Do you think our Service NPC's are freeloaders? (Service= Maids, Babysitters)

[jeanamariex3]

Understood. How about just changing the topic to "Do you think NPC's are freeloaders?" Then people wouldn't get so confused.

[Hosfac]

You started both threads, so feel free to do so.

[jeanamariex3]

It is now called our Service NPC's as appose to Babysitters.

[flootiebeauty]

This aspect of the sims kind of bothers me. I know it's just a game and it's meant to be funny, but I think it gives maids, babysitters, etc. a bad reputation. I know I'm probably taking this way too seriously, but I worked as a babysitter all throughout college and if I did half of the things that the babysitters do in the sims, I would have been fired instantly! The other day, I hired a babysitter so my sims could have a beach wedding party and not worry about their infant, and the babysitter just stood there holding the kid in his arms while he messed in his diaper, got very hungry, and then his social interactions dropped low too! So yes, I think the game makes them into freeloaders, and I really don't like it. I wish that more of the service NPCs had a better work ethic to show a more realistic balance of the types of people that are employed in homes.

[CSquared2]

Not to bump up an older topic, but I noticed something and remembered this thread.  I came back and I'll confirm with my own experience what a couple others pointed out about maids.  Grady came to clean Ernestine's house Monday.  I followed Ernestine to work.  At about 2pm the pop-up came up from Grady saying he was done and he took his pay.  When Ernestine got home, nothing had been done.  I was mad, but I also thought "What was he doing in this house all day?  There's nothing fun but a bookshelf!"  The next day was the same.  On Wednesday, I let Ernestine go to work on her own and I stayed behind to watch and see what Grady was doing.  That's when he started cleaning.  The same thing happened for the next three days, everything was spotless when he left earlier than when he was left on his own.  I had seen those "watch your hired help" warnings, too, but I had assumed they were for my sims, that the maid might not work unless Ernestine was home to supervise him.  I always thought that was pretty dumb, but now I really do think those warnings are for us.  I still think it's dumb, especially in with the advent of professions requiring you to actually follow your sim and direct her as to what to do, but at least I know how to get the maid to pick up a scrub brush, y'know?

[Hosfac]

So it isn't just me, then.  This is especially problematic with babysitters when I have sims go out at night to do interactive careers like Ghost Hunter or send them out to soak up some of the night life.  Really, we shouldn't have to keep an eye on them since our sims are paying them.

[TheChronicR]

So that's what it indicates! Me too, I thought it was for our Sims or just one of those usual EA jokes, but never thought it was a warning. Thanks.

[CSquared2]

I've become a stay-at-home husband because of this!    I hope Ernestine's real future husband won't mind.    I'll play a little more today and try something different that may help with sims with professions rather than careers.  I'm going to try bouncing back and forth between Ernestine and the house and see what Grady does.  It may not be necessary to watch him the entire time.

So here's my experiment and its results.  I wanted to know if simply checking in on Grady did any good.  I followed Ernestine to work at 8:00.  I gave Grady until 11:30 to get to the house and start working.  He always arrives by 11 and starts work within a few minutes.  At 11:30 I zipped back to the house to find Grady standing outside the front door and everything as I left it intentionally, breakfast dishes sitting out, an old newspaper outside and the bed unmade.  Immediately Grady went for the dirty plate and washed it.  I went back to Ernestine and gave him another hour.  When I went back at 12:30, he was still standing at the sink with no additional chores done.  He headed for the old paper and threw it away.  I kind of knew what would happen, but to be thorough, I zipped back to Ernestine and waited until 1:30.  Back at the house, I found Grady standing outside by the trash can, the bed still unmade.  Upon "my arrival," he immediately made the bed and, finished with his work, left.

Lesson learned: simply checking your maid (if it's Grady, at least) will make him or her work while you're watching.  I wonder if they all behave the same way.  I'm going to try a couple other things, too.  I want to know if while I watch Grady, he starts an action that requires multiple steps, like picking up multiple dishes, if he'll finish that action even though I'm not watching.  I suspect so, but I'll have to see.  Also, I wonder if watching when Grady arrives at the house makes any difference.  A suggestion: Ernestine doesn't have a lot of money, so I don't hire Grady all the time.  He usually only comes during the week when she's at work.  She has a career in a rabbit hole, so I'm content to stay at home and supervise Grady.  If you can get your sims to make their own beds and wash their own dishes, hiring a maid just two or three times a week for the day to clean surfaces and appliances and then canceling the service might suffice.  Be careful about calling the night before to schedule the maid, though; I've had them show up that night doing that.  At any rate, we don't pay the maids hourly as we did in TS2, so whether he works quickly when I follow his every move or inefficiently only when I'm watching, he's paid the same and the work gets done.  As long as I watch.  Weirdo.  

