Is it normal that raising programming skill takes so incredibly long compared to other skills?

In my current save in Cahaya I am playing rotationally with different Zois who are self employed and make money each with a different skill. One of them is supposed to be a programmer. I had the feeling already in previous saves but now that one Zoi is completely focused on programming I find it really strange how long it takes to raise this skill.

I checked the in game time and he needs about 4 hours to develop a plugin or a game mod and he had to do that 7 times to move from level 1 to level 2 = 28 in game hours pure programming time. Not sure for the moment if the next levels will also need 28 hours or even more but this seems extremely slow to me .

Compared to other skills like playing instruments, performing, painting, fitness or even crafting, fishing etc. programming is way slower to progress to the next level. The only skill which I have noticed has also very slow progression is cooking but this is also due to the fact that you don“t cook 28 hours long in a couple of days.

So if your Zoi really wants to reach level 10 programming it seems that he then spends all his life at the computer. While for other skills it is much more balanced: you can reach a higher skill and then earn money with this skill and still have some kind of a social life.

What is your experience? Or is there another way to speed the skill progression for programming except programming itself, video games and books?

I don’t know if it’s normal or intended but programming is hard and maybe because inzoi aims to be realistic, the skill takes longer to achieve. Though if that’s the case, every skill would need a unique learning-time instead of the same one (which I’d love cuz it’s realistic lol)

That would be actually fine and a nice idea. But then the payout at the end should be bigger as well. If you compare that you can sell your best app after reaching a high level for a maximum of 1000 but and you need 4 hours to produce one vs. a painter who needs only 50 minutes for a painting at level 10 and can get up to 6000 for one painting or a gardener at level 10 is able to get 300-400 for a bonsai which only takes 30 minutes to make.

Cooking, Music, Critical thinking… they take INSANE long now.
At first it was just cooking in the Cahaya update (0.3.0).
But now it’s almost all skills.

It’s so bad, that in my cahaya save, My stay-at-home zoi who cooked all her life, sometimes 3 meals per day (she mostly did the breakfast, but did cook 2-3 meals per day regularly) only had reached level 8 before she died of old age at 91.

Yea that would make sense

Though I think 6000 for a painting and all would be a bit much, in sims it’s so easy to get rich this way which breaks immersion

That’s a different topic in itself, but the better paintings should not sell for more than 1000 mew base price.
I agree a master painter makes it far too easy, IMHO.

@Samuriko yes, this is crazy. Had the same with the cooking for one Zoi, also cooked every day several times and was not able to reach level 10. But still some other skills have remained normal like painting, fitness, performing, rhetorics etc. That`s why I am not sure if this is the way it should be?

@Scarlett I had even 6500 (selling on pocket market - base price was around 4500) several times for a perfect painting with my painter Zoi at level 10. So it is the same with Inzoi and it is the best money making skill so far, same as in the Sims. But I agree that this again is too easy given that it only takes 50 minutes.

Yes, cooking and instrument skills are incredible hard to reach. Specially instrument… you need years to reach level 1-2, cooking bit faster but still long D:

You can speed them up a bit by being having the right emotional state, but not all skills seem to have an associated emotion. I guess for Programming it would be Focus, but I’m not sure about that. Either way, skill gain does seem slower in the more recent updates - I have one Zoi who’s level 4 in the musical instrument skill and getting it any higher is taking forever.

I think personality traits also affect skill gain to some extent (the Genius trait makes it faster in general, while Lively helps with performance-related skills). There are also some donuts in the Meow store that can help. Even so, I have no idea how they want us to complete the ā€˜get to Level 5 in 4 days’ want, unless you remove the timer.

Thanks for confirming, so it is not only in my game!

@Liessahl I also thought it would be focused or concentrated for programming but when you hover over the emotional state it at least does not state it. It states that fitness would go faster and we know that gem finding is easier. But focused would also seem the most meaningful for programming to me, though not sure it really does something for programming.

