To be more clear I only use height slider on 3 specific teens to make them shorter because I don't believe all teens should be short either. In real life teens come all sizes. And to be fair I use it on ALL ages of my sims to get varying degrees of height from average to extra tall including kids and toddlers. Just like in real life. So I would honestly not like teens to come short by standard.
My point was that in sims3 teens did not look like teens face wise as many people claim,in my opinion. And I have an easier time making them in sims 4. I just use the height slider for the three I want to look the youngest and shortest.
However,I would be open to a teen overhaul with many of the suggestions people have here to make them more distinguishable. 🤭
Oh okay that makes more sense! I think the most "teenagery" teens were actually the Sims 2 teens to be honest, but I liked a lot of the interactions that the Sims 3 brought in for them, especially in generations. I'd still prefer them to be shorter by standard, and then you could height slider them taller if you wanted to. But each to their own... I guess if there REALLY isn't resources for the dev team to make it happen, we will have to look to other ways to make the life-stage unique, deep and interesting.
I wrote a long thing about all the things Teens did in previous games but A) moot point, you all know these things and regarding the height and being unable to differentiate:
I allow teen pregnancy in my game and there is really no difference between the YA Sims and teens except that the teens can't "Share Big News." Except.... for one mod that has a "I'm too young for this" moodlet that I've seen once after my teen sim was on her third child (turns out she accidentally had the immortal trait so she didn't age and it took FOREVER to understand what was up). I know this lends very little to the discussion except that we shouldn't need mods to make teens be teens.
But pivoting to what COULD be done within the realm of Sims 4...
1) special club activities. We have "play on playground equipment" for kids... there should be activities only teens can do.
2) special lot moodlets. There is a "teen hangout" lot trait-- shouldn't that make a teen feel "hip"?
3) predisposed to social media accounts. It should be way more autonomous for that age group.
4) Prom social events. I mean, come ON.
5) Unique interactions with younger children
6) Unique aspirations.
YES please, especially those unique aspirations. I feel like that would be a relatively simple and easy way for the dev team to differentiate the age group and make it more special. I'd also like some different options for kids too!
- I want them to sneak out and have parents who actually care when they come home in the middle of the night!
- Slumber parties, sleepovers, prom, unauthorized parties when the parents are away.....
- More traits (rebellious etc)
- Teen aspirations (graduate high school, be popular, you name it....)
- It would be nice if they could just lay on their beds to read, do their homeworks, use their laptop, listen to music.....
- I want after school activities (soccer practice, clubs....)
YES please. Again, those teen aspirations. I'm starting to see a common theme here aha
I agree with you OP @bethyGrace . The "teens" in TS4 are baby faced adults. They don't have much significance in the game and barely have any interesting teen-specific activities. I'll bring over what I mentioned in another thread:
What teens need:
- More shenanigans/pranks/mischief
- Influencing others or dares.
- Autonomously runs away if neglected. A temporary event - existed in TS2 https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Running_away
- Even more extracurricular activities (arts & crafts, sports, catering, science club, chess club, book club, etc.)
- Enroll in private school (children too. I also expected this to come with Discover University for an additional scholarship)
- Outside school events. Science fairs anyone?... Teen bake sale, school bazaars...
Just a few things on top of my head.
For those who don’t want to click the link and read about teen runaways:
A teen Sim can run away from the household in The Sims 2 when the particular teen has negative relationships with the other members of the household and has few or no other friends. When a teen is preparing to leave, a message will pop up in the upper-right hand corner letting the player know. Then, the teen either walks or runs off of the lot. The memory associated with a teen running away is usually red but may also be green depending on the Sim and their relationship with the teen. While running away, a runaway icon will appear in their picture. Being gone does not affect things like school grades.
I heard a lot of people say teens in sims 3 looked more like teens but I just cant see it? I tried making some myself just to test it our, plus I looked at pictures online and NONE of them looked more like teens besides the height or serious cc added. I actually think look wise you can get more younger looking teens in sims4 it just takes a few tricks which I'm getting the hang of. Lately I've had more success as learn. Plus I use height slider.
I'm a bit confused by what point you're making here? haha. Are you saying that you use a height slider in the Sims 4 and it helps your teens to look more realistic? ... Cos that is just supporting the idea that they ought to be shorter, which was my original point haha.
Interesting to read that a lot of you aren't bothered by it though. I have to admit that it doesn't stop me from playing the game (obviously) but I still feel like the life-stage could be overhauled and the game would be much better.
