What's your second and third impression of OFB?

[Jysudo]

Following the fashion of the original thread...but I just want to know ur views after 10 hours or more playing.
My thoughts are

1. this game is not intuitive compared to NL and UNI. I have no idea how many things work and are still struggling to figure them out.
2. Its' difficult and challenging to run a store which sells everything such as a florist and a small cafe. The cafe needs too many stuff and the customers are losing royalty from being kept waiting.
3. Its difficult to keep the mood of the customers up and the staff needs to take breaks frequently and cannot have overtime too much or they quit their job on me (I guess i work them too hard without realising it....2 of them quit on me).
4. I have to keep an eye on the stupid sim time to try to keep the store open from 9-5.
5. Cash flow is so erratic. No idea why? and my customers only have 1 simoleon bag.
6. Finally Maxis give us some nice hairstyles. But the racks for putting things suck and I cannot put custom content on maxis racks (*hint, hope there will be a hack for it soon).
7. Custom fridges cannot be used for the "make many...pies" options. The option disappears. Bluesoup, we cannot enjoy our pretty fridges anymore   and sims cannot cook custom food and put it into their inventories automatically like the maxis food (I think maxis is evil for excluding this) I got to do it manually (Stop the sim from serving and putting it in his inventory using hand tool) and its so time consuming.
8. Difficult to find good employees.
9. Some weird bugs. Such as when I hire employees , I get the pop up " A basket of grocies had been teleported next to you."  (I think this msg comes up because o Monique' computer. but I just carry on using it since it doesn't do other bad stuff to game). After my sim drinks love potion, he wants to bleh and also drink love potion again? I don't know what kind of weird bug that is? And I got my sim drinking coffee repeatedly if they have coffeemachine (nope I don't have coffeecup hack, if that's what you are thinkg).
10. and too much micro management. My sims refuse to serve customers automatically and love running into their 'break room' where there's a tv and pinball machine (kinda like RL issit?)



On the whole, I have mixed feeling about this EP. You? If you are not too busy playing, post some of ur thoughts and observations.

 

[ZephyrZodiac]

Have you tried running all your custom content through SimPE?

[Jysudo]

Have you tried running all your custom content through SimPE?

I am doing it now. .. I thought I will scan again in case I have any unknown hacks

nope, I don't have the coffeecup hack.Its strange but I elminated the coffee machine before I lost my sanity.  Val drank like 5 cups of coffee before I notice it...when I was instructing to harvest Echo's crops, she decide she need coffee fix instead 

[Motoki]

It's defintely alot more complex, but there's a lot more features than the other expansions so that's kind of to be expected. Overall, I like it, but I'm starting to lean towards buying the damned guide as I almost feel like it may be necessary for this expansion.

BTW, I have the tips turned on it and claimed if you pay your employees more they'll take less breaks and such. Apparently, how much you have to pay them goes up with how much experience badges they have etc.

[Scotty]

I use Merola's Multi Purpose painting to keep everyone's needs up on my store. It works very nicely, and the employee's dont complain, I work them like dogs and I dont give the little freaks any breaks either. I just boost their needs with that painting and make them continue working. Only one emplyee quit on me, I dont know why, since his mood was pretty high. Maybe his aspiration level was down. I'll have to remember that the next time.

Too bad we can only have 8 employees, those crafting stations would be great for a sweat shop!

Oh, one thing that really gets on my nerves, is that sometimes they like to play kicky bag. They get in the way of other customers. And they will also have pillow fights right in the middle of my store.

[Zaphod]

As a whole I like it. Customers playing kicky bag in the middle of my store and loitering all day gets annoying though...haven't had the pillow-fights. I've played a few of the pre-made families. The furniture store, The flower lady, and the bakery, thats the hardest for me so far, people don't seem to want to buy the food from the case, and just stand around or play chess all day.  I finally ended up putting a ticket taker in there to make at least SOME money, but they don't stick around long heh. Mebee they need to be hungry to want to buy food.  Also, I put in one of the large espresso bars, and no-one ever comes to it to buy espresso, so it may not be enabled for this expansion.

[Motoki]

TwoJeffs no indoors kickybag hack works with OFB. I've been using it and not had a single instance of it.

[syberspunk]

Edit: Darn you 'toki, for gettin your post in before I did.

Does the pillow fighting happen with noroadpillows? Does the kickybagging happen with the various nokickybag hacks? Or do those all need updates?

Hrm... about that expresso thing... that's another pet peeve I have is that... despite having some great ideas in general, it seems that a lot of the options are limited. It's like we've been given a great set of brushes and various colors for a palette, but we are totally forced to paint within the lines.

Ste

[J. M. Pescado]

Eh, just you wait, I'll have the business Jobinator eventually. Because in Soviet Russia, you do not run business, business runs YOU!

[Motoki]

So will we get a version of bathroomusesyou that charges?

Bathroomchargesyou - 2 simoleans per wipe! 

[simmiecal]

Bathroomchargesyou - 2 simoleans per wipe! 

