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Mad Poster
Original Poster
#1 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 12:46 AM Last edited by mangaroo : 4th Jan 2011 at 6:56 AM. Reason: changed subject after splitting off thread
Default Uni is boring? Why?
Okay, I keep hearing people say University is boring and I really have to ask:

What are you doing that's so dull?

Honestly. You skill up faster, you require fewer skills to advance, you have gobs of community lots with plenty of things to do in them on which the clock keeps ticking, all you have to do to have gobs of money even without dean's listing after the first semester is put several sims together on one lot and keep the lot occupied - all the money stays on the lot till it empties - you have all the social opportunities in the world and plenty of room to set up love stories, rivalries, and vast complicated storylines and character arcs that would be constantly interrupted in normal play by jobs and babies, you can start your own Greek House, have parties every day, date like there's no tomorrow - how does anybody ever get bored with this phase of life?

I keep telling myself "different playstyles, different interests, different tastes, blah blah blah" but University has more of everything except babies and apparently with hacks you can even get them. It's like Sims Squared. So this isn't me going wrongbadfun or scorning other people's taste, this is me being completely mystified.

Which isn't on-topic, so, sorry. Played in rotation Sims does slow down the rate at which you get back to the regular neighborhoods and I'm a little intimidated myself at the size of the populations I've set myself up to take care of in the future in my enthusiasm for University, but that's not what people are complaining about, so I'm baffled.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
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Scholar
#2 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 1:40 AM
I'm not the biggest fan of university, I really had to learn to enjoy it. I've given a lot of thought to why that is and these are the reasons I've come up with thus far:

1- Dorms are boring

2- A lot of the same stuff being done, lot less of a reward

3- 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.

4- There is no sense of investment or accomplishment in unversity time, you feel as if you're idling

I know there isn't really very much difference between the stuff you do to pass university and the stuff you do for promotions, but it feels different like your sim is idling waiting for the light to turn green.

I have to psyche myself up to play uni and I have to plan fun things to do when I play and I still have a minimum level of enjoyment. One of these days I'm going to really invest in creating a Uni that I can enjoy, but in the meanwhile I'll keep the season set to fall and keep skipping semesters so that I can get it done as quickly as possible.
Test Subject
#3 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 1:59 AM
I've just very recently played 3 sims through University. 2 sims graduated, one dropped out. I did find it to be dragging after a while. So I got the hack that shortens the semester and that made it more playable. I'm not sure why it isn't as much fun as playing a house in the neighborhood; it probably has something to do with the dorms (I was playing the EAxis dorms. Next time maybe I'll play a custom dorm). The other frustrating thing was I was trying to get my sim to socialize and romance a dormie and the dormie kept running off to class or doing assignments at the most inopportune times.

Also the YA walk... omg... could they walk ANY SLOWER?
Scholar
#4 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 3:14 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Peni Griffin
Okay, I keep hearing people say University is boring and I really have to ask:

What are you doing that's so dull?


For me, I'm actually in my fifth year of full-time university in real life. I am sooooo not interested in playing university in the Sims' life. Drives me crazy how easy they have it - one class a day, you don't really have to do homework or studying if you go to class, their tuition and room and board are practically non-existent... Even though I've got some mods installed for higher tuition and bills, the fact uni is so... easy really gets me. I wish uni was that easy in REAL LIFE! I don't do a lot of community lots at uni, although I really should... the Lothario triplets are headed off to uni in the next rotation, it'd be a good chance to try actually using half of Uni's features...
Field Researcher
#5 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 7:18 AM
I always start CAS sims in uni they work on skilling, the gardening badge primarily for eggplant juice, visit downtown or the hood (if it has any comm lots) to see where they want to live (like they have a choice-hah!) and start building relationships. They look for a mate and if they have any time or energy left they study.
transmogrified
retired moderator
#6 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 7:46 AM Last edited by mangaroo : 4th Jan 2011 at 8:02 AM.
Quote: Originally posted by Peni Griffin
Honestly. You skill up faster, you require fewer skills to advance, you have gobs of community lots with plenty of things to do in them on which the clock keeps ticking, all you have to do to have gobs of money even without dean's listing after the first semester is put several sims together on one lot and keep the lot occupied - all the money stays on the lot till it empties - you have all the social opportunities in the world and plenty of room to set up love stories, rivalries, and vast complicated storylines and character arcs that would be constantly interrupted in normal play by jobs and babies, you can start your own Greek House, have parties every day, date like there's no tomorrow - how does anybody ever get bored with this phase of life?


