Want to buy that crafted item instead of making it?

[Pegasys]

Kicking a $12 flamingo shouldn't be more fun than the best TV. 

[Veering off topic]

What is the deal with this flamingo, and why do Sims think it is so fun? In the Prima Guide, it says the Fun is level 2, only up to 60. Yes I know the Prima guide is often wrong but why should my Sims work hard to get expensive TVs and games when they can just kick a flamingo a few times? It's stupid.  Anyway, I only put flamingos on my poor Sims lots. They look so tacky.

[/Veering off topic]

The buyable rewards kind of undo half the point of the expansion pack. But that is just IMHO. I'm glad this is an open-ended game and that it can be so freely hacked any which way, and I wouldn't want it otherwise. However I also understand where Motoki is coming from, it's strange to think I'm going through thousands of mouse clicks when I could just open up a window and type in a short code. But during the game I blithely ignore that fact and pretend the CTRL-SHIFT-C doesn't even exist. Most of the time, anyway... 

[Gus Smedstad]

I could never for the life of me (even with TS1) see why friends were required to increase your job level.

It's not realistic.  It's purely a gamey thing.  Another goal to achieve in order to advance.  I'm OK with that, absent another mechanism.

That said, friend requirements for careers never seem to be an obstacle anymore.  To newly created adults, yes, but not to any Sim who I've played through childhood, particularly through University.  And I can't bear to play new adults anymore because I want the other 2 Want slots.

What I don't understand is when someone says they think hacks like InSIM are "too cheaty" yet they use boolprop and/or simpe to do everything InSIM does and more. whats the freakin difference? there is none in my eyes *sticks out her tongue*

Does anyone actually do that?  Again, I don't care what you use, but InSIM has never appealed to me because I don't want to do anything I understand it does.  I use MoveObjects primarily to delete stuck chairs and doors, and I don't have SimPE.

 - Gus

[Moonshires]

I could never for the life of me (even with TS1) see why friends were required to increase your job level.

It's not realistic.  It's purely a gamey thing.  Another goal to achieve in order to advance.  I'm OK with that, absent another mechanism.

That said, friend requirements for careers never seem to be an obstacle anymore.  To newly created adults, yes, but not to any Sim who I've played through childhood, particularly through University.  And I can't bear to play new adults anymore because I want the other 2 Want slots.

That actually made me smile, and yes, I agree with you on that part.  Any sim I've had that went through childhood (even the shy and mean ones) haven't had a problem having enough friends. 

In fact, that got me to thinking, and sometime tonight, I'm going to start a whole new neighborhood without the 'no friends for jobs' hack and see if I can cut it.  Plus, my current neighborhood is growing pretty stagnant and a brand-spanking new one always makes me giddy since I still enjoy building and landscaping the homes even more than I do playing the actual game.

I just need to PM someone first...

[simmiecal]

I don't know what the TS2 people are on, but even the people that made TS1 didn't screw up this bad.

You know, I bought the first Sims the week or so it came out, and I played all the way to Making Magic with no more than the Maxis patches on the official site. I don't know if I'm just pickier w/ TS2, but w/ half the annoyances we have w/ this game, I think I would've stopped playing a long time ago if it weren't for hack creators. In fact, at last count, I had 257 files in my hack folder, and while some of those are multipart, that still makes for a heck of a lot of hacks.

Heh! I didn't even make it as far as Making Magic. Hot Date (or Vacation whichever was later) was as far as I got - and I really did enjoy the game. It just got too repetitive and boring. I didn't have a clue about the online community til TS2. I am sure that if I had to play with Maxis only stuff, I don't know if I'm sure I wouldn't be playing it anywhere near as much as I do and I don't know if I'd be investing in further expansions with as buggy as these have been. Maxis really should be tahnkful for the modding community. How many people wouldn't have bothered with expansions if they had to rely on Maxis to fix them?

[sanmonroe]

I don't get this restocking thing. It's not like restocking by employee makes the game SO much harder. Is it really that big of a deal?

Since it means one less employee in a busy shop, that's $50-$100 / hour right here, $400-$800 a day.  So yes, it's a big deal.

 - Gus

You need to work on your hiring practices.

I have no employees paid over 40$ an hour.

Don't hire employees with skills and badges other than the one job they are being hired for. All it does is raise the cost.

Cheap unskilled labor, toss them into their new job at 15$ an hour and as they move toward gold in that one skill, raise their pay to the 30s.

