More Awesome Than You!

Following the fashion of the original thread...but I just want to know ur views after 10 hours or more playing.
My thoughts are

1. this game is not intuitive compared to NL and UNI. I have no idea how many things work and are still struggling to figure them out.
2. Its' difficult and challenging to run a store which sells everything such as a florist and a small cafe. The cafe needs too many stuff and the customers are losing royalty from being kept waiting.
3. Its difficult to keep the mood of the customers up and the staff needs to take breaks frequently and cannot have overtime too much or they quit their job on me (I guess i work them too hard without realising it....2 of them quit on me).
4. I have to keep an eye on the stupid sim time to try to keep the store open from 9-5.
5. Cash flow is so erratic. No idea why? and my customers only have 1 simoleon bag.
6. Finally Maxis give us some nice hairstyles. But the racks for putting things suck and I cannot put custom content on maxis racks (*hint, hope there will be a hack for it soon).
7. Custom fridges cannot be used for the "make many...pies" options. The option disappears. Bluesoup, we cannot enjoy our pretty fridges anymore :(  and sims cannot cook custom food and put it into their inventories automatically like the maxis food (I think maxis is evil for excluding this) I got to do it manually (Stop the sim from serving and putting it in his inventory using hand tool) and its so time consuming.
8. Difficult to find good employees.
9. Some weird bugs. Such as when I hire employees , I get the pop up " A basket of grocies had been teleported next to you."  (I think this msg comes up because o Monique' computer. but I just carry on using it since it doesn't do other bad stuff to game). After my sim drinks love potion, he wants to bleh and also drink love potion again? I don't know what kind of weird bug that is? And I got my sim drinking coffee repeatedly if they have coffeemachine (nope I don't have coffeecup hack, if that's what you are thinkg).
10. and too much micro management. My sims refuse to serve customers automatically and love running into their 'break room' where there's a tv and pinball machine (kinda like RL issit?)



On the whole, I have mixed feeling about this EP. You? If you are not too busy playing, post some of ur thoughts and observations.

 :-\

Have you tried running all your custom content through SimPE?

I am doing it now. .. I thought I will scan again in case I have any unknown hacks :P

nope, I don't have the coffeecup hack.Its strange but I elminated the coffee machine before I lost my sanity.  Val drank like 5 cups of coffee before I notice it...when I was instructing to harvest Echo's crops, she decide she need coffee fix instead  >:(

It's defintely alot more complex, but there's a lot more features than the other expansions so that's kind of to be expected. Overall, I like it, but I'm starting to lean towards buying the damned guide as I almost feel like it may be necessary for this expansion.

BTW, I have the tips turned on it and claimed if you pay your employees more they'll take less breaks and such. Apparently, how much you have to pay them goes up with how much experience badges they have etc.

I use Merola's Multi Purpose painting to keep everyone's needs up on my store. It works very nicely, and the employee's dont complain, I work them like dogs and I dont give the little freaks any breaks either. I just boost their needs with that painting and make them continue working. Only one emplyee quit on me, I dont know why, since his mood was pretty high. Maybe his aspiration level was down. I'll have to remember that the next time.

Too bad we can only have 8 employees, those crafting stations would be great for a sweat shop!

Oh, one thing that really gets on my nerves, is that sometimes they like to play kicky bag. They get in the way of other customers. And they will also have pillow fights right in the middle of my store.

As a whole I like it. Customers playing kicky bag in the middle of my store and loitering all day gets annoying though...haven't had the pillow-fights. I've played a few of the pre-made families. The furniture store, The flower lady, and the bakery, thats the hardest for me so far, people don't seem to want to buy the food from the case, and just stand around or play chess all day.  I finally ended up putting a ticket taker in there to make at least SOME money, but they don't stick around long heh. Mebee they need to be hungry to want to buy food.  Also, I put in one of the large espresso bars, and no-one ever comes to it to buy espresso, so it may not be enabled for this expansion.

TwoJeffs no indoors kickybag hack works with OFB. I've been using it and not had a single instance of it.

Edit: Darn you 'toki, for gettin your post in before I did. :P

Does the pillow fighting happen with noroadpillows? Does the kickybagging happen with the various nokickybag hacks? Or do those all need updates?

Hrm... about that expresso thing... that's another pet peeve I have is that... despite having some great ideas in general, it seems that a lot of the options are limited. It's like we've been given a great set of brushes and various colors for a palette, but we are totally forced to paint within the lines. :P

Ste

Eh, just you wait, I'll have the business Jobinator eventually. Because in Soviet Russia, you do not run business, business runs YOU!

So will we get a version of bathroomusesyou that charges? ;)

Bathroomchargesyou - 2 simoleans per wipe!  ;D

 :D  :D *wipes soda from monitor*

Hehe. Yeah... pay toilets.. they have em IRL.. why not sims.  Tanks for the hacky sack comment, I had forgotten he made a hack that did that.  Think I had it at one time, but did a clean install for OFB.

My sims already had them thanks to Inge. Her pay toilets and her bladder full fountain made some good simoleons for some of my sims.  ;D

I feel like I've joined a nunnery.  I'm playing a totally vanilla game.  Not a single hack and the censor blur is back. I'd honestly forgotten what it looked like.  I've played for about 4 hours in total: I sample each of the ready made families in Bluewater Village.  I do like this EP - simply because you have to think strategy now to get some sort of success.  By the time I got to playing the flower shop I'd decided that to make a business work successfully hire four key staff: a cashier, an object maker, a sales person and a restocker.  Then your playable sim should release each one for a break in rotation.  I overpaid the sales person (Alvin Futur) and made a killing on that day's sales.  He upped his level to manager, but I couldn't see the option to promote him.  (Too cheap to buy a Prima Guide). 

Next time I play the flower shop I'll see if my strategy works.  I kind of hope it doesn't, because that part of the game would get boring pretty quick.

I haven't really tested this, but I took a Sim to my one community business lot that another playable Sim owns.

It's the closest thing to "visiting another Sim" - kind of neat to see my playable but non-selectable Sims puttering around the business.

However a very interesting possibility is that there were a couple of aspiration reward objects on the lot that appeared to be usable by the selectable Sim I'd taken to the lot.

So now I'm thinking - here's a possibility for setting up a venue - charge an astronomical fee for entry, and place a Resurrect-O-Nomitron in the middle of the room. I don't know whether this will work, but it's an interesting concept.

I'm really enjoying this pack immensely!  ;D

Trying to get your business to a successful is level definitely keeps you on your toes and the management side of things( restocking, looking after indecisive customers etc) is pretty much full on!

I do what Scotty does....have Merolas painting, keep levels up and work all my employees like dogs!!  :D

BTW Sandilou.....

to promote staff to management, just click on whichever employee got the promotion and there's an option there to promote them.

Aussieone I tried - I couldn't find an option anywhere.  I've shut the game down so maybe it will be there when I relaunch it.

Hmmmm...

Yeah that's strange sandilou

I guess I'd do the same....shut the game down and restart and see what happens  :)

Issit? I am going to get them now. I am sick of people using my bathrooms for free.  :D

I haven't had any issues with my sims cooking and putting custom foods up for sale.
I am sourta mad that custom fridges don't work anymore, but I guess that is expected with the new fridge options.

I had one of my best employees quit on me tonight for what appeared to be no apparent reason.    Grrrr

I HATE the hiring system.  Call on the phone and you get a selection of like 6 sims...unless there is something I am missing here with the hiring options via the telephone.

I do have a business that is up to level like 8 or 9 now.  (How many levels are there anyways?)   It's getting really hard to keep everything under control.  I'm trying to have the owner "train" her daughters to do stuff so that I don't have to keep messing with hiring stupid idiots who quit anyways.

I'm still figuring a lot out.  I'm hoping I can figure out stuff w/o resorting to buying the guide.

A home business won't allow you to promote someone to manager, only stand-alone businesses can have them.


I believe the choices for employees works similar to job openings from the newspaper/computer - every night at midnight another random group of potential Sims is available.

I read on the BBS that before an employee can be promoted to manager, they have to have 5 badge points.

Gold = 3 pts, silver = 2 pts, and bronze = 1 pt.

So I think it depends on the kind of badge and the number of badges your employee has.

Thanks Gynarchy: that makes sense because the flower shop is a home business.  The pop up said that my sim had earned enough points to be promoted to manager, and that managers look after the shop in your absence, so that you can have a remote business.  Can't do that if you live on the premises.

There are ten. so you are almost there.

You don't need merola's painting to get moods up - there is an item in game will do it for you.  I guess this is a spoiler, so here's the link instead of the info...
http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?&openItemID=item.103,root.1,item.43,item.41,item.23&threadID=f2a1081b7696ba61a84f34f0dc6a47cb&directoryID=103&startRow=1#fccb4ff941ddf57d414957a2716cfb10

1. Word. It's like an entire science in itself. I still have no idea how that ticket thingy works.
2. Having idiots at the cash registry is funny first, but gets annoying after a while.
3. They need breaks? Whats next? Paid vacations?  ;)
4. Pah! My shop is open when it's open. So there.
5. Wait you get cash out of this?
6. What's with the crazy hats inflation? And those racks suck so much, like a really sucky thing.
7. Hm. This doesn't bother me much.
8. Haven't even tried so far.
9. Had thankfully no bugs yet.
10. Too much work, period.

