I loved the Sims 3, especially because of the aging process, however, I have always wanted preteens. You don't just go from swingsets and seasaws to learning how to drive instantly. So EA, please add a preteen life stage. And what do you all think?

Having a daughter about to start college, I can assure you it is quite realistic to have them go from swing sets to driving in what seems like about a day in real life, too. Still, a tween age group would be a nice addition, and allow for more activities and interactions than the current limited set. It could be helpful in shaping their teen year personalities (assuming we can do that in TS4).

Middle age - the ages are too heavy (long) on the younger side.

If there isn't any gradual aging in Sims 4 I think they will probably add another life stage or two. Preteen would be good. I'd also like another between middle age and elder. You don't go from say 35-45 year old to 70+.

I think toddlers should be able to go to school for a few hours as daycare, so you don't have to have a babysitter at the home if the parent(s) goes to work.

A possible way to compromise between concerns about making sims take too long to reach maturity and concerns about drastic jumps in apparent age between life stages that I've thought of recently, based on observations of Freeplay and a revised version of some past ideas of mine:

- Don't make "preschooler" a life stage, instead expand on what toddlers can do. Preschool is by no means universal- some kids aren't in education at all before they're 5- so include it as an optional activity for toddlers that have learned their three main skills instead. Also, to give more of a sense of progression within the toddler stage, both enable toddlers to use stairs and change their animations so they always standing upright after they reach a certain developmental point- let's say, either once they've learned to walk or once they've learned all three toddler skills. That way, you can clearly distinguish between ones representing 1-2-year-olds and ones that aren't far off being classed as children, assuming the player is bothering to teach them properly.

- Cut the teenager stage roughly in half, use the removed days from the first half (and possibly a day or two taken from the child stage, unless that'd make it too short) to make a transitional stage. I'd personally call this "tween" rather than "preteen," as it'd cover the years between 10-14. There's nothing "pre-" about 13 and 14, those are the early teenage years.

Using this model, sims would take the same amount of time to reach the young adult stage as they currently do, but appear to grow and progress much more smoothly in the process. It'd also make the child, tween and teen stages roughly the same length as one another, thus preventing any of them from seeming disproportionately long- I know some people felt that was a particularly noticeable issue with the teen stage in TS2.

Perhaps they could add more growth through the age group.

A kid could be a kid from age 6 to 12 for example, but during this life stage they would grow slightly taller already, and at the end might feel the need to interact more with teens since they might be seen as cool.
As for teens, there would be more change there. At first they could still be more playfull, and they wouldnt be able to learn how to drive untill they are eightteen. probably sixteen since EA is american though.

Thing is, after sims are no longer teens they should be allowed to study further. I dont care if its university or similar to kids going to school, but it should be there from the start. Some jobs would require this and others could allow sims to start at a higher position.
This way you will have adult sim kids staying at home a bit longer as they finish their education, or having a hard time if they move out and go to school and juggle a part time job.

Its just quite a jump from teen to adult. Also, teens should be able to get into real trouble like drinking alcohol, having a tattoo or at least be able to sleep around once they are sixteen or such. Worst they can do as it is is get bad grades.

Another aging suggestion: Lengthen the young adult and adult stages to some extent. The most realistic setup would be to make the length of time it takes for a young adult to reach middle age (or for an adult to reach retirement age) roughly equal to the length of time it takes to raise a sim from birth to the beginning of the young adult stage, to reflect the fact that all of these things would take around 18-20 years in reality.

Why? Well, I've notice that on some lifespan settings in TS3, the ages of different family members don't always match up in a sensible way, with the parents of new young adult sims sometimes being retirement-age elders even though they'd have to have had their child in their mid-forties (IE: slightly into the adult stage) for that to be the case- not inconcievable, but certainly not the norm considering that it's most common for people to have their first child in their late twenties or thirties.

