Going to elaborate on that @JoAnne65 With Ambitions you get clients who want makeovers and specific shoes,this is Sims 3!!!
If that guy just happens to be the sim that I seen giving flowers to my wife he is walking out my salon with a stunning pink mowhawk some speedo's paired with yellow swim fins and fabulous guyliner.Will I lose my job?? Nope,will he be angry?? Yupp I go give the next sim a glorious look and all is well in the world.
If you are a home designer they give you a list of needs and wants like a new game room with new curtains etc..do I care what they want NO!!! this is Sims 3 I am HGTV trained and do what I want.My idea is a neon lit room with a pool table and a bar and some FX machines shooting lasers with bubbles blowing out the back of the bar.And I even sold a couch of theirs to help fund my project because it was tacky and not needed.
Ambitions is awesome I never follow the rules and heck most times the client ends up blown away and loves it.Will admit to getting RL rage when I turn a frumpy townie into a supermodel fashion goddess and they hate looking beautiful and get angry it really does make me upset
Sims 3 is driven by the players imagination,same with LEGOs why it is the highest selling toy of all time.You are given a box of pieces a suggestion to make what is on the cover yet 90 percent don't want to make a spaceship and build a house or a bird instead.we get the tools to make what we want however we want and agree Sims 4 will never be that
@CravenLestat Well said. Comparing TS3 to TS4 is like comparing Lego to play dough. One would appeal to a younger crowd while the other can be taken apart and reassembled as you wish.
Funny as everyone always said that TS4 looked like play dough...
@king_of_simcity7 It is true though,LEGO company sells one product one toy and blows away all competition because you play with their toy the way you want.Some have art galleries with LEGO sculptures some make nothing but animals like tigers and giraffes very few make what was on the cover or on the instructions and LEGO company knew this.Imagination is not static you can change your mind on a vision at will and the outcome of the game or toy will bend to that change and you are not penalized for it.
Like Joanne65 said about World Adventures so many complained that it was not sandbox etc but WA is whatever you want it to be.I have been to China 3 straight vacations and never did a single mission.I set up a tent right in the center of the market and hit on the sim ladies skinny dip in the public fountain or my fairy would visit locals houses to set traps on their stuff and stand across the street and watch them get their mail only to be stung by the bees I put in it you know what I mean torture townies.If anything they should have called it "Dang you should have been arrested" or "You have no morals" expansion.
My only real complaint about WA is that if it's enabled your sims constantly get Opportunities that require you to travel to one of it's new areas. Never mind that your Law Enforcement sim just started working as a cop and is dead broke, they want you to fly to China right now and find some relics so the brass can look into how they could be used by smugglers. Forget the fact that your sim is broke after buying their first home, your new boss at the theater wants you to fly to Le Champs right now because she's got a craving for Nectar. No, she doesn't care that your paycheck was only a couple hundred simoleons. Nor does she care that it costs roughly a thousand simoleons a day to vacation in Le Champs. "What's that? You're living out of a sleeping bag because the real estate agent lied about there being a structure built on your brand new $15k plot of land? Who cares, I want my nectar NOW! And you only have three days to deliver it to me!"
And why does the school think little Sammy, a child mind you, can afford to fly to Al Simhara in the middle of the week in order to interview people and write a five page essay? Especially if Sammy's mom is struggling to pay the bills as it is?
That said, I LOVE the new worlds and find the tomb exploration adventures to be clever and well thought out.
Fear not the fae, for they are harmless. Anger not the fae, beware their wraith. Harm not the fae, fear the Faerie Knight.
LOL @Faerie197 You could always play the bad cop and have the klepto trait.A little extortion funding never hurt I mean is that sim really going to miss that vase or lamp or 3,000 painting You work hard keeping the citizens of your town alive and deserve a lil extra income.
And why does the school think little Sammy, a child mind you, can afford to fly to Al Simhara in the middle of the week in order to interview people and write a five page essay? Especially if Sammy's mom is struggling to pay the bills as it is?
This one is even sillier when little Sammy is 2nd generation Egyptian and his mother is actually from Al Simhara.
