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Post by MissyHissy on Nov 26, 2019 16:19:54 GMT
I'm currently playing a rotational game in Sunset Valley with the pre-mades, plus a few I've brought over from Bridgeport. I'm actually playing a handful of my own careers (shameless self promotion, here ) and I hate the fact that they always get promoted, whether I want them to or not. Right now though, I'm using Ani's No Free Work Performance mod alongside the Job Overhaul mod by Gamefreak130 and they've added a lot more realism to the job search and the promotion system. With Ani's mod, they won't gain any work performance until they've completed all the metrics required for promotion and therefore they can't get promoted. What are you guys doing to make the career gameplay more realistic? Are you using any other mods?
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Post by simshai91 on Nov 26, 2019 18:48:40 GMT
I've also been using the Job Overhaul to limit automatic promotions. Need to try out Ani's No free work performance mod. But usually, I limit my sims career progress manually based on their education level, which is based on their skill level. I have a whole explanation on my in-game education/career system on my tumblr here: simshai91.tumblr.com/education-careersPS: This is still being tweaked as new mods come out or if I see other simmers with a better way of doing things
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Post by t888 on Dec 2, 2019 7:19:43 GMT
I've got my own mod where I've overhauled pretty much all the vanilla careers to what I see as more realistic... aside from a few (at this time) not possible (yet in the future potentially possible) based upon a video game franchise I like, for example I've altered the medical career so you progress up from nurse to PA to MD to chef medical officer (thats how it worked for a doctor I know IRL) but the final level is surgeon general, after all in the USA they kinda are the top authority think about tobacco warning and surgeon general koop) and I altered upper lelvels of police on the intelligence branch so instead of it being more James Bond-y its a more realistic CIA type of branch, science progresses up through levels like nanomachine specialist, robotics specialist, AI specialist, bipedal robot specialist, and at the highest level instead of mad scientist its government scientist (weapons developer & creator of defense tools). And similar small over hauls.
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Post by T1gerCat on Dec 2, 2019 13:11:12 GMT
Aside from "No Free Work Performance", nah I let my sims progress as they see fit. Like T888, I madeover the original career names so they make a tad more sense but that's more of a personal peeve.
My biggest problem with career realism though is that whenever I change careers, half the townies will change theirs to become my sims' coworkers. It's incredibly annoying to recreate Pleasantview, set the townie sims in their original careers (let alone relationships, Don Lothario settled down and began popping kids on gameplay day 1!!!) and then have them flock in droves to completely different ones just so they'll be my sims' coworkers. It's even more annoying when I make sure to give them their proper lifetime wishes and they disregard them. Does anyone know of a way to stop that?
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Post by MissyHissy on Dec 2, 2019 13:18:13 GMT
simshai91 I love your career and education page! I've found a few mods on there I didn't have, including an update to the Evening School mod. Thanks for sharing that, very useful! Love the way you're doing your University system! t888 The EA careers do need a lot of work. I don't know what they were thinking. Organ Donor as the first level of a medical career? T1gerCat I've been grappling with this myself in my current game. I'm experimenting with the settings in the Careers mod to set both minimum and maximum coworkers for all jobs to 0. Hopefully, the game won't generate coworkers for them now but it's still a test (once Hank Goddard actually gets a new job in my game, I'll know if it's worked )
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Post by T1gerCat on Dec 6, 2019 21:04:45 GMT
@missyhissy, frankly there are times I want to completely get rid of the premade careers and remake them in a way that they make sense. I already want to sit down at some point and turn the freelance careers into rabbithole ones, if only to make playing them on my not-exactly-brand-new computer easier and less laggy (a family of four, each with their own freelance career? I do NOT recommend it).
Speaking of coworkers, while having 0 coworkers might be one way (the only way?), I'm greedy and I want to keep coworkers but somehow confine them to npc or currently jobless sims.
