Your Opinion on Lifespans Since Toddlers?

AmyCarolyn · February 2017

I was wondering how everyone is dealing with the lifespans since toddlers were released.

There was discussion when the game first released and up until even before toddlers, that the lifespans had too big of a jump from normal to long. I feel like the lifespans are even more awkward now that toddlers were released. If you don't have a baby within the first week of being a young adult, then you will be an elder by the time your kid gets out of the teen stage. and good luck ever meeting your grandchildren. I really miss being able to choose the days in each stage like in TS3. I'd like to know how everyone else feels and if this is a unanimous issue, is it possible to tweak in a patch?

Has anyone else had any issues with the lifespans or are you happy with them?

Side note: I know there are mods to adjust lifespans but I do not like mods in my game, personally. I am only speaking on what is in the game directly from EA.

ladybreid · February 2017

I use McC so that I can set each life stage length

Simpkin · February 2017

I was hoping we'd get the separate settings for each lifestage with this. I haven't played toddlers yet so can't comment further. But yeah, it would have been a very good update along with toddlers.

Uzone27 · February 2017

AmyCarolyn wrote: »

I was wondering how everyone is dealing with the lifespans since toddlers were released.

There was discussion when the game first released and up until even before toddlers, that the lifespans had too big of a jump from normal to long. I feel like the lifespans are even more awkward now that toddlers were released. If you don't have a baby within the first week of being a young adult, then you will be an elder by the time your kid gets out of the teen stage. and good luck ever meeting your grandchildren. I really miss being able to choose the days in each stage like in TS3. I'd like to know how everyone else feels and if this is a unanimous issue, is it possible to tweak in a patch?

Has anyone else had any issues with the lifespans or are you happy with them?

Side note: I know there are mods to adjust lifespans but I do not like mods in my game, personally. I am only speaking on what is in the game directly from EA.

I agree there should be a setting between normal and long.
For this reason I do find myself fudging a bit with lifespans from time to time.

The 7 toddler challenge for example is way too easy on the short lifespan...and a bit too grueling on the long setting,
Something in between would be welcome.

simgirl1010 · February 2017

I've always played with aging off and age up my sims when I feel ready. With toddlers I want to savor them as long as possible.

Andiratyme · February 2017

I rarely play with aging on so it doesn't really bother me. I just age them up when I feel like it's time. Haven't played with aging on since I lost one of my favorites many years ago in sims 2.

Lisey · February 2017

One possible work-around is to track it yourself and age them up earlier. Or later. It's definitely not ideal, but can be done if it's a game-breaking issue for you.

emmaning · February 2017

I think it makes sense that the parents would be elders by the time their children were young adults... or even teens.

But I do think that sims are toddlers for too long. I want aging options back like in TS3.

AfterMidnight · February 2017

It's funny. With TS3, I would always turn the toddler lifespan down to four days because it was my least favorite life stage. With TS4, I've used MCCC to expand it by three days. I never expected that to happen!

I'm hoping we'll get age sliders patched into the game like we did with TS3. Maybe if we request it enough it'll happen? It's worth a shot, anyway.

MidnightAura · February 2017

I would love age sliders back in game. Normal feels too short for family play and long can be too long, that's one of my favourite things about the sims 3, that I can adjust each age group.

Neia · February 2017

I agree the gap is too big between normal and long. I've modded it so I'm playing on half-long at the moment.

For the "can't meet your grandchildren" issue, I think a new lifestage between adults and elders (so the age where you no longer have children, but still aren't retired, greying hair) that would be basically around 50-65 would balance out the toddler lifestage.

Lustianicia · February 2017

I play with the long lifespan. I just age up my toddlers myself (by using the cake) once they reach the maximum level on each of their skills. This usually happens about 10-13 days. So I end up aging them into children while still having about 15 days left anyway. 28 days is way too long for a toddler in The Sims... at least I think so.

I do, however, wish that the developers would give us the option to customize each life stage the way we want. Especially since it's too big of a jump from the 'normal' lifespan to the 'long' lifespan. Even 80 days each for the young adults and adults is way too long. I don't even like how the children and teens have 52 days each.

If they can't give us the option to customize the lifespans ourselves, they should at least add another one that would fit in between the "normal" and "long" lifespans. At least it wouldn't be such a huge jump if they did.

