I just wish we could choose our sim's schedule! There were always classes that you didn't get an option about times because it was an upper level course and there was only one section, but there were also courses that you could choose from several sections. I was able to avoid having classes that started earlier than 10:00 AM because of this. It would be neat to be able to do this.

It makes a degree (heh) of sense though. College oftentimes is about the academic more than the practical. As someone who went for graphic design, I spent more time discussing color theory and related applications than I did actually designing anything. But that's part of the honing process. You're there to learn why things are done a certain way and how, and occasionally do so yourself as a test.

I don't remember the TS2 version of university EP too well, mainly because I used it maybe once or twice: according to what I do remember, it was boring and way too limited: no interactive classes, only YAs could attend the uni (and that whole life stage was available only for the sims who went to the uni, which sucks), community lots were mostly useless due to the almost non-existent lot zoning in TS2, and the only thing to do on these lots was meeting new sims.

In TS3 the university seems more real, fun, and challenging, because both the studying part and the social part are more fleshed out. You do need to try hard to get good grades, but there are so many distractions and temptations around: parties, social cliques, new forms of entertainment, that you need to make some tough choices, just like IRL: you can't do it all at once, but you can try a bit of everything, or focus on one-two things and become a star student or a super-influential person in a social group. Also, you can get multiple degrees and enroll at any stage in your life.

The university town looks really nice, but I still prefer the hometown university one can build with the mods, because this way it is more in sync with everything else.

Also, even those who aren't that much into the university life itself can appreciate the new items shipped with this pack: the plain modern furniture you can use in not-so-fancy contemporary houses and apartments, the community lot objects (we needed those! this game lacked fun objects for community lots for too long), the build items, thw world deco, all of which added much detail and realism to the game.

TBH I never thought this EP was "underrated"; from what I see, Supernatural is one of the less appreciated EPs, because many people are into more realistic gameplay style, and don;t want their game to be full of fairies, vampires, and other strange creatures.

That sounds very strange to me and also almost sounds like a waste of time. But, 'You're there to learn why things are done a certain way and how' sounds like you are raising your painting skill (for lack of better TS3 equivalent). But tbh I can't relate to a graphics design study that much.

I am mostly familiar with technical academic studies. You create a very important base of skillsets (math, physics, programming, etc) that fit very well with the logic and science skill in TS3. There is no way to do a technical academic study here without raising your math skill severely. In fact, this is a reason that some will drop out, because they can't cope. And then depending on what specific study you do, you raise other related skills. I am confident this is the same with any biology and chemistry related studies. They don't just sit there discussing methods, angles and how nice molecule models look, anyway.

Also, raising your skillset is not just about practical skills. Also not when looking at TS3 skills. Otherwise there would be no skill books in the game. TS3 skills are also used in a very broad sense of the meaning. Just look at what 'logic' entails.

I definitely prefer TS3 UL to TS2 Uni, but the lack of the ability to have custom University Worlds and the weird social groups are my primary qualms. The former is obvious; I don't want all of my Sims are going to the "northeast" for university. As for the latter; I just graduated from University and from my experience, social groups (especially the three delineated by UL) aren't a thing. The general lack of cliques was the biggest thing I felt liberated about from when I went to university after high school. At first they were cool, but now I feel that they are restricting especially since I'm such a perfectionist and don't particularly want everyone to have differing degrees of sway in all the groups simultaneously. I definitely made the mistake of trying to categorize everyone in Sunset Valley into particular social groups.

That said; the ability to go at any point in your life, the fact university actually COSTS money and isn't free, and many of the other things listed already in this thread outweigh those negatives.

I think you can have a homeworld university, or use NRAAS's traveller to go to a custom UNI world and treat that university as the university world.

For instance, Franglishandchocolat has a recreation of Sim State University: https://franglishetchocolat.tumblr....stateuniversity

Taylorb1000 has a fairly detailed university world: https://homeworlduniversity.wordpress.com/

I personally have a small uni in the homeworld (which I treat as a small Liberal Arts College or Community College), and leave the main uni neighbourhood as the 'Ivy League' for my top-scoring sims. You can use the recolorable rabbitholes to differentiate the different campuses (http://modthesims.info/d/541726/cas...placements.html)


But yeah, the inability to change subneighbourhoods beyond default replacements (and even those haven't been fully tested yet) bugs me a bit. A lost opportunity, IMO.