I haven't actually played any lot as yet, but browsed through the hair and clothing options in cas for all ages and both sexes...what's with all the hats? :o The new clothes are pretty cruddy too. And that new 'hooker' makeup!  The only thing I really like is the cute little ringlet style hairdo for the little girls, and the animal outfits for the toddlers.
I am putting my outfit and hair downloads straight back in the game...
I will play the game later and see how that works out :) I haven't even checked out the new objects and such yet!

I truly am challenged by OFB .I received my copy of OFB the day after it was released and I would bet that I havent come any where close  to figuring out all the new interactions  in the family's and definitely I am still groping through the business world  totakly blind. I did discover that Pleasure Sim's make horruble business owners .where the obvious is also true the most likely to start making a profit in Business right away is the Fortune sim.I like OFB its far better than I expected and I wish this had come out instead of UNI first

Anyone know if there is a way to check what badges my employees have after I hire them? Sometimes I forget. :p And making them selectable temporarily to peek messes up their employee status and turns them into customers. :p

I'm not sure how the 5 or 6 or so employees available a time on the phone works. I guess it just rotates a random selection. You can also hire people in person. You do get to check out their badge, but you have to choose hire first and you have to at least have some relationship with them otherwise they will get made and you will lose relationship AND a sales star with them. :p

I don't use that damned painting. Sorry, it's just too much like cheating to me. I might as well motherlode myself a bunch of money and make everything perfect. What's the point?

Oh, and watch out for pregnant customers. Their needs go down REAL fast (if you don't cheat :p) and they make for pissy angry customers. I found that out the hard way.

I'm disappointed because I think it doesn't have many stuff (several things that were in the screenshots weren't included - yeah JM, I know, propaganda ;)) and it's too darn repetitive!

I don't like clicking again and again on customers to perform sales interactions. I had hired a slacker who was great at sales, but as soon as he reached a gold badge, every interaction resulted in minus points, and I have no idea why! He just drove the business to the ground despite being well paid so I had to have my playable Sim do the sales interactions and it's BORING. And there are very little choices offered when you want to hire people, so that someone with a big neighborhood will most likely only get their playable sims proposed although, of course, they don't have a single talent badge!

Clicking on empty shelves to restock and choosing where the items go on the shelves is also tedious. As far as gameplay goes, I think it's about as repetitive as Uni, Superstar and Makin' Magic for stores that sell stuff, although it is more open as you can choose a theme for your store.

I also think it's unrealistic that the Maxis made OFB families started with almost inexistent skills, I think the logic would be to build skills while a kid and teenager and then work at a business when you reach adulthood.

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

The new clothes are quite disgusting, I think they outdid themselves lol, especially for the mumsy outfit with the very high waisted pants and baggy shirt. And the gorilla heads and such... ugh.

So far, Nightlife is the best EP IMO.

You can check it out in your business panel, there's a special "employee info" button, it's near the top I think.

Heh, that's funny because I personally felt Nightlife was the lamest episode that added the least and most of it was stuff that should have been in the main game (restaurants, chemistry) or extraneous silliness (vampires). *shrug* To each his own I guess.

I'm liking this one the most so far because I think it adds the most to gameplay but it is complicated.

Oh and for restocking I have the workers do it. Then I don't have to click on each shelf and the items get restocked where you put the original one as long as you leave the sign there so you don't have to manually place them. So far, no one has screwed up at restocking for me so I think having the workers do that at least is safe. :)

Oh, duh. Okay, thanks I will do that. :)

Lamest and most disappointing for me.  I had this silly idea that dates would be a challenging new gameplay mode, rather than being automatic Dream Date even if you never fulfill the other Sim's wants.  As tedious as some aspects of University are, it added far more actual gameplay than Nightlife.

 - Gus

I agree that NL was never a challenge but I just love the cars, new downtown, clubs scene, objects, pleasure aspiration ect. It added a bit of everything.

Bluewater village looks so much like Pleasantview I don't even feel like I have a new EP!

Motoki, I actually want to hire someone to restock but I've not yet met a Sim with a talent badge in that, so I guess I'll have to take the risk to hire someone who's new at it ;)

I'm not to fond of Bluewater Village. I've decided not to give my sims a business district. There's enough room in the base hood!

I've seen quite a few. I was pleased that my community business owners reroll when he goes to open his store, and amused to find him wanting to make sales to specific people :) I am disappointed over the LTWs. I'm just playing the shopping district to get the hang of it, and the couple with the toystore they've had for generations and want to give to their daughter have totally inappropriate LTWs for other professors (well the husband does, the wife wants to marry off a bunch of kids). If they were in-game born, it'd be easy to make them platinum and then run the business, but it seems like their dreams ought to at least match the story :p

I love this EP. I like a challenge, and am going to keep giving it a go without the manual (of course, I've read a fair amount of hints online). I've a whole bunch of ideas for different things to do with them and I enjoy management goals and figuring things out and, well everything. I liked NL too tho. Uni's still really too tedious for me, tho better.

I've had employees do it with no badge before. I suppose they are slower, but I haven't timed it. They didn't mess anything up though and they eventually got a badge from doing it. Anyway, it sure as hell beats doing it yourself. ;)

I actually thought 1-2 of the new clothes added are pretty nice. Surprised no one here like them
I like playing sims to relax. I don't like complication or challenges such as figuring out how to make customers click. I enjoy the intutive playing . If I need a challenge, I'll play my other brain- melting games, not sims! So yeah, I don't like the challenge OFB presents!  >:(

ETA: Motoki, heh, you don't do anything in ur store? Then what are you doing? peeing on urself or flirting with customers?

Mmm, challenge. I really hope that Stockmann has the expansion by now so I can buy it tonight. I'm looking forward to both the new wearable items and the gameplay. Finally, they included my usual hairstyle... :)

No, I have stuff. It was supposed to be a robot shop, but it's now sort of a toy, flower & painting shop (my damned fortune sim constantly gets buy a 500 simolean painting over and over).

I did hire a former lunch lady elder vampire cosmotologist for my shop to try to branch out into the beauty business, but even though she has a gold badge she just stands there so I'll either have to get her promoted to manager or else just play her and have her start her own business.

Hey Motoki, if you click on your sim you'll see a Restock option that when clicked will put your sim on restock duty (meaning it will restock everything to save you clicking each item).

So far I'm not impressed!  The open/closed sign is useless, you can't get rid of Goopy!  Maybe it'll be better when I get rid of those damn townies!

Miramis: Doh! and here I was clicking on each one lol

ZZ: They leave eventually, or you can just kick them out lol. I think it's somewhat realistic because I worked in retail and believe me there are always stragglers you have to wait on even after you close the store.  ::)

doh, I usually have 3 or 4 customers at any one time (I'm playing in the shopping district thingie) and when I turn it to closed, they all take off almost immediately. I can ring up final purchases if they'd already decided to buy and I'm quick about it. But otherwise, they leave. I hope that's not a regular neighborhood issue... I'll have to go back to my normal sims today and check.

(I took out all mods and downloads, if that means anything... can't imagine it does though.)

Sorry you're having trouble. I don't like Goopy - I'm not sure I even want him to buy stuff ;)

Yes, but you tell one of the idiots to "Ask to Leave"  and they start listening to a stupid joke instead!  and the piano's going unless the nobuskers works!

No doubt when all my hacks are working the way I want, and I can use SimPE to get rid of those townies, it will be better!  But at least it loads quickly at present, since I haven't restored my CC!

Oh, and I just checked at simEnhancer - update for OFB is estimated in about a week.  and the latest from SimPE is that, according to jFade, the objects workshop in the lates version is working with OFB, so maybe now I've installed it I'll see if it can access my characters!

I found a new annoyance. My sims can no longer sleep in community lots despite having beds there. This must be because beds are now sellable items. I hate this.
I used to have a swinger's bay for my romance sims. Now the swinger's bay is practically useless! :(

I'm surprised by the negative critics towards OFB, i'm finding it the best ep so far.
In fact, i'm even more surprised that people says "it doesn't add to much to the game" , when the business system is one of the most complete and complex features i've seen on any Sims ep.
WTG Maxis. :) Now just release a patch  :P

Yay for Stockmann as they had loads of copies. I got mine. :D They also had the holiday pack for 5 euros so I thought hey, why the hell not! Now I can have more funny hats AND sparklers in my game. Yay! Too bad the manual is in Swedish and Finnish, and my Finnish is still pretty bad. You think this game is hard when you're able to read the manual...  ;D

Not installing til tomorrow though as I got five hours of sleep last night and I'm kind of disassociating from reality right now.  So tired!

I made mine in a regular lot with a "hostess" and just used a teleporter to teleport over all the romance Sims. Various hacks kept me from having to mess with her needs while I babysat the romance Sims :P Now the hostess has adopted a kid, though, and I'll actually have to play her, so that'll be interesting...

How the heck do you get the management option to show up?

And how many sim days does it take for a sim to buy something?

There are some nice objects, admittedly, but setting prices is so slooooow and complicated!

I just find it totally confusing - but then, I guess I don't have a business brain!

The employees have to have enough badge levels before the promote to manager option will show up. If they don't have it, have them keep practicing stock, cashier, making stuff etc etc.

Yes, I realised that, but I couldn't even let the poor guy have a break!

I'm not sure what the deal with the break is. Sometimes I get the option to let them have a break and sometimes I don't.

