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Scholar
#26 Old 6th Jan 2011 at 8:37 AM
In a way the uni EP feels half-baked, it mimics college, poorly and its not much of a challenge. The advantage grads get can be offset by just playing well enough to let your sim use aspiration rewards to keep them alive longer and letting them skill faster. Also like another simmer said part of the fun for me is sim genetics so when I play a sim through uni thats time where genetics are not the focus.
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Lab Assistant
#27 Old 6th Jan 2011 at 8:19 PM
I make my college students study really hard & go to as many community lots as possible. If they have high creativity points they can make a surprising amount of money at Little Fallorayne Amphitheatre, no matter what school they go to. If they have enough money & are stressed, send them on vacation for a few days. My students don't get much sleep at uni ... ;-)
Mad Poster
#28 Old 6th Jan 2011 at 8:42 PM
I have built my own, or re-worked, every type of lot in Univ; just hate their dorms. I like to send a CAS Sim to Univ, just because they start with such a disadvantage. In my big Sedona hood I work families to have many teens ready to go to Univ at the same time, and I send them to dorms fitting my plans for them. My smart guys go to a dorm with lots of custom skill-building stuff. My party Sims go to another type of lot and often flunk out. I commonly have 3 dorms going, with maximum Sims in each one. While I direct some party or popularity Sims to become Big Man on Campus, join Sororities, etc, I've done those things enough that it's now easy, and boring. I have a cheat that makes college faster. Have "cheated" to make a pregnancy; and worked to figure out how to get the baby back to the parent! - when they graduate, the baby does NOT go with them! I sometimes put a couple in a house, just because of the money thing; in dorms, I "buy" lots of the most expensive statue and put them in the sims inventory - after all, they EARNED dit.

Stand up, speak out. Just not to me..
Instructor
#29 Old 6th Jan 2011 at 11:13 PM
Quote: Originally posted by grammapat
in dorms, I "buy" lots of the most expensive statue and put them in the sims inventory - after all, they EARNED it.


With the money they earn, right? You're not raiding the common area, are you? I usually keep the money they get by buying and stashing in inventory, also. Though, my current uni sim is staying on the Dean's List and so I'm saving that up so he can by a commercial lot before he graduates.

ETA: I actually like to keep the dorms relatively skill-free - otherwise my sim never gets out. But I don't like them going to the main hood or downtown, because, they're in college - they should go to college-like places.
Lab Assistant
#30 Old 6th Jan 2011 at 11:42 PM
University is boring. I've played with my College Sim all the way until he became a senior, and I just got rid of him.
Mad Poster
#31 Old 8th Jan 2011 at 8:34 AM
I like to build dorms with skilling stuff, that way they don't have to go to community lots...especially if they're fresh out of CAS. LOL

I still like it for the reasons I stated: build up relationships, build up reputation (Apartment Life--have a good reputation and you can buy Buy Mode stuff at a discount, or require fewer friends for promotions, etc.), and if I want two students to eventually be married, it gives them more money to work with after they graduate.
Lab Assistant
#32 Old 8th Jan 2011 at 3:10 PM
The only thing I like about University is how easy it is to get good grades.

This is a signature, worship it and it will love you forever.
Instructor
#33 Old 8th Jan 2011 at 5:01 PM
As silly as this may sound - especially since I thought this wasn't a significant annoyance - I think, for me, the game felt like it went on forever because of that stupid, slow, walk. If it feels like it takes forever to cross the common room, of course it's going to feel like forever to graduate.

I've been playing with the walk-mod zumppe recommended and with smaller community lots (the larger lots felt very isolating) and I've actually enjoyed it. I do need to send the sims to community lots though. Those overpriced, luxury dorms do nothing for me. Of course, in the regular hoods I always start my sims in very cramped places. I love making shot-gun shacks and 2-up-2-downs. (I'm so mean.)
Banned
#34 Old 9th Jan 2011 at 2:40 PM
Quote: Originally posted by A.G.Doren
Too long and too short all at once: You can finish up everything a sim needs to get a passing grade in 24-36 hours, after that there is lots of time to fill. At the same time there is no spring break, no winter break etc... The university clock never stops so the 72hrs deadline is always hanging over your head.



