More Awesome Than You!

Windkeeper has made a collection folder which makes the crafted items available for purchase.

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=138087

I grabbed that earlier, it's great!  ;D

now I don't have to worry about all my little kids getting the new toys!

*perfers home businesses* I'll still make my sims earn their badges and make the stuff themselves for their stores but this way I won't have to have all my playable familys have the toy and flower craft benches just so they can have the new stuff  :D

*isn't real interested in having robots* course I've never made a zombie (and don't plan to) and I still haven't gotten around to having a vampire  ::)

Oh thank god. I hate crafting with those damn benches.

I like having to craft it, it adds an extra "niftiness" to it. Except the evil toys, it won't let you craft those specifically, AND I LIKE THE EVIL ONES MORE.

I like the craft benches and want SOME of my sims to have them. But I also like this option for setting up stores that have these items for sale.

I agree about the "niftiness" of having them make them themselves and my sims will make them for their stores but my kids are gonna get their new toys when I want them to have them, rather then waiting and hoping that one of their parents comes to my home based toy store.


you can also buy the evil ones from the collection  ;)

The normal toys are boring. I would only give them evil toys. Kids deserve evil toys. You remember the good old days when toys were choking and suffocation hazards? Remember when that was all we had, and we liked it?

I thought you could have a sim craft them, and then have your playable sims go to the store to buy them?

I don't have the game yet, so I don't know, but I was hoping to give my simkids the toys by buying from my other playables.

Yeah me too. And you can have them buy it from another sims store.

I know this is probably raining on everyone's parade here but the cheats really bug me. I know I should just ignore them but for some reason it just gnaws on me that they exist.  :P I guess it's a character flaw. I just wish I could play the game where I knew there was no way I could cheat at all. I could always not go online, but then I'd miss the annoyance and bug fixes and I honestly don't think I could play with that damned phone.

Oh well, maybe I should just check the OFB directory for updates and stay off the damned boards heh.

I know what you mean, Motoki.  I often wish I'd never downloaded the buyable aspiration collection because I just get everything out of there now, my Sims hardly ever use their aspiration points, which is very silly really.  So, I'm not going to download this collection, otherwise I know I'll regret it in the same way.  I remember with Makin' Magic, being annoyed that I'd got all the crystals and so on available in the same way, rather than having my Sims work for them, and I vowed I wouldn't go down that road again.  And I really miss Makin' Magic, incidentally.  I hope they bring something like that into this game.

And what are the "evil toys"?  I didn't realise there were any that were specifically evil, just the normal ones going wrong sometimes.

Yeah, I agree Motoki.  I'll go one better and say that I'm trying to figure out how to limit myself with the snapdragons when I finally go back to playing my real neighborhood.  With the servos, at least there's the possibility that they'll go insane, but there's no downside to the snapdragons and they're too powerful.

I do understand the problem with not being able to buy stuff from a home-based business, but you can always have your crafter buy Little 'N' Local for a while so your sims can pick up some firetrucks.  That's what I did to... get more snapdragons into my game  :-[

Motoki-I know exactly what you mean. I am definitely not going to get that collection! I want to make my sims make stuff and then buy stuff (ie-the point of the expansion)

First of all, no, you are not allowed to stay off the damned boards.  We just got you back.
 8)

Cheats, shrug.  I'm not the most self disciplined person (ha, there's a laugh), but I stopped playing with most cheats and aspiration rewards a long time ago.  It wasn't hard when I set down my own rules for the game.

I banned all aspiration rewards except the thinking cap and smart milk.  Trying to keep fortune Sims platinum without the money tree or counterfitting machine (for instance), meant encouraging and cultivating the non materialistic wants that come their way.  Happier Sims result!

If my Romance Sims want a hot tub, they better get off their butts and earn $6500 somehow, because I'm not cheating for money and they aren't getting one out of the aspiration rewards.  This generally results in them trolling for dream dates who will drop off an outrageously expensive gift....and out of that come good stories.

Haven't played OFB enough to say, but I'm already wary of snap dragons.  I doubt I will be placing them much.  I have TJ's static energy sculpture, but I've never once used it.