When I play fresh-out-of-CAS founders, I like to send them to Uni to acquire skills and develop their personalities and storylines before the clock starts ticking on their lives. I just played a set of founders for the War challenge through Moo's Brainania and had an enormous amount of fun.

Switch to Prosperity, a neighborhood hovering around the 3rd or 4th generation of game-born Sims. These Sims usually have sufficient skills to scrape by Uni requirements, all gained based on child/teen wants and interests. When I send them to Uni, they aren't allowed to randomly skill; they have to express a want for it. I have dorms or community lots equipped to meet all of their needs, so the only time acquiring money is of interest to me is when I want to found a new greek house (the more impressive the lot, the higher the rent), which hasn't happened since the second generation, because I need to keep the Greek lots continuously occupied or the order dies out. Kids attending Uni on day 110 are socializing with the same dormies and secret society members their grandparents socialized with on day 50. Awkward! Since I like to keep all my Sims in sync, if one resident is going to a community lot, all of them have to go. I then have to carefully schedule this around everyone's class time so no one is put at a disadvantage. (My Sims only do homework/term papers if they roll wants, so missed classes can have a serious impact on grades. If they miss a class because of a fire or fight in the dorm, that's an act of game. If they miss a class because spending time on a community lot placed them in 5-hours-'til-final position when they could have squeezed in one more class by staying at home, that's my bad.)

This doesn't mean Uni is always boring. I'm at the tail end of a generation when Uni was massively populated with playables (18 Sims spread across 4 different lots), and that was enormous fun. But the game's only measured goal -- Sims' grades -- remains unchanging for every YA for all 576 Sim hours 'til graduation. And YAs visiting Uni community lots (and therefore eating up Uni time) won't see playables from the home neighborhood there, which can feel very isolating.
Test Subject
#7 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 7:46 AM
I don't really know to be honest, my ridiculously short attention span has never seen me graduate a sim until recently when I tried really hard.
I've never even gotten past second generation in fact.
I've actually never DONE anything with my college sims, I've always just kept them at the dorm, studying, socialising, maybe I SHOULD take them out to the community lots but then I'm always worried about their needs and I never feel like I've accomplished anything when I bring them back home? They'll have met 3 other sims and not done much else.
But then my gameplay has been dramatically changing recently and I have to say it's getting better?
Mangaroo, your way of playing sounds AWESOME.
I'm actually slowly developing that kind of "not doing it unless the Sims wants it" way of playing, it definitely does make gameplay more interesting because I know if I played it according to my wants, all they'd ever do is skill up.
Lab Assistant
#8 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 7:49 AM
I like uni, but only in dorms. Uni in a private house is boring as heck, but you never get a dull moment with those messed up dormies!

Storyteller and lover of ridiculously overcomplicated plotlines. Very inactive and not especially interested in the Sims anymore (my game's been bugged out for months anyway).
Field Researcher
#9 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 9:40 AM Last edited by zumppe : 4th Jan 2011 at 9:55 AM.
Quote: Originally posted by Pegasys2
Also the YA walk... omg... could they walk ANY SLOWER?


That drove me nuts, until I downloaded the young adult walk fix from Simbology. It's the last one on this page:

http://www.simbology.com/smf/index.php?topic=13.0

(The zip contains 3 different versions: one that fixes only the ya walk, one that fixes only the "lazy" anim =the slouch that lazy sims do, and one that fixes both. I love the lazy slouch, so I just got the walk fix. )


EDIT, to answer the original topic: I've had all EP:s almost two years, but never played Uni until last week. Turns out I love it. (The Faster Uni Education mod is a must though: http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=302233 )
Forum Resident
#10 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 11:05 AM
I find the unmodded uni time to take too long (almost as long as the whole adult lifespan), and even though I can and do have (unplanned) college pregnancies, the kids are never older than toddlers when their parent(s) graduate due to the fact that I have uni occuring over four normal sim-days. One of the reasons I play is to see genetics being passed down, and as such I've halved the time at college (to twelve days) which is long enough to do everything, but short enough that I don't get bored with it.

