OFB - Shouldn't a business need to be profitable to be considered successful?

[speedreader]

A profitable business is usually one that does more with less.  By this I mean the business has about one less employee than they actually should have.  This forces sims to "cross-train" and "multi-task."  Don't expect to be able to take it one customer at a time.  My business is currently run by a family of three:  two sims and a robot.  Those 3 are the sales force of my electronics store.  I currently have two NPC employees, a stocker and cashier.  As a level seven business I usually have five or more customers on the lot at the same time, which means my salesmen are working two customers at the same time.  I rarely use dazzle and prefer to "basic sell" and "hard sell" in oder to get the deal done with the occasionaly offer cheap if I am in a hurry.  Some customers just don't want to be sold and will decide to purchase an item on their own.  My sales team will switch jobs to easy bottlenecks as they occur.  If a line builds up then one of them will open a second register, if the store is badly needing to be restocked then they do it.  After two days I am only two stars away from reaching rank eight, and in the last session (it was a ten hour day) I netted a profit of $16k after I restocked everything from that was sold.  I only use ffs hacks (over a hundred of them hehe).  My initial cost of inventory to get me up an running was around $24k but I will easily finish making that up plus some in the next session, putting me official into the black.  If you don't like sales then don't open a retail shop and expect to turn huge profit.  In that situation I would just open some sort of serice business.

Sounds to me like you should open a RL business. 

[shezoe]

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.   

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 

[ZiggyDoodle]

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.

[J. M. Pescado]

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.

[Motoki]

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*

[Pegasys]

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? 

[Motoki]

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.

[J. M. Pescado]

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.

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.

[Motoki]

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.

[Motoki]

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.

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.

[J. M. Pescado]

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.

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.

[J. M. Pescado]

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.

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

[Motoki]

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. 

[Process Denied]

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.

[ZephyrZodiac]

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!