I'd love to hear anyone else's trials with other NPCs.

[Hosfac]

I might have been the first person in this thread to discover this.

I was playing a "homeless sim" who was a single mother.  She lives on a 10x10 "vacant lot," in which the only two pieces of furniture she has is a park bench and a street light.  She has lived on this lot since she was a teenager (I moved her in there with an adult and then killed the adult off and reduced household funds to 0),  and every simolean she has she has mooched off other sims.  Once she aged up to adult, I had her befriend/romance the first male sim she met and got her pregnant, just to make things interesting.

There is literally nothing for her to do on her lot for to see to any needs other than sleep (and she naps on the park bench for that), so she has to go elsewhere to fulfill them.  When her child was an infant, it was problematic for her to take an infant places, so she left her daughter at home when she went out to mooch food, watch tv at the gym or bathe in the various sinks around town.  Thus, she hired a babysitter.

Any time she would leave the lot, my attention would be on her.  However, the baby's needs would drop so low that her picture on the side of the screen would turn bright red.  When I clicked on her picture to see what the issue was, her social, hunger and hygiene needs were bottomed out.  Likewise, I'd get a warning occasionally that if I didn't see to her hunger soon, social services would come and take her.  So I think "what in the world is that babysitter doing?"

When I pan over to the lot, the babysitter is standing beside the mailbox, doing absolutely nothing.  I'd send my sim home to fire her, but shortly after the camera settled over the lot, she'd jump to pick up the baby and feed her.  After the same thing happened a few days in a row, I started noticing the pattern.  So I started experimenting with her like you did with the maid.  Literally any time the camera was not on her, she'd stand around and do nothing.  The moment it was, she started working.

I figured this was a problem exclusive to Bridgeport, since I had never encountered it before playing there.  However, after I discovered this, it has happened in every town with every babysitter, without fail.  However, I've never had the opportunity to test this with maids, since I usually have a "Neat" sim in the house to begin with.

Thus I have to wonder if this is a bug, or if the game is simply unable to handle autonomous behavior when the camera is off watching another sim.

[CSquared2]

I guess it's hard to know if it's a bug or if it's intentional, but my suspicion is that it's intentional, but outdated.  The makers of the game obviously knew, in my mind, that the behavior of hired NPCs would be affected by the presence of the camera or they wouldn't have included the blurb on the loading screen regarding watching hired help.  I suspect EA had no concrete plans for Ambitions when it released the base game.  After all, World Adventures came in between and that's a whole EP worth of planning, programming and testing to do before considering Ambitions.  I mention Ambitions because it's the first EP to cause sims to require direction during the work day that also requires you be witness to and party to what they're doing.  With rabbit hole careers, it's simple enough to direct them from home.  My guess is EA realized rabbit holes were boring, figured players would make families and have more than one sim, increasing the likelihood of a sim being at home most of the time, and the camera would be directed toward the house (and the sim who was actually doing something) anyway, thus reducing the effect of a very bad programming choice for NPCs.  Fortunately, not every moment of a sim's day need be supervised while performing tasks for their profession, so checking back on NPCs isn't totally inconvenient.  Just a little bit.   

[Hosfac]

I guess it's hard to know if it's a bug or if it's intentional, but my suspicion is that it's intentional, but outdated.  The makers of the game obviously knew, in my mind, that the behavior of hired NPCs would be affected by the presence of the camera or they wouldn't have included the blurb on the loading screen regarding watching hired help.

A third possible option is that perhaps there is a limitation in the autonomous AI itself that they cannot work around or correct.  Kind of like how humans can't fly without an airplane or other external device:  it's not really a "bug" in our genetic code, it's just something that can't be done.  It's part of the limitations of being a human being.

I suspect that you may be right, however that blurb about watching the NPC's has been in place since the base game.  But as there wasn't much reason to follow a sim to work before Ambitions, it's highly possible these interactive careers (and the other things sims can leave the house to do) are the reason that we're noticing this issue now instead of when the base game was released.

