More Awesome Than You!

As I'm getting more into this expansion, my fundamental problem with it is that the way it defines a successful business takes absolutely no account of profitability. A business could be losing lots of money, selling stuff cheap, paying employees out the wazoo and be completely in the red but be considered successful by the game and rewarded with perks. WTF?

Any established sim with lots of money could easily throw it all away to make people happy, but that's not running a business, that's charity. There's no challenge in doing that but there is a challenge to some degree to make a profit, even for a very wealthy sim. It takes strategy to hire enough employees to keep the business running but not so many as to drain profits, and to pay them enough for maximum efficiency and minimum expenditure and to price things enough to make them easy to sell well still turning a decent profit etc etc.

Unfortunately, the game doesn't give a rat's ass about this! All it cares about is how many customer loyalty stars you have. Hell, I've seen multiple posts from people who didn't even know how to put items for sale yet and that had a level 4 or 5 business still. Something is wrong with this picture. It makes no sense to me that a business that loses money or even doesn't actually SELL anything could be considered a successful business.

Overall, I do enjoy this expansion more than the others but I think they really screwed up on this aspect of it. Only measuring customer loyalty to consider a businesses success is way too simplistic and unrealistic. It also makes getting the perks too easy and no challenge for established sims.

[/soapbox]

Hey man, lifes not about material values...

Lol, sorry, couldn't resist.

I totally agree.  Just because people like you doesn't mean you're sucessful.

You're talking my kinda language, motoki. I've sweated blood trying to get profit as well as all the game goodies ...  ???

I have too! And when I figured out the profit didn't matter at all I felt cheated. What's the point? Why was I working so hard at it when I can just get the perks by giving everything away and overpaying a bunch of high level employees.   >:(

I'm getting quite sick of having to pay my emplyees retarded amounts so they don't just up and quit. I went motherlode to try and see if I could somehow make a profit, but ended up running out of money.

Oddly enough, I can make very decent profit off selling food, but since half of it keeps dissapearing when it's made; ; the chances of keeping a profit are low.

:) So Maxis used themselves as a business model?

No, if they used themselves as a model it would be the reverse. Only profitability would matter and customer loyalty would not be taken into account at all.  ;)

The only reason that we think a company has to be profitable to be sucessfull is there are laws preventing many companies from selling at a loss in order to out-compete smaller companies.

There are several lawsuits right now against gas stations that have been offering special incentive plans in an attempt to get around the law that drop the price below the legal mandate.

The reason for the laws was simple, and is exactly what the tactic in OFB is.

Someone with huge backing (private or large corp) opens up and sells services or items far below cost. They suffer large net losses, but they can absorb the loss. In the process the smaller companies, whose prices may be as much as double the big corp lose customers and go bankrupt. The big corp just earned a monopoly in the area for one service, a huge customer base, and can then raise prices to normal and reverse the losses.

Its an extreme Wal-Mart tactic. The only reason that Wal-Mart doesn't do that completely is legal limits, they have to resort to other manipulations in addition to smaller versions of this to take over an area.

I'm not arguing this for real life  ::)  ::)  ::) I just mean the point of a business is or should be, to make money. And if you want to nitpick and split hairs over whether this is or not the case, let me put it to you this way, it makes the game more of a challenge to play that way. :p And poor sims just starting out really NEED to play that way. They don't have a choice. This gives the rich established ones and advantage. And yes I know money always gives people an advantage, but I think the game would be more challenging if it was on a level playing field.

I suppose we could send out sims to work to volunteer or pay money to their employer to let them work too, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense since the point is kind of to earn.

Anyway, to be clear, I wasn't making an existential philosphical debate here, but an observation of the game play. I think it would be better if it took multiple factors into account instead of just one. It's too simplistic and too easy to exploit.

