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How intrusive is High School Years?
Atreya33
Posts: 4,429 Member
With the recent sale High School Years is 50% off. I have avoided this pack for a long time and have zero interest in teens. I personally enjoy playing supernaturals but from time to time also families (especially the younger ages). I already shortened the lifespan of teens back in the sims 2 days. I HATE how without telling us the teen lifestage was prolonged and became dis-proportionally long compared to the child lifestage when this pack was introduced . Just to nudge is into buying this pack. But here I am considering it after all. The world and Build Buy just looks so pretty. If I could get the items without the gameplay I would go for it right away.
But I have a a few questions
1. how bad is the body hair issue. I know there is no global on/off switch. I would have to go through every sims to disable it sim per sim. Has anyone done this? How long does it take for townies to all become hairy? If there is any mod to completely turn this off, I am willing to give it a try.
2. Crushes: how do they work. Will my played sims have crushes on others or will other sims get crushes on my sims. Are there any repercussions if I don't act on them? Will sims automatically gain love interests? I hope not. Is this only for teens?
3. Social bunny: again no global on/off option, has to be toggled sim by sim. How intrusive is this feature. Does it mess up my sims relationships.
4. Has the issue with not being able to plan holidays been resolved?
5. I heard teens kicked out of high school can never re-enroll, is this true?
6. Any bugs or glitches I should be aware off?
I would be mainly getting the pack for the world and the objects and not play teens any second longer than needed to get the character values from parenthood.
But I have a a few questions
1. how bad is the body hair issue. I know there is no global on/off switch. I would have to go through every sims to disable it sim per sim. Has anyone done this? How long does it take for townies to all become hairy? If there is any mod to completely turn this off, I am willing to give it a try.
2. Crushes: how do they work. Will my played sims have crushes on others or will other sims get crushes on my sims. Are there any repercussions if I don't act on them? Will sims automatically gain love interests? I hope not. Is this only for teens?
3. Social bunny: again no global on/off option, has to be toggled sim by sim. How intrusive is this feature. Does it mess up my sims relationships.
4. Has the issue with not being able to plan holidays been resolved?
5. I heard teens kicked out of high school can never re-enroll, is this true?
6. Any bugs or glitches I should be aware off?
I would be mainly getting the pack for the world and the objects and not play teens any second longer than needed to get the character values from parenthood.
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Comments
But yeah, as far as I can tell, no interactions from this pack affect the character values though.
2. yes and yes unless you turn them off which i did as I still like to pair sims myself so I don't really know
3. no turning off social bunny for everyone its by sim but i barely notice it exists until i get the " social bunny worthy things happened to sim" at which point i deactivate it for all sims in household
idk about rest since i haven't really explored either
the school festivals are pretty annoying though since those show up in all sims calendars regardless of age or world they live in
I like the world for occults since it has lowkey salem vibes (or thats what me, nordic bean never been to 'merica thinks it looks like)
and some items are cool
but yeah gameplay is kind of all over the place and nowhere to be seen if you don't play "modern" teens that much
I say modern cause my save is still in like year 2000 or something with all these ts2 sims I have and it just feels off to me to mix my current teens up with these obviously more 2020 sims
it was so weird to me to see freaking Malcolm Landgraab with these kids for example like nope pls get that guy out of there so yeah i just don't play the active school thing much yet while i have these obviously older than hsy teen sims
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There's a small chance that your teen sim will get a random crush, but most of the time, at least in my experience, you need to actually interact with the sim. You'll occasionally get wants related to the crush, and a few moodlets if you're arround the subject of the crush, but otherwise you can ignore them. There's also a "try to get over crush" interaction in there somewhere.
It can be ignored, honestly. In my experience it only "messes up" relationships in that 1) you can build relationships with it that shouldn't be possible, but that requires actively using it, and 2) you will continue to build friendhips with your social bunny circle, along with occasional relationship change icons floating around. 3) you'll occasionally get tense, angry, or embarassed moodlets from an autonomous post... but you have to have your sim actively use it at least once or twice before those hit.
As far as I can tell, yes.
This I don't know, as I've never tried to have it happen.