Bit off-topic, but does anyone know of a way to create new lifetime wishes? Playing with user-created careers severely limits lifetime wishes options. Or maybe a way to connect created careers to the existing lifetime wishes, instead.
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Post by MissyHissy on Dec 6, 2019 21:35:22 GMT
@missyhissy, frankly there are times I want to completely get rid of the premade careers and remake them in a way that they make sense. I already want to sit down at some point and turn the freelance careers into rabbithole ones, if only to make playing them on my not-exactly-brand-new computer easier and less laggy (a family of four, each with their own freelance career? I do NOT recommend it). Speaking of coworkers, while having 0 coworkers might be one way (the only way?), I'm greedy and I want to keep coworkers but somehow confine them to npc or currently jobless sims. Bit off-topic, but does anyone know of a way to create new lifetime wishes? Playing with user-created careers severely limits lifetime wishes options. Or maybe a way to connect created careers to the existing lifetime wishes, instead. Oh I hear you there. I've been disabling them in the Job Overhaul settings so I don't have to see or use them. Custom ones are miles better Ahh, I'm rotating round the households, so I don't want random coworkers. I'll be adding them manually with MC, so maybe that would do it for you? New lifetime wishes do require script modding. Franzilla made three on Mod the Sims and velocitygrass wrote a tutorial for it also on Mod the Sims. Does that help?
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Post by T1gerCat on Dec 6, 2019 22:10:32 GMT
@missyhissy, frankly there are times I want to completely get rid of the premade careers and remake them in a way that they make sense. I already want to sit down at some point and turn the freelance careers into rabbithole ones, if only to make playing them on my not-exactly-brand-new computer easier and less laggy (a family of four, each with their own freelance career? I do NOT recommend it). Speaking of coworkers, while having 0 coworkers might be one way (the only way?), I'm greedy and I want to keep coworkers but somehow confine them to npc or currently jobless sims. Bit off-topic, but does anyone know of a way to create new lifetime wishes? Playing with user-created careers severely limits lifetime wishes options. Or maybe a way to connect created careers to the existing lifetime wishes, instead. Oh I hear you there. I've been disabling them in the Job Overhaul settings so I don't have to see or use them. Custom ones are miles better Ahh, I'm rotating round the households, so I don't want random coworkers. I'll be adding them manually with MC, so maybe that would do it for you? New lifetime wishes do require script modding. Franzilla made three on Mod the Sims and velocitygrass wrote a tutorial for it also on Mod the Sims. Does that help? Hell yeah they are! I have a preference to careers that actually make sense as they progress (like you said earlier, Organ Donor may be amusing as career level, but it's hardly realistic). Also I find I like careers with less than the usual 10 levels especially for careers that can begin as teen jobs or for careers that can be a bit more basic. My Medical Examiner career has only 3 levels, for instance. I don't like rotating households for that exact reason, I can be too specific for what I want for specific families/households and them changing jobs (or swapping partners like they've lost them during a poker game) can be quite annoying. I haven't tried using MC in that way but I'll look it up and try it when I find enough time to play to see if it works. I had no idea those mods/tutorials existed. I'll definitely read up on them, thank you Missy!!
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Post by MissyHissy on Dec 6, 2019 22:37:30 GMT
Yeah, I also prefer the ordinary jobs, not just careers. I like some of my sims being able to be car mechanics and others become surgeons, or GPs. The diversity is great. I've got quite a lot more normaly jobs planned, like electrician, plumber and hairdresser alongside some major music ones. Well in all honesty, I'm playing with no Story Progression at all. Not Nraas, not EA's, nothing. SO they're not doing a partner swap, nor progressing through the careers without my permission! So it's proving to be a lot of fun. You're welcome! I'd love to be able to make some myself one day. I'm getting more and more tempted to have a go at script modding, you know. There are so many things I'd love to do and so few modders left in the community
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Post by T1gerCat on Dec 7, 2019 10:57:09 GMT
Truthfully I'm tempted to do just that myself. Turn off Story Progression and all it's sibling mods and play as I want to play. My only problem with that is the same as I had with sims 2, townies will stay the same age unless I manually age them, marry them off or give them children. If I were any better (or even good) at proper modding, I'd try to understand the existing Story Progression mods and make my own, just so it'd be the way I want my game to be.
