Custom Careers?

[reggikko]

I've never used any custom careers, but frankly, I'm tired of the same old Maxis ones over and over. However, I don't want my game to blow up, either. So, do you use custom careers? Are there tried-and-true career developers that you trust and use on a regular basis? Any guidelines that I'd need to keep in mind? Thanks!

[veilchen]

Reg, the only custom careers I use are from MTS2. Pay close attention to what the people are saying about them, some have either a)no chance cards, b) override existing careers, or c) bugger up the carpool.

The Gamer career (with the P-icon) for instance overrides the scientist career, at least it did last time I checked. I am real careful about what I download custom career-wise, and I have not had any problems yet. Put them into their own separate folder, and you can take them out easily enough if they turn out buggered.

MTS2 has them categorized into uni, nl, base, or all game readiness, and the one person who seems to know quite a lot about Careers are SuperFly and Pookins (there might be others, but those twe are the only ones that comes to mind right now, sorry )

[KellyQ]

I finally added some custom careers because like you, I was bored with the same doctors, lawyers and indian chiefs...oh wait, we don't have those! Anyway...I downloaded a few from MTS2. I have the model, dancer, archeologist, architect, lawyer, some kind of tv newsman/journalist (I can't remember exactly) and auto mechanic careers installed. They seem to work just fine. I did have a psychologist career installed but I experienced some weirdness with it and took it out. Some of the chance cards are worded a little oddly but otherwise it's been nice choosing new careers for my sims.

[ari_]

what Veilchen said.

I have ~100 new careers in my game (about 20-30 are teen careers), and they all work without conflicts. Some don't have updated chance-cards, but with those, I just edited them myself to deactivate chancecards altogether. I really love the variety, especially since there are careers for Pastors, Vampire Hunters, and some Adult careers. I've also seen some based on XFiles or or Buffy or Harry Potter, and some Medieval ones, which are great for themed neighborhoods.

Just make sure to check whether they're Uni/NL compatible, and keep them all in a seperate folder so you can easily delete any that you suspect of causing trouble.

[nikita]

Yeah, like Veilchen said too.  I only have 4 or 5 custom careers and I only use the ones from poojkins from MTS2 because hers are reliable and most people swear by them. 

I should probably download more but they are getting more and more outlandish.  I prefer to keep my steeped in reality and sorry, but I can't really see any of my Sims wanting to follow a Mod The Sims 2 career path.  What a waste of a University education.

[radiophonic]

Many of the have a lot of potential, but almost all of them are incomplete. I never bother with them. Not to mention, the next time an expansion pack comes out it's not much fun to go around the hood and make everyone quit their jobs so that you can remove the custom career from your downloads folder.

[Pegasys]

Do the custom careers have custom outfits as well?

[julieb]

Before my recent download folder clean out I had a few custom careers installed (auto mechanic, porn star--hee hee, and another that is completely escaping me right now).  I didn't have any problems with them but I did have problems with the psychology one mentioned above.  It messed with my carpool.

If you go onto MTS2 to look at careers, be sure to check and make sure that they are compatible with all of the expansions that you have. 

[ari_]

Do the custom careers have custom outfits as well?

Not usually, tho the better ones edit the career so that you use already existing career outfits that fit the job.

Not to mention, the next time an expansion pack comes out it's not much fun to go around the hood and make everyone quit their jobs so that you can remove the custom career from your downloads folder.

Not necessarily. Uni was a problem because Uni changed how careers worked, but all careers that were ok for Uni work for NL as well. When the next expansion pack comes out, I'll just wait a day or two before I install it. By then, I'll know whether I'll have to remove the career folder or not.

[MokeyHokey]

P00jkins makes good careers.  All of hers are functional, complete, and do not overwrite any Maxis ones.

I use a Hacker career (from TS1), Nurse, PokerPro, X-Treme (TS1), Vampiric, and the all-important "Workaholic".  I love adore the workaholic for both spouses of romance sims (they are gone 14-20 hours of the day) and for $100k wanters.

[Motoki]

Regarding the expansions, NL didn't change anything about careers, it just incorpated the changes that Uni made, so if a career is Uni compatible, it is NL compatible. The real issue with Uni was not that they added new careers but that they changed some fundamental things about the way careers worked. In the base game careers had chance cards for every level, but they got lazy with Uni and added a new value that sets what levels of a career have chance cards and what don't. Well the old pre-uni careers didn't have this value and it fubar'ed the game up.

As long as future expansions don't add extra values to the base career code, any Uni and/or NL compatible career should work with them. Of couse I have no idea if or how the business expansion pack might screw with careers or even if operating a business will count as a 'career' at all as far as the game is concerned.

That being said, a lot of custom ones are incompletely and/or unprofessional with bad grammar and spelling and such. Very few have custom outfits or career rewards though some at least take the time to select the already existing ones in the game that are most appropriate.

[veilchen]

They have a Computer career that has its own career reward, and it's a really nice one. The creator has taken a lot of care with that one, and although it doesn't have it's own outfits she or he uses the ones that are availble quite nicely. You can tell the creator has put a lot of time and thought into it. It's this one right here. Personally, I love it:

http://forums.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=57588

I also have the firefighter career. It is a nice career, I love it because it's nicely done and I have a family chuck full of firefighters. That one is here:

http://forums.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=94252

Edit: because I forgot to mention that the computer/hacker career reward can't be  unlocked with a mod (for obvious reasons), it has to be earned

[Motoki]

Hmm, I will have to try that. I have moved a couple of firefighters in and wished I could have them stay firefighters.

[veilchen]

Maybe Syberspunk would like it too (sorry Nectere, but sometimes it's necessary)

[reggikko]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I downloaded a few careers and I'll be testing them out the next time I play.

[JadeEliott]

My favorite career is the self-employed one here:

http://forums.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=42215

It is great for my business owners who need a bit more cash. It is a well done career by SaraMKirk, a simmer I have always admired.

:-)

[jrd]

I like the careers by p00jkins. They're generally well made, and include chance cards which do not suck. Nor do they pay too much.