Sims will sometimes show up at your house to ask your teen sim to prom (usually as friends) or to be best friends, or even boyfriend/girlfriend if their romance is high enough. Even if it's the middle of the day, and your teen sim is at school/work.
That's the main one that bothers me currently, though it's not as bad as it was right after the pack came out.
I'm sure there are others, but they're not intrusive enough into my play for me to take notice.
2. Crushes feel pretty random. Afaik it's only for teens, they get a sentiment and moodlets. You don't have act upon the crush. They can crush on their friends pretty easily.
3. I disliked social bunny at the beginning, but really it's the best. Normally in rotational play sims get assigned all kind of random relationship which is annoying. I put their true friends in social bunny and the app keeps their relationships in good shape. I've learned to see it as a very useful tool.
4. I don't know this issue.
5. I don't know.
6. Nothing comes to mind, I've enjoyed the pack more than I thought I would.
Updated with Werewolf Diaries (1)
2. Crushes happen randomly during friendly interactions. They are only for teens. They happen in accordance with your sim's sexual orientation (including that you can get some surprises if you have the "exploring" setting on). The pink bar doesn't appear on its own, but your sim gets sentiments about the crush. NPCs can have crushes and the accompanying sentiments too. They can also think about their crushes, or try to get over crushes. Cool thing: writing about the crush in diary (doesn't require parenthood) builds teens' writing skill really quickly
3. Social bunny builds green bar quite significantly over a period of a week or two, passively, with anyone you're social bunny friends with. The constant flashing light on the UI can be annoying. I've never had any major negative effects on relationships from social bunny, just small minuses from time to time (no sentiments) that are easily overcome by the constant build of the green bar. Yes, it needs to be disabled for each played sim. I usually have it on for teens (to simulate the intense bonding of teens with their friends) and then turn it off when they become young adults.
4. Planned holidays not starting? That's a new one on me. I did find a bug report here but it appears to only affect 2 players? https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/S-Scheduled-premade-Holidays-don-t-start/m-p/12279253
5. Also a new one on me, but there were other bugs related to expulsion that have been fixed.
6. Here's the current list of open HSY bugs. There are quite a few. Several of the ones marked Needs Saves are imho player misunderstandings of game features, but I can't be sure. To me the most disruptive is that NPC teen classmates of my played sims often fail to age up on their own.
[OPEN] Homeless, unplayed teen sims never age up
Aspirations
[NEEDS SAVES] [HSY] Admired Icon: can't 'Make 10 teen Friends' with Incredibly Friendly
Autonomy
[OPEN] Teens randomly stop taking exams
Body Hair/ Acne
[NEEDS SAVES] Facial and Body hair don't grow according to settings
[OPEN] Servos have interactions for body/facial hair
Career: Work From Home
[OPEN] Video Game Streamer: Not getting paid when working from home
CAS Asset
[OPEN] [HSY] All but one swatches of this top is faulty
[OPEN] [HSY] Certain outfit cause deformed Fingers/Nails
[OPEN] [HSY] Flared Feminine-Frame Jeans Appear Warped
Excessive Use of something
[NEEDS SAVES] [HSY] Constant pop up messages asking to prom or to be bff’s
Graduation
[OPEN] Early graduated teen cannot join a university organisation
[OPEN] Graduation event dissapears after editing lot from World Map
[OPEN] No Diploma at Graduation, Principal Missing
[OPEN] Teen that graduated early can't join E-sports or Sports Teams
[OPEN] Teenage uni students can't tutor
High School
[NEEDS SAVES] Can’t follow teen sims to highschool
[NEEDS SAVES] Cannot Claim a Locker
[NEEDS SAVES] Sim is stuck on C student despite acing all exams
[NEEDS SAVES] Teen Sim drops out of school upon aging up instead of graduating
[OPEN] Teens don't attend class/White Board shows Career
Interactions: Objects
[OPEN] Clean Whiteboard not available in interactions
Interactions: Sims
[OPEN] Prom Social Interactions disapeared
Lots/Premade Houses