I thought about this: can you send YAs on vacation? That would be awesome, sending your students to Twikkii Island on spring break for all sorts of craziness.
Mad Poster
#35 Old 9th Jan 2011 at 3:51 PM
Yes you can, Jim, if I recall correctly. They don't ever get "days off" from their uni schedule, but you can just send them away on vacation and their clock stops ticking down to finals until they get back from wherever you've sent them on holiday. I've only ever sent one college sim on vacation, as far as I can remember; normally I like to have them save as much money as possible whilst they're in uni, and I don't let them have the $20,000 handout anymore (though I don't use the MATY mod to stop it) so they need all the money they can scrape together to get their own place when they graduate......
Instructor
#36 Old 9th Jan 2011 at 3:52 PM
Quote: Originally posted by perihelion
I thought about this: can you send YAs on vacation? That would be awesome, sending your students to Twikkii Island on spring break for all sorts of craziness.


Yes you can. But I think YAs can't buy or rent a vacation home from college. I have made some great vacation homes that would be perfect for college students, but since they didn't buy it back home (or it wasn't willed to them) they have to stay at a hotel instead.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#37 Old 9th Jan 2011 at 10:49 PM
First of all, I apologize for asking this question in a completely unrelated thread. My blood sugar was low and I was getting into a state of mind where I shouldn't be on newsgroups at all, and I "failed my save" (as we say in tabletop RPGs) vs. not hitting send. Thanks for moving it so it could be a fruitful discussion.

In taste and scent, no argument; it does not surprise me to discover that people who don't like University play in ways that are utterly alien to me, while others had such a bad first experience that they took against the whole thing. Social interactions are the heart of the game for me; and I've not only never had a problem setting my own goals or seeing the possibilities opened by the goals of the sims, I've been frustrated, outside of University, by the way the goals the game sets and the mechanics it uses interfere with other things I want to do. Many of these mechanics are specifically addressed at University.

For instance, I want circles of playable friends and relations, yet the game insists on bombarding me with townies. Children bring home dead-end "friends" who can't grow up, or playable children from an entirely different part of town, instead of the kid who lives next door. I've spent half my playing time trying to get people on the same street to even meet each other, and work my popularity and romance sims half to death providing connections. At University, all I have to do is add people into the same dorm or residence, and get one person from that dorm or residence to try to pledge the appropriate Greek House. Even if s/he doesn't get in, the Greeks swarm all over the residence, everybody meets everybody, and from that point on can call back and forth. I Invite Household as much as Throw Party; in the outside world, invited household members often won't come because they're at work or don't like the caller enough, but at University, they're likely to all come over. With so many uncontrollable sims on one lot, I can focus my attention on the one or two I'm interested in that day while the others mill about behaving spontaneously, making their own connections and displaying their natural personalities, which I can then riff off of when their turn comes.

The opportunity to change aspirations at the beginning of junior year also gives me an easy and natural way to play character arcs without using cheat codes or hacks, which I am consciously avoiding unless I absolutely can't do a storyline without them. IRL, 2/3 of teens have half the aspirations - Pleasure, Popularity, and Romance. Among adults, Fortune, Family, and Knowledge come into their own (though we all know adults we would classify as having the "immature" aspirations and teens with the "mature" ones; all generalizations are false). So I want to give most of my teens "immature" aspirations and discover, through University play, which ones will grow into "mature" ones. This will probably entail a last-minute change of major and that's all to the good, as suddenly their LTW is harder than it used to be. Some of y'all are yawning at the mere thought of this, but that's okay. You'd probably be shocked at the movies I've yawned my way through because they lacked meaningful character arcs and all the breakneck derring-do in the world couldn't engage my interest without them.

I also use University to deal with problems and pressures in Drama Acres and Downtown. Many people seem to find University isolating; but since I play in rotation and family members are constantly wanting to talk to each other this has never happened to me. Toddlers getting you down? Invite your kid home from college with all his dorm friends and Influence them to clean and play with the kid! Can't get the teens who live next door to each other to meet? Have his older brother put him in a social group with himself and his buddy from the sorority, her older sister; older sister puts little sister into the same group; a couple of outings later, presto! They know each other.

University takes the pressure off toddlers, kids, and teens to skill up all the time, as they'll have plenty of time to skill in University. The intimate friendships of University housemates age naturally into ones that can be called on during pregnancy and childraising years to make them less hectic. Why stick yourself with a townie roommate when you can share digs with your old college buddy? And so on.

Since teens fall out of love when they age to YA, I can switch love interests (but don't put former steadies into the same building if you don't want them to fall right back into love!), split up and reunite couples, and generally simulate something more like normal dating with a lot less sturm and drang, and not take up half the adult lifespan doing it. It would be massively inconvenient to have two best friends fight over a guy and then make up with him as a common enemy if I had to do it while everybody is holding down different jobs and can easily avoid each other.

