Is there and reason to stay at work after the bar is full

[dodi90]

By the way, the new active career can also be improved by hacking the work performance, ask the boss for promotion (Lv 10 charisma), make connection (Computer Whiz reward trait). All three can be done during work hours however I recommend  to hack from your home since it took quite some time.

[Carl]

I just did some testing to figure this out myself. In short it appears that getting the bar full is sufficient and continuing to pursue objectives is pointless, but you should never leave early. I'm curious if you can leave early afterward, but that will take some more testing. Edit: leaving work early incurs a major penalty, even with the bar full. Plus you won't be paid for the hours.

In order to have a control, I saved the file at the very beginning of the work day with full needs and traits that would not affect his mood during a shift (noncommittal, art lover, and foodie). On the first day, the Sim got the bar full and stopped immediately. I parked him outside so that he would be just 'fine' from having no decoration moodlets as the work day came to a close. I then took a screenshot of the progress bar once he'd loaded up at home.

Reloaded, and stayed late for work, doing as many objectives as I could. I got it down to just one objective remaining and again put him outside so that mood couldn't factor in. This resulted in the exact same position on the performance bar.

Left work early and the bar barely moved, despite having filled the meter.

Did some further testing, and Ambitious didn't affect this at all.

I want to know if focused will help at all, because I've wondered what portion of the day a Sim needs to be in that emotion for it to count. Is it just at the end or beginning? I will try to clarify some of these things and put some information into the guide.

[ClayMask]

I just did some testing to figure this out myself. In short it appears that getting the bar full is sufficient for calling it a day's work, but you should never leave early. I'm curious if you can leave early afterward, but that will take some more testing. Edit: leaving work early incurs a major penalty, even with the bar full. Plus you won't be paid for the hours.

In order to have a control, I saved the file at the very beginning of the work day with full needs and traits that would not affect his mood during a shift (noncommittal, art lover, and foodie). On the first day, the Sim got the bar full and stopped immediately. I parked him outside so that he would be just 'fine' from having no decoration moodlets as the work day came to a close. I then took a screenshot of the progress bar once he'd loaded up at home.

Reloaded, and stayed late for work, doing as many objectives as I could. I got it down to just one objective remaining and again put him outside so that mood couldn't factor in. This resulted in the exact same position on the performance bar.

I see a couple of things in the XML that may make promotion in 1 day possible when it wouldn't be otherwise. It looks like the 'friends with coworkers' thing might just boil down to having a certain amount of charisma - level 3. Also, ambitious might boost gains by 50%, while lazy lowers them by that same amount. I'm making another Sim, and will edit if I discover anything groundbreaking.

I also want to know if focused will help at all, because I've wondered what portion of the day a Sim needs to be in that emotion for it to count. Is it just at the end or beginning? I will try to clarify some of these things and put some information into the guide.

Thanks for doing this study.  These are great discoveries!  When you say getting the bar full, you mean stopping at the position that would be gold if it were a party, right?  The third line.

I will be surprised if ambitious does make performance rise 50% faster.  It hardly seems to affect rabbit hole career performance, if at all. 

[Carl]

Ambitious didn't do anything (and I'd edited that post so that's why some didn't see that). In the case of active careers, neither did the ideal mood. I went IN focused and came OUT focused and tried to stay that mood the entire time, was not focused for maybe 10 Sim minutes. I think it's only relevant for Sims in careers with normal moving bars. The time you're under that mood will make the bar move faster, perhaps more-so with 'very' focused, etc.

Edit: sorry, didn't answer your question. Yes, I meant 100% full as in gold

[ClayMask]

Are you planning on testing whether charisma level 3 or coworker relationships affect work performance?

[Carl]

I just tested coworker relationships - 3 best friends. It did nothing to the bar, nor did Charisma level 3 Every time I've done this, I came out with the exact same amount of performance. Getting a promotion in one day beyond level 1 is quite challenging for these actives. It seems like there is more you can do to affect it for regular careers.

However, I don't know if the game implying that office relationships affect those is true either.

Edit: It looks like there is only one more major factor I could test... completing every single objective. Maybe that does give you a boost, should you actually finish them all, as Playalot has reported.

[Carl]

@Playalot Can you think of anything I didn't cover that your Sim had to boost performance? I just cleared every objective and was unable to get a promotion in a single day. All this was done on level 3 Scientist by the way. Since nothing else bumped it, I'm wondering what could let Sims get promoted in a single day when it's not level 1.

It does seem that Sims require varying amounts of performance to get promoted, given how easy the first is. Different career tracks/job levels may provide different results as far as how much performance you get from filling the meter completely. It is clear that finishing off the objectives isn't the secret, however.

