OFB super challenging!! Well, maybe difficult? umm.. well hard as Uni?

[sanmonroe]

Before I say anything else I have a hack request.

GET RID OF THE SPAM WANTS TO HIRE EVERY FUCKER YOU EVER MEET!!!! You think sims love playing ssx? Think they desire instruments? Think they are stupid? NO!! They want to hire every bastard who ever comes within 20 miles of them, and rarely have less than 3 of thier want slots taken up with "hire Sim X, who is currently playable and at the top of the nat science career, as a 15$ an hour cashier".

Anyway, how hard is OFB if you are not retardo?

Well, after playing last night for several hous and getting 3 businesses up to 8 ranking, I have to say, its not that challenging unless you make an away from home witha  sim that has no skills, no friends, and no money (i.e. one that couldn't afford it int he first place)

Half the bonus rewards are useless as well. Grab allt he ones that lower your base costs, and a few of the networking ones, and there you go.

You don't need the mood or want assessment skills. The vast majority of the sims will come on the lot and start considering something on their own, just sell them that and every so often pull one over and show them something worth a decent amount and dazzle them. If you use the glasses and dazzle att he same time you can get +40 relationship and pretty much an instant sale unless the item is marked at the most overpriced setting.

I didn't play a diner so, that may be difficult since you need employees all the time.

----Running a venue-----
1- At home.

Your best bet for profit and skill gain is just to run this out of your home.

Don't even bother with employees for a venue. They just screw up your profit and provide nothing of value since the game so harsly restricts the number of sims that will come to your shop/venue at one time. Its not like in Nightlife where you could get 20 sims wanderig around at once, as soon as you buy the shop it drops down to 3 max, and at the high end (lvl 10) its something like 9 or 10.

In fact, don't bother doing anything with a venue. Place a few items that sims obsess about on your lot, put the little ticket machine on your lot, turn on the open sign and set the fee below cheap. Then never close or do anything else again. You just created a solid stream of free money. Adding things like bars and manning them can work, but the cost of running them far exceeds the amount you earn from them, simply because of the limit of customers the game forces on you. You can't justify paying someone 20$ an hour to sell 15$ of drinks every 3 hours!

My example- Couple day old Sim that I created just to test out ofb a few days before release. 3 max skills, not perma plat yet, uni degree, 15 friends, top of paranormal career.

I bought one of the tiny houses on the left side of the default downtown. Flattened the roof, added a staircase from the back yard. Put a swingset, a poker table, a bong, and that stupid raffle game ont he roof. Opened the doors to customers and went to work finishing capping my skills, finishing my LTW, and then working on mass producing robots, then flowers, just to get gold in those skills.

Level 8 pretty fast. I added some more stuff to it when it was making good money, but I really didn't have to do anything at all. It ran itself, my maid cleaned the toilets, and I had my sim locked in the house so she didn't charge to the swingset etc every 20 seconds. Constant stream of  sims coming in.

Example 2- The "hard" way to do a venue.

Using another sim I opened a gambling den. It has instruments, poker tables, darts, pool tables, etc. This was not an at home venue so it was considerably more difficult! In fact, until I realized "oh, I can just meditate if I want to", I would have to go home every day or two to rest up and recover. If you try to interact etc yeah you will need to go home frequently, but unless you feel like socializing, there is no point interacting. You get your money just by virtue of them standing on your property, let them playt he drums until they piss themselves, talking to them will only make them realize they are hungry.


----Running a store---

I did play a little with the florist girl to see how things worked the day I picked the game up. Once you get the hang of things its pretty easy.

In this caseI used a sim who had uni, all skills maxxed, had not finished LTW, had tons of friends (as there are over 60 woo hoo memories for her) and about 50k of free cash.

I bought "Corner Shop" in the new area and turned it into a Furry/Plushy/Cosplay store for perverts. I stocked it with stuffed animals for the plushies, the giant monkey and chicken for those who have giantess fetishes, a rack of clothes, 2 hot tubs, and other various crap like the reindeer statue.

