What's your first impression of OFB?

[MissDoh]

The minute I will have a videocard that works well I will be able to give you a report.... 

*sigh* 

[miramis]

I was playing the flower shop girl(knowledge).  What the heck are you suppose to do?  She is lazy and a bit sloppy so her needs go down fast.  She wants to learn which fill up her wants and her LTW is to be a mad scientist.  Which EP am I suppose to play? You can't work full-time run a business and have a social life.  She doesn't have enough money to hire an employee.  I got her business to a 5 and got a good review but not without cheats.  How are you suppose to have them have a full life without cheats?  I do like this EP--now I know what to do with the Montys.  But having a single girl with no skills and really no desire to run a business--have a business?? Is stupid.  I wanted to play the new characters as written but--I give up.  I hate puddle mongers and wish them to be sim binned if they don't have some modification.  So I shall play happily with my hacks.  I love hacks!!!

I think she was halfway through her adult life too wasn't she?  I just got her a job in the science career, worked on her skills to get her aspiration up and points towards the elixir and worked her towards the LTW.  Now she's there with higher skills I suppose she can think about her shop.  I did try running the shop in the beginning, but realised that she would be dead of old age before I could do much with her.

[terrakosmos]

Did anyone actually confirm the magical abilities of crafted Snapdragon flowers? Look here for the original post. Yeah, I know it's from the BBS, but it's still interesting.

It definitely works in my game. I was wondering why my florist was doing so well -- She had four snapdragons up for sale, keeping her and her customers in excellent moods. After I read that the snapdragons were responsible, I made sure to put a couple in the crafting room and one in the bedroom. They don't even have to view them. Just keep one or two in the room and it will take care of every motive except energy, as long as they're at good levels to start with. My sim hasn't ventured toward her fridge in days. She subsists entirely on snapdragon fumes. It's the best thing ever.

[MissDoh]

Well I am trying out pre-made Maxis Sims (the florist) and it is not that bad so far.  I did not play long though.

Did any of you notice that now in the family loading screen, there is an option to "rename lot".   +


EDIT:  This is just to funny, what is the worst thing that could happen on a 1st day opening a store, you guessed it a fire.....

[RainbowTigress]

It's on MTS2 - try here -
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=64137

Thanks.  I downloaded it, but I'm kind of peeved that it doesn't charge enough interest on the loans.  6% per week?  I want crushing interest, like 6% per day.  After all, a "day" is kind of like a "year," and 6% APR is cheap for a loan.  I'll give it a shot sometime, but I have a nagging suspicion that it won't give me the feeling I want of broke college graduates living off of their credit cards.

For that matter, how is is that the bank stays in business, loaning out money at 6% per week but returning 12% per week on deposits?  Fortunately I'll never making a deposit into a savings account with this thing, since I don't need my game to be any easier.

 - Gus

Perhaps if you are handy with SimPE and know what strings to look for, you could modify the interest rates charged.  You could change it so the sims would get 12% interest charged on a loan and only 6% interest on savings.

[Sandilou]

Re: Monique's Computer.
If your sim is second generation or from a large family then Monique's computer comes into its own.  Combined with no 20k handout and using JM's moneyorder you can move your sim out of the family home, or from Uni with just 3 or 4k of simoleans and make them suffer.  If they've come from the family home I make them borrow atleast 10k to start out.

The joy of Monique's computer is that if you miss a payment then a whopping 10%  borrowed is added to your mailbox bill.  For my sims, that usually means finding $1000 in 3 days, on top of daily minimum payments of atleast $100.  You cannot save while you are in debt using her computer.

If you are using JM's no 20k handout, your sim gets a percentage of the cash available in the account.  I make my sim parents bank their accumulated cash and earn interest, so that the youngsters only get a small percentage when they move out.  The wealthiest family had 3million plus, so I banked most of it and left 18k in the kitty.  But using JM's no 20k handout meant that this had to be split between 6 family members.  That sim moved out with 3k and had to borrow a further $15k, before moving out and have it sent on by postal order when he was in the lot bin.  No sponging off rich parents in my game. 

I love the challenge that this adds to the game.  May my sims never be wealthy...unless they've worked their pixelated socks off. 