Edit: Also, I know many people are probably thinking why I just don't age up my Sims whenever I want. Well, the reason I don't do that is because I'm a player who likes to focus on one household at a time. I don't jump between households. Because of that, it would be very difficult for my Sims' friends and family who live in other houses to keep up. Since they age automatically, I need to make sure their lifespans are in sync with the Sims in my current household (or at least roughly around the same time)... if that makes sense.

To7m · February 2017

Neia wrote: »

I agree the gap is too big between normal and long. I've modded it so I'm playing on half-long at the moment.

For the "can't meet your grandchildren" issue, I think a new lifestage between adults and elders (so the age where you no longer have children, but still aren't retired, greying hair) that would be basically around 50-65 would balance out the toddler lifestage.

Oorrrr just add more days the the two adult life stages we already have? Or allow us to CHOOSE how many days our sims live?

For me, I turn aging off and on A LOT. I like my sims to age, I like to keep them in sync with each other (dyk pregnant sims don't age at all?) and I like to savour each stage. It's annoying but doable.

--T

Neia · February 2017

To7m wrote: »

Neia wrote: »

I agree the gap is too big between normal and long. I've modded it so I'm playing on half-long at the moment.

For the "can't meet your grandchildren" issue, I think a new lifestage between adults and elders (so the age where you no longer have children, but still aren't retired, greying hair) that would be basically around 50-65 would balance out the toddler lifestage.

Oorrrr just add more days the the two adult life stages we already have? Or allow us to CHOOSE how many days our sims live?

For me, I turn aging off and on A LOT. I like my sims to age, I like to keep them in sync with each other (dyk pregnant sims don't age at all?) and I like to savour each stage. It's annoying but doable.

--T

Yeah, that would work to, but it would be less fun than a new life stage

Being able to choose the length of each life stage would still be useful though, perhaps some people want their children earlier/later, or don't enjoy this lifestage and want to make it shorter. New life stage and customizable life spans are not mutually exclusive.

jimbbq · February 2017

Toddlers are great but family play is still bad, due to unbalanced life span, terrible teen stage. The focus of ts4 is still on YA and A. I hope generations will come soon !

Mstybl95 · February 2017

I had to turn aging off. Now I just play until I think they are ready to age.

LadyEmillye · February 2017

I've decided to play with aging off in TS4...I'll age them when I feel like it's time for that next step lol.

Dreamie209 · February 2017

Meh, for me it beats having your pretty young YA with 2 10 year olds...but that's just how I look at it.

ladybreid wrote: »

I use McC so that I can set each life stage length

Yup yup! McC is such a diva. It's like a Amazon Echo in the sims <3

JessicaSimston · February 2017

I like to have my Sims become grandparents when they are in their mid to late Adult stage. That might seem young to some people but where I live, it tends to be the norm. For example, my mum is 56 and my niece is 12. It also lets me have more interesting family trees, because I have a Sim who is the same age as her nephew, this was because the grandparent Sim was still able to have children by the time she became a grandparent.

None of the TS4 default age options catered to these kind of family dynamics. The long age was the only way to make it possible but I'd get so bored playing the same sim in the same lifestage for that long. The MC command centre has fixed this but the aging system really needs to be patched, as not everyone likes to use mods.

emmaning · February 2017

Lustianicia wrote: »

I play with the long lifespan. I just age up my toddlers myself (by using the cake) once they reach the maximum level on each of their skills. This usually happens about 10-13 days. So I end up aging them into children while still having about 15 days left anyway. 28 days is way too long for a toddler in The Sims... at least I think so.

I do, however, wish that the developers would give us the option to customize each life stage the way we want. Especially since it's too big of a jump from the 'normal' lifespan to the 'long' lifespan. Even 80 days each for the young adults and adults is way too long. I don't even like how the children and teens have 52 days each.

If they can't give us the option to customize the lifespans ourselves, they should at least add another one that would fit in between the "normal" and "long" lifespans. At least it wouldn't be such a huge jump if they did.

Edit: Also, I know many people are probably thinking why I just don't age up my Sims whenever I want. Well, the reason I don't do that is because I'm a player who likes to focus on one household at a time. I don't jump between households. Because of that, it would be very difficult for my Sims' friends and family who live in other houses to keep up. Since they age automatically, I need to make sure their lifespans are in sync with the Sims in my current household (or at least roughly around the same time)... if that makes sense.