Your loyalty goes up FAST if you sell things as compared to a venue. I was very quickly at lvl 3 and couldn't keep up with restock, cashier, and helping customers. So I hired an employee just to stock the shelves. That worked fine just the two of us for a few days. When I needed a break I would put her on register, call up a date, bring them over, bang them in the bed in the breakroom for plat mood and use cystal -me...errr... the energizer, then send the employee home for a 6 hour rest.

When i was alone at the store I just rang customers up once my rating got high enough, they sold to themselves fast enough it was hard to get away. Eventually I hired another sim to be a full time cashier. With him and the stock girl, the shop ran itself until they needed a 6 hour break.

Jumped up to lvl 9 before I decided "its bedtime" and put the deed for sale at a very inflated price and dazzle/hardsell/dazzled an NPC into buying it. Made about 180k in profit.

Keep in mind that I only went back to the sims home lot ONCE in the time it took to get to lvl 9. And that was just because I wasn't paying attention and used speed while at green inspiration.

----ALL IN ALL----

Adds some nice features, but not the challenge people were saying it was.

[Ashleigh]

I must be retardo. 

[sanmonroe]

I must be retardo. 

Give it two days. If after learningt he basics its still hard, then get the "I am a burden of the state" t-shirt.

[MokeyHokey]

No cheating, except for one emergency use of "maxmotives" since my 3rd trimester pregnant sim was keeling over from starvation while "restocking".  This was accomplished this morning in about 3 hours, freshly "deleteall" neighborhood, first CAS sims I made day before yesterday. I was selling palm trees in my front yard.   




There's a lot more I want to experiment with, though. I closed that business down after the founder died and now her daughter is running a level 5 styling salon out of the garage.

[Pegasys]

It's harder if the items are crafted.  Certain businesses are going to be more challenging than others.

Also I refuse to use maxmotives, doesn't that maximize everyone's motives on the lot? But I have been using the Energizer quite a bit.

[Motoki]

I personally am finding it pretty damned hard, but then I started with a new sim who was pretty much broke. I did take out 20,000 in loans from Monique's computer, it helped some and I'm doing a bit better now but nothing like you guys.

I'm also not getting the hire so&so wants, but then my sim hardly knows anyone.

I did manage to get a gold badge in robotics and make and activate a servo so I guess that's something. *shrug*

I think I need the guide because I kind of suck at the business thing lol.

I feel like the cash register badge takes WAY too long to get up also.

[Sandilou]

Hi Motoki    It's good to see you back.  I'm enjoying your posts once again.  Personally, I think Sanmonroe is just showing off and ought to go back to doing the Times Crossword.

[Motoki]

Well she may be right. I'm sure it's much easier starting with an established family with money and friends and a large house and whatnot, but I purposely chose not to go that route and am finding it pretty challenging. It's not as since I've started getting the hang of things a bit but I still wouldn't say it was easy.

But then again if you cheat or just have established characters with boatloads of money I suppose anything is easy in this game. *shrug*

[sanmonroe]

Yeah it definitly can be challenging with a fresh sim out of CAS. But again, you need to cheat to for that sim to use OFB, be it through a money cheat, or a loan hacked object. If you don't cheat at all, by the time the sim can afford to run the business you have the cash and skills needed to make it trivial.

I didn't use any cheats other than moveonjects and testingcheats to fix things that get stuck and try and figure out what all the damn errors with servo and professors visiting the lots are from, and don't have any hacks that make anything easier (well, phonehack, but thats not easier, its less annoying).

The at home one I mentioned the sim only had about 20k to spend. She was pretty fresh out of college and definitly not rich. The one I will test tonight will be for a restaurant and that family has several million dollars in cash from several generations of play.