I do ensure that my sims only get enough skills to pass their classes, and everything above and beyond that is directed by their wants. I will admit that I tend to stay on the home lot, but I am trying to move myself away from that (at least in uni) -- less skilling/entertainment items in the dorms, more skilling/entertainment items in community lots.

And in regards to large college populations? I've got at least 25 sims to put through college this rotation in my Prosperity 'hood; I'll be glad that I've got thirty households in the main 'hood after that.

Angelos Town Prosperity updated 11th June 2012. | Albion Falls BACC updated 25th April 2011.

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Mad Poster
#11 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 12:48 PM
Quote: Originally posted by mangaroo
And YAs visiting Uni community lots (and therefore eating up Uni time) won't see playables from the home neighborhood there, which can feel very isolating.


It's possible to take them back to their home neighbourhood. I had a sim in college who would regularly visit her elderly parents.
transmogrified
retired moderator
#12 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 1:52 PM
Of course. But taking them to community lots in the home neighborhood does not move the Uni clock forward. And to visit one's parents in the home neighborhood -- unless a single parent runs an OFB business -- requires playing the parents' lot, not the Uni lot.
Instructor
#13 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 2:27 PM
I can play without cheats until the end of sophomore year and then it feels like wash-rinse-repeat. Part of it is that I don't like any of the Uni sims. My sims don't friend them because I don't ever want to see them after graduation.

With that, my next thing to do is get Lilith through college. She's been languishing in the sim bin far too long. Wish me luck!
Lab Assistant
#14 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 4:35 PM
Well, to be honest, the first time I played Uni I thought it was so fun and awesome. It was one of the last expansion packs I installed because I couldn't find it anywhere to buy. Well I played a sim through college and thought it was so cool that she could live in a dorm and go to classes and all the fun stuff. However, it got really boring after the first time. I would probably enjoy Uni better if you could have more complicated college life. More goals to complete and make it more of a game other than just kind of a twilight zone in your sims life where they live in a building with a bunch of other sims without the option to reproduce or really go any further in their life. They disappear for a few hours every day and then have to do these small tasks and then it's just empty free time.

In my opinion, I'm not sure if anyone every played the Sims 1 for game systems but in those there were goals and tasks you had to do to move up in the game and if Uni had things like that built into the expansion pack it would make me want to play all the more.

That's just my opinion though. I just have more freedom and fun playing outside of Uni.
Mad Poster
#15 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 4:43 PM
I had a bit of a break from playing conventional uni - I used the college adjuster to speed sims through it - but I recently came back to it and really enjoyed it this time.

I played my alien, Quarlaar, who was born in game and I sent her to uni when her dad and stepmum had twins. They live in a small one-bedroom flat and there was just not enough room for all of them to live together so off she went to learn things! She had a few skills already so for the first couple of semesters she didn't have much to do work-wise. I find that so long as you send sims to class everyday then they will have done enough to pass the semester. Because she didn't need to do work I had her socialise instead. She ended up with three boyfriends, one being her professor. I then decided that I was going to make her really sociable. She joined a secret society, made friends with most of her dormmates, and then I had her join a sorority. She achieved the want of being 'big Sim on campus', or whatever it's called. She graduated, had a massive party, and has now moved into her own place where she has friends round constantly.

It was a different way of playing to how I normally play so it made a nice change to try something new. I always find uni really great for making friends because they don't have much else to do with their time!
Scholar
#16 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 5:22 PM
I always liked Uni but could see how others found it to be boring after a few semesters or just annoying in general. Then I built my own campus with plenty of fun community lots and created all the "dormies" that live there. I also installed a variety of hacks to tame the annoying professors and mascots and the stop the endless spawning of them as well, also have the increased tuition or basically every hack I could find except the ones that shorten the semester.

Now I LOVE Uni. I've got guidelines of course that my Sims have to go by and they can flunk out but that seldom happens. Dorms are for freshmen only as that is by far my least favorite playing experience as it's simply too easy. I've got quite a few Greek houses, which are my favorite to play and lots of private housing. I enjoy the challenge of having to keep on top of 6 to 8 Sims at once which is why I like the Greek houses. My biggest challenge is keeping the timeline in order especially with siblings.

I can certainly see how one could make Uni very boring indeed if the desire is to just get the Sim through as quickly as possible.
Mad Poster
#17 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 8:54 PM
I don't particularly care for the dorms. I like the private housing. That way students can cook and build up cooking skill, fix things and build mechanical skill, and not have dormies hogging up the computer to browse for some hobby-related thing when my Sim needs to do a term paper.

