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Even if the new Parenthood traits didn't make a difference...
Pegasys
Posts: 1,135 Member
this pack would still be worth it.
A lot of people are wondering whether the final traits make a difference to the personality of a YA. I haven't played a YA who has earned any Character Value traits yet, so I can't make any comments to that one way or the other.
However, even if they didn't... this pack is about the whole experience of raising offspring. And so far the pack has definitely achieved that. In a similar way, playing toddlers doesn't significantly change the personality of the sim after they age up, but players feel more bonded to their sims and families having played through the toddler stage. This is what, in my opinion, Parenthood does for the child and teen stage. And any new traits / personality additions are icing on the cake.
A lot of people are wondering whether the final traits make a difference to the personality of a YA. I haven't played a YA who has earned any Character Value traits yet, so I can't make any comments to that one way or the other.
However, even if they didn't... this pack is about the whole experience of raising offspring. And so far the pack has definitely achieved that. In a similar way, playing toddlers doesn't significantly change the personality of the sim after they age up, but players feel more bonded to their sims and families having played through the toddler stage. This is what, in my opinion, Parenthood does for the child and teen stage. And any new traits / personality additions are icing on the cake.
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I agree whole heartedly about becoming more invested in my sims. I used to just age babies, children and teens up. So far I am really enjoying the added elements to the toddlers age.
I'm enjoying the actual kid and teen stages when watching them much more than before. I wanted to and still want to raise a flawed (mad scientist) from baby on up and I guess I'll see how he/she turns out when I settle on which kid to do it with... Hmm maybe more than one.
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YA= Young Adult (or college student as we used to call em in the sims 2
Introducing the YA stage separate from something only for university was the greatest thing ts3 ever did for me! I remember being so miffed in ts2 that this brilliant life stage was only available for collegiate sims.
great. now i really want to play college in ts4. thanks lol!
eta:
I agree that it's definitely the journey that makes parenting enjoyable in this pack, but it does feel a bit underwhelming IMHO. I assume that's not a popular opinion, but I hold it nonetheless. I do really enjoy this pack. I just feel like it definitely could have used a bit more to it.
Could they have delivered both good family play and good traits? Yes, and that's precisely why complaints and disappointment will be voiced from time to time.
The traits are fine, I don't know what a couple few people are going on about, here's some backstory.
I had a son and a daughter as toddlers, the son had the angelic trait, and the daughter fussy.
The son is a teen now and has green in nearly all categories, the daughter is red in 3 and green in 2.
The son autonomously will do dishes, set up the table, and generally doesn't get into any trouble. He's only been in time out once, I seriously never have to punish him. He even has good grades and does projects.
The daughter meanwhile, never picks up after herself and was an absolute nightmare as a kid. She was CONSTANTLY making messes and being scolded. She went through a mean phase and was an absolute jerk to her dad and brother. I put her in time out more times than I can count, and most of it was autonomous. Let me tell you, that girl had a mouth like a sailor, and her grades weren't nearly as good as her brothers.
The traits in this pack have seriously improved, I'm so happy. I just aged them up to teens so let's see where it goes.
I'm not talking about character values, I'm talking the traits. The two are not the same. The character values are functioning fine, the Young adult traits are rather weak.
Had a child that was low Empathy and insensitive and they picked fights constantly. Moment they become a YA, suddenly they're calmer and back to normal, only picking a fight here and there much like Mean and Evil do (aka not enough, and may have been Evil doing this since she had that trait). The little girl that constantly sought to pick a fight or troll the forums was suddenly only interested in video games or tending to her needs, and would only rarely pick mean interactions in conversations. What's more, "Instigate" was the only new interaction worth mentioning (+2 moodlet to a negative mood for the target sim), as all the others she gained were functionally identical to existing traits.
Even ones such as Responsible are a bit weak, since they only encourage the Sims to work hard by default instead of boosting their promotion rate; a responsible sim and a sim that happens to be working hard seem to gain promotions at the same rate, it's just the responsible sim is less likely to come home tense. Very very few of the YA traits seem to actually matter, such as the Manners ones or Irresponsible.
Point is the YA traits could've been handled better. They weren't and that's disappointing, because as I said, functional character values for kids and well-polished traits for adults are not mutually exclusive, so even if the focal point of the pack is on kids, there's no reason they couldn't ensure this feature was meaningful for YAs too.
