Get to Work Needs Some Updates [ Edited ]

[SqueamishNerd]

I think it's time for The Sims 4 Get to Work (GTW) to get some updates. It was the first expansion pack, so it's already 4,5 years old. So, I've got some suggestions on what could be done!

This wouldn't only be nice for the players but also for EA. Why? Because there are still a lot of TS4 owners who don't own GTW, and they would then be more prone to buy it with these updates! EA would definitely profit from an update like this! And the players would simply love it! Of course this would need to be a free update for those who already own GTW, but I really think that EA would profit from it because of all the new GTW owners they would get. Also, those who already have GTW will be more prone to buy other packs because they’ll like EA more if they got an update like this. It's a win-win situation.

Police, Burglars, and Doctors

In GTW we have police and burglars/villains, but these live in their own little world. You can't have burglars breaking into your sim's home, so the police can't come to your sim's home to solve the cases. It would've been more interesting if you actually could have burglars breaking in, so that you had to call the police. Maybe they could break in when the sim isn't at home or is asleep, and if the sim is asleep when it happens they won't react to it until the morning (or whenever they wake up), so that they have to call the police when the burglar isn't there any more. When the police arrives it'll be one of the sims that actually have the job, and the burglars are the ones who work in either the criminal career or as a villain in the secret agent career. Would've been fun to have Nancy Landgraab breaking into your home, wouldn't it?

Also, if you have Cats & Dogs installed you could be able to go to the police if your pet runs away, and the police can search for the pet.

Another thing is the doctors, it would've been interesting if they actually could visit you when you're very sick (even though it is very practical to just buy medicine on the computer or phone).

Townie Jobs

I find it a bit boring that I can't choose which sims I want to work as mail-deliverers, maids, food-stall vendors etc. It would've been nice if those jobs were available for played sims too. And if you play rotationally you could meet them out in town when they're for example delivering mail.

And if they introduce this they could also upload Kaylynn Langerak (https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Kaylynn_Langerak) to the gallery!

Maybe these kinds of jobs aren't like careers, so that you can't be promoted.

It would also be nice to make it possible for us to choose the sims' jobs from Manage Households.

As a side note, it doesn't make sense that the vendors in the Magic Realm are the normal vendors but in ghost form. There should be proper ghosts working as the Magic Realm vendors.

Fire-fighters

What if you could get a fire-fighter coming to put out the fire, wouldn't that be nice? Sometimes the fires get very big, and then it would make sense that you could call the fire-fighter. When I played just yesterday my sim started a fire, but the sim couldn't reach the fire because something was in the way, and I couldn't go into buy mode because there was a fire, so I had to wait for the fire to become bigger so that my sim could reach it. In such a situation it would've been nice to have a fire-fighter to help, and it could be implemented so that the fire-fighters always can reach the fire, for example by being able to stand farther away from the fire when putting it out.

If we don't get to have townie jobs this doesn't have to be a job your played sims can have.

Worlds

It's sad that you can't visit the Police Station, the Hospital, and the Science Lab, if you're not in any of those careers. I think it would've been great if you actually could visit these places. For example, as I wrote above, you could go to the police if your pet ran away.

When it comes to the Science Lab there can be visitors (though most/all of them are aliens), when your sim works there, but you can't actually visit the lab yourself. That doesn't make sense to me.

I think the Police Station and the Hospital could be in Magnolia Promenade, and for the Science Lab there could be a new world. What if they introduced Strangetown to TS4 GTW! That would've been a great place for the Science Lab.

When StrangerVille was released Maxis put a lot of (or even all?) of the TS2 Strangetown sims on the gallery. It's just that StrangerVille is pretty small, and four of the lots already have inhabitants, so you have to evict them to have room for all the TS2 Strangetown sims from the gallery, if you want them to live in StrangerVille. Since they were uploaded to the gallery just in time for the StrangerVille release it feels like they're supposed to live in StrangerVille.

Personally it doesn't bother me at all if we had two worlds called almost the same, and also to have three desert worlds. Oasis Springs feels like an African or Asian desert, while StrangerVille feels more like a North American desert, so they aren't even the same types of deserts. Strangetown could be the type of desert as it was in TS2, if I remember correctly it was like an American dessert but less red than StrangerVille.

Live on Sixam

I've written a post about this before, but I really want it to be a thing. I think Sixam is boring. It's really beautiful, but it's boring. The only thing you can do there is to get collectibles. Well, if you're in the science career you can sometimes be invited to an event on Sixam, but that is very rare and it's like any other bar night but without toilets.

Also, you can make aliens in CAS, so it's very odd that you can't have even the aliens living on Sixam.

