1) Brought high school game play to only one world. 2) Ignored my other sims and brought generic NPCs and Copperdale NPCs into the school. I had to get a mod to select who I wanted to appear in school. 3) Forbid you from having Get Together clubs on school grounds, even after school hours. 4) A long list of other things that I am not going to list.😂

Instead of getting the jump scare of a burglar we now get jump scare of the notification for football and cheerleader day. I miss the burglars.

Such a missed opportunity not to add private schools to this pack 🙄 I’m truly disappointed there is zero option for private schools that could lead to sims getting better scholarships or better grades for university

An additional thought and issue I have is that students that show up to high school changes.. and if you're a rotational player, your sims friends, cousins and other family members won't "go to school", I find that so annoying, not seeing them there.

Many reviews from critics are forgiving of bugs. They give the benefit of a doubt for the conditions of the review version they receive with the hope that patches will solve the issues. Players are far less forgiving. I saw this a lot with My Wedding Stories reviews, and after that I stopped reading media reviews for Sims games.

My biggest disappointment was the absence of an active Teacher career which after the announcement I was really hyped about it, fantasized about situations and stories I could play out with my Sims and then was let down by the Simsteam again after they said there wouldn't be one. ugh. I do like the some of expansions overall ideas and features, relative to other Sims4 expacs, but I still cant get myself to buy it because of the missing Teacher career.

I think the biggest problem with TS4 packs is, that they are too linear. There is only one way of playing with them. For instance HSY should have introduced a simple school mechanic. Meaning you have classes that can be edited for various purposes. The player can decide on the subjects and the schools can be designed accordingly. I would have preferred a custom curriculum; a way to pick your classmates. Similar to the club system. To just have the ability to choose your subjects, whether it’s Potions class for spellcasters or Music class for the aspiring violinist, would have been great. Introducing a school lot trait would have made the pack universally usable. Then we could have created our own schools in every neighborhood. Vampire school? Done. A learning institute for your historical gameplay? Here you go. As it is you can only attend U.S. High School. It‘s incredibly restrictive and immersion breaking. No freedom to create your own stories. To be fair, I quit the Sims long before HSY and never played with it. Apart from that, I‘m not the target demographic for the game anymore. But I do feel that the restrictiveness and lack of pack integration is prevalent in most TS4 expansions. They never quite fit my playstyle, rendering them useless for storytelling purposes. Thank you, Erin! I enjoyed the video 🤓

I really wish that for high school years we had the option to attend prom as a rabbit hole. The first few times it’s nice to go with them, but after a while it gets annoying that this is the only way for your sims to go. Especially when you’re playing with a large household and have other sims to focus on. I don’t want my sims to miss out on prom, but I also don’t want to be forced to go with them every time.

One thing that still baffles me years after this pack's release is the fact that we can't build an high school anywhere we want (at least, one active high school per save at a time). For immersion sake, and especially with a gameplay that repetitive: The dev team shot itself in the foot by not giving us a way to at least change the setting by choosing the world, the classmates, the teachers and the uniform (or not). Another Sims4 pack that ignores the others and designed to be played only once.

The last good expansion pack was honestly Cottage Living… -Never before seen animals (you can actually pet and care for) in the Sims franchise (Llamas) -Lore -Return of Agnes Crumple Bottom -More lots than average expansions -Blends in very well with most of the packs you own -Quests -They tried to make the world interactive (window shopping, festivals, the stalls) -canning and stichting AND overhaul of the cooking system -Marketing. (Flyers sent to simmers) -The launch wasn’t super glitchy at all, which can’t be said for the latest packs released as of lately -probably much more!

Social bunny is still so questionable especially the flirty interactions. It’s showing up on PARENTS but not love interests like?? Hello? And then the cafeteria staff will sometimes decide that they hate their job and do something else making it impossible to eat And also before I got the more classmates mod, I kinda forced the game to only have teens from played households by assigning unplayed sims into extreme violence mod gangs and just waited for them to take each other out one by one 😂

Something no one talks about is that the game will create a pool of teens for high school and WON'T AGE THEM UP unless your sim attends graduation. The problem with this is if you never send your sims to graduation 1. You'll have the same high school classes for 10 generations 2. Graduation is glitched and it's almost impossible to go The teens not aging up is by design so that they don't randomly age in class but it practice it's so immersion breaking

Because I am a rotational player with a pretty large family tree in my active legacy, I play with HSY a lot and find myself regularly using the build / buy and CAS items. Yeah there are some bugs and I'll sometimes just cheat my way through the aspiration milestones, but it is so useful for storytelling. it would be great if the career day actually mattered. it just feels like a waste of time to me. I do find the activity day notifications to be annoying though, like for Football day and Cheer day. The Social Bunny app I primarily use to slowly build or cause drama passively. I've had sims become friends as well as enemies by just being social bunny friends and leaving it alone. it just doesn't function the way it should when I try using it. I don't mind the theme park, but I really wish that the ferris wheel wasn't a rabbit hole and that it was open so we could see the different sims riding it, but I still enjoy the space.

I actually forgot that theme park existed. Shows how little I actually use High School years. XD

To piggyback off my comment from the poll I keep thinking Erin imagine if they were tasks during the classes with a timer like events ? Like let’s say you are in science class and then you get tasks like, using a science table, using the telescope, read such and such book etc and you completing those tasks have an effect on your grades. Or tasks at home like the extra homework making a volcano, find a gemstone etc like in university and elementary school. That would have been so interesting to have and see your sims do the tasks in real time and that affecting their grades.

An interesting angle… these 2 packs that people were most unhappy with in your poll (For Rent and High School Years) are the ones that, to me at least, feel like they assumed a “standard” way of playing and didn’t allow for any variation. Both work best when you’re only playing 1 Sim, not a large family and definitely not rotationally. And HSY is also made for a normal lifespan - I’ve heard so many complaints from people who play long lifespan or aging off. And yet, according to a recent AHQ poll, most people play with aging off or long lifespan! Whereas Snowy Escape may have disappointed some (I personally love it) but at least playing in a non “standard” way doesn’t actively make it worse. Same with Horse Ranch.

