[LS] Romance Consultant: Degree not helping

Issue: A Distinguished Communications Degree with Honors gives a smaller career boost than a regular Communications Degree without honors in the Noble and Romance Consultant careers.

This is how degrees are supposed to impact career performance, PTO accrual, and simoleon pay boosts:

1. Regular Degree: lowest boost
2. Regular Degree with Honors: 2nd lowest boost
3. Distinguished Degree: 2nd highest boost
4. Distinguished Degree with Honors: the best degree; highest boost

But Noble and Romance Consultant careers treat regular Foxbury Communications degrees as if they were Distinguished, giving them larger boosts than both Britechester Distinguished degrees.

Code from the career_Noble_Level1 tuning files shows both Foxbury communications degrees wrongly giving a higher simoleon bonus than the Distinguished communications degrees from Britechester. CommunicationsDegreeBA/BS need to be switched here.

What should happen: Distinguished degrees should provide higher boosts than their equivalent non-distinguished degrees for the Noble and Romance Consultant careers.

 I reported this exact issue last year for Lovestruck's Romance Consultant career, but a CM mistakenly moved it to a Feedback thread when it is clearly a bug in the code mixing up which communications degree is distinguished.

Hello. I didn’t know that… What is CM?

Hi EA_Solaire​, my bug report was moved to this feedback thread, but there is a clear error in how the Romance Consultant career identifies which Communications Degree is “Distinguished”.

Distinguished Degrees in Communications (Britechester) should be the higher-tier degree, with greater pay and performance boosts than the regular Communications Degree (Foxbury), consistent with how all other degree-career pairings function. But with this career, the “lesser” Foxbury degree grants the higher benefit.

It appears that trait_University_CommunicationsDegreeBS / BSHonors were mistakenly used in place of the correct Distinguished degree traits trait_University_CommunicationsDegreeBA / BAHonors.

Could this thread please be reclassified as a Bug Report, or would you prefer that I create a separate report specifically for the degree mix-up?

Soanad​ if you need administrative help, please talk to a CM. You know I don't work for EA.

I did post my comments as a bug report, it got moved to this thread. I agree, a regular Communications Degree should NOT earn higher pay than a Distinguished Communications Degree and they've clearly been mixed up in the code.

I wondered if the "feedback" aspect was to do with the career level starting boost being a bit more complicated, as most other careers split off at Level 4-6, but this one doesn't branch off to matchmaker/relationship counselor until L8.

The only other career I've seen do that is the Park Worker career in Adventure Awaits, so I tested how degrees work there to compare. Unfortunately both careers are inconsistent!

• When I gave the sim a Distinguished Degree in Psychology with Honors, that sim was able to start at L8 in the ParkCounselor track.
  • This is consistent with other careers.
  • BUT when I gave another sim a regular Degree in Psychology (no honors) that sim was ALSO able to start at L8 in the ParkCounselor track. Not consistent with other careers, which would start at L6.
• My sim with a Distinguished Degree in Biology with Honors was only able to start at L6 Park Worker, before the career branches off to Ranger/Counselor.
  • A higher career jump than the degrees currently give Romance Consultants, but it should be L8 like in all other careers (and is inconsistent with the other track!)
  • Sims with a regular Degree in Biology (no honors) ALSO started L6. I would expect sims with a regular degree to start here. Distinguished + honors should be 2 levels ahead of a regular degree.

I'll make a report for the Park Worker career issue and wait & see what the community managers would prefer for this thread.

Could you please post in the bug section? It’s not feedback, it’s clearly bug.

crinrict​ I hope it’s fine to ask - could you move this thread to the bug section? Thanks!  

I've done more testing to clarify my post (including with honors degrees):

COMMUNICATIONS DEGREE:

• Distinguished degree (trait_University_CommunicationsDegreeBA)
  • starts at only L1 (no level boost, matchmaker track not yet available)
  • earns 63/h at L3
• Regular degree (trait_University_CommunicationsDegreeBS)
  • starts at only L1 (no level boost)
  • earns 66/h  at L3
• Distinguished degree with honors (trait_University_CommunicationsDegreeBAHonors)
  • starts at only L1 (no level boost)
  • earns 65/h at L3
    • earns less than regular degree without honors; should earn more than regular degree WITH honors.
• Regular degree with honors (trait_University_CommunicationsDegreeBSHonors)
  • starts at only L1 (no level boost)
  • earns 67/h at L3
    • earns more than distinguished degree with honors; should earn less

PSYCHOLOGY DEGREE:

• Regular degree (trait_University_PsychologyDegreeBA)
  
  • starts at L1 (no level boost)
  • earns 63/h at L3
    • Regular psychology degree earns same as distinguished communications degree
• Distinguished degree (trait_University_PsychologyDegreeBS)
  
  • starts at L2
    • Level slightly boost but doesn't open up therapist track
  • earns 66/h at L3
• Regular degree with honors (trait_University_PsychologyDegreeBAHonors)
  
  • starts at L2
    • Level slightly boost but doesn't open up therapist track
  • earns 65/h at L3
• Distinguished degree with honors (trait_University_PsychologyDegreeBSHonors)
  • starts at L3
    • Level slightly boost but doesn't open up therapist track
  • earns 67/h

Issues:

• Career level boosts are inconsistent with how degrees usually work.
  • Usually regular degrees start at L6, distinguished degrees start at L7, regular degrees with honors start at L7, distinguished degrees with honors start at L8.
• Matchmaker track not yet available with any communications degree.
  • Inconsistent with how degrees work with other careers.
• Therapist track not yet available with any psychology degree.
  • Inconsistent with how degrees work with other careers.
• Foxbury Communications Degrees incorrectly treated as Distinguished, and vice versa, for pay/performance boosts for this career.
  • Distinguished Communications degree comes from Britechester, not Foxbury.
  • Sims with Distinguished Degrees should be paid more than regular Degrees.

This was apparently "fixed" but is actually still incorrectly working.

To test, I gave 4 sims all 4 regular psychology and communications degrees (one from each university, without honors).

Issue #1: All 4 sims could only start the career at Level 1, instead of getting the usual degree career boost being able to skip to later levels in the career track corresponding to their degree.

Issue #2: CommunicationsDegreeBS (regular, from Foxbury) gives higher bonus than CommuncationsDegreeBA (Distinguished, from Britechester)

Distinguished psychology degree correctly boosts payment trait_University_PsychologyDegreeBS

Distinguished degree in Communications gives a far lower bonus trait_University_CommunicationsDegreeBA

trait_University_CommunicationsDegreeBS (Regular degree in Communications, from Foxbury) gives higher bonus than Distinguished Degree in Communications from Britechester

This also applies to the Honors degrees in the code

Edit: trait typo fixed in caption about Psychology degree.

My sim recently finished his degree at university and took a job as a romance consultant. He got given the sign on bonus but only starts his career at level 2. 

That's an odd choice. Your Sim will already get boosted to Level 3 of their career if they graduated High School with a Grade A. The point of going to University, even if you didn't start as a teen, is to allow players a different way to get higher in their career. You're spending anywhere between 3-4 weeks in game to achieve this degree only for such a small reward in that career.