So the game is keeping track of cash flow on that screen (tho I'm not sure where it's getting the starting numbers), but not doing anything with it? As long as you've cash on hand, it doesn't stop you from getting stock or whatever, but you can see if the company is in the red... I think? As it seems to be tracking something, maybe one of the hackers can make that count towards a business score?

The tracking only works on comm lots. At home it tracks everything you bring in or spend, from ordering groceries, to losing a poker game.

What a mess sim taxes must be. 'But I tell ya Mr. Irssim, these groceries are a business expense! The cucumbers and lettuce are for facials and the hamburger is for... uh, black eyes, yeah.'

Does the game do anything with the tracking it does on community lots?

I agree, Motoki, and it is my personal goal to make my businesses profitable, even moreso than business ranking. From the customer's viewpoint, however, profitability doesn't matter for loyalty, as they would have no idea whether the business is profitable or not. Think about it, if you were filthy rich, you could open up a coffee shop, have great customer loyalty, get positive reviews, and no one would care that it was bleeding money. Perhaps this is closer to real life than not.

I think it should come into play though when considering selling a business (how can you sell a business that is losing money? Don't investors usually take that into account?)

I agree Motoki, this is wierd how this game goes. My business has made it to rank 9 and I'm still trying to figure out the game. This makes no sense, I am making a small profit but still, I don't deserve a rank of 9.

As far as I can see my rank goes up chiefly because I have my Sims greet,chat them up and show them around, plus I have a hot tub and a piano which the customers really like. I get really high marks when a Sim makes out with another . Well, at least I'm charging them for doing that  Whoa, wait a minute, I think this means I'm running a brothel    ;D  .

Personally, I think maybe home businesses should only be allowed to be run by sims who don't have a community lot, usually because they can't afford one yet.  And if the rules of the game changed a bit, so that only one adult/teen or elder on the lot was allowed to take paid employment, profitablility would be far more important.  And I really think the paying to enter the lot is stupid, unless you are running a night-club or gambling club or maybe a gym, health spa etc.  Do you pay to go into the supermarket?  I know I don't, and if they were set on charging me before I went in, and then kept charging me every hour, I'd tell them where they could stick their groceries!

But from now on, I think I'm going to use Inge's paytoilet and paybuffet - I'm sick of having to feed the whole darn lot of them because you want your sim to cook for the kids!

Just lock the doors to the family areas. I think it's very funny that the way that works looks so similar to Inge's doors.

Unfortunately at present there just isn't room to do that!  These sims are poor!

I think I have to take some time out and build my own "over the shop" type starter homes!

Well, some perks implicitly assume that a starting business will operate at an initial loss until you get those perks. In fact, in real life, many starting businesses begin at a loss and only become profitable once they're established and have some level of recognition.

Well, yes, if you want to make any MONEY out of it, sure. Even a deep well runs dry eventually. At some point your business is going to be faced with having to make money SOMEWHERE.

Seems realistic to me. Look at TSR. They don't sell anything, but they're taking in millions of dollars a year.

Realistically, if you're a private business not required to post profit/loss summaries for your nonexistent shareholder, your customers have no way of knowing that you're losing money. If they LIKE your business, *THEY* think it's a success, and that's what matters to them. The problem with tracking whether or not your sim is posting a profit on a business is kinda vague because on a business, any cash into or out of the business is considered profit/loss. Meaning if you consistently reinvest your profits back into upgrading your business, you will probably be constantly running at what the game perceives as a loss, and conversely, if you have sources of side income, such as retaining your day job, the money you earn doing that posts itself as profit in any home business.

Pescado, are you sure that TSR is raking in MILLONS? Although they have thousands of subscribers  but the sims is still a small community compared to the vast world of the internet. Although they are getting paid for nothing (as in the creations don't cost $ to buy), they still have full time staff, need to pay some FAs, have a lot of servers blah blah... millions is like a  bit exaggerated?  ???