I do have a couple of University households in which I made basic errors and which are less involving to run than the others; but those errors are mine, not intrinsic to the EP. I would say it is usually a mistake to have fewer than three sims to a household, and that those sims should not all have the same aspiration. That way you can rotate your attention, and somebody will always want to do something interesting. Conflicting wants may even set up storylines. Your knowledge sim will not become totally isolated, and your pleasure sim will have someone around to help him keep his grades up (by being influenced to doing his assignments, by dragging him into study groups, or by playing chess with him till he gets the logic point that enables him to squeak by with a C grade, depending on your house dynamic.). If you only have Popularity and Pleasure sims in the Greeks (their natural habitat, I grant) you'll soon get sick of throwing parties, but leavening them with Family, Knowledge, and Financial sims gives you something to do with partyless days.

The only wrong way to play is the way that's no fun; I submit that, this being the case, if University bores you, you're playing it "wrong" and would do well to try something different with it. University is different in kind from other EPs, and therefore it shouldn't be surprising that you'd have to learn new play habits to get the most out of it.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
transmogrified
retired moderator
#38 Old 9th Jan 2011 at 11:30 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Peni Griffin
The only wrong way to play is the way that's no fun; I submit that, this being the case, if University bores you, you're playing it "wrong" and would do well to try something different with it.


Agree; and disagree.

People have solved the "Uni is boring" conundrum for themselves: by using cheats to shorten the length of Uni or by not sending their teens at all. Bending one's playstyle to "make" Uni fun following the EA formula is the same as bending one's playstyle to make TS3 fun: only worthwhile if you are specifically looking for different fun. When you've got the fun you want, it's perfectly acceptable not to force yourself to do anything different at all.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#39 Old 10th Jan 2011 at 12:57 AM
I wouldn't expect anybody to bend their playstyle and I doubt I play it as Maxis intended. It's easy to sound like a taste bigot online even when you're not one. (And most of us are, really, to a certain extent, if we don't watch ourselves.) I find that expanding my playstyle and experimenting in order to find a way to enjoy something is fruitful, even when it doesn't always quite work as intended. Sometimes all you find is that something really isn't for you.

For instance, in yawnworthy movies I amuse myself by predicting plot points, which characters will die in which order, etc. I'd rather avoid the movies and nobody holds that against me. But if I didn't keep going to movies my friends want to see and I don't particularly, I'd never be surprised and delighted by the one that turns my expectations on their heads.

And I certainly hope that people for whom University is problematic will get something out of this thread, even if it is only a sense of fellowship that they're not the only one who found the YA walk intolerable. (Even alerted to it, I can't detect any noticeable difference in the way they move, myself. I believe y'all that it's different, but I can't see it.) Obviously it's my hope that a few people will find they can enjoy it after all, or under certain conditions, just as I have profited by reading about other people's methods with parts of the game I initially found difficult or tedious.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
transmogrified
retired moderator
#40 Old 10th Jan 2011 at 1:34 AM
Peni, sorry if I made you feel as if you had to defend the existence of this thread. That wasn't my point at all. I know a lot of forum members find inspiration in learning how other people play the game and what they enjoy about it. My point is: people who have tried University and decided that the slow pace, the social bubble, or the lack of more than one game-defined goal isn't for them aren't playing it wrong. It's like telling someone they're playing the game wrong if all they do is dress up their Sims or clutter their houses for photoshoots because they find story-oriented gameplay boring. The only wrong way to play is the way that's no fun for the player.
Mad Poster
#41 Old 10th Jan 2011 at 2:02 AM
Actually I find Uni boring because half the time you need to skill or prepare for classes/tests/graduation, and in a way, it feels too much like career jobs. I also find career jobs boring. However, I do love the EP for all the nice objects it gave us.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#42 Old 10th Jan 2011 at 1:47 PM
Well, but my point is that since there's more than one way to play everything, if you haven't tried out different ways, you don't know if you like it, do you? For instance - Crocabura, if you don't want to spend half your time skilling, don't! Unlike the careers, points needed aren't cumulative even within majors, so if you only skill up just enough to keep from going on academic probation, there may well be no penalty at all next semester - and if there is, you can change majors! (Until senior year. And anybody who can't cut it senior year can drop out at the last minute. Why not?) I've even had a couple of frat boys I wasn't paying attention to go on academic probation, and next semester they knuckled down and got on the dean's list; from that point out they pulled Bs and Cs with relatively little effort. With most majors during most semesters, you'll only need one or two skills to pass.