They both are really for many of the same reasons. People look at the overarching concept of the pack and decide they don't want it. I feel like almost every pack at least added something I use constantly. But they tend to forget the smaller things that packs add. Supernatural had beekeeping, rocking chairs, skipping stones. Pets had plastic surgery. University Life had, as jje1000 pointed out, some great build/buy that can be used almost anywhere. Into the Future had something that had nothing to do with its concept, the Dip Kiss social. Even Showtime, my least favorite pack, added several little things that I love, like the genie.

It's a problem with almost every other pack besides the essentials like Ambitions or Generations really.

After reading this thread it seems to me that it is quite subjective. It comes down to your personal preferences. If you don't care about sending your sims to university, then UL does not seem to offer much (it still has a lot of build/buy to offer ofc). And the same goes for Supernatural. Comes down to how much you are interested in the theme.

Then there is hindsight. We now can compare TS3 expansions with TS4 expansions. Making all TS3 expansions look underrated.

Science, Street Art, Social Networking skills, baristas, gourmet coffee beans (for brewing and as harvestables), herbs (for consumption and as harvestables), comic book stores, bowling alleys, rebel hangouts, juice kegs, bonfires, flying discs (frisbees), the PlantSim occult state, the Irresistible, Avant Garde, and Socially Awkward traits, Murphy Beds, Ping Pong (table tennis), whiteboards -- none of these require sending sims to Uni World in order to enjoy. It's fine to not have any interest in any of these things and the extra gameplay they provide whatsoever, but to say the EP has nothing in it other than Uni World specific experiences and Build/Buy assets is not coming across as a very well-informed assessment I'm afraid. Or am I missing something myself and some of these game features were actually patched in without really requiring the EP?

Yes, and the same goes for Supernatural. Btw, I actually agree with you, because :
" If you don't care about sending your sims to university, then UL does not seem to offer much (it still has a lot of build/buy to offer ofc). And the same goes for Supernatural. "

It is why I wrote 'seem' . It is the general impression it can give because of the theme of the expansion pack. That if you are not interested in the theme, you might think it does not offer much to you. All the things you listed are kind of mixed with the rest of the stuff you install. Not descernibly Univerity or Supernatural content.

I give up lol.

Perhaps if you had said more explicitly "does not seem to offer much at first glance to those who have not fully checked out what the EP really includes," or something like that, I wouldn't appear to have been so triggered. I mean, I'm very protective of my favorite EP. It's like someone has called my own mother shallow without really getting to know her first, of course I would have a few choice words to say about that.



If the food or drink item disappears upon purchase when ordering by clicking on the barista sim, try clicking on the counter instead. Or if this happens when clicking on the counter, then try clicking on the barista. Not much of a fix, but that's the only way I've found to play through that bug when it strikes. Or just enjoy your gourmet coffee/herbal tea at home, when one's schedule allows for it.

I've noticed too that Sims at university have a random chance to have an occult status. Is there any way to change them all to human all together at once? I'm changing them as I see them with MC, but there always seems to be just one more popping up.

Not really all at once because Human is not an occult state. It's a lack of all of the other occult states. But you should be able to remove let's say the vampire one from all of the sims in the world who have it by filtering the Remove command run from the Admin Bldg (substituting for City Hall) or an in-game computer, then do the same with fairies and the others.

Sounds like something other than NRaas SP is in control though. Under EA standard, inactive sims become occults randomly if that occult state is in play under Game Options. Under NRaas SP, there has to be a good reason for a sim to be an occult, such as they were born that way/inherited the state genetically, they were turned through in-game or SP Personality events for those who use those modules, or they immigrated in that way as per the mod's settings the same as with homeworlds.

I'm not sure honestly, because university is the only world, sub-world or regular worlds, where I've seen this happen. This is with NRaas SP installed and it never happens elsewhere.

The strange thing is that I've noticed that it's not just limited to immigrating Sims or inherited from them. I've seen premade uni sims, such as those at the fraternity house, start as occults upon loading up the university hood for for the first time.