   *wipes soda from monitor*

[Zaphod]

Hehe. Yeah... pay toilets.. they have em IRL.. why not sims.  Tanks for the hacky sack comment, I had forgotten he made a hack that did that.  Think I had it at one time, but did a clean install for OFB.

[simmiecal]

Hehe. Yeah... pay toilets.. they have em IRL.. why not sims. 

My sims already had them thanks to Inge. Her pay toilets and her bladder full fountain made some good simoleons for some of my sims. 

[Sandilou]

I feel like I've joined a nunnery.  I'm playing a totally vanilla game.  Not a single hack and the censor blur is back. I'd honestly forgotten what it looked like.  I've played for about 4 hours in total: I sample each of the ready made families in Bluewater Village.  I do like this EP - simply because you have to think strategy now to get some sort of success.  By the time I got to playing the flower shop I'd decided that to make a business work successfully hire four key staff: a cashier, an object maker, a sales person and a restocker.  Then your playable sim should release each one for a break in rotation.  I overpaid the sales person (Alvin Futur) and made a killing on that day's sales.  He upped his level to manager, but I couldn't see the option to promote him.  (Too cheap to buy a Prima Guide). 

Next time I play the flower shop I'll see if my strategy works.  I kind of hope it doesn't, because that part of the game would get boring pretty quick.

[Pegasys]

I haven't really tested this, but I took a Sim to my one community business lot that another playable Sim owns.

It's the closest thing to "visiting another Sim" - kind of neat to see my playable but non-selectable Sims puttering around the business.

However a very interesting possibility is that there were a couple of aspiration reward objects on the lot that appeared to be usable by the selectable Sim I'd taken to the lot.

So now I'm thinking - here's a possibility for setting up a venue - charge an astronomical fee for entry, and place a Resurrect-O-Nomitron in the middle of the room. I don't know whether this will work, but it's an interesting concept.

[aussieone]

I'm really enjoying this pack immensely!  

Trying to get your business to a successful is level definitely keeps you on your toes and the management side of things( restocking, looking after indecisive customers etc) is pretty much full on!

I do what Scotty does....have Merolas painting, keep levels up and work all my employees like dogs!!  

BTW Sandilou.....

to promote staff to management, just click on whichever employee got the promotion and there's an option there to promote them.

[Sandilou]

Aussieone I tried - I couldn't find an option anywhere.  I've shut the game down so maybe it will be there when I relaunch it.

[aussieone]

Hmmmm...

Yeah that's strange sandilou

I guess I'd do the same....shut the game down and restart and see what happens 

[Jysudo]

Hehe. Yeah... pay toilets.. they have em IRL.. why not sims. 

My sims already had them thanks to Inge. Her pay toilets and her bladder full fountain made some good simoleons for some of my sims. 

Issit? I am going to get them now. I am sick of people using my bathrooms for free. 

[skandelouslala]

I haven't had any issues with my sims cooking and putting custom foods up for sale.
I am sourta mad that custom fridges don't work anymore, but I guess that is expected with the new fridge options.

I had one of my best employees quit on me tonight for what appeared to be no apparent reason.    Grrrr

I HATE the hiring system.  Call on the phone and you get a selection of like 6 sims...unless there is something I am missing here with the hiring options via the telephone.

I do have a business that is up to level like 8 or 9 now.  (How many levels are there anyways?)   It's getting really hard to keep everything under control.  I'm trying to have the owner "train" her daughters to do stuff so that I don't have to keep messing with hiring stupid idiots who quit anyways.

I'm still figuring a lot out.  I'm hoping I can figure out stuff w/o resorting to buying the guide.

[gynarchy]

Aussieone I tried - I couldn't find an option anywhere.  I've shut the game down so maybe it will be there when I relaunch it.

A home business won't allow you to promote someone to manager, only stand-alone businesses can have them.

Call on the phone and you get a selection of like 6 sims...unless there is something I am missing here with the hiring options via the telephone.

I believe the choices for employees works similar to job openings from the newspaper/computer - every night at midnight another random group of potential Sims is available.

[Jarsie]

I read on the BBS that before an employee can be promoted to manager, they have to have 5 badge points.

Gold = 3 pts, silver = 2 pts, and bronze = 1 pt.

So I think it depends on the kind of badge and the number of badges your employee has.

[Sandilou]

Thanks Gynarchy: that makes sense because the flower shop is a home business.  The pop up said that my sim had earned enough points to be promoted to manager, and that managers look after the shop in your absence, so that you can have a remote business.  Can't do that if you live on the premises.

[Jysudo]

I do have a business that is up to level like 8 or 9 now.  (How many levels are there anyways?)   

There are ten. so you are almost there.

[cwykes]

You don't need merola's painting to get moods up - there is an item in game will do it for you.  I guess this is a spoiler, so here's the link instead of the info...
http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?&openItemID=item.103,root.1,item.43,item.41,item.23&threadID=f2a1081b7696ba61a84f34f0dc6a47cb&directoryID=103&startRow=1#fccb4ff941ddf57d414957a2716cfb10