Only using crafted items can add soem challenge, but I did learn how to do that on the flower lady, and once you get a servo (the "I win" button in OFB is servo) or the customer base to hire an employee to craft and just alternate between which of two crafting employees is there then thats no problem again. The at home biz with a servo is 24 hours, with decent employee manegment you can keep it open 24 hours without a servo, just make sure to sleep when the employees are fresh!

I think the restaurant will probably be fairly challenging to run. The only reason though is because you need at least 3 positions at all times (greeter/seater, chef, and waiter) and with the artificial limit on customers you will hemmorrage money. Its like if you bought a McDonalds and for the first few weeks only 3 customers were allowed to be eating at one time, but you required a full dinner rush staff in expenses.

[Motoki]

I think you can do it without cheating, but it would be pretty darned hard and your sim would be old by the time things really got going, unless you were playing a zombie, vampire or robot.

There's so many ways to cheat or borderline cheat-ish things in this game though. You could marry another sim or move someone else in which would bring in more money, you could use aspiration rewards like the recharger etc.

Even with the loan it was pretty tough. I suppose it's kind of like moving in another sim and having them bring 20k except in this case I have to pay it all back and the payments get added to my bills and interest accumulates so it's certainly not a free ticket like kachinging 20 times.

[Sagana]

But again, you need to cheat to for that sim to use OFB, be it through a money cheat, or a loan hacked object.

Sure you can. There's 2 "beginning business" lots that are 5kish in the shopping district, if you want a community business. Buy a tiny home and few furnishings and it's affordable. Or you can buy a flower making thing instead of a computer or whatever, so the standard 20k works fine to start a sim out.

I've got a couple who've got their home business up to level 3 who were fresh-started. They've got twin boys (newborns) and the husband works and the wife makes and sells flowers, but we're considering switching off. They did hire a nanny (they're pleasure sims and don't care much about the kids anyway). No uni degrees, they've a few friends and make friends easily at the business (3-4 customers at a time is plenty). No money cheats, and no aspiration rewards (no energizers of any kind).

I did give the twins (the ones that were in the bin) a loan to buy the 3in1bookstore (again the one in the bin) as I wanted to see how a bookstore works. I'm using FamilyFunds to make them pay it back at really high rates and very quickly. She got a job, he's running the business. They have 2 employees - sometimes they'll call them in and sometimes not. She works there on her days off and he goes to the lot, works unitl his energy is down to nothing, goes home and sleeps and takes advantage of the no time on community lots to go back again every day, so the store's open a lot. He's gaining sales skills quickly and it seems to me like the cash register is the hardest. They're too slow at the checkout and customers get impatient. Hopefully they'll skill up soon. The business is doing well tho. Sims like buying things.

Anyway, we're having fun.

[windy_moon]

LOL, well I've managed to challenge myself so far.

Nearly no time to play this weekend with RL family obligations, but I couldn't resist biting off more than I could chew.

For my first business, Cassandra Goth bought P.U.R.E (in which I'd previously added a restaurant, total $148,000.)  I have no Prima Guide, no clue how to really play this game....in a nearly brand new neighborhood.

How fast do you think I can lose Mortie's fortune?  I need a chef, waitstaff, a host/hostess, DJ, bartender.....and have mostly losers to choose from in hiring.

So far I've managed to hire three and get them set up and uniformed.  We didn't even open for business before Kennedy Cox, the new host,  caught fire! (from the roast marshmallow thingie).

And I had no sprinkler system on the roof....

Cassandra paid the staff, called it a day and will try again tomorrow.

 

[simmiecal]

But doesn't this fit into the generational aspect of Sims2 ?  Mom and pop start a little business venture at home. Junior, raised in the household builds up skills and contacts that will help him/her later on when mom/pop kick the bucket and they inherit the business. With the business already established and the nice inheritance from mom and dad shuffling off the mortal coil, junior can purchase a lot elsewhere and move the family business out of the home and into the "business district".

Do people really expect that a sim straight out CAS is going to be able to be successful at all aspects of the game: uni, NL (social/dating) and OFB (running a business)? Doesn't it make sense that some aspects of the game (without cheats) should take more than one generation to accomplish?