If you don't give them one, they'll take one on their own and then the option doesn't come up.

Click on the sim employee, you should have "manage" (or whatever it is, I always mess this up as I can't look at the game and post at the same time) and then options for assigning the task, changing the task they're assigned to, sending them home, firing them, or a break. If they're a cashier and you only have one register, you can also just take over the task and they'll go on break.

Hope that helps a little.

Oh, well, if that's the case, maybe it depends how low their motives are?  Guess I'll just have to play the lots a bit longer and see what happens when they've been working all day!  But I'm finding all those sims just standing around with meters over their heads while they stare at a flower arrangement for hours is just sooo boring!

Sagana, I don't see a management option at all!

Doesn't the little ball above their heads show a color that indicates their motives? Like green is good, yellow so-so, red bad etc? At least I thought that's what the colors meant.

Maybe - hey, I only got the game 16 hours ago!  And I had to defrag etc. before I installed it, had to sort out my hacks so I could actually bear to play the game!  I'm still feeling my way around, but I do think it's more confusing than either Uni or NL (NL was a cinch! - apart from all the glitches....)

ZZ, you should have management options. After you've hired them (by phone, or in person) and called them in to work (with the open/closed sign or by phone) did they show up and say "I'm here for my first day, don't forget to give me a task"? Then you click on the employee and have manage options - if you don't give them a task, you've paying them to always be on break :) And go on break and everything is in the same menu as giving them the task to start with.

Yeah, I think the color of their funky plumbobs lets you know if they're unhappy. My cashier will go yellow and then just leave and go off to the bathroom and sit down tho.

I kinda like selling, showing different items and trying different sales tactics, so I don't get so bored watching the sales meters fill up.... yet... but I've only had the EP since last night :)

Yes.  And you can also check the overall mood of your employees by clicking on the "employees" icon where their pictures/skills/etc are displayed.  The background color will reflect their mood, just like it does with playable Sims.

I noticed that if you work employees too hard they will refuse to come to work.  I had a pair of employees working in a home-based toy shop (one as cashier, the other making toys).  Finally sent them home around 3 a.m. after they had been working most of the day.  At 6 a.m. I tried to summon them to work again, only to get a message to the effect of "I'm too tired, I need to rest for a while."  I guess Maxis didn't want any Sim-sweatshops.....

Karen

You have to wait at least 6 hours to call them back into work. They can still call in sick if they don't feel like coming in.

Thats bad if you get no manegement options.

Are you sure none of your hacks are interfering?

Without manegement optins there is no way to assign them to do jobs, no way to promote them, etc.

ZZ the easiest way to set the price for goods in your shop is by clicking on your till (cash register).  Then you can choose, ridiculously cheap -15%, cheap +5% , average +15%, expensive etc for all goods on the shelves.  The goods are marked up (or down) by that percentage for the original production cost of the goods. You'll see the real percentages in game (I'm not on a business lot at the moment, so I'm guessing from memory).

I'll reserve final judgement until I've played it a while longer, but up to now I find it extremely boring.  Sales and all that has always bored me silly anyway, but as someone else said, just watching them with those meters above their heads is worse than watching paint dry.  So far the only thing I really like is Servo.  It's early days yet, though.  I've only got a couple of playables preparing to sell from home and they haven't made enough goods to start their businesses yet, so perhaps once they get going it'll be better.  What I really want to do is get someone running an art gallery, although I haven't seen the option to paint anything any different - weren't we supposed to be able to paint original stuff and put it on the exchange so other people could buy them, or something?

What I find really silly is the fact that there are all these new townies, yet most of the time the only staff I am offered are my own playable Sims.  When Malcolm Landgrabb tried to recruit staff, he was offered 4 of my recently graduated Sims, including my Sim self.  Why on earth would someone at Level 9 in their career want to give it all up to work in a shop selling cheap stereos?  And why does it say there are 7 possible employees left but only offer 5?  What does it mean by 7 left anyway?  7 in addition to those 5, or 2 others?  It's all very confusing. 

I think I'm a complete moron at this game so far. So far all of businesses(3) have been doing pretty crappy, I'm always in the red as far a money goes.

I can't figure how to assign workers to jobs other then the cashier. I clicked on almost everything but I get no options. How do I assign workers to restock and host? I have a toy store(well sort of), flower shop, and clothing store. The toy store is the only one that I can assign  alot of workers to  different jobs because because of the crafting stations.

I have yet to figure out how to get them to actually buy anything. All they do is hangout, watch TV,chat, play kickybag,  pillow fight and play the piano.
 
So far 2 of my business made it to the 3 star level and I have no idea how I accomplished that  :-\. I do realize it's because of the number of customers who enter the shop but still, why did they enter in the first place? What did I do right? And what can I do to get more customers?

And Finally, where the hell is the Robot? What do they mean I have to make him with a craft bench. Jeez,I have an awful feeling it's going to take a pretty long time before I ever get the chance to make a real one. So far all I have been allowed to make are toy Robots.

Overall I'm lost. I feel like I'm playing blind because I didn't buy the guide ,so I have no idea how to play this.  The guide that came with the game is worthless.
Any help will be greatly appreciated ;D

Wolfee use the telephone to hire staff.  When you select them their skills are listed.  Many can already make the toys and robots that you want: they have bronze, silver and gold badges.  The higher the rank, the wider the range of objects that can be made.  Your playable sim need never develop any skills of his own - look at Malcolm Landgraab IV - he doesn't have any but he can still manage his two businesses.  Just hire - and fire staff.  If you think your staff deserve a reward, up their payscale.  They'll peak in performance for a while after that.  Keep them in a good mood by either giving them a break or sending them home - they'll appreciate it and come back ready to work harder the next day. (Just like real life!) ;)

I completely underestimated OFB.  I thought it would be a steaming pile of donkey dung, but it ended up being on the same level as Nightlife and University.  I'm just kind of surprised it only had one disk than the usual two.

The wholesale stuff is the most boring thing in the entire game.  You barely make any money from it and people constantly bitch when your sim tries to sell them something from it. Selling stuff your sim makes gives you a lot more money, and I'm still not sure how you can charge people for makeovers because If I want to give my sim a makeover I have to do it for free.

I also think it's better if you don't have about 300 townies in your game, but notownieregen might have to be updated because every once in a while a new townie spawns as a review person.  I usually hire my people in person, they're just working for you a little faster that way.

Thanks sandilou. I do use the telephone to hire staff, it's just I don't know how to assign them to different jobs except to be cashier or craftmaker. I also don't know how to give them pay raises. They say you have to click on them but when I do I don't get that option.

I didn't know that my Sims skill didn't make a difference on how well things sold.What a pity, my Sims are pretty maxed out on all their shills. oh well, at least I can hope for one of my own Sims will be available for hire but so far I haven't gotten that option.

I'm sure I'll catch on soon  :)

 Welcome to the club Wolfee.   chuckle    I bought the guide and I haven't had much chance to play my game yet.  

The guide says the employees just wander around satisfying their own needs and enjoying themselves if you don't assign them a task.  There is an Assign.......interaction menu which you use to direct an employee to perform basic tasks.   I haven't done this yet, but it looks like it is in the upper right hand corner of the playing screen.   You probably either have to click on the employee to bring it up or the object you want them to use.     You can assign employees to a service job by using the particular objects Assign job.......menu.    Specify which sim you want to man the object and the desired service begins.   When employees return to work after being sent home, they retain their job assignments from the previous day and will head directly to those posts unless reassigned.

  As far as customers buying   Customer loyalty, the stores business rank, and the simmies shopping need are all at play.  Customers with a large browsing bar head start are going to be the easiest to sell to.  I think you have to get the store employee to do a sales social.   They need to talk to them.   Presumably when you do this you will get another menu come up with different choices.    I'm not sure about that yet because I haven't actually played yet.

I don't have a Prima Guide (me too cheap) so I'm determined to muddle through it too.  Wolfee make sure that you play with sims that are ready made in Bluewater first, so that you don't affect your real game.  I'm fully prepared to wipe out everyone's fortunes in Bluewater while learning how to play.  ;D

 That's one reason I haven't played very much.   I set up a new custom hood that I can delete once I get the hang of the new ep.    Only problem is I haven't had time to put houses on lots or make a few new simmies yet.   I'm a little too attached to my other neighbourhood pixel people to screw their neighbourhood up.     And knowing me I probably will.

After the initial first impression (fantastic, my crap's broken!), uh... well, the second was trying to figure out how to generate townies, as the "debug + mailbox" combination resulted in... defective generation. It was creating things like "NPC Robot," my own sims, etc... probably a tech bit, so back on track...

After that, the third was pretty much an "Umgah" moment. By that, I mean "To Arms! To Arms!... wait a minute! Don't HAVE any arms! AIEE!! MY ARMS!!"

To make sense of myself, after inadvertently erasing all of my downloads to fix the townie creation thing, I decided to just grab a few key things and run with it. My personal experience with this game...  well, not a particular fan of either of the other two packs, so it's no real surprise that this one wasn't quite like I expected it to be. University was too boring, and Nightlife too... frankly, underwhelming, but this... I think "perplexed" almost counts, and is about as close as I can get to it right now. First three businesses of mine could only make money by cheating, which is a giant neon sign saying I need to try a bit harder to do this right, more or less.

