What's your second and third impression of OFB?

[Assmitten]

Ha ha, word to that. I hated selling things!

[veilchen]

I like the new ep as well, except for the idiocies. JM is right, it shouldn't take this long to get used to a register, I've seen faster movement out of 14-year olds on their first day at a fast food establisment. My simmie is a 'chief of staff'. Am I to believe that a chief of staff at a medical establishment needs this long to figure out a cash register? She is maxed in ALL skills, supposedly. Hmmm... not a doctor I'd want to visit, and certainly not a surgeon I would trust.

I don't think this one is too hard, on the contrary, I think it's kind of fun compared to the other two ep's.  I dislike the idiotic interactions, the broken interactions (beds, dressers, etc.), and the bugs that came with the new ep. I haven't had the car-to-community-lot bug yet, but there are few other nuisances I have encountered, and worked through and around. And although I don't want cheats (I can have those, I only have to look around, heck, the debug mode alone is a good example), I want fixes that make the game a little more logical, realistic, and smooth.

[simmiecal]

I want fixes that make the game a little more logical, realistic, and smooth.

I don't like "cheating" and enjoy things like no20khandouts. BUT - the first thing every sim is getting cheated up is full skill on the cash register. That has to be the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Even on the fastest speed it took forever! Forget the customers - I got pissed and MY blood pressure went up just waiting for the damn sim to ring up a sale. Ray Charles wearing mittens could use a cash register quicker than that!

[Sandilou]

If we make playable sims into townies AFTER we already have installed OFB will they get random badges? My feeling is no, but I'm not sure.

I made all Maxis Sim State Uni playables townies on a vanilla game.   Former Tri Var greek house resident Tiffany Sampson was then pledged to my sim's greek house.  When she completed her pledge and moved in, she didn't have any badges, but this is what she did have: 2 Renuyu Portachugs, 6 Funkadelic Stereos, 5 simulated succulent plants, 3 frost de fleur bud vase, 8 Mystic Life flower vases, 4 shocking pink flamingos, 3 Bit of This and That, 4 Kozy Kitsch Gnomes, 4 Blue Sky Bonsai Trees, 3 VroomMaster 4000s (remote control car), 1 Sunflower, 3 Burnished Blaze Torchieres (standing lamps), 2 Musee Public Collection Sculptures, 4 Juniper Bonsai Trees, 5 Potted Palms, 2 Titania Vineyards 1914 Toasting Sets (wine bottles), 2 Dialectric Readyprep Ranges (cheap green ovens), 2 AquaBox 5 Gallon Aquariums, 2 Trottco 27" Multivid IV Television, 1 Farstar e3 Telescope, 2 Soma 44" Pancake Tec Televisions, 1 VocophonicSim Karaoke Machine, 1 Soma AudioGeek TK421 Tower System, 3 Election Day Retro Space-Age Action Pinballs, 1 Florid Font (water sculpture),1 12th Century Song Dynasty Sculpted Vase, and 3 Chimeway and Daughters Saloon Pianos.  I shit you not!

I have never had a sim bring so much to any household.  This must be the new Maxian bribe to get Uni students to open up a shop in the Commercial District.  

[veilchen]

Holy Cow Sandilou, you hit the jackpot. I've had townies move in with some good stuff since OFB, but never even close to this much. One brought a chess-table, a bowling alley and a karaoke machine, and at first I thought I was hallucinating. Turns out I didn't even come remotely close to your townie sim. Anyway, I just thought that that sim was just meant to have bought these items somewhere, or maybe he was a REALLY good date ;)

[akatonbo]

2 Renuyu Portachugs, 6 Funkadelic Stereos, 5 simulated succulent plants, 3 frost de fleur bud vase, 8 Mystic Life flower vases, 4 shocking pink flamingos, 3 Bit of This and That, 4 Kozy Kitsch Gnomes, 4 Blue Sky Bonsai Trees, 3 VroomMaster 4000s (remote control car), 1 Sunflower, 3 Burnished Blaze Torchieres (standing lamps), 2 Musee Public Collection Sculptures, 4 Juniper Bonsai Trees, 5 Potted Palms, 2 Titania Vineyards 1914 Toasting Sets (wine bottles), 2 Dialectric Readyprep Ranges (cheap green ovens), 2 AquaBox 5 Gallon Aquariums, 2 Trottco 27" Multivid IV Television, 1 Farstar e3 Telescope, 2 Soma 44" Pancake Tec Televisions, 1 VocophonicSim Karaoke Machine, 1 Soma AudioGeek TK421 Tower System, 3 Election Day Retro Space-Age Action Pinballs, 1 Florid Font (water sculpture),1 12th Century Song Dynasty Sculpted Vase, and 3 Chimeway and Daughters Saloon Pianos.  I shit you not!

