meals, live short lives and start fires while cooking.
This pack could mark the return of... the popularity bar! I want to give the kids and teens some more unique gameplay
Based on how social your child/teen sim is, this will determine if they will be one of the popular kids, or a dork. This can impact their moodlets from being at school, and if they are popular enough, they will build up relationships and the Charisma skill faster.
Private schools will also make a return! Better hope the headmaster doesn't get the Unflirty trait *wink*, *Deligracy intensifies*.
And I would also love to introduce a brand new NPC to The Sims 4: Moneybags.
Moneybags is a super rich and influential sim. He is Materialistic, a Snob and a Genius sim.
He will randomly roam the worlds and can be interacted with. You could try to convince him to give you loans for education, but you must pay them back eventually or else he will take away items until it repays the loan. If your sim is lucky, there is a 10% chance they won't have to repay the loan (chance increases based on how high the relationship is). If your sim is unlucky, there will have to repay more money than what they loaned, increased by how long it takes them to repay the loan.
You can also bribe him to get your kid into private school or even bribe him to make a sim get lower grades/ get expelled from college / get fired at the expense of you becoming enemies with the sim you targeted (a fast way to spark drama lololol).
You can also try to bribe him to get you a promotion/ a raise.
The chances of a positive or negative outcome are random for each sim, and the Lucky/Unlucky traits influence these chances.
Also, the more you pay him, the more likely it is to get a positive outcome from what you wanted to bribe him for.
Gameplay Items:
-A Moneybags inspired Monopoly game for children, teens, YAs, Adults and Elders to play in groups of up to 6 sims.
Come to think about it, this pack seems to have a lot of capitalistic undertones lmao, but it's not so far from reality..
-Books that can help sims study on their own and get better at whatever they are studying.
-chalkboards that sims can doodle on, do math problems on.
-small chalkboards that kids can draw on.
CAS:
Your typical dorkish clothes, cool kids clothes (think The Plastics from Mean Girls), piercings, new tattoos, private school clothes, "teacher" clothes lol.
Sims 4 Update feature:
-A notebook where we, the players can write whatever we want. It can be a diary or even a blog of the recent things that happened in the life of our sims. It can have multiple page entires.
-Snack and drink machines and public stalls. Assuming the new schools will be actual lots where we can follow our sims, these will be a must have. They are very useful in general.
Feel free to write what ideas you have for and Education pack Once I brainstorm some stuff I'll edit this post.
It also provides stuff for kids and teens. As a whole, you could call it an Education EP (Get To Class? lol).
This is unfinished, just a basic concept.
So here are my ideas:
-Three types: College, Trade School and University.
-Every day you go to one of these schools, you have to pay money. This adds more of a challenge by replicating how education in real life is not cheap. It's a grim reality, but the Sims 4 could use some more grittiness to it. It is a life simulator after all
.-University will be the most expensive, and Trade the cheapest.
-You can go to the university as many days as you'd like, but you have to live on a dorm. The dorms can work just like the rental lots in Granite Falls, where the more fancy the dorm, the more expensive it is.
-College is it's own "secret" lot, like the hospital and police stations in GTW. Your sim will go back home every day and essentially pay less money for education, but will have less jobs unlocked once they graduate.
-Trade School will act the same as College, but will unlock unique jobs that the other two schools don't unlock.
-Sims who don't have that much money can receive financial aid.
-Sims can get a scholarship for each of these:
Being adopted, getting an A+ grade in school, being an Alien, being a Vampire, having a single parent, both parents passed away and the sim lives with a guardian/grandparent, maxed out any skill, completed an Aspiration.
The types of jobs that can be unlocked by graduating:
University:
-Education
-Architecture
-Movie Producer/Actor
-Supernatural/Medium
College:
-Education
-Graphic Designer
Trade School:
-Mechanic
-Fire Fighter
Some perks from these jobs:
Education:
-Do your kids homework, bribe their teachers for higher grades.
Mechanic:
-Create robots!
New traits:
-Studious: This sim loves school and gets happy moodlets from being at school. Gets tense if they don't do homework/ have low grades.
-Cool: This sim is too cool for school, gets tense/bored while at school and is able to skip classes and school days entirely for a confident/happy moodlet.
-Lucky/Unlucky: These two work in polar opposites of each other. Lucky makes your sim able to receive random raises from work, more likely to find rare collectibles, live long lives and cook great meals.