Final summary: Uh... okay, good concept, abundantly confusing setup.

The art gallery is just the smae paintings that have always been in the game. You would think they could add a few more pieces.

You can upload custom ones in houses to the exchange. Its stupid but works. Thats probably what they meant.


There are only 5 potential hires per day. The list you see are the ones that you can hire that day only.

the "7 left" means you can hire 7 more total. So you can hire 5 today, then 2 more at midnight if you wanted.

And Pescado mentioned a hack is int he works to fix the stupid high level career sim taking a stockboy job.

If you hire exclusively from the hiring agency, yes. You can also hire in person using the hire command.

Yes but that is annoying because A: you have to have some kind of relationship with them, at least 20 daily IIRC and B: You don't see what their talents are until you actually make the offer and do the hire interaction. It's true you can cancel if it you change your mind, but it's a hassle to have to go run around and spend time checking each sim, plus you can only have so many sims over at a time.

I also hate that some of the 5 are always taken up with other playable sims so you really get even less than 5 to choose from. I'm not going to use them because I have other plans for them and because it doesn't make sense for a mayor or superstar actor to quit their job and become a cashier or stockboy.

I think we need a better talent agency in town. Sheesh.

I had trouble assigning staff, but I finally worked it out.  When a Sim with a business first goes to their business lot, their staff member(s) automatically turn-up and ask to be assigned.  Trouble is, they do this even if it's out of their working hours, which means you have no option to assign them because they're not meant to be working.  What I did was clear them off the lot using Inge's Teleporter bush, then when it was their actual working time I called them back in.  The "Management" option on the pie-menu was there then, but it wasn't there before when they weren't meant to be on duty, even though they'd apparently turned-up for work.  The annoying thing is that it does let you assign them to things like the cash till when it's out of hours, but they won't actually work it.  Brynne bought a cheap card table from Ramirez's furniture store (it's the only thing anyone bought) and although his staff member was on the till, she didn't ring it up, so Brynne threw it on the floor in disgust and stormed out of the shop.

One thing I've noticed is that if you send another Sim to someone's business  (i.e., choose it as a venue when they're visiting a community lot), the owner and staff will be there and visiting Sims will still purchase items.  The owner automatically rings them up and presumably that increases their sales and badges and the rest of it.  Seems to me that might be the best way of running the business, because everything is done autonomously and you don't have to mess about with it.

One thing I don't like is that if a member of the family owns a business, no other member of the family can go work there (except if they're hired in the normal way), so there's no sharing a business between spouses, for instance.  I find that a little odd, I'd have thought we could have had a husband & wife running a business together instead of having to run separate businesses.

My family members are working the business together. They're more or less like another owner, rather than telling them what to do, you click on them to choose what task they'll accomplish and they can boss the staff members around, open and close and all that. You can also give the rewards that your "main" owner has to someone else - so Joe can up his sister Jodi's selling or restocking abilities or whatever, if you want (or give them to an employee, I *think* but I haven't actually tried that yet). The main difference is that if you're building objects, they all end up in the actual owners inventory. And if it's a community lot, whoever bought it has the deed unless you move it. I think anyone that lives in the house with the owner is sort of technically an owner... but I haven't tried sending Jodi to take care of the store without Joe being there at all, yet.

Update: My business is now ranked 8! I finally got it.

Now I like this game. It's so much more chanlenging then the other EP's

ETA: Does anyone know if the no jealousy hack works with OFB? I kindof need it now, I did something wrong in my game and now I must try to fix it  ;D

TJ's Casual Romance is working in OFB, although I'm not using it myself at the moment. Apparently the no jealousy in the same room doesn't work with Lizzlove's waterbed.  I'm using the Insim to turn off Lot Jealousy.

Try to solve it without the hack! The drama is so much better!!! Or just kill a  few sims off.

Well, I've been playing for hours, which is why I haven't got back to all you kind people who've tried to help!

This time I made my own sims, a father and teenage son.  The father is romance, the son popularity, and he got the LTW to own five Level 10 businesses, and he started with a lemonade stand.  Then he got a poker table and after that things started to take off.  He got a flower bench and has reached the first talent level, and now emplys Lilith Pleasant to make flowers or be cashier.  So far, she's got the bronze talent badge for the flowers too, and seems far happier at work than at home (I wonder why....), and the business has reached Level 6. 

However, Lilith is now underpaid, and I still can't get the darn management option to give her a payrise!   (It's just like when I first installed Uni and the College option didn't show up;  so I'm wondering if it's tied in with that somehow, and since I haven't yet picked a college, maybe that's the problem.  However, it's certainly going better than it was, since both father and son are outgoing, friendly types and get on well with their customers - and if they're queued to do something, they do it - maybe because they don't have a computer yet!

What I don't like, though, is how everything you buy for the house once the business has been started, is subtracted from the profits, and the salaries of working sims in the house is added - so you never really can tell how the business is doing financially.  In fact, I think you could probably reach Level 10 and never make a profit at all!

Most of the other things you advised me about, I've managed to figure out now, like checking the employee stats. etc.

But it's so time consuming running a home business, poor Jack (the father) still hasn't had time to woohoo - and he still doesn't have a double bed!

Yes having Level 10 is not tied to profits - I have the Prima Guide and it notes this fact. In fact I'm thinking having a Level 10 business may be easier than having a profitable business  :P (course I have no idea, I'm pretty retardo, my businesses are only up to Level 3 right now).

I think the fact is, that as long as one at least of your sims has a well-paid job, then the business can, in fact, run at a constant loss - which I find rather disappointing!  And I'll bet the kid who reaches Level 10 before they go to college won't get the Young entrepreneurs award either - and really, with that name, they are the only ones who should get it! 

I agree, this is really pathetic. I was shocked to discover this and so outraged I started a thread over it. lol

Yes, it seems it's just another "Make Friends and Influence People" game, and really nothing to do with Business at all!

Well, I can't agree people. My little tycoon sim, Marie Bertino (a townie shock horror!!) is doing very well for herself. She is at level 10 and making a huge profit. The key in my mind is not too many staff. Try and manage with just your sim for as long as you can and make sure you get good reviews. I also filled the discounted wholsale reward first, then the cash option.

I also made sure her cash reg. skills maxed first at least to silver and then sales next. You get that working, then you can sell and ring up a customer quickly which means less need for staff. Plus I don't make anything. I just sell maxis stuff. I sell the odd painting that Marie's flat mate paints in her store, but mostly its maxis stuff. I have started her in flowers and now real estate.

Same here Stormy. I have one owner, a CAS sim. I had her in the scientist job (she's knowledge, I know that's a shocker, but hey..) to get some starting money and to max her skills, make friends, find a love, etc. Then I had her buy the Little and Local. She started out with the tiny box, now it's a lot bigger.Wholesale perks are maxed, working on the networking/cash perks now.

She's doing alright so far. Cash register and restock = silver, Sales and flower arrangements = gold. No employees, just her, and she's doing quite well. Her store is at level 8 now. Because she's on a community lot, she can go home, do stuff, use the energizer and go to work as well. I need her to reach the top of her career for permaplat.

By the way, she's not selling any home-made flowers save for the snapdragon (love that plant :D). Her store is a holiday item store. Yep, I finally found a good use for the holiday crap LOL.

Next on the agenda: get married to her fiance, have kids, get more stores. Poor thing, thank goodness I can't stress her out like this would stress out people in real life. Sure to get ulcers or a psych disorder :D

I have to get poor hard working Marie a life too. She has made too loves since being in the retail business and one sim who she just about falls over whenever he comes in, ah Gilbert, a new townie I think?? Well, I have had Marie hire Gilbert for her real estate business so we'll see where this goes *wink*. I'm thinking she needs an heir to her small empire.

We started out with the Cold Something Clothing Store in Downtown. I then made Marie's store deco's available for sale and the paintings that she had decorating the walls. Soon I got rid of the clothes and went into home decor. I had a full room dedicated to every mirror that maxis has, plus my CC ones. It was crazy! I then expanded further and got into furniture. Marie was selling lounges, coffee tables, statues etc etc.

Real Estate should be a real change!

Real Estate?  Please explain.  You have started her in real estate?  I have been trying to figure out why that real estate office is for sale.  

I bought this game Thurs. AM, brought it home and was playing by noon (removing downloads, etc.).  On Friday AM I got up and went out and got the guide!  I was soooo lost.  Things are slightly better with Prima's help.  At least I have a place to search when I don't know why or what is happening.  

I love this EP, confusing as it is.  

One tip.  Do not invite your best employee to move in, then have her find her own place.  Suddenly she will be working for free.  Good for the business owner - not good for the employee.  It was actually kind of funny.  I had to find her a job and now my business owner can't afford to hire her back.  That'll teach him to mess with the help!

I'm still learning about real estate but apprently you need to buy as many business as you can then take the deeds out of your inventory and sell them like a normal item I guess. The tip I got was to NOT sell them to your playable sims.

Marie, my tycoon, has about $350,000 simoleons so that should be enough to do it.

I might add too that the design of the real estate office is really nice. I like it heaps. Big change from normal maxis refab stuff. Tasteful colours IMO.

Yeah thats real estate.

The price goes up based on store ranking and quality of the staff.

If you want to be working at a profit you want to hire 8 staff members with skills for every shop.

The reason to sell to towniees is thent he lot becomes vacant again right away. Plus towniees have unlimited money so they can buy any crap you want to sell them.