But getting opps that we have no real intention of ever accepting is all part of the charm of the game to me.
My only real complaint about WA is that if it's enabled your sims constantly get Opportunities that require you to travel to one of it's new areas. Never mind that your Law Enforcement sim just started working as a cop and is dead broke, they want you to fly to China right now and find some relics so the brass can look into how they could be used by smugglers. Forget the fact that your sim is broke after buying their first home, your new boss at the theater wants you to fly to Le Champs right now because she's got a craving for Nectar. No, she doesn't care that your paycheck was only a couple hundred simoleons. Nor does she care that it costs roughly a thousand simoleons a day to vacation in Le Champs. "What's that? You're living out of a sleeping bag because the real estate agent lied about there being a structure built on your brand new $15k plot of land? Who cares, I want my nectar NOW! And you only have three days to deliver it to me!"
And why does the school think little Sammy, a child mind you, can afford to fly to Al Simhara in the middle of the week in order to interview people and write a five page essay? Especially if Sammy's mom is struggling to pay the bills as it is?
That said, I LOVE the new worlds and find the tomb exploration adventures to be clever and well thought out.
Can't say I recognize this Sure your new sim will get that whim to travel (you can either click on it or ignore it, it's not like it's in your face) as a small reminder you could decide to make your sim save some money for that. If you ignore the whim however, it will not return. 'Ok' the game will say, 'fair enough, you don't allow your sim that little break to combine some sun with tomb raiding even when the money needed will only take finding a few gems on a late sunday afternoon, fine, how about him starting to learn how to play the guitar then? He did buy one after all.' If there's one thing that works perfectly in Sims 3, it's the whims system.
(you are aware by the way little Sammy can take that flight 30 minutes before the school bus arrives without getting into any trouble by the way? That bus will be there right after he has returned)
My only real complaint about WA is that if it's enabled your sims constantly get Opportunities that require you to travel to one of it's new areas. Never mind that your Law Enforcement sim just started working as a cop and is dead broke, they want you to fly to China right now and find some relics so the brass can look into how they could be used by smugglers. Forget the fact that your sim is broke after buying their first home, your new boss at the theater wants you to fly to Le Champs right now because she's got a craving for Nectar. No, she doesn't care that your paycheck was only a couple hundred simoleons. Nor does she care that it costs roughly a thousand simoleons a day to vacation in Le Champs. "What's that? You're living out of a sleeping bag because the real estate agent lied about there being a structure built on your brand new $15k plot of land? Who cares, I want my nectar NOW! And you only have three days to deliver it to me!"
And why does the school think little Sammy, a child mind you, can afford to fly to Al Simhara in the middle of the week in order to interview people and write a five page essay? Especially if Sammy's mom is struggling to pay the bills as it is?
That said, I LOVE the new worlds and find the tomb exploration adventures to be clever and well thought out.
Can't say I recognize this Sure your new sim will get that whim to travel (you can either click on it or ignore it, it's not like it's in your face) as a small reminder you could decide to make your sim save some money for that. If you ignore the whim however, it will not return. 'Ok' the game will say, 'fair enough, you don't allow your sim that little break to do combine some sun with tomb raiding even when the money needed will only take finding a few gems on a late sunday afternoon, fine, how about him starting to learn how to play the guitar then? He did buy one after all.' If there's one thing that works perfectly in Sims 3, it's the whims system.
Sims 3, not Sims 4. No 'whims' are offered in Sims 3. Sims 3 has Life Time WIshes, which all sims have one. This is their life's goal, which you can work towards or not. Accomplishing it gives a lot of Lifetime Happiness points to spend on rewards such as never having bills or friends never abandoning you regardless of how long it's been since you chatted. Then there's Wishes, which are short term goals your sim has. Your sim can have 4 promised wishes, or wishes you decided will be fulfilled. These can be things like buying a music box, getting a promotion, anything really. Some are short term and easy such as chatting with their spouse, others are long term such as "read 30 books". Wishes are selected based on your sim's traits, skills, and what they're actually doing. An Adventurous sim for example will get wishes to travel abroad, while a bookworm is more likely to get wishes to read ever more books (3, 5, 10, 20, 30, ext). Whims replaced Wishes and Ambitions replaced Life Time Wishes in TS4.