If you ever make your own Lifetime Wishes, we'll know they're working, lol. Try as I might, I still can't make Opportunities or Events work. I've read your tutorial, taken apart a couple of your careers to see the code in a far clearer way than the Sims-made and just when I think I've done it, poof it all goes!
As for ordinary jobs, I'm definitely interested in those. It's fun to be President, but what about the simple folk? I had found back in my sims2 days, a career pack that had most, if not all, the ordinary NPC careers (gardeners, repairmen, maids, nannies etc) and I had a blast giving them to the more everyday people in my game.
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Post by MissyHissy on Dec 7, 2019 11:20:42 GMT
I've been a lot happier with my rotational gameplay with no story progression, I've got to admit. I have control over them at last! I play with aging turned off and age everyone up manually anyway, so that much doesn't bother me at all. But I hear you. I'm pretty sure there are some XML tuneable files for Story Progression. Maybe it's worth looking those over? I think I might create a section for general modding on here, you know. We could help each other out with general, not-career specific, modding too. Well it's my ambition to create a lot of new traits and lifetime wishes. I'd love more of both and I'm really determined to learn how to do it. What's the problem you're having with the opportunities? Do you want to start a thread about them? I'm happy to help! Yeah, I think I had a mod for that, too. It feels more realistic to have people in normal, everyday essential jobs.
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Post by T1gerCat on Dec 7, 2019 12:45:42 GMT
Isn't it funny how turning off story progression suddenly makes the game more playable? It's like the programmers at EA took the right idea and then went nuts with it, townie's changing spouses (of both sexes, male or female sex is more of a concept in my game and for once, I'm not the one doing it!), popping kids like it's going out of fashion or having 0 births, townies moving out and leaving babies or toddlers behind. It's crazy! And that's all with no Story Progression mods, just the EA one.
At some point, I really need to take a break from my offline life and go over the EA-files to see what I can play with to make SP a bit more consistent (and while I'm at it, to break out my old programming school books because I remember next to nothing).
There are traits I never play with because, with my game at least, they're a bit useless or the various lifetime awards can easily override them so if I want to finetune a sim, I'll work with those more and keep traits as basic as possible. Lifetime wishes though are severely lacking if you want to avoid the career or supernatural sim related ones. For my game, if I ever do get around to working on them, I'd like either skill/personality related ones or a way to connect custom careers to the existing wishes (so a custom medical career can still get the "world renowned xxxx" wish where xxxx would be the renamed field).
Opportunities cause the career to not even show up. I tried adding one to my Medical Examiner career (a simple 3 level career) and to be safe, I more or less copied an opportunity code from the medical career in the game (and when that failed, one from your Medic career). The career wouldn't even show up as a result. Once I took the enhanced career out and put the original one in, it showed up as normal. That was a couple weeks ago and I haven't had enough spare time to try again (or I'd have tried starting a thread begging for help). It was a simple "go to this/that rabbithole for x sim minutes" one. The idea behind it was that the ME would go to the military rabbithole to perform an autopsy and then return to the hospital with a relationship and/or career point or level boost.
It's on my to-do list a series of simple 2 or 3 level careers for the everyday jobs and utilize the custom rabbithole doors to house the ones that have no obvious rabbithole (electricians, plumbers, builders, painters etc).
