Jobs that need the least amounts of friends?

[mozgun]

Hi everyone! I was just wondering: Which career tracks require few to no friends to get promotions? Making friends is time consuming, but the worst part is maintaining friendships. I make a bunch of friends and then, what do you know, 5 of them say something dumb like "Were you abducted by aliens?" Then my friend count goes down and I can't be promoted. I have base game, Nightlife, and Seasons, so I only have the careers from those (although nightlife didn't include career tracks as far as I know). Thanks for your feedback!

[Gcgb53191]

There's a hack/mod that lets you get promoted without the whole friend count. I used to have since I hated that as well but I ended up taking it out because it didn't feel realistic to me :D Plus I never really have a problem with my sims making friends since they're all born in the game and grow up with everyone in the neighborhood.

[Peni Griffin]

The trick to not having constant friendship decay is to befriend other playables, and play them. Frequent community lot visits (friends will gravitate toward each other in the background), parties, and outings, ditto. Even with CAS sims, under Sims2 I've never had a promotion stoppage due to friendship decays.

I've had one for introverted married pairs of sims who only have eyes for each other and can't be bothered with anyone else if the other one is on the same lot, but that's a different story.

My problem is with my sims making random townie friends I don't care about, who just sit there in the relationship panel forever.

ETA: Oh, and in answer to the actual question: I've never had to pay attention to which jobs require the fewest friends in Sims2, but in Sims1 it was military, and they don't seem to have changed the requirements much for the jobs that made the transition. Certainly the descriptions of the promotion levels are still the same.

[Bwinney43]

I'm the opposite. Having friends for a job promotion doesn't seem realistic. My boss has never said "You have to get 3 more friends before you become manager"

[zumppe]

I'm the opposite. Having friends for a job promotion doesn't seem realistic. My boss has never said "You have to get 3 more friends before you become manager"

I agree, doesn't seem realistic to me either, to need friends for promotions (especially friends who have nothing to do with your job).

I find the entire relationship decay thing unrealistic, real friendships will last whether you keep in touch constantly or not. I have old friends whom I might not meet for years, but when we do, we just pick up right where we left off (and, if you really dislike/hate someone, you will continue with that even though you don't meet for a while, and not be back to neutral as fast as in the game). For more realistic relationship decay, I use Inge's hack:

http://www.drealm.info/simlogical/sl/Sims2Pages/Sims2_Relating.htm

EDIT: Military (6), Culinary (7), and Criminal (7) require the least amount of friends.

[Orilon]

I've never paid attention to how many friends my Sim needs for a promotion because I use this mod by Two Jeffs http://www.simbology.com/smf/index.php?topic=15.0 so that they get promoted anyway.

They have to have good job performance and all the skills, but they don't need the friends. It always seemed unrealistic to me to need friends to get promoted.

[haricots]

Answer : Military track.

But for me, friends here represent contacts and career relatives, both which are very important to get promoted in a career track. So....yeah, it's realistic enough for me.

[Mootilda]

I believe that needing friends for a promotion was EA's initial attempt at networking. Networking in real life can help you to get jobs, promotions, etc.

However, becoming friends with the pizza delivery person and having that affect your ability to become CEO of a company is pretty unrealistic.

[VerDeTerre]

I'm the opposite. Having friends for a job promotion doesn't seem realistic. My boss has never said "You have to get 3 more friends before you become manager"

True, your boss won't say that and he/she might not even think it, but often you are offered jobs and given opportunities by the people you know. I came to this realization about networking late in life and had that "Ah-ha, so The Sims were right!" moment.

It also helps to be nice to your boss and your coworkers. Management is more likely to promote someone who is easy to get along with than someone everyone has trouble communicating with or liking.

[Johnny_Bravo]

I wonder why you need friends for a promotion. Like does your boss care if you have friends or not? :lol:

[Babahara]

Having friends for a job promotion doesn't seem realistic. My boss has never said "You have to get 3 more friends before you become manager"
I am currently a witness to a charismatic woman of no exceptional skill getting praised and promoted by the boss. She made friends with all important people at work.

Such qualities of charisma as high self-confidence and an authoritative attitude are easily confused for skill, too, so it's entirely realistic for it to be a career-boosting factor.

[mozgun]

I guess one solution to make friends for jobs seem realistic would be to pretend (whether or not they are really in your career track) that, say, Mary Sue Pleasant is my boss and Don Lothario is my coworker. Each time you are promoted, you get a new boss and coworkers. You still need to keep a good relationship with your underlings, however, to keep your career running smoothly.