Finally there are Opportunities. These are not 'whims'. These are things someone in the community asked you to do. Some have no timer and can be done at your leisure. Others need to be done within a certain number of days. Your boss asking you to read a specific book (which you'll find in the sim's inventory), a neighbor asking you to cook up a plate of hotdogs for their party, a neighbor asking you to fix their stereo, and so on. Opportunities award cash (usually), skill boosts, job/school performance boosts, relationship increases, and/or celebrity status increases. A sim can have one job opportunity, one skill opportunity, and one Special opportunity at any given moment. Special opportunities are things like celebrity related ones and other non skill/job type requests.
EDIT:
Also, I've turned down the "travel to this area" opportunities on a few Child sims once every day of their child and teenage life. I've had to cancel "travel to this country" wishes on adult sims who are focusing on something like their job or working on a skill hundreds of times. Sometimes the same one will come up 10 times in a row.
Fear not the fae, for they are harmless. Anger not the fae, beware their wraith. Harm not the fae, fear the Faerie Knight.
@CravenLestat I will be happy to talk about Lego when I get the time, that was the original Sims, good graphics and you didn't need to save. Just try not to tread on a bit bare footed
@CravenLestat I will be happy to talk about Lego when I get the time, that was the original Sims, good graphics and you didn't need to save. Just try not to tread on a bit bare footed
Ah, legos! Such a great toy invention. As a kid I had plenty of action figures, but Mom always thought the playsets were a waste of money. So I built my own breakaway playsets using legos. That way when I was having an epic fight between the Ninja Turtles and Skeletor, for example, the heroes and villains could be knocked through walls and such.
Fear not the fae, for they are harmless. Anger not the fae, beware their wraith. Harm not the fae, fear the Faerie Knight.
@Faerie197 Sorry, I meant wishes, not whims I know how it works in Sims 3. Your sim constantly gets wishes you can either ignore or accept. My point was: when you reject a wish in a certain direction, the game won't bother you with similar wishes anymore, which is why I'd hardly call that one wish 'travel to' a problem. When they are focusing on their job or a skill, the game most certainly will present wishes in that very direction and will continue doing so as long as you accept them.
The five page essay thing for kids isn't a wish, it's an opportunity, but also that you can simply refuse and it won't be asked again (and like I said, the fact it's in the middle of the week isn't a problem because a travelling sim returns home at the very same second they left; they can travel to Egypt in the morning and still make it to school in time). I like it kids get opportunities at school myself, there are several. Your edit is genuinely completely unrecognizable for me (in fact you're rather describing Sims 4 there for me, not Sims 3). Maybe you have some mod installed that messes up things?
Except it does, and it's not the wishes that get annoying. It's the Opportunities that require travel constantly coming up. Wishes can be ignored if you want, they pop up fairly regularly. But opportunities can be rare at times. So having ones that require travel constantly showing up can be annoying.
Fear not the fae, for they are harmless. Anger not the fae, beware their wraith. Harm not the fae, fear the Faerie Knight.
Except it does, and it's not the wishes that get annoying. It's the Opportunities that require travel constantly coming up. Wishes can be ignored if you want, they pop up fairly regularly. But opportunities can be rare at times. So having ones that require travel constantly showing up can be annoying.
Yes, I can see how they must be, but again, I hardly ever get opportunities telling me to travel with my sim. Not even with the adventurer I'm playing at the moment. I really think something might be glitching in your game.
Doesn't happen often, but kids seem to get those opportunities too often. And certain careers LOVE it. Such as law enforcement, criminal, and culinary careers. It also seems like the only skill opportunities I get for gardening anymore require traveling to other places to get seeds which I then have to grow plant after higher quality plant until I get Excellent quality produce for turn in. And half the time my cooking opportunities require traveling to another country to learn the regional recipes first. The fact two types then frequently have a time limit gets REALLY annoying.