You don't have to do what Maxis assumes you'll do in order to enjoy this or any other EP. And even if you don't want to have a continuous University game, or send all your sims, it has uses in combination with the base game and other EPs which are nice to have in your toolbox, just as Bon Voyage and Open for Business and Free Time (none of which I have, though I'm weighing the pros and cons of adding Free Time when I already spend so much time doing this) seem to. You wouldn't think this would need pointing out in a newsgroup that's organized around the desire to tailor the game for each individual taste, but so many people speak of University as if it were a chore and complaining about features it has that are identical in effect to cheats and hacks that are used regularly - well, it creates a certain cognitive dissonance.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Mad Poster
#43 Old 10th Jan 2011 at 2:46 PM
Recently, having forgotten everything I've ever known about simming, I sent eight teen sims to college to live together. I, too, like to stuff a lot of people in small places, Esmesqualor. But it takes FOREVER for all of them to get through when there are so many. I'm just now in second semester of sophomore year and I played for several hours yesterday. I like all the stuff that came with uni, but the game itself is to me usually boring.

"Fear not little flock, for it hath pleased your Father to give you a kingdom". Luke 12:32 Chris Hatch's family friendly files archived on SFS: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=603534 . Bulbizarre's website: https://archiveofourown.org/users/C...CoveredPortals/
Mad Poster
#44 Old 10th Jan 2011 at 8:35 PM
I find uni boring if I give in to my natural micro-managing tendencies. That's good if it's an Apocalypse. Not so good for other play. I've banned Aspiration rewards from my uber-megahood because it makes it too easy to learn everything before hitting Uni, get your LTA points or LTW before graduating to be permaplat, etc. I also have a tendency to keep sims together with whoever they're with no matter what, which also makes Uni less interesting. Part of this is because of the over-the-top programing for 'we aren't dating' anymore, and because it's so hard for sims to fall out of love. Dude, you have moved onto someone else. Stop thinking you're in love with whoever you used to be with. If love decayed separately from LTR and STR points, that would make me a happy simmer. Eating pancakes together daily should not be enough to maintain romantic feelings. (I should just use the sim-blender for that, shouldn't I now?)
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#45 Old 11th Jan 2011 at 12:06 AM
I like university. There was a stage when I thought I was the only simmer in the world who did since so many people seem to dislike it. But, as this thread shows, there are plenty who do like it too.

I think I like it for a lot of reasons (one being that I have a very positive view of education in general) but the one thing I do on university lots or with university families which I tend not to do in the home neighbourhood, is really big social occasions because, with the default set up, you have time to do them once you have got the students to do their work for the semester. I also play much larger 'families' on dorm lots too - usually between 12-16 sims though up to 20 on occasion. For example, I had a pair of twins (Horace and Henry) throw an absolutely humungus party when they graduated. There were, I think, about 14 students on the lot anyway and then H&H, popularity sims who were very popular, invited all their friends. There were around 40 sims at the party in the end and I decided, as they got going, that everyone was going to start off dancing the smustle. I spent an intensive few minutes going round clicking on every sim present and getting them to join in, in which I was successful if only for a few moments. The thing was though, that many sims smustling is hilarious. Their facial expressions and doing it wrong bits are really funny when you have dozens of them doing it all at the same time. I spent that play session laughing and laughing at them. That is something I would never do on a home lot or community lot in the main neighbourhood.

I hear ya ForeverCamp - bugs me too. It's too easy to pass with top marks and I have to work at it to make sure sims only get Bs and Cs or actually fail altogether, especially since Seasons. There was talk of a make-uni-harder hack at one point but I don't know whether that actually came together. However, I'm about to try a hack which halves the time sims spend at university by letting each semester session represent a full year (as this follows the American system, that means four semesters) and also shortening each semester by 1 day. I want to do this because I think it will make it harder to get everything done and will increase the number of failing or under-par students and also because it will fit better with the timelines of my neighbourhood which I play strictly in rotation. Having the sims disappear for 8 days (I played one semester per day in the main neighbourhood) was seriously unbalancing their lives, time-wise, with the family members back home and any contemporary sims who didn't go to university.
Scholar
#46 Old 11th Jan 2011 at 2:05 AM
YA's can go on vacay, but I find vacay to be prohibitively expensive for YA's. It would be nice if there was some kind of vacay prize YA's could earn or win.

Peni-You make some excellent points about bending your place style for different aspects of the game and I'm usually game for that: ten kids sure, 50 1st dates, 50 dream dates, 20 puppies and kittens, 5 top level businesses, 20 diff. lovers, miscarriages for low motives, private school fees, higher bills whatever, piles of objects from various sites that shall not be named here...etc...I've yet to find a direction to bend my playstyle in that makes Uni fun. I hope too, I'd like to keep up my legacy family's college tradition and I've got at least 5 generations to.