Why pay for a charismatic sim who can bake, and make toys to restock when you can pay someone 1/4 the cost who only knows how to restock?

All the homeless people, trailer park trash, and mentally challenged sims in my hood are very grateful to get 15$ an hour and be forced to wear their underwear while they work.

[Gus Smedstad]

I have no employees paid over 40$ an hour.

I've never been able to find an employee who will work for less that $40 / hour, via any venue.  My playable sims have too many skills, and the townies all cost more than that.  Once they get any kind of shop experience, they start demanding $70-$100 an hour.

Don't hire employees with skills and badges other than the one job they are being hired for. All it does is raise the cost.

I never see any unskilled or single skilled candidates.

All the homeless people, trailer park trash, and mentally challenged sims in my hood are very grateful to get 15$ an hour and be forced to wear their underwear while they work.

Are these playable Sims that you've created and never played?

 - Gus

[Moonshires]

Tough crowd, lol! OK, you lost me somewhere halfway through this thread. You don't like the cheat, don't download it . I made it for my game then decided to share it, its as simple as that. Between making custom objects I personally play maybe two hours per week, skip a week or two, or three. You bet I cheat, lol! I just don't have time not to.

My reason for making collections was actually the flowers, just wanted to place bouquets in every house. Its my first official hack, and its not even a real hack. I've been reeeeaally good until now, lol! I blame the evil toys. Now, someone said something about evil shapadragon, hmmm... I wonder if it comes as a separate object...

Hehe, nah, not a tough crowd.  We're just very bit..er...opinionated, and not afraid to say so. 

Personally, I have a TON of custom content in my game.  Unfortunately, I don't use a good 90% of it because to me, their priced wrong.  Cloned expensive beds (normally a couple thousand simoleans) for only 300, a really nice looking end table (cloned from the cheapest one in the game) for 2k!    Same with wallpapers that I think are only 'meh' priced in the 20s, where the really neat ones are only priced for just 1simolean.

Until I figure out how to re-price (and in some cases re-catagorize) those objects, walls, and floors, I won't use them.

Also, for the record, I did download the collections so I could see the evil kite and water thing, the promptly deleted them.  I'm going to have to slave my sims until they make at least one of each of those now, Hehe.  Thanks for letting me see them!

[sanmonroe]

I have no employees paid over 40$ an hour.

I've never been able to find an employee who will work for less that $40 / hour, via any venue.  My playable sims have too many skills, and the townies all cost more than that.  Once they get any kind of shop experience, they start demanding $70-$100 an hour.

Don't hire employees with skills and badges other than the one job they are being hired for. All it does is raise the cost.

I never see any unskilled or single skilled candidates.

All the homeless people, trailer park trash, and mentally challenged sims in my hood are very grateful to get 15$ an hour and be forced to wear their underwear while they work.

Are these playable Sims that you've created and never played?

 - Gus

Yeah. The game towniees suck.

Before I started my first real hood I destroyed all towniees, and added several lots of hookers, trailer parks, juvenile detention centers, homeless people, twinks on the prowl, etc. I wanted it to look real at a comm lot. Sadly that was before we knew about the flaming ball of doom and I did some strange things that led to 1300 characters...

I remade the whole hood, recreating all the sims in it, but left the towniees in. SO I have 500 or so char files, but a huge number of the people wandering are my sims.

Besides, with that kind of sim you can do fun things. Like the homeless people lot, I go in every so often and lower all their hygene, aspiration, and social to the lowest level. That way they are EXTRA attracted to talking to your sims on comm lots, but stink, and I make them mean...

[Motoki]

Tough crowd, lol! OK, you lost me somewhere halfway through this thread. You don't like the cheat, don't download it . I made it for my game then decided to share it, its as simple as that. Between making custom objects I personally play maybe two hours per week, skip a week or two, or three. You bet I cheat, lol! I just don't have time not to.

My reason for making collections was actually the flowers, just wanted to place bouquets in every house. Its my first official hack, and its not even a real hack. I've been reeeeaally good until now, lol! I blame the evil toys. Now, someone said something about evil shapadragon, hmmm... I wonder if it comes as a separate object...

It's not as simple as that. It cheapens things for me to know it exists. If you can't understand that or at least respect it then I'm sorry.

[Sandilou]

Motoki, am I detecting PMS here?