The other day I started a sim who was going to make a job out of growing produce, while supplying the plants needed for their roommate's alchemy. As soon as Gardening skill got to level 1 the sim got an opportunity which required traveling to Al Simhara and collecting date seeds, then coming home and growing dates so I could give the grocery store some Great quality dates to test the market with. I had to do this within 3 sim days. Brand new sim who's still raising their first crop of Normal quality apples and tomatoes (as well as the alchemy plants), hasn't even been able to harvest the first time. But it's expecting me be able to harvest Great quality dates within 3 sim-days.
Fear not the fae, for they are harmless. Anger not the fae, beware their wraith. Harm not the fae, fear the Faerie Knight.
@Faerie197 -That's why I got a Mod to disable all opporunities from MTS and choose to trigger them with Master Controller instead.I can trigger when I'm ready for it instead of having it come up at the wrong time.
I've played The Sims 3 for a while, I've always thought it was a good game but it alone is the reason I will never buy another Sims game again.
There's one very simple reason- bugs. ...
This was the very reason I decided to wait to buy Sims 4 when it first came out. I was not going to spend my money on another EA game that they never bothered to fix their bugs and glitches. I was going to wait to see how bug infested it was. I'm glad I did because that gave me a chance to see the art/graphic style of Sims 4 (which I don't like) and to hear about the many shortcomings of the game (no CASt and not open world being the game breakers for me). So thanks to EA's policy of not cleaning up their problems with Sims 3 I didn't waste my money on Sims 4.
Thankfully there are third party mods that fix most of the Sims 3 glitches, bugs and annoying "features". Hurray for modders.
Doesn't happen often, but kids seem to get those opportunities too often. And certain careers LOVE it. Such as law enforcement, criminal, and culinary careers. It also seems like the only skill opportunities I get for gardening anymore require traveling to other places to get seeds which I then have to grow plant after higher quality plant until I get Excellent quality produce for turn in. And half the time my cooking opportunities require traveling to another country to learn the regional recipes first. The fact two types then frequently have a time limit gets REALLY annoying.
The other day I started a sim who was going to make a job out of growing produce, while supplying the plants needed for their roommate's alchemy. As soon as Gardening skill got to level 1 the sim got an opportunity which required traveling to Al Simhara and collecting date seeds, then coming home and growing dates so I could give the grocery store some Great quality dates to test the market with. I had to do this within 3 sim days. Brand new sim who's still raising their first crop of Normal quality apples and tomatoes (as well as the alchemy plants), hasn't even been able to harvest the first time. But it's expecting me be able to harvest Great quality dates within 3 sim-days.
Two things:
1. To stop opportunities from showing up for a particular sim, but allowing other sims to get them, I accept an opportunity with the intention of never fulfilling it. When I'm ready for that sim to get more opportunities I remove the old one.
2. The way I advance my gardening sims is that first day of the game I move them onto an empty lot or I send them to pick wild flowers so they have enough money to travel that day. Then I have them read the gardening book at the library so they are at level 1 (if they have enough money they can take the class instead.) Then I have them travel to China where they harvest from Han's orchard every day. By the time they get back home they are at level 5 of gardening (level 6 if they have the green thumb trait). They sell all their produce except one of the best quality of each kind, which they plant. They make enough money to pay for their trip with a little extra. By the time the special seeds start to spawn on Wednesday my sims are at level 7 and can plant them. If they are on an empty lot they can then move to a starter one and plant their garden if I do not intend them to build where they are. If I do not have my sim at level 1 before sending them to China they only reach level 3 of gardening by the time they get back home. Always better to get your sim to level 1 before they start harvesting so they advance faster.
Doesn't happen often, but kids seem to get those opportunities too often. And certain careers LOVE it. Such as law enforcement, criminal, and culinary careers. It also seems like the only skill opportunities I get for gardening anymore require traveling to other places to get seeds which I then have to grow plant after higher quality plant until I get Excellent quality produce for turn in. And half the time my cooking opportunities require traveling to another country to learn the regional recipes first. The fact two types then frequently have a time limit gets REALLY annoying.