[J. M. Pescado]

I don't believe in loans, and I don't see the point of storing 3 million in wasted funds like that, but I have found no-20K to be hilarious on  MATY college graduates from CAS, which move onto their tiny 3x1 lots with a whopping $150 to spare.

[Sandilou]

The point of storing the cash is so that you have your families ready to buy all those holidays, makeovers and pets in the forthcoming EPs and Add ons.  What you must not allow your sims to do is have the parents do all the hard work and let the children reap the benefit for free.  Let's face it, before (I don't know if you still can) any sim could wed a uni undergrad and get 2million in their kitty.  So much for studying to graduate and/or working your way up the corporate ladder.  Without a challenge of some kind, what's the point in playing?  For some people it's building houses, for lucky you, JM, you it's detangling and making sense of Maxian logic, but for me, its playing the game and laughing at what the sims do.

[RainbowTigress]

I thought that was a bug Jase discovered where sims could hit the "jackpot" when marrying or asking sims to move in across sub-neighborhoods?  I'm not sure of the details, but I've never had it happen to me.  Someone here had it happen a while back though, and posted a pic.  Jase has a fix on his forum for it at http://mysite.verizon.net/aestudios/sims2/index.htm.  It really doesn't make sense for a sim to get millions of dollars just for marrying or moving in a sim who hasn't even graduated yet. 

[Karen]

I thought that was a bug Jase discovered where sims could hit the "jackpot" when marrying or asking sims to move in across sub-neighborhoods?  I'm not sure of the details, but I've never had it happen to me.  Someone here had it happen a while back though, and posted a pic.  Jase has a fix on his forum for it at http://mysite.verizon.net/aestudios/sims2/index.htm.  It really doesn't make sense for a sim to get millions of dollars just for marrying or moving in a sim who hasn't even graduated yet. 

Yes, this bug has been around since the original game first came out.  I got hit by this one barely a month after TS2 first came out, after I moved an occupied lot from Veronaville to Pleasantview (this was way before anybody knew moving families across neighborhoods was a Very Bad Thing).  Don Lothario married one of my game-born Sims and ended up bringing in over 3.3 million simoleons.  So, it definitely can happen.

Karen

[Sandilou]

Yeah, I know Jase has had a 'Lottery' fix for months now, but I chose not to use it.  It really is a lottery: some undergrads come with just $5000 while others, mainly those who were playable and had lived in a greek house, came with millions.  I think that one of the Nightlife patches fixed this so that you couldn't move out playable undergrads anyway.

[Gus Smedstad]

I haven't played it for long, so this is definitely first impressions.  Maybe this will change with time.

So far, I'm really not liking it much.  There's just so much that's done wrong.

First, there's the legacy problem of time and community lots.  The fact that no time passes at all was irritating but minor in the base game.  In University it wasn't a huge problem because the final exam meter continued to count down.  Then in Nightlife it got to be a serious problem because of how much you could accomplish on a date in zero real time.

Now in Open For Business, you go to work... and come back in 20 minutes exhausted and hungry.  Disregarding degenerate playstyles like heavy use of the Energizer at work and the like, a Community Lot job rapidly puts your Sim completely out of whack with the rest of the Sims on your lot.  Because it consumes no real time, you can have several "work days" every day if your bed is decent.  Can you imagine what the game would be like if regular career tracks worked like that?

OK, so you can ignore the community lot stupidity by running all businesses out of your home.  I'm thinking that the next time I try this, I may buy an large residential lot and create two buildings, the business and the home.

Restocking.  Restocking is stupidly implemented.  You can eliminate restocking entirely just by manually deleting the "out of stock" items and buying new ones.  Or in the case of crafted items, moving them out of your inventory.  This isn't something I want to do, because it's tedious, but it's dumb that it's so easily circumvented.  There should be a reason for the player to order restocking actions beyond avoiding player makework.

Crafting is clumsy.  If you "Make One" of an item, or break off to do something else, the item sits on the workbench and has to be manually placed in your inventory so it can be restocked.  At which point, it's actually less work to cheat and avoid restocking by placing it on the shelf.  Every time you start making items, you have to go through the "custom" dialog, instead of say, choosing "change toy robot type" from a dialog.

There's no help text with the badges saying which skill is relevant.  What genius at Maxis thought that hiding this information was a good idea?  Motoki has posted the, but really this is basic information that should be in the game.