[Zyrcona]

Evil toys are specifically marked by the game as "Evil", with names like "Evil Jack-in-the-Box". They are invariably painted in dark, sinister colors and perform harmful and sometimes even lethal effects on hapless children.

Naturally, I like them very much.

Do all the toys have evil counterparts? So far I've only discovered the octopus, the kite, and the jack in the box. I'd like to see an evil brick (hits sim over the head), an evil fire engine (child spontaneously combusts upon playing with it), and an evil version of those one-kid seesaws that makes the child who rides it vomit every time.

[Gus Smedstad]

Are these playable Sims that you've created and never played?

Yeah. The game towniees suck.

I have 500 or so char files, but a huge number of the people wandering are my sims.

I think you have to realize that what you've done has unintentionally made Open For Business a lot easier for you.  All that cheap labor.  I think you need to keep that in mind when giving advice to other players.  Most people don't do that, and don't want to do that.

I completely agree that the standard townies suck, but my personal solution was to use Inge's bush on Sims I created in order to put them in the townie pool.  Once I did that, they gained townie skills and townie jobs.

 - Gus

[Sagana]

I could never for the life of me (even with TS1) see why friends were required to increase your job level.
It's not realistic.  It's purely a gamey thing.  Another goal to achieve in order to advance.  I'm OK with that, absent another mechanism.

Oh I dunno about that. Around my neck of the woods, nepotism and the good old boy's network still play significant parts in what jobs one gets and how well one does at them. Even for low-paying stuff, finding a job is sometimes lots more a matter of "who you know" than how well you know it. My last 4 positions I haven't had to job search as knowing the right people got me interviews at the right times (switching jobs often = promotion, it does in the sims too if you read job descriptions). And it certainly helps if they like you. Many fields have pools where everyone in the business knows each other and Kentucky businesses can be so club-y.

[idtaminger]

Oh I dunno about that. Around my neck of the woods, nepotism and the good old boy's network still play significant parts in what jobs one gets and how well one does at them. Even for low-paying stuff, finding a job is sometimes lots more a matter of "who you know" than how well you know it. My last 4 positions I haven't had to job search as knowing the right people got me interviews at the right times (switching jobs often = promotion, it does in the sims too if you read job descriptions). And it certainly helps if they like you. Many fields have pools where everyone in the business knows each other and Kentucky businesses can be so club-y.

Some jobs definitely work out better if you've got the right connections, like business, slackers, and sometimes art and the like. That's why networking is such a big deal in RL.

But I agree that for some jobs, the friends don't make sense. I mean, the whole appeal of mad scientists is that they're reclusive and do their whole line of work locked in a secret lair somewhere. Maybe I can understand at least 1 friend for the bumbling sidekick that they always seem to have, but at present, they really do have too high of a friend requirement.

[Sagana]

For the mad scientist part, yeah I agree. But they do have to be profs first, and friends are important in campus politics... and I forget what else

[sanmonroe]

Are these playable Sims that you've created and never played?

Yeah. The game towniees suck.

I have 500 or so char files, but a huge number of the people wandering are my sims.

I think you have to realize that what you've done has unintentionally made Open For Business a lot easier for you.  All that cheap labor.  I think you need to keep that in mind when giving advice to other players.  Most people don't do that, and don't want to do that.

I completely agree that the standard townies suck, but my personal solution was to use Inge's bush on Sims I created in order to put them in the townie pool.  Once I did that, they gained townie skills and townie jobs.

 - Gus

But at the same time the buying power of my customers is much much lower. Towniees can, with one dazzle, be sold pretty much anything. Sims living 8 in a lot, with a total of 20k that they started off with to pay for the lot and the house to decorate the hood, don't buy much. You have to actually pick your customers based on what you have played and who they are, since you know thier relative worth.

If you use towniees, money is no object. Run a low price sale store solo until you have at least hard sell, toss in a few expensive items, and you can just move a towniee or two back and forth between 2 constantly restocked plasma tvs and make a few 100k in a session.

I have people come in and I try to sell a 100$ item to and they give me the "just browsing" with the not enough money bubbles response. Making money is painfully slow in expensive stores in my town.

[sara_dippity]

Motoki, am I detecting PMS here?

Oh no you didn't!!

[Motoki]

LOL well they say us guys get it too.

[miramis]

I swear hubby gets it instead of me, I'm always so sweet *batters lashes*

[Sandilou]

You know I don't mean anything by it, Motoki!  I just couldn't resist...