[Motoki]

But again, you need to cheat to for that sim to use OFB, be it through a money cheat, or a loan hacked object.

They did hire a nanny (they're pleasure sims and don't care much about the kids anyway).

They must not if they hired one of those nannies. Poor kids, I hope they haven't pissed on them yet. 

I don't think taking out a loan (within reason) to start a business is that much of a cheat and it seems fairly realistic to me since that's what most people do irl. Actually, I think Maxis should have added this as a feature really.

[Sagana]

No pissing on the kids so far. :) I usually use a hack if I want a nanny, but my downloads folder is barren.

I agree about the loans. I sure wish they'd put that in - it's not near as much a cheat (imnsho) as never having to eat or sleep ;) That and home shopping. Charge a premium for it, but *please* add it so I can buy all the clothes I dl without spending half my time on community shopping lots, plus NL and Business ones.

[Motoki]

I agree about the home shopping. I was kind of hoping to be able to start home businesses like a catalog or internet business without having a bunch of annoying townies trapsing around your house. But may someone will come up with a hack like Pescado's continuous painting hack that lets your sims use the new crafting machine and then sell each item as soon as they are done instead of putting it in their inventory.

Oh, and I realize I'm going off on a bit of a tangent here, but which nanny hack do you use? Christianlov's or Danny's from Valdea.com? I took a look at Christianlov's but what used to be one or two files has turned into a bazillion with a readme that looks like War and Peace. I'm confused by the whole thing and don't know if I feel like taking the time to figure out what to use and what not to. 

[Sagana]

<scuffle> here's where I'm bad. I actually have both the allinone nanny and Danny's and the neighborhood babysitter as well, and had them all in the game before I loaded OFB. I'd sorta pick one or the other depending on what I wanted. I was a bit confused about what Christianlov ones I needed at first too. I downloaded them all, and then read the first post while looking at them, and just deleted everything I didn't want, and then it didn't turn out to be so much. I try to avoid global hacks (the others are more compatable) so it was easy 'nuff to know I didn't want those.

[Scotty]

Well, sadly, I had to start from scratch. Somehow, my neighborhoods got corrupted, and I couldn't buy a community lot. So I am starting all new neighborhoods. I had to scrap all my families that I worked so hard on since the base game first came out.Oh well, starting fresh is nice sometimes.

[sanmonroe]

What comm lot in the expansion is only 5k? The lowest I have seen are the mercantile and corner shop, both around 17 or 18k. But the ease you d3escribe running with a fresh CAS family is no suprise, doing in one sim alone is the only way to really struggle at all (maybe).

Ah, here is the list of the new NPC limits added. You can invite more autonomous sims over witht eh phone, but they will count towards a slot and use up one of your potential customers. This is assuming your computer is considered good enough to run this many. So if your computer maxes out at 8 sims recommended, and its you and 3 employees, you can never have more than 4 customers.

(rank)-(Max NPCs)
10-10
9-9
8-8
7-7
6-7
5-6
4-5
3-4
2-4
1 and below-3

Stupid limits making most of the NL and Orig comm lots a huge waste to buy, as they are too large to ever be needed. No restaurant ever has to be larger than 3 small square tables to prevent having a wait.

[sanmonroe]

And I just thought of something.

If you just want to be a real estate mogul all you have to do is buy small lots, go on them, hire random NPCs, making sure they have a few badges. Then sell it off. The employee skill levels raises the value. I added 30k to the value of the corner shop just by hiring 5 employees that I never used.

[Sagana]

What comm lot in the expansion is only 5k? The lowest I have seen are the mercantile and corner shop, both around 17 or 18k.

In Bluewater Village, Little n Local is 5,127 and the Mercantile Mart is 6,111. Both are available under purchase community lots on the phone (I haven't looked on the computer). If you want more of a challenge, start with a lower level character and build. And don't use the aspiration rewards. It's more challenging that way - you're min-maxing, which is certainly easy enough, but in my opinion, less fun.

