A study of Buy Bars

[LordHellscream]

Here are something i've observed about buy bars

1. The more expensive the item is the harder it is to raise the bar. Say you can dazzle (gold badge sales interaction) once and completely fill a buy bar of someone who is buying a TV set, but you only raise the buy bar a tiny little bit with a dazzle when you try to sell your 200k community lot ownership deed.

2. It seems like it has nothing to do with whether an item is expensive or cheap, only the amount matters, so dazzle someone to buy a $8000 plasma TV set raise the buy bar the same amount as dazzling someone to buy a $8000 puddle. Though other factors make it harder to sell $8000 puddle than a $8000 plasma tv.

3. The buy bar raises slowly on its own, customer loyalty and business ranking probably (not sure) make it raises faster or start at a higher level. The most important factor is if the item is at a reasonable price. So if the price is set at rediculously cheap the buy bar raises faster than if the item is set at average price.

4. The buy bar goes down slowly if the item is set to be anything higher than average, the more expensive the item is the faster it goes down. Luckily the buy bar doesnt start from 0, so you will have a few seconds to get to the customer and do sales interaction  before the bar drop to zero and at that point the customer is no longer interested and the loyalty is also gonna be taking a hit.

5. Thus it is basically impossible to sell someone a 200k community lot at anything higher than average price, because every second the buy bar drop more than you can boost with any sales interaction (including manipulate)

6. When a customer is autonomously browsing an item it is much easier to boost the buy bar than when they browsing an item you  are showing them. so "Access..Desire" and "Look for Mark" is kinda useless, cuz even a customer is "willing to buy" and "interested in that huge plasma tv" you will still have a hard time selling to him than if he autonomously trying to buy it.

8. Cheap or expensive? if you are selling some items at averge, and some other items at expensive, then customers are more likely to buy the cheaper value items than the more expensive ones. But if you sell everything at same price level (say very expensive) then they will be as likely to buy the same item as if all items are set to cheap.

9. Then the BIG question is, should i sell items at cheap or expensive? It depends, if there are many items in your store, its is better to set price at average, because there are always more people browsing than the number of sales people. the buy bars goes up on its on so you dont have to worry about losing customers. when your business is getting successful with high rank and alot of loyal customers, sometimes customers even buy things like plasma tv on their own without sales helping. If you set price at expensive then you can lose a lot of customers who are not being handled by your salesperson in time. because their buy bars goes down slowly.
On the other hand, if your store is only selling a few items, then it is probably a better idea to set the price to be more expensive, just to make sure every buying customer is being handled by a salesperson.

10. Spot the poor and get them out of your shop asap! if a sim is too poor, he wont buy anything. he only wanna hang out and blocking other potential customers from entering your lot.

10. Exploiting the loopholes: sales interactions like dazzle raise the buy bar by a fixed amount, the only difference is that the higher cost item has a bigger buy bar (all bars look the same but u will notice that it takes alot more dazzle to fill buy bar of 50k item than a 5k item) but you can fill the buy bar of most items you buy (10k or lower) with one at most 2 dazzle.
I set up a pay to stay business, the suggested average ticket price is $87/hour, and i set it at $800 using the custom pricing, the game consider anything $129 or high rediculously expensive, but afterall it is still only $800 i can get anyone to buy it with one dazzle. so now my business ranking is 8, i have 8 customers at a time, i can keep them on poker tables and hot tub forever with snapdragon all over the place. I'm making 800x8x24 = $156,400 a day with no effort, no employee and no expenses. (they dont even need to eat or anything because of those overpowered plants)
and often they will sleep on my lot (have echo's sleep enabled hack) when their energy gets really low, hell, they wont even sleep if i dont want them to, just have my servo rally forth them over and over.
my electronic store probably make more than this a day but this requires no attention at all. i only need to dazzle them once when they come and invite them to the poker table/hot tub and they are on their own, paying me 800 an hour.

[angelyne]

Thanks. That was great.


Seriously though   Good info there!  I'm not going to use the loopholes because I prefer realistic play, but now I understand lots more about the game.  (very well explained btw).  This is better than the prima guide.

[Gus Smedstad]

Interesting stuff.  Clearly even though the bar always appears to be the same size, in actual fact it has a scale that depends on price.  You should think of higher priced items as having a bigger bar.

I thought relative price (cheap or expensive) affected the size of the bar, but from what you say it affects the natural rate of fill of the bar.  The cheaper it is compared to wholesale, the faster the bar rises on its own.  Above "average," the fill rate is actually negative.

I'd already noticed that low-priced items required no sales help to sell, and that high-priced items required sales interactions.  This clarifies the mechanism.