While I was disappointed with the pack when I first played it I have since found ways to use it that actually add to my gameplay - 1. Making the school smaller 2. Combining both class teachers into one classroom makes the classrooms feel livelier. 3. And probably the best thing was discovering I could use the club system to make groups of 'unplayed' teens that my played sim can 'invite club to hang out' brings the whole place to life. These unplayed sims will sit in the classrooms, use the cafeteria, practice cheer and use the gym and computer room and generally add to the school vibe and let my playable sims meet more teens than they normally would. I've also found I can skip classes to skill build, very rarely do my sims get caught - I have them paint in the art room, build skills in the media room etc. I also use the clubs in the same way to get more teens turn up to prom. Probably the biggest complaint is that the prom is so scripted... oh, and the fact that the cheer and football comps still don't work 😢 Sorry for the long comment but I thought this might help other simmers to enjoy it more ❤

It was just so empty, but I was most disappointed that other teens in the neighborhood didn't attend the school even after the NPC students were removed. I created several families and had all of the teens in a friend group. I was hopeful that since they lived in town I might have seen them in the school while playing my main sim, but the game just continues to send the removed NPC or newly generated NPCs. No teacher career was disappointing too. The trailer was complete false advertising in my opinion. I didn't play the sims for over a year after this pack released.

I do feel like they lazed out about all the windows having animations instead of just one to sneak out. Then "sneaking out" doesnt take you anywhere and gives you a rabbit hole... my worst enemy

My biggest issues with this pack are: 1) the inability to choose your classmates. 2) the calendar repeating events weekly. Prom shouldn’t happen every Friday. Those could’ve been different types of events. 3) not being able to build a high school in any world. 4) lack of pop ups and interactions during the day. 5) the routing inside the school is terrible.

The issues I have with this pack is; 1) Your teen Sim never gets the intended diploma after they graduate. For example, if my Sim is a Valedictorian, they never receive the Valedictorian diploma, they instead only get the regular diploma in their mailbox. 2) When it is time for graduation, you sometimes get notified, you sometimes don't, it's not consistent. And when you do get your teen to go attend their graduation, you see randomly generated townies that your Sim never went to high school with before, or you will see a few, like one or two that the game automatically age up to young adults and the worst of all, you will see a Sim, who you know very well, was only a child and they are now suddenly a young adult ready for graduation, this happened to my game with Evie Delgato. She was suddenly aged up to a young adult by the game randomly to attend graduation whilst her older brother Pierce Delgato is still a teen. I was so annoyed by this that I stopped sending my teen sims to any graduation events for fear of the game randomly again, breaking my immersion just because they decided to aged up a random sim into a young adult to graduate. 3) Lastly, the events; The Proms, it doesn't make sense to have it every week. imagine playing without aging on... and you just can't escape the constant notifications for football or cheerleading. It's so obnoxiously loud that it gives you a jump scare! And when you do attend the football or cheerleading event, there's literally nothing to do there, it's pathetic. I actually can go on with more issues with this pack, but I think I have said enough... 😟

Also there are special traits assigned to high schoolers which are meant to create fun but they basically don't work. Students will have hidden traits like "Bully" "mean girl" and "popular kid". These traits are supposed to have an effect on autonomy which is why you'll see 2 sims fighting in the halls sometimes but don't really work.

i forgot about snowy escape even though i also thought it was disappointing.. snowy escape felt like they didn't commit to one strong concept and just put in a bunch of smaller things which were kind of half baked anyway imo

I think the lack of virtriol for snowy escape is due to how long ago it came out, at the time it seemed like one of the worse but compared to how bad things are now it isn’t. Also it did bring a lot of diversity and gameplay/new activities so those tend to be received better imo overall.

I had hopes for HSY but it really let me down. The school is nearly empty, the field outside is useless, no teacher career, lack of activities etc. I know we had a few but what about baseball basketball clubs? Or my Britishness hockey cricket. It’s a shame really so much potential and we got screwed

High School Years suffers from "You got what you asked for, you didn't know what you were asking for thats why you hate it" syndrome. And Maxis is partly to blame for this. They put out survey's asking players what we want, corporate looks at these survey's dictates what will sell to the devs & then says "Make it." the devs can say "No, they mean this" but the corporate money daddy can argue back "Survey says no, make it." And thats where it all falls apart. I for one love & hate High School years. CAS, Build & World are all 8-10. Solid content! Actual school is a 2, I hate active nonsense & never play with families so it's meaningless to me. But what makes this entire pack a 4 overall for me despite my love of the CAS, Build & World, which should really add up to more than 70% of my rating? 1. I cannot disable Cheer, Football & Prom, despite the calendar now being Base Game. As I said, I don't play with fams. So why is my elder spellcaster getting weekly updates to go to events she can't take part in if my household has no teens? That's a fail. Complete. Fail. 2. Active classes were never going to work. They were aweful in Sims 3. Shoe horning that bad idea into High School years was players demanding "I want this!!!" but forgetting just how horrible that was in previous games. This same thing happened with Laundry Day. Lindsey Pearson said Maxis vowed to never make Laundry for Sims 4 in an interview but the players demanded the pack in a community vote so they team was forced to make Laundry. They did not want to make it. They knew it would not work well. The developers were aware of the teams limitations and the pack would have issue, many many issues but they were forced to cave in to community demands. So they made the pack. It has many many issues & players complain about it constantly. They complain because they got exactly what they asked for, a fire simulator that only some times works. Active classes are the same problem. Players demanded to go to school, but school is incredibly boring & was torture to live through, so playing it in a sim is going to be torture to play. You guys got what you asked for, boring classes, bad events, lame dances & agrivating bugs. Maxis could do a Much better job getting community feedback. Goth Galore proves they are asking the wrong questions the wrong way. They shouldn't ask "Hey what theme do the cool kids want today?" And then just go from there. That's a recipe for mess. What they should be asking is "What outcomes do you want?" That would have saved them a lot of issues in previous packs. -Mermaids would have had occult tech trees. -Horses would have had unicorns with at least 2 abilities. -Acting would have Katy Perry style gig street jobs. -Growing Together would have strollers, not child backpacks that don't work. -Batuu would be a stand alone like Sims Mideval. -Pets would be playable. -My First Pet stuff wouldn't exist, hamsters would be a Kit. -Kits would have come at launch because some people really love them especially console players who can't just make there own magic content on. -Base Game would have kept the cars loading screens. (They removed this to streamline the game by the way). When you have to watch an animation play out in it's entirety and the animation plays on top of a loading screen that means the load time must be at least the length of the animation. Therefore, loading times are increased. If you guys want cars back you are going to have to come to terms with the fact you are asking for longer loading screens that have a car & not a spinning plumbob.

