To be honest I would really like a preteen life stage in the game, more than toddlers actually. I just find the jump between child and teen very jarring, even if the teens were shorter. I think people underestimate the importance of preteens in the game.
For now I use simmythesims's "shorter teens and gradual growth" mod so they grow a little bit every sim midnight. The only glitch are the kissing animations.
To be honest I would really like a preteen life stage in the game, more than toddlers actually. I just find the jump between child and teen very jarring, even if the teens were shorter. I think people underestimate the importance of preteens in the game.
For now I use simmythesims's "shorter teens and gradual growth" mod so they grow a little bit every sim midnight. The only glitch are the kissing animations.
I think the addition of toddlers made us all even more aware of what a life stage could be. It's not all about height or appearance in that way exactly. It's about having options and interactions and gameplay that gives us the feeling that our adult sims are raising fully developed little sims which is not the feeling I get (or apparently others get) when they play with children or teens as they are. I'd like to see a pre-teen stage that has as much detail as the toddler stage has now. I think pre-teens don't get enough credit for being interesting because they certainly are in real life and there are definitely a lot of playable moments with them so far as quirks and milestones.
I'm totally with you on this. I never play with these so called teens, the Sims 4 teens are the worst. The small heads on the tall bodies, with small shoulders and small hips, the super small eyes and small jaw...they look so deformed I just visually can't take it. I always wonder how the artsy people in the team could let this happen! It's unacceptable, in my opinion. It absolutely destroys family play for me, I honestly get irritated when I see these spaghetti-sims. I can't get used to them, and I really tried to look and not see what I see.
The thing I do is dress teens appropriately. Sundresses and nonrevealing attire for girls and sneakers, jeans and T-Shirts for boys. No heavy makeup either. I also choose more ponytails and kid like hairstyles for them. It gives more separation between them and adults.
Teens tend to be more slender in the game as well, so definitely do look different.. but I also agree that the height makes it harder to differentiate them.
LOL its so funny because I was playing just last night and I have a household with a ton of teens. I saw this girl pass by and I was like..."Maybe my teen can get a date with her?" Only to realize that she was a young adult.
AWKWARD.
Yeah I agree that maybe the whole teen stage maybe needs a little expanding in terms of design and differences but I'm not really sure what, to be completely honest.
I do think the teens look too much like the young adults, but it's not a game breaker for me. In real life, lot of teens look much older than they are. They can shoot up to near adult height in a couple of months, which in sim equivalent, is basically overnight. So it's not too withdrawn from reality. What separates teens and adults most is mentality and behavior, which is where I think the game would benefit the most from improvement. If they carried over the age-specific aspiration and trait mechanic they introduced with toddlers into every life stage, I think that could be a vast improvement to the entire game.
Currently, the only teen-specific whims are little things, like the desire to lock their door (I only have GTW and DO, though, so I don't know if other EPs expand on this). I think whims like staying out late, sneaking out, skipping school, etc, would add a lot. "Change look" is another I'd like to see for teens. There were a lot of teen-specific wishes in TS2 that really made the teen stage feel different. Bringing some of those back into the game could help a lot.
I don't mind how they LOOK, i was taller than my father when i was 16, but i don't mind if they introduced a "Preteen" stage with the gameplay of previous games teens, that said, what i would really want is way more interactions for all stages, childrem and elder in particular. WHY CANT MY KIDS JUMP ON THE FREAKING BED ???
@JoAnne65
But which "more" ? Sometimes people mention things I actually dislike in TS2 (like the curfew, special clothes or private schools with the director), sometimes it's things I just don't relate to at all (like driving, proms, etc). I'm not interested in stereotypical teens, and people are really often suggesting enforcing some stereotypes on teens, to make them different, which would basically limit my possibilities.
I'm ok with another younger teen life stage or more options but I don't want to lose the teenagers and the gameplay I already have.
I feel like toddlers are ( understandably ) the most unique life stage right now, not only because of how toddlers are but because they got so much indirect feedback on them while they were still in development. Hopefully they'll use the knowledge they gained when developing them to flesh out the other life stages as well.
I'm never really sure what I'm going to get with a toddler so far as emotions or actions or whatever. I think the devs created them to be extremely dynamic and lively whereas clearly that same attention, as you mentioned, wasn't given to other life stages. I think it's fair to say teens come with a similar level of drama and dynamism that toddlers and children do so I'd like to actually be able to see that in my gameplay.
