Dev Log: Career Overhaul Suite To-Do List

I hope you all have been enjoying the Career Overhaul so far. I wanted to fill you in on things I still want to add to it in the near-term. I can see this being something I continuously add more to over time. If you have any more ideas for additions, please leave them here for me to see.

1. Perform a Deeper Investigation on Gigs

The first release of the Career Overhaul Suite has dealt with a lot of pay rates in the game, but more work remains. I need to do a closer examination of how the game pays your Sim for the acting career, freelance jobs, and work-from-home tasks. I have already received reports that WFH gives you more money at lower job levels, more akin to what you would expect without the mod, so that will be one of my first priorities. I am not sure yet how I want to deal with actor and freelance pay, as I would always prefer active play to be rewarded over passive rabbitholes, but I have to take realism into account, too. Freelance jobs have no hard requirements unlike the other careers, so I would prefer to keep their weekly pay low, at least for a while.

2. Adjust Promotion Bonus values

I haven’t touched any of the lump sum bonuses that Sims receive when they are promoted, and that needs to be address quickly. For the most part, I’d like to match the expectation already set by the game and use the new day’s pay, but there are a few exceptions. For the Criminal career (especially the Boss branch), I have kept hourly pay quite low relative to the level and skill requirement, but I want to make the promotion bonuses disproportionately high. The idea is that they’re eking by but occasionally they pull off a big job and get a cut. Another exception I’d like is for jobs like professional athletes signing on for their first big team contract; I see that as deserving a very large bonus too.

3. Add Talent Scout requirements to certain careers

Possibly related to the bonuses mentioned above, I want to add “Impress a Talent Scout” to careers like Athlete and Entertainer prior to the really big pay jumps. This would be a mostly random event that would trigger occasionally while your Sim is at work. A dice roll decides whether or not your Sim passes the test, influenced by their skill levels, mood, and work tone (a new work tone for pandering to the talent scout would be added, too, at the expense of your work performance and your coworker relationships). The chance would never reach 100% but can definitely improve if you work at it. This is mostly meant to block supremely skilled Super Sims from steamrolling into the career. Not everyone gets famous in real life, sometimes very talented people never make it big. It’s something you’ll have to consider when choosing a career.

4. Add Reputation changes for certain careers

Some careers involve doing unsavory things, and your Sim should face some consequences for that. Criminals, Smugglers, and Villains would have to deal with reputation drops every time they went to work. The whims of the public are capricious, so Investors and Politicians would see large, random reputation shifts in all directions as their deals go through.

5. Add Big Game requirements for professional athletes

Looking at the code for the university soccer team, I do not think it would be hard to port the game mechanics over to the Athlete career. There would be a Big Game every Thursday and Sunday, and your career progression would depend on winning more often than not.

6. Add Hot Shot Client event requirements for certain Business levels

Right now the Investor career is a bit barren. Compared to the Management branch of business, the requirement of some Mischief seems lackluster compared to the friend requirement in the other branch, especially since Investor pays better. I want to add a scheduled, goaled event where your Sim has to wine and dine a hot shot client with a lot of money on the line in order to get their investment and progress in their career.

7. Adjustable Pay Rate Multiplier

In my opinion, I’ve made the lower levels of the careers barely survivable for a single Sim, but there are some who want things to be even harder, and there’s probably some who want a slightly easier experience, too. I’d like to add an option menu that allows you to choose a multiplier that uses my pay adjustments as the baseline. This would be a number you input yourself in order to make sure everyone can get the experience they want.