A lot of things about the expansion smell of "Let's hide basic information about how to play, so the difficulty in learning the rules will mask how easy it is to master."  Like the fact that I hired a saleswoman who rapidly worked her way up to a Gold sales badge, but who was still pissing off the customers.  Err, why?

What's the deal with breaks, for that matter?  The obvious thing is to send and employee off on a break when their mood starts lagging.  But sometimes they just don't come back, and don't seem to improve on break.  So you're paying an employee to watch TV for hours.  I'm not even sure breaks are necessary at this point, because I haven't seen any adverse affects to never sending them on break.

The game really needs an "employees only" door.  I sectioned off a portion of my shop with a break room, complete with a kitchen because my Sim got hungry well before the day was over.  So my customers wander in there and make food for themselves.  I'm not running a venue, but I need recreational areas for my Sim and his employees.

Of the perks, the only line that seems to have any value at all is the "reduce wholesale cost" line.  Maybe I'm missing something, but the other items all seem to be a waste of time.

I get the impression that once I do figure out what I'm supposed to be doing, running a business will be dull and repetitive.

I need to give it more time, obviously, but those are my first impressions.

 - Gus

[Darkstormyeve]

Gus, dude, thats an intense, angry post.

[aussieone]

I get the impression that once I do figure out what I'm supposed to be doing, running a business will be dull and repetitive.

 - Gus

Hehe...just like in RL actually 

[sanmonroe]

Restocking.  Restocking is stupidly implemented.  You can eliminate restocking entirely just by manually deleting the "out of stock" items and buying new ones.  Or in the case of crafted items, moving them out of your inventory.  This isn't something I want to do, because it's tedious, but it's dumb that it's so easily circumvented.  There should be a reason for the player to order restocking actions beyond avoiding player makework.

Can you think of a better way to implement restock? I am glad I don't ahve to pause and replace items every time they sell. Hire a 15$ an hour sim to do the job for you once you hit rank 5 or 6 and can't easily do everything solo.

Crafting is clumsy.  If you "Make One" of an item, or break off to do something else, the item sits on the workbench and has to be manually placed in your inventory so it can be restocked.  At which point, it's actually less work to cheat and avoid restocking by placing it on the shelf.  Every time you start making items, you have to go through the "custom" dialog, instead of say, choosing "change toy robot type" from a dialog.

Yeah, and the fact that if you even think about pressing a button it changes the name, then it s new item for stocking purposes. Thats what pisses me off.

There's no help text with the badges saying which skill is relevant.  What genius at Maxis thought that hiding this information was a good idea?  Motoki has posted the, but really this is basic information that should be in the game.

Great for marketing and their relationship with prima. thats why they do it. Sucks for players, but when has EA cared if they are making a profit?

  Like the fact that I hired a saleswoman who rapidly worked her way up to a Gold sales badge, but who was still pissing off the customers.  Err, why?

Is she nice? Or maybe grouchy and outgoing? Or maybe tired? The personality plays amajor role, its fun to watch a grouchy sim try to sell to a poor CAS sim. They have a nice little dance where the salesperson screams at the customer for being poor.

What's the deal with breaks, for that matter?  The obvious thing is to send and employee off on a break when their mood starts lagging.  But sometimes they just don't come back, and don't seem to improve on break.  So you're paying an employee to watch TV for hours.  I'm not even sure breaks are necessary at this point, because I haven't seen any adverse affects to never sending them on break.

Some of their needs cannot be fixed on the comm lot. If you send them on break and their pay is not above fairly paid, they won't come back whent ehy are close to bottomng out energy for example.

Its best just to pay them one step above fairly and they will work a full shift without stopping. The risk of giving them no breaks is they will quit. If you overpay them the risk is almost nothing and they will work until they are on the brink of peeing and passing out. Then they run to the toilet and come right back to work until sent home.

The game really needs an "employees only" door.  I sectioned off a portion of my shop with a break room, complete with a kitchen because my Sim got hungry well before the day was over.  So my customers wander in there and make food for themselves.  I'm not running a venue, but I need recreational areas for my Sim and his employees.

Umm... In case you aren't kidding here is how to do that.

Click on the door and set the lock to only allow employees and household members..

Of the perks, the only line that seems to have any value at all is the "reduce wholesale cost" line.  Maybe I'm missing something, but the other items all seem to be a waste of time.

