More Awesome Than You!

Is there a cheat or a hack, or maybe a way to limit the number of customer at a time on the lot?

My small business lot (1x3) is getting too crowded!

You must be doing too well!  They start off with just 2 or 3 customers, not sure what the maximum is but I had 8 I think when my business reached Level 10, maybe more I can't remember for sure. 

If you change the max # of sims allowed on the lot it should also lessen the shoppers. If you do intProp maxNumOfVisitingSims 4 or 6 or whatever in your starup.cheat file. If you don't have one just create a plain text file called that and put any cheat codes you want to load up on start in it, then put it in My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Config.

I dont want to limit all of my business. Only a certain number of them.

I suppose you could just enter that manually in the cheat box then when you are in the store. *shrug* Not sure if it takes effect immediately or you have to exit and reload the lot for it to take effect. I've always used it in my startup.

*writes out the cheats*

Thanks Motoki. I guess I have no choice but to try that one!

Motoki, if it was going to work it would need to be entered in the neighborhood screen.  Funny, I never thought of trying that.  I keep hosing my business and starting over so I can have the lower rating because I don't want a big business--just a little one, and every time I turn around I have umpteen people shopping on the lot, even with bad reviews.

That's true, that makes sense. I guess it's best to just enter it in the neighborhood screen before you enter the lot you want to reduce and then if you exit that lot and go to another one then enter it back to 8 in the neighborhood screen before you load the next lot.

Jeez, I wish I have your problem!

Be careful what you wish for!  LOL  With the rating system, their whole business can snowball before you know what's happening.  For example, they start out with no skills, so they're still learning, but it doesn't take nearly as long to get that first star rating as it does to work up their skills.  Poof!  Almost instantly they have double the customers!

Seriously, if you're having problem on the business end of things you might want to sack or sell your existing business and start over.  The sim keeps their skills they've learned and all their perks, and it carries over to the new business.  From the get-go they are skilled enough AND probably have enough money to buy enough stock to actually be able to afford an employee, and get them started training off the bat.  I ran into problems with that by the time I could afford an employee, the business was going too fast for them to keep up.  Now we don't have any employees, the hubby and oldest daughter help out in the store (when she goes to college, her sister will take over her spot).  When things get too hectic for the family, we close the doors either until the next day or until they all get a breather.

Invariably, my sim ends up with the reporter coming on a day when she doesn't have enough help and has been trying to let the stock run low because I don't want to make them rich off this store.  (Money's just way too easy in this game.)  All in all, though, the bad reviews haven't been a bad thing.  They tend to deter customers for at least a couple of days. ;) 

No, maxNumOfVisitingSims has no effect on the number of customers on your community lots. And to make things worse for those of you with slower machines, the higher your business rank, the more customers you'll have (eg. Rank 10 = Max 10 Customers at a time) and if you get a good review on top of that, the traffic will increase for 3 days.

I use maxNumOfVisitingSims here because the game doesn't give me enough. I get a max of 2 on a home lot when I can easily handle 8.  :P

I noticed the trafic increase, sometimes up to 12 sims on a community lot. Needless to say, I had a lot of lag so I changed the maxNumOfVisitingSims in my userStartup.cheat file to 4 but it had no effect.

Thanks for the info!  I won't bother trying it.  I was just saying yesterday how I wish Maxis had made the amount of possible visitors to lots consistent, basically the same way they did the original community lots.  I never could figure out why I'd go to a community lot and could have 2 visitors, but go to a Downtown lot and have 6 to 8.  It doesn't make sense.  I'm have no idea right now how many visitors I can have--haven't thrown a party since we built my new machine.

This is shocking. I am trying to make $$$. and you are here complaining that you have too much $$$. Am Motoki and I the only ones here who are having problems surviving? I got a small themed shop at level 6 and those customers are not coming in :( or they browse for hours without buyiing anything and scoot off the lot  >:( >:( >:(

Give you a secret to how it works:
*click* Sales *click* Dazzle *click* *ding* *swipe*.

All too easy.

The Prima guide claims how many customers you get depends on how many the game deems your computer can handle, so slower computers will get less. As far as I know, the maxNumOfVisitingSims is the setting that gets set when the game scans your computer and changing it will override it. At lot of us had to do this with NL since it deemed our computers slow for some reason even though they can handle 8 sims just fine.

Of couse, the Prima guide could be full of shit as usual. Wouldn't be the first time. :p

I'll have to try it.

Raise your prices and that should get rid of some of them.

Not really. They will still come and 'hang in' the store, while making other customer who actually wanna buy something cant get in.