OFB - If you could turn back time

[simmiecal]

I finally got my copy of OFB and might install it tonight. After reading thru the posts here, it seems that:

1. you cannot place tables on mailboxes
2. you cannot make street parking

Can someone answer for me:

1. Can you still move the mailbox away from the street - say, five to six tiles closer to a home? and the problem is that you just can't place anything on the row of tiles where the mailbox and trashcan are?  Anyone who has lots where the mailbox and/or trashcan were moved prior to OFB - are you having problems with either of them?

2. For the lots that had street parking, does the street parking still work and you just can't place new extensions? Can you place a newly purchased (post OFB) car on a driveway extension in the street that was placed pre-OFB?

I was thinking of making some lot templates with the street parking already on the lot and saving those for building post-OFB, if the street parking still works. And moving and/or placing tables at all my mailboxes.

Is there anything you wished you would have done to your lots / neighborhoods before you installed the new pack?

[Motoki]

If I could turn back time (Why do I suddenly feel like Cher?) I would convert some of my playable sims who I don't really play anymore into townies. When you install OFB it asigned random talent badges to townies, but not to other playable sims.

[FroggySim]

I don´t know about the mailbox thing but as for streetparking:
If you built a lot with streetparking before you installed ofb everything will be fine.
At least it is in my game. I was able to use the car and place a new car on the already
existing driveway. But the game refuses to let me put any other driveways. It turns them appropriately but when I want to place them (moveobjects on, of course) it tells me that "building limit is exceeded" (I don´t have an english game and don´t know if I translated that right).

[angelyne]

If I could turn back time (Why do I suddenly feel like Cher?) I would convert some of my playable sims who I don't really play anymore into townies. When you install OFB it asigned random talent badges to townies, but not to other playable sims.

Have you confirmed that it only happens when the game is installed?

I'm sure anyway that soon as the new SimPE is out, we will be able to adjust badges ourselves.  I miss SimPE!

[Motoki]

I assumed it only happens on OFB install or adding a commercial district but I'm not sure.

Technically, we can adjust badges now in the game with the 'badge juicer' from debug mode, but that's kind of cheesy and cheatish and removed the fun of discovering who has what skills imo.

[Swiftgold]

I assumed it only happens on OFB install or adding a commercial district but I'm not sure.

Technically, we can adjust badges now in the game with the 'badge juicer' from debug mode, but that's kind of cheesy and cheatish and removed the fun of discovering who has what skills imo.

Yeah, that's why a random assignment would be nice. But you'd think they'd get the badges upon being made into townies... after all, if they were newly generated after OFB, they'd get them, and the playables I've made into townies before have gotten false memories and other such things, so perhaps badges would appear too. I'll have to try this when I'm off work. (I have a gold Multitasking on the Internet Badge *whistle*)

[MutantBunny]

Seems that OFB is pretty buggy. I'm reading all kinds of problems. I haven't bought it yet and don't know if I will!

I haven't seen any info on: Is anyone having any problem with the new landing/stage tool?

AN dlastly: Does anyone wish they HADN'T bought it?

[Motoki]

I know everyone complains about the problems and I have done my share too but overall I think it works pretty well, adds a hell of a lot more than both the last two expansions combined and I have no regrets buying it and would do so again. I just think it's human nature to complain about the bad instead of to praise the good.

Honestly, the old bugs that still haven't been fixed bug me more than any new ones introduced so it's not a problem for me personally.

I haven't messed with the stage landings at all so I can't speak about them.

Oh and Switgold, I also have a gold badge in internet multitasking. One of my coworkers came over to my desk one day and said "How can you work with that many windows open?" 

[Swiftgold]

Oh and Switgold, I also have a gold badge in internet multitasking. One of my coworkers came over to my desk one day and said "How can you work with that many windows open?" 

Many of mine don't understand the concept of having more than one program open at once - I'm sort of the technical person here, and they're older and didn't grow up with computers like I did. I guess I kind of use that to my advantage, though they let me because I also get my work done. I think I'd literally go nuts if I had to stand at the register and wait for customers, especially the slow season like now. Luckily I do mostly packing and shipping right now anyway. [/OT]

[Karen]

1. Can you still move the mailbox away from the street - say, five to six tiles closer to a home? and the problem is that you just can't place anything on the row of tiles where the mailbox and trashcan are?