The connections line is quite nice as well for romance and pop sims, and for customer loyalty too. The grant/funding line is great if you ahve a new sim, but an established family doesn't need 50k very badly. The influence line... meh. If you underpay your employees I guess its ok. More of a hassle really. The sales line is a good way to build up loyalty quickly. You get a star just for telling the sim where the thing they were thinking of is.

I get the impression that once I do figure out what I'm supposed to be doing, running a business will be dull and repetitive.

I need to give it more time, obviously, but those are my first impressions.

Its a lot like Uni. Except the shine is wearing off much faster. I am leaning towards saying this expansion has less replay and content than Uni. It adds some nice features, but meh.



[/quote]

[ZephyrZodiac]

I just wish I could give my sim employee a pay rise -  it's Lilith and she's worked her butt off, and got a badge for crafting, but there's no option to up her pay!  I'm seriously considering asking her to move in!  At least she'd be a bit happier than back in the Pleasant house.  (And I have no intention of playing any of the Pleasantview families until I can use SimPE to change things I don't like.........)

[Gus Smedstad]

Gus, dude, thats an intense, angry post.

No, just highly critical.  I certainly have written pissed off reviews in the past, but usually it requires something really repetitive and frustrating, like a multi-jump puzzle in a platforming game where they save the nearly impossible jump for the end.  With OFB, I'm just underwhelmed by the design decisions.

 - Gus

[Gus Smedstad]

Can you think of a better way to implement restock?

When you place a new item for sale, it starts as an "out of stock" sign, and you must "restock" it before it goes on sale.  If you mark an existing item for sale that wasn't previously, it goes in your Sim's inventory until you stock it.  That'd eliminate the shortcut of just placing stuff on the shelf by hand.

  Like the fact that I hired a saleswoman who rapidly worked her way up to a Gold sales badge, but who was still pissing off the customers.  Err, why?

Is she nice? Or maybe grouchy and outgoing? Or maybe tired? The personality plays amajor role, its fun to watch a grouchy sim try to sell to a poor CAS sim. They have a nice little dance where the salesperson screams at the customer for being poor.

I do appreciate the tips, though I'm not too clear on how you get personality information on an employee if they are a townie.  Skills, yes, personality, no.  I wish the game were a bit more up-front about the factors that affect selling.

Umm... In case you aren't kidding here is how to do that.

Click on the door and set the lock to only allow employees and household members..

No, I didn't know you could do that.  It didn't occur to me that they'd added an interaction to doors, since normally you don't click on them, ever.  I went looking for a speciality door like the bathroom door or the Myne door.

You get a star just for telling the sim where the thing they were thinking of is.

I obviously need to do some more sales manually, because I've never even seen that as a dialog option.

 - Gus

[sanmonroe]

Test it out with a nice/outgoing sim. Get the first 2 ranks of sales and first 2 ranks of networking and whenever you want a star (assuming your shop is not a dumpster) just "assess... desire", it tells you what the NPC wants, click the item, select show to...Goopy, and your sim will do that.

As for telling what an NPC's traits are, the only way is to wath how they interact with the customers. You obviously got a crap one for sales. Move them to cashier or stocking. When you hire non-cas you never know what you are going to get, and pay out the ass for badges that the employee has but doesn't need.

If you have too many problems with salespeople, just do the sales yourself. It helps since you won't use the HARD SELL... option as much as those grouchy sims will.

[PlayLives]

Amazon finally delivered on Sat, so I only had a few hours to play (where do you all find the time?)
Anyway,

And I'm disappointed that I barely see any new wants and fears apart from the "get a badge" ones.

I have seen new wants and fears. My sim had wants to make a sale to people and gain customer loyalty points. He also had a fear that he would lose customer royalty points.

What I really want to do is get someone running an art gallery

This is my 1st and only business so far and is very profitable (home business), although my sim is in the red (just started out and had shop open for a few hours). I have him selling his own paintings including a portrait of a dormie (sold for over $600) and easels. He had three customers come in (one more came after closing so he just left) and all bought two or more items and 2 of them gained customer loyalty points really quickly. He gained Rank 1 really fast. I only had the gallery open for about 2 sim hours. The back part of the art gallery is a nightclub where I will charge with the ticket machine. I think he is going to do really well.

Now for my questions (waiting for the guide - yes I need it!)

