Discussion: Acting Career and Its Major Problems
I've been sitting on this topic for a few days. I'll have a summary at the bottom for our TLDR readers. The goal of this post was to do a breakdown of the career after I have explored it fully. I'm going to talk about things from a perspective of efficiency and cost vs time investments.
So before I go off and start listing the issues let me breakdown how the entire actor career works in a paragraph or two so that everyone (myself included) doesn't get lost later when I'm discussing different issues. Obviously the jumping off point is joining the career via the phone. Afterwards you pick a agency to represent you, and there are four. Really though only three benefit you and they each benefit you better at a different stage of the career. Everyday extras will give you access to some TV shows early on which is helpful as they pay a bit more. G.R.A.N will get you into gigs that you would normally not have available at your career level (IE higher level gigs). Lastly Well Suited Talent Agency (WSTA) will give you a pay bump of around 15% for prime time TV/Movie actions and dramas.
After agencies comes auditions and some of the first issues that pop up for me. You basically use the menu or the phone to bring up a list of gigs. You pick the one you want and you get to audition this takes 1 day. After passing you get an extra day for preparations and on the third day you shoot. In total the time from bringing up the auditions menu and getting paid is 3 days MINIMUM.
Problem 1): The time between booking gigs and shooting is way to long after level 7. At this point in the career you should have worked on most of the skills needed. Even if you didn't your skills only get you the audition they don't seem to effect your on the job performance. Even if you take the celebrity perk "established name" it still does not remove the audition day from your schedule. Its still three days from audition to shoot. Later on in the career 8+ this becomes a detriment more than a perk. If you have the skills to pass the audition then whats the point of the perk? Its a waste. No matter what perks you take or how you play 3 days is required to complete one gig. This means in an ideal world where your sim is always on the ball, you can only work twice a week (maybe three times if you happen to be shooting on Sunday). If you take a day off or fail an audition then you might be able to only work once a week. ONCE A WEEK. I don't really know why they wouldn't let us book multiple gigs back to back so that we could stack our schedules.
Problem 2): Compensations and the main point of this post. I'm going to make somewhat of a bold statement and say under certain circumstances acting career has worst pay of all the careers in the game at level 10 compared to other level 10 careers. Although it does the potential to under pay at lower levels too.
The list of gigs available to an actor range from around to 400$ to 6,500$. If these 6,500$ gigs happen to be prime time dramas or action genre's then the WSTA will bump it up to 7,2-7,300$. This the MAX amount of money you will see from this career per gig. I talked with other simmers and they have verified that 6,500$ is the highest paying gig that they have seen. Since we have already established that you can only work twice a week, this means 14,600$ is the MAX amount of income you will see per week (give or take a few hundred for margin of error). That is an absolute. There are no other factors, no bonuses, no raises, no perks, and no other extraneous factors. MAX.
Lets take a moment to compare to other careers without perks or raises that are normal careers.
Interstellar Smuggler (Astronaut): $14,868 weekly.
Botanist (Gardner): $14,700 weekly.
Angel Investor (Business) is: 12,992$ weekly.
Villain (Secret Agent): $12,875 weekly.
One from active careers GTW:
Chief of Staff (Doctor): $11,200 weekly.
Now all these careers are roughly equal to the acting career on a even playing field. However all these careers can get raises (including GTW careers), while acting cannot. Also there is one tiny factor here that completely over shadows everything else. It has been stated by several simmers that the level 5 celeb perk "easy street" does not double the pay check of any active career GTW or GF. Meaning that 14,868$ a week from smuggler just turned into almost 30,000$. Add in raises into that mix and its.....excessive. BUT please note I haven't had time to verify this fully myself but I have seen a post about it and several other simmers mentioning it. Even if the perk does/did work raises by other careers still causes the same effect. Any career given time will overshadow acting in terms of compensation. Also one final point before I move onto my last rant. All those careers I listed, they all require 2 skills max to level for promotions. Acting uses comedy, fitness, guitar, and charisma up to level 7 and acting up to level 10. That's 5 skills almost all near max compared to 2 skills maxed. I take this into consideration when valuing my sims cost vs time evaluations.
Problem 3): Median pay and why 6,500$ is not median pay. The game lists the median pay for the acting career at levels 8-10 as 9,800$. Let me be clear here. The language used in game is "Median Gig Pay: 9,800$". This means what it says the MEDIAN payments PER-GIG meaning one job, is 9,800$. This is not correct in the slightest. I've made a post about this on another thread, instead of re-bottling my passion and retyping it, ill just copy past it.
Currently I believe the real median pay per gig is around maybe IDK like 2-3,000$? This seems right given a low end of 400$~ and a high end of 6,500$. If my basic understanding of statistics is correct with a median pay of 9,800$ we should be looking at a high end payment of around 20,000$~ per gig, 40,000$~ a week and 80,000$~ per week if easy street was working for acting.