I think they would be capable of adding a slider or at least options because modders have already made mods for customizable age spans (so you can have whatever you want with some of these) and I remember a SimGuru saying somewhere that modders can do whatever devs can do. So surely it'd be the other way around. Whether or not they'd actually do it though is another question.

I reccomend MCCC for this because it also does a ton of other stuff, such as larger households enabled. It's like someone remade some of Twallan's and NRAAS's mods for TS4, changed them slightly and put them in. However, I get why people don't want to use mods in their games.
I try to minimize how many I use because I get addicted to downloading them easily, then I have too many to keep track of. But other people have legitimate reasons, rather than just a 'yes I use mods, but I try not to go on sites for them too often because each time I come back with one item I actually wanted/needed/came for and a thousand I did not intend to get/had never heard of/was not looking for.'

Neia wrote: »

To7m wrote: »

Neia wrote: »

I agree the gap is too big between normal and long. I've modded it so I'm playing on half-long at the moment.

For the "can't meet your grandchildren" issue, I think a new lifestage between adults and elders (so the age where you no longer have children, but still aren't retired, greying hair) that would be basically around 50-65 would balance out the toddler lifestage.

Oorrrr just add more days the the two adult life stages we already have? Or allow us to CHOOSE how many days our sims live?

For me, I turn aging off and on A LOT. I like my sims to age, I like to keep them in sync with each other (dyk pregnant sims don't age at all?) and I like to savour each stage. It's annoying but doable.

--T

Yeah, that would work to, but it would be less fun than a new life stage

Being able to choose the length of each life stage would still be useful though, perhaps some people want their children earlier/later, or don't enjoy this lifestage and want to make it shorter. New life stage and customizable life spans are not mutually exclusive.

They should fix what life stages we have now before adding more imho. Teens aren't even there, but toddlers are way better than TS3.

jimmysnan · February 2017

I think they should improve on all life stages, give elders more to do, make teens proper teens and then give us customization of their life span. I play with aging off for this reason the aging does not make sense. Maybe if we had a proper story line then we could work from there, but with none we are on our own, so why not be on our own with aging

luthienrising · February 2017

For when I'm playing with aging on (which is in just one save), I'm now using MCCC to lengthen the young adult and adult life stages. IIRC I set it up to add 10 days overall to those lifestages for now -- it had already felt a bit off balance before toddlers. I mean, I'm not an Elder yet IRL—still a good ways to go—but two of my three kids are YA already and I didn't have my kids early!

Zafireria · February 2017

I used to play with ageing on, but some times before the toddlers came out I switched it off to try and alternative way of playing and liked it. So when toddlers were released ageing were still disabled, so I just aged them up when I want. I recon I have to think out a lifespan plan when I enable it again (I use MCC)

FFX2Paine506 · February 2017

I think bringing back the age sliders from TS3 would be beneficial to a lot of people considering it seems a lot of simmers are forced to use alternatives, whether that be mods or turning aging off. I would personally love it and have been wanting it since the start because YA is my favorite stage so I like to keep the parents YA as long as possible, even with their children changing into YAs with them. I'm definitely in favor of bringing it back.

GalacticGal · February 2017

ladybreid wrote: »

I use McC so that I can set each life stage length

Please share with me how that's done. I am new to MCCC and have yet to figure it out, on the whole.

To answer the OP : Right now, I play on Long, and simply age each Sim up in the family when I'm ready to do so. You might say, I dance to my own tune. LOL But, I do miss the sliders from Sims3, where I used to play on Epic, but adjusted each life stage to suit me.

GalacticGal · February 2017

luthienrising wrote: »

For when I'm playing with aging on (which is in just one save), I'm now using MCCC to lengthen the young adult and adult life stages. IIRC I set it up to add 10 days overall to those lifestages for now -- it had already felt a bit off balance before toddlers. I mean, I'm not an Elder yet IRL—still a good ways to go—but two of my three kids are YA already and I didn't have my kids early!

I'm right there with you. I got married at 19, had my first baby at nearly 23. I have 9 grandchildren, and am still technically considered middle-aged. Have a few more years to go before I can even start to think about Social Security.

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Your Opinion on Lifespans Since Toddlers?

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