Thanks for the explanation.  Will have to try that out later.

I still love OFB.  I've figured out most of the shop running tricks and am looking forward to opening a restaurant in the near future.  Even though I have my first businesses running like machines, it's still  challenging to juggle all of the responsibilities of business ownership.  I like to micromanage my sims, so I find myself actually playing the game a lot more closely than before.  Raising families had become incredibly repetitive for me, so OFB is just the thing I needed to hold my interest in the game. 

My favourite new feature has been the fact that pregnant sims are useful!  I have one, Elena, who owns a community lot and also lives in a house with a business in it.  Even though she technically doesn't get paid for working in her own home, her presence relieves the business owners (her husband and sister-in-law) of having to pay someone to do the work she does.  Elena was also hired at another fledgling home run business and even though I'm not sure she keeps the money she makes there, she does come waddling in when called.  Since she's got a gold badge in flower designing, a silver on the register and a bronze sales badge, she's quite an asset.

The only new Maxis sims I've played are the Larson twins and the Jacquet family.  Gilbert Jacquet is a little creepy (maybe it's the blond eyebrows/black hair thing).  Were it not for a female love interest in his relationship panel, I would suspect that Maxis had designed a John Wayne Gacy sim- what's with the pink bear statue in his bedroom? Maybe they were angling for "confirmed bachelor" vibe, but the whole thing seems off.  It's too bad my initial feelings on him were bad, he's pretty nice-looking and friendly, which is unusual for Maxis.   

I love Gilbert. He must be the most good looking maxis sim ! I am hooking him up with my fav gay sim. :P

Yeah, at first I thought that was his bedroom and I was creeped out too, especially because the first thing I saw him do was go over and kiss his mother.  Family kiss, but still creepy in context.  Anyway, now I think the upstairs room is his, because it has a computer for him to check on his business.

As for OFB, I like all the new objects.  At first I thought running a business was too hard, because my sims got exhausted way too quickly, and Florence couldn't make any sales (test neighborhood, no friendships yet).  Once Florence could make snapdragons and her husband could make robots (great profits) and they had a servo to run the cash register, it just seemed too easy.  The real estate churning makes it absurd, there's no challenge.  Between the snapdragons and the real estate, I think they've broken their own game.

I'm growing rather fond of Gilbert myself. I sold that silly bear statue. Gilbert's quite the handsome sim and a Romance sim too so he will be my "studsim" and help to populate Bluewater Village with his beautiful babies. :P He already has one daughter Fleur with his first wife Florence Delarosa, just had twins Gabrielle and Lance with second wife Nancy (previously a townie) and his dangerous liasons with former employee Christa could lead to another child and another divorce if Nancy finds out.

I forgot to mention that Bluewater sims, thus far, make ugly babies.  Florence married a good-looking new townie name River, their daughter has that weird sunken eye battered look, bulgy cheeks, and arched eyebrows that touch her hairline.  Malcolm Landgraab stole Lisa Ramirez away and had a baby with her, their kid was uuugly.  She looked like a Michael Jackson/Tori Spelling love child.  I've been wondering if these characters were made with the worst default faces and then changed cosmetically but not genetically.

Maybe you're right about Gilbert being the neighborhood prize stud though, I'll go breed him to Florence and see if I can get a decent-looking heir for her.

But they make for really lousy customers because their needs go down so darned fast. Either get them sniffing snapdragons or just leave them the heck alone. I learned the hard way that they don't appreciate a good sales pitch. Well at least the ones in my town don't.

This is the only thing that really bothers me so far.

Singularly unplayable.

I have the bug where the game periodically hangs and blanks the screen out. Just now, it apparently also managed to make my monitor stick in standby mode - I couldn't get it to show what the CPU was outputting to it at all. I know that this should be impossible - software can't cause that sort of hardware error - but I've checked all my port connections and it was definitely somehow Sims-related. Had to reboot to fix it.

I have been saving periodically, but it likes to hang right before I save. Just now, that meant the loss of a good half-hour to hour of playing time.

What I'm seeing, I'm liking, but the constant hangups (and, on three occasions, full-comp crashes) are really wrecking this for me.

Turns out I made things very difficult for myself, without realizing it.  I picked a home based business that sells crafted items (flowers) with a CAS family with no skills and no friends  The mother runs the shop with her daughter (when she is not in school).  They both are very lazy. I literally have to stand over them with a whip.  The minute I don't have a queued interaction they are off to sit on the sofa,  to watch tv, or even to clean the frigging toilets! (she's also very neat).  It's pretty bad when a shop owner rather clean toilets than talk to her customers.

The husband is a intern and doesn't help with the business other that keeping it afloat!

And I also borrowed 15k from the bank to buy the business.  Those interest payments are not making my life easier, and I have been unable to repay the capital yet.

So far I am coping, but all of their aspirations have been very very neglected.  They are in the green....barely.  My teen is almost an adult and I'm debating whether or not to send her to college.  I'd hate to loose my unpaid labor.   I would have liked for them to have a baby, but who has the time?

So far this is sounding pretty close to real life :)

What I am loving so far is there is finally a use for all those townies I created.  They are my customers.  I never interacted with them much before because I hate community lots.  With OFB I can make them come to me!

My biggest annoyance so far is having to micromanage the business so much, especially the customer relations.  When I make a sims a cashier s/he stays there and minds the cash.  When I tell my sim to make flowers s/he makes them and even gets a fun boost.  When I tell them to restock they do so.  Why is it then that there isn't a sale interaction for your controlled sims as there are for your employees.

Have you tried ChangeLotZoning to residential and then back again to community? 

When you ask a Sim who owns a community business what his job is, he says he's unemployed.

Kind of annoying, considering that if you ask a Sim who's employed either at a home or community business, he'll answer "I'm an Employee".

There also shown as unemployed and told to look in the paper and find a job!  Some things have definitely not been thought through!

There is a new hack over at MTS2 to fix that.  It's not a bug it's a feature :)

After a little more musing, here are a couple of things which bug me about the EP. 

I think it should be more integrated into the base game.  You earn badges more quickly if you have points in the relevant skill, but why won't you gain skill points as well?  Painting gives you creativity but not flower arranging?

So far I am enjoying creating business, but I have the impression that it's one of the other; either I play OFB or I play the base game.  In order words, either I build a business or do skilling/want fufillement. 

Mind you I am doing a home-based business with new sims.  Might be a different scenario with community-based business, I haven't tried that yet.  Maybe home base business are better suited for older established sims, preferably perma-plat ones. 

can you post a link or at least the title so I can search for it. thanks

Angelyne, I agree, it's rather ridiculous how it is so hard for sims to gain any skill points while they're trying to run a home business.  The trouble is, unless you cheat, CAS sims and new families just don't have the cash to buy a home and a business! 

Although on first thought, it seems horribly crazy and stupid of Maxis to put boss sims as unemployed but on second thoughts, they did it so that your sim would still be eligable for employment in career tracks. They made OFB such that you can work ur sim to their simmy bones, having them operate a store and also go to work in a 'real' career track.

Bleah! I wouldn't even want this kind of crappy life in RL not to mention imposing it on my sims but its a feature, not Maxis' stupidity at work.

So far my impression is still that this is an interesting and fun expansion that I'll get a lot of mileage out of. The only thing I've done is make a flower shop, which has kept the fortune sim who so desperately wanted one on his toes! I have a feeling it'll take me a very long time to explore all of the different types of businesses the game has to offer... I think I am an awfully slow player compared to everyone else.  ;D

The only thing that annoys me, and it makes me really, really surly, is the register. Every time I see a sim sitting there hunting and pecking over his register for half an hour to ring up an increasingly impatient customer I want to shake the little bastard. I have worked retail of a variety of flavours and damn it, registers are not that hard to figure out unless you are actually mentally retarded. This is one thing I will totally feel justified in cheating a badge for - it takes too long to get a register badge and after observing a townie employee with a bronze badge sweat over the register, it doesn't do enough good at lower levels. I know sims are inherently stupid, but this is too much even for them.

I am very tempted to make it much easier to gain register badges, PARTICULARLY with the corresponding skills. Someone with 10 logic points should not hunt and peck at a cash register more than once or twice.

It would be a much-appreciated hack!

I don't know if it's my perception of things or what, but it seems to take much longer to get register badges than any other badges I've tried. The fortune sim in question does have 10 logic points, and he gained bronze in sales and restocking his first day at his business - yet he still sweats over the register as if he were disarming a bomb or something. For pity's sake, the store only sells four different types of items, it's not that hard!

Yeah, who needs a cash register anyway when your store sell things everything at ONLY A DOLLAR. Seriously, $1 is not a hard concept.

Part of the problem with gaining register badges is that there is absolutely NO WAY to practice it at all. Which makes no sense, you'd think you'd alot time for a register clerk to practice with it just by poking some buttons and getting used to it. As opposed to sales, which must logically be practiced in the field. I mean, most other badges have a practice mode: Crafting badges let you practice churning out tons of useless junk before you try to sell anything, the Cosmetology badge lets you practice by mutilating friends and family....

Absolutely! It's a must!

JM, if you made a hack to shorten the time it takes to earn a register badge I'd pay double next billing period.  I'm sick of having flashbacks- I've trained absolute morons on register and they seem like brain trusts compare to my otherwise bright sims.  Also, having worked retail, watching the sims in line get antsy and irritable makes me uncomfortable as well. 