And they can lock the doors so the cow mascots, coaches, or whatever can't get in.
Forum Resident
#18 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 9:11 PM
I really enjoy University. It's probably my second favorite EP. Mainly because I am one of those simmers who cannot stand making their own sims. I hate starting from square one with friendless (adult)sims who have no skills what-so-ever. University gives me the oppurtunity to make YA sims put them through college and then when they hit prime adult age(i.e. can get married/babies...etc) They have skills and can jump a rung or two in their career.

Not only that but I enjoy the whole experience and am still finding things in this EP that I had no idea existed or just never bothered to try. Although I can't say I love all the maxis made dorms. I usually edit those.

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Mad Poster
#19 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 10:26 PM
Quote: Originally posted by mangaroo
Of course. But taking them to community lots in the home neighborhood does not move the Uni clock forward. And to visit one's parents in the home neighborhood -- unless a single parent runs an OFB business -- requires playing the parents' lot, not the Uni lot.


Yes, but if you get bored with Uni you can always play them in the base neighbourhood for a while, then go back to playing Uni.
Test Subject
#20 Old 4th Jan 2011 at 10:53 PM
I don't have Uni, but the way you describe it? Easy advancement and easy money means less challenge. I hate running parties -- only do it to satisfy big wants -- and dates get repetitive pretty fast.

And this:

Quote: Originally posted by Peni Griffin
plenty of room to set up love stories, rivalries, and vast complicated storylines and character arcs that would be constantly interrupted in normal play by jobs and babies


...just confuses me. How are jobs and babies somehow not part of storylines or character arcs?

I mean, I guess it could be fun for a while, but like real college, it'd get old after a while.
Field Researcher
#21 Old 5th Jan 2011 at 4:43 PM
Not boring. More of well...

A long annoying train of seriously annoying townies that only want to invade your dorm, do nothing but either harass other sims, leave homework scattered across the place, generate THOUSANDS of mac and cheese bowls. On top of this, the professors constantly call asking for your sim, because nothing is better than having a blue screen pop up without any warning. You pretty much do this for two hours or so only to get some careers unlocked IF you put your major to them, or just to have a skill advantage over other sims.

I joke. In reality, I can't stand the grind that it is. If I do university, I typically only do it once in a blue moon. I've only took about three sims through college from start to finish. Others, I typically get them a good set of skills, meet a few other sims to call up for quick friends, and drop out. It has some usefullness, but I mainly use it for the items the expansion comes with.
Field Researcher
#22 Old 5th Jan 2011 at 5:27 PM
I liked it when I wanted my sims to be ahead of the game with a job, but in the end, I found it useless.
Instructor
#23 Old 5th Jan 2011 at 6:23 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Clashfan
... Then I built my own campus with plenty of fun community lots...


I think this may have been my problem - I HATE the community lots at the Uni's. Even when I edited them, I still disliked them but I couldn't figure out why I disliked them. It wasn't Sims Squared, it was Sims Not Even Trying, Sims - A Pale Immitation. I'm too lazy to build my own campus, but I've just played a few hours with Mootilda's Brainania, and ... it feels like Sims. So, I just might be converted.

(I also got the YA walk mod. Ewwwww I hated how they walked.)
Field Researcher
#24 Old 6th Jan 2011 at 7:05 AM
I find uni frustrating because its too long and because i hate maxis lots, but to makeover an enitre campus would take too much CC and is too big a project for my embarrassingly short attention span. Also i have no idea at all about american university life.
Having said that i've always thought you could create good story lines within uni. I started one with Marla Biggs, but ended up giving up because of the ugly lots which equalled ugly pictures.
I think with the uni hack that makes the time shorter and the patience to build your own campus, even a small one, it would be more enjoyable.
I hate the YA's walkas well -what IS that?? lol.
Mad Poster
#25 Old 6th Jan 2011 at 8:21 AM
All you need in a college 'hood is a dorm. I have some Riverblossom Hills students at Riverblossom College, in a small, country-themed dorm that I created. They don't have to go to a community lot to work on skills; there's an activity room in it too. They want to go have fun, there's downtown or the main 'hood.

I did have Sandra Roth and a cow mascot have a crush on each other. But the cow blew it when she caught him hitting on a dormie--a guy....

Ouch.
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