When a customer is autonomously browsing an item it is much easier to boost the buy bar than when they browsing an item you  are showing them. so "Access..Desire" and "Look for Mark" is kinda useless, cuz even a customer is "willing to buy" and "interested in that huge plasma tv" you will still have a hard time selling to him than if he autonomously trying to buy it.

I'd explored those due to advice from this board, and given up on them.  I'd "assess... desire," but every time I tried to "show item," the interaction failed and the customer got a negative loyalty hit.  Maybe these work if you already have a high relationship with the target, but I've given up on them because they always fail, and I don't know why.

9. Then the BIG question is, should i sell items at cheap or expensive?

I disagree with your conclusion.  Rather, I'd say that it makes the most sense to have a lot of lower-price, Average items, and a few high-price, Ridiculously Expensive items.  The lower priced stuff will sell with little or no sales intervention.  The big-ticket items will require a Dazzle or two to sell, but if the item's ordinary price is high enough that it usually requires sales help to sell, you might as well price it very high since you need Dazzle anyway.  The obvious codicil is that you shouldn't have more of these items than you can reasonably handle with your salesmen.  You probably can't count on employees for this, only controllable sims.

i only need to dazzle them once when they come and invite them to the poker table/hot tub and they are on their own, paying me 800 an hour.

Yeah, that definitely falls into the category of "exploits."  Some people will pursue this anyway, like the Sport of Kings, so it's worth mentioning.

 - Gus

[LordHellscream]

Thanks. That was great.


Seriously though   Good info there!

heh thanks, remember this is not from official guide or anything, just stuffs i noticed from observation

[angelyne]

Thanks. That was great.


Seriously though   Good info there!

heh thanks, remember this is not from official guide or anything, just stuffs i noticed from observation

No it's probably better than the official guide

[LordHellscream]

[

9. Then the BIG question is, should i sell items at cheap or expensive?

I disagree with your conclusion.  Rather, I'd say that it makes the most sense to have a lot of lower-price, Average items, and a few high-price, Ridiculously Expensive items.  The lower priced stuff will sell with little or no sales intervention.  The big-ticket items will require a Dazzle or two to sell, but if the item's ordinary price is high enough that it usually requires sales help to sell, you might as well price it very high since you need Dazzle anyway.  The obvious codicil is that you shouldn't have more of these items than you can reasonably handle with your salesmen.  You probably can't count on employees for this, only controllable sims.

Good point, but it seems like people are less likely to browse the expensive price item if there are average or cheap items around.
I did an experiment on this, had a store selling 4 plasma tvs, and 3 of them set to average and one of them set to expensive, i sold 4-5 of each of those 3 average ones and only sold the expensive one once

[Gus Smedstad]

I think we need better information on  how Sims decide what to browse, which is the important thing when considering high-priced items which require sales intervention.  The fact that you had 3 average and just 1 expensive item skews your data, and the sample size is pretty small as well.  I'm not saying you're wrong, you're probably right, but it would be good to know.

The variables that leap to my mind:

Does price affect browsing?
Does margin (cheap vs. expensive settings) affect browsing?
Does variety matter?

To test these, I can see setting up:

A shop which only carries one kind of item, with some set to "average" and some to "ridiculously expensive."  There should be equal numbers of both prices.  Do the Sims browse the first group more often than the second?

A shop which carries two kinds of items, with different wholesale prices, but identical retail price because they're set to different markups.  Again, you want equal numbers of each.

A shop with a huge variety of items.  How often does "can I help you?" fail in the first shop, with just one item type, compared to this shop?  This has more random variables in it than the other tests, unfortunately.

Maybe I'll investigate this.  I'm kind of reluctant to screw up my current store to do so, though.

 - Gus

[J. M. Pescado]

Yeah, that definitely falls into the category of "exploits."  Some people will pursue this anyway, like the Sport of Kings, so it's worth mentioning.

Pssh. The Sport of Kings is not an "exploit". It is OBVIOUSLY far more fun than any mere TV! I've haven't watched TV in YEARS, but KICKING SOMETHING is definitely loads of fun! The fact of the matter is that few things entertain better than physical violence. The Romans knew this. Why shouldn't you?

[LordHellscream]

I think we need better information on  how Sims decide what to browse, which is the important thing when considering high-priced items which require sales intervention.  The fact that you had 3 average and just 1 expensive item skews your data, and the sample size is pretty small as well.  I'm not saying you're wrong, you're probably right, but it would be good to know.

im not saying im right, im just saying the inconclusive evidence had led me think this way. it is entirely possible that this is just coincident

[J. M. Pescado]

A shop which carries two kinds of items, with different wholesale prices, but identical retail price because they're set to different markups.  Again, you want equal numbers of each.