I feel like my testing was pretty controlled, given I did each thing at one time and saw the same amount of performance. I didn't want to put myself in the position of wondering if it was this or that which did it, and require even more testing

[dodi90]

I guess all careers, be it active or not, are quite challenging to get promoted on one day after the first promotions. For normal career, it usually take two days for my sims to get promoted and sometimes it could be even 3 days due to shorter work hours at higher job level. I took Entrepreneurial but it barely make noticeable differences although this might need further testing. Ambitious trait is also useless here in the Sims 4 as it didn't raise the performance bar faster as it did in the Sims 3 but retained the drawback for being too long without promotions.

[grimsoul]

@Carl Thanks for all the testing on this. That answered my questions and then some. That was a lot of good information.

[Carl]

You're right, dodi. It is just meant to be that way, and it's not necessarily a bad thing.

On further examination of the game's data, I found why Focused isn't helping in a noticeable way. At level 1, it's providing a whopping 20% boost to performance to be focused (same for very focused). At level 2 this drops to 5% for Focused and 10% for very focused. I assume based on how this is listed that each action you undertake while focused would give a little extra kick to the performance meter. Another thing that makes performance easier to max on day 1 is that the Sim's base performance starts higher. You begin with a 35% out of 100, and by level 3 start at a 15.

At higher levels, in those moments when you were just a hair from the promotion, being Focused may have made the difference. I was probably not able to notice a 5% tick in performance in my screenshot.

It is entirely plausible that filling the active career performance meter to 100% is literal. It is the best a Sim can do in regards to Career performance, assuming they went in at the best possible mood and stayed there as long as possible.

I tested sending the Sim to work with a Focused potion. This resulted in an ever-so slight tick to the left in what a day's work could bring. That is, it's definitely better to assume control for you can make sure they get the most possible performance.

[ClayMask]

It is entirely plausible that filling the active career performance meter to 100% is literal. It is the best a Sim can do in regards to Career performance, assuming they went in at the best possible mood and stayed there as long as possible.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here.  Are you saying that if a Sim goes to work and fulfills enough tasks to reach the "gold" level, that this has at least as much of an impact on the overall performance bar as if they were very focused all day, but working rabbit hole style?

[Carl]

Yeah, that's my suspicion. A 'silver' would be an average day's performance, while a gold is meant to be the best you can possibly do. It would certainly make sense. It's like the system stops registering any further actions once you've filled that meter.  didn't manage to get that much performance when I sent the Sim to work without joining her and used work hard. I got 1-2% less performance than filling the bar manually by going to work with her.

Sadly, there are traits listed in Scientist and the other two that say something about career_story_progression, and they are traits you'd think would make an impact on performance - Evil, Genius, Ambitious, I think they were. Doctor had Ambitious listed. I tried an Evil, Genius, Ambitious Sim and again came out with the same performance. Doh.

[dodi90]

Okay I did, a mini testing for Entrepreneurial reward trait, It does absolutely nothing to help work performance. I use two sims for the test, One I give the trait and one not. I use max need cheats for both for easier testing and give them both the same pluck from inspiration from guitar for 8h inspired buff. At level two, they both use work hard and ended up at the same place at progress bar. At career level 3 something interesting happened, I make them both work normally to see any differences. My sim without the trait got a chance card and gained small performance boost and in the end ended up slightly higher than my sim with the trait.

I haven't test with active career yet, but I doubt this reward trait make any difference. So for now, save your reward points for something better instead.

[ClayMask]

Okay I did, a mini testing for Entrepreneurial reward trait, It does absolutely nothing to help work performance. I use two sims for the test, One I give the trait and one not. I use max need cheats for both for easier testing and give them both the same pluck from inspiration from guitar for 8h inspired buff. At level two, they both use work hard and ended up at the same place at progress bar. At career level 3 something interesting happened, I make them both work normally to see any differences. My sim without the trait got a chance card and gained small performance boost and in the end ended up slightly higher than my sim with the trait.

I haven't test with active career yet, but I doubt this reward trait make any difference. So for now, save your reward points for something better instead.

I had been wondering about that reward, since it never seemed to do much to me.  Thanks for testing that, and telling us about it.

[Carl]

Thanks for that testing Dodi, it's reflecting what I see and I agree that it hasn't seemed to do anything for me, either. There are entries in each of the careers for a chance at early promotion with that reward trait. I think this means, there is a 10% chance that at the end of the work day you get a boost - either a promotion out of nowhere or you get performance added onto whatever you did that day. That seems to be an awfully low chance for such a reward, but it says 0.01 with a multiplier of 10. It then says there is a +20 modifier on that.. I am thinking there's a 10% chance it gives you +20 performance, but am unsure. Regardless, with a 10% chance it would take a number of days of testing to see it do something useful. This explains why in the careers challenge I still couldn't get promoted quickly, even though I ran for that trait straight away.