- What makes a customer gain loyalty points? I played the premade flower shop for a while and I couldn't get the lady to gain points for nothing. She would try to "sell item" to people and their green bar would drop. She would "show item" to someone and they would get a negative-star sign above their heads. People only bought one or two things but they left without gaining any loyalty. However, when I had one of my sims open an art gallery, his customers were gaining loyalty quickly with him just doing one "sale item" to them. They were buying up the stuff. What is the difference? The maxis-sim has no skill points and my sim has a lot, is that the difference?


- Can you hire household sims as employee's? If not, how do you get the option to train them to work the register or restock?

…back to reading…

[Gus Smedstad]

If you have too many problems with salespeople, just do the sales yourself. It helps since you won't use the HARD SELL... option as much as those grouchy sims will.

Yeah, I'm leaning toward thinking that sales is something you ought to do yourself until you know all the mechanics.  Bad cashiers and bad restockers are just slow.  Bad salespeople choose the wrong interactions.

If I'm understanding it correctly, it's kind of like the social interactions.  You need a certain level of DR to succeed, modified by things like personality scores.  Basic Sell may be the "weakest" sales technique, but it's also the least risky.

 - Gus

[Gus Smedstad]

- What makes a customer gain loyalty points?

I'm still flailing around myself, but the main ones seem to be:

- Asking "Can I help you?"  That almost always seems to get me a full star.  Apparently Sims want particular things, and they often can't find them by themselves, even if it's right in front of them.  It took me a while to recognize the "puzzled look" animation that signals this interaction is available.  You can't ask this of a sim who has already locked on an item.

- Low prices.  A particularly low price seems to give a positive loyalty reaction when they first consider an item.  Obviously you can't do this for everything, but a few cheap items can act as loss-leaders.

- A successful sales pitch.  I'm still unclear what will make a pitch succeed or fail.  My comments above are still speculation.

- A Sim actually deciding to buy an item.  The "should I buy this" progress bar has to succeed before time runs out, I think.  Sims will often buy cheap items without prodding, but expensive (>$1000) items may require a sales pitch or two. 

See would try to "sell item" to people and their green bar would drop.

I think that's a failed pitch.  You may need a better DR or a better personality.  I'm still largely in the dark on this one.

She would "show item" to someone and they would get a negative-star sign above their heads.

If they don't want it, show item is a bad action.

If not, how do you get the option to train them to work the register or restock?

I brought them into the store as part of a Casual Group "just for fun," just like going to any other community lot.  They're controllable, so you just give them orders to stock or work the register.

 - Gus

[PlayLives]

I brought them into the store as part of a Casual Group "just for fun," just like going to any other community lot.  They're controllable, so you just give them orders to stock or work the register.

I wanted to be able to have them do this autonomously, like an employee would do when you hire them.

Can the owner perform sales on their own or do you constantly have to direct them?

[Gus Smedstad]

You have to direct them.

I suppose you could try calling a family member and inviting them to the lot, so they're just like any other customer, but I'm guessing the "hire" interaction won't be there.  It may not even be handled correctly.

 - Gus

[Lion]

[I wanted to be able to have them do this autonomously, like an employee would do when you hire them.

Can the owner perform sales on their own or do you constantly have to direct them?

I don't think so. From what I played, you have to direct your owner and his/her household memebers to do things, otherwise they just go watch TV or buy coffee. But when you use a different sim to visit a community lot that the owner owned, the owner will be in the store and ask employees to do stuff, like restocking, on their own, even if you assigned that employee to do sales right before you (the owner) left the store last time you played it (which I don't like, but I didn't play too long on that store). If you assigned a household member to a job, like register or else, he/she will not be in the store when you use another sim to visit the lot, only the owner is in the store, so you better hire some employees if you plan to use other sims to visit the store.

My biggest gripe for the store side, is bad cashier. I (the owner) assigned the register to an employee before I (the owner) went home for the day. Then I use another sim to visit that store, she bought stuff and wanted to pay, but the assigned cashier just wondered about not doing her job. My sim finally threw the shopping bags on the groud. The next time the sim (not owner) visited the store, the owner eventually worked the register. That really feels good. Maybe it is because they have low register badges (zero).

So far, I have the most fun not from running the business, but from having other sims visit the lot to see how the owner and employees do their job