Unlucky makes your sim able to get fired due to outsourcing of jobs, make poor meals, live short lives and start fires while cooking.
This pack could mark the return of... the popularity bar! I want to give the kids and teens some more unique gameplay
Based on how social your child/teen sim is, this will determine if they will be one of the popular kids, or a dork. This can impact their moodlets from being at school, and if they are popular enough, they will build up relationships and the Charisma skill faster.
Private schools will also make a return! Better hope the headmaster doesn't get the Unflirty trait *wink*, *Deligracy intensifies*.
And I would also love to introduce a brand new NPC to The Sims 4: Moneybags.
Moneybags is a super rich and influential sim. He is Materialistic, a Snob and a Genius sim.
He will randomly roam the worlds and can be interacted with. You could try to convince him to give you loans for education, but you must pay them back eventually or else he will take away items until it repays the loan. If your sim is lucky, there is a 10% chance they won't have to repay the loan (chance increases based on how high the relationship is). If your sim is unlucky, there will have to repay more money than what they loaned, increased by how long it takes them to repay the loan.
You can also bribe him to get your kid into private school or even bribe him to make a sim get lower grades/ get expelled from college / get fired at the expense of you becoming enemies with the sim you targeted (a fast way to spark drama lololol).
You can also try to bribe him to get you a promotion/ a raise.
The chances of a positive or negative outcome are random for each sim, and the Lucky/Unlucky traits influence these chances.
Also, the more you pay him, the more likely it is to get a positive outcome from what you wanted to bribe him for.
Gameplay Items:
-A Moneybags inspired Monopoly game for children, teens, YAs, Adults and Elders to play in groups of up to 6 sims.
Come to think about it, this pack seems to have a lot of capitalistic undertones lmao, but it's not so far from reality..
-Books that can help sims study on their own and get better at whatever they are studying.
-chalkboards that sims can doodle on, do math problems on.
-small chalkboards that kids can draw on.
CAS:
Your typical dorkish clothes, cool kids clothes (think The Plastics from Mean Girls), piercings, new tattoos, private school clothes, "teacher" clothes lol.
Sims 4 Update feature:
-A notebook where we, the players can write whatever we want. It can be a diary or even a blog of the recent things that happened in the life of our sims. It can have multiple page entires.
-Snack and drink machines and public stalls. Assuming the new schools will be actual lots where we can follow our sims, these will be a must have. They are very useful in general.
Feel free to write what ideas you have for and Education pack
Once I brainstorm some stuff I'll edit this post.11
Comments
The link there is my ideas(top post). If you want to read it.
I absolutely love you ideas for traits I feel like they would be great for bringing some personality and life to my sims(particularly the studious for my more nerdy sims I would love that)
Popularity bar yes! yes! yes! this would be just amazing and honestly so true to life.
Also scholarships are a great idea I don't know if I love getting them for just being an alien or vampire though also single parent how will that be identified? is it one parent is dead or is it that both of your parents aren't living in the same house hold? There could be issues either way if say mom/dad remarried and you technically did have two parents, do you still get the scholarship then?
I'm not super in love with money bags personally but that is more a me thing than the idea itself is flawed(although the game is attached to it is super cute and funny). I feel it should be a little less capitalist though since university is very different across the globe (free in some places) so I would tone that down a little bit so it is more relatable and generic.
I would combine the collage university trades stuff into one building and just have different degrees that cost different amounts (My areas trade school has options that cost just as much as the university and both of them are major and successful schools for my country).
I like the careers but I would like any career options
I would recommend a homeschooling option (I really want homeschooling to come into the game *fingers crossed*) and flesh out private school a bit more (my suggestions are in my post)
Otherwise I like this
Edit: For the popularity bar I hope they have a celebrity pack thing and have the school popularity one help boost the "real world" (ha ha real world in a simulation) one a bit. Just think it would be good synergy if they did these two packs.
But... That's taking a simple concept, and making it somewhat complicated.
Where I live, a college is either of two things. It's eithera private school, or it's a particular field of study at Uni, eg, a dentistry college.
And we don't quite have trade schools here, what we have is more like a combination of tradeschool and community college.
That's kinda unrealistic for people of many parts of the world. The method in ts3 was a bit more realistic, with a fee at the start of each term.
