Details:
For some skills the progression is extremely slow. It is completely Ok that it takes a while to get to a high skill level with all the benefits which it brings but for some skills it feels extreme. E.g. for painting, gardening, fitness, performing you will need time but will be able to reach level 10 of the skill if your Zoi is focused on this.
But for skills like cooking or programming or instruments it is nearly impossible to achieve this within the lifetime of a Zoi, even less if you play with the currently intended 48 minutes day. This feels really wrong. The Zoi needs e.g. 4 hours to make a game mod using his programming skil and to move from level 1 to level 2 of the programming skill he needs to do this 7 times = 28 hours of pure programming time….. And then he is only level 2 and will not earn much for his apps. And to achieve only level 2 takes him about 5 days if he still wants to have some kind of a social life between all the programming. Same goes for cooking - a Zoi who is cooking 2-3 times a day will mostly die of old age only reaching level 5-7 in cooking, this seems massively unbalanced.
I don´t know if this is really intended or a bug, but if this is intended then I really do not understand why. Why should you have level 10 for a skill if a Zoi is unable to reach it even if he has dedicated his life to this skill. And at the same time it is not the case for all skills but only foe some of them. Would really apprecialte to understand the logic behind this if this should not be a bug but intended?
PS: dear community please add for the skills I might have not yet spotted or mentioned!
Have you tried reading books? Reading skill books guarantees fast skill progression. My adolescent Zoi mastered Performance and Instruments that way, in combination with practicing her instruments and singing.
I accidentally discovered this after noticing her skill progression was “stuck” at a level for way too long, but suddenly jumped a LOT after I had her read. Now she studies every day.
Details: Since the game was updated to the latest version, I’ve been experiencing a problem with learning the music instrument skill only for teenagers. I’m creating a game from scratch, without any mods, and when I play as a teenager, I can’t level up the music instrument skill. I can only level up to the first level, and then the leveling process stops. This issue only affects the teenage age group.
I opened one of my saves and was able to reproduce it right away. Neither my teenager, nor my young adult was able to level up to lvl2. It’s very likely become bugged after any of the November hotfixes. Thank you for reporting it!
Hi @Kooper ,
As HeinziDerHeld mentioned, I’ve merged your topic into an existing discussion that covers the same issue.
Feel free to follow here for updates and continue the discussion here.
I actually now managed to get one musician Zoi to level 2 instrument but it is similar as I described for the programming skill. She was focused on this skill for a week and it took her 4-5 days to get it to level 2. In these days she was mainly playing instruments, practicing songwriting or reading books about that. Except for the scheduled social events where she still participated and the care for her needs she used most of the remaining time to practice instruments. I did not count exactly but assume it will be similar to programming around 25-30 in game hours to bring it up from level 1 to level 2.
It really does not feel right from a gameplay perspective. And again I really do not want a change where it is super easy to get to level 10 (like in Sims 4 which ruins the challenge completely).
But thinking from a realistic gameplay loop: if somebody is really into this skill and heavily focused on practicing he should be able to reach level 10 maybe around second half of his young adult life stage or similar. But if I count together the time needed for skill progression from level 1 to level 2 and sum it up to level 10 = around 270 pure in game practicing time to reach level 10. Then assume your Zoi is awake 16 hours a day and will minimum need 4 hours a day for taking care of his needs, so he could spend maximum of 12 hours a day for this skill = 22,5 days to reach level 10. And this would be an extreme dedication and very boring gameplay: forget about all the social events in your schedule, do not marry or get kids, do not get a job etc. Thus I think it is more realistic to assume a dedicated Zoi would spend something between 6-8 hours a day for the skill = this would lead to 34 - 45 days to reach level 10. And if we look at the current lifespans with 45 days he would already be 5 days away from senior life stage thus probably dying of old age in a couple of days.
PS: For instruments this drastically changes if you have a Zoi who was born in game and reached the top of the toddler and child skills. In that case you start at adolescent with level 5 instruments skill. Then you could manage to reach level 10 in the first half of being young adult if you focus on this. But I doubt this is the idea of the devs as there is no benefit to other slowly progressing skills like cooking or programming from maxing out the child skills. But still you would have more time given the adolescent and teen stage gives you in total 20 additional days, even though through school etc. you might only be able to practice 2-3 hours a day.
Hi all @here,
We’re truly sorry for the inconvenience this skill-related issues has caused during your gameplay.
We’re aware and currently looking into it.
Will share any updates in this thread as soon as we have them!