And how about a hack so that a customer (a) doesn't spend three sim days making up his tiny mind if he's going to buy something or not, and maybe locking him on to buying it once the bar is half-way filled?  In other words - no socializing instead of browsing.

I started with a premade sim that had a home based business - flower shop. She had about 4k in the bank and everything was already set up. I played without any CC or mods, this really didnt pose that big of an issue until she starting whining.

I didnt experience any of the bugs people have encountered. Once I closed the business with customers in line as the playable sim was seconds from passing out so I sent her to bed, the customers who were in line, left after some time leaving all their bags on the floor. The next day I had her clean up those bags and oddly she gained money from them, or at least it appeared so. She moved up in business rank somewhat quickly I thought, got to rank 3 by the end of the second day and had earned 4 perks and a good review. There were several customers who were in a bad mood and didnt like to be sold to, for them I used some joke interactions and then moved on to other customers, they bought stuff on their own.

One thing I really didnt like is that when I sent my employee on a break, he really didnt do anything to refresh himself, I ended up having to stop the main sim from selling and running the register to cook and serve food for the employee. So I guess I am still working out the assign/take break interactions etc as my employee was pretty much always in the yellow and once got in the red (needed food), but he didnt quit so, I guess I didnt muck it up too bad.

I guess my initial impression is that it is a whole lot of pointing and clicking at this point. I only played for a couple of hours. I like the new build stuff however and I am excited to build some homes etc with the new things. Also I am getting a kick out of people having so many issues trying to figure out how to play the game, since many people complained that the previous EPs were far too easy and didnt offer any sort of challenge...

First page of the mods section over at MTS2 : http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=136854

thanks

I'm having a lot of fun with it so far - admittedly, I played the business part of it for the first time last night. Still, it was great. I had a family I was kinda not looking forward to playing - the dad was next in line to age to elder and he had 15 days left. I was contemplating "accidental" Simicide, but now they are suddenly really fun and I breezed through five days with the son's new community-lot florist shop.

Maybe it's because I was reading here so much, but so far it seems pretty intuitive, and I've gotten to level three. Definitely look for customers who seem confused, I've found - if you ask them 'may I help you?' and show them what they're looking for, they almost inevitably get a shiny gold loyalty star. My most loyal customers so far are the confused ones I was able to get to in time.

The second day my owner brought both his pregnant wife and his pregnant mother to work with him. The mother got the usual community-lot wants, though she worked the register in a pinch, and the wife had the running-a-business wants, including the want to fire the one employee which wouldn't go away! She's still obsessed with getting a bronze sales badge, even though she has a normal job. They made a couple sales pitches and basically just hung out and ate, being pregnant, but it was still helpful to have them there. I wish they could have napped on the couch in the break room, though. I had to use a motives cheat for energy to keep them awake enough to close and go home.


This was my big issue, too, and the one thing I cheated on, though I only gave him a bronze badge. After four days he still hasn't upgraded - WTF? Yet he's gotten a bronze flower arranging badge and a bronze sales badge from scratch, and the one employee has gotten a bronze restocking badge because that's all he does.

My other big beef is that, since I moidered all my townies, no one starts with badges. There are five townies I made myself that DO have badges, but they aren't exactly the types who work in cheap furniture stores. All the rest are my playables, about 150 of them. I'd seriously love a hack that assigns playable Sims random badges, because although I could cheat and assign them some myself... well, I don't wannnt to cheat that way, for once :P People aren't always talented in exactly the right areas and I don't want my Sims to be, either.

I noticed also where some people were complaining about the amount of customers? That seems to be tied into the amount of Sims on a lot ala the graphics rules. There definitely (thankfully!) aren't as many as come onto downtown lots, but I still get a good amount of customers, I think about five, at once, which was too many for my owner to handle alone. Three in line while he hunts and pecks at the register? Pain! Incidentally when I threw his wedding party I was able to invite five Sims, which is more than the game ever let me do before without editing the graphics rules, and this is on the same computer as ever.

Otherwise, well, I'm having tons of fun with it, and I'll have to get one of my richer families to buy a different kind of business to see how that goes. Otherwise I'll have to veto bunches of plants only in all my playables' inventories :P

I agree, lol, it gives me PTSD flashbacks just watching it. :p

And it takes WAY to long to get the darned badges. Unlike the other skills, you can't continually be ringing up so what takes sim hours to raise in the other skills takes many days to raise register. I have a sim who has worked register for nearly a sim week and is only a bronze in register, but he's long since maxed out his sales and robotics. :p

And I agree about giving them breaks and they aren't very smart about satisfying their needs. Sometimes they do, more often than not they don't just come back with their little dot in the red again. :p

This is the part I'm enjoying the most also. All my sims suddenly have plenty to do again - all the time. My ingame borns that overly easily maxed skills (not all of them, usually, mostly because I don't *try* it makes everything so easy) and permaplats way early, now have new skills to gain and new goals that I set for them. I've given each one (4 sons of the original family now in 4 seperate houses with their own kids and 2 originally townie families that they picked up as playables after uni) a different business goal of some sort. So they're all madly still working jobs and skills, taking care of kids, learning new skills, setting up businesses and earning money so they can buy more stuff (I used no 20k handouts and they pretty much just got out of Uni so they aren't rich by any means). Someone said there was no replay value, but for me the point isn't to make the best business possible and "win" the game (I'm not even sure this IS a game, really. I think it's a stage with some cast, some props etc. A platform for your own individual games and stories which makes it interesting for non-gamers and explains the varying levels of ease people pick it up etc.) But anyway, for me it's infinately replayable, now more than ever, as setting and accomplishing my own goals is a huge rush :) </soapbox>

There are lots of bugs and poorly done issues (why can't custom content be treated like any other piece one sells?) - Maxis can't implement anything, rushing all the programmers through and everything. And the cash registers drive me insane as well. Even if you hire staff with skill levels in it, it seems slow. I'll quadruple my subscriptions to get both No PC customers and Faster Cash Registers :) But I still love the game

I would be more than happy with a mod that allowed for register "practicing." I think that's more realistic and I would feel less like I was cheating. Also, yes, employees are TERRIBLE. You stand around and do nothing for two hours, and then bitch at me when I tell you to get back to work? Have fun at the unemployment office, Ivy Copur and the four other sims I've fired.

I hired a clerk with a gold badge in sales and she hard-sold everyone, and they cried to the boss about it. I wonder if that's a personality thing?

Having employees sell just doesn't seem to work. They are stupid and will continually try to sell to sims even to someone who gave them a bad reaction. Gold badge doesn't help, paying them the max doesn't help, them being in green and in a good mood doesn't help. I just don't bother having them sell anymore and give them the menial tasks. :p

The skills they have really make a difference in how fast the badges are acquired. It didn't take long for my Sim who has 7 or 8 charisma points to get a Gold Sales badge. Register is accelerated by high Logic points, perhaps Sims with no logic will take a long time.

Yes but my point is, you can continually sell sell sell. You can't do that with the register. I got a gold sales badge easily as well, even with a sim without any charisma. The only one I have a real problem with getting up is the register. Most of the time you just spend standing around waiting or doing other things and you have to wait for the customers to come to you before you can ring them up and when you do, it doesn't take very long or go up much for each sale rung up. The problem is, since you can't continually pratice it, it takes forever to get up. Logic helps a little, but still doesn't make up for this problem.

Where do you get the May I help you option?  I certainly haven't seen it, or any of the management options either.  I'm beginning to think I need to reinstall it to see if things show up that I'm missing.  I think I've had to do that with every darned EP so far, and it's absolutely infuriating!  It's almost as though when the CDs are to shiny and new that stuff doesn't get copied properly!

They don't always have it, only certain customers sometimes do. You'll be able to tell because they'll be looking all around like they are lost and have no idea where they are or what they are doing. :)

I'm not sure what the rate is for how often you get a customer like that. It seemed like some days I don't get any and some days I might get 2 or 3 a day. It's usually not a lot though.

Well it just takes a lot of ringing up. Bronze happens fairly quickly, one of my employees got Bronze in about a day or two. The same Gold Sales badge Sim has a Silver in cash register. But I'm glad something takes a long time, I don't want everything to be too easy. If you're concerned you can hire employees who have silver or gold register.

It's weird some people (I don't mean you, Motoki) complain about gameplay being too easy, then want cheats to speed things up...

I don't want a cheat per say, but practicing when the store is closed might be nice. Pretty much ever other skill I can think of, even the hidden ones, you can continuously practice in and you can control how long and when you want to practice so this register skill is kind of an anomaly in that respect.

Yes, you'd think that if you asing an employee to the register, then they'd actually be skill-building while they stand there, other wise there's no point in having that option, you might as well do it yourself and just "ring up customers" when they appear with shopping bags!

And what's the betting, if you made George Macarthy a playable sim, and managed to employ him, he'd be just as useless in spite of countless hours with no breaks at the community lots and the campus stores!!

That, or maybe an option for the manager or owner to train the employee similar to a parent teaching a kid to study.  You'd get an immediate boost (maybe to bronze) and maybe the employee could learn at an accelerated rate while they are being coached?

I'd be happy with any of these options, even just one that makes learning the cash go much faster.  Seems to me that a couple of sim hours (less than a day)  should be enough to get to bronze, and maybe a week to silver and a month to gold.