Motoki, I am with you. Biz is about making a profit. So why don't you just play ur game the way its supposed to be? That's what I do. I practically sell out the whole shop in a day but my ranking is only level 6. Those sims are there for me to wring money not to play pool or hang out  :(

But since I sell 'cheap' stuff like flowers , I don't make $50,000-$100,000 a day (someone on TSR claim they make that kind of money) although I sell my stuff at 'ridiculously expensive'. having 2 handsome sims and the 'dazzle' technique helps a lot. And because I do so much selling, I am seriously microhandling all my sims. That means hundreds of clicks for every action and turning off free will (super tiring if you ask me).

'fraid not. TSR has a million listed members. They demand $43/yr. That's a maximum potential of $43M a year. Assuming only 10% of those subscriptions are active yields $4.3M/yr. Even at 1%, that's a not-inconsiderable $430K/yr.

And this does not include advertising revenues. MTS2's monthy ad-and-donation revenue is about $3.5K. MTS2's userbase is about a quarter the size, so TSR's advertising revenue can be roughly estimated at $14K monthly, or about $168K/yr.

So, TSR is literally, yes, making millions. Server and bandwidth costs don't even measure up to on the same order of magnitude and can be considered a negligible sum. Few if any of their content producers are paid, and of those that are, they receive negligible sums of money.

This means the rest of these millions disappears into their pockets. Or into the pockets of the nearest Porsche and Ferrari dealers. Same idea. So no, "millions" is not exaggerated.

I think most cheapies like me only sign up for 2 months sub. I doubt many have money to throw on one year sub.
I thought MTS2 need to pay at least $1.5k a month (Delphy told some simming magazine in some interview somewhere , i think) for their servers and bandwidth (. that means TSR should be at least $6k onwards. $6k x 12 = $72k (not neglible if you ask me?) ??? And they have those big forums threads to maintain and their downloads.

I know they don't pay the mods. One mod told me that (I was a bit shocked she volunteer to Walmart and didn't expect to get paid :P) so that's one sum less.

Maybe a profit of $1million sounds reasonable but Millions?  ???

Anyway, I do think TSR is a pretty powerful machine. Not everyone can get paid for creating nothing (which is just what they did).

Not starting an agrument here but just want to find out more about TSR's costs and revenue (which I have to say I have no idea of but only that US$8.95 for 2 months for everything (although some are crap) is still a pretty good deal).

Not being funny, but if they are charging that kind of money, then they should weed out the crap first!

Also, let's say I buy a donation set from 4ESF2.  Something in that set is faulty.  I e-mail Carola and tell her.  She puts it right straight away.  She also does the same with free sets - I know, because it happened withe one of her early sets, and she took action at once.  Now, if you email TSR about a faulty download you get no response WHATSOEVER, and that has been the same since Sims1.  OK, you can post on the forum, but why should you have to weed through everything there to find out if anyone else has had the problem?  They are in business, and they should reply to customers' e-mails!  Otherwise, what's the point of having the facility to "Contact" them available on the site?

That actually works out better, since per-2-month sub rate is at a higher per-month rate than the per-year rate. Which means people have to sign up more often, which means a larger pool of "active" subscriptions, and that results in an even higher profit.

Even assuming bandwidth costs were that high, which I am very skeptical of, that's still not on the same order of magnitude as any of the calculated revenue streams.

Bottom line: Yes, they DO make that much money!

And the idea that they *PAY* their staff is absurd: That's not really payment, that's division of the plunder. It can't rightly be considered a site expense because moderators are free.

They don't pay the mods but they need to pay the team maintaining the servers? I am not sure if they actually have a team but with a site that big, they shld be having some full time staff.
Sometimes, I wonder what the mods get for their time but of course, I didn't dare to ask  ;)


zz, of course you are not being funny. I think you are right. They should do some quality control. I am sick of weeding through hundreds of pages of crap to get one good object. TSR customer service have responded to me (but after a long time). I don't know why they never respond to you though. Perhaps I have the support of a FA that's why. I complain privately via the email that one of FA's downloads set is not working. They never responded so I posted publicly and volia, FA appear and do her best to get them to correct it. It took about 1 week odd to get the download right again. (they were upgrading site at that time and that was the excuse for slow response).