I dress teens like teens and let them have piercings that I downloaded and I let them be that way until beyond their teen years when they have babies I make them more look like a mother then them looking like a defiant teen. Though most of teens have tattoo's to.
I really don't understand why the teens are so bad in this game. It's not like it was the first time they were added. In the Sims 2 & 3 they were smaller and totally different than the adults. Really it makes no sense.
I feel like toddlers are ( understandably ) the most unique life stage right now, not only because of how toddlers are but because they got so much indirect feedback on them while they were still in development. Hopefully they'll use the knowledge they gained when developing them to flesh out the other life stages as well.
I totally agree. And I could imagine a generations ep coming up sometime could help out many of the lifestages. Not to mention 'pre-teens' were talked about in that old survey if I recall.
I'll admit, I'm still not exactly the biggest fan of the s4 teens. My poor niece just turned 13 and she's only 4'10 like most teen girls are where we live, so her and her friends can't relate at all to the super-sized sized teens and usually prefers to choose the child state instead.
I wouldn't mind seeing a expansion stage like YA were in s2, I could see it working for either a school gamepack/expansion or a generations-like expansion. Either way, like @Yoko2112 said, simmers have to come up with ideas for them. Think about how much ideas and feeback many simmers put into toddlers. The same could be done to not only teens/preteens but any other lifestage that simmers feel in a need of revamping.
What has to be considered is that teens were smaller in previous games - which was a design choice by the developers. TS4 teens draw attention to the importance and purpose of this design choice that was shorter teens, as the little physical distinction our teens have now plays a huge part in the problem that is them being indistinguishable from YA/A. It essentially makes their gameplay redundant and players have noticed this redundancy, hence the thread.
Pre-teens are not the answer to this problem, as developers should not be adding a new life stage to compensate for a severely underdeveloped one that's already in the game. Instead, resources should be spent on fleshing out teens to make them more unique and worthwhile. Once that's done, I would then consider the need for a pre-teen life stage.
@JoAnne65
But which "more" ? Sometimes people mention things I actually dislike in TS2 (like the curfew, special clothes or private schools with the director), sometimes it's things I just don't relate to at all (like driving, proms, etc). I'm not interested in stereotypical teens, and people are really often suggesting enforcing some stereotypes on teens, to make them different, which would basically limit my possibilities.
I'm ok with another younger teen life stage or more options but I don't want to lose the teenagers and the gameplay I already have.
I don't like curfew either when I can't escape it (don't know about 2 but it is like that in 3, only a rebel can escape the curfew I believe and that's trait related, not action related). I'd love there to be consequences, I'd also love the ability to make your teen escape consequences. To some extent. I don't want consequences to be rigid and set in stone, but if there are no consequences, it's not a game. That's my opinion though, maybe the stage could do with a topic of its own, like there used to be a toddler topic filled with ideas (ideas I see back in the current toddlers).
I'm not only talking about that by the way. I'm also talking about teen behaviour...
I really don't understand why the teens are so bad in this game. It's not like it was the first time they were added. In the Sims 2 & 3 they were smaller and totally different than the adults. Really it makes no sense.
I believe it was to do with time/budget constraints when the base game was being developed. It wasn't really a design choice, but more of a consequence of other factors that limited the development of teens.
I think a guru has commented on it before, but I'll have to find the quote.
@JoAnne65
But which "more" ? Sometimes people mention things I actually dislike in TS2 (like the curfew, special clothes or private schools with the director), sometimes it's things I just don't relate to at all (like driving, proms, etc). I'm not interested in stereotypical teens, and people are really often suggesting enforcing some stereotypes on teens, to make them different, which would basically limit my possibilities.
I'm ok with another younger teen life stage or more options but I don't want to lose the teenagers and the gameplay I already have.
I doubt you would loose anything, as for these features, you can pretty much ignore most of them, don't block people ideas if you can just ignore the gameplay. There is nothing more stereotypical than a teenager, specially when they "want to be different" and end up beign the same in the process. Not saying that about you, but your comment did bring that to my mind.
