In my opinion it's Entertainment. All those random jobs that have no logical connection, and some of the most gosh-awful getups. I really think Sims 1 had better job clothing (most of the time).

I dislike Entertainment too. And there is already Showbiz and Music, so why do you need another "star" career, especially one which is so obscure?

Come to think of it, Music makes no sense. You zigzag around from rock to classical constantly. It made more sense in TS3 where it splits into tracks. I don't really mind which one in TS2 but I wish they had picked one or made it sound more neutral so you can put your own flavour on it with imagination. I have a sim who I styled as a classical singer but she looks strange when she goes to work as a Roadie!

Gamer career is stupid because the description is basically playing video games. Where is the carpool taking you? Why do you need to go somewhere? Are they supposed to be LITERALLY IN the game? Like they are a sim, but their day job is being an avatar in WOW? (Actually, new headcanon).

I used to think Oceanography was completely random, but it fits in very nicely to a seaside town. (I do still think it's a little bit redundant when Natural Scientist already exists).

I want to replace Intelligence too because I think being a spy is such a random job that is so obscure IRL, and there's already a police and politics and adventurer and military which could all fit that role if I wanted to do that.

I do plan to DR some of the weirder careers in my realistic hood. I have a Game Designer replacement for Gamer already.

I am okay with it.
After all, anyone who works backstage, manages a stage or make sure the bands on stage have drinks, is in the entertainment career.
And many rock stars have had classical musical training before going the alternative way.
The gaming sims are just going to the office where computers don't only have unlimited space, but never break down and internet is uninterrupted.
The only problem I have with careers is that there is simply not enough, so I add some custom careers to my hood.
A spy is not as random - a spy is just a person who gathers information - some do it by simply sitting in a government department office and reading all the news, and based on that info, may be sent to confirm something or others may go into the field - but it is certainly not as it seems to be in films.

You're right about a lot of those careers being silly or stupid-but if you look at the original base game careers, (because the ones you cited are from EP's added) they're all pretty dumb.
You become a doctor after being a EMT? No, you don't.
You become Mayor after being a Senator? Most politicians are going to go for Governor or higher office than that.

I could go on and on-but even the custom careers can be dumb because they assume so many facts that don't work.
I just wish there were more DR careers that were realistic.

But then you have to realize that it is only a game, not real life. The pixels have it easy compared to us-and they get paid for every single day they work! How great is that?

I hardly even pay attention to the different career levels because yeah, they make no sense in a lot of cases. I just put them in the career that I think suits them, or they have to go into, and then decide what that actually means in my head. Like, in my Strangetown, most of the jobs are military-related, so if you're in science, that means you work in the military's research lab, if you're in medicine that means you work in the military hospital, if you're in law enforcement you're an MP, and so on. If I ever decide to get a sheriff for Strangetown, then they'll be in law enforcement too, but in my head, they'll be sheriff. Or like Aldric works in the music career but is a professional piano player (while he's actually a camp music teacher or some nonsense), and Erin also works in the music career, but I see her as just a clerk in the record shop, or maybe she's the one who books the bands into the local club. The promotions and demotions are useful for me to see how well they're doing at work, or maybe to add a twist to the story if they get fired that I have to deal with, but I don't bother about what level they're at generally.

I tried out custom careers once, but it didn't work for me because I like to match careers with wants or at least use LTWs to guide me as to what they want to do. If I ever tried playing an integrated hood again, though, I'd think custom careers would be the way to go.

For me it's the Slacker career. It needs a number of skills to become a... "Professional Party Guest" in the end and get paid almost nothing for the hours the sims spend to skill up! There are no sims in my hoods who work in that career because I find the skilling up for it a waste of time, I prefer the Music career instead (yes! my hoods are full of Rock Gods and... Godesses, lol!).

But what I find even dumber are the levels of the Rock Star branch of the Music career in the sims 3! Level 9: Pop Icon, Level 10: Rock Star, in other words a sim who is at level 9 is... Justin Bieber who later on gets promoted to... Alice Cooper??? lol!!!

Of cource, the sims 4 found the solution and removed the whole "dumb" part by not having a Rock Star branch at all (typical!!! just like the problem with the open world, why fix it when we can totally remove it??? yes there is another mod to feel the... void, lol!)

What triggered my turnoff to the Entertainment career was this: I had a male Sim n it who had collar-length flyaway hair (EAxis basic). But as soon as he reached the level of Juggler, he had a buzz-cut (also EAxis basic), and the only way I could fix it was to move him out and move him in again (I put him into a different house, as it happens). Really, NOTHING else worked.