I agree with all the comments that point out that bugs contributed a lot to this, but even if the pack had been released in perfect condition, it would still be a horrible, lazy pack. In my opinion, this is a pack that simply has no gameplay. It's extremely repetitive and I don't see anything fun in watching my sims in class, without being able to take any action. The decision for the proms to occur every week seems pretty lazy to me, it's obvious that this should be a special event. Maybe they should have combined the ideas from this pack together with GT EP, which is another pack that could be so much better.

I doubt it flopped from a financial aspect for EA (has any pack done that?) but for simmers it definitely seems to be a big miss for the most part. Even putting the numerous bugs aside, it didn't really offer anything beyond the most basic kid goes to school. It has the same issue many other packs have, it fails to live up to it's potential. The world is nice for building but that's not enough. I don't follow the bigger sites like IGN and others, as you can't trust their reviews because they'll want to keep a positive relationship with the publishers. Whether there's truth there or not, it casts enough suspicion for me to stay away. I'd sooner go to smaller channels with nothing to lose.

The kids just sitting there but having nothing you could do, being able to choose even as much as you normally can choose if they're going to rabbithole

I´m one of the "snowy" 5% btw... it was just so underwhelming and I was quite happy to see a Japan setting... :(

Prom is kind of a mess in HSY. I kinda get because of how weird aging is in sims 4 (and its customizable) why they made dumb choice like prom every week. But I think they could have had ‘a dance’ / maybe seasonal based dances like spring formal and ‘fall fling’ and ‘winter ball’ or an ‘event’ every weekend to curb this issue. I play on long lifespan with periods of turning aging off even. Prom becomes meaningless afterawhile so there was a way to not overdo ‘the big dance’ for long life spans, not make short lifespan miss playing it, and a way to balance for normal lifespan that would have made a school dance event better. Not having the clubs be active was a miss. I was actually quite okay with NOT going to class with my sims in all the Sims university packs (2-4). But I would have like real parties and activities to go to in HSY. I like the concept of social bunny, not the execution. And same with Graduation. Better than Discover University but it was confusing when graduation was even going to happen the first time I played HSY through a kid aging up.

6:38 All primary and secondary schools in Europe and Africa are uniformed schools whether private or public (there are exceptions of course), unsure about anywhere else x 👀 But the school system in High School Years is so foreign for non-American players and the lack of variety/ focus on American societal systems breaks the immersion. *Things like cheerleading, American high school sports, prom, high school graduation and middle school don’t exist in most school systems **_(e.g. primary school age 3-11, secondary school age 11-16, sixth form or college age 16-18, university aged 18+)._* It feels like a “Recreate your favourite American TV show” simulator instead of a representative life simulator. 🙃 - which is insane because most of us (outside N.A) pay for packs at a premium to fulfil the Sims 4 promise of ‘simulating our lives’. They’ll throw a “foreign” world in here and there, but the features are locked to that pack and everything else remains American. 🤷🏾‍♀️ For example, even after 10 years they still haven’t updated the base game to add more school options that represent the schooling experience in other countries. High School Years adds some broken gameplay, but tbh despite the game having an international audience, it’s one of many packs that’s only for Americans.

I feel like a lot of people forget about Discover University’s shortcomings, but I truly hate how long it takes to get a degree and the fact that lifespan just continues. I wish they would have treated it as its own world like in previous Sims games to help off-set the aging. High School Years kind of reminds me of these shortcomings.

I hardly play with HSY, tbh. I go to school with my sims only on the first day and after that I just send them alone. If I don't, their grades never go up. And that's the whole point, according to the aspirations. I also think it's really empty. I replace the school with the one James Turner built, immediately in my games. The standard school is way too big and empty. I thought the school system was better in the previous ones.

I definitely agree that they should’ve had it be more interactive. I wish the teen aspirations were a little more interactive when you decided to join your son at school i.e., if your sim has the drama llama aspiration, have one of the objectives for the day is to start gossip or get into a fight.

There was no "passing notes" or "raise hand to answer question" or "act like a smart aleck" actions for the classes. No fish tank or gerbils to feed. No real "hanging out" sort of activities.

Great video as always. Would love to see more deep dives on other packs including popular ones. I enjoy highschool years but I realized most of the things I enjoy are because I have mods to add more gameplay and make teens more interesting! This pack had so much potential but I think I was hoping for it to be like the trailer, silly me. I know now not to expect that but at the time I was hyped. I don't mind the rabbit holes for the rides but I wish they'd made the amusement park an active lot because it's usually pretty empty.

