Hi again. This has nothing to do with my little 5-0 Career project, just in case anyone wonders

I don't know if it's a glitch with the game or caused by one of the mods installed, but here's my problem: I have one Sim in Law Enforcement and he got an Opportunity related to travelling:
Improving Disguises (title), Travel to Shang Simla, meet 4 new Sims, and go to work (goals to complete).
It's all well and good, pretty straightforward and as it happens, I was planning to send those two Sims on a vacation to China anyway.

However, when they arrive at the basecamp (SP does it's thing, I have Relativity to make time go a little slower, the same 4 notifs I get whenever I start up the game and load the save show up like always), the Opportunity is gone. His friend still has his Opps, but neither of them are work-related (so they just say 'return home to finish' or, in one case, Travel to Egypt). And I check the Career tab (which in the pop up says they're on vacation and don't need to worry about work), they're both shown as unemployed.

I sent them both home to make sure, and yes, they retain their jobs at the same level they were before travelling, no issues there. So I figured they're meant to show up as unemployed (NRaas MC gives the same status because for all intents and purposes, while on vacation, they're 'unemployed', i.e. no work schedule - this is me assuming that's how the game handles it). But the Opportunity is still gone. Ergo, there's likely no way to complete it since it disappears when they get to China and doesn't reappear when coming home, not to mention it's a one-off, so I can't repeat it (I saved before telling them to go on their vacation, my saving grace to keep that Opp until I figure out a way around this).

I have a lot of modules from NRaas in my game, though I believe the only ones that might touch this (if it is caused and/or can even be fixed by NRaas) would be MC, Traveler, SP and possibly Mover. If it makes a difference (thought it shouldn't), they're in Isla Paradiso, all EPs except ITF, no stuff packs.

Edit: Before posting, I decided to try a couple more things. I gave the other sim a work-related Opp as well and got them both out the front gate (they had kind of stopped halfway to the street before the loading screen came on). The 2nd Sim has a custom career with custom Opps (like Mobster) though, and either because it had nothing to do with China or travelling, he still had it when they got there. The 1st one (in Law Enforcement) lost his Opp again. Also, weren't they supposed to drive somewhere before the loading screen pops up? One of them got the car out but that was it, straight to loading, I don't remember it working like that.

If anyone knows what's happening or a way to fix it, please let me know. I tried to check 'Retain Dreams and Opportunities' the second time around, and I shouldn't have to because no dreams/wishes are lost, just the one Opp. I'm all out of ideas here except deleting the cache files (again) before loading the game, can't see how that'd help. Thanks.
--Ellie

The getting in a car or other vehicle to drive off the map before the travel transition begins is pure eye candy. It doesn't really matter, the transition will begin after a timeout countdown no matter what the sims appear to be doing on screen unless something goes horribly wrong (like as sim gets reset) in short interim period. I often retreat to Map View while waiting since watching them try to do stuff that they won't really have time to complete, if they aren't in a vehicle, is kind of distracting to me.

Retain Dreams and Opps, also referred to here as Dream Catching, is for what happens when you switch active households within the same world, not for travel.

I get that the opportunity is broken and the reason you believe it to be so might be valid (the sims are considered unemployed temporarily). But in case you weren't aware, MC can be used to hand out an opportunity to a sim at any time if they are deemed eligible to receive it.
NRaas > MC > (Sim) > Basic > Opportunity (or Opportunity By Category)

DebugEnabler can be used to actually grant completion of an opportunity if you have taken the sim through the motions of having done so and the game is just not recognizing and rewarding your efforts.
On the sim, NRaas > DE > Options:Sim (or Smartphone) > Opportunities

Does that help at all?

Hey, Igazor. Thanks for replying. I knew the 'Dream Catching' option was a long shot, didn't really expect it to work. I don't really switch between households so it shouldn't make much of a difference, I only play with one family per save. I'll eventually set it back to default. I'm glad to hear Sims not getting in the car doesn't matter when travelling, it just threw me off.