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Post by MissyHissy on Dec 7, 2019 14:11:30 GMT
Isn't it funny how turning off story progression suddenly makes the game more playable? It's like the programmers at EA took the right idea and then went nuts with it, townie's changing spouses (of both sexes, male or female sex is more of a concept in my game and for once, I'm not the one doing it!), popping kids like it's going out of fashion or having 0 births, townies moving out and leaving babies or toddlers behind. It's crazy! And that's all with no Story Progression mods, just the EA one. At some point, I really need to take a break from my offline life and go over the EA-files to see what I can play with to make SP a bit more consistent (and while I'm at it, to break out my old programming school books because I remember next to nothing). There are traits I never play with because, with my game at least, they're a bit useless or the various lifetime awards can easily override them so if I want to finetune a sim, I'll work with those more and keep traits as basic as possible. Lifetime wishes though are severely lacking if you want to avoid the career or supernatural sim related ones. For my game, if I ever do get around to working on them, I'd like either skill/personality related ones or a way to connect custom careers to the existing wishes (so a custom medical career can still get the "world renowned xxxx" wish where xxxx would be the renamed field). Opportunities cause the career to not even show up. I tried adding one to my Medical Examiner career (a simple 3 level career) and to be safe, I more or less copied an opportunity code from the medical career in the game (and when that failed, one from your Medic career). The career wouldn't even show up as a result. Once I took the enhanced career out and put the original one in, it showed up as normal. That was a couple weeks ago and I haven't had enough spare time to try again (or I'd have tried starting a thread begging for help). It was a simple "go to this/that rabbithole for x sim minutes" one. The idea behind it was that the ME would go to the military rabbithole to perform an autopsy and then return to the hospital with a relationship and/or career point or level boost. It's on my to-do list a series of simple 2 or 3 level careers for the everyday jobs and utilize the custom rabbithole doors to house the ones that have no obvious rabbithole (electricians, plumbers, builders, painters etc). I know, it's amazing. Since turning it off completely, I've enjoyed the game far more. Yeah, I'm sure there are some files. I know there are some small story progression-related mods at the Sim Asylum, maybe they could be a good starting point? Do you know, I hardly use the lifetime rewards? Most of them, for me, are too cheaty so I never use them but I'd love some new traits and lifetime wishes. Like you, I'd love some more skill/personality based ones. Well I'm happy to look over the opportunity for you, if you wanted?
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Post by T1gerCat on Dec 7, 2019 14:52:22 GMT
I have a bunch of those, yeah. I need some more free time to look into them after I play mod-free for a while to see what and where I want to focus on. Stable marriages, regular births/deaths, steady jobs would be the ideal. I don't mind divorces and 2nd marriages or single parents but it goes crazy on its own, lol.
They definitely are cheaty. I see them as extensions of the original traits. I mainly use them for when I want to create sims, plop them in place, give them jobs and leave them alone to live their lives. They're a good way for more specific and unique sims but yeah, for the main family, they are cheaty. My favorite gameplay is the one where I focus on my main sim/family but I dislike how the townies will stay stuck with 0 help from me or reach the other limit and go haywire.
On a side note, maybe it's just me but the premade townies in Sims3 don't really compliment each other. More realistic for sure, but I prefer the Sims2 premades where are were interconnected and gave a more realistic small town feeling. It's no wonder my most played game is a Pleasantviw-in-Sunset Valley setting.
I'll have to look up the opportunity (I had a computer crash in the meantime) but yeah, I'd love to send it over sometime. Knowing me I'll have missed something tiny with big consequences, lol.
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Post by MissyHissy on Dec 7, 2019 16:49:07 GMT
It does tend to get a bit crazy. I've played with the Nraas story progression for ages but there's so many options and they change partners like underwear, it becomes impossible to keep up. It's not just you, I've been thinking along similar lines. The closest you get to any sort of inter-connection in Sunset Valley is Susan and Boyd Wainwright being Blair's parents and Agnes Crumplebottom being Cornelia Goth's sister. Bridgeport's a lot better for that, I must admit. If it helps, I usually miss something small with big consequences. I still do
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