New patch, new careers!

[dethdukk]

Hey guys, I just went and looked at the patch notes, I wanted to post some of them here for people who might not read them.

1)  Cool stuff free to download!

Here are the instructions for how to get your Holiday Celebration Pack:

    The Holiday Celebration Pack can be unlocked by logging into Origin and launching The Sims 4.
    Banners within the main menu of The Sims 4 and in The Gallery will show the option to redeem the “Holiday Celebration Pack”.
    Click on the respective banner to surface an in-game pop up that will place the Holiday Celebration Pack in your shopping cart.
    No payment information will be required to check out.
    You will then be directed to an order confirmation page. Click the “Close” button.
    After closing, you will receive a notification that your content is preparing for download. Click the “OK” button.
    Once the download is complete, a notification will inform you that the Holiday Celebration Pack has been successfully installed.
    You will need to restart The Sims 4 in order to see content from the Holiday Celebration Pack in your game.
    Alternatively, you can also redeem the Holiday Celebration Pack via Origin.com [insert link]. Simply follow the instructions to download and install the pack into your game.

2)  Sims can now paint different quality Focused paintings.  <--- FINALLY

3)  The rate at which objects break has been decreased, and high end objects will break even less often than previously.  (love it!)

4)  More drinks are now available to make at level 1 Mixology, including the Angry, Flirty, and Focused emotional drinks.

5)   Thanks to great player feedback, we made some pretty important changes to Career and Aspiration objectives. Please take a moment to review your Aspirations and Careers, as some of the objectives have possibly changed. Our main goals with this update were to:
        Get rid of objectives that were too specific or repetitive
        Fix objectives that were too difficult and/or too big of a jump from previous steps (e.g., going from requiring 2 friends to 6 friends)


There's a bunch of other awesome changes, such as paid time off, family time off for pregnant sims, new careers, ect, but these are the things I found in the detailed notes that I found coolest.

In case anyone is interested in checking out the patch notes, http://help.ea.com/en/article/the-sims-4-updates/

[Bri]

Yep, I already have threads up for these two things

For the patch notes:
http://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php/topic,22531.0.html

For the Holiday Celebration Pack:
http://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php/topic,22532.0.html

[dethdukk]

Aha, awesome.  Thanks for providing the links, I was mostly just posting up some of the changes I liked the most/found to be the most important to know about.

[Playalot]

Just a thought: the level one focused drink is called the "Amygdelight".

I also love the fact that sims can now eat their garden produce. Gives a very nice moodlet.

Happy +3

Gift From Mother Nature
(From Eating a Harvestable)
There's nothing better than hand-picked food!

4 hours

*edited. Looks like the different qualities of produce will give you a different moodlet. yeah! Now it makes sense to push through to the top quality of plants etc.

[dethdukk]

Haven't had a chance to look into it so far, but it looks like most of the aspiration requirements got lowered a LOT.  I'm kind of annoyed actually, both Friend of the World and Soulmate got about 3 times easier than they were when Kell did them  Grrrr, arg.  Well at least I can say I did the aspirations before they were easy.  I'm actually kind of disappointed with some of the changes.  It's nice that they balanced all the aspirations out, difficulty-wise, but wheres the challenge now?

Edit:  what I mean by this is, The friend of the World aspiration was fine.  It was hard, admittedly, but the only near impossible requirement, the only thing that needed changed, was the 5 BFF thing.  Instead, they basically cut the requirements to nothing.

Soulmate I like the changes, they just lowered the 200 socials to 50, which is perfect.  I might have even left it at 100 myself.  But those aren't the only ones they changed, others got changed a lot too. Tech Guru, which I always felt started way too slow, got some of the requirements changed/lowered.  I love the Tech Guru changes mind you.  Basically, I feel like the low-tier changes they made are amazing, but that they lowered the high end requirements too much.

[stitching_JA]

I have mixed feelings about the tweaks to the aspirations.  I really hated having to ruin relationships to make new BFFs for Friend to the World, and the number of parties for party animal was daunting, but completing those challenges was satisfying.  I enjoy completing hard challenges in games.  However, the sims is more than lists of tasks and skills, and I think I was losing sight of that in Sims 4.  My legacy file got corrupted last month and I didn't want to restart until after this patch so I started playing Sims 2 while waiting.  The change has reminded me how much I enjoy playing in a more open-ended way. 

When I play The Sims (2, 3, 4), I frequently get caught up in having to complete things - collections, milestones, maxing skills...  but I also like to just enjoy the life simulation and create stories with different characters.  I noticed that with the level of challenge to aspirations and the detailed career tasks, I was only playing in the first way with Sims 4, even in non-challenge games.  That was starting to make the game a bit too predictable, but letting my sims have time to do other things meant failing to reach assorted goals.  I think that with the reduced aspiration requirements, there will be more balance between story-telling and trying to complete everything in my games.  I'm off to play!

[dethdukk]

Looks like they nerfed Never Weary.  Instead of stopping your sleep need it just slows down the degrade now.

[Stormi71]

I haven't even checked the aspirations yet. Did find a glitch, but nothing that couldn't be resolved, just annoying.
Never Weary changing to slow decay of sleep seems more realistic than never sleeping. I hadn't bought that reward because I like realistic game play. Steel bladder and Antiseptic rewards never completely stopped that need, which I liked.
I'm sooooooo happy to see sims changing their clothes back into daywear now. It really bugged me that sims would walk around as hotdogs or clowns or in pyjamas etc. I can finally hold that Icognito party without fear of a town full of permanent hotdogs!

[Playalot]

Looks like they nerfed Never Weary.  Instead of stopping your sleep need it just slows down the degrade now.

Rats, I loved the old way never weary worked.

[MissZoef]

Rats, I loved the old way never weary worked.

me too, I wouldn't mind if they left it then way it was.

[grimsoul]

They should have changed the name of it to because the name doesn't match what it is now. Like from Never Weary to Hardly Weary, Less Weary or something.

[Whirligig]

Personally, I love the tiny changes that have been made to the UI, especially the careers panel. The daily task has been brought out of the tooltip and right into the open, which is useful.

I kind of agree with @dethdukk - some of the changes seem to be a bit too easy, though maybe I'm just set in my ways. To get from a C to a B, all the kids need to do is get 1 skill to level 2, then get 1 skill to level 4. No extra credit work required. It was too hard beforehand, now it's too easy.

Of course I can also see the other side of this: more time to just play the game and enjoy sims being sims (especially for the kids).

[stitching_JA]

I've tried out the Friend to the World's new requirements, and it feels balanced and still reasonably challenging to me.  You now only have to have 20 friends at the final tier (instead of 25), and have one BFF, but you now have to max charisma.  It actually took me two days longer to complete than the old requirement, but as I didn't have to insult friends or feed them to cow plants, I was happier with it.  I also like that you no longer need two of your friends to be neighbours, as that got frustrating if the house next door was empty or had only ghosts.

The infant in my game only just aged up to child, but I agree that the requirements for school do look a bit too easy.  I want to play with children for longer before deciding that, though.  They may have adjusted the importance of homework, or mood, in progress while at school.

[dethdukk]

From my experience so far, it looks like the rate at which the performance bar fills has been lowered.  As in, the requirement is easier, but it takes longer to get the promotion time wise.  It took Kendrick about 4 days to go from a C to a B even though he had needs filled and was in the proper mood.

[Playalot]

I'd agree with that dethdukk. Now I've played a few days it really is taking longer for each promotion. It's a bit nerve wracking.