It seems like a lot of expectations ruin how people feel about the game when they actually get it. For instance, I would never have expected that it would include an active Teacher career or an active Principal career. The active school day I did expect, and it turned out almost exactly how I expected it to turn out. (It's very similar to the active work days in the rest of the game, including the amount of "repetitiveness.") So, while others may have been disappointed by the "active" parts of the pack, I wasn't. The only thing I wanted that the pack didn't have was having the teen learn to drive (which would have been fine as a rabbit hole. The way that TS3 did it, the poor Sims often ended up far from home as if they were kicked out of the car partway through the lesson. That was frustrating.) But that's a pretty minor issue. I suspect if they had done it that way, there would have been a big outcry about cars in the game. (As it was, I remember a multitude of complaints because the pack didn't come with cars in any way. I suspect the team wanted to side-step that issue completely.) There are a lot of things that I wish were more fleshed out (such as the cheer and football events) but I suspect that they ran out of money to do more with those. I never attend them. (But they aren't my "thing" anyway. Even if fleshed out more, I wouldn't use them. But other people would be happier.) If anything, the team tried to cover too much and that led to people feeling slighted (even though it was meant to do the opposite.) Overall, I *like* the way I can use High School Years. I like having a prom every week (because it always feels like it's Freshman prom, Sophomore prom, Junior prom, and Senior prom. I didn't get to go to any of my school proms, including Senior prom, so it lets me live vicariously.) I also like the availability of after-school activities, teen side hustles, and the like. I especially like how those integrate into the new Teen Aspirations (which I find to be a lot of fun.) I especially like the way I can integrate it with Growing Together. This pack fits in well with how I like to play. However, from listening to how other people play, they may not enjoy it the way I did.

This was one of only two packs I ever purchased with nifty knitting stuff being the other in December 2022. I combined both packs frequently along with a CC stuff pack so that I would create an emo teenage sim named Serenity Rune. This also involved the use of several mods that would make her high school classmates almost the same every day. As part of her adventures the school was equipped with a buildable rocket ship. Other changes to the school included adding appliances to the cafeteria and making the school have a swimming pool and a motion gaming rig. Serenity’s time in high school ended when she celebrated her birthday at prom. This was done by setting aside a table at prom to accommodate a birthday cake. If both high school years and either luxury party stuff or my wedding stories is installed you get more food choices at prom (without either it’s just roast chicken, which was not one of Serenity’s favorite foods, as vegetable tempura was her favorite). The other packs I have were obtained for free via special promotions (jungle adventure, luxury party stuff, fashion street kit on epic, and backyard, my first pet, romantic garden, desert luxe via ea) or giveaways (home chef hustle and goth galore).

I was so disappointed when my sims sat down for class and I had no options to take notes, doodle, the text under the desk, sleep ....even if they went in the "all sims must remain seated for the duration of this class" route for an EXPANSION PACK they could have put the hours into some seated in desk animation options that affected gameplay.

It's subjective, but I prefer gameplay and since this game is about simulated ppl I wish they put more effort into that. I feel like before the sims were dumb fun, now they are just dumb boring. In past games, their trait or quirck or random emotional reaction could cause chaos. Now you can absolutely ignore it, and if it does a little something it's so effortless to fix. I second that comment about cutting Generation into tiny pieces. I had hoped growing together and high school years, for example, would have made more significative improvement to intergeneration interactions, and impact ! We got new bubbles interactions, yes, what do they do ? Not much really. I don't feel compelled to use them, they don't change anything. TS4 is so much, expensive, fluff to me I have lost hope for improvement. I mostly enjoy it for building now. I really wish they would act on those promised pack refreshes...

theres been a bug since hsy ep that causes teens to never age up. i dont see anyone talk about it. i play a lot of legacy gameplay and often take my teen sims to active hs. my gen 1 sim will have teen friends at school that my gen 2,3,4+ teen sims will have at their school. i think it has something to do with the fact that not enough sims have teens at the time of going to school and the game needs X# of teens to function at school. also the teachers will stay alive forever. the janitors will die and take days to replace the role. i have also had YA sims show up as classmates. to combat this issue i have to go in manage world and add a ton of teens to the game. its so frustrating though. (i also know its not just me bc ive seen simmers streams where it happens to them.)

2:25 I'm gonna guess being a part of the sims community is the thing here. People that enjoy playing the sims 4, but do not consume any content about the sims, nor interact with the community, are probably not aware of the bugs, or don't care too much. The majority of players probably fall into this category actually tbh I've played the sims since 2004, and I've only very recently found "the sims community". The entire time I was playing the sims 2 and 3, the "community" was my friend group.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again! The biggest problem is that the worlds are empty. Including the high school itself. It just doesn’t feel like a high school because it’s simply not “big and busy” enough. “The halls are alive” … uummm … no they’re not!!

What's the point of the weekly competitions at the tea shop? Often the staff don't show and we're left with a handful of sims in similar outfits and are prizes awarded? I've not seen any.

I was most disappointed with the school clubs. Already expected that there won't be much to do in class but the clubs being just rabbit holes is awful. Like, what do you mean we have this huge building that we can fill up with all kinds of skill building stuff but clubs are outside of school? And why are there only 2 clubs that aren't sports? And even worse: being unable to make your own clubs/club gatherings from get together being disabled. There was a HUGE opportunity for that but no. The school building is basically useless.

tihihihihi "active" classes. my biggest problem is the thrift store/flopsy/entrepreneurial skill stuff, which actually works fine and is fun, but it has f... I mean woohoo-all to do with school; while anything to do with school, sports/cheerleading/chess club/classes/prom, isn't engaging and only connected to your sims' personality by a thread and even that ends up severed once they age up. it's all not terrible ideas on their own, but there is no connective tissue.

Hi Erin! I never play with HS years. You just reminded me about the amusement park. Thanks it’s the one feature I enjoy from that pack.

I wish they just done a boarding school instead of a regular high school locked to a single world.