What has to be considered is that teens were smaller in previous games - which was a design choice by the developers. TS4 teens draw attention to the importance and purpose of this design choice that was shorter teens, as the little physical distinction our teens have now plays a huge part in the problem that is them being indistinguishable from YA/A. It essentially makes their gameplay redundant and players have noticed this redundancy, hence the thread.
Pre-teens are not the answer to this problem, as developers should not be adding a new life stage to compensate for a severely underdeveloped one that's already in the game. Instead, resources should be spent on fleshing out teens to make them more unique and worthwhile. Once that's done, I would then consider the need for a pre-teen life stage.
As i said, people keep making a big deal for how they look, but gameplay is the big deal here. I would not expect they to do a complete rework all animations of a lifestage, even if they introduce something like that again with a free patch it would most likely be a new stage. When we get more EPs for Thesims4 and start discussing Thesims5 then it might be wise to bring out the matter of Shorter teenagers before the game is done.
What has to be considered is that teens were smaller in previous games - which was a design choice by the developers. TS4 teens draw attention to the importance and purpose of this design choice that was shorter teens, as the little physical distinction our teens have now plays a huge part in the problem that is them being indistinguishable from YA/A. It essentially makes their gameplay redundant and players have noticed this redundancy, hence the thread.
Pre-teens are not the answer to this problem, as developers should not be adding a new life stage to compensate for a severely underdeveloped one that's already in the game. Instead, resources should be spent on fleshing out teens to make them more unique and worthwhile. Once that's done, I would then consider the need for a pre-teen life stage.
Umm ok that makes no sense that you would hate teens because they can wear all the young adult-elder clothes they are still unique and I couldn't stand when I would CC shop for clothes in the other games that I had to get separate clothes for them to wear. I like that they can wear the adult clothes its how you present them in your game whether they look like teens to you.
@JoAnne65
But which "more" ? Sometimes people mention things I actually dislike in TS2 (like the curfew, special clothes or private schools with the director), sometimes it's things I just don't relate to at all (like driving, proms, etc). I'm not interested in stereotypical teens, and people are really often suggesting enforcing some stereotypes on teens, to make them different, which would basically limit my possibilities.
I'm ok with another younger teen life stage or more options but I don't want to lose the teenagers and the gameplay I already have.
Everything in this game is stereotyped in some way. All life stages are collective ideas about what should be appropriate to distinguish them as that life stage, and many of those ideas are not absolute and apply to all real life reflections about people in those age categories. Not all school aged kids are exactly half the size of adults, but it would help to give the player the impression they're playing with kids. The same is with teens. I don't think anyone wants to mess with the gameplay you already have, but rather add to it.
@JoAnne65
But which "more" ? Sometimes people mention things I actually dislike in TS2 (like the curfew, special clothes or private schools with the director), sometimes it's things I just don't relate to at all (like driving, proms, etc). I'm not interested in stereotypical teens, and people are really often suggesting enforcing some stereotypes on teens, to make them different, which would basically limit my possibilities.
I'm ok with another younger teen life stage or more options but I don't want to lose the teenagers and the gameplay I already have.
I don't like curfew either when I can't escape it (don't know about 2 but it is like that in 3, only a rebel can escape the curfew I believe and that's trait related, not action related). I'd love there to be consequences, I'd also love the ability to make your teen escape consequences. To some extent. I don't want consequences to be rigid and set in stone, but if there are no consequences, it's not a game. That's my opinion though, maybe the stage could do with a topic of its own, like there used to be a toddler topic filled with ideas (ideas I see back in the current toddlers).
I'm not only talking about that by the way. I'm also talking about teen behaviour...
Haha not only rebels didn't get caught my teenage sim stayed up all night in the graveyard practicing magic in 3 and never got caught. Then I had to send her to school dead tired because she wasn't home.
What has to be considered is that teens were smaller in previous games - which was a design choice by the developers. TS4 teens draw attention to the importance and purpose of this design choice that was shorter teens, as the little physical distinction our teens have now plays a huge part in the problem that is them being indistinguishable from YA/A. It essentially makes their gameplay redundant and players have noticed this redundancy, hence the thread.
Pre-teens are not the answer to this problem, as developers should not be adding a new life stage to compensate for a severely underdeveloped one that's already in the game. Instead, resources should be spent on fleshing out teens to make them more unique and worthwhile. Once that's done, I would then consider the need for a pre-teen life stage.
