GTW Pack Refresh Ideas

If ever a pack needed a refresh, it's Get to Work!

In my game, on console it's never fully worked. Careers and retail are severely impacted by bugs. It needs a lot of work. I really love the gameplay that it brings too, particularly what it adds for collectors.

The detective career is really problematic as crime scenes don't reset and witnesses won't leave. If you move into a former crime scene it's still active for several days and you can't interact with the witnesses to get rid of them, they even walk through locked doors and use the shower or get food.

The medical career just has my Sim doing any work, NPCs just linger and don't work and my other medical Sims are rarely at the hospital. It's impossible to take care of every patient and diagnoses are too vague. It bothers me as someone who had a serious medical mistake IRL so sometimes I can't stand to play it. Housecalls are bugged too and I always get routeing failures around the hospital building. The equipment causes T posing and will somebody else please pick up the trash!!

Travel to Sixam works well, hurrah, and I build rockets on generic lots to travel there for extended periods. But more could be done with it I think. My Sim sometimes takes an easel and paints the landscape as it's so awesome. The aliens don't really interact so more could be done with that side of it, maybe something along the lines of a mystery like Strangerville. Or bring it into the astronaut career.

Retail is one of my favourite features but again, hampered by bugs. Mannequins cause crashing, as devs are aware already. Gameplay can slow down as customers fill the store and I get half a dozen paparazzi outside even closed stores under construction. I usually add a dwelling, like a flat while my Sim is working on their store and the paps can cause problems when my Sim goes to bed as they count as visitors. I'd like more craftable items to be saleable. Like the hanging pots from nifty knitting. Imagine my annoyance when I had an inventory full of them, hung them around the store and tried to set them for sale! My poor Sim, River had been on making them for days, I'm sure she would have reached a tiny hand out from the TV and slapped me if she could!

The science career is awesome. One of my favourites. But tasks aren't always possible at the earliest stage of the career so promotion and progress can be frustrating, I'd ditch them altogether. I do love that you can fully edit the lab. I add the Strangerville mystery items to the basement and bring it into the story. The days go super quick and I wish the work day could be extended even further.

I'd also like to be able to send 2 Sims from the same household to work instead of only one being possible.

Magnolia Promenade is pretty small so I add high streets in base game worlds with stores, etc. I just did a garden centre in Oasis Springs near the Gym and next to a Spa I built. I've done the same in Newcrest with an artisan stores section and Willow Creek where I added art shops and galleries.

It's a pack that has plenty of promise but is plagued by glitches. It needs a lot of work and I think it should be top of the list for a refresh.

Curses... lot my long as heck post... ah, time to retype.

About making the hospital, science lab, and police station visible on the world maps? I don't think that is necessary and would be quite a hassle for the EA team. Rather, I think a good alternative is to have the ability to travel to the lots via your phone. Also, if your Sim is sick, a pop up option to be able to go to the hospital would be nice, like how it works when a pregnant Sim is in labor.

I'm totally down with the build/buy option being available without cheats. Of course you cannot change the lot type, but being able to edit the lot without hassle would be lovely. I could easily dismiss the Artic Fan animation, however. There are plenty of items in the game that would certainly be cooler if they had animations for their particular uses, but none of them really need them. So unless there is the idea to do a refresh on a lot more items in game, giving the Artic Fan an animation only would likely just get a lot of Simmers excited or up in arms about giving animations to other things like clocks.

The desire you have for Retail... I think the reason it lacks the upgrade and reward system is so the Doctor, Scientist and Detective careers could be more immersive, interactive and have more items.

For what you desire, it would have been better to make a whole Retail pack. It would be able to have the upgrade and reward system, but it would also be able to create more interesting stores. It could have different store types you could select. There would be a build/buy and CAS items that would allow you to make stores that don't rely so heavily on just base game items or other packs. That would have given the ability to make hair salons/barber shops where a Sim comes in, gives a description of a hair style they are looking for or ask you to select a style you think would suit them. Load into CAS and pick a new hairstyle for them, get feedback and get paid... unless they are so angry at what you did they decided to not pay you. Same could be done for cosmetics. A Sim comes in, wants help to find the right look for them and their personality or for a special event. You load into CAS and can create a look that you think suits them or the event they are going to. Again, you get their feedback, get paid... or get chewed out because you made them look horrible and the do not pay you. I so would have gone for a mechanic career to be added in. You could have a mechanic shop, build, fix or customize a car and gain skills from it. I wouldn't insist it be functional, but it would allow Simmers who like to build to add garages to houses and put their creations in said garage or driveway.

I don't know about the reputation system being added to careers. This may be due to my own experiences at work. You can have people who are horrible, but are excellent at their job. You can have people who everyone loves, but they slack off all the time.The active careers already allow you to fire or promote employees. The ones that aren't could likely give you a scenario, but how that would effect your reputation just feels too unnecessary and up to chance if you add in a reputation system. You fire a Sim for slacking, but then your reputation goes down because everyone was that Sims' friend so morale is lower. You fire a Sim for not getting along with their co-workers, but find that in firing that Sim has caused a huge gap in efficiency, so you have to make all your mediocre workers work harder and later than before to make up for the loss, so even thought he Sim they hated is gone moral has lowered due to the extra work, your reputation falls and you have to stay later for work. So... yeah.

I'm not touching the edits and additions to the Doctor and Detective careers. I have no idea how much would be needed to implement those things and if it would keep the pack a game pack.

Sixam & Aliens... It would be nice if the one lot there was editable without cheats, but the rest of the things listed...

Again, I say you'd need a separate Game pack for Aliens alone. GTW already has so much going on in it, adding all those things would be impossible.Sixam is an alien world that is not part of the Sims world. Therefore, it requires the ability to access it via a rocket or a Wormhole generator no matter what via Sims on "earth". Therefore, more reason there would need to be a pack. In that you'd get your power tree, your Alien could work up to get the ability to disguise themselves properly, learn abilities and the like. You'd have an actual with a map that would allow you to travel to residential and community lots. To get to the world all the other Sims live on, your Alien would need to build a flying saucer. The Sixam lot in GTW could then be considered just another small part of the planet, like how the hospital and police station are lots that are part of Magnolia Promenade and the Science Lab is a lot that is part of Oasis Springs

Yeah, I simply called it a Retail pack for the separation from GTW idea. Also, sorry about calling GTW a Game pack. I was typing  "game pack" so often yesterday it was pretty much default. Either way, considering how Dine Out and C&D focus primarily on those careers only, I only figure that the updated system might cause the GTW to have a lot problems with the career system and a more complex retail system being present. After all, look at Dine Out. One its own it is still buggy as heck to this day.

Back to the "Retail" pack idea... As it goes, it would be focused more on allowing Simmers to have the update and reward system modernized for retail and as said provide the ability to create specific retail lots that would likely attract more suitably aged Sims to. Again, if you only have the base game and the pack, this pack would include more build buy items to create more interesting stores. Then, just for an add-on to cater to old complaints about certain careers not being in the Sims 4 still... add in a few service based businesses that could allow Simmers to build functional salons, boutiques and other stores that relate to CAS.

About the fire and promote co-workers, I was mainly responding in regards to how Dine Out and Cats & Dogs works.

Clock animations - wouldn't we all. "It's the little things" as a lot of Simmers have noted. More detailed animations with microwaves, less hammer space animations where the Sim magically produces an item out of nowhere - especially in the kitchen. The list can go on. There is just so many things that Simmers want fixing, I see small animations and those sort of details being low on EA's list of things to do.