I stopped using the Energizer aspiration reward months ago in favor of macrotastics caffenate and no one has ever fallen asleep in a plate.  It's much more fun for me, watching their little bodies quiver with the coffee buzz.

(Oh, I cheat outrageously with aging.  They are my stories and Merola's painting lets me set their ages up however I, the Sim Goddess, dictate.)

So, I'll download the linked collection, thankyouverymuch, and most likely always make my Sims work for the objects anyway....unless I have a story that needs one in a pinch.

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

Naturally, I like them very much.

As soon as I read about them in the Prima Guide, I thought they'd be your thing :D

Lethal?  Is that true for toddlers too, if they play with the evil toys?

Karen

I think they put them in just for you. You'd better be careful, no telling what they're doing when they're specifically trying to addict you. Might have all kinds of other dangerous things in there... and you got this EP suspiciously quickly...

Well there are evil stinky snapdragons. Perhaps someone could make a hack where there's a chance the good ones could go bad. Maybe if you don't water them.

I want to try out the evil toys but I really don't want to use this collection so I'm hoping Pescado comes up with a make evil toy hack for the benches. Hmm, maybe I should try shift clicking on those benches in debug mode and see if there's a debug option to may an evil toy.

Now I have to open a toy store.  I had no intention of doing this before reading this.

 - Gus

I understand the sentiment, since I'm very annoyed that things like Restocking aren't actually required.  If the game includes restocking, I want it to force me to do restocking, without allowing a method that bypasses it entirely.

Then I realized that, like Windy Moon, I have a lot of house rules for the base game that I self-impose to make the game more interesting, and I don't have any trouble abiding by them.  I.e. there are a lot of commands I won't issue unless the Sim has a Want.  Studying in college, for example, since getting a 4.0 is ridiculously easy if you actually try for it.  Like Windy, I won't use any aspiration reward except Smart Milk.  So I can resist manually restocking or buying items that require crafting.

Agreed.  The only reason it's acceptable at all is that the Sims has always demanded that you set your own goals.  It's easier to accept the idea of not using parts of the game if you're already forced into making up your own rules.

 - Gus

Well, having your employees restock is certainly easier than doing it yourself, but if it has to be done yesterday...

You also miss out on a a few bonuses if you always hand-restock, so mostly I do this as an emergency thing.

Actually they aren't that bad, they seem to have a limited area they work in, so if they are in an area like a hallway, it's more of an occasional boost. I don't use a lot of aspiration rewards (smart milk, thinking cap, and elixer, that's it) and I don't use buyable collections or whatnot either, but I think of these as "aromatherapy" and put them near my shoppers and employees.

The one thing I'd like about this hack is that I could have buyable flower bouquets to place on the plots in my community cemeteries. Though I also wish TS2 would cycle through different types of tombstones like it did for TS1. More vairety would make the cemeteries look more realistic to me. For now I have a sim in each neighborhood area who "owns" the cemetery and places flowers on the graves from his or her inventory. I guess they're the friendly neighborhood mortician? Kind of morbid I suppose. But I like it because it adds a sense of realism to my neighborhoods.

yes you can just have your sims buy them a a commericial lot store But if that store is a home business then you have to hope your sims visits the store so you can sell it to them!!

right now, I perfer home businesses but I want my sim kids to have some of the new toys before they freakin die of old age!!  >:(

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/ rant below is not directed at anyone in particular

I play for fun and I don't get all this crap about cheating, if a hack or cheat code dosen't fit into your way of playing then just don't use it! theres alot of stuff I rarely use but like having for just in case and theres stuff I use all the time. I've noticed that some people like to imply that the hacks they use aren't "cheats" and any they don't want to use are.

get off the freakin high horse, everyone plays differently and I think almost everyones "goal" is to have fun! This isn't a game you play to "beat"

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/ rant off

*feels better*
I just dislike people implying I'm a cheater and trying to make me feel guilty because I play differently then they do.  :P

There is a simple way to buy the crafted items without forcing all your sims to be proficient at making them.  Just set up certain individuals with community businesses selling each of the crafted items.  It's better to have several of each type, and at least one of each colour for variety.  You can then send your other sims who can't make them to those business to do some shopping, this way you don't need to cheat and it's kind of more realistic.  You also don't have to wait for those sims to turn up at the store since you can take the sims to the store instead (in other words control the shopper not the owner).  I use this method to buy Snapdragons from Delarosas store for my other sims businesses in the test hood, and will be using it to buy other items for my non-crafting sims in my legacy hood once the stores are set up.  