Or perhaps if we got "pre-teens"?
It's crazy how huge the jump was from The Sims 1 to the Sims 2, with the life stages and aging and everything it introduced. I guess I'm hungry for bigger innovation, more risks and bigger jumps forward from the dev team. I totally understand that I'm talking about a very different time there, with super different technologies making things possible, but I'm sick of the "less less and less" content and gameplay we seem to be getting with this franchise compared to days gone by.
To be more clear I only use height slider on 3 specific teens to make them shorter because I don't believe all teens should be short either. In real life teens come all sizes. And to be fair I use it on ALL ages of my sims to get varying degrees of height from average to extra tall including kids and toddlers. Just like in real life. So I would honestly not like teens to come short by standard.
My point was that in sims3 teens did not look like teens face wise as many people claim,in my opinion. And I have an easier time making them in sims 4. I just use the height slider for the three I want to look the youngest and shortest.
However,I would be open to a teen overhaul with many of the suggestions people have here to make them more distinguishable. 🤭
In Sims 3 my teens clearly look different than they look as adults (face wise). Whether that’s a teen look or not could lead to long and fruitless discussions (my males usually aren’t very attractive as teens in the game, they sure don’t look like their adult version), but you can see a clear difference. In Sims 4 they seem to have chosen for an older teen, so the difference simply is less clear. Height wise they’re the same, outfit wise they’re the same and facial wise they are. Not only real life teens come all sizes, real life people in all life stages come all sizes. That realistic detail is not in the game, there are no height sliders. To use that as an argument to defend the teen problem described here, sounds like explaining away an issue that has only one cause: they didn’t want to bother with more animations and more clothing. They didn’t want to bother. Four life stages in the game are practically identical, they just have different labels. As for long teens in comparison to adults, that’s not a biological thing. That’s circumstantial and individual. But a teen will always be shorter than him- or herself as an adult. For Sims 4 they decided to jump from an 8 year old to an 18 year old because it was easier. Not because it was more realistic.
It is a problem or we wouldn't have had to demand a tag on teens so we would know their age before we had our Sims flirt with one only to find out they were under age. Needing the tag says it all.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
They look so much more realistic ! Also both teens in the second render look like they're not the same age, which is something I would like, because teens right now look more 16-18, so your kid sims go from say, looking 8 to looking 17 when they age up....what a gap !! Also I have a family that has two teen girls, but I want them not to look the same age, one is supposed to be 16, the other 14.
In this render, they've made an effort to make the teenager look shorter to add that visual distinction, and for my money the family looks 10x more realistic that way.
I agree with you OP @bethyGrace . The "teens" in TS4 are baby faced adults. They don't have much significance in the game and barely have any interesting teen-specific activities. I'll bring over what I mentioned in another thread:
What teens need:
- More shenanigans/pranks/mischief
- Influencing others or dares.
- Autonomously runs away if neglected. A temporary event - existed in TS2 https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Running_away
- Even more extracurricular activities (arts & crafts, sports, catering, science club, chess club, book club, etc.)
- Enroll in private school (children too. I also expected this to come with Discover University for an additional scholarship)
- Outside school events. Science fairs anyone?... Teen bake sale, school bazaars...
Just a few things on top of my head.
For those who don’t want to click the link and read about teen runaways:
A teen Sim can run away from the household in The Sims 2 when the particular teen has negative relationships with the other members of the household and has few or no other friends. When a teen is preparing to leave, a message will pop up in the upper-right hand corner letting the player know. Then, the teen either walks or runs off of the lot. The memory associated with a teen running away is usually red but may also be green depending on the Sim and their relationship with the teen. While running away, a runaway icon will appear in their picture. Being gone does not affect things like school grades.
If you're lucky they're baby face adults. I had one sim family, when the girl aged up to teen, she looked older than her mom. When the game was first released, there wasn't even the tag telling you they were a teen and people were upset about this. So Maxis made them "different" by adding a tag below their names when you hover over them. Like, the least effort solution possible, but at least they did it I suppose.
In general, the look of teens, and their height works for me.