SP is installed, but is progression on for Uni World? Some players prefer to not use SP there. If it's not engaged, it sounds like EA's is taking over.
NRaas > SP > General Options > Enable Progression > T/F

When we start a new instance of Uni World from the beginning, there are I believe some townie residents but no one except our actively played sims in the dorms, frat/sorority houses, nor students in off-campus housing yet for the first sim hour or two. Don't they arrive a bit later, before the Meet and Greet? It's been a while on my end, but I think it's only after arrival that they would have the chance to morph into occults or not if this really is happening the EA way and it seems that should be plenty of time to get SP's settings engaged, if one intends to use SP in Uni World.

Progression is definitely on, because I'm receiving the notifications every couple of seconds (haven't gotten around to editing custom story settings yet for uni) for Sims all over town. So it's definitely functioning.

When I load up uni for the first time in a new save, the premade Sims, who are there by default, appear in front of their respective housing. Standard EA procedure. I often send Sims to stay in the fraternity house, and there is usually at least one premade who is always an occult when I arrive, usually a vampire.

Oh, I thought it was some kind of ongoing localized epidemic. With the understanding that I haven't started up a new instance of Uni World myself in a very long time and perhaps I should, in that case it sounds like EA standard is sneaking in there right in the beginning as the world loads and SP with its constraints hasn't really been fully engaged, the game clock is not yet moving forward, etc. What I am remembering is my actively played sim(s) all alone in town except for the townie residents, and the fellow dorm and other students arrive together, marching in with their luggage somewhere around 10 or 11 am that morning. Maybe things have changed with patches that have been released since way back then. But even when starting up Uni fresh for test purposes, which I must have done somewhere along the line, I would not have been likely to notice one or a small number of occults here and there as being all that unusual. In fact in one case I repopulated the entire student body using SP's Rapid Immigration with some royally borked up settings and ended up with an entire instance of Uni World students all being werewolf-vampire hybrids and all having the same first and last names. That of course I noticed and almost played through that mess just to see what it would be like, but instead dumped it and applied the actually intended exported mod settings for playing forward.

If SP has things in control properly after the world instance is generated, then it sounds like using MC to fish out and change the unwanted ones in the very beginning should be sufficient for the rest of the term at least, even if it's a bit inconvenient to remember to do.

It would seem so. No biggie though. As long as I can control it going forward that's all that matters to me.

In any case, thanks for the assist. Always appreciate your insight igazor.

If you happen to finish that custom University World, please share it!

Played TS2 Uni, and tell you not my cup of tea. I'm hesitant to send my Sim due to heavy restrictions and having to grind for class performance. Not sure about TS3 take on UL, but it sure looks fun with content its filled and it' will be my next purchase for an EP for sure

UL is pretty much the first pack I'd recommend anyone would get for TS3. It might've been the first pack I gifted to someone, as well.

I would probably say Generations first, since it's pretty much essential element to the game as a whole :/ Though University Life is something you can really call an expansion pack. It's so meaty in terms of content quantity. Most of the stuff seem like could be used in Late Night setting, where venues can be filled with lots of these recreational items. Like you have vendors, juice keg, pinball table, barista bar.

You can, I do. University Life is in my opinion the greatest addition to the day-to-day Sim life that actually feels like an expansion, unlike Generations which goes largely unnoticed once it's there. My Sims regularly use the whiteboard, beer keg, pool/tennis/football tables, and I'm pretty sure I haven't even tried half of the new items in the pack yet. The speakers' podium, the business planner, the radio emitter, the backpack and the bonfire all seem like good additions too.

Of course that's just the "stuff" part of it, if you have your Sims use their smartphones there's also a bunch of good gameplay there. Those are very important to me in saves where it isn't 25 years too early for them to exist.

I also happen to like the additions in CAS, I use the clothes from the pack regularly. They have a nice look to them. And scrolling through Buy Mode now, hell, there's something I regularly use in every category. Literally, every category I use has good content (bar plumbing, which UL does not come with). It's probably the best pack all-around. If I start to think about what items I notice myself using a lot, University Life keeps coming up. I don't tend to seek out stuff from Ambitions or Seasons deliberately, they're not packs I'd say I know for their good content. But on any given lot I'll always have a bunch of things from Late Night and University Life. I guess Generations isn't half bad either, it just doesn't stand out to me.

I could go on about packs I use for their content.....Into The Future, where the theme is decidedly modern. 70s/80s/90s Stuff, where the theme is maybe not quite vintage but a bit of a throwback. Great stuff in both if you know how to use it.