From reading this thread I think players that enjoy or don't enjoy uni fall into two catagories: those who like observing sims and those who don't. I fall into the latter catagory, for me playing a game is active and not passive. If I want to do something passive I'll watch Big Brother.

Never-the-less I'll be play another generation at university and trying something different this time too.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#47 Old 11th Jan 2011 at 3:40 PM
Ah, but just because we're observing doesn't mean we're passive! I like seeing sims do things on their own because that gives me an idea of their natural tendencies, which gives me leads on how to play them and where to go with them. That's how I'll be deciding which aspirations to change, which couples to match, and so on; also, they'll suggest their own storylines.

Nor is observation incompatible with frantic activity. One of the busiest sims sessions I've ever done was a sorority party that overlapped with the end of a really hot date; I was switching back and forth between active sims like mad, keeping track of what the uncontrollable guests were doing (I hate it when two sims have a knock-down drag-out fight and I miss the trigger), and trying to get a sorority girl and a guest I wanted her to meet into the same room. All this and writing dialog in my head, too - I was fully engaged.

BTW, I find that the easiest ways to keep grades down are to avoid getting all the skills necessary to max out and to skip class. If you load up a sim's queue or depress his mood as class approaches you have plenty of time to cancel the "go to class" option; sims who are discouraged enough won't go spontaneously. However, I've had more than one pleasure or popularity sim surprise me by dean's listing after a heavy round of parties, because they spontaneously did assignments or got dragged into study groups by their more studious friends. You've got to keep an eye on them and teach them good or bad work habits. You *can* train them. I have one, who isn't as smart as anybody else in his household, who always wanted to foist his homework onto somebody else and pulled Bs and Cs when I wouldn't let him; the only way I could get him to finish a term paper was to send him on a dream date with his fiancee and set him to work in the afterglow. Now he'll spontaneously want to write a term paper after woohoo; or even after a good slow dance down in the living room. Let pleasure sims fulfill their wants to skip class, and they'll slack off more and more.

If you play University enough, money for vacations need not be an issue after a few generations, because the grant money stays in a household. My Alma Mater household started with six kids in a dorm, all of whom gradually moved into greeks, residences, or simply graduated; but new Alma Maters from their families keep rolling in, and none of those who left took very much money with them. The household now lives in a roomy three-story residence on a large lot with a hot tub and various high quality furnishings and decorations. The most cash they've ever had at once is about $12,000. A full Greek House should be similarly well-heeled. If you've got BV, I would say Go For It on a Spring Break; make affording it a semester goal. Can you also do some kind of "vacation on a budget" thing with too many college students crashing on the floors in hotels, sleeping on the beach, and so on like they really do? That could be cool.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Mad Poster
#48 Old 11th Jan 2011 at 4:57 PM
Lots of times before I send Sims to college, I put things into their inventory so that they'll have extra money for college. Give them one of those huge aquariums that come with Apartment Life (18K Simoleons for that thing) and they'll have money for vacation.

I've never sent college students on vacation yet, though.

I also have a way to have married college students without Inteen (when they have fun, I want it to be legit--I'm Mrs. Crumplebottom minus the purse). I just create a married couple in CAS, put them on a lot, age them down to teen, then send them to college. I use SimPE to give them some skills, even give them Level 3 teen jobs, so they can get scholarships (and if you create them without parents, Orphan Scholarships). I found out that their relationship is intact, and on the loading screen it shows them in the "married" pose. Nice part is, no chance of babies until after graduation! (Unless you want a bit of a challenge, then use SimBlender. But I have a rule, no babies until after graduation.)

And after working on term papers, it's nice to have a spouse to provide Fun and Social (wink wink, nudge nudge).
Top Secret Researcher
#49 Old 12th Jan 2011 at 2:20 AM
I like it, one of my favorites.... well, actually, NL is like a necessity, so it doesn't count for me. Anyways, I use a shortened university semester hack so it makes everything shorter and more fun.


ENTJ
Banned
#50 Old 13th Jan 2011 at 6:01 PM
If anything, tying BV in with Uni would give your Sim so much to do they'll barely have time to eat and sleep! Aside from studying, skilling, attending lectures and doing term papers, they should also either have a job or start their own business to rake in as much cash as possible so they can afford to splurge on a luxury hotel, tours, shopping trips and other stuff. If they want to bring a love interest along with them for a romantic getaway, it will cost even more.
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