It's driving me crazy the amount of skills that fall under fitness and don't have their own skill

Skating is a hidden skill. Rock climbing, dancing, wellness, and fitness are all separate.

I think swimming fits fairly well under a fitness skill myself, but you're right about fit people not always being able to swim. It would not be remiss to have a swimming/diving/aquatics skill separate. Martial arts should definitely be it's own skill, though.

You may know, but the creativity skill used to be just that in older games. Painting extraordinaire? You're a musical virtuoso, too. It did not really bother me back then, but individual skills have more depth and bonuses.

I think it is weird cleaning isn't a skill anymore. As an adult, cleaning is most certainly a skill. It'll take forever and is potentially disastrous if you don't know what you're doing.

I would love swimming to be a skill of its own, perhaps like dancing one with only 5 levels? I would also love to see more specialised "fitness" skills - like soccer skill, skating (not hidden, but active) and so on.

But more than that, I want skills to be more expanded in general. Gourmet cooking shouldn't be able to be built until you've mastered cooking. Rocket science should require logic (at least to some degree). Why isn't reading a skill? With research (as its own separate skill) a dependant on reading skill? Debate should be connected to charisma. After writing we could have academic writing (good for journalists) and creative writing (for authors).

In general I just want more separate skills, but also more skills that connect to each other and are developed as you get older - so that not every skill you might ever need in your career or life can be mastered in the scope of 3-4 weeks of university. Also cooking and parenting skills are WAY too easy to get. Normal, every day, interactions with your kids or cooking family meals should never get you past 5, after that it should require more of an effort (classes, books, programs on tv...)

"kaiwrysims;d-994888" wrote:

It's like if they made a creativity skill and made painting, photography, candlemaking and etc. fall under that one skill.

So, TS1?

The funniest thing is that cleaning toddlers potty also rises fitness skill, lol.

The way TS4 combines (and sometimes doesn't combine) activities into skills can be quite strange more often than not. On the one hand, there's Piano and Pipe Organ, which are treated as two different skills despite being basically the same instrument, except that the organ has a little something extra down there. On the other hand, we have woodworking and electrical engineering lumped together under Handiness, and (the worst offender for me personally) Logic, which covers several natural sciences... (and chess.)

Like others in this thread, I'm not sure if there's really enough to swimming to make it a separate skill, unless it was combined with something else like diving, but Island Living unfortunately missed that opportunity. Ice skating and rollerblading being a hidden skill and otherwise contributing to Fitness is annoying, though. I've never been into sports, but became a queen on the ice rink from the moment I first skated on one, so to me, those are two entirely unrelated skills. :D

I would've liked it if they made swimming its own skill with Island Living if they had also included some sort of swimming & diving aspiration to go with it.

I completely agree and why doesn’t using the Rockwell from the fitness expansion give rock climbing experience?? I bought the pack for that reason and was so disappointed.

Personally I think they need to add a hiking skill too with increasing resistances to things on the trails like bugs, dehydration from heat etc.

Swimming... is fitness, though?

There are several activities that fit under fitness, but I think it's great that they are their own skills. I don't think a rock climber should automatically be also able to swim or do other fitness type activity. Sure they are fit, but there is certain skill and knowledge particular to swimming which is very different from climbing or say skating.