Here's a link to the Sixam-post I made a little while ago: https://answers.ea.com/t5/General-Discussion-and-Feedback/It-Should-be-Possible-to-Live-on-Sixam/m-p...

Summary

- Police and burglars should exist outside of the police career

- Townie jobs should be available for played sims

- Fire-fighters could help to put out big fires

- Police Station and Hospital in Magnolia Promenade

- Introduce Strangetown and put the Science Lab in that world

- Making it possible to live on Sixam

Come on EA, I promise that this is a win-win situation!

[RaichiSims]

I have fond memories of burglars breaking into my sims homes in uhhh was it sims 3 or sims 2? Either way it was fun, the alarms went off, police came to the home-lot to try and catch the burglar. 

I don't know why they didn't add this in sims 4. Also, the get-to-work pack of sims 3 was waaaay more fun than the one in sims 4. It had ghost-busters and other cool jobs that were fun to play!

With sims 4 I played the detective career track once and the scientist career track once, after that I don't feel the need to do it anymore. "ben there done that", not replayable content in my book. And retailing, ugh what a chore, not for me. Also the reason I don't buy the dine-out game pack, it will probably bore me after one time playing or I will dislike the gameplay like I did with the retailer job, and 20 bucks is not something I am ready to waste on a glorified stuff-pack. 

Basically jungle adventure is a glorified stuff-pack to me, beautiful flora and tile/wall textures, but the gameplay I did not enjoy. Took two 3 day trips to selvadora, did what there was to do, and never went back again, because again, it's okay-ish to play for me the first time around because it's new and I'm exploring the new content, but it's not super fun or something I will repeatedly do. So yeah, never visit selvadora anymore because been there done that, it's boring, aka, glorified stuff-pack. Again a pack that doesn't even come close to the quality of it's predecessor "vacation days" on sims 3. 

[SheriGR]

@SqueamishNerd You have some great ideas! I commented on your other post about living on Sixam (all for it), so I won't go into that one.

I think that incorporating your police, burglars, and doctors into the game is a great idea! Using the sims you have played & employed in those fields for the game-generated reactions (if they are not from the active household) would be fun. For instance, if one of your played sims is a detective and a burglary happens on a different active sim's lot, it would be fun if one of the detectives that shows up at the house was (or could be) that sim from your other played household. Same thing with doctors and other careers. 

I think being able to add a home security system to avoid the burglars (or maybe all but the very most skilled ones) if you have enough money to purchase the system, plus insurance to help cover the cost of the burned or stolen item like in Sims 2, would be cool. I would love to have your butler be able to beat the tar out of a vampire and guard your home while you're sleeping. I also think it would be fun if you could call the police and report a vampire or other intruder that will not leave your home when you ask them, and the police would arrest them at your request for trespassing. Same thing with a clepto-shoplifter in your store.

I also would love to see the ability to vacation in Sulani if you own Island Living, or build in vacation worlds without cheating. It would be nice to have the option to live in Granite Falls or Selvadorada if you own those packs. 

Anyway, just wanted to give your ideas a big thumbs up! Thanks for sharing! :eahigh_file:

[SqueamishNerd]

@SheriGRIt would be great to live in Granite Falls and Selvadorada. It feels a bit odd that those places are only for vacation while Sulani is only for living there. I think it would’ve been nice if we could live or go on vacation in any world. It would be nice if all empty houses anywhere could be rented for a vacation, and that the houses in Granite Falls and Selvadorada could be bought.

There’s even a Maxis-made sim on the gallery, Kurt Lumberjackson, who’s said to have lived in Granite Falls.

[secretlondon123]

@SqueamishNerd That would cost EA an absolute fortune in developer time- none of those are easy fixes. I suspect most people who haven't bought GTW are more likely to buy if it's on sale. They'll never cover the costs.

[burin077]

Interesting ideas, however as others have mentioned, it would be a time-consuming process for packs that have already been out for a while, and have served their purpose.

If anything I would see it more likely just being another release down the road as something else in incorporate new careers or gameplay; that or you'd have to find mods that would include the various gameplay features you are looking for. (Unfortunately, mods usually need to be updated to keep up with ever-updating patches, so the updates on mods are completely the responsibility of the player.)

While I would love to see things like Burglars, Firefighters, and more elements that give the Sim Life a bit more spice and flavor; I think we've already crossed the proverbial Rubicon to incorporate those without it just being a suggested feature for a mod.

- B

[SqueamishNerd]

@secretlondon123 They’re patching out items and functions for free all the time, this could be patched out little by little. Only this year we’ve been given over 30 CAS items (not counting the swatches) and over 20 build items (not counting swatches and not counting the counters that were fixed for Island Living) and the freelancer career, among other things, for free. And some years ago they patched out a world, Newcrest, for free.