Also the urge to reach level 5 is really absurd given the progression speed. And as long as there is no different levels of meow coins for such complex urges there is really no point to go after this urge for only 5 coins. You can probably drink 1000 protein shakes in the time it would take to reach level 5 and gain a ton of meow coins with such urges instead.

This really seems unbalanced to me, especially given that they now say that the primary intended day length to play is 48 minutes which makes it even less likely to reach level 10 before your Zoi dies. I generally really appreciate that it is not so easy to reach level 10 fast. Compared to Sims 4 where you can get to level 10 in only a few days when focusing on that skill is ridiculous and makes the game boring but on the other hand you would really expect that a Zoi dedicating his life to a certain skill would be able to reach level 10 before dying off of old age.

I’m wondering if there might be a bug with skill gain? Even before the Oct update I was having trouble with the Instrument skill.

I have posted a bug, just in case somebody might hopefully look into this. It really seems very unbalanced to me gived how long it takes for some other skills to develop…

I halted ageing for all zois, and built-up various slow to build-up skills. Then restarted the ageing to continue with the game.

I think in a way the game is realistic. If you really stick to the traits and likes all through, as in real life, a zoi could get 3 or 4 skills maxed in their lifetime, but not all.

But they still need to fix the needs and day duration. It always comes to that.

Swimming also takes an extremely long time to raise compared to the other skills. It’s particularly noticable at level 0, which normally progresses to level 1 very quickly.

I agree, programming definitely takes long to master, let alone advance.

My zoi Minji was only able to get a bit further in it due to her being enrolled for Computer Science at Youngseung Uni and having the daily assignments and homework but that takes forever.

@coya_nade is this really still the case for you? Or do you refer to the completion time of an app etc. which really takes ages, especially at early levels and if your Zoi does not have the genius trait?

I started this thread back in November and back then programming, cooking, instruments and a couple of other skills were really raising incredibly slow. But since the December update this has been changed and in my opinion it is now not too slow anymore.

It takes a non-genius Zoi approximately 3h in-game to level up to the next level and this is quite consistent starting from Level 1 up to Level 10. For a Zoi with the Genius trait it takes even less, only around 2:15h in game time. Thus you can actually quite easily level programming up to level 10 within less than a week if you take around +/- 5 hours a day to do programming.

Total time to level from 0 to 10 for non-genius is around 27 hours, for genius only around 20 hours.

I did quite some testing on this for my programming guide and checked now again after your post to see if there are changes made after the March update, but the leveling times seems to be the same. Tested with 2 Zois (1 with genius / one without up until level 4) and the times still match with a variance of 5-7 in game minutes.

Yes, I’m aware there was an update to address this and the date it was posted; my comment was saying it’s still the slowest skill to gain in my game and the only thing that helps some is having her study for Computer Science since it takes less time (being that I can skip thru the school day straight to going home). I don’t stick to the same saves when major updates drop, but the skill gain hasn’t changed much when she’s working on her programming skill from her computer vs it progressing automatically on school days.

I’m also aware that what may change something in one update isn’t as effective in others. There are some people who still have the ā€œsmall talkā€ interruptions in convos while a recent update fixed that for me but I still have the NPCs jumping into conversations despite a recent update giving us settings to toggle that on and off.

But I probably should tweak the days to 96m vs the default 48 bc she never really has much time to brush up on her skills outside of class. I also want to wait for the upcoming update (if the freelancing feature is included) to have her work on her programming that way to earn more money from it :relieved_face:

Thanks for explaining @coya_nade

I know that certain things which are announced to be fixed in an update are not always fixed for everybody. But somehow I was thinking more for certain bugs and less for the skill gain duration.

Might be though that this is due to the day length. Have not tried with 46m day. If leveling programming should take twice the time in 46m day, that would explain it. Because then you would be at 6 hours per level gain and that would be really long… Nevertheless logically it should be the other way around - that it takes less time in 46m day, but we already had such discrepancies in the past with the day lenghts.