Greetings folks!
First of all let me say that, I'm a unusual kind of player, who's always been a fan of little sims. In fact, most of my sims life spams are a huge preparation for offspring, therefore I was quite excited for the new daycare career, picturing the time spent with the little ones playing and teaching them, as well as the huge tips and enhanced relationships with the parents for teaching their little treasures to walk or instructing them till honor list.
Then came reality...
I've made a new sim with family oriented and the new nurturing trait and started a daycare right away, assembling a decent kitchen, purchasing an activity table and a potty seat, figuring that as money flowed I'd better equip the nursery and the rest of the place.
Receive two toddlers at first , to take care from 9am to 7pm, however they do not behave as ordinary ones.
A message board appears every time the cursor is over the kid, with messages as "Jane Do is a bit smelly/is very smelly", "John Do would care for a snack/is really hungry" (I don't know how is the actual message in English, since I play a translated version) and these needs are constant. While caring for your own child, it's necessary to change dippers once, twice a day, daycare toddlers require up to 5 changes a day and multiple bottles during the work hours (notice: 9am to 7pm = 10 out of 24 hours). In the first carrier levels it's possible to read 1/10 of a book between suppling the kid's needs, but when you got 4 toddler in the house, as soon as you finish feeding the last one the first is already crying for a change of dipper or some attention, even worse when you get children around, but I'll get to that.
Another very frustrating issue is that differentiated care doesn't seen to matter at all. Feeding a toddler with ambrosia in the high chair (yes, I needed cheating to do it) doesn't seen to make any difference than giving a bottle on the floor; potty training or finish reading a skill book doesn't do anything for your performance or payment, in fact, kids don't seen to increase any skills AT ALL while in daycare, even if they spend the entire day playing with the xylophone.
After a few promotions children start coming to your house after school. By that time 4 toddlers are already in and you have only 4 work hours left, meaning you can only tell the children to do their homework - which must be made individually - and serve a group meal, which your sim most likely won't share, since he or she still have to take care for the toddlers.
As a result, the chance of having good evaluations by all your clients' parents is about the same as wining the lottery and been struck by a lighting 12 times - in the same day -. Since you are two busy with the toddlers, if the children feel lonely or need to have fun you can only pray they can handle themselves on their own.
At the top levels of the carrier your sim will get a "problem child" (not accurate - translated version...) who will:
1. arrive;
2. break something;
3. break something else;
4. do the homework if commanded to;
5. break yet another thing;
6. have a meal when called to;
7. break wherever is left if there's a spare time.
Two special interactions are available with the problem child - reprehend and talk about problems (accuracy, translated...) - at a certain point I gave up all other kids and focused on this one, after that, she arrived, broke something, broke something else...
The interaction "stop doing that" (acc... you know it!) don't work by what it seen to be a bug: my sim waited for the child to finish breaking the object and just then told her to stop. Not exactly efficient.
The career is half short compared to full times jobs, which at first I thought great, since it takes forever to reach the top of ambitions professions, but then I realized the week payment stops raising at puny $500. You can imagine the happy smile on my face.
By the end, my sim wakes up at 6 am, have breakfast, shower and goes on working till 7pm, by then she has the children's leftover, fixes the objects broken by the 40 inches Satan, cleans up the house - can't spend or repairmen or cleaning ladies if I'll ever build a bedroom for her own child - and goes to bed at about 1am for a half night of sleep, possibly with the stir crazy moodlet if it's the end of the week.
The only good thing I saw on this career is that the celebrity, super friendly and everyones' best friend charisma challenges are achieved nearly automatic, and when the daycare owner has his own children, they can make tons of friends, possibly completing the super popular lifetime wish in the first ten days, with normal life spam.
However, all considering, it makes me disappointed to see that EA really messed up this career, not by limitations of the own game - the resources are all there waiting to be put to use -, but by what it seems to me like a hush to release a new product, without the proper thought and dedication it required.
At last, I must highlight that, as this topic tittle states, those are first impressions. Perhaps there's more to this career to be known, a better way to do things, surprises not yet enlighten, full of joy, hope and a stunning pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
But I'm not counting on it.