I think the idea is that when you assign a cashier, you don't have to worry about your cash being unattended and your customers getting pissed off.  In fact, one thing I find supremely annoying is that you can't assign a controllable sim to assisting customers like you can an employee.  So you need to constanly click click click or next thing you know they are off watching tv instead of serving customers. I'm hoping JM will do something about that soon.

Yeah, it only shows up when you click Sales... on a confused-looking customer. Do you not have the management options on a vanilla-OFB installation? I removed many of my hacks that weren't specifically OFB compatible and only put back in the ones from here and I haven't had any problems. It looks like I also skirted the 'driving a car to comm lot' bug because, though my owner took his car all but the first day, I never saved on the store lot! Phew!


Well, in my case anyway, I have only six Sims (Townies I've made) who've come with any badges whatsoever, and considering they're the immortal tyrants of the Neighborhood, some great-grandparents of my other Sims, etc etc, I don't really want to hire them as Florist Shop Restocker when there are tons of playables who aren't doing much of anything.  :-\ If it was possible to randomly give badges to the playables, so I'd be able to hire one with a register badge, I'd do so...

Maybe you should turn your extra payable characters into townies.  In the old game there wasn't much difference between townies and player characters (that you weren't playing).  But now with OFB there are two big differences, money and badges.  I'm thinking I am going to turn some of the characters I don't play into townies.  I can always turn them back if I get this sudden urge to play them.

Swiftgold, I don't get any management options at all.  Maybe I should take my hacks out and see if that solves the problem.

Oho. Yeah, I might just end up doing that with some of them. Once I get them through Uni, if I don't have a storyline going for them, they just end up living in some house and I never play them, so that might work nicely. I'd just have to remember where they are in my aging list and adjust them accordingly if they ever become playable again through marriage...


Yeah, it's possible you're getting a conflict with a hack that adds something to the pie menus? I'll be reintroducing my other-site hacks when they're updated, but so far I have the director's cut in, the ones from Inge, TJ and Crammyboy that are compatible, and some that I frankly just guessed wouldn't conflict, heh. So if you suddenly get the management and sales options, you'll know a hack's the culprit which is better than guessing, anyway...

If we make playable sims into townies AFTER we already have installed OFB will they get random badges? My feeling is no, but I'm not sure.

Personally I wish you could take badges away from towniees.

I hate paying them for things that I would never use them to do.

Thats why all my employees are the unskilled homeless people and trailer trash that populate my town.

Then I can traint hem in one, and only one, job and save 30$ an hour.

If you make a Sim in CAS and then immediately use Inge's teleporter shrub to turn it into a townie, it receives random skills, doesn't it? So it should be possible for badges as well. Might as well try it. (I'd do so, but I'm still trying to free up a little more HD space for a much-needed pre-installation defrag.)

Well, I reinstalled and loaded up vanilla and everything seemed fine, so I started to put a few hacks back in.  Still everything seemed fine, until Lucy Burb decided to go jump on her parents bed.  I didn't x out the action, merely gave her a different instruction, but after that not only was the bed broken, but nearly everything else was not working properly.  Somehow, I think the portals got damaged, since John's car did not appear to take him to work, although he changed into his uniform.   Unfortunately I decided to try deleting him, and then sent Jennifer off to her shop.  when the taxi cam, it suddenly teleported off the lot with her in it, and when I got to the shop, it was in build/buy mode and I couldn't get play mode at all.  Now I can neither play the shop and get Jennifer to go back to the house, or get into the house!  I think my only option now is to move them in with someone else and then move them back!

Sounds like fun ZZ..NOT.  I love the new EP.  Only a couple of complaints though.  One I posted a thread about, and two: if I send employees on a break, no matter how long they have they get really pissed off whe I tell them to get back to work.  One even quit.  So no breaks for them little suckers from now on. ;D

To my knowledge making your own townies from CAS sims does not assign them random skills or anything else.  So I doubt that they would get a bagdge as well.

When I created my pool of townies, I went into SimsPE and for every townie, I gave them a randomly determined job and level, randomized their skills (there is a button for that in SimPE) and adjusted their skills to match their profession.

The way it's supposed to work is that when you send employees on a break, they'll automatically go back to work in an hour if they're paid enough/mood is raised enough/relationship is high enough. The goal is to send them on break before their needs drop too low and they'll return on their own. Making them go back to work always pisses them off.

Careful, I discovered that if an employee quits, if you try to rehire them, their required pay goes up substantially. In one case it more than doubled even though my Sim had a great relationship with him.

Yeah, because they're so experienced now from standing around at your store picking their butts.  :D

Only once have I had an employee go back to work cheerfully. They're just more trouble than they're worth, to me. I might try again later, after I get better at making a profit without employees.

Overall it's okay.

It should have been bundled with the real game manual sold by Primagames (I call all game guides the REAL game manuals).  Lockers/dressers don't work on community lots except for the sim that owns the lot.  The only practicality may be and I haven't tried this yet is the home business. 

The only way a sim makes real money fast from the lot is by buying, raising the rank, then selling the lot and better to sell the lot back to the community or a townie NOT a playable sim so the lot will reset back to rank of 0. 

The lot MUST be played each day (or the lot doesn't make any money for the day if you don't play at all) by the owner or take a loss by operating it remotely IF you have a manager.  Therefore you could spend hours playing an owned community lot and really not progressing in the game. 

Oh!  And one other thing, When a sim goes to a community lot to restock the regrigerator one better check to see how much is needed because unlike before when a sim buys groceries a sim can now always buy the maximum amount of groceries of 600 dollars and may only need 250 dollars or less to restock the fridge. 

The extra goodies with the expansion pack are always welcome.

That's about it,

Pcgeekri

Huh?

I have a flower/art shop with over 200k of profits.

Well, I finally managed to save the Burbs thanks to Inge's teleporter plus, but I still couldn't send Jennifer to the shop without getting the buy/build screen and a frozen jennifer - but this time John was home so I was able to load the home lot, and Jennifer reapppeared.  I got Jennifer to sell the store and then exited, evicted them and bought them a better house.  I bulldozed the original house, which I'm pretty sure was very corrupted.

I've also got all the management options now, and I'm beginning to get the hang of it at last!  However, I do wish they'd made it possible for staff to make a meal or a cup of espresso when they're on their break!

And by the way, Dustin Broke is a brilliant employee, he tries really hard and is a great salesman!   (And so much better than standing on a street corner watching to see if the cops are around!)

IMO, Dustin Broke just needs some direction. Otherwise he will hang out stamping your Sims' flowerbeds. I try to keep him busy. :)

He did real well with the lemonade stand.   ;D

OMG teens can use it too? How embarassing lol.

I did notice child age sims can't get any badges. That's too bad because I thought they should actually be able to get a sales badge for the lemonade stand.  :P

Check the lameass excuse for why they can't, too - "should be free from the pressures of adult life" or some nonsense like that. So that's why American public schools press grade schoolers to sell overpriced candy to everyone they know, huh? Bake sales? Scouts?  ::) Sheesh, Maxis, if anyone needs sales badges it's the kids!

Ha ha, word to that. I hated selling things!

I like the new ep as well, except for the idiocies. JM is right, it shouldn't take this long to get used to a register, I've seen faster movement out of 14-year olds on their first day at a fast food establisment. My simmie is a 'chief of staff'. Am I to believe that a chief of staff at a medical establishment needs this long to figure out a cash register? She is maxed in ALL skills, supposedly. Hmmm... not a doctor I'd want to visit, and certainly not a surgeon I would trust.

I don't think this one is too hard, on the contrary, I think it's kind of fun compared to the other two ep's.  I dislike the idiotic interactions, the broken interactions (beds, dressers, etc.), and the bugs that came with the new ep. I haven't had the car-to-community-lot bug yet, but there are few other nuisances I have encountered, and worked through and around. And although I don't want cheats (I can have those, I only have to look around, heck, the debug mode alone is a good example), I want fixes that make the game a little more logical, realistic, and smooth.

I don't like "cheating" and enjoy things like no20khandouts. BUT - the first thing every sim is getting cheated up is full skill on the cash register. That has to be the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Even on the fastest speed it took forever! Forget the customers - I got pissed and MY blood pressure went up just waiting for the damn sim to ring up a sale. Ray Charles wearing mittens could use a cash register quicker than that!

I made all Maxis Sim State Uni playables townies on a vanilla game.   Former Tri Var greek house resident Tiffany Sampson was then pledged to my sim's greek house.  When she completed her pledge and moved in, she didn't have any badges, but this is what she did have: 2 Renuyu Portachugs, 6 Funkadelic Stereos, 5 simulated succulent plants, 3 frost de fleur bud vase, 8 Mystic Life flower vases, 4 shocking pink flamingos, 3 Bit of This and That, 4 Kozy Kitsch Gnomes, 4 Blue Sky Bonsai Trees, 3 VroomMaster 4000s (remote control car), 1 Sunflower, 3 Burnished Blaze Torchieres (standing lamps), 2 Musee Public Collection Sculptures, 4 Juniper Bonsai Trees, 5 Potted Palms, 2 Titania Vineyards 1914 Toasting Sets (wine bottles), 2 Dialectric Readyprep Ranges (cheap green ovens), 2 AquaBox 5 Gallon Aquariums, 2 Trottco 27" Multivid IV Television, 1 Farstar e3 Telescope, 2 Soma 44" Pancake Tec Televisions, 1 VocophonicSim Karaoke Machine, 1 Soma AudioGeek TK421 Tower System, 3 Election Day Retro Space-Age Action Pinballs, 1 Florid Font (water sculpture),1 12th Century Song Dynasty Sculpted Vase, and 3 Chimeway and Daughters Saloon Pianos.  I shit you not!

