More Awesome Than You!

....thus resulting in them eventually spinning around like the Wicked Witch of the West until they give a bad review  :P

This can also happen with regular customers.  I haven't done enough testing to confirm what is causing it, but I forced an error on the reporter in case the error log is useful.

I tried starting up The Sims 2 with custom content disabled.   I saved before forcing an error on the reporter so that I could try various things out.

Again, when I loaded up the save game the reporter Sim was unclickable (the old 'There are no actions available' comment appears when I try) and the only way to make him clickable was to use testing cheats - Make Selectable.

After having done the 'May I Help You?' routine with him, I made him unselectable again, and he continued to be clickable until he'd finished his review of the shop and gave me a nice shiny Best of the Best award.

This is in contrast to my earlier attempt with custom content switched on, in which he became unclickable again shortly after being made unselectable, which resulted in the 'I'm melting' sketch :)  However, consequently, even with custom content switched back on, I was able to repeat the procedure and get my award.  Which is very confusing to say the least.

Given that the test is not conclusive proof of any malfunctioning within hacks that I have installed, and that in fact Sims spawning in as uninteractable could be something caused by a clean installation, all I can ask is, has anyone else come across this problem?

I did a search of the TS2 boards and as it turns out at least one other person has.

What would actually be really handy is a debug feature to spawn in a reporter or a customer who is lost, because at the moment they crop up rather infrequently and this makes it difficult to pin down the cause - to, in fact, duplicate the problem under controlled conditions.

I've only had this issue with "Business Runs You" being used on a lot. Are you using that particular hack?

I am, but I'm not saying that that proves anything, because when I replaced the controller on the lot I was still able to interact with 'I am so lost' customers, and I was still able to get the reporter to interact after some blatant fiddling.  While it's true that I haven't run into this problem while not using the controller at all on a lot (a home business) the small customer base and randomness of reporters makes it hard to draw any definite conclusions.

I've now done proper trials without and with the Business Runs You hack installed.  I didn't get any reporters, but I did help over a dozen 'lost shoppers' in each case over the course of four Sim days.  The problem I was having did not recur.

This leads me to believe that something is different between the lots where these problems have occurred, and the ones where they haven't.  One thing that springs to mind is lockable doors; in the trials I just performed the employees had their motives frozen so they did not need a break area or facilities, and so there wasn't any need to lock a door as employees only.  On the shops I usually play, these facilities are present and they are locked to employees.

I guess the next thing to try obviously, is to make a back room which only employees can get into, and see what happens.

This is a known issue and has been resolved in the current debug build.

See? There ya go, Marvin. ;)

Well, that's a relief because even with locked areas I still can't seem to reproduce the problem on the testing lot.

And if there's one thing I've noticed from this it's that customers seem to be rather more interested in socialising within a shop that sells telescopes, than actually buying something :P

I'm getting ruthless now and use Assess Desire and drag the little #$@!$ over to whatever they are most likely to buy.  I then dazzle them and make them buy the item.

Of course if there is something more expensive in the shop you can still show it to them, they may say that they'll look at it, it just depends on whether you can afford the loss of stars if they either don't want to look or don't buy it.  For example, if they're a very loyal customer, then you can possibly rake in more cash this way.

I've never used assess desire, I can just arbitrarily show anything to anyone and make them buy it. :P

Or you can do the real easy thing and only sell one item per shop.  That way, every sim walking in will walk in wanting to buy the same thing and you won't have to putz around with Sims who want something that someone else just bought and you haven't yet restocked.  I mean, it's not like your playable Sims are really ever going to go to these stores for something useful.

That's not true, really. I've had sims that come into a shop stocked with gobs and gobs of something....so that they can go to the ONE item in the store identical to every other item near it...and moan about how that one item has not been restocked yet...perhaps because there's about 80 others exactly like it. Even with stores with different things, meh. A sim either buys whatever the hell it wants, or it buys whatever the hell I tell it to buy if it can't make up its mind. The process is simple: Show Item to Sim, Dazzle.

Or at all, if you have no playable shoppers.