Experience And Qualifications - A Lifetime Of Learning

To qualify for certain activities in This Grand Life 2, you need to pass a threshold of accumulated experience and qualifications. I think the best way to explain how this works is with an example.

Let's say you want to become a Software Developer. To qualify for the position, you can either have 8000 programming XP (about 4 years full-time worth), a Computer Science degree or some combination of both.

You can gain programming XP by coding at home, which is free but takes longer than studying a degree at university (and also has different preferences).

If someone has both 8000 XP and a degree, then they would be 200% qualified for the job and more likely to be successful in a job interview. 

The "value" of experience and qualifications decays very slowly each month. This means if you obtained your degree 5 years ago, it would only count about 70% towards becoming a Software Developer. You would have to make up for it with XP to reach the 100% threshold to be considered for the job.

You won't have to do the math yourself, it's all conveniently calculated and displayed in each character's statement and in tooltips.

A side effect of decaying experience is a career-focused character that works as much as possible will become qualified for their next promotion relatively faster than someone who works at a leisurely pace.

From a game design point of view, I can adjust the thresholds so some qualifications are absolutely required to reach 100% qualified for a job. For example, you must have a Doctor Of Medicine to become a General Practitioner.

The above image shows the most you can get from doctoring XP is 95% qualified. The other 5% must come from a medical degree. No one wants to be treated by someone who never graduated medical school!

The same system is applied to children going through school. If you neglect your child character's education and they don't gain enough schooling XP, they might be unable to complete their high school diploma by the time they reach adulthood.

It's not the end of the world though. Once that child becomes an adult, they can always take remedial education classes to make up for missing schooling XP and eventually complete a high school diploma.