Without the full details of how someone plays the game though, it's hard to tell too much. For example, if someone is claiming traits are pointless, what are your autonomy settings? (You aren't going to see much trait impact unless you've got some level of autonomy turned on). How many people are in your household? What are their main traits and character traits? How long have you played them to come to your conclusions? Do your sims often travel to lots or mainly just stay in their house? Frankly, I've seen little more than some blanket, generic, anecdotal type statements like "The traits don't really do anything...I don't notice any difference." That is hardly the type of evidence that's going to sway anyone's opinion.
Household size of four, about three days of explicitly testing to see if the Insensitive trait would play a role, and it did occur to me to send the family to a bar (and other public lots) because I knew in the past that oftentimes when I did this, two of the siblings with low empathy would pick fights. The YA who aged up ceased to pick fights as much as before, whereas the other sibling still did so. The trait is a downgrade from the character values.
It's also not something that always needs to be tested. Some traits are forgettable by design, such as the Emotional Control and Conflict Resolution traits. They're far too niche to be used often. The only time I can picture Emotion Control's mattering is if someone in the family died and slapped all Sims with a +5 Sad moodlet for 3 days. All other instances I can just overwhelm the negative moodlets with easily acquired happiness ones until they wear off.
And in the case of Conflict resolution, a rather unfortunate problem is that culling downplays it's importance. If I have a fight with a Sim and want to repair the relationship, I can just play another household for a while and watch as culling kills their relationship while maintaining their relationship with the ghost of a bartender my Sim ordered a drink from 475 days ago. (thanks culling) I don't need this trait. Even if culling weren't a problem, options such as "Find Common Ground" are already very effective at repairing relationships. Only vampires seem to build negative relationships fast enough that they might benefit from such a thing.
The traits simply could've been better. Some do too little in terms of AI, and others do too little period based on their rather limited concepts. I mean look, I really like Vampires, but I'd be the first to confess about ~10 of those powers are very weak and meaningless. 10 out of 25 of those powers are meaningless; that's only a 60% success rate. Luckily, the 15 we do have and the 11 weaknesses are all meaningful enough that even though the system could've been better, I walk away satisfied. 15 powers and 11 weaknesses is a decent number of meaningful traits, so I'm quicker to forgive the flawed ones. Here though, we have 5 different character values, and 2 of those are heavily flawed due to being too niche. Additionally, some of the remaining traits of the other 3 groups could've been handled better. By the time you weed through all the problems, only a small fraction of the total traits are meaningful to your gameplay, and that's really disappointing to see.
The character values for children were handled wonderfully. It's just a shame most of the same improvements don't really seem to maintain themselves once you hit adulthood. Manners do fine, Responsibility is hit-and-miss, Empathy could be better, and Emotional Control/Conflict Resolution are nothing short of forgettable.
I've been rotating around a little in my game and playing some families to level up parenting skills and set some kids on different paths, because I want my main legacy to have various and diverse friends. As I was rotating I was on a family with Nina Caliente and her twins and their stepdad. I decided to play around and cheated Nina to have irresponsibility trait, bad manners trait and argumentative.
It definitely works, she laughs when her kids burp or fart, she can encourage bad behaviors, and started an argument when her husband tried to discipline her kids. She'll also say and do things like, assert correctness, or Point out flaws autonomously and create conflict with her hubby. Her kids are both quickly falling into the red on manners, responbility and emotional control themselves.
The husband tries to parent them but the kids are taking forever to warm up even slightly to him. Her daughter is especially evil. She recently smashed the dollhouse then asked step dad to fix it only to smash it again. (She did this autonomously)
Actually I think that's a pretty big deal... being able to work hard without getting Tense. Also, I've heard there are new career chance cards that come up for Responsible adults.
Anyway, the point of this thread was not whether the final traits at make a difference or not, but that even without these (Young Adult) traits, IMHO, it's a worthwhile pack.
Sim Stuff by Pegasys
Updated with Werewolf Diaries (1)
All the sims err'day
Yes, a responsible young adult or adult Sim can teach their kids about responsibility. I love that option! I cheated this trait on one of the parents in my family and she's been teaching all the kids about responsibility. This helped get it well into the green a lot.
I don't think I'll get a sim .. under the influence of the new pack there for a long time though.
I figure that's intentional. If the toddlers were already halfway through learning their values, then there wouldn't be much to parent them on when they're in the child or teenage phase, now would there?
From what I've seen so far, toddlers seem to learn values the slowest, kids a bit faster, and have more ways of getting there, and teens can learn and reach the top levels more quickly.
I wouldn't want the toddlers learning too much too soon. They are too young to truly grasp these skills and can only gain a base knowledge, plus the trait you pick for when they age to child can change these anyhow. For instance if you pick hotheaded they start in the red for empathy and emotional control.