My honest suggestion to the devs is do a scaling gig pay. IE the higher you go in the career the more people will pay you on different gigs. Its currently on a scale of 400-6500 so lets say you are level 8 it should maybe go to 900-10,000. Maybe at level 10 go from 1,500-18,000. It makes sense after all you pay more to hire a celebrity actor to do a commercial then a nobody. But you also don't pay them as much as like a big box office film. Makes sense and its real world grounded.
Ideally I'd like to be correct on all my points (I'm just a person I may not be) and have the values adjusted accordingly. I believe that get famous marketed the "lavish" and "excessive" life style and I'd like to think the actor career was designed to give our sims these goals in mind. I'm honestly not sure if 80,000$ a week seems fair but it was more in line with what I was expecting. The low pay and low fame gain (a problem I won't talk about here as the post is to long already) only makes level 10 feel....not very glamorous. You will be working around 7 weeks for 100,000$ mansion which is on the lower end for mansions. And that off the cuff estimate is based on you having no expenses and constantly getting the best gigs. Also please don't say you can paint, garden, write, etc. You can do that with literally any other career as supplemental income. Overall I just want to see the some of the changes I mentioned worked into a patch.
Last paragraph I promise. I made this post because I love the acting career. Its my favorite career in the series so far. Its got a good flow, good variety (as much as can be expected for careers so far), and overall its fun. There is so much to do on and off the set that you can really get the feel for the life of an actor. The at home tasks of preparing really makes you feel like your diving into your role. I knew it was special to me when I started to doing things I no longer needed to do (prework tasks, dressing up, make up etc) because I thought they were good story elements. I have lots of fun RP'ing it so I just wanted to point out these observations.
Fine fine TLDR:
Make "Easy Street" double paychecks for acting career. It doesn't.
Make median gig pay higher across the board and accurate to what it says in game. It isn't.
Alternatively make median gig pay scale with acting level so that different gigs pay differently at different level. It doesn't.
Make "established name" cut down on the number of days it takes to complete a gig. down to 2 from 3. Again it doesn't.
So before I go off and start listing the issues let me breakdown how the entire actor career works in a paragraph or two so that everyone (myself included) doesn't get lost later when I'm discussing different issues. Obviously the jumping off point is joining the career via the phone. Afterwards you pick a agency to represent you, and there are four. Really though only three benefit you and they each benefit you better at a different stage of the career. Everyday extras will give you access to some TV shows early on which is helpful as they pay a bit more. G.R.A.N will get you into gigs that you would normally not have available at your career level (IE higher level gigs). Lastly Well Suited Talent Agency (WSTA) will give you a pay bump of around 15% for prime time TV/Movie actions and dramas.
After agencies comes auditions and some of the first issues that pop up for me. You basically use the menu or the phone to bring up a list of gigs. You pick the one you want and you get to audition this takes 1 day. After passing you get an extra day for preparations and on the third day you shoot. In total the time from bringing up the auditions menu and getting paid is 3 days MINIMUM.
Problem 1): The time between booking gigs and shooting is way to long after level 7. At this point in the career you should have worked on most of the skills needed. Even if you didn't your skills only get you the audition they don't seem to effect your on the job performance. Even if you take the celebrity perk "established name" it still does not remove the audition day from your schedule. Its still three days from audition to shoot. Later on in the career 8+ this becomes a detriment more than a perk. If you have the skills to pass the audition then whats the point of the perk? Its a waste. No matter what perks you take or how you play 3 days is required to complete one gig. This means in an ideal world where your sim is always on the ball, you can only work twice a week (maybe three times if you happen to be shooting on Sunday). If you take a day off or fail an audition then you might be able to only work once a week. ONCE A WEEK. I don't really know why they wouldn't let us book multiple gigs back to back so that we could stack our schedules.
Problem 2): Compensations and the main point of this post. I'm going to make somewhat of a bold statement and say under certain circumstances acting career has worst pay of all the careers in the game at level 10 compared to other level 10 careers. Although it does the potential to under pay at lower levels too.
The list of gigs available to an actor range from around to 400$ to 6,500$. If these 6,500$ gigs happen to be prime time dramas or action genre's then the WSTA will bump it up to 7,2-7,300$. This the MAX amount of money you will see from this career per gig. I talked with other simmers and they have verified that 6,500$ is the highest paying gig that they have seen. Since we have already established that you can only work twice a week, this means 14,600$ is the MAX amount of income you will see per week (give or take a few hundred for margin of error). That is an absolute. There are no other factors, no bonuses, no raises, no perks, and no other extraneous factors. MAX.