[victory101]

I use the No Friends Needed for Careers hack, because it seems silly to me that whether or not you're promoted is based off of how many friends you have. Shy, introverted, and/or misanthropic sims should be able to succeed at work too!

And even with the hack, you can still have your sims schmooze their way to the top if it suits them -- just befriend the the people they bring home from work, or find a townie in the same career track but at a higher level. This seems way more realistic to me than having to butter up a random number of sims that don't have any connection to your sim's job at all.

[iCad]

I am currently a witness to a charismatic woman of no exceptional skill getting praised and promoted by the boss. She made friends with all important people at work.

Such qualities of charisma as high self-confidence and an authoritative attitude are easily confused for skill, too, so it's entirely realistic for it to be a career-boosting factor.

^ This. Absolutely true.

And I agree, too, that this was Maxis's attempt to simulate networking, increasing one's standing in the community/job market by knowing the right people, which often leads to better jobs. (Not necessarily with the same company you're currently working for, mind you.) In my own career, knowing the right people is essential, particularly in order to get studio musician gigs, which are my favorite gigs. For instance, I know a lot of people who score TV/movie soundtracks, either because I went to music school with them or because I came to know them later, usually through networking. So, they know me, sometimes are friends with me, and they know what I can do...so I get gigs, and off I go to LA (Yay. :/ ) or NYC (Meh. :| ) or occasionally Vancouver (YAY! :D ), where a lot of TV shows are produced. If I didn't know people, my career would be much poorer, on many levels. :lol: So, for the game, I think it's important for people in charismatic careers like Music or Show Business or Politics to have a lot of friends...and I believe those DO have higher friend requirements than most, so good on EAxis. (For once. ;) ) And I agree that Military SHOULD have the least...and it does, although at higher ranks, I'd think even there that "knowing the right people" might be helpful.

On the other hand, I DO agree that being friends with the guy who delivers pizza PROBABLY isn't going to do much for your career, unless you're also a pizza deliverer. It'd be nice if the friend requirement were only filled by being friends with people in the same or related careers. (For instance, Art and Music might "overlap;" I do get a surprising number of harp-playing gigs from artists for their gallery shows and such. And Music and Show Business definitely overlap; a good percentage of my income comes from studio gigs for movies/TV shows.) But that would probably make things quite difficult, both from a playing and perhaps from a programming point of view.

And on that note, that's why I decided to stop hacking out the friend requirement for promotion, as I had been doing for a long time. I like to make it harder for my Sims to get promotions, not easier. And, like someone else said, most of my Sims except for married-ins are born in game, so by the time they're a teen, they tend to have enough friends to get them at least half-way up the adult career ladder, and if they go to Uni and live in a dorm, they tend to come out of college with enough BFFs (Which take a loooooooooong time to degrade) to get them all the way to Level 10. :lol:

[AlexandraSpears]

I have the no friends required hack myself. Though with university and everything, my Sims are hitting the tops of their careers early and often (haha). Lately I couldn't care less about their LTW anymore. I'd only take the hack out if I want to make it harder.

[Peni Griffin]

This is one reason I like to make social groups of sims in the same profession. It's a big help in storymaking.

For instance, Luis Iana, looking for a more stable job with better family-sim hours, recently quit the dance track to work in the business track. Since he's a Guasimilan semi-legal simmigrant, and Gavin Newson's in labor management, I decided that Gavin needed somebody fluent in Guasimilan, who understands the specific needs and problems of the simmigrant workforce. Gavin is BFF with Ernest Munny, who brought Luis home from work and made friends with him; Ernest is in mining. Okay, that's a little random, but of course Ernest's mining conglomerate is a big employer and undoubtedly does a lot of its hiring assisted by Gavin's company. Luis comes home with some random townie and a promotion. So as far as the story is concerned, Ernest needed somebody to deal with some recent acquisitions in South Simerica, vetted Luis on Gavin's recommendation (Gavin and Luis aren't actually friends, but Luis didn't have any friends in the business track so I just took a logical opening, and you don't have to be actively friends with someone, if you do a good enough) and offered him the job. The random townie becomes the guy showing him the ropes in the new position and can be sent home with a joke (in case he's a networker; one joke, and they'll spit out their offer and then you can get rid of them). Ernest can now add Luis to the Business Sims social group and he'll go out with Gavin, Ernest, and Harris Hawkins once in awhile, making friends with Harris and Gavin and providing me with logical reasons for future random events in the story.

[annoainthere]

I find the simplest solution is to have two or more sims in the house and they each have 1 or 2 good friends (much easier to maintain relationships with 1 or 2 friends) making it easier to gain those promotions, as it's not who your Sim friends - it's the collective household's friends that score towards the friends known for promotion part of the job.