Just to point out You do  NOT have to wait for sims to visit your store.  Take your sims to the store instead, just like you take them to downtown stores to buy Clothes or Perfume.  **Edited** to add that you can't take your sims to home stores duh!  Stupid me.

Yeah, but what Sleepycat meant, was that it is impossible for a sim to visit another sims homebusiness. It has to be on a commercial lot, which kind of defeats the purpose of having home businesses then.

And if you have a home business, your only hope is that the sim youw ant to have the item actually shows up, and furthermore wants to buy said item. Not really good odds on that one...

I'm still unsure about these "evil toys".  Do they turn evil, or are they evil to start with?  I've seen no option on the toy-making station thingy to make them.  Are they the result of someone with no toy-making skill crafting the toys?  I don't want to have to download this collection to find out, so I need to know how to get them legitimately.  

I'd already worked out the taking your Sims to shop angle.  I find this a much better way of playing actually, because then the shop-owners and staff actually WORK and do it properly.  What I was wondering was, does the shop grow as a result of this?  In other words, if I sent one of my Sims and got them to buy loads of stuff, would it show-up in the cash flow of the shop and would the owner also get the increased loyalty?  If so, it sounds the easiest way to get a business up several notches.  I managed to get the Delarosa one up a level yesterday (or rather, the teen she employed to do sales did), but I also made one of Malcolm Landgraab's go down.  

They're the results of a random crafting failure for "low skills", but you can't even make them at all unless you have the right skills.

And frankly, I can't see why you can't craft evil toys. I mean, to make a work of true evil requires far more skill than to make a mere NORMAL thing. Pssh.

Just you wait. I'll get that Evil Toymaking Hack, oh yes.

Cyperangel: Yeah, I realised that after first posting and edited it at the bottom when the lightbulb went on.  

Evil Toys:
They are evil to start Ancient.  I've had them even with a gold level badge, they are possibly affected by mood, but this one sim was in a great mood (Snapdragons ;)) and still made some evil jack in the boxes.  So I'm not really sure what affects whether an item comes out good or evil.

I don't know about the shop growing as a result of visiting it, the shop I visited was already lvl 10.  I should have checked whether the money changed hands though.

Does the squid water thingy actually cause harm?  I had Gilbert Jacquet try it out, thinking it was going to pop up his butt while he jumped over it or grab his ankle and spray water in his face until he drowned.  Instead it just made a few puddles. 

I don't think it's guilt tripping, I think it's just incomprehension.  Those of us who studiously avoid cheats or hacks that feel like cheats do so because these things make our games less fun.  When people do stuff like remove all the "friends" requirements from jobs or something like that, I can't help but think, "why are you deliberately making your game less fun?"  No moral judgement intended, just an inability to understand what parts of the game you enjoy.

 - Gus

Sleepycat: To clarify, I don't necessarily think you are a cheater or even care if you are. Again, it's really my issue. For me mentally if I know there's an easy way to do something, it cheapens the work it takes to earn it the normal way. I know it's silly, it's a mental thing and it's all in my head, but it's how I feel.

I don't care if other people use, cheat codes, aspiration rewards, collections etc. I don't have a problem with what other people do in their game, I just wish I didn't know about them.

I know people will say don't use them but I still know they are there and even if I never use them, in the back of my mind just knowing that I can makes a difference on how I feel and even how I play.

For example, recently I played Fable and discovered your character ages with the more levels you increase in the various skills. I didn't want to run around an old fart but wanted to maxmize all my skills so I thought 'Ha! There's got to be an age cheat.' I looked around and there wasn't. No code, no hack. Nada. I then had to be much more careful about how I played and more selective about which skills I chose and the game ended up being more fun for me that way.