[OPEN] Loud Speaker requirement not recognized if non-default color
Moodlets
[NEEDS SAVES] [HSY] Sim without a crush keeps getting crush related moodlets
[NEEDS SAVES] [HSY] Underprepared moodlet but daily task is complete (homework)
Notifications
[OPEN] [COL] [DU] [HSY] Team result notification appears as Fair notification
NPC Relationship Questions
[OPEN] Already married Sims ask another Sim to marry them
[NEEDS SAVES] NPCs ask other Sims regardless of age/rel status to become GF/BF/BFF
NPCs/ServiceNPCs
[NEEDS SAVES] Stand Workers Invading my house
Outfits/Appearance/Voice
[OPEN] NPC Sims never wear their everyday outfits at school
[OPEN] Teens don't loose acne when aging up to YA/No way to cure
Photobooth/ Ice Cream Vendor/ Ferris Wheel/ Vending Machine
[NEEDS SAVES] Cannot take photo with others at Photo booth on Plumbite Pier
Photography
[OPEN] Selfies and Take picture with not centring properly
Prom/Graduation/NPC Invites
[OPEN] Can't 'Dance With Someone' at Prom / Can't achieve 'Gold' Event Rating
[OPEN] High School Prom not taking place
[OPEN] Never invited to parties
[OPEN] Prom not appearing in calendar/Prom works anyways
[OPEN] Won't Travel to Prom
Relationships
[NEEDS SAVES] Romantic Relationships with all Sims/ Disregards sexual orientation
Science Fair/Sports Day
[NEEDS SAVES] Graduation Not Showing on Calendar - Prom Works
[NEEDS SAVES] No Judge in Chess Science/Sports Fair
Sentiments
[OPEN] [HSY] Teens Enrolled in College Get Resentful About No Prom Invite Sentiment
Skills
[OPEN] [HSY] Llama's Lair Success Giving No Reward
Sneak Out
[NEEDS SAVES] No option to sneak out on ground/ask permission
Social Bunny
[NEEDS SAVES] Adult posting on social bunny about teen related events
[OPEN] Horse/Cat/Dog Has a Social Bunny Account
[OPEN] Sims can send Flirty Social Bunny Messages To Teens and Relatives
[OPEN] Sims sending DMs to themselves on Social Bunny
[NEEDS INFO] Social Bunny app freezes my game
[NEEDS SAVES] Social Bunny app stays on x minutes
[OPEN] Social Bunny Can’t Post
[OPEN] Social Bunny No Followers/Not increasing
[OPEN] Social Bunny only offering limited stuff to post about
[OPEN] Still Yellow Dot on Social Bunny Notifications are turned off
ThrifTea
[OPEN] NPCs order from Thriftea and don't drink/leave
Trendi
[NEEDS SAVES] Can't Wear Trendi Outfits From Inventory
[OPEN] No Fashion Choice/ Outfit type filters for Trendi Outfits
[OPEN] Residential Rental: Tenants can't send items on Plopsy/Trendi
Video game streamer/Simfluencer
[NEEDS SAVES] Sim won’t make lifestyle product review Simfluencer career
[OPEN] Video game streamer career: Unable to livestream unreleased game
from https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/READ-FIRST-Compiled-list-of-reported-Issues/m-p/11673025#M223852
1. Body Hair: I have noticed it on newer sims that have been added to my game. Some of them pre-date this pack and so aren't affected so it surprised me a little bit when I would add a newer sim and suddenly, they would grow a beard or a teen girl would need to shave her legs. CAS.fulleditmode is your friend if you don't want it. I have been in there to switch it off and sometimes I just leave those sasquatches to shave in the shower. You can shave any of it with the shower or sink. You may need to edit some new sims though.
2. Crushes: These pop up during interactions with other sims and are a bit like sentiments in how they appear. You as the player do not determine the crushes but you can go into the control panel for the sim where there is a panel about their romantic orientation and preferences. You can use the settings to determine the sim's orientation. As for crushes, a sentiment pops up and the sim might feel romantic around the object of their interest but you can act on that or ignore it. Actually, they tend to get crushes on whoever they are dating which is nice. They can develop multiple crushes so getting one crush does not limit them if you want them to pair up with someone else.
3. Social Bunny: You receive notifications and you can participate or just entirely ignore it. I do have my sims use Social Bunny. They sometimes have moods about things that happened online or want to talk about it with friends. You could entirely ignore it. You can also gain new friends through Social Bunny by adding acquaintances. You can also message other sims with it.
