I am very much looking foreword to this EP, and while I can't wait for the option to have more careers added, I'm not sure how I feel about following my sims to work. I have gotten tired of the careers that are currently available, and am excited that most of the new ones are very different from the ones we currently have! I'm just wondering if it will affect game play negatively or at all if I choose to play my stay-at-home parent instead of following the other to work, etc.

I'm hoping that the new career game play will work similarly to WA in that you can still go on vacation for fun, and not necessarily fulfill adventures. I like having the option to ignore my working sims and focus on another one during those hours their at work. I guess we won't know until it's released, just wondering if anyone has any speculation on the topic!

Sorry if there's already been a thread on this, I haven't really lurked in a while and I'm too lazy to dig through past threads!

Well, I just pasted this in another thread and I hate to repeat myself... but this is what a SimGuru said about that issue early on:

"Several of the active jobs have been designed to allow your Sim to still progress while you’re busy with a different Sim elsewhere. For example, a Private Investigator can do low level police work or stakeouts while he isn’t working on an active case. The Firefighter is not always fighting fires so there are times where you can let him hang out and socialize at the Fire Station or work out when you aren’t controlling him. Both the Stylist and Architectural Design jobs will take you into a mode that will pause the game, but if you don’t want to do that you can still have your Sim research their field on the drafting table. Every career has responsibilities and its own active jobs. Each active job will require your full attention, but there are still options that allow your Sim to progress and level up while not controlling them. The most efficient progression will be with you controlling them but the balance is up to you. Similar to how World Adventures worked, it will be a challenge to control more than one Sim with multiple active jobs but we’ve offered many other avenues to help make it easier, and it can be done."

http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/178785.page

So it seems you may not be able to progress quickly if you completely ignore your working Sims in the new jobs, but you won't have to be controlling them every second, either.

Hmmmm, that sounds a little complicated, but so did WA until I started playing it. It sounds like it might be a little more challenging to advance two sims in both their careers simultaneously.

I guess once we start playing it will make more sense, I'm just looking foreword to getting to explore all of the new possibilities!

Thanks for the info

The more I think about it the more I begin to suspect that you wont have set hours to work in the new jobs and will be able to basically set your own shifts (though I'd imagine that you'd also be contacted with tasks you can choose to complete at any time as long as you are registered for that job). I'm imagining it might work in a similar way to the adventure board, where you can basically go and check for available tasks (possibly on your computer, by phone or at a certain location). Still, I'm not sure that would make perfect sense for Firefighters, Doctors, Stylists and Tattoo Artists, who are more likely to work set shifts at a particular location (a "freelance" Firefighter might just be a little too odd "no I don't feel like helping save you from that fire just now but thanks for the offer!", I'd kind of enjoy that though ).

I found it interesting that they mentioned being able to register a particular skill as being your job by going to City Hall, I wonder if that'll just mean that you get more opportunities related to that skill because you've given it priority or if it means you'll actually get extra opportunities only available if you have that skill registered (or perhaps both). I mention this because it's what made me think about the way they could have you work your own custom shifts rather than having all the active jobs have set hours.

Anyway, we'll just have to wait and see how it works and what the exact options actually are. It's a short time but it always feels too long when it's something you're interested in .

I want to know more about consignment shops myself.

I think the self-employed/skill career.. well hmm phrasing it like that I no longer know what I wanted to say. lol Well ok that's not true. I was thinking it could be something as simple (and lame) as getting more money from your sales (paintings, books etc) but I did read that it was an actual career so it'll be interesting to see how that is set up.

I really don't think the other jobs will consist entirely of flex hours but they could. Even fire fighters. Remember that the medical and law enforcement careers have pagers where they can call you into work for emergencies at any time when you're 'on call'

So you have to know that fire fighters HAVE to go to work in the same manner. They're always 'on call' but their 'down time' could easily be treated as flex time. Where other careers I'm certain will be opportunity based. From the 'official' response there appears to be minor tasks to improve your job performance where you can leave your sim alone but otherwise you would look for opportunities.

I imagine that every job is probably different though. The detective is probably entirely flex time where say.. the stylist and tattoo artist would likely have more standard work hours.

Hmm, you guys bring up interesting points. I really haven't looked too much into this EP, just haven't had much time recently, and I didn't know about there being all of these changes to game play.

I don't know how I feel about flex time at work... like I said above I will just have to wait and play to see how I will choose to use all these new features. I am happy that we can follow our sims to work, but I also want to be able to ignore them and let them do their thing and still get promoted.

I think I need to do some more research!!

What you have to keep in mind though is that we're just speculating. We don't really know any more than anyone else. I'm just suggesting ideas that seem like reasonable design options.

I dont think i would mind if they were flexible hours.

Then I might not have to worry about missing work so much

But im glad that a guru posted that

It makes me happy to know that after im bored with a job I wont be forced to start over

Definately looking forward to playing it though.

What I want to know is Are the other careers like, criminal or politics going to be able to be controled. It would make scence because if your in politics you could raise or lower the cost of bills. Criminal, break into peoples houses and actually go to a jail for more then just one night. ya know. Police could actually arrest people.

23tylbri wrote:What I want to know is Are the other careers like, criminal or politics going to be able to be controled. It would make scence because if your in politics you could raise or lower the cost of bills. Criminal, break into peoples houses and actually go to a jail for more then just one night. ya know. Police could actually arrest people.

This has been asked quite a lot and technically it hasn't been confirmed one way or the other. Still, if you look at the information that has been released so far it seems highly unlikely that they'll be making the other careers into "active" careers like the new ones. They might add new "active" careers at a later time and these might be related to the existing careers (in the same way as Doctor is related to the Medical career) but would likely still be seperate to the existing ones and there's no guarantee that they'll add any more at all.

In one of the interview I read recently it said that Sims can choose being Self-employed.

Being self-employed is the same as a "skill career". I suspect that ALL that is involved is that you will be listed as employed in your jobs panel, and you won't get "get a job" wants. But maybe they've actually worked up some opportunities for those skills... though it's hard to see how they'd be any different from the related skill opportunities.

I'd be happy to see some new LTWs from those careers too... we do already have several skill-related LTWs, but something like "make X simoleans from your paintings" would be welcome.

It sounds like it may be a challenge to balance more than one sim in one of the new careers, but its good that while they are work, they can manage it all by themselves, without us interfering all the time. Sometimes I like how Sims 3 has made the sims a bit more smarter and resourceful than Sims 2 was.

Srikandi715 wrote:Being self-employed is the same as a "skill career". I suspect that ALL that is involved is that you will be listed as employed in your jobs panel, and you won't get "get a job" wants. But maybe they've actually worked up some opportunities for those skills... though it's hard to see how they'd be any different from the related skill opportunities.

I was thinking that it might just basically allow you to select a skill and you'd get opportunities for that skill more often (mostly existing ones I'd imagine but maybe some new ones, WA added some as well after all). The current system is extremely random so if you want to focus on a particular skill and get opportunities for that then setting it as your career would be a good way to do that (if it works anything like I suspect). I think I might enjoy trying Nectar Making as a career (or Martial Arts, break those space rocks!) .

Srikandi715 wrote:I'd be happy to see some new LTWs from those careers too... we do already have several skill-related LTWs, but something like "make X simoleans from your paintings" would be welcome.

That's a good idea, I like pursuing the big objectives. I'd quite like to see one or two new slots for longer term wishes that aren't quite lifetime wishes, things like the ever increasing "earn X in tips" and "make X nectar bottles". I tend to end up with about four going on for a single sim and don't want to cancel them (they don't always come back) but keep missing out on smaller wishes that can be done more regularly .