[Sandilou]

I've only used Christianlov's Diligent Visitor Mirror for less than a week, but it has become an absolute must have on two levels:  the first being practicality, second satisfying revenge.

Here are the options: You can choose any sim from the neighbourhood to come and clean your house.  The sim always cleans up properly and leaves the house spotless.  Only cost is the price of the mirror.  There is also the option to schedule someone to clean every morning.  I always choose the sim that is least liked by the resident sim to clean; Furious newspaper thieves finally get their comeuppance.

Most of my favourite hacks have been updated or are compatible.  The games running fine.   

Scotty, you have my commiserations. Have you tried running your game without the Downloads folder.  It should launch, but there might be alot of bald, default dressed sims.   If it makes you feel any better I'm thinking of deleting every neighbourhood that I've got, custom downloads and all because I don't think that they'll ever be compatible with OFT now that the old version of Inteem is likely to be discontinued.  I have files from TS2 from a year ago that I've not touched since I bought Uni.  I'm itching to delete everything and declutter my pc.

[sanmonroe]

What comm lot in the expansion is only 5k? The lowest I have seen are the mercantile and corner shop, both around 17 or 18k.

In Bluewater Village, Little n Local is 5,127 and the Mercantile Mart is 6,111. Both are available under purchase community lots on the phone (I haven't looked on the computer). If you want more of a challenge, start with a lower level character and build. And don't use the aspiration rewards. It's more challenging that way - you're min-maxing, which is certainly easy enough, but in my opinion, less fun.

I will try that tonight and see hiw hard it is to go from single and nothing but the 20k start cash to running a full community shop complete with Servos to buy and have weird robut sex with. No aspiration rewards unless the sim pisses me off and I want to turn him/her into a cheese sim.

I could have sworn those two were more expensive. Maybe I am including the ost after I added items to sell.

[Scotty]

Thanks. I was just playing, and I moved the Goth's to a new hood. I cannot enter their house without crashing. And I cant move them to the sim bin because I have to visit the damn house before I can do that. Any other lot I enter is fine, but I cant get into the Goth house. (I had some plans for them, especially Alexander) I tried getting in with debug mode, nope. Cant do that either. I have no idea why it's crashing. I have deleted all my old hacks, and updated some of them with OFB compatible ones.

I cant even bulldoze the stupid house because I need to move them off the lot first. And of course I can't do that.

I swear, I HATE Maxis sometimes.

[diamonde]

Yeah it definitly can be challenging with a fresh sim out of CAS. But again, you need to cheat to for that sim to use OFB, be it through a money cheat, or a loan hacked object. If you don't cheat at all, by the time the sim can afford to run the business you have the cash and skills needed to make it trivial.

Not really.  I figured my sims have had it too easy for too long, so I did an extreme start legacy lot with one CAS adult, so she started with 1500.  After a week she married an NPC who brought 1500 to the household (good thing her ex gave her a dance sphere after a good date - some people might call it exploiting a game feature, I call it prostitution).  No money cheats, loans or otherwise unorthodox financial gain, except the Maxis-condoned prostitution.  By the end of the second week both of them were working day jobs and running a home-based toy store whenever they were home, which was often since my founder was on maternity leave.  To celebrate their uneducated, working-class nature I've also banned them from holding regular jobs above level 4 or hiring domestic help.

So far they're working their little pixelated butts off for not much profit, he's still got a day job and the business has reached level 4.  The baby's just turned into a kid, and grew up reasonably well despite the way her parents left her alone in the living part of the house while they sold toys.  She scared me when she turned into a toddler wearing a bear suit, though.  The parents cooed and cuddled and I went "why does my kid have a TAIL?"

It's been fun.  I've had to work an awful lot harder than usual, but it's been an interesting way to pick up the business concept.  And definitely more difficult than uni.  My first CAS students with their no skills or money never had it this hard, even when I left the game running while I made a sandwich.