Exactly.

Anyone who has lots where the mailbox and/or trashcan were moved prior to OFB - are you having problems with either of them?

Mailboxes moved prior to OFB work fine.  I don't know about trash cans.

Karen

[angelyne]

I assumed it only happens on OFB install or adding a commercial district but I'm not sure.

Technically, we can adjust badges now in the game with the 'badge juicer' from debug mode, but that's kind of cheesy and cheatish and removed the fun of discovering who has what skills imo.

True.  We both have a similar stance on cheating.  But it wouldn't be cheating if you rounded up all the characters you didn't play, assigned them a badge (roll of the dice to keep it fair) and then made them townies.

[Motoki]

I dunno, I kind of blur the line between townies and playables anyhow. In the begining before the surgery machine and all that I used to make a bunch of playables and just plop down a bunch of random cheap start houses with a phone and never bothered playing them, I just basically put them there for the purpose of of having some people to interact, be friends with and possibly marry who weren't so darned freakishly deformed.

There's also some instances like zombies where I may have brought back a service npc or townie as a zombie, but didn't want to play them and didn't want them as part of the household.

There's a lot of grey area in the game and some perfectly legal things within the games standards that are rather cheatish like aspiration rewards, snapdragons etc.

There's definitely some things there's no denying are cheating like motherlode, but I guess for a lot of other areas it's kind of up to what you consider cheating and what you don't.

For me if I don't play a sim and never intend to then for all intents and purposes they're a townie, but I could see someone feeling differently. *shrug*

[Sagana]

I don't really think there's any cheating in a 'game' there's no way to win. Anything goes that keeps it fun. I just usually like to not make it too easy on myself - I guess I think it keeps it interesting longer and feels more 'realistic'. But if I've a big house and some reason that suits me that I want specific CAS sims to have it or whatever, I'll motherlode away. And if I'm going to die of boredom watching another sim build some other stupid skill level for another 3 days, I'll use a thinking cap or a cheat if I just want them to have it or whatever. I cheat all the time, I just don't cheat myself. ;)

I actually made most of my not-really-playing sims into townies but I turned a few of them back as I wanted them to age up with my playables and the Age Sims cheat is fairly buggy, actually. Too bad, it would have been nice if they'd had some skill levels and I could have waited a few days until I installed OFB and then made them playable... if I could turn back the clock.

I also would have been more careful about where my sims were and what day it was. I've got a couple of kids who moved, moved again, and then the game installed and they got rather cheated on school grades (even tho I sent them in the car every time, I think they hadn't done their homework first). Poor things, moving around too much makes school harder. I suppose that's realistic.

I'm thrilled with the EP. It's really lots of fun, even tho some of it is buggy. And it seems just about the right difficulty level for me - I'm not trying to do everything the best possible, so it's not too easy, and I'm managing to figure out how to get along, so not too hard. Just for me.

Um, I really do suggest playing with no hacks, and actually maybe with no downloads at all just for a bit to get the hang of it. It's too hard to tell if something is conflicting - some menu you don't know you're supposed to have or whatever - or where all the new pieces are and everything. Just looking through all the folders in a clean game and checking out all the interactions helped me a lot. Oh, and I turned on game tips (my husband said something like 'you're kidding, right' when I mentioned the guide might work well with this EP and so far I haven't really needed it.) The tips help a lot, tho it's annoying that it continually brings up NL and Uni ones as well as business ones.

Just my much longer than but worth less than two cents :)

[Li'l Brudder]

I think the stages work great, there's just one drawback:  you can't build them under ceiling lights, but you can place the lights after you place the stage.  Odd.

[MutantBunny]

Someone said that they placed a landing on a foundatin and then doors and stairs to the landing.

Has anyone tried putting a landing on a piece of foundation to make it possible to do a 'spiral' stairway in a corner?

[vcline]

Um, I really do suggest playing with no hacks, and actually maybe with no downloads at all just for a bit to get the hang of it.

Thanks for the advice.  I'm definitely going to do this, and start a new neighborhood with only the attached business district, which seems to come with playable sims in their own businesses.  I don't want to mess up my current sims until I understand how to run a business (hopefully, I won't mess them up even then).