I'm not using DebugEnabler right now, but might as well add it to complete that damn Opp manually without travelling. If that's possible since you mention completing the goals and the game not realizing I've done them already - is it necessary to complete them, or would I be able to just complete the Opp without doing anything by using DE and still get the rewards?

As for MC, yes, I'm aware of those options, that's how I gave the other Sim a career Opp to see if it disappeared too along with their 'employed' state. But it didn't, it just told me to return home to complete it (which in the case of that particular Opp makes sense). My conclusion was that they're stated as unemployed because for as long as they're travelling, they're on vacation, and therefore don't have a work schedule, and that's fine with me. But I don't think that's what's breaking this Opp in particular. And more to the point of your suggestion, I can't add the Opp through MC while in China because they're 'unemployed': the list I get by category includes Adventure (the job board Opps I believe) and then all the skills, though I didn't test if it shows up in the complete list (by name), which it shouldn't since it should be just a master list of the ones divided into the categories anyway; and I can't add the career again either, which makes sense because they aren't really unemployed, once they're back home they pick up right where they left off.
For some reason I could add a job (Active or Self-Employed kinds) through MC while travelling if I'm remembering it correctly, but not the rabbithole careers.

I scoured the web for anyone with a similar problem and on the last post in this thread (apologies if I messed up the wikitext to add the link since I can't preview it), the poster says they still have the Opp when they arrive in China, which I don't, but it also disappears when they try to complete the goals by meeting the first local. Same thing happens with similar Opps in Journalism apparently.
Either not a lot of people have gotten this Opp in the game and tried to do it, also failed and reported it somewhere, or they did but had no problems completing it, or something in my game is removing it after travelling and thus won't let me complete it. Can't figure out if it's an EA glitch or caused by something I've added/altered with mods. Other links, in this case the exact same issue I'm having, with no solution: <a class="wiki_link_ext" href="http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discuss ... tunity-bug" rel="nofollow">here</a>, <a class="wiki_link_ext" href="https://www.reddit.com/r/thesims/commen ... ed_career/" rel="nofollow">here</a> and <a class="wiki_link_ext" href="http://forums.thesims.com/en_us/discuss ... r-in-china" rel="nofollow">here</a>. I haven't found anyone claiming they've completed any of these types of Career Opps that require travelling, has anyone here managed to do at least one? For some people the Opp is still there but they can't do it, for others (like me) it simply vanishes. No info on what's happening or any clue why or what might be causing it. Also no Error logs from the times (in real life hours) when I had them travelling, ErrorTrap doesn't seem to be catching anything related to it.

In the end, it's like I cancelled that Opp myself, which I obviously didn't. There are a few things I haven't tested yet: sending that Sim alone to China and having him 'book' the trip for both of them instead, though honestly I don't see how that would help at all. For my sanity's sake, and in case I need it in the future, I'm going to get DebugEnabler anyway and check my options with it. I would send a strongly worded 'request' for help to EA on this, but chatter is they don't even have anyone working on it anymore.

Any help is appreciated, guys, specially if you can test it in your own games and let me know if it happens to you or if you can get it to work.
If needed, I'll list the NRaas Mods I have and even try to export their settings as logs for review, so let me know. Most of them are the default settings though.
--Ellie

Your first 'here' link is rather old but my experience is still the same: almost all career related opportunities which require traveling to WA worlds disappear on arrival. The only ones which work reliably are ones where my sims have to deliver an object in inventory to someone. For example, there is an opportunity in the Criminal career (IIRC) where your sim has to deliver a package; that one always works in my game. I recently had a sim in the LE career get an opportunity to learn the martial arts skill in China, and unfortunately I don't remember if that worked or not. The only reason I might have tried it is because the career opportunities which regularly fail for me are the ones requiring my sim to speak to a local for some reason. I still don't accept those since they never work in my game.

I haven't found a solution and have given up on those.