I play with HSY a lot and I liked it more than I thought I would. I don't play rotationally so I haven't encountered those issues. If a sim's friend doesn't show up to school I just say they're grounded or took a sick day, because different sims show up. But I like that the game can run well with that many sims on a lot. The animations are queued well and the NPC's perform as expected. I love that my sims build a bunch of different skills as teens and graduate with a decent skill set (I have all packs installed). I do not like the aspirations that come with HSY because they glitch and don't always account for a sim completing a task, especially after school activities in other packs, all my sims are currently Llama Scouts. I regularly have a glitch between completing an after school high school event and the game thinks I've entered the Finchwick Fair. And yes, I did report these glitches to EA. I want my sim who is a teacher to appear at the school, I'd like to be able to play as the teacher or principal. And I want the high schools that they built for the trailers to appear on the library. Maybe it wasn't a complete build and that's why they didn't post it. But the high school that comes with the game is just awful and thousands of people have uploaded their own schools. I want the option in build mode to require uniforms at school. I'm not too upset about there not being a private school. The rabbit hole private school in Sims 2 sounds like an easy trick programming-wise to have fewer sims to care for, and that wouldn't work in the sims 4 because the sims have to be somewhere in the "world". I like being able to play as a sim in high school but mostly for the social interaction and the skill boosts. It doesn't always make the game easier, because sometimes I have sims that struggle based on their traits.

6:38 I don’t know If uniform schools are necessarily private, in the uk every school has a uniform so could just be that they wanted school to feel more like that

I enjoyed the pack a lot, but it's honestly lazily put together with not enough thought. We did get a LOT of cool stuff (the high school, crushes, detention, prom, auditorium, and so on) but we also got a lot of flopping stuff (The football team doesn't have actual unforms like American football for one thing, Friday night football club or whatever it's called is the biggest joke, the school is sparse of students, and must I mention that the 'sitting anywhere' feature has ruined weddings forever?). I can live with rabbit holes, but the game just over promised if not outright lied to us in some instances. (I can't think of any lies right now, I'm not in a good headspace atm, but there had to be some.) If they ever refresh it, it would help if they fixed at least some of the above, plus: *Not putting sims in detention just because they had to pee/bargain with or explain to principle option, similar to plead with death. *Actual art class. Could not be that hard since we have all the stuff needed. *Bring back cut scenes, if just for the ferris wheel so people will have their comeuppance (because they complained so much that we couldn't see inside it). It would be a nice compromise between full animation and what we currently have. *Utilize some of the animations and things from university. Not sure what exactly, but it would have made sense to recycle what we already had since the themes are similar. Edit: Some of what we could or should have gotten with this pack that would have made it feel more well rounded and full: *Driving lessons from sims 3 back, along with actual cars. (Stop being lazy, EA.) *actual grades that equate 9-12 and are EU friendly as well since they measure differently than US does. Without that, it makes it feel like it lasts forever. (Maybe call them levels or something instead of grades/forms?) *More structure in general *Related Careers, like people in the video said. *Making Career day A LOT bigger than it is. 3 tables is measly. 6 would have been better at least. And forget the "must complete" thing and no timer there. Too stressful. They really should have tied it to 'Get To Work' as an addition, then just had what they have now as generic, and a fourth random one that changes every so often. *I think TS3 had a science fair? Bringing that back for sure. *Obviously, more schools in other neighborhoods, don't just limit us to Copperdale if you give us the ability to make schools. (I'm throwing one in to Oasis Springs because I never play there, just for pretends sake.) *Guide us through what a rival really is, because I messed it up big time on multiple occasions. *Home Ec class and shop class at least, just sayin'. *More ways to get detention, omg. *A School fair for funds would have been fun. Dunk tank, anyone? *Extremely wishful thinking, but this would have been the time to give us a teen height slider. If we can't have it across age groups, this would have at least made sense.

I feel like there needs to be a generations specific pack instead of breaking it up into 10 different ones. I’ve been mainly playing Sims 3 just because the packs are better executed compared to sims 4’s. IMO, sims 4 is a more creative game while sims 3 is more gameplay focused.

The prom event, the school day events, it goes by so fast and you can’t even truly experience it. I see what they were going for in the pack, and some of the ideas of flushed out and more functional could’ve made it a decent pack.

I thought the active school day thing was a bad idea from the start, even though that's what people asked for. 1. The school day itself could have been a rabbit hole with a lot of options that affected your sims relationships and popularity. Then, more of a focus could be put on activities and relationships. 2. There should have different types of rabbit hole schools that could be placed in any world (all girl's school, private school, technical school), and that could tie into the colleges if you have that pack. 3. They should have brought back the boarding school and headmaster 4. Better integration with the club system that already exists (c'mon man 🙄🤦🏽‍♀️) 5. Integrating an active educator career would have been great! 6. The pier was cute, but they should have included some games with prizes and the ability to travel there directly. So so many missed opportunities.

I like HSY for the new lot type, active HS, B/B & CAS and the pier fair area. The flip side to those is the thrift/clothing interface looks like it was designed to show the outfits but it doesn't (how cool/perfect would that have been!?) Not to mention being able to set the selling price for ANY AMOUNT? Strange. Feels overlooked? The active HS attendance "locks" your sims into doing that. There are NO interactions while "active" in class. I would have liked to see things like "sneak a text," "pass a note" "lie about dog eating homework" etc. More INTERACTIVE options throughout the school day so the player feels like there is a reason to go to HS. The pier area isn't perfect. Seeing your sims interacting with the objects instead of rabbit holes would have been a fun feature but not entirely necessary - I understand that one. I'm just not a fan of the increasing use of rabbit holes in general (the HR cave is one exception I think is cool again because it's more interactive.) Love the teen aspirations as they can be challenging. Love the update beforehand with rounded walls as a builder (though they are still so buggy and can take a lot of patience to get them to do what you want.) Overall I'm happy with purchasing it but there certainly are MANY things I would change and feel could have been done better.

So cool to make it in your video, Erin! There was so much wasted potential here for an amazing expansion pack.