For some people fun is hitting motherlode a bunch of times and designing a great big house and there is nothing wrong with that! Whatever works for you and makes things fun is fine, it's your game. This is just totally my issue, not anyone else's.

I actually play two different ways.
1. - As few hacks / cheats used as possible. While not following the legacy challenge exactly, I follow the spirit of it. No20khandouts used and no money cheats. If a sim dies, no pleading with the reaper, no resurrection. Try only to influence sim actions based on what is showing in their want slots or based on their lifetime aspiration.

2. Storytelling, or if you prefer, the "big" dollhouse. If their is an overall storyline I'm playing out, I have no problem using hacks/cheats to move a relationship along, force introductions instead of waiting for two sims to "bump" into each other. I use money cheats up the wazoo - not to make things easier, but to decorate the lot in a manner that fits the storyline. (You know how expensive it can be to properly decorate a run-down, trashy trailer?  ;D ) I also like doing sim movies and for those, you really have to cheat to force the sims to act a certain way for a particular shot.

Usually when a new expansion comes out, I have one or two families that I cheat to get all the new goodies, so I can play with them - see what they do and the new animations that come with it. I made one zombie - to see what it did - and didn't like it because it was too unreal for my "stories", haven't had an alien in game (well except the one time that I cheated an alien pregnancy just to see the birth animation) and was soooo sorry that I let vampires loose in my favorite hood (that I had spent forever to build and trashed it because once vampires are loose, you can't get rid of them).

I guess the big difference I see is that some people "play" the sims like a game where "cheating" makes things too easy for their enjoyment. I think for others, the sims is a storytelling tool so it's not "cheating" since there is no "win" scenerio and anything that helps you move the story along is used -whether it's "gameplay" the way the game was originally designed or a hack or testingcheats.

There are things in between, too.  I'm very much a gamer, but sometimes when I'm playing, I'm doing improv theater.  I'll set up non-optimal situations just to see what will happen, or to follow what the sim "wants" to do, even though I know at heart it's just a random number generator.

 - Gus

See and that's the thing, for me there really isn't a story. Oh I know, it's whatever you make it up to be, but I get tired of making up stories in my head, I know the story and the outcome already so where's the fun (for me anyhow). I'm used to playing roleplaying games where there is an actual story layed out by the game that you can interact with and discover. When I very first got this game I thought 'Wow, there's stories in the neighborhood' but you can't do anything with them, it's just background.

I think other people would have liked there to be real stories in the game that are layed out and can be interacted with and resolved. I think that's why people were so interested in the whole Bella thing. People were looking for a story that wasn't there, or wasn't able to be resolved at least.

What I really wish is that there was a tool available so that we the users could set up scenarios that could be played, and looked into and eventually resolved and then upload them for each other so we could all play stories where we don't know the outcome and that there's an element of surprise in.

I've actually read that the PSP Sims2 has some quests and a story to be played and interacted with and that sounds interesting to me. As much as I dislike portables and those tiny screens I might give it a try at some point if I ever get the darned thing (the PSP that is).

I do follow their wants and I do let them do their own thing or let random things happen. If someone gets bitten by a vampire, then so be it. If someone has a want to drink the headmaster, go ahead, they get a want to bring him back as a zombie, sure (except he gets put right back into the npc pool, don't want that thing in my house lol).

BUT I also make my sims work for what they want, they don't get easy ways out. Maybe the occasional gold digging hoochie gets to marry a rich sim, but for the most part I make them work their butts off.

Hey, aromatherapy and the like works in real life, you know. Like those perfume stores - bath & body works, etc. - how many shoppers are lured in by the smell alone! I don't like their stuff - too sticky and non-absorbant for my tastes, but they do smell great, and occasionally I'll wander the store just to sample the fragrances. And of course, there's the myriad subliminal stuff that gets you to buy - great packaging/displays, ambiance, hot pple pushing the products. None of these things are taken into account in the game, so if you just think of snapdragons as a substitute for these effects, it's really not that far removed from real life.