The other day I started a sim who was going to make a job out of growing produce, while supplying the plants needed for their roommate's alchemy. As soon as Gardening skill got to level 1 the sim got an opportunity which required traveling to Al Simhara and collecting date seeds, then coming home and growing dates so I could give the grocery store some Great quality dates to test the market with. I had to do this within 3 sim days. Brand new sim who's still raising their first crop of Normal quality apples and tomatoes (as well as the alchemy plants), hasn't even been able to harvest the first time. But it's expecting me be able to harvest Great quality dates within 3 sim-days.
That's possible, those are careers I never play (law enforcement and criminal) It sounds logical the game advises you to go abroad to find things that might be interesting to your sim. I can imagine for fishermen it will be the same (I played one years ago so I don't quite remember). If you don't want to, you could place spawners in your home world (you can find them in buydebug) for foreign seeds and fishes. But indeed, for recipes you'll have to travel. Haha, and who said Sims 3 doesn't offer a challenge It does surprise me, because I though opportunities correspond with the level your sim is in?
Are dates from a mod? There are no dates in my game. You can get a task to grow Pomegranates, Plums or Pomelos found in WA. I love dates... I want some date nut bread now.
Might be misremembering the food item, but it's one unique to Al Simhara. I had to look up where to find them. At which point I was going "uhm, no. Not only no, but no frell no. I'm still building this sim's house, I can't afford to send them to Al Simhara." I try to have about 20k banked before I consider sending sims on a vacation. That way they can afford the trip, and any unique Build/Buy items only available there such as martial arts training dummies and board breaking stations.
Fear not the fae, for they are harmless. Anger not the fae, beware their wraith. Harm not the fae, fear the Faerie Knight.
I've played The Sims 3 for a while, I've always thought it was a good game but it alone is the reason I will never buy another Sims game again.
There's one very simple reason- bugs. ...
This was the very reason I decided to wait to buy Sims 4 when it first came out. I was not going to spend my money on another EA game that they never bothered to fix their bugs and glitches. I was going to wait to see how bug infested it was. I'm glad I did because that gave me a chance to see the art/graphic style of Sims 4 (which I don't like) and to hear about the many shortcomings of the game (no CASt and not open world being the game breakers for me). So thanks to EA's policy of not cleaning up their problems with Sims 3 I didn't waste my money on Sims 4.
Thankfully there are third party mods that fix most of the Sims 3 glitches, bugs and annoying "features". Hurray for modders.
What is that mod?
There are several NRaas mods that fix EA glitches - Overwatch in particular. There are also NRaas mods that improve on Sims 3 playability - Storyprogression, Register, Mastercontroller, Tagger, Tempest, Relativity, etc. There are other modders who fix annoying EA "features" and others who add more game play interactions.
.... But it's expecting me be able to harvest Great quality dates within 3 sim-days.
That one is a ridiculous "opportunity".
The problem is not with the harvesting. Anyone can harvest any quality produce. The problem is that there are no plants with great quality fruit in the WA worlds, or any EA worlds for that matter. Once you harvest the produce you must bring it back home, plant it and then get your plants to the point they can produce great quality produce.
Harvesting in China and France (I almost never bother in Egypt) my sims will get normal, nice, and after the first days harvesting sometimes very nice produce. But I don't think they have ever gotten great produce. Edit to add: I might be wrong about that. I think my sims have gotten great grapes in France.
I know that anyone can harvest any quality produce becomes sometime when I want to have perfect quality produce without developing a gardener or when I want a gardener but don't want to spend much time and effort in it I cheat and place a small residential lot next to my sim's lot. This small lot has all perfect plants. I will send my non-gardener sim over to harvest. There is no need for watering, weeding or fertilizing but eventually they will advance in gardening simply from harvesting.
Exactly my point. Asking you to grow a "great" or better quality plant is one thing. Might be a long term goal, but it's doable. But insisting you do so within 3 days in-game would require that you're already growing that plant, and have been for a while.
Fear not the fae, for they are harmless. Anger not the fae, beware their wraith. Harm not the fae, fear the Faerie Knight.