Lets take a moment to compare to other careers without perks or raises that are normal careers.
Interstellar Smuggler (Astronaut): $14,868 weekly.
Botanist (Gardner): $14,700 weekly.
Angel Investor (Business) is: 12,992$ weekly.
Villain (Secret Agent): $12,875 weekly.
One from active careers GTW:
Chief of Staff (Doctor): $11,200 weekly.
Now all these careers are roughly equal to the acting career on a even playing field. However all these careers can get raises (including GTW careers), while acting cannot. Also there is one tiny factor here that completely over shadows everything else. It has been stated by several simmers that the level 5 celeb perk "easy street" does not double the pay check of any active career GTW or GF. Meaning that 14,868$ a week from smuggler just turned into almost 30,000$. Add in raises into that mix and its.....excessive. BUT please note I haven't had time to verify this fully myself but I have seen a post about it and several other simmers mentioning it. Even if the perk does/did work raises by other careers still causes the same effect. Any career given time will overshadow acting in terms of compensation. Also one final point before I move onto my last rant. All those careers I listed, they all require 2 skills max to level for promotions. Acting uses comedy, fitness, guitar, and charisma up to level 7 and acting up to level 10. That's 5 skills almost all near max compared to 2 skills maxed. I take this into consideration when valuing my sims cost vs time evaluations.
Problem 3): Median pay and why 6,500$ is not median pay. The game lists the median pay for the acting career at levels 8-10 as 9,800$. Let me be clear here. The language used in game is "Median Gig Pay: 9,800$". This means what it says the MEDIAN payments PER-GIG meaning one job, is 9,800$. This is not correct in the slightest. I've made a post about this on another thread, instead of re-bottling my passion and retyping it, ill just copy past it.
"phantom121294;c-16842257" wrote:
ALSO WHY IS MEDIAN GIG PAY LISTED AS 9,800? Median pay or salary is the mid point of a distribution of payments or salaries. Meaning if you get payed this YOU ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A DISTRIBUTION. Meaning there are payouts less than this and payouts more than this. My current offerings are 8 gigs minimum of 490 maximum of 6,500. My median pay at level 9 is 9,800. This makes no sense. Why state such a high value as a median if you will never see it at all? Its a median....there should be gigs offering much higher paychecks than even the 9,800$ we already don't have the option of getting.
Currently I believe the real median pay per gig is around maybe IDK like 2-3,000$? This seems right given a low end of 400$~ and a high end of 6,500$. If my basic understanding of statistics is correct with a median pay of 9,800$ we should be looking at a high end payment of around 20,000$~ per gig, 40,000$~ a week and 80,000$~ per week if easy street was working for acting.
My honest suggestion to the devs is do a scaling gig pay. IE the higher you go in the career the more people will pay you on different gigs. Its currently on a scale of 400-6500 so lets say you are level 8 it should maybe go to 900-10,000. Maybe at level 10 go from 1,500-18,000. It makes sense after all you pay more to hire a celebrity actor to do a commercial then a nobody. But you also don't pay them as much as like a big box office film. Makes sense and its real world grounded.
Ideally I'd like to be correct on all my points (I'm just a person I may not be) and have the values adjusted accordingly. I believe that get famous marketed the "lavish" and "excessive" life style and I'd like to think the actor career was designed to give our sims these goals in mind. I'm honestly not sure if 80,000$ a week seems fair but it was more in line with what I was expecting. The low pay and low fame gain (a problem I won't talk about here as the post is to long already) only makes level 10 feel....not very glamorous. You will be working around 7 weeks for 100,000$ mansion which is on the lower end for mansions. And that off the cuff estimate is based on you having no expenses and constantly getting the best gigs. Also please don't say you can paint, garden, write, etc. You can do that with literally any other career as supplemental income. Overall I just want to see the some of the changes I mentioned worked into a patch.
Last paragraph I promise. I made this post because I love the acting career. Its my favorite career in the series so far. Its got a good flow, good variety (as much as can be expected for careers so far), and overall its fun. There is so much to do on and off the set that you can really get the feel for the life of an actor. The at home tasks of preparing really makes you feel like your diving into your role. I knew it was special to me when I started to doing things I no longer needed to do (prework tasks, dressing up, make up etc) because I thought they were good story elements. I have lots of fun RP'ing it so I just wanted to point out these observations.
Fine fine TLDR:
Make "Easy Street" double paychecks for acting career. It doesn't.
Make median gig pay higher across the board and accurate to what it says in game. It isn't.
Alternatively make median gig pay scale with acting level so that different gigs pay differently at different level. It doesn't.
Make "established name" cut down on the number of days it takes to complete a gig. down to 2 from 3. Again it doesn't.