Umm ok that makes no sense that you would hate teens because they can wear all the young adult-elder clothes they are still unique and I couldn't stand when I would CC shop for clothes in the other games that I had to get separate clothes for them to wear. I like that they can wear the adult clothes its how you present them in your game whether they look like teens to you.
I never said I hated teens. I was drawing attention to something that made teens successful in other games and that is their size.
Sure I like how they can wear adults clothes, but currently everything they do is adult, apart from school and a part time job, so I would be happy to sacrifice some adult things for them to be more unique.
@JoAnne65
But which "more" ? Sometimes people mention things I actually dislike in TS2 (like the curfew, special clothes or private schools with the director), sometimes it's things I just don't relate to at all (like driving, proms, etc). I'm not interested in stereotypical teens, and people are really often suggesting enforcing some stereotypes on teens, to make them different, which would basically limit my possibilities.
I'm ok with another younger teen life stage or more options but I don't want to lose the teenagers and the gameplay I already have.
I doubt you would loose anything, as for these features, you can pretty much ignore most of them, don't block people ideas if you can just ignore the gameplay. There is nothing more stereotypical than a teenager, specially when they "want to be different" and end up beign the same in the process. Not saying that about you, but your comment did bring that to my mind.
What has to be considered is that teens were smaller in previous games - which was a design choice by the developers. TS4 teens draw attention to the importance and purpose of this design choice that was shorter teens, as the little physical distinction our teens have now plays a huge part in the problem that is them being indistinguishable from YA/A. It essentially makes their gameplay redundant and players have noticed this redundancy, hence the thread.
Pre-teens are not the answer to this problem, as developers should not be adding a new life stage to compensate for a severely underdeveloped one that's already in the game. Instead, resources should be spent on fleshing out teens to make them more unique and worthwhile. Once that's done, I would then consider the need for a pre-teen life stage.
As i said, people keep making a big deal for how they look, but gameplay is the big deal here. I would not expect they to do a complete rework all animations of a lifestage, even if they introduce something like that again with a free patch it would most likely be a new stage. When we get more EPs for Thesims4 and start discussing Thesims5 then it might be wise to bring out the matter of Shorter teenagers before the game is done.
Oh I know the way they look is not the complete package, but it helps. Have you noticed that kid animations are basically identical to adult animations, but just on a smaller scale? No one really complains about that and neither do I because I will admit that their size is a huge part in what makes them kids.
What has to be considered is that teens were smaller in previous games - which was a design choice by the developers. TS4 teens draw attention to the importance and purpose of this design choice that was shorter teens, as the little physical distinction our teens have now plays a huge part in the problem that is them being indistinguishable from YA/A. It essentially makes their gameplay redundant and players have noticed this redundancy, hence the thread.
Pre-teens are not the answer to this problem, as developers should not be adding a new life stage to compensate for a severely underdeveloped one that's already in the game. Instead, resources should be spent on fleshing out teens to make them more unique and worthwhile. Once that's done, I would then consider the need for a pre-teen life stage.
Umm ok that makes no sense that you would hate teens because they can wear all the young adult-elder clothes they are still unique and I couldn't stand when I would CC shop for clothes in the other games that I had to get separate clothes for them to wear. I like that they can wear the adult clothes its how you present them in your game whether they look like teens to you.
I never said I hated teens. I was drawing attention to something that made teens successful in other games and that is their size.
Sure I like how they can wear adults clothes, but currently everything they do is adult, apart from school and a part time job, so I would be happy to sacrifice some adult things for them to be more unique.
But there size doesn't matter all my teens look like teens because I dress them like teens. This is my best example of teens looking like teens in my game at least.
Comments
For now I use simmythesims's "shorter teens and gradual growth" mod so they grow a little bit every sim midnight. The only glitch are the kissing animations.
I think the addition of toddlers made us all even more aware of what a life stage could be. It's not all about height or appearance in that way exactly. It's about having options and interactions and gameplay that gives us the feeling that our adult sims are raising fully developed little sims which is not the feeling I get (or apparently others get) when they play with children or teens as they are. I'd like to see a pre-teen stage that has as much detail as the toddler stage has now. I think pre-teens don't get enough credit for being interesting because they certainly are in real life and there are definitely a lot of playable moments with them so far as quirks and milestones.