Along Mingham's lines, I would like to have some tween stage, and a shortened teen stage. Which is essentially how I set up my current games. I start with a long life span and then adjust it accordingly. I have a 2 day baby (sometimes 1 day if I'm trying to move things along), a 5 day toddler (which is about the time to get them trained and read to), a 14 day child, a 21 day teen (and sometimes less, again, if I'm rushing things along, down from the default of I believe 28 days when on long lifespan), a 90 day YA and 85 day A, and 1 day Elder (get the death clock clicking from the aging up point, as I get frustrated when an elder hangs around for 120 days before finally "moving on"). The drawback to a shortened teen stage is less time for skilling up, which may be important for their YA career, as well as their SAT score if they go to Uni. My solution is to have a children can read skill book mod, so they can start earlier, and they can spend their teen years doing interesting stuff, like dating their entire town. Hopefully, if a tween age was inserted, the option to begin developing skills could start then (12 year olds can start to learn to cook and use an oven in real life) without a need to mod it in.

Well, yes, the solution there would be to let children skill far more than they could in TS3 and allow tweens to skill to the same extent as teens. TS3 children are too limited by default anyway, even for a game that does have a longer teen stage, so I can't see this being an issue. And none of this "let children skill but don't display the skill points until the teenage years" nonsense either- that was entirely pointless.

All depends on where you think one age ends and another begins. I use 18 to 35 for young adult and 36 to 65 for adult since most people I know in their 60s are not EA's definition of elder. Not even sure anyone under 70 fits that definition. For me, Adulthood is longer than young adulthood.

But the problem remains of age 4 to 12 for children lasting a shorter time than 13 to 18 for teens (if you use 13 as a teen year, my personal opinion is more like 14 for most kids). That discrepancy exists, I believe, because of the paucity of activities for children in game, compared to teens. If you allow a few activities like skill acquisition to occur in children, your teens can be free to pursue stuff like social activities. And a shorter teen period makes more sense, as now the beginning of YA can now be taken up in Uni (true, their age might be frozen, but it's still a few weeks of sim play time for you, as the player, getting them through).

Besides, adulthood in the US does not fully kick in until 21, as, while you might be able to vote and join the military, you still can't smoke until 19 (going to 21) in some States, and you can't drink until 21. While I'm not holding up smoking a a rite of passage, but having the "right" to a beer used to be 18 when I was growing up, and represented a big step in feeling "mature". Now you're stuck waiting another 3 years (although, given the issues of drinking and driving that drove the age increase, I must say I am in favor of it, too many kids had, and sadly still have, too many accidents when mixing the two). So that 18 to 21 year old period is taken up by some as the first college years, when you are technically an adult, but not quite an independent adult (if your parents are helping foot the bill for school).

I'm not suggesting we need another age stage for YYA, but again, the long, seemingly never-ending teen years of the default EA age group is mis-proportioned in relation to the other age groups. Even if they get part time jobs to fill the hours, the job experience doesn't even benefit them when they enter the job market on entering young adulthood. At least if you use Twallan's part time careers, the sim can get a bit of a boost if they continue in a career relating to the part time job they selected. Which is something else that would nice for consideration in the base game of TS4 for all players to benefit from.

Make teh SIMs age per year, not per day!

This is especially troubling when you have seasons installed. How can a SIM enjoy the joys of Christmas & Halloween if he/she is already a teen by Spooky day and/or Gift giving day pfft!

I agree. An age between child and teenager would be nice but if I could only choose one it would definitely be a middle age. The change from adult to elder is incredibly jarring.

And I would really like a feature that gives you the option of bringing up CAS to plan an outfit for a Sim that is about to age up. It could be part of the birthday reminder. I hate having to stop in the middle of a birthday party to change my Sim out of the bunny suit and flippers he or she aged up with.

Again, though, I'm not sure if the best solution would be to add a whole new life stage for that. One could just as easily make the transition from adult to elder less jarring by A: making the adult stage more middle-aged-looking (which is what it was supposed to be in TS3, but didn't manage to be because the developers didn't do anywhere near enough to distinguish them from young adults) and B: making the elder stage less exaggeratedly decrepit and frail-looking. As many have mentioned before, the elder stage in its TS3 form is a state that many elderly people never find themselves in at all these days due to improvements in medicine and health, or at least only get into when extremely old- one could easily have recognisable elders without going down that route.