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

Hi Sleepycat, I don't care how anyone else plays their game*.  I just don't like to make things too easy for my sims, because that makes the game boring for me.  My favorite times are when a family is just starting out and has to struggle.  I was actually hoping OFB would have stuff for my sims to waste their money on.  Oh well, maybe the upcoming Glamour expansion will have expensive but fleeting stuff, so the offspring of my wealthiest sims can realistically dissipate their fortunes.

*except for the hack where the couple always takes the man's surname, that makes me sad, but it's still none of my business.

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

 - Gus

The thing I like best about Sims is that it's so open ended. It can be played in a variety of ways to cover all sorts of interests; from those who like to build the homes, those who like making stories and those who like setting themselves certain goals and so on. There's virtually no wrong way to play, just a whole bunch of different ways to play.  :)

I really don't see any reason why we couldn't set something like this up. Without trading characters and neighborhoods and all... It's really no different than GMing (well) any other RPG. The players agree to make things that fit within the storyline the GM sets up and the GM doesn't overly micromanage and insist on certain actions and conclusions so the PCs get to tell their own part. If there was interest, I'd be happy to give it a shot.

You shouldn't know how your story is going to end in advance ;) Even authors often don't know where something is going until the characters tell them and sims do have minds of their own :)

What I have trouble understanding isn't the making it difficult for yourself part - I do that too. There are lots of aspiration rewards I've never touched. Too easy. I was thrilled to discover JMs no20k. It's one of my favorite hacks. I like the stuff that makes it harder. But I don't understand the... attraction to getting (often it seems as quickly as possible) to the "best" of everything. How fast can I max out the selling options and have the store with the most money. That kind of thing. I don't even want the most money - I have too much already. I want my money to go away :) Unless it's for story-telling purposes.

What's this restocking business? (i don't get it)

sagana: I thought we tried the whole neighborhood rules thing and it didn't work out. Something about too many cooks. I'd rather that one person can set up a module, put it up for download and be done with it then everyone else can enjoy or pass on it. But we don't really have the tools to do something like that.

When running a business, one of the objectives is to keep your shelves well stocked to help maintain customer loyalty.  You can have an employee stock or you can go into buy mode and do it yourself.  The first way, if you are paying an employee to be the stockperson, you lose whatever money you pay that sim.  The second way, it's at no penalty to you (unless, of course, you stock from the catalogue when you otherwise would pay wholesale).

I stock in buy/inventory mode when I've switched styles on an item at the craft table.  For some reason, my sims can't place, say, a red rose in a black vase in a spot reserved for a white rose in a green vase.  Instead of just crafting the same colour combinations, I manually stock.  This is, of course, the least of all my cheating.  I don't have as much time to spend on the game, so in order to make any headway I use as many time-saving devices as possible (actually, mostly mood enhancers).

Can't you? My sim's home flower shop does this successfully all the time - ie out of daisies, replace with more daisies of any colour, not necessarily the same as the ones that were just bought. It is a family member sim that I control doing the restocking, not an employee - don't know if that would make a difference.

 
Sleepycat, you've remarked in the past that we both have similar playing styles and I agree with you.  I will be downloading this collection, just in case I ever need it. 

Now that I have started all over again - and you've no idea just what that means unless you can fathom how my pc went from 67GB to 22GB of used space - I am only downloading items that affect the game.  No custom content that just looks pretty.  If I want that then I have to go do some real life shopping!

I love the meandering nature of the game.  It makes me smile when JM says that players are basically idiots if their Sims haven't maxed all skills before entering Uni.  My sims only pick up skills because of hacks like Inge's skill-while-reading and doing homework, Moniques multi-skilled bookcase and of course, her computer, which allows Sims to earn money and develop skills by writing articles.  The challenge, if any, for me is just for the Sims to fulfill their wants and live happily.  Just like in real life, I don't think being well read or wealthy is the be all and end all. 