4. Sims can plan holidays. I just added more new holidays recently to my calendar. I think this must have been resolved in terms of how it is described.
5. I have never had a sim that was kicked out of high school so I don't know this one. If a student is expelled in real life, they can't re-enroll either though so that sounds accurate. Sims with good grades can be offered early graduation which is what I've encountered.
6. I don't think I'm aware of too many bugs in HSY. I may have encountered a glitchy experience with trying to get sims to ride the carnival rides. Generally, it has worked. There was one time where it didn't seem to. I can test it again sometime because I've been playing in Copperdale lately.
Not mentioned but I do actually like Copperdale as a world so far. The high school is pretty basic but I think it's meant to be generic so you can customize it or tear it down for something new. They went with a basic style in which you could be playing in a historic time period from about the mid-century through to today. I might even like it about as much as Brindleton Bay. I just end up wishing that I had a few more lots there, but I like it. I have gotten other packs on sale for mainly the world, clothing and objects so I do not judge.
Also if you want to age teens up, go for it. I have done it but right now I'm running a chaotic boarding school to age numerous teens together simultaneously. It is fun with HSY because there is more for them to do and I can follow the group to classes.
Teens can have after school activities, like chess and computer lab. They have activities like football and cheerleading too. You can make extra rooms for your sims at the school too, like a wood working room with the wood working bench, and.or a knitting room ( ( home ec ), that they can use at lunch, before or after school. You can put a full gym there for them to work out if you want. Sims can eat lunch in the cafeteria, or you can put vending machines for them to buy food, etc.
There are a couple of part time jobs with the pack that teens can do.
The boba shop is nice for Sims to frequent.
I love the bedroom furniture and the CAS is good.
There is also an urban legend in Copperdale.
1. how bad is the body hair issue. I know there is no global on/off switch. I would have to go through every sims to disable it sim per sim. Has anyone done this? How long does it take for townies to all become hairy? If there is any mod to completely turn this off, I am willing to give it a try.
Not bad. None of my existing sims were affected by this as far as I know. I did not check every sm in CAS, but Ib should have seen it by now if existing sims got very hairy. That said, I already had a bug making some female sims hairy by default in CAS, I think it was caused by HSY patch, and not the pack itself.
2. Crushes: how do they work. Will my played sims have crushes on others or will other sims get crushes on my sims. Are there any repercussions if I don't act on them? Will sims automatically gain love interests? I hope not. Is this only for teens?
I can't say I ever noticed any crushes, maybe just once. But I play rotationally, so perhaps the game take longer to trigger these things.
3. Social bunny: again no global on/off option, has to be toggled sim by sim. How intrusive is this feature. Does it mess up my sims relationships.
I had no input from social bunny, except an occasional popup warning me that this sim "might miss out on the fun". It is less disturbing than I expected. Seems like a sim must activate a Social Bunny account to get that stuff. I never did that.
4. Has the issue with not being able to plan holidays been resolved?
Did not check. My sims rarely deserve a holiday anyway
5. I heard teens kicked out of high school can never re-enroll, is this true?
Did not see this yet.
6. Any bugs or glitches I should be aware off?
I find no reason to warn about anything. Perhaps my gaming did not yet trigger the annoying stuff. World feels like a good world for occults, but leaving to others to decide whether it is worth 50% discount alone. Btw, I loike quite some BB and CAS items. I really wanted the photoboot but have not yet tested it...
Not being able to read enrol is unfortunate but if sims can make up for it by getting a high school diploma as young adults, then my sims should be fine later in life if they ever get expelled.
Not sure if I like to read all the possible bugs. Kinda like reading the small print on medicine. Do I really want to know everything that possibly can go wrong. But it's good the information is available. Thanks for a heads up on the acne bug.
Are you saying there is an option to turn crushes off? That would be useful.
So you had similar worries but find the pack OK? That's hopeful. And a world suitable for occults is always a plus, even if they are in practically every world in my game already.
Thanks to everyone else who answered. I think I might get the pack in the end. There are some annoyances but I think it will be OK.
