More Awesome Than You!

Curious if this is just a very rare case of bad luck, or if something a little more nefarious is going on.

Since buying Seasons, I've probably checked jobs on the computer 15-20 times for my sims, and I've never had the Adventurer career offered.  I've had the other Seasons careers offered, many times, in fact, but never the Adventurer career.

Is there a bug that's preventing it from showing, or am I simply getting a weird RNG?

If it's a bug, it's a new one. I get the Adventurer career fairly commonly...although if you have all exp. packs there are 20 careers to choose from, and only 3 in the paper, so it could be an exceptionally bad case of sadorandomness. For starters, enable boolProp and shift-click on the paper. Click "Adult Jobs" and cycle through. Do you see Adventurer?

If you see it on the debug newspaper, check to make sure none of your sims wants a job in that career. A job that your sim actually wants has a greatly reduced chance of appearing.

Is this real or is it Murphy's Law-esque?

Real. Besides, is there really a difference?

Shows up regularly in my game and is getting as common as chief of staff.

I had a sim who wanted to reach the top of the Journalism career (I believe). I had him check the paper every day, but it took 15-20 days before it finally showed up (I was determined not to cheat). I also figured that he was lazy, and if that was the only job he wanted to have, then he could putter around the house all he wanted until it became available.

Eventually he did land the job. And then after a couple of promotions he made some poor choices and got fired. C'est la vie.

I have a sim in her 30s still waiting for a journalism career - and I'm using the computer to find jobs at the moment. Sadorandom. Mind you, she's nearly reached the top of the culinery career in the interim.

Sounds like they did that backwards.  Any chance of a hack that flips it back upright, so if someone has a want they actually have a change of fulfilling it?

Hook

Nope, it's hardcoded into the generator. And it so far it has remained impossible to retrieve a sim's wants in a form accessible to the game scripting, as if Maxis wanted to make it intentionally impossible for a sim to be able to act upon them.

I remember one of the Maxoids saying as much in one of the chat logs.  The gist of it was something along the lines of requiring player input for better gameplay.   ::) 

I have a zombie Sim that wants to be top of the Law career.  Figures.  It's a good thing zombies don't age, because she still hasn't gotten the job yet.  So it may very well be a bug.  But then again, I've had other Sims who've gotten their dream jobs on the first day upon moving in.  So I dunno what's up with that.   :D

It's random, but biased against you. You'll get just enough to lull you into a sense of complacency, but the odds are actually heavily weighted against you.

Does taking another job have any bearing on this? I've often found that if I just have the sim take another job at random, the next day their dream career comes up. Could just be the roll, of course.

Nope. Taking another job has no effect on waiting for your current job to appear.

This is why I took out the Life Stories careers, they seemed to pop up every day and of course, my sims never actually wanted to get a job or reach the top of the LS careers. Just took up valuable 'real' job space.

I was doing the asylum challenge, and my sane sim wanted the adventurer career. Took eight days, but luckily she finally got it. Unfortunately, she also got fired on a chance card on her first day. :D Fortunately, her first day of work was the day she got the job, so the job was still in the paper for her to take up again. :P

LOL I've learnt that the hard way-never throw the paper out if you get the job, wait until the next day :P

Not only do you not have to throw the paper out, but you can ALSO stuff it in your inventory and keep that job option forever! What's more, you can hoard papers, as the newspapers will not expire if you have 3 papers on the lot, so it's possible to have 3 or more "fresh" papers simultaneously.

D'you know what? I'd never have thought of that. Thanks Pescado, you are useful sometimes.

Yes, yes, I know you're anxious to see Gooplets Round 2. Because Sim-Emma wants to have a bunch of little Gooplets.

When the game decides what jobs it is going to offer on a job search, does it take into account the career wants of all Sims on the lot or just the one searching the first time that day?
I often find that when Sim A does the first job search of the day, her wanted career won't be available, but Sim B's wanted career is. That of course could just be chance....

She should have at least 9, all in groups of 3.

See, there's that gold standard of evilness cubed - I was going to suggest one set of triplets.

On the subject of sadorandomness, I notice that the three career tracks available in the newspaper seem always to be a subset of the five career tracks available on the computer for any given day. Is this just sadorandomness, or is it the way it is meant to work?

Sadorandomosity. They're often different.

I had a family sims wait 22 days for an opening in the law enforcement track.  After about a week I got her a job in the military while she waited patiently for som poor cop to be killed in duty or something.  She was an astronaut by the time she finally managed to land a gig as a security guard.
I use harder jobs, and the college job fix thingy, but neither of them should affect this case.

On a semi-related note, how many careers are available for cats? I've only ever had three show up in the paper (and all in the same order). If they only get three jobs available, however, feel free to mock me openly.  :-[

*points and laughs*  ...Yes, only three.  It's the same three types for dogs as well: Service, Security, and Show Biz.

Well, that would explain that, then. For some reason, I thought I had read that they had five.  :-[