A bit of investigation showed that the buzz-cut went with the Juggler head & hat (so it's EAxis farting around again, surprise surprise). The Juggler body calls the Burglar outfit, so feh to that too.

If I could extract the career (I have NOT found instructions that worked, and no, you can't do it with Object Workshop, you have to go directly to the actual EP Objects folder), I would see about making some changes. (Note: the Custom Career tutorials DO NOT include links to any careers later than University!)

There’s this tutorial that might help. I was working on this myself before I decided to just use Epi’s Magician career

I feel like the only way a doctor's career works starting as an EMT is if there was the option for a mid-career return to University, which TS2 sadly doesn't accommodate.

And I agree on Politics too... The only way I can figure the Mayor position being a potentially better job than Senator is if you assume SimCity is a stand-in for someplace like New York City or London or a comparable "global" city on that level... Just Pleasantview isn't gonna cut it!

We don't have Senators here, which means it does not bother me. Mayors are relatively important, though, because we have district municipalities, and a mayor does not belong to one town or village. And there can be more than one mayor too, because in some provinces, different district municipalities provide different services. I am sure a local political career here will make little sense to you, but it will go from mayor to provincial leader to member of parliament to Speaker to President (Or leader of any of the opposition parties, or leader of the main opposition).
I can understand that careers may not make sense to you in the US - but, then, there are a lot of things in Sims that don't necessarily make sense to me - I have mentioned BigFoot elsewhere.
Bigger picture to me: it is a game. It does not have to make sense, as long as I have fun playing it.

EMT is something that might be done on the side to raise money for medical school (note that "medical school" is mentioned in the next two levels). Just don't assign the career to anyone who isn't a University graduate (and preferably in Medicine).



I tinkered with the Politics career (which fortunately was readily available for tinkering) to make it conform to the way the small city I live in actually works. See attached. (I'm not entirely sure about the 9th level Chance Cards, though.)

Emeraldzephyr: While I was at it, I went and grabbed Epi's default replacement careers - not just Magician, but Show Biz and Oceanographer as well. (That last should also remedy one of my niggling peeves, that Maxis misspelled it "Ocenography".)

Follow-up: Except, no, it didn't. Wherever Maxis is pulling it from, and apparently it's not the Career package itself, is still misspelled. Really, EAxis!

There is a custom uni career. So its a regular job but its levels are things like Freshman. I use that for any adult sim who wants to return and get a degree. I have one sim now who wants to be in oceanography, a pre made. So I was like okay, go back to uni and get your degree then.

To be honest, I don't care anymore. Most of the problems mentioned above used to irritate me (for some reason, music career and some final stages of other careers the most) but by now they don't feel important, maybe just silly. I push my Sims through their careers because that's what I always did, but my real interest is fueled by other aspects of the game, and if my Sims want to dump Senate in order to become mayors, well, good luck to them.

I have that option in game, it's called "Adult College Student" and it goes through all the levels of college so that when they finally get out, they can get that job that requires a degree.

It does take 8 years though...(2 semesters per year/level) and it's not as simple as it might seem. You have to actually gain skills to graduate just like in real Uni.

Here's the link:
https://modthesims.info/d/415772/ad...ent-career.html

Yep, that's what I am using. So far he is being promoted each day without skilling as he already has the skills. So he is on level 3 right now after 3 days.

Now THAT looks more realistic!

I honestly do not mind the weirdness in things like Medical - I don't typically allow my sims to get promoted day after day after day, they get promoted slowly over time, so I can imagine this kind of career progression.

And slacker always made sense to me that it was intended to be completely random. However, I do have the lower wages slacker career. The point of being a slacker is that... you're slacking lol.

Medicine being pre-uni I can forgive totally. It would have been nice if they had done something like Cyjon's Edukashun is Gud instead of requiring a degree for the 4x uni careers which are extremely random - or they should have made the uni careers actual graduate careers, like education and law. Natural science also makes sense to me for uni because it's more of a specialism. But no matter. I have had unicareershack in my game forever, and I edited it to my own preferences, so paranormal and art do not require a degree, whereas medicine, law and education do.

Because teens can obviously get jobs without going to uni, I tend to see the teen jobs as a kind of "apprenticeship", and in my game, teens who have a uni-requiring job DO NOT need the degree to progress into that career. However, they had better not get fired! Though, if they have worked in a job for many years as an adult, I might later cheat and give them an honorary degree.

I have no idea what the US political terms mean, so I always just took that one at face value. I thought about creating a UK politics DR but I never got around to it.