I love that they have access to the same clothing as adults. Teens often dress the same as young adults in the real world, making it harder to tell who is under 18, and who is over. What I would like, is more school uniform options. Components of uniforms, rather than ready built outfits. I want one up, one down socks. Maryjane school shoes for teens (and older). Knee length check skirts, and some of the same, that are too short, because in the real world, that's what you see on real teens, uniforms that they're growing out of. I want knee length shorts for the boys, half tucked in shirts, with and without crooked ties. I want proper neat uniform shirts, with the tie perfectly straight. Over-sized blazers, ones that are too small, ones that fit just right, ones with stains and pushed up sleeves. I want ugly school jumpers (sweaters as some weirdos call them), woolly and itchy, and the vest version too. I want to be able to create a class of 12 or so students, and not have any two look exactly the same, yet all be wearing the same uniform.
I want teens who slouch all the time, I want teens who stand up straight. I want more visual personality for my teens.
1. So...my point was, that Parenthood offered some game mechanics that make teens separate from others age groups and that at least in my game I find I have enough assets to further distinguish them by how I style them.
2. That if teens were a separate height category that they would suffer from the same CAS droughts that plague children and toddlers.
I agree with this.
Parenthood was a massive step in the right direction, but some of what it added should have been in the game from the start.
A separate height would also effect interactions, so we'd have fewer for teens, just as there are fewer for children and toddlers. Having teens the same height as adults streamlines what the developers add to the game.
- More shenanigans/pranks/mischief
- Influencing others or dares.
- Autonomously runs away if neglected. A temporary event - existed in TS2 https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Running_away
- Even more extracurricular activities (arts & crafts, sports, catering, science club, chess club, book club, etc.)
- Enroll in private school (children too. I also expected this to come with Discover University for an additional scholarship)
- Outside school events. Science fairs anyone?... Teen bake sale, school bazaars...
Yep. It's the lack of interactions, or actions that have consequences that is really reducing the game play of teens.
Comments
Oh okay that makes more sense! I think the most "teenagery" teens were actually the Sims 2 teens to be honest, but I liked a lot of the interactions that the Sims 3 brought in for them, especially in generations. I'd still prefer them to be shorter by standard, and then you could height slider them taller if you wanted to. But each to their own... I guess if there REALLY isn't resources for the dev team to make it happen, we will have to look to other ways to make the life-stage unique, deep and interesting.
YES please, especially those unique aspirations. I feel like that would be a relatively simple and easy way for the dev team to differentiate the age group and make it more special. I'd also like some different options for kids too!
YES please. Again, those teen aspirations. I'm starting to see a common theme here aha
What teens need:
- More shenanigans/pranks/mischief
- Influencing others or dares.
- Autonomously runs away if neglected. A temporary event - existed in TS2 https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Running_away
- Even more extracurricular activities (arts & crafts, sports, catering, science club, chess club, book club, etc.)
- Enroll in private school (children too. I also expected this to come with Discover University for an additional scholarship)
- Outside school events. Science fairs anyone?... Teen bake sale, school bazaars...
Just a few things on top of my head.
For those who don’t want to click the link and read about teen runaways:
[/list]
If you're lucky they're baby face adults. I had one sim family, when the girl aged up to teen, she looked older than her mom. When the game was first released, there wasn't even the tag telling you they were a teen and people were upset about this. So Maxis made them "different" by adding a tag below their names when you hover over them. Like, the least effort solution possible, but at least they did it I suppose.
I love that they have access to the same clothing as adults. Teens often dress the same as young adults in the real world, making it harder to tell who is under 18, and who is over. What I would like, is more school uniform options. Components of uniforms, rather than ready built outfits. I want one up, one down socks. Maryjane school shoes for teens (and older). Knee length check skirts, and some of the same, that are too short, because in the real world, that's what you see on real teens, uniforms that they're growing out of. I want knee length shorts for the boys, half tucked in shirts, with and without crooked ties. I want proper neat uniform shirts, with the tie perfectly straight. Over-sized blazers, ones that are too small, ones that fit just right, ones with stains and pushed up sleeves. I want ugly school jumpers (sweaters as some weirdos call them), woolly and itchy, and the vest version too. I want to be able to create a class of 12 or so students, and not have any two look exactly the same, yet all be wearing the same uniform.
I want teens who slouch all the time, I want teens who stand up straight. I want more visual personality for my teens.
I agree with this.
Parenthood was a massive step in the right direction, but some of what it added should have been in the game from the start.
A separate height would also effect interactions, so we'd have fewer for teens, just as there are fewer for children and toddlers. Having teens the same height as adults streamlines what the developers add to the game.
Yep. It's the lack of interactions, or actions that have consequences that is really reducing the game play of teens.