My alternative is to have 1 sim as a stay at home with popularity or family aspiration, even pleasure works too, and have them go make and maintain friendships, as your sim with the job doesn't need friends, friends are scored on the household's combined friends.

[AlexandraSpears]

Of course if you play with clean templates and you don't bother to generate townies...who are your Sims going to be friends with?

(When I make a custom 'hood, I have it set up to where it doesn't generate Pleasantview townies. I just get the social group townies. So I use the mailbox.)

[Peni Griffin]

Each other. You just make a bunch of CAS sims, move them in, and play them all. Makes it a lot harder to run a profitable business, of course.

[WooHoo31]

Yeah um, I also have the mod where you don't need friends to get promoted. :P Like others said, I don't find it realistic to need friends... What if I wanted a very serious job-oriented sim who doesn't have time for a social life?

Actually, I find that my sims usually never have any friends... Only their family... Oh well. :P

[MattShizzle]

In a way it's realistic. I have a degree and had a 3.75 GPA but could never get a job beyond what people who barely graduated HS got because I have Aspergers and no friends other than family and immediate neighbors. Not being able to read non-verbal communication at all is another reason. I tried to get a promotion using my degree but no luck and have been on Social Security since 2008. As far as the game is concerned I'm pretty sure business doesn't need many friends either without cheats.

[poisonapple88]

I also keep the friends thing in. I need townies in my game otherwise I get bored so many of my Sims have a lot of friends. Though, often enough, even though everything I need for a promotion is met, some Sims NEVER get promoted. Could be a bug with the lot or something but it's really annoying.

[Saturnfly]

The science career doesn't require many friends. Maybe medicine as well?

[TychoH]

I'm the opposite. Having friends for a job promotion doesn't seem realistic. My boss has never said "You have to get 3 more friends before you become manager"

I agree, but I don't want all of my Sims to reach the top of their career, so the you-need-friends-thing is a good one for them.
Hey, there are just 12 Sims in my hood!

[Peni Griffin]

Y'all, we've got a game with mpreg, Elixir of Life, cowplants, and pleading for your friend's life with a Grim Reaper who carries a cell phone and throws sticks for dogs to chase to heaven. I don't think "realism" was on the designers' minds, so much as "playability." Which is as it should be.

The requirement of friends for promotion was used in Sims1 so that players would be required to balance their sims' lives in order to advance, and as a game balancing mechanic it worked well. When Sims2 was designed, they wisely took things that weren't broken from Sims1, and didn't fix them. I think it's still a pretty elegant mechanic, though not in itself nearly as necessary as in Sims1; but that's true of most elements in Sims2, taken alone, simply because Sims2 has so many more elements.

[Sunbee]

http://snootysims.com/infoindex.php?id=careers http://www.snootysims.com/infoindex.php?id=seasonscareers

I use snootysims lists, when I need to know for some reason. They are still on line, but you have to google them because snootysims no longer links them any way I can find. That's the base game and seasons links.

[saskganesh]

However, becoming friends with the pizza delivery person and having that affect your ability to become CEO of a company is pretty unrealistic.

Oh I disagree. Having good friends in catering will make the big boardroom meeting go a lot smoother.

If the food is bad, it doesn't matter how sweet your powerpoint is.

[mozgun]

My sim Richard just married some downtownie named Holly Ryan. She brought in 13 friends! Plus, she is a Professional Party Guest, so she is home most of the day and can call up her friends. So, basically, my friend problem is fixed (for now)!

[Issie]

My sim Richard just married some downtownie named Holly Ryan. She brought in 13 friends! Plus, she is a Professional Party Guest, so she is home most of the day and can call up her friends. So, basically, my friend problem is fixed (for now)!

Don't you just love that when it happens? I also check to see what goodies they have in inventory and get dissappointed when some have nothing in them :)

I agree that Snooty Sims is best for any info in regards to gameplay (astrological signs and all) very handy!

[mozgun]

Holly must have some magical pockets because in them she had a hot tub, a pinball machine, a song dynasty vase, a potted palm tree, a piano, and a lawn flamingo to boot!

[VerDeTerre]

It's like Danny Kaye's song from Hans Christian Andersen, "Uncle Pockets"!

[AlexandraSpears]

My sim Richard just married some downtownie named Holly Ryan. She brought in 13 friends! Plus, she is a Professional Party Guest, so she is home most of the day and can call up her friends. So, basically, my friend problem is fixed (for now)!

Your Sim must have snagged the Diva. :)

That's an advantage to moving townies in....