I had wanted to play the game as designed by Maxis, just to see what OFB would be like.  Making friends without JM's autosoc and phonehack is considerably harder.  Do people consider those cheats? Plus there's loads of hacks here designed to get rid of the 'nuisance' value added to the game like kicky bag, rock-paper-scissors, pillow fighting etc, which if you didn't use them, would add more challenge to your Sims completing commands or tasks successfully.  The poor pixelated fools have the concentration skills of a toddler - ["Oh - so pretty and shiny!"] :o.  If you kill the random spontaneity in the game, then you end up with the programmed robot Sims that JM admires and ZZ abhors! ;D

Motoki, Saint Simmiecal has made Matyville Lite which has the background stories that you've described.  I have just downloaded it and will be installing it over the weekend.  Who knows, I might (although I doubt it because of Inteen) even be able to reinstall my old Matyville citizens so that I can write another issue of The Matyville Tabloid.

I won't be downloading that collection, just because I like forcing sims to craft items.  Heck, I'm not a noncheater in some people's eyes...  I use the Elixer of Life to keep my sims at the adult stage because I frankly don't like playing generations.  I kill townies with the "deleteallcharacters" cheat and use notownieregen.  I use those because I just plain hate maxian townies, and I'd rather make my own.  That's just how I play the game, though I might play generations eventually.

Kicking a $12 flamingo shouldn't be more fun than the best TV.  You shouldn't need a Macro to make expresso actually useful.  You shouldn't need to deal with Sim ADHD problems during repairing something just because they have a crap mood.  Old Ladies shouldn't be punching each other's shoulders.  Kicky-bags shouldn't get stuck, lots shouldn't screw up, and people shouldn't want to aspire to have 10 kids.  Making the Sims robotic helps stop some of these annoyances that just shouldn't happen.

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

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

I just like to play and have my sims do what I want them to do but with some free will also. I find most of the "needs" to be unrealistic and dislike how long it takes them to take a piss (or whatever) so I use InSIM to make them hungry when I want them to be hungry etc... Sometimes I don't max their motives for alittle while and play "normally" but then I decide I want them to do something and their needs get in the way so I max them back up *laughs*

Part of the way I play is because of the long term illness I have to live with. I'm frankly just to damn tired all the time to be bothered worring about their "needs"  I like to have them make friends, go on dates, go shopping and do all sorts of things without having them pass out or die of hunger  ::)  heh, all stuff I can't really do myself anymore

Although I use to max out all the skills on my sims (using InSIM) I quit doing that when Uni came out because it was boring, now I usually give them a certain amount of skills according to how I plan to play them ( are they stupid? are they smart? good at cleaning? good cook? etc... ) and anymore then that they have to gain by skilling if there is a reason for them to. I don't want all my sims to be rich and smart and live in fancy houses or be top in their careers or now - have a succesfull business. I keep my sims busy "living their lives" and I rarely fast forward unless I have everyone in the household skilling.

I have played without hacks and had fun but I have more fun because of hacks. I'm also really picky about what hacks I use, most just stop/fix annoying behavior (I really hate "punch you punch me") or correct bugs or make the game more realistic (ie; no censor blur, risky woohoo, crammys cock & nudist hacks)


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

*is feeling really rotten today and is touchy*


edit - 183 hacks here, a few are muilti part   :D

I just had to comment on this one -

I could never for the life of me (even with TS1) see why friends were required to increase your job level.  Since when did you need friends, who had absolutely no actual connection to your occupation, to advance?  Also, if I purposely made an extremely shy, and maybe not-so-nice sim, because of a (in my opinion) stupid requirement to advance in jobs, my sims would be stuck at L3 pretty much for ever.  I'm failing to see where the fun is in that.

Oh and yes, I use the 'no friends for jobs' hacks.  It just makes no sense for me to -have- to make my mad scientist sim have a ton of friends.  I mean, look at Dr. Frankenstien...

[Veering off topic]

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

[/Veering off topic]

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

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

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

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

 - Gus

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

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

I just need to PM someone first...

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

You need to work on your hiring practices.

I have no employees paid over 40$ an hour.

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

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

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

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

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

I never see any unskilled or single skilled candidates.

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

 - Gus

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

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

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

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

Yeah. The game towniees suck.

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

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

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

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

Motoki, am I detecting PMS here?

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

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

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

 - Gus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

:o Oh no you didn't!!

LOL well they say us guys get it too. ;)

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

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