My Thoughts on Handiness

"CorkysPetals;c-16925854" wrote:
Here's the thing... when the game was released in 2014 there was cooking and handiness. The cooking skill had a short list of food items, but handiness covered all those real life skills you mentioned.

Later... the gourmet cooking skill and baking skill were added in patches or expansions (and dancing and photography). I could be wrong, but I think it's a lot easier to add NEW skills than it is to change the original base game skills.

So the real question is: why in 2014 did they only have handiness but they made separate skills for guitar, piano and violin?

Gourmet cooking was in from the beginning (you can start learning it at level 5 regular Cooking skill); Baking was added with GTW. Photography was also added in GTW though patched in for base game with C&D, and dancing is part of GT along with the DJ booths.

The reason for separate skills for the instruments is because they all are different abilities. I play piano (not well, but I can plunk out a few pieces) but I've never learned violin -- I wouldn't expect to be able to pick up a violin and play Vivaldi just because I knew how to play piano.

I find handiness skill already hard to gain -- you have to either fix items, spend time (and money for parts) upgrading objects, work on a workbench, or read books. And unlike skills like cooking, painting or writing, it doesn't really tie in to any of the careers. Splitting it into separate categories would make it near-on impossible.