Entertainment being backstage is a great idea - maybe I'll make that something like "Media" and replace it that way. The issue to me with the Entertainment career is that they are not support staff - they are performers. And we already have 2x performers. I don't really want millions of custom careers in my game, because I like sims in the same "industry" to meet each other at work, so I prefer things which bundle one industry into one career, and I can use my imagination.

Actually that reminds me that sometimes with music I just make them skip levels depending on whether I see them as a rocker or a classicist.

Thanks for the heads up about the career replacements. I like things like that and it will save me some work.

On a semi-related issue, does it bother anyone else that Politics/Business and Athletic/Military require the same three skills to progress? I find myself wishing the 10 base game careers all had unique combinations. I struggle to swap out Charisma, Logic or Creativity for either Politics or Business but I think the case for Mechanical in Athletic is weak.

Also, why does Culinary need Logic? The lower levels on that career in fast food/hosting/waiting are begging for either Charisma or Cleaning.

The first four are just busy-work to get your Sim a good grounding in Politics generally. Things go wonky starting with level 5: City Council Member is a little high for a complete novice, since they're the Mayor's advisors as well as being movers and shakers on their own account.

6: State Assemblyperson is way too high, you're already way above mayoral level. The assumption here is a unicameral state (not city) legislature - some states (like the one I live in) have two chambers, represented by Assemblypersons or State Representatives (lower house) and State Senators (upper house).

7: Congressperson is national (not city, not state) level, a member of the House of Representatives.

8: Judge is a sharp comedown, you're back to city level.

9: Senator is national level again - there are only two of them per US state, and they are the "senior" branch of the national (not state) legislature.

Since I have a pretty good idea how my local city works, I rewrote the career so that it makes sense to me.

(Sims 3 went in the other direction and grossly inflated the job levels, putting "Mayor" down around level 7 and finishing up with "Leader of the Free World", forsooth - what chutzpah!)

Business and Politics require very similar talents, except that in the former case they are being applied for self-enrichment and in the latter (nominally) for public service (insert snide political comment here). But you got me on Athletics.



About level 4 you start needing organizational skills (who gets seated where? who ordered what dish? how to organize your kitchen staff so they work efficiently? etc., all of which fall under Logic). I don't know why Cleaning isn't required.

Athletes can fix their exercise equipment with mechanical skills. Or the television/radio, if they want to work out. And it may also come in handy when a bus breaks down on the way to a match.

As a political nerd, the more I think about it, the more the political career's progression bothers me. The top of the career being the Mayor actually makes a bit more sense than you all think- a lot of chance cards seem to refer to SimCity in a way that indicates that it's a country, so the Mayor would in fact be the top executive. But that raises even more questions about the titles below it- if SimCity is a City-State, why are City Council and Congress two separate bodies? Why is one city divided into multiple states? Plus, it's not even just American centric, it's blatantly California centric- in my home state, we refer to state assemblypeople as representatives, and we don't elect judges at all. So, here's my proposal for a revised version of the political career's progression, plus a version that conforms to the UK's political system.

1- Campaign Worker
2- Intern
3- Lobbyist
4- Campaign Manager
5- City Council Member (US)/Local Councillor (UK)
6- Mayor
7- State Legislator (US)/Backbencher (UK)
8- Congressperson (US)/Frontbencher (UK)
9- Senator (US)/Leader of the Opposition (UK)
10- President (US)/Prime Minister (UK)

I think these careers are supposed to be inherently absurd. You can literally be a space pirate as part of a career track. Why is being an adventurer considered a career in the first place? It's basically a way of life, not a 9-5 clock-in, clock-out job.

For me the Criminal career is pretty dumb that I avoid it. The lower levels only make sense, later on everything is so watered down, basically what kids think that criminals do. Where are dealers, mafia bosses, godfathers? I wish they included 'enemies' that at least kicked your trashcan and tormented your household. For higher levels would be realistic to install a security system to your home.

I agree with everything the others said so it's not necessary to mention it again.

For Music and other 'famous' jobs I wish they included people harassing your home and the need for a gate and a security system like in the Criminal career. It would've been nice if more sims wanted to greet my sim and asked for an autograph. A grouchy Sim would've declined and a nicer would've accepted, or it can depend on the mood. Nothing drastic.

Many level 10 salaries are underpaid. if a sim works for 2500 for 25 days, they make a little more than 62000, which is a medium home with cheaper furniture. Imagine a CEO or any most successful person in their field only affording that in their entire adult life?

Overall, all of these jobs seem the same with different text.