The most traumatic to me is when I forget to do that and my female sim ends up with gorilla legs or even worse, a hairy back
Also there’s no way to shave everywhere at once, so, say your sim has hair on their arms, torso, legs, and back, you have to do four different shaving interactions.
2) You get a pop-up saying your sim has a crush on someone. For some reason my sims always have crushes on same-sex sims, even if I set it up differently in CAS.
3) You only see Social Bunny stuff if you open the app on your sim’s phone, otherwise it doesn’t change anything.
4) I didn’t have the issue.
5) Yes unfortunately it’s true and extremely annoying. They can’t re-enroll at all. I have several teen that are « stuck » out of school now, and I didn’t even do anything to get them expelled, they just had bad grades or maybe got caught doing mischievous interactions autonomously ? I don’t know for sure because it doesn’t say why your sim is expelled and I hadn’t been following them at school when it happened.
6) I was gonna mention point 5), but you already know.
I really like this EP but I do play with teenagers a lot.
I do put body hair on some of my sims but I usually disable hair growth so they keep it at the length I choose and I have only noticed it on a few random townies (not on the created ones like the Goths). Oh, I'm not sure if the walking along/looking at phone thing came with this pack but I think it's been toned down anyway. I don't notice it to an annoying degree.
It's got some great build buy stuff with it.
Oh, I didn't think about the thrift store. I don't plan on using it. Will this do anything if I never make outfits. What worries me a bit is that townies can walk around in thrift store outfits. Is that a thing? I know the base game fashion career allows players to create outfits for townies to wear but has no way to get rid of those trends. Is something similar going on with the thrift store?
That's good news. As long as I stay away from this, my sims will be fine
Not sure yet if I'll ever get the pack but I really appreciate seeing everyone's input. There used to be an awesome high school mod that I played with a long time ago and I loved it, maybe I'll look it up, see if it still exists. 🙂
There are no new activities for children.
Yes, the only thing they can do is going on the Ferris wheel and haunted house attraction. They can't play with that football (they could in previous games), they can't use the photo booth (again, they can in the previous games), they can't order Boba tea (they can drink ones left out, but they'll stretch out when inserting a straw, almost like they don't have animation for it), they can't use the escape window (use this knowledge to build adult-only rooms) etc.
And at first, they couldn't do pillow fights too, but Growing Together solved that one.
I get that this pack was made to improve teen life stage, but seriously, I don't get these exclusions (and Discover University even gave children the ability to play with the soccer ball!). And years back I praised The Sims 4 Get Together for allowing children to interact with dart boards, football tables, diving boards etc.
Although the main aspect of this pack (going to high school lol) is boring, repetitive and a waste of time IMO, at least they have made the annoyances pretty unavoidable if we want to avoid them.
Thanks, that's good to know about the T pose. 🙂
Yeah, I would want my teens to go to highschool but it seems kind of dull and mundane. I want to see anxiety and drama! I want Sims to fight over the same boy, or skip class and get detention, or spread rumors about each other and get upset, or forget their homework and have a stress meltdown. I want to be entertained, lol. I know I've seen a variety of mods for the pack, maybe there's a good teen drama one.
I also have the no autonomous phone mod. The phone usage went crazy with the high school years patch, even without the EP. I think a later patch mentioned it being toned down but I haven't removed the mod. I have no interest in my sims hanging on their phone all day, with or without HSY
I also don't get the T-pose thing. Glorifying a bug in the game after simmers have only had bad experiences with T-poses?
Too bad there are so few activities for younger sims in this pack. Sims DLC seems to be a hit or miss when it comes to younger ages. Some packs care about them (for example letting them ride on horses, yay) and some just ignore them completely. All I can say is RoM is my favourite DLC despite absent kids gameplay. If children could participate in the magic the pack would have been better as a whole. I wish every pack would consider all sim age groups. Anyway the fact that there is almost nothing for age groups other than teens is probably why this is about the last EP I am missing (besides for rent which isttoo buggy and too early for a 50% sale)
Thank goodness the T-pose is limited to the high school. The intentional T-pose I should say. Active high school sounds fun for a few times but if it is like regular careers I will switch to sending them alone after some time.