I think highschool years could have been good. If they focused more on the highschool and the overall teen experance. I think it's part of their design pipline to add in a new world, but honestly i feel like they shouldn't do that for every pack. I think I would have been okay with the loss of the themepark if it meant for more fleshed out highschools, and overall teen life. As for splitting the pack compared to the other sims games. In some cases the sims 4 packs will have more depth, the occult packs come to mind. I has sims 3 supernatural and the sims 4 feels a little more indepth the sims 3 occults. (except for aliens and mermaids)

Would love more retrospective content from you, be it this pack or other packs, this casual or more in depth. What I'm going to say applies to Sims 3 as well as Sims 4 - Speaking as someone who loves Sims 3, and couldn't quite get into Sims 4 for whatever reason, I think the fact that both Sims 3 and Sims 4 needed expansions that fleshed out entire life stages (Generations fleshing out kids and teens in Sims 3, High School Years specifically to flesh out teens in Sims 4) shows a fundamental flaw in the basic design of the Sims - And I got this sense of Sims 2 (and especially 1) as well though I think some people like the Child and Teen gameplay for 2 - and the way that every life stage but Adult and Young Adult usually feels tacked on in the base game. (I'm guessing the comment about 'uniform school' is 'schools with a school uniform' as is standard in the UK?)

High School Years is not as fun as it is shown in trailer, as you pointed out the mechanics itself is not as immersive. Going to class just to see the Sims sit for a long time listening to the teacher yapping away, with no input from players on how it can turn out, nothing interesting to see either. So the main part of the game play is really flawed. Events for the school is way too often and not that it is interesting either. Most of them feels like again a checklist to complete which is not as fun along with the events in Sims 4. After school activities are interesting, again I don't get the point of having the carnival rides as rabbit holes. No carnival games? Nothing else to do aside from vanishing to a ride entrance? All in all High School years "flops" not because it is bad, but it is not giving enough to make the pack feel complete.

HSY will always be the EP that I hate the most (seconded by Eco Lifestyle) because of how they handled it. They tried to do too much at once with it and it shows. I would love a private school option, but even just being able to assign a general uniform would've been nice. The exclusion of Get Together was absurd since they didn't integrate HSY with other packs. Drama club, soccer, programming/game design club, etc. were all simple things that could've been included and joining clubs is something a lot of people do in high school. Not to mention the faulty AI not working as intended or the absurdity that people can't have teens from families they make attend school with their sim. The fact there are so many issues with the events (loud notifications, can't turn them off, etc.) just reiterates how the code wasn't fleshed out properly and I know that overall it probably came down to the team being rushed. Too much energy went into Social Bunny and Trendi (which still makes no sense to add since they could've just extended Plopsy to this pack) instead of flushing out the main feature- high school. Even then, Social Bunny wasn't properly tuned seeing as there are issues regarding the messages you can send to various sims. The amusement park was a nice concept (and I don't mind rabbit holes), but they coded it so it's only really usable for individual sims or romantic interests. Groups of friends/family can't go on any of the rides together, and again that's a major part of high school. Again, I'm not hating on the Devs because I know it's most likely they were rushed, but I think the biggest failure of the EP came from them being spread too thin.

i also think one issue with the poll thing is it doesn’t show who actually bought each pack. for all we know maybe hardly anyone bought snowy escape and that’s why it was so low. or some people may be voting based off content they’ve seen and not first hand gameplay

I don't like HSY other than for the furniture because i don't find the school day very interesting (in the classroom) and I do not like having Prom every week which is very unrealistic. Wouldve been nice to be able to have an active career at the highschool too. For Rent was released buggy (and still is) but to me doesn't have the lackluster effect that HSY does. I like horse ranch i have no problems with this pack. I bought snowy escape months after release so I genuinely don't know why people don't like it.

I'm replaying HS pack with my new computer with new safe file. Turns out, teen unable doing extra credit work, the option only for kids. Also, in order to graduate 🎓 with A rank, you need spend 3 game weeks in HS with level 3 of any skills. Good thing in the HS option on teens is Study Exam, you need only do once on entire game week. So late knowing how because teens in my old file graduate early 😅.

1:53 so many critics just aren’t even gamers… they won’t get as deep into the pack as players and won’t see the issues. unless the problems are in the your face the whole time or the critic can’t figure out how to play the game, you can almost guarantee an 80-90 score from every major critic on every game.

Fun fact when I first got it, I never got a pop-up for going to school. It was only after I completely re-downloaded the game and all my packs that it happened.

I think the bulk of the problems goes back to how the basegame was made and then changed. Sure, we've been getting bug fixes. But it's like fixing a badly made house at the point of collapsing by randomly nailing new boards in the hope that it will stay up.

answer is simple: lack of features, bug gameplay and just look at the school its huge but empty it would've work if this would be a game pack not expansion

I think part of what makes this worse and so noticeable is linked to how you can’t multitask and have different sims in different areas at the same time. If you are stuck with one sim in a live classroom it should have a lot more features to keep you busy. I wouldn’t mind so much if it was open world, but when you have to always make an active decision on which sim to follow I don’t want to feel like I’m wasting my time

what do you mean by rabbitholes? like areas a sim enters that you cant see them in while they "interact"? thank you for the in depth video! i need to play this pack more to see how i feel! 💗🌷

High school years was fun for awhile but as a storyline player, high school years eventually got boring after time especially with Prom being every Saturday got boring after time. I didn't want my teen sims going to prom all time, I planned Slumber parties on some Saturdays and the teens that my sims were dating got mad because of "No Prom invite" I had my teen couples skipped out on Prom at times but like I said prom Every Saturday got boring.

been reading quite some bad things about that one... kinda happy that I didn´t get it yet :)

Well-done analysis Erin. I use the CAS items all the time and for me it's the strongest aspect of the pack. I find the gameplay unfortunately severely lacking. HSY could have been so much better