I have never had a sim bring so much to any household.  This must be the new Maxian bribe to get Uni students to open up a shop in the Commercial District.  

Holy Cow Sandilou, you hit the jackpot. I've had townies move in with some good stuff since OFB, but never even close to this much. One brought a chess-table, a bowling alley and a karaoke machine, and at first I thought I was hallucinating. Turns out I didn't even come remotely close to your townie sim. Anyway, I just thought that that sim was just meant to have bought these items somewhere, or maybe he was a REALLY good date ;)

And a partridge in a pear tree?

Yeah, better make that 5 partridges so that I can restock those shelves!

I do think something's fishy with this.  I have OFB, Nightlife and Uni.  I wanted a brand new legacy type family so I started the founder at Uni.  I've played him in his dorm and now at his greek house.  He has never visited campus, or downtown or the empty shopping precinct.  He was the only playable character in all three neighbourhoods. When Tiffany moved in she brought $1000 which took his account up to $5781 The deed for the cheapest Bluewater shop costs just over $5000.  Tiffany brought just the right kind of stock for this shop.  Could this be the first sign of intelligent Maxian programming?  Or should I start playing the lottery?

 Buy a lottery ticket sandilou

 ;D

Wow something must be wrong with my game because I have yet to see any interaction regarding paying at the register and the  slow witted cashier.
What line of  customers?  I see no stinking lines. ???

 a lot of you are annoyed at how slow and stupid the cashier is but in my game I haven't seen anyone checkout and believe me I would have noticed that interaction.

With the cash register, I have started issuing my own badges using the "spawn..." boolprop cheat. I don't issue them straight away but after one sim week, my little sims get a bronze badge in checkout and so on...

What sort of business do you have Wolfee? I have two going at the moment. The florist always has customers lining up to pay at the register, but at the restaurant it seems the cashier might be superfluous because Sims who have finished eating seems to get up and leave, but the kaching of monies being paid still happens.

I've tried tweaking the gain rates on that. After increasing it by a factor of 10 from the base 100 to 1000, it's still painfully slow!

Contrast this with gold sales badges, the easiest badge in the game. I got an entire family of 5 people, every single one of them, to gold in less than a day and a half just harassing the customers with their sales skills. In fact, I'm test-driving a macro for it. It is DEAD EASY.

And yet the ability to operate a cash register is apparently an ability of mythical proportions and places one amongst the elite few. As opposed to in real life, where it gets you minimum wage.

If the programmers are that confused by cash registers, no wonder the game is so buggy.

I honestly think that a badges (cash register) mod is high priority. The little badge thing I spawned though is working well enough. Seriously though, how fast your sims work that little machine can make or break a busy shop. I say call it the "nofatfingers mod".

I learnt that the hard way!!  :(

Me too!! The first time I played, I tell ya, I was ready to slap those stupid little sims around if they didn't hurry up! I was getting as impatient as the customers!

The cash register badges are the HARDEST to gain because they are triggered ONLY by operating the cash register, and there is absolutely no way to trigger this event outside of live operation. No training runs. No practicing. Nothing. What's more, it fires only infrequently, in contrast to every other skill, which has a practice mode:

ROBOTERY/FLORISTRY/TOYCRAFTING: Make lots of junk at the highest level you can for optimal results.
SALES: Really easy, just badger every customer you see with sales interaction spam, Basic Sell for None/Bronze, Hard Sell for silver. Accept/reject doesn't matter, you get equal practice for success or failure. No customer loyalty hit if you badger them while they're still pondering the electronoticket terminal.
COSMETOLOGY: Mutilate your friends and family outside of a business!
RESTOCKING: This badge is probably the least critical: Anyone can restock at reasonable pace, badge or no, and there's relatively little pressure. If you need it done yesterday, you can always stock manually with no real penalty.

This leaves cashregistry as the slowest skill, no practice options, in a task which in real life is incredibly basic. You pretty much have to either start with it or be unlikely to ever acquire it, because it's such a major operational bottleneck that you simply can't afford to train newbies.

I had a sim like that before I got OFB. Marla Bigg moved in during my sim's Uni years and she had a load of stuff in her inventory - including 2 hots tubs, karoke machine, 2 DJ booths, expensive telescope, lots of stereos, tvs and tons of little decorative stuff, etc. etc. ad nauseum. It was kinda nice to get the extra, but also kinda ruined the point of no20K handouts. I figured Maxis thought she'd be going on lots and lots of dates :p

I have since had 7 other sims move into the Greek house.  Only those that were former members of the Maxian Greek houses - Tri Var and Urele Ore Cham (or whatever it's called) have brought similar inventories.  Ashley brought even more!  Other townies have brought zilch! 

To summarize: make your Maxian Sims into townies and then have them move in. You can rake in the simoleans. 

I managed to train one of my sims to silver, without customers getting pissed off enough to leave. But that was at the begnning of my business when volume was still fairly low.  As long as there is no lineup, even unskilled will work ok without the customer getting too pissed.  I think customer volume depends on your business level?  In any case, I lost my sims to college.  I tried replacing her with an employee with a bronze badge.  What a disaster.  Finally I cheated and gave another sim a silver badge.  That was acceptable.  I can still see fairly long lineups, but it moves along fairly fast.  I have yet to see a gold badge.

But JM is so right.  If you loose your cashier for whatever reason, in an established business,  you simply cannot afford to train a new one.  Wish makes zero sense in any kind of real context, as cashiers are dime-a-dozen.

Not sure if anyone posted this or not:

For those of you wanting to use custom fridges and still have a bakery, just click on the stove to access the "make many" feature.  This of course assumes you're using a Maxis standard stove.

As for custom food and the "make many" feature, I haven't added any to my game, so I can't comment on that.

I believe that beds are like lockers/dressers they can be used by sims on a community lot ONLY by owners.

Pcgeekri

Well, for people not satisfied with the content level, consider that this expansion only increases your game content by 12.5% the lowest of any expansion to date: University was a 50% increase to your game, at 2 CDs to the base 4, but NL added only 2 more CDs to a 6 CD compilation for a total of a 33% increase, and OFB only adds one CD to a now 8 CD compilation for 12.5%. Clearly, the level of content-added falls with every expansion pack, and this one was an exceptional lightweight by mass.

Assessing by actual code added, looking at objects.package, the original TS2 objects.package weighed in at 30354 KB. Uni weighs in at 36367 KB (and includes all the redundant previous code), for a difference of 6013 KB, or ~20%, and NL weighs in at 41474 KB (and includes all redundant materials), for an increase of 5107 KB (14%), and OFB comes in at 46991 KB, for an increase of 5517 KB (13.3%).

You decide which metric you find to be a better measure, but by any of the standards above, OFB is the lightest in terms of content weight added.

Pregnant sims frequently also have the "broken mood bug" issue. You may want to do a "fix broken mood" on the Debugger first if you're finding customers that are inexplicably surly.

Part of their marketing strategy I think.  They also have started to release content packs, separate from their updates.  But then you caught on that one fairly early JM, with your get one for the price of two! 

I have solved that problem; for me anyway, I made about 20 Sims with the specific purpose of having them unemployed and therefore available for my successful business -owning Sims to hire.  And the best part, no more busted- ass face employees.  And if they bug me, I fire them and hire another of my pre-selected ones... ;D

I haven't bothered to count, but I'm guessing that each one of those STUPID hats that is now clogging up my game is one of the "125 new items".

It sure would be nice if the thinking cap worked on passing perks, and all the various skill badges including making stuff.

Their "required" pay is not actually "required", merely their "base" pay. It seems to be a pretty arbitrary metric that depends on their (completely useless) skills and badges (which may not even be applicable to the business or their job).

Of course, all of mine are paid sweatshop wages, as I immediately cut their pay to a more reasonable level based on what they're actually *DOING*, which the game, incidentally, considered "ridiculously underpaid". But as long as they have 100/100 with the shop owner, and are in platinum, they don't seem to quit.

I've got no management or sell options on 2 lots.  ZZ mentioned it earlier in the thread, but I don't see any follow up on what (hack?) caused the problem.  On my lots, the owner is there with the deed in his inventory.  He can click on the cash register and assign a cashier, but can't click on an employee and assign a task.  similarly with sales, he can click on an object and show it to someone, but when you click on the customer there are no sales interactions.  I've patched and I guess I'll start looking for a problem in downloads.  I've got Base Game and OFB.  No Uni, No NL.  I'm still exploring what Uni/NL things I have in my game.  So far - I have influence and turn on/off, but no LTW and permaplat.

UPDATE
OK took out all the downloads last night - problem solved.  Today I start trying to figure out what it was.

re Basegame/OFB extras - I have wants to slowdance now, so I guess I have slowdance.  I have Attraction and Furious, more arguments and fighting >:( and, wow, I can see neighbouring lots!  I can also put clothes in subfolders at last.  and I have doormat rugs.