And a partridge in a pear tree?

[Sandilou]

Yeah, better make that 5 partridges so that I can restock those shelves!

I do think something's fishy with this.  I have OFB, Nightlife and Uni.  I wanted a brand new legacy type family so I started the founder at Uni.  I've played him in his dorm and now at his greek house.  He has never visited campus, or downtown or the empty shopping precinct.  He was the only playable character in all three neighbourhoods. When Tiffany moved in she brought $1000 which took his account up to $5781 The deed for the cheapest Bluewater shop costs just over $5000.  Tiffany brought just the right kind of stock for this shop.  Could this be the first sign of intelligent Maxian programming?  Or should I start playing the lottery?

[Marg]

 Buy a lottery ticket sandilou

 

[Wolfee]

Wow something must be wrong with my game because I have yet to see any interaction regarding paying at the register and the  slow witted cashier.
What line of  customers?  I see no stinking lines.

 a lot of you are annoyed at how slow and stupid the cashier is but in my game I haven't seen anyone checkout and believe me I would have noticed that interaction.

[Darkstormyeve]

With the cash register, I have started issuing my own badges using the "spawn..." boolprop cheat. I don't issue them straight away but after one sim week, my little sims get a bronze badge in checkout and so on...

[aussieone]

Wow something must be wrong with my game because I have yet to see any interaction regarding paying at the register and the  slow witted cashier.
What line of  customers?  I see no stinking lines.

 a lot of you are annoyed at how slow and stupid the cashier is but in my game I haven't seen anyone checkout and believe me I would have noticed that interaction.

What sort of business do you have Wolfee? I have two going at the moment. The florist always has customers lining up to pay at the register, but at the restaurant it seems the cashier might be superfluous because Sims who have finished eating seems to get up and leave, but the kaching of monies being paid still happens.

[J. M. Pescado]

With the cash register, I have started issuing my own badges using the "spawn..." boolprop cheat. I don't issue them straight away but after one sim week, my little sims get a bronze badge in checkout and so on...

I've tried tweaking the gain rates on that. After increasing it by a factor of 10 from the base 100 to 1000, it's still painfully slow!

Contrast this with gold sales badges, the easiest badge in the game. I got an entire family of 5 people, every single one of them, to gold in less than a day and a half just harassing the customers with their sales skills. In fact, I'm test-driving a macro for it. It is DEAD EASY.

And yet the ability to operate a cash register is apparently an ability of mythical proportions and places one amongst the elite few. As opposed to in real life, where it gets you minimum wage.

[akatonbo]

If the programmers are that confused by cash registers, no wonder the game is so buggy.

[Darkstormyeve]

I honestly think that a badges (cash register) mod is high priority. The little badge thing I spawned though is working well enough. Seriously though, how fast your sims work that little machine can make or break a busy shop. I say call it the "nofatfingers mod".

[aussieone]

Seriously though, how fast your sims work that little machine can make or break a busy shop.

I learnt that the hard way!! 

[Darkstormyeve]

Me too!! The first time I played, I tell ya, I was ready to slap those stupid little sims around if they didn't hurry up! I was getting as impatient as the customers!

[J. M. Pescado]

The cash register badges are the HARDEST to gain because they are triggered ONLY by operating the cash register, and there is absolutely no way to trigger this event outside of live operation. No training runs. No practicing. Nothing. What's more, it fires only infrequently, in contrast to every other skill, which has a practice mode:

ROBOTERY/FLORISTRY/TOYCRAFTING: Make lots of junk at the highest level you can for optimal results.
SALES: Really easy, just badger every customer you see with sales interaction spam, Basic Sell for None/Bronze, Hard Sell for silver. Accept/reject doesn't matter, you get equal practice for success or failure. No customer loyalty hit if you badger them while they're still pondering the electronoticket terminal.
COSMETOLOGY: Mutilate your friends and family outside of a business!
RESTOCKING: This badge is probably the least critical: Anyone can restock at reasonable pace, badge or no, and there's relatively little pressure. If you need it done yesterday, you can always stock manually with no real penalty.