TreyNutz, I'd seen your comment in one of those links xD It's a shame it doesn't work for you either, and I'm aware it's an 'old issue', but that's exactly the reason it should have been resolved already if it's an EA bug or glitch. After all, these Opps have been around since the launch of the WA expansion, which was the first, and relate to base game careers. It's reasonable to think someone would've reported it and it would've gotten some kind of fix (or attempt at one) in the patches after that.
Thing is, those links are pretty much all the mentions I could find of this issue, and they're not all the same. In particular, in the first link I shared (thread from 2012), the last poster claims they still see the Opp in their tab until they try to meet the locals, and it only vanishes after that. Whereas for me, it's already gone the moment the game loads my Sims in China, and still gone when they return home.

I'd at the very least like to know if this is widespread, and therefore likely EA's screw up, or if there's a chance it's being caused by one of the mods, something I could alter the settings of, tune or take out momentarily until I've finished the Opp as expected. For instance, if someone has managed to do one of these 'meet the locals' opp, with or without mods in their game, by travelling there and having it work properly (or close enough to it).

Thanks for your take on it, Trey.
--Ellie

To go back a few steps, sorry was away for a while, I believe that DE doesn't really require that the Opps goals be reached to get the rewards. it's there for testing (or cheating if one prefers) and is especially helpful when playing what one knows is a chain of Opps but getting stuck part way through. I would use it only if everything else related to an Opp failed to produce completion, but can't even remember the last time I've done that.

My brain has been filtering out most Opps involving any kind of travel since near the beginning since they are so fragile -- or apparently in the case of these employment related ones, just don't work. I think where I really lost it is when a kid in school, might have been a teen by then, got an Opp involving travel to Al Simhara to "interview a native" or something like that. The kid was born in this homeworld, but his mother was Egyptian so all he should have had to do was wait for her to get home from work that day and have a chat if understood what was being asked of him correctly (rolls eyes remembering this now).

Long story short, my sims travel when I want them to for other reasons not when the game wants them to. I just dismiss these things as they come up. There's so much to do in this game that I never run out of things that my sims are each working on.

Update: With DebugEnabler, while trying to figure out how to complete the opp like Igazor suggested - couldn't find an option to do it, would you mind giving me more information on that? I have options to add opps and a few others but if one is meant to automatically complete it, I can't tell which one it is. - I found the seemingly handy option to add an opp from the list to a sim manually.

So, knowing my opp would disappear once the Sims arrived in China, I decided to try adding it back with DE. Just like with MC, it didn't work, giving me a notice that the Sim didn't fulfil the requirements for that opp.

Here's the kicker: I had cruised through GameplayData.package (yet again) looking for the file that added these opps to the game and saved it to a notepad so I could use Ctrl+F and find the details of it easily. I just checked the code:
<OpportunitiesRequirements>
<GUID>EP1_CareerPolice_MeetLocals</GUID>
</OpportunitiesRequirements>
No requirements listed. Other than the obvious, which would be that the Sim is in Law Enforcement, otherwise it wouldn't make sense. This is looking more and more like a glitch that's caused by the fact that they're temporarily listed as 'unemployed'. No police career, no related career opps available. Still doesn't explain how someone was able to still see it in the opp tab before it disappeared as they were trying to meet a local, but since that thread was old it might be because of a later patch that broke this opp even further.

And I think I've run out of options here. I can't add the career back while they're on vacation; and if I can, that sounds like it could be game breaking without even being completely sure that's what's causing it.

I know there isn't much in terms of development going on with NRaas mods nowadays, but if you guys end up picking this up and finding a way to fix it (as an addition to traveller maybe), or might consider looking into it, please let me know.
I'd take it up with EA myself if they still cared enough to listen to the people who bought their product and giving support for it, but I can't even find a way to contact them about game glitches and I've seen plenty of complaints from others on how they didn't do much even when they still worked on Sims 3.

I'll be waiting on the 'walkthrough' to complete an opp through DE, Igazor Thanks for everything.
--Ellie

Whoa there. Wait a minute or three, let's clear a few things up if we could.

1 - I can't give you a "walk-through" because I would be flying just as blindly through this as anyone else who has never played around with these cross-world Opps. Except for a small number of commands like Fix Invisible Sims and Sim object resets, DE has always been a use at your own risk type of mod. It is merely an interface into debugging commands that EA left in the game with no other way for mere players to access, it's not like these things are documented anywhere we can see.

