Friday, May 30, 2014

Q: University

So I've played, although haven't yet blogged, the first 30 families in round one.  I am getting quite a collection of teens in the college bin.  So I've started thinking about how I want to handle university.

Now first I must say that university is jacked up in my game.  I don't have any of the original students which I find sad.  If anyone knows somewhere I can download them packaged please let me know.  I also don't have any dormies.  My game will make them once I start moving people into dorms.  Given all this, I first thought of just using one university and working everyone through it.  The lazy man's way shall we say.  But I've been thinking and I've changed my mind.  I plan on treating the universities like the vacation destinations.  I'm giving each university two seasons.  I think that will make the universities distinctive.

To me, Sim State University has always seemed like that good old college that's all about sports and friends.  So I think they will be summer and spring.  Jocks like romance after all.  La Fiesta Tech has always seemed like a learning university.  I think they should be fall & summer.  Acedemie Le Tour has always seemed a big snobbish to me.  The perfect place for sims who want to learn and get a high paying career and also make connections for their future use.  So I'm thinking Fall & Winter.

But here is the question, which sims go where?  At first I thought they should be sent by aspiration.  Certain ones, like knowledge and fortune, could be easily pegged.  But others, like family and pleasure, could really go just about anywhere and fit in.  So right now I'm thinking...random.  Assign each university two numbers.  Roll the dice for each student and that will determine where they go.  It's kind of like saying that this college has offered you a scholarship so of course that's where you will attend.  It's possible that the student could reroll after their second year, at the same time they could reroll their aspiration, if things weren't going well for some reason.  Perhaps they need to escape from a crazed ex-lover.

So, anyway, I was wondering what people thought.  Does it make sense?  How do you handle this?  Any suggestions?

Just let me know.  Thanks so much for reading my ramblings.  I'll try to get more blogging done as soon as the real world lets up a bit.



3 comments:

  1. I am playing all universities in my megahood but i put my sims alphabetically
    so i get to play them for one sim per semester. I didn't have that at first i was playing college at the end of each round of houses but it would have taken ages to get through all the sims. I think re-rolling in the second year is a good idea then their can make new friends or enemies.

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  2. I haven't gotten to university rounds yet myself, however, I had decided when I first started that my teens (if they really wanted to go to uni) would roll a die and then that would determine which uni they would go to. I like your 2 seasons per uni, I typically do 2 or 3 for mine so I might keep that idea. :) So for me, rolling to make it random does 2 things. First (at least I hope) it should keep one university from getting over crowded. It's going to take forever to get through uni anyway. :) Secondly it allows me to "mix up" the students from different hoods. I do something similar when they get ready to leave uni. If they are an heir they go home, but otherwise they roll for where they will live. Hope that helps. :)

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  3. Your system sounds very sensible! I never thought through my way of playing uni so well. All I do is send my teenagers to uni, with very few exceptions. My campus hoods are the original ones, and at the moment, I have two uni households full of playable students. I play them according to the alphabetical list; when it is any of the students' turn, I play them for one "year" at uni. Of course, this means that the whole household advances a year, which is good because otherwise it would take them all forever, and everyone they knew back in the main hood would be long dead by the time they graduated!

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