Might be misremembering the food item, but it's one unique to Al Simhara. I had to look up where to find them. At which point I was going "uhm, no. Not only no, but no frell no. I'm still building this sim's house, I can't afford to send them to Al Simhara." I try to have about 20k banked before I consider sending sims on a vacation. That way they can afford the trip, and any unique Build/Buy items only available there such as martial arts training dummies and board breaking stations.
In that case your sim won't be able to cook falafel. That's your free choice. It's just a suggestion the game hands you, to tell you it's a possibility. I find it way more annoying that when I do go to Egypt to catch some crocodiles, they return without one because they somehow lost them on the way home The harvesting opportunity indeed sounds strange.
Comments
If that guy just happens to be the sim that I seen giving flowers to my wife he is walking out my salon with a stunning pink mowhawk some speedo's paired with yellow swim fins and fabulous guyliner.Will I lose my job?? Nope,will he be angry?? Yupp I go give the next sim a glorious look and all is well in the world.
If you are a home designer they give you a list of needs and wants like a new game room with new curtains etc..do I care what they want NO!!! this is Sims 3 I am HGTV trained and do what I want.My idea is a neon lit room with a pool table and a bar and some FX machines shooting lasers with bubbles blowing out the back of the bar.And I even sold a couch of theirs to help fund my project because it was tacky and not needed.
Ambitions is awesome I never follow the rules and heck most times the client ends up blown away and loves it.Will admit to getting RL rage when I turn a frumpy townie into a supermodel fashion goddess and they hate looking beautiful and get angry
Sims 3 is driven by the players imagination,same with LEGOs why it is the highest selling toy of all time.You are given a box of pieces a suggestion to make what is on the cover yet 90 percent don't want to make a spaceship and build a house or a bird instead.we get the tools to make what we want however we want and agree Sims 4 will never be that
Funny as everyone always said that TS4 looked like play dough...
Like Joanne65 said about World Adventures so many complained that it was not sandbox etc but WA is whatever you want it to be.I have been to China 3 straight vacations and never did a single mission.I set up a tent right in the center of the market and hit on the sim ladies skinny dip in the public fountain or my fairy would visit locals houses to set traps on their stuff and stand across the street and watch them get their mail only to be stung by the bees I put in it you know what I mean torture townies.If anything they should have called it "Dang you should have been arrested" or "You have no morals" expansion.
And why does the school think little Sammy, a child mind you, can afford to fly to Al Simhara in the middle of the week in order to interview people and write a five page essay? Especially if Sammy's mom is struggling to pay the bills as it is?
That said, I LOVE the new worlds and find the tomb exploration adventures to be clever and well thought out.
But getting opps that we have no real intention of ever accepting is all part of the charm of the game to me.
NRaas has moved!
Our new site is at http://nraas.net
(you are aware by the way little Sammy can take that flight 30 minutes before the school bus arrives without getting into any trouble by the way? That bus will be there right after he has returned)
Sims 3, not Sims 4. No 'whims' are offered in Sims 3. Sims 3 has Life Time WIshes, which all sims have one. This is their life's goal, which you can work towards or not. Accomplishing it gives a lot of Lifetime Happiness points to spend on rewards such as never having bills or friends never abandoning you regardless of how long it's been since you chatted. Then there's Wishes, which are short term goals your sim has. Your sim can have 4 promised wishes, or wishes you decided will be fulfilled. These can be things like buying a music box, getting a promotion, anything really. Some are short term and easy such as chatting with their spouse, others are long term such as "read 30 books". Wishes are selected based on your sim's traits, skills, and what they're actually doing. An Adventurous sim for example will get wishes to travel abroad, while a bookworm is more likely to get wishes to read ever more books (3, 5, 10, 20, 30, ext). Whims replaced Wishes and Ambitions replaced Life Time Wishes in TS4.
Finally there are Opportunities. These are not 'whims'. These are things someone in the community asked you to do. Some have no timer and can be done at your leisure. Others need to be done within a certain number of days. Your boss asking you to read a specific book (which you'll find in the sim's inventory), a neighbor asking you to cook up a plate of hotdogs for their party, a neighbor asking you to fix their stereo, and so on. Opportunities award cash (usually), skill boosts, job/school performance boosts, relationship increases, and/or celebrity status increases. A sim can have one job opportunity, one skill opportunity, and one Special opportunity at any given moment. Special opportunities are things like celebrity related ones and other non skill/job type requests.