At the moment, what a shopper chooses to browse is apparently determined at random.The weightings are unknown and buried within some undecipherable LUA thing.

A shop with a huge variety of items.  How often does "can I help you?" fail in the first shop, with just one item type, compared to this shop?  This has more random variables in it than the other tests, unfortunately.

Oh, this one's real easy. I can dig that up in the code right now.

Here's how it works: Assuming your victim can afford the object he's going to ask you to show him if you succeed (if he can't, for whatever reason, you fail automatically), here's what happens.

Your target's base mood level is adjusted by +10/+20/+30/+40 for no/bronze/silver/gold sales badge.
If your target's chemistry-and-badge-adjusted mood level is <= -50, you fail. Period.
If your target's chemistry-adjusted STR with you is <= -25, you fail. Period.
If his STR is >= 25,
... and his outgoing score is >= 500, then if his modified mood level is > 8, you pass. Otherwise, you fail.
... and his outgoing score is < 500, then if his modified mood level is > 11, you pass. Otherwise, you fail.
Otherwise, if your target's STR with you (with modifiers) is < 25,
... and his outgoing score is >= 700, then if his modified mood is >= 15, you pass. Otherwise, you fail.
... and his outgoing score is < 700, then if his mood is > 17, you pass. Otherwise, you fail.

And that's all there is to it. Variety is unimportant. It's basically just a mood thing. Some customers are unexplainably surly, due to a borked mood boost. Try checking your lot debugger for "Fix Broken Mood Boosts".

[Gus Smedstad]

That's the first decent breakdown I've seen of why a Sales interaction succeeds or fails.  I hadn't realized that "Can I help you?" cared about Daily Relationship.

I don't really get the intent of the testing tree.  As I understand it, "can I help you?" generally only applies to Sims who have just come on the lot, though now and then I've seen a Sim finish shopping and get the baffled look.  So you'd think that this tree would always succeed, particularly with the badge adjustments.  Either something is borked, as you say, or I'm not understanding something, because I've had a fair number of "Can I help you?" interactions fail with a Gold sales badge.

 - Gus

[LordHellscream]

these are making sense now, with mind-control mirror i checked and found out that all my best customers (those who buy the most frequent and never reject my sales interaction) are very very outgoing.

[J. M. Pescado]

I don't really get the intent of the testing tree.  As I understand it, "can I help you?" generally only applies to Sims who have just come on the lot, though now and then I've seen a Sim finish shopping and get the baffled look.  So you'd think that this tree would always succeed, particularly with the badge adjustments.  Either something is borked, as you say, or I'm not understanding something, because I've had a fair number of "Can I help you?" interactions fail with a Gold sales badge.

There's several reasons for why this might occur: First, there's the possibility that your target just unnaturally hates you for some reason that is invisible to you on your panel. If your subject hates you, possibly due to lousy chemistry (only -25 is needed), or perhaps an extended history of personal assault, you auto-fail, period. Secondly, some sims are just unnaturally surly when they arrive for some reason. Letting them bask in some snapdragons for a bit may help, but usually if they behave this way, you're better off just kicking them out of your store.

[LordHellscream]

if chemistry plays such an important role then does it mean that those people without NL can sell stuffs more successfully? since chemistry was introduced in NL expansion pack.

[J. M. Pescado]

No. Even though Chemistry was introduced in NL, it's a core game feature so remains active in OFB, even for those without NL. Turn-ons and turn-offs may or may not exist in OFB without NL, but the basic chemistry functionality remains.

[Gus Smedstad]

I just had a "May I help you?" interaction fail when my sim was a  Friend of the target (DR at least 50 on his part) and Assess Mood said he was in a "Very Good Mood."  I haven't used a cheat to see his Townie personality, but clearly supposedly his Outgoing level shouldn't matter with those two being that high.

 - Gus

[Gus Smedstad]

I now believe that Sims sometimes come into your shop looking for something specific.  I noticed that during the "May I Help You?" interactions which failed, both Sims showed speech balloons showing the cheap TV.  Successful interactions show no speech balloons.  A new Sim came into the shop just now and had a puzzled look and a "cheap TV" thought balloon.  I don't normally stock those, but for the purposes of testing I bought one and put it on sale.  I then did "Can I Help You?" and sure enough, he went to the cheap TV.

[J. M. Pescado]

I just had a "May I help you?" interaction fail when my sim was a  Friend of the target (DR at least 50 on his part) and Assess Mood said he was in a "Very Good Mood."  I haven't used a cheat to see his Townie personality, but clearly supposedly his Outgoing level shouldn't matter with those two being that high.