They fumbled so badly on this pack imo. The idea could have been really great and I was actually really excited about it!! The gameplay is lacking so much: the board walk is just rabbit holes and theres never sims when I go to the board walk. While I don’t hate rabbit holes and I understand the need for them, when there’s so many in one spot it’s really not a great look. The school events were extremly buggy in the beginning and I still sometimes don’t get to go to graduation or prom. The aspirations are getting old very quickly. I wish I could choose which sims show up to the school and I feel like they should have made the amount of spawnable sims for the school lot higher (it’s not like you can have more than one school anyways lol). Social bunny is like many of the recent gimmicks they’ve been adding with packs, a very lackluster gameplay aspect. I always turn it off because I find it quite irritating with the pinging and the notifications. I use it very rarely for a teen sim with the drama llama or social aspirations. I haven’t played with Trendi at all yet, as it didn’t fit into any of my storylines yet. I actually almost forgot the after school activities, which while I liked them are seriously lacking as well, would have liked an art club or band tbh. Others have mentioned things that could have been included that I also agree with like an active teacher career and boarding and private school. Even though they definitely added too much in the pack to actually flesh out anything. Almost all the gameplay additions are lackluster and don’t add any meat to the game. The highschool day is just soooo boring, which I guess is kinda realistic haha. The only thing pulling this pack up are literally bb and cas. You can actually make sims that dress like teens and live in realistic teen rooms. I’m just really sad about the state of the recent expansion packs, if I pay 40 bucks for a pack I want something that’s actually fun and not just half-cooked gameplay ideas wrapped up in a pretty bow :(( In the end: As a family and legacy player I do use highschool years a lot, but I definitely think the packs gameplay feels unfinished and lacks in depth… A little thing I noticed because I play on long lifespan right now: My teen sims get a call everyday asking if they want to graduate early ://

So I just spent a huge amount of time screaming at my sims to go to freaking class. Half the time the main feature of going to school with them is broken. It's so frustrating. Expansion packs are the game packs of Sims 3. There is not enough content for the price. I refuse to buy anything full price anymore.

I was so hyped for HSY then so disappointed with it but as time went on I ended up really liking it. The CAS and build/buy is A+ and I'm a sucker for new foods so really liked the boba tea shop. Thrifting is kind of fun (and a good money maker) AND you can store an outfit in your inventory and change without going through a loading screen. I like football and cheerleading (but don't like how we have to cheer alone) and I love the amusement park, prom and photo booth. Plus your teens easily meet people at school. Cons: the school - too big and ugly, the classes- boring, lack of grades etc and hard to play everyday with a family, and social bunny was unnecessary.But overall it does make my teens feel like teens just because they see other teens so much and have their own things going on even if it's just "football", chess, cheerleading and computers. Before they had next to nothing

I'm not okay with rabbit holes in the sims 4. Devs got rid of open world but claimed there would be no rabbit holes but active experiences. Now look what we've got.

I didn't buy any of these packs. I was interested in all of them when they were announced, but the more I saw about them, I lost interest. You can't have a pack like this where you follow your teens to school in a closed world game like TS4. Because while you're there with your teen, the rest of your family isn't going to work, isn't going to school, isn't feeding themselves, you can't just flip over to them and take care of them for a minute, it's just awful. You finally come home and everyone is using locked computers they shouldn't be able to access, starving, missed work, didn't do homework, all of it. I actually stopped watching several Sims streamers at this time because I didn't even want to watch the let's plays for this pack. I wasn't even the one playing and the bugs were annoying me so much.

I accidentally played my teen today and it was disappointing to get a NOTIFICATION about someone having a sign stuck to their back, but no animations to that effect during the class. I feel like there were a LOT of lost opportunities in the pack and of course, messing with the lifespans at that point was ...... unfortunate at best.

I remember being disappointed with high school years: the bugs, the appearance of the school vs the trailer, school events (part of me wishes we could make our own like holidays) I once again have more hope in Life By You - I'm not expecting the moon - i would just like the ability to integrate my own events, skills, etc. within the game. I might also want to have a bunch of characyers on atvs hunting troves.

The fact that the cheer competition isn’t really a competition because your team is the only one that shows up, no one else arrives and everything is just empty is so annoying. Social bunny sucks so badly, why are my adults talking about pillow fights and prom? It could’ve been fun if it was more like a social media website like Twitter and not just based around teens. Social bunny is specifically for teens it seems and I think they just didn’t bother to expand it for adults

I was so disappointed with HSY. Oddly enough it was the perfect pack for a closed world game like sims 4. Wonderful whims, RPO and Teen dynamic life all set good examples of what HSY should have had. Allow players to set when prom, graduation and career day will be held. Career day should have been a place to send your sim to every career through a rabbit hole or ask adults about careers until they found one they liked. B.c clubs are locked behind GTT they should have added a section to it for high school specific clubs you could set to appear after school ended. Let players choose what teens in your world attend school and even assign them roles if a player wants to. If I want a swim club instead of a football club then I should be able to make that, players should have been able to put any sport in there and send them to the nationals, and those sims should stand in the halls trying to recruit me. Sneaking letters, texting, taking notes, sleeping or even staring at your crush during class would all have added to the gameplay, with sims doing different things depending on their traits. A full on crush system should have been in here and players should have been able to set a crush or randomly get one. This pack lacked direction, ambition and just nobody seemed to care at all about high school drama.