[CSquared2]

Here's another unexpected gem: when Ernestine is home, but I'm not watching them, Grady continues working.  To me that suggests it may indeed be as you suggest, Hosfac: when the camera is not on the maid but is elsewhere attending to an active sim, the game doesn't maintain the maid's autonomous action, whether it can't or is programmed not to.  When the active sim is in the same location as the maid, the game does maintain the maid's autonomous action.  The only unusual thing about the situation I observed is that it was not a normal work day for Grady.  I had forgotten to rehire him and asked Ernestine to do it late in the day.  If that changes something, I don't know.  It sure didn't change him helping himself to a bowl of soup (his meal break?)  At least he cleaned up his own dishes this time.  And then he brushed his teeth.  Then he went back to work, but still didn't perform all the cleaning tasks (namely, he forgot to make the bed) before he left.  He did work through a complicated, multi-step task, collecting dishes and washing them all, even though I wasn't watching.  In retrospect, I've had trouble with this in the past when it came to maids doing laundry.  I've no plans to purchase a washer and dryer for Ernestine, so whether the presence of the camera might also help with that will remain a mystery for the time being.  Grady also moved between tasks without observation, again, though, when Ernestine was present at home, though I had the camera elsewhere.  Leaving a sim behind at home might be enough to induce the maid to work, though it may require that sim be the active, selected sim (the one whose plumb bob you see).  That's another scenario I'll have to try when Ernestine does marry someday.

I understand a little more than I did before, but every answer brings more questions.  I won't pretend to know everything about this game, but even when I think I'm learning, the complexity of it still astounds me.

One more experiment: I waited at the house for Grady to arrive and begin working, then left to be with Ernestine at work.  No surprises, Grady stopped working once he finished the task he was completing when the camera moved away.

[jeanamariex3]

The camera was centered at my house while I accepted the offer from the maid to clean up all the trash. (Remember the picture of all those rats I posted from the challenge I received from the Riverview Budget Home?) She still didn't stick with her that she would clean up. Ugh. The female maids are just so high maintenance. They can't even stand to clean up the house. I mean it's like come on, it's your job did you think the mess was going to clean up itself? The guy maids actually do their job.

The babysitters in Riverview however, actually do their jobs. They tend to the baby, and watch TV after the baby is put to sleep and the needs are up. Candy Ashleydale was swimming in the Goth's pool (the had another baby after Morty) while Layla's needs were low. Layla almost got taken away.      Davy Linell actually napped on my couch, while my toddler Chowder's needs were rock bottom. Jake Rowland actually came and took Chowder away.

EDIT: Jake Rowland is the male NPC Social Worker for Child Protective Services, for future references.

EDIT AGAIN:

 

So it isn't just me, then.  This is especially problematic with babysitters when I have sims go out at night to do interactive careers like Ghost Hunter or send them out to soak up some of the night life.  Really, we shouldn't have to keep an eye on them since our sims are paying them.

So that's what it indicates! Me too, I thought it was for our Sims or just one of those usual EA jokes, but never thought it was a warning. Thanks.

*Banging head against wall, for being unaware of what is common sense.* There are messages at the beginning of the game (when you go to load it), that give you tips. One of them said: "Keep an eye on Sims you hire over the phone. Not everyone works hard for their pay." Anyone else ever get that message? EA did this intentionally.[/u] Why else would they put that message up on the loading screen?

[TheChronicR]

*Banging head against wall, for being unaware of what is common sense.* There are messages at the beginning of the game (when you go to load it), that give you tips. One of them said: "Keep an eye on Sims you hire over the phone. Not everyone works hard for their pay." Anyone else ever get that message? EA did this intentionally.[/u] Why else would they put that message up on the loading screen?

I used to get that message quite often with only the Vanilla Base Game, but with 3 EPs coming around, I haven't seen it quite often. But I've seen it. And didn't get the meaning! Ugh.  Now I know. 

[Hosfac]

The camera was centered at my house while I accepted the offer from the maid to clean up all the trash. (Remember the picture of all those rats I posted from the challenge I received from the Riverview Budget Home?) She still didn't stick with her that she would clean up. Ugh. The female maids are just so high maintenance. They can't even stand to clean up the house. I mean it's like come on, it's your job did you think the mess was going to clean up itself? The guy maids actually do their job.

Actually, during the meteor shower challenge, the cleaning service offers to help, not clean the house for you.  The sim is expected to do part of the work, or there's not much challenge involved.  I expect that the rat challenge is no different in this respect.