I agree with this. It just feels that most elders look almost 90 years old. I know my uncle didn't get a hunchback like that until he turned 93 years old.

You can customize the ages in Sims 3. I always do and my teens have a shorter span than 4 to 12, which I do use for my kids. My youngest daughter just turned 13 and while she is still tiny, she is without a doubt a teen. Some kids, boys especially, are younger at 13 but it is a game and not purely reflective of real life. I do dress my young teens in Sims differently and then change them as they get older. I can live without a preteen stage but won't care if they give us one. Either way is fine.



Legally, you are an adult at 18 in all but the ability to buy alcohol and cigarettes. I have never seen a teen arrested for actually smoking, just buying. Otherwise, you have the responsibility of an adult. Your parents are no longer responsible for you legally, they do not have to be involved if you get in trouble with the law or need surgery, and you are now protected by the same privacy laws as other adults. As a parent, I can no longer sign my son's checks and put them in his bank account, have access to his medical records, even though we pay his insurance and bills, or even call his college and ask questions without him on the phone giving permission.

Besides, high school ends at 18 usually (or 19 in some cases) so therefore, teen years end when the Sim teen finishes high school. Again, it is a game and game mechanics do put limitations on the game.

There are so many other things I would like to see in Sims 4 and can live without the exceptions to the 'rules'....Sims graduating high school at 20 or tiny undeveloped 13 year olds (even though I was one of those many years ago).

I'd like the exceptions to exist, as long as there would be ways to avoid weirdness. (too large of age differences in sim relationships too the point of being illegal) However I would like the game to allow a teen sim around the age of 17 to date a young adult around 19. There should be a way to allow sim relationships of tween/teen or teen/young adult if the year equivalent is only 3 years or below, however sim parents might still be able to complain about the equivalent of 3 years age difference and even ban it, depending on the sims parents.

And yeah, I really want tweens to exist. Their height should be somewhere in the middle of child and teen and they should have slightly less baby faces but not as old looking as teen faces exactly. Male tweens should have the tiniest amount of peach fuzz. Also both gender's voices should be lower, but not different yet.

If they would add another life stage, they would need to change their approach to how content is divided between life stages. Otherwise you just just get one more neglected lifestage. In TS3 I get the impression that you get most out of the game as YA. I barely play the other lifestages anymore. Kids/toddlers are just unroutable interaction props in TS3 to me. And what fun is a burrito you can't eat. Not at all cute like irl :/

i think that there should be more ages and there should be an age between teen and young adult and does anyone else think its stupid that there's no alcohol or cigarettes in Sims yet...- PLEASE PUT ALCOHOL AND CIGARETTES IN THE SIMS 4- ... they should also add puberty ... that would be awesome it would make it so realistic and fun to see... i know its not all about aging but ehh itll do. im really upset because they aren't adding height sliders... tell me what you think about it!
UR ALL IDIOTS FOR NOT LIKENING I HATE U ALL!!!

-Evil laugh- There's alcohol in the Sims Medieval. You can get so drunk that you can pass out (and have an epic hangover). As for drugs...I think it would be appropriate, if they were expensive and consequential.

The alcohol in the Sims Medieval makes me laugh Most of my characters are drunks because of it.

It's unlikely that alcohol or cigarettes will be in the Sims 4 though, because the game is kid friendly. There will always be juice (alcohol substitute). As for drugs, not likely (again, kid friendly game) but I could see them adding in something silly like the grilled cheese aspiration where all the Sims wanted to do was talk, eat, breathe grilled cheese as a substitute for drugs (and addiction).

I would consider not putting in cocaine, heroine, cancer and hookers in a life simulator more along the lines of "human-friendly" than "kid friendly."

EDIT: I'm also against adding puberty because it's more scary for kids than all those things combined.

We might get a hookah again, like in Sims 2. (My hippies lived on that thing.)

They should just do gradual aging, IMO. There was a mod for it in Sims 3, so we know it's possible.