Yeah, sure, if you live in the US, but there are plenty of countries where your education is provided by the government.
I did four years of tertiary education, and it cost me nothing, the government paid for it, they also paid my living expenses while I was studying. I was lucky, due to a loophole I found in the system. For most other people, they get a loan from the government (it doesn't have to paid back until you're gainfully employed), and they get a living allowance for while they're studying, it means that no one who is eligible (on a low income) has to pay for any of it up front, it also means that you get to study, without so much stress of loans needing to be paid, and the cost of living needing to be covered. A lot of countries have variations of this sort of thing.
Again, the reality of this depends on where you live. Plus why not combine the two for the sake of the game? It's not as though your sim is going to be learning to be a plumber.
Why?
I don't understand how you came up with this concept. Can you explain it further?
Critiquing over, here's what I'd like to see.
And education world, with a university, a high school, a primary school, and a library, and maybe a sports field. There could also be a dorm lot, for those who want the feel of that sort of uni life.
The university could be a large lot, with several large buildings containing classrooms, labs, etc, as well as a cafe and a food stall or two. Or it could be a collection of lots, it's own neighbourhood.
The schools could have a cafiteria, or your sim could have the option to bring a lunch from home (a sandwich in a paper bag, a salad in a box)
High school could have 3 classes per day, two in the morning, each being 2 hours long, with a 30 minute break between them, then an hour break for lunch, and another 2 hour class in the afternoon. Students would be able to choose what classes they attend, and the classes could then relate to skill gain
Mathematics = logic skill
Science = science skill
Simlish = Reading/writing
Art
Music
Cooking
Etc
Primary school would be similar, but the students wouldn't be able to select their own subjects. And they'd have a full hour break in the morning, for play!
Active Careers, I get to choose professors and Deans.
I can alter if it's an IV league School, If it's known to be a party school, or whatever.
My Mood:
I could see two types of education work. The university would work like Granite Falls and the trade school, which I would call vocational education, would work like a secret lot (or, for the sake of simplicity, work like regular high school). I could see a university having more theory exams and a vocational school having more practice exams. In vocational school I could see Sims choosing the job they want to study for beforehand. So, for example, when a Sim wants to become a fire fighter he/she will select this track and in the end the exam will consist of extinguishing several fires.
I do like the careers of education, architecture, fire fighter and mechanic though. All four careers could function like the Sims 3 Ambitions ones or the GTW ones (the latter especially counts for the education career). I could see a Sim being called to extinguish a fire somewhere or to redesign a house or its interior or to repair a television. I could also see your Sim working at school, teaching a class of kids/teens. This could make a fun open career with a lot of challenges.
Besides unlocking these careers, I could also see Sims that went to college start at a higher level in any career. Same for vocational education, but the starting level should be lower than for Sims who went to university. So, for example, a Sim who studied at university will start at level 4 of any career and a Sim who went to vocational education will start at level 3.
I like this idea of being able to choose subjects, that relate to skill gain. It would be great if children and teens were to get a separate grade for all of their subjects.
My idea is in this Education world, there would be a college/university for sims to attend (including adults going back for more education). There would also be a trade school to teach sims trade skills like mechanics (there could be a garage where sims learn about and repair cars). There could also be a boarding school for kids and teens to attend. They could live on campus. There would also be other lots like a gym, library, food joints and parks for relaxing and recreation.
Now when I think about it, having 3 schools does feel like some sort of gimmick. And Moneybags could definitely use some more gameplay elements to him. Perhaps he could be the headmaster
I'll look deeper into the Education EPs the last two games had. Honestly it's been so long since I even thought about The Sims 2's Education EP (I don't even remember it's name) and never had University Life, but from what I know your sims had to live on campus.
And honestly, a city college seems more in tune with The Sims 4's style. A University is very "old world" in a way and doesn't feel like it would fit that well.
I'll update the OP at some point.
Actually I think a rural university could fit the sims 4 style.
Depending on how you design the World of course. But even Still, the school I'm currently attending is but in a rural setting, and it was established in the late 1800s and is actually getting modern upgrades. So I like that my school is a mix of Modern and Old Style Buildings.
OR!
What they could do is Make two worlds/campuses One in a Rural Setting, and one in an urban setting. Don't get it twisted its the Same school, just in scattered locations.
My Mood: