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.
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 ‘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 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.