Anyway, I am not spending money at TSR anymore. I don't have that kind of money to throw everytime.

I'm still learning how to get the customers to actually purchase something.

I have a sales shop (baked goods) on a commercial site, no employees, and the owner and family have, after day 2, reached a rank of 3.  The two main family members have a bronze sales badge from the constant "Sell-Basic sell" that they do.

The customers will stay all day, and will go through the entire purchasing cycle, sometimes 2 or 3 times, without purchasing anything. 

All my expensive stuff is marked "Average" and I use "Cheap" quite a bit, with "Very Cheap" on a few items.  After spending all day with these customers, one of them may purchase something, usually an "Average" or "Cheap" item.  Occasionally a "Very Cheap" item, particularly if I bring it to their attention.

I tend towards one sale per 10 hours and have to constantly babysit the customers.  Needless to say, it takes close to 30 minutes to ring up a sale because the owner and family only get the use the cash register once.

I think part of my problem is that I did not install Blue Village (and the townies that go with it) and months of not regenerating townies has limited my customer base to playable sims only.

However, if one of my non-owner playable sims visits the business as a customer, the poor owner will have 5 customers with 3 waiting in line at the cash register within minutes.

So, I have determined that the best way to build rank is to play the lot and the best way to build profit is to visit the lot.

By the way, it is a nice advantage to have the business on a separate lot.  With a large family, each family member can take turns running the store on the same day at the same time and I can get 2 or 3 store days into a single residential lot day.

Sounds to me like you should open a RL business.  ;D

acckkk-i didn't know this. i've been giving myself a headache trying to get the business out of the red-thinking that was the POINT. geez! So far-there are quite a few things that i think are nutty about this e.p-that are only mildly annoying to me now-while i'm trying to figure everything out, but suspect will drive me nuts later. One of the things is that there isn't really a very wide range of new objects to run a business with.  All the custom business items people have made would be SO cool, but they work like the original maxis objects they were taken from. so they just LOOK neato. I wanted to open a beauty salon, but there's not much you can actually DO in a beauty salon-juz the same ol' stuff as always (unless i'm missing something, of course) It just seems to me that over-all, they didn't put enough p&d into making the businesses work in a unique way.  Maybe they wanted to just give a base so all the custom designers could take it from there n they wouldn't have to pay for it  :-\

While I am just getting into the EP, I agree with Motoki that it is wacko in some ways.

I started a robot business using a downtown CAS I haven't played much.  He can now make  hydro, sentry and munchi bots for his home business.

Because I converted his former game room to the electronics store, I moved his pool and card tables outdoors.

He hasn't sold a single robot but now has a business rating of 1 and a  sales star because when I noticed the "customers" were playing pool and cards rather than shopping for 'bots, I added the pay for play gizmo.

He is also about ten grand down.

The way I see it, the game gives you perks as part of the loss-leader phase of the business. Eventually you will acquire all of the perks. Eventually you will be forced to somehow turn a profit. Otherwise you will go bankrupt and your business will fold, thus making your rating stars plummet as your business spirals to its death.

It's just like how a SimCity can have a positive mayor rating even as you dig yourself into a financial hole, because your sims are happy living in your city...oblivious to the fact that your city is to due to implode as you can no longer afford to maintain any of the services. And when that happens, the abandonment and rioting set in.

This is no different: Your customers are happy and your business receives high ratings for as long as you can sustain taking a loss. At some point your business must either be converted to profitability, you cheat and thus defeat the point, or you go bankrupt and are forced to start slashing personnel and services, and watch your rating plummet with it.

Business ratings in real life are no different: Good companies go out of business from lack of profits, bad companies (*cough* EA *cough*) get terrible ratings by their customers, but rake in cash hand over fist.