This leaves cashregistry as the slowest skill, no practice options, in a task which in real life is incredibly basic. You pretty much have to either start with it or be unlikely to ever acquire it, because it's such a major operational bottleneck that you simply can't afford to train newbies.

[Sagana]

I have never had a sim bring so much to any household.

I had a sim like that before I got OFB. Marla Bigg moved in during my sim's Uni years and she had a load of stuff in her inventory - including 2 hots tubs, karoke machine, 2 DJ booths, expensive telescope, lots of stereos, tvs and tons of little decorative stuff, etc. etc. ad nauseum. It was kinda nice to get the extra, but also kinda ruined the point of no20K handouts. I figured Maxis thought she'd be going on lots and lots of dates :p

[Sandilou]

I have since had 7 other sims move into the Greek house.  Only those that were former members of the Maxian Greek houses - Tri Var and Urele Ore Cham (or whatever it's called) have brought similar inventories.  Ashley brought even more!  Other townies have brought zilch! 

To summarize: make your Maxian Sims into townies and then have them move in. You can rake in the simoleans. 

[angelyne]

This leaves cashregistry as the slowest skill, no practice options, in a task which in real life is incredibly basic. You pretty much have to either start with it or be unlikely to ever acquire it, because it's such a major operational bottleneck that you simply can't afford to train newbies.

I managed to train one of my sims to silver, without customers getting pissed off enough to leave. But that was at the begnning of my business when volume was still fairly low.  As long as there is no lineup, even unskilled will work ok without the customer getting too pissed.  I think customer volume depends on your business level?  In any case, I lost my sims to college.  I tried replacing her with an employee with a bronze badge.  What a disaster.  Finally I cheated and gave another sim a silver badge.  That was acceptable.  I can still see fairly long lineups, but it moves along fairly fast.  I have yet to see a gold badge.

But JM is so right.  If you loose your cashier for whatever reason, in an established business,  you simply cannot afford to train a new one.  Wish makes zero sense in any kind of real context, as cashiers are dime-a-dozen.

[Moonshires]

Not sure if anyone posted this or not:

For those of you wanting to use custom fridges and still have a bakery, just click on the stove to access the "make many" feature.  This of course assumes you're using a Maxis standard stove.

As for custom food and the "make many" feature, I haven't added any to my game, so I can't comment on that.

[pcgeekri]

I believe that beds are like lockers/dressers they can be used by sims on a community lot ONLY by owners.

Pcgeekri

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, for people not satisfied with the content level, consider that this expansion only increases your game content by 12.5% the lowest of any expansion to date: University was a 50% increase to your game, at 2 CDs to the base 4, but NL added only 2 more CDs to a 6 CD compilation for a total of a 33% increase, and OFB only adds one CD to a now 8 CD compilation for 12.5%. Clearly, the level of content-added falls with every expansion pack, and this one was an exceptional lightweight by mass.

Assessing by actual code added, looking at objects.package, the original TS2 objects.package weighed in at 30354 KB. Uni weighs in at 36367 KB (and includes all the redundant previous code), for a difference of 6013 KB, or ~20%, and NL weighs in at 41474 KB (and includes all redundant materials), for an increase of 5107 KB (14%), and OFB comes in at 46991 KB, for an increase of 5517 KB (13.3%).

You decide which metric you find to be a better measure, but by any of the standards above, OFB is the lightest in terms of content weight added.

[J. M. Pescado]

But they make for really lousy customers because their needs go down so darned fast. Either get them sniffing snapdragons or just leave them the heck alone. I learned the hard way that they don't appreciate a good sales pitch. Well at least the ones in my town don't.

Pregnant sims frequently also have the "broken mood bug" issue. You may want to do a "fix broken mood" on the Debugger first if you're finding customers that are inexplicably surly.

[angelyne]

Well, for people not satisfied with the content level, consider that this expansion only increases your game content by 12.5% the lowest of any expansion to date: University was a 50% increase to your game, at 2 CDs to the base 4, but NL added only 2 more CDs to a 6 CD compilation for a total of a 33% increase, and OFB only adds one CD to a now 8 CD compilation for 12.5%. Clearly, the level of content-added falls with every expansion pack, and this one was an exceptional lightweight by mass.

Part of their marketing strategy I think.  They also have started to release content packs, separate from their updates.  But then you caught on that one fairly early JM, with your get one for the price of two!