That's a mystery, then, since it openly contradicts information as written in code, with no blackboxes involved. However, "Assess Mood" is very, very unreliable, especially due to the "broken mood boost" bug.

[angelyne]

Maybe you can explain this one to me Gus.

I just set up a home-based Art Gallery.  All my paintings are on the expensive side, but I am selling them at average prices.  I've had 2 customers in my shop so far, but no one is buying.  They just stand there with their buy bubble slowly climbing...then it drops to zero and they get a negative hit.  Over and over till they leave because of needs.  I tried doing a basic sale (I just started, so that's all I can do, but didn't seem to do much)

What am I doing wrong here?

[Gus Smedstad]

All my paintings are on the expensive side, but I am selling them at average prices.  I've had 2 customers in my shop so far, but no one is buying.  They just stand there with their buy bubble slowly climbing...then it drops to zero and they get a negative hit.  Over and over till they leave because of needs.  I tried doing a basic sale (I just started, so that's all I can do, but didn't seem to do much)

I'm pretty sure they won't even start to browse something they can't afford.  What's happening is that the basic fill rate at "average" isn't enough to fill the price of your target painting.  So if all you have is Basic Sell, you have to hit the customer with that repeatedly.  Every time you complete it, you'll get a little gain on the buy bar and a little loyalty gain.

If you can't sell any of your stuff with repeated Basic Sells, you need to sell some cheaper items.  Things under $200 or so sell pretty easily without any sales help.

 - Gus

[cwykes]

No. Even though Chemistry was introduced in NL, it's a core game feature so remains active in OFB, even for those without NL. Turn-ons and turn-offs may or may not exist in OFB without NL, but the basic chemistry functionality remains.

Turn-ons and turn-offs exist in OFB without NL.  I've got base game +OFB (no Uni, no NL) and I have turn-ons/offs attraction, fights and furious, inventory, slow dance (I think) and view neighbouring lots,  but not LTW, permaplat, cellphones and mp3 players.   So I have the NL stuff, but not the Uni stuff in general.  The install allocates a random set of turn on/offs to your existing sims and puts a vial of stuff in your inventory to change them if you want.
[EDIT - I do have LTW and permaplat - I just found them thanks to a screenshot of Simmiecal's 
I have wants to slow dance, but I haven't found slow dance yet.]

Thank Lord Hellscream for the info - I was beginning to figure some of this out, but you've helped a lot. "May I help you" seemed to work all the time for me and be good for a star whereas "assess desire" always failed.  I'm obviously using the first one on newly arrived sims who are in a good mood and the second one on Sims who've finished shopping and in a bad mood.

I'd like a "broke sims go home mod".  You can't sell them anything and trying lowers their customer loyalty, but, you can get customer loyalty stars off them if you leave them alone - I got one from a sim who'd just found the shop had a bathroom!  Trouble is they get into fights and love affairs.  Taking time to get rid of them without losing loyalty takes you away from sales opportunities and I guess they count toward your maximum visitors number, so you won't get any new big spenders til someone leaves.  Just a simple time limit on a visit would work I should think.

I now believe that Sims sometimes come into your shop looking for something specific.  I noticed that during the "May I Help You?" interactions which failed, both Sims showed speech balloons showing the cheap TV.  Successful interactions show no speech balloons.  A new Sim came into the shop just now and had a puzzled look and a "cheap TV" thought balloon.  I don't normally stock those, but for the purposes of testing I bought one and put it on sale.  I then did "Can I Help You?" and sure enough, he went to the cheap TV.

That one's interesting - I don't pay much attention to the bubbles.  - have to do that now!

[kutto]

I set up a pay to stay business, the suggested average ticket price is $87/hour, and i set it at $800 using the custom pricing.

How do you manage those prices? My game considers even $18/hour ridiculously expensive, and I have quite a few expensive items on that lot. Even with dazzle, not every customer will be in a "great mood" resulting in a failed social, and lowered loyalty. How do you do it?

[J. M. Pescado]

Customers can't gain or lose customer loyalty until they've agreed to pay, so all the spammed sale socials in the world don't hurt customer loyalty (or help it!), until they pay the bandatron.

[kutto]

Oh wow! I had no idea. I deal mostly in sales stores.

[J. M. Pescado]

Oh wow! I had no idea. I deal mostly in sales stores.

It also makes for a good way to build the sales badges at no risk, cost free: Setup a bandatron, hand-input a price so outlandish that it will never work, like, say, 50000/hr, and then just start sales-spamming anyone that shows up to look at it. They'll never buy in, so you can just keep spamming them regardless of if they accept or reject, since you get the learnpoints either way.