2 - If you want a sim to regain their career while in China, then you need (a) a police station in China (or whichever rabbithole lot houses their homeworld career) and set Traveler to Treat as Vacation > False. You will need to set the latter back to True before returning home. I have no idea what this will do with their career once they return home, probably no other impact, and have no idea if this will make the Opp work better but this is something I don't believe you have tried yet. I think we'll have to call this "My Final Offer" on the matter.

3 - It doesn't matter how you approach EA with bugs and issues, there hasn't been a TS3 development team over there for coming up on four years now and from all indications they aren't very likely to ever re-assemble one. Would it show that they cared any more if they seemed to provide a way to listen to your report and then subsequently did nothing with it? If they do decide to remaster and/or work on TS3 that would be a very interesting direction for them to take, but honestly I wouldn't count on that ever happening at this point.

4 - I know there isn't much in terms of development going on with NRaas mods nowadays...
Kindly take a look at the mod updates we have in beta testing, and think about NRaas Chemistry that doesn't appear there yet because it is far too soon in its development cycle to be functional and ready for more than pre-alpha stress tests. You may want to re-think this assessment.
<a href="http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Update+Hist ... Testing</a>
<a href="http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Chemistry+P ... Testing</a>

Oh, back on (2) above of course China doesn't have a City Hall. The map tag of Base Camp or an in-game computer should suffice to reach townwide mod settings like those of Traveler in that case.

I may have worded things in a way that confused you or read in a certain way, let me clear my own reply up a little. I'll use your points as guidelines.

1 - By 'walkthrough' I only meant instructions along the lines of: click your Sim > NRaas > DE > Opportunity ... and whatever came next, if you knew which option it was. Rest assured that the only person I'll hold responsible for messing my game up is myself xD and I have backups to restore in case I do. If you don't know which options it was, or perhaps it's not available for this opp in particular, that's fine. I'm guessing I'll have to abandon it anyway.

2 - I don't remember seeing 'Treat as Vacation' in Traveller before sending them off, but from how you wrote it (and then the 2nd reply on it) I'm assuming you mean it shows while already on vacation in China? If so, you're right, I didn't look into that while there already (didn't even know "City Hall NRaas access" was done in Base Camp, really there's so much I don't know, I'm sitting here just coming up with hypothesis), so I'll see what that does as a test. If I can set the career again or if it shows by setting Treat as Vacation to False, give him the opp, try to complete it and send them home immediately after to see what happens to his career. Whether it works or not, I'll leave a note here too. And in any case, I have a test save for these things to keep the original before the trip safe. Thanks for the suggestion, promise not to bother you with this any longer after I try it.

3 - That's precisely what I meant. They're just not going to work on Sims 3 anymore, and frankly, I've seen the prices on the various Sims 4 products available. It's just my opinion, but all I see is profit maximisation from them, and that's just sad.

4 - I apologise for my assumption. Though what I meant was that it wasn't the hive of active development it once was? Which might still be wrong, I wasn't around when that was happening either xD I'm glad to see a team still working on it despite how long it's been, specially when the company that created the game seems to have shelved it to collect dust. Also, I'm fairly new to the structure of this place, I had little idea where I'd find what's being worked on, except update history which I've checked recently to ensure the mods I had installed were all the latest version available. Thanks for the links, Chemistry as an expansion on how Sims are attracted to each other sounds like it'll be a great addition to the game!

In conclusion, I sincerely apologise for however what I wrote might have been read as. I try to make my writing clear and polite, but it wouldn't be the first time someone read a tone I didn't intend because we don't know each other well enough. That just happens, we're all human Let me just say I'm very grateful for all the tips and replies, wasn't offended by anything and I hope I didn't offend anyone else either.

Oh and given how I've proven I know very little even if it sounds like I know what I'm talking about, if you ever find bad advice (with good intentions) in my replies to other people, please correct me. I've only replied to a few but I don't want to mislead anyone and it's a great way to learn something new so I always check them when I'm here.
--Ellie