I guess I just expected more strategy to be involved and more of a balancing act than sell cheap, lose money, get everyone to like you, sell expensive once they are hooked, rinse, repeat. And yes, I know there are companies like Walmart that use dirty tricks like selling below cost to eliminate competition etc, but I dunno, like I said I just expected more. *shrug* Maybe I expected too much. I was wanting a what we ended up with is sort of a make everyone like you and be happy sim. Most people have established sims that are filthy rich already.

I guess if I want the challenge I have to force it myself by playing a new sim who has to worry about profit as well as customer loyalty when starting out because they have no choice but as they're starting with limited resources. For me personally I would have found the game more enjoyable if it enforced these things, but I suppose that's a mental thing. It's like chosing not to cheat when you know you can, and to be honest, knowing that all the cheats exist and I can use them bugs me too. I don't generally except to correct bugs, but it still irks me that they are there and cheapens the game for more because I always know there is that way out, but I guess that's just me and my personality issue. *shrug*

I agree with JMP; people are playing the game as if business ranking is all that matters, but eventually, profitability comes into play. Sure you can create a 10-star business while losing money, but if you want your Sim to be able to upgrade to that mansion, or to pass down the business through the generations, profitability is going to eventually be important. My Sim has slowly built to a 6-star business, and has only started to see positive daily cash flow; it will take a little longer to have a total overall positive cash flow. I could have done things differently to zoom up the business ranking faster but I'm enjoying playing with the different aspects (employees, etc.). Althought it's going to be easier now that my Sim just made permaplat and has a ton of Aspiration points...

Motoki, I understand what you mean about the cheats being so easy to use, and that used to bug me, but it doesn't anymore, because really the game is what YOU make it. Sure typing ctrl-shift-C and "forcetwins" or "familyfunds 1000000" is awfully easy to do, but personally I just don't do it and pretend that these options don't exist. Perhaps you want a "no cheat" hack where it would be impossible to enter cheats?  :P

LOL that would be nice. My willpower sucks and even when I force myself, it still nags at me that I can. I find games where I can't cheat so much more challenging because I make my decisions MUCH more carefully since I know I can't just use a get out of jail free card if it comes down to it.

I do appreciate hacks like the no 20k handout and expensive npcs which aren't cheats per say, but are balancing issues that needed to be addressed imo.

Uh...I thought that *WAS* the strategy. Isn't that how the strategy of a real business works? I mean, that's how I played Capitalism II, too. Sell cheap, undercut your competition, operate a loss, drive down your stock prices in the process low enough to take control of your own company within affordable constraints, but not so low that you get sacked as CEO (which can't happen if you manage to own half, which is what your ultimate goal is), then once you have a customerbase, move to more expensive products, and above all, MAKE SURE YOU GET THIS TO HAPPEN BEFORE YOU RUN OUT OF CAPITAL!

Obviously, the deeper your starting pockets, the easier this is.

Yeah but you can't really drive the competition out of business. In fact, you're not rating against them at all, which also dissapointed me a bit, but I suppose in most cases unless people share the game with others they'd just be rated against themselves anyway so there wouldn't be much point.

Even if this is a strategy (and to me it's more like powergaming to get your perks) there's no point since there's no real competiton. I guess the point could be sell cheap, hook them in, sell expensive, but even then it seems like pretty much the only strategy you can use and be successful and make money with this expansion. The book even reccomends doing that, so it's not even so much of a strategy as pretty much the way you have to do things as far as I am concerned.

Again, I think the issue is me in that I just expected more for some reason. I like the items and interactions but was expecting there to be different ways to run your business and it seems like there's only one.

OMG LMAO!!!

I need to do that to my nannies!

Actually, with OFB if a sim has low skill and/or is in a bad mood they can make an 'evil item'. Dangerous robots that zap people, a metallic kite with red eyes that electrocutes the kiddies, snapdragons that emit a putrid odor and lower motives. Oh and elevators can break and fall with sims in them too.