I've got some thoughts... LOL First of all, as far as its reviews/rating, I'm very curious what kind of simmers are reviewing it. We all have different play styles and what we each individually get from the packs is different. There are packs I own where the actual game play didn't interesting me but the CAS/Build Buy did. Depending on how you play the Sims would change my answers on what packs I suggest to a friend? Are you mostly a builder? Then I suggest X. and so on and so forth. As far as HS..is functions like trash. My first time trying a graduation ceremony...hoo boy. First of all it was a severe thunderstorm. My Sims mom had a fear of the dark that kept coming back so she was freaking out. I finally manage to get her composed and then EVERYONE IN THE AUDITORIUM WAS HAVING MASS PANIC AND HYSTERIA. They kept cowering in masse reacting to the damn storm. This went on for in game hours until the ceremony was over. HS is a lot of half baked ideas and hype (like most xpacs). They tried to put so much in it but it was mostly shallow. I like to describe The Sims 4 experiance as a hollow chocolate bunny. You want one, you buy it, you bite inside, its empty. Yeah, you got some chocolate, but it was not a satisfying experiance. I feel like we're in this toxic cycle of... EA's greed puts pressure on devs to push out content and keep us interested in buying it. So we get cool half baked concepts that never have the time to be fully fleshed out so its on to the next one. We want more fullfilling gameplay, so like our toxic ex we keep taking them back and buying the next thing, being disappointed and wanting something shiny and new. The devs have pressure from us to fullfill our wants and pressure from EA to churn stuff out fast. What would change this? If people stopped buying everything they put out, but we're never collectively going to be on the same page with that. We're in the absolute worst timeline to be consumers, quality is down, prices are up, and no one stops the madness. EA has the benefit of not really having competition. People are trying, but most of the competition fails cause it does not offer as much as Sims does.

I like build/ buy and CAS, but I don't like the gameplay very much. The Prom is too short, it takes place every single week and it's no fun at all. No private schools, no great teen lots, you can't choose your classmates, career day is boring, the EA High School is boring, no participating in class, using their phones ALL THE TIME it's super boring. And I think that Preteens are missing.

I don't really want to buy HSY because of how isolated it feels like. Even if in my way of playing, there are not really different worlds apart, I hate that there is one high school for everyone? Like for example you ask someone about their career, and then you go in their profile, they sometimes just have "gratuated from Copperdale High School" and it's breaking immersion a lot for me. But as usual with other EPs: it's pretty. The BB and CAS items are really cool and I wish I had them in game but I don't want the gameplay coming with it. Maybe the theme park though, but it's just a fixed rabbithole, not even a lot you can create yourself. :(

The high schools never worked for me. (Could be mod-caused, but I am veeery diligent about my mods) My teens just never go to class.🤷‍♀ And the school is SO empty!

"The active school days felt repetitive, unimpactful and not well integrated with the sims' life span" so just like irl school?

The High School pack failed form me with the major problem with exercise equipment not being not providing credit when used. Also, no matter how much you study you are always failing. That is unless you have the genius trait. Then you are given full credit for classes. Frankly, I just don't have time in a sims day to do classes, afterschool stuff, and do teen internet influencer. I couldn't never get teen internet influencer to work right, either. And it was difficult to have teen school linked friendships that worked due to time problems. I had to setup teen clubs to get them together and stay together. I did the same for university. Otherwise good luck finding people in age group. Disappointing.

I think asking people to choose the worst is different than asking users to rate the pack, because if people are generally satisfied but still have preferences, it will look worse than it is.

I gave up on the Sims 4 entirely and moved back to the Sims 2. I found my spark for the game again and am so happy I moved back to the Sims 2.

Honestly, I'm going to defend this pack, kind of. The bugs were annoying, sure, but with the right mods, I found high school to be wildly dramatic (one of my Sims' childhood friends came out as trans at the cheer meet, I have beautiful screenshots of a promise ring exchange in the middle of Prom, there was a fight in the hall that stopped the whole class and disrupted the day, for starters). Without the mods, I bought it explicitly with the intention of getting my Sims to graduate early so they can get a head start on University, and in that regard, I think it does a bangup job aside from the whole teens can't do university clubs issue. I also find that my teens don't typically spend a lot of time in high school unless they're really struggling, so it never really gets to feeling repetitive. I do agree they could have done a lot better, but this pack did surpass my expectations and makes the transition to young adulthood so much smoother, whether my teen is saving up for a house, getting a head start on university, or taking a gap year in Salvadorada. Amazing video as always, Erin! I AM kind of shocked the critics rated it as high as they did, even if I have a lot of fun with it.

I feel like the simstein just needs to do better at getting more in depth Feedback about what they want from the game. Because genuinely don't know why they thought people would want a lackluster active school day over more flesh out and varied school experiences and after school activities. I personally like to play with a lot of sims at once so I would prefer rabbit holes with actual impacts and consequences over having every aspect of gameplay be active. While I know that EA is a greedy company I'm oftentimes frustrated with The Sims team for not working with the limitations of the game and systems that we already know exist to make the game more fun

Personally, I feel like the whole Depop gameplay could’ve been a stuff pack or a kit. Like a better version of the Menswear Kit.

I missed that poll, but FOR SURE High School years was pretty blah. I never use it. I did not want an active high school career at all. I love sending my kids off to school and not having to worry about them for a few hours. It did have a really decent build/buy though! And Social Bunny I use all the time (great way to build friendships with zero effort!)

Maybe it's me, but generally the interactive things in the sims 4 annoy me, if I can I always select the choice of not following them... the interactive careers proceed anyway, whether you follow them at work or not... and it's just one of the examples, idem school, proceeds equally whether you follow a teenager to school or not, and often proceeds better if you don't follow them to school.

I haven't been playing with the pack for as long as many of you, (only about two weeks) but after doing one active school day, I decided that it really wasn't worth it. LittleMsSam's mod for the constant proms and exams is also a lifesaver, and I wish there was one for the sports days, too. Only had social bunny crash my game once so far.

I am a firm believer that EA is buying reviews and censoring bad ones. I left a bad review on the google review bag and found my comment had been hidden from the public even when i actively looked for it. Steam is know as a platform for sort of just let people alone (thus all the controversy games that get released on there). So I figured steam is currently the one platform not completely bought out by EA's PR team.

i know so many people are bothered by prom every week, but functionally it makes sense. they did it that way to ensure whatever life span you play on your teen sim gets a chance to go. you dont have to go every week.

I would love to see these retrospect videos for Growing Together, For Rent, and Get To Work!

Snowy escape is a good pack, why people hating on that?