Show me the money! My favorite fortune Sim just made criminal mastermind (and what a lovely outfit that is too) but so far, no big payoff! What gives? He's been wearing the dorky Doomsuit for three days now, and no wild card chance to win the big payola. He's still broke, thanks to his expensive tastes and relatively piddly salary. What gives? Does the game occasionally stiff you, or do I just have to be patient and wait? I hate waiting.
I got to criminal master mind with one of my guys and the pay is crap compared to everything else. I had the "normal" pay out with the job up thingy but thats it.
How very very disappointing. You'd think that crime would pay, at least a little ... sigh. Now I guess he's going to have to get a REAL job. He wants to be a business tycoon next ... yawn. I work in an office all day. Do I really want to play one too? Methinks not. Oh, well. He's a good artist and is making OK money with his masterpieces. Maybe he'll just do that for a while. Plus, his future bride is aiming for Hall of Famer, so maybe she can support them when she moves in, once she's made her goal of woohooing 19 other sims besides him. Got their future home all built, but they can't afford it yet ...
The Criminal Career is not only poorly-paying, but also has crappy hours, and the chance card sucks nuts. A guide to chance cards is available here. Looking over the probabilities table, you can clearly see that the final card of the Criminal career has no correct answer. Meaning your odds of gaining anything out of of it are about as good as the odds of you losing a bucketload from it, and the sum of money involved is not really that good. In comparison, the chance cards for certain other top-end career tracks will pay out nicely and be 85% favorable. Still, the criminal cards are not as piss-poor as the Medical cards.
And if you read the probabilities table, that's all it is, luck. Note that the two upper level chance cards are basically crapshoots, although the lower level cards have a "likely" result according to the table. However, their payoffs are rarely worth even the risk of the penalty.
I have found that they're not exactly even handed. The Mad Scientist final wild cards paid off no matter what option I chose, yet the Captain Hero one is dicey ... you have to start all over if you get it wrong. I like the element of risk but I have learned I should never gamble ... I nearly always answer wrong.
The Mad Science chance card has a 50/50 chance of being right no matter which option you choose. In both cases, the wager is a sum of money, but the correct answer is always "GREEN", which both pays out more money and loses less money when you win or lose, respectively, as compared to the alternative. The Law Enforcement chance card, however, is 85/15. Meaning that the first answer, A, "Giant Robot", is the correct answer, in which you wager a sum of money (+50K vs -25K) at 85% odds of success. The alternative choice carries only a 14% chance of success, so you will pretty much always lose. And be fired, as a result. The reward for this slim chance of success is again a mere $50K. Clearly, as you can see, this card has a "correct" answer which you should always choose. Consult the chance card guide for the relevant odds for every career level, as well as the keywords list for the ones that are actually lucrative enough to gamble on. Remember, chance cards often do have a right answer, but in many cases, like nuclear war, the winning move is not to play.
You and I clearly have a different view of life ... I feel it's better not to know such things, as it sucks some of the joy out of the game. I guess I'm saying I prefer to be a sap, rather than a control freak ... 'Tis better to have chance carded and lost, then never to have chance carded at all ...
There isn't a lot of difference between the two of you actually. The whole purpose of a game is to derive recreation from bouncing around inside an artificial environment (playing by the rules of the game). Using cheats in games doesn't damage the entertainment value, nor does it violate the essential structure of the rules (though it can get you shot or jailed if you try cheating at baccarat in Las Vegas!) Most traditional games (chess, checkers, cards, Monoply, etc.) are rendered entirely pointless by cheating. Computer games are utterly different. You can cheat or not cheat but you are not safe to make analogies that refer to parlour games. You cannot rely on the belief that you are seriously taking a "chance" when you turn down the community chest offer to pay a 10$ fine in favor of taking a chance. You know darn well there's a card in that stack that might give you $200 and you also know whether it's been turned over already. You ain't taking a blind chance, you're taking a calculated gamble. Pescado's table of details is merely giving us a similar benefit (of the experience of being able to read the cards before we start playing) ... so we know what the risks are. Risk being defined as probability multiplied by magnitude ... so if a very bad thing is highly likely to happen it is defined a very serious risk. Of course each of us is absolutely free to choose our own scales of measure for "badness" but only a fool thinks he can beat probability; ask anyone in the departure lounge at McCarran airport
I guess I've been put in my place ... I was just having a little fun, meant no offense. I only dish it out to them as can take it. It's a game, it's meant to be fun, play it however you want. You could be right about board games, but it doesn't explain how I always seem to get the "go directly to jail" card ... Must be paying for crimes in a past life or something.
payoff Well, I won 50,000 smackeroos on my first go-round as criminal mastermind, so maybe it's all in how you move the mouse, baby.
I'm in awe. Can I use your mouse? Hey, on the plus side, I have a slacker who's rolling in cash. He's gotten two big payoffs already ... $40,000 for making a movie and another $40,000 for being the life of a party. Slacker, hmmm? More like big-time provider! Guess it depends on the roll of the computer. (Keep your hands and feet out of the way ...)
LOL SBW. You'll get used to my manner. I wasn't putting you in your place, just having a wee rant and going all philosophical. If there is a right opinion anywhere in this universe I am pretty sure it hasn't been found yet ... least not by me ....
That's OK. I was worried after I posted it that it might seem a little mean, and then I remembered who it was aimed at. I'm glad to see at least one other person in the universe admits she doesn't have all the answers ... I worry about people who think that they do. I'm sooooo bored today. My work goes in fits and starts and right now it's definitely "fits." And I left my MIP at home ... (manuscript in progress) Hence the mega-postings. Just hoping for a nibble ... So, thanks for biting.
It's a 50/50 shot, so you could win or lose. You're only gambling with cash, not skillpoints or your job, but the pay ratio is still insuperior to the Mad Scientist card that happens to also be 50/50. In Monopoly, getting that card can be a very good thing. You stop having to move, and therefore stop having to worry about hitting anyone's hotels for awhile. I, on the other hand, simply use my fine grasp of basic physics to make sure I always land where-ever the hell I want, making the dice obey my will. Because the true landing pattern of dice is not random, but determined by basic physical laws and your initial launch conditions, the latter of which can be easily manipulated given knowledge of the former. Use the Force, Luke.
Witches, you sound like me and my job. There are days when I don't look up, and I take the laptop home with extra work. There are other days when I have nothing to do but sit by the phone "just in case", and I hang out and look at my message boards about 500 times. LOL I have yet to get my sims to the top of their career ladders without cheating. I've been trying to do it since UNI, and have a couple near it, but not quite yet.
I'm not even sure how to cheat to get to the top of a career ... wait, not sure I want to know ... Speaking of getting to the top, I have one sim who is maxxed out on all skills. He was a mad scientist but I wanted him to get a day job, since his wife was also a mad scientist and they wanted to have a baby ... so I made him an athlete. He got to the top of the athletic career in four days. All I had to do was make sure he called three sims each day to maintain his friendships (he has around 15). Anyway, once you max out all skills, which is time consuming but not that hard to do, it's all easy street ... since that was his lifetime goal he's also permanent platinum, always in a good mood, and a terrific father ... the kid's been in platinum since day one.
You're bad at this. It takes ONE FREAKING DAY to pull this off in Uni. Perhaps you should study the Macrotastics macros. The current development version nearly plays the game for you, naturally, with my precise and ironclad fist.