EDIT:
Also, I've turned down the "travel to this area" opportunities on a few Child sims once every day of their child and teenage life. I've had to cancel "travel to this country" wishes on adult sims who are focusing on something like their job or working on a skill hundreds of times. Sometimes the same one will come up 10 times in a row.
Ah, legos! Such a great toy invention. As a kid I had plenty of action figures, but Mom always thought the playsets were a waste of money. So I built my own breakaway playsets using legos. That way when I was having an epic fight between the Ninja Turtles and Skeletor, for example, the heroes and villains could be knocked through walls and such.
Glad you enjoyed it the thread really cheered me up one night when I found it
The five page essay thing for kids isn't a wish, it's an opportunity, but also that you can simply refuse and it won't be asked again (and like I said, the fact it's in the middle of the week isn't a problem because a travelling sim returns home at the very same second they left; they can travel to Egypt in the morning and still make it to school in time). I like it kids get opportunities at school myself, there are several. Your edit is genuinely completely unrecognizable for me (in fact you're rather describing Sims 4 there for me, not Sims 3). Maybe you have some mod installed that messes up things?
The other day I started a sim who was going to make a job out of growing produce, while supplying the plants needed for their roommate's alchemy. As soon as Gardening skill got to level 1 the sim got an opportunity which required traveling to Al Simhara and collecting date seeds, then coming home and growing dates so I could give the grocery store some Great quality dates to test the market with. I had to do this within 3 sim days. Brand new sim who's still raising their first crop of Normal quality apples and tomatoes (as well as the alchemy plants), hasn't even been able to harvest the first time. But it's expecting me be able to harvest Great quality dates within 3 sim-days.
What is that mod?
Two things:
1. To stop opportunities from showing up for a particular sim, but allowing other sims to get them, I accept an opportunity with the intention of never fulfilling it. When I'm ready for that sim to get more opportunities I remove the old one.
2. The way I advance my gardening sims is that first day of the game I move them onto an empty lot or I send them to pick wild flowers so they have enough money to travel that day. Then I have them read the gardening book at the library so they are at level 1 (if they have enough money they can take the class instead.) Then I have them travel to China where they harvest from Han's orchard every day. By the time they get back home they are at level 5 of gardening (level 6 if they have the green thumb trait). They sell all their produce except one of the best quality of each kind, which they plant. They make enough money to pay for their trip with a little extra. By the time the special seeds start to spawn on Wednesday my sims are at level 7 and can plant them. If they are on an empty lot they can then move to a starter one and plant their garden if I do not intend them to build where they are. If I do not have my sim at level 1 before sending them to China they only reach level 3 of gardening by the time they get back home. Always better to get your sim to level 1 before they start harvesting so they advance faster.
There are several NRaas mods that fix EA glitches - Overwatch in particular. There are also NRaas mods that improve on Sims 3 playability - Storyprogression, Register, Mastercontroller, Tagger, Tempest, Relativity, etc. There are other modders who fix annoying EA "features" and others who add more game play interactions.
The problem is not with the harvesting. Anyone can harvest any quality produce. The problem is that there are no plants with great quality fruit in the WA worlds, or any EA worlds for that matter. Once you harvest the produce you must bring it back home, plant it and then get your plants to the point they can produce great quality produce.
Harvesting in China and France (I almost never bother in Egypt) my sims will get normal, nice, and after the first days harvesting sometimes very nice produce. But I don't think they have ever gotten great produce. Edit to add: I might be wrong about that. I think my sims have gotten great grapes in France.
I know that anyone can harvest any quality produce becomes sometime when I want to have perfect quality produce without developing a gardener or when I want a gardener but don't want to spend much time and effort in it I cheat and place a small residential lot next to my sim's lot. This small lot has all perfect plants. I will send my non-gardener sim over to harvest. There is no need for watering, weeding or fertilizing but eventually they will advance in gardening simply from harvesting.