They could have a year focusing on updating GTW, marketing it a as a year of giving new free content for GTW, so that those who don’t own it want to buy it, and those who own it will be super excited and tell people about it. At least I would be super excited and tell my TS4-playing friends about it, and none of them own GTW.

[Psychotps]

@SqueamishNerd LOL. You're not asking them to add a few new cas or build items. You're asking them to completely restructure half the game! Re-design a number of existing worlds and add all new ones.

Adding "Townie jobs should be available for played sims" alone will require adding hundreds of new jobs, likely thousands of animations, game logic, etc.

And re-designing the existing worlds? What are the millions of players supposed to do with their existing worlds? We have enough bugs as it is without subjecting "saved game world conversions" into the mix.

Granted, these are GREAT ideas, but better left for The Sims 5.

[SqueamishNerd]

@PsychotpsOkay, let's break it down.

Police, Burglars, and Doctors

We already have these jobs, well, if burglars were the sims in the criminal career or being villains in the secret agent career, so these jobs don't have to be made. The difference is that the villains/agents should be like vampires, that they can break into your sims' homes, and instead of biting you they will have the kleptomaniac animations, which is the same animation as when a sim picks up anything and put it in their inventory, and maybe some additional animations of them sneaking around.

The only difference with police would be that the police who are tagged as police can come to your home and solve the crime. It doesn't have to be the same animations as in the played police career, but some of them, it should be made waaay simpler to have a police come to you compared to when playing the police career, like fewer interactions and so on.

When it comes to doctors being able to visit they already have the animations and such, the difference would be that they can come to your house. Also here, the doctors who come should be those who are already tagged as doctors.

Townie Jobs

Townie jobs shouldn't be active careers. Think of it, it would be pretty boring. Everything already exist when it comes to animations and such. The only things that have to be changed is that the townies who are tagged as maids, mail deliverers, food stall vendors etc will still keep their job if they become played sims. When they are in the played household that would mean that the jobs would be rabbit-hole jobs, but when they're not in the played households it would be EXACTLY as it is today, that you meet them when they're working.

Fire-Figthers

This should just a new townie job. It will have animations that sims already have, such as putting out fire and running (but jogging to the fire instead of running away in fear). They don't have to come in a car, because maids etc don't come in cars.

Worlds

We already have Magnolia Promenade, and we already have the police and hospital neighbourhood. The difference would be the picture of the map of Magnolia Promenade, and that the map will have two new links to the already existing police station and hospital. The current Magnolia Promenade and the police and hospital neighbourhood would still be different neighbourhoods, so when you're in one of them the other one will not be seen, just as with all the other neighbourhoods in TS4.

Here are some examples (the red rings) of where the links to this neighbourhood could be placed (and that part of the map would have to be repainted). I don't remember exactly how far you can go in the Magnolia Promenade neighbourhood, but it has a edge, so there's surely some reasonable place to put the police and hospital neighbourhood on the map without changing anything of the two existing neighbourhoods' looks of the edges.

About Strangetown it would be like creating any other world, and, as I said, they gave us Newcrest for free. They don't have to put the actual houses there, if they don't have time, making it an empty world, but if they have time they could put the houses there or in the gallery. TS2 Strangetown has 11 lots (one of them is empty) which is quite a lot, but Newcrest has 15 lots, so it's not totally unreasonable. But TS2 Strangetown is quite wide, so they would have to make it more compact, so that the neighbourhoods don't have to be so big, I don't mean big as in the amount of lots, I mean the actual size of where your sim can walk and where the edges are.

Live on Sixam

Sixam already exists. They just have to make the existing lot like any other lot, i.e. possible to choose if you want it to be a residential lot, a bar, or whatever you want, and they have to paint a map. It doesn't have to have more than this one lot, it's just that the lot today is extremely boring, and Sixam is boring, and if the lot could be inhabitable, even though it's only one single lot, it would be much more fun.

[RonneeSimmer]

@Psychotps   

To be honest, though the graphics are absolutely amazing, I have been so disappointed with Sims 4 that I doubt I'll waste money on a Sins 5. I've barely bought much of Sims 4 expansion or stuff packs. I find myself scrutinizing each new releases . Looking carefully at all the new content and reading the forums to see how others are liking it before I purchase or, much more often, choosing not to purchase.

I remember being so excited about new releases and new content with Sims 2 and 3. I would pre-order my games and wait with such exhilaration for it to arrive in the mail or rush to Game Stop so I'd be there when they opened their doors. I haven't felt any of that since the initial releases of the Sims 4 base game.