I'm thinking of having the Pescado sim open up and evil store. ;)

Well, that's the fundamental nature of TS2, that it's not really "competitive". There's no real "market" so to speak, as sims will buy anything and there's no such thing as market saturation. I even sold a sim a puddle of his own piss.

The bottom line is that you don't *HAVE* to evaluate a business by how many stars it takes in. It was YOUR CHOICE to evaluate a business in terms of stars. You don't have to do this. TS2 is inherently open-ended like this. Both metrics of success are listed, but you choose to fixate on the star rating over the cashflow panel. This was your choice.

Me, for instance, I evaluate my businesses based on how ridiculous of a business model I can make and still turn a profit.
For instance, I have Brynne's store of "Buy My Pee!", one of my sim's store of "Pay Me Money To Get Beat Up By BlueSoup, Or Else BlueSoup Will Beat You Up!", and BlueSoup's "BUY OR DIE!" store, which rakes in both the profits and the customer loyalties even while BlueSoup physically assaults her customers.

Hmm. I need to make the option to intentionally create evil items.

Having multiple salespeople helps get the customers buying and out faster. The problem with that is the employee sales people are just plain stupid. Even with one who has a gold sales badge and I maxed out his pay, he will continually try to sell to customers even if they have a bad reaction to him.  :P

I had so much fun playing this family business this weekend that unfortunately the sim is now 4 days from being an elder.  It is so critical to have your sales sims to be gold and playable.  It makes a world of difference.  Once my house of three all became gold then I was raking in 10-25K a session(on average cause some days were only for spending and building).  I could have killed the employee.  She was at the register when Allegra was done shopping.  I pay her well and she usually pulls through but for some reason she just stood there and didn't ring her up.  By the time I noticed and teleported some on in to replace her it was too late.  A 12K purchase down the drain.  I could of killed her.  The business is now in the green by 30K.  The dazzle sales option is the best.  I have them show the product,hard sell,basic sell,then dazzle and the sale is clinched 95% of the time.  Some needing less and some more.  The townies are awesome(finally found use for them)  they actually have skills that my sims don't and better yet they have an endless supply of cash.  The Art professor bought 10K worth of stuff.  The store got the business of the year award and is at level 10.  The reviewer bought abought 6K.  I  usually pick out the rich and bottomless cash sims and continually sell to them till they have to pee.  The business took awhile to go green cause it is residencial and it was a trailer park.  Ive had to do a lot of building and what not.  They are still in a trailer eventhough the business is beautiful and big.  It started out as floral shop and expanded to be a garden shop(with fountains and statues,etc.)then she married a townie and he had gold in toy making so now they also sell toys.

Well, I built an "over the shop" house and moved the Oldies in.  Herb's doing really well, all he had was a poker table and an available toilet, then I got him a juice thingy and a buffet.  He's making some profit now - but I already knew from a previous game that Herb is a pretty darn good poker player!

He then asked Lilith to move in, which was wierd, becasue at first she just walked off the lot, but brought with her 311,000 simoleons!  (So, I think moveinall is a bit bugged for OFB.)  I saved, exited and reloaded, and she was there, and instead of the red aspiration you get if you start out in the Pleasant house, she was already in gold and happy as Larry!  I have a feeling she ain't going back home any time soon!  But it's amazing hos often Mary-Sue or Daniel turn up to play poker!

Anway, I spent a great deal of the money just making the house nice and buying a car etc., but since Herb and Coral have both changed aspirations, somehow Herb has to own five level 10 businesses!  Well, at least he has the money to buy them now!  I suppose I could have taken the money away again, which, if Iwas playing this game for keeps, I would, but since it's just a "learning experience"  I don't really care too much what happens, just so long as I find out how to play it and get things working the way I want them to!

However, I begin to think all you need is some fun stuff on your lot and charge a reasonable amount to have people visit, and you don't actually need to SELL anything!