Download below ♛
Teens tend to be more slender in the game as well, so definitely do look different.. but I also agree that the height makes it harder to differentiate them.
AWKWARD.
Yeah I agree that maybe the whole teen stage maybe needs a little expanding in terms of design and differences but I'm not really sure what, to be completely honest.
Currently, the only teen-specific whims are little things, like the desire to lock their door (I only have GTW and DO, though, so I don't know if other EPs expand on this). I think whims like staying out late, sneaking out, skipping school, etc, would add a lot. "Change look" is another I'd like to see for teens. There were a lot of teen-specific wishes in TS2 that really made the teen stage feel different. Bringing some of those back into the game could help a lot.
But which "more" ? Sometimes people mention things I actually dislike in TS2 (like the curfew, special clothes or private schools with the director), sometimes it's things I just don't relate to at all (like driving, proms, etc). I'm not interested in stereotypical teens, and people are really often suggesting enforcing some stereotypes on teens, to make them different, which would basically limit my possibilities.
I'm ok with another younger teen life stage or more options but I don't want to lose the teenagers and the gameplay I already have.
I'm never really sure what I'm going to get with a toddler so far as emotions or actions or whatever. I think the devs created them to be extremely dynamic and lively whereas clearly that same attention, as you mentioned, wasn't given to other life stages. I think it's fair to say teens come with a similar level of drama and dynamism that toddlers and children do so I'd like to actually be able to see that in my gameplay.
I totally agree. And I could imagine a generations ep coming up sometime could help out many of the lifestages. Not to mention 'pre-teens' were talked about in that old survey if I recall.
I'll admit, I'm still not exactly the biggest fan of the s4 teens. My poor niece just turned 13 and she's only 4'10 like most teen girls are where we live, so her and her friends can't relate at all to the super-sized sized teens and usually prefers to choose the child state instead.
I wouldn't mind seeing a expansion stage like YA were in s2, I could see it working for either a school gamepack/expansion or a generations-like expansion. Either way, like @Yoko2112 said, simmers have to come up with ideas for them. Think about how much ideas and feeback many simmers put into toddlers. The same could be done to not only teens/preteens but any other lifestage that simmers feel in a need of revamping.
Pre-teens are not the answer to this problem, as developers should not be adding a new life stage to compensate for a severely underdeveloped one that's already in the game. Instead, resources should be spent on fleshing out teens to make them more unique and worthwhile. Once that's done, I would then consider the need for a pre-teen life stage.
I'm not only talking about that by the way. I'm also talking about teen behaviour...
Sure this is stereotyping but there's a reason why every parent on earth has to laugh watching this
edit:
lol, this automatically came next and I'd like that kind of behaviour towards teens as well
I believe it was to do with time/budget constraints when the base game was being developed. It wasn't really a design choice, but more of a consequence of other factors that limited the development of teens.
I think a guru has commented on it before, but I'll have to find the quote.
I doubt you would loose anything, as for these features, you can pretty much ignore most of them, don't block people ideas if you can just ignore the gameplay. There is nothing more stereotypical than a teenager, specially when they "want to be different" and end up beign the same in the process. Not saying that about you, but your comment did bring that to my mind.
As i said, people keep making a big deal for how they look, but gameplay is the big deal here. I would not expect they to do a complete rework all animations of a lifestage, even if they introduce something like that again with a free patch it would most likely be a new stage. When we get more EPs for Thesims4 and start discussing Thesims5 then it might be wise to bring out the matter of Shorter teenagers before the game is done.
Everything in this game is stereotyped in some way. All life stages are collective ideas about what should be appropriate to distinguish them as that life stage, and many of those ideas are not absolute and apply to all real life reflections about people in those age categories. Not all school aged kids are exactly half the size of adults, but it would help to give the player the impression they're playing with kids. The same is with teens. I don't think anyone wants to mess with the gameplay you already have, but rather add to it.
I never said I hated teens. I was drawing attention to something that made teens successful in other games and that is their size.
Sure I like how they can wear adults clothes, but currently everything they do is adult, apart from school and a part time job, so I would be happy to sacrifice some adult things for them to be more unique.
Oh I know the way they look is not the complete package, but it helps. Have you noticed that kid animations are basically identical to adult animations, but just on a smaller scale? No one really complains about that and neither do I because I will admit that their size is a huge part in what makes them kids.