Forum Discussion

ArchXDiablo's avatar
6 years ago

GTW Retail Done Right

I tried left and right to make retail work vanilla, but ultimately failed. Granted, this depends on what you consider "right", and if that is simply making money then there are ways of course to do so with retail, but as an experience and specially coming from TS2 OFB, it felt very broken. The main culprit here is the buff levels applied to employees, the requirement for sims to know a sim to use retail interactions and the dreaded "idle chat", the latter being more detrimental. Idle chat locks sims into conversations that really are not conversations, but rather standing around looping animations as if they were interacting. This prevents employees from "breaking free" and doing what they are supposed to do. Without it sims are forced to cycle real social interactions.

After almost 4 years little has been done to make it work. But I'm an avid mod advocate, and I found a combo that just about makes retail even be able to run on its own. But not everyone likes or wants to use mods nor should them to get a paid feature to work right?

This is my feedback on how to make retail run perfectly, it is already possible:

-Remove idle chat from all types of customers and employees (actually from the game would be fine)
-Buff tasks levels so they react faster
-Remove requirement to have met sim to use retail interactions
-(Optional) Assign higher buffs to backup tasks for employees that have nothing to do if their current task is done for the moment.

Mod combo that achieves this (if interested):
LittleSam's Retail Overhaul
Have Some Personality Please or SCAMv5 (remove idle chat manually)
**I also made and uploaded a mod to MTS that increases employee limit to 6**

This is what a day at retail looks like with me just running around helping to ring customers out and restock (since having 3 customers to ring up at the same time is common). Employees do all the talking and do it perfectly. Just keep in mind that this was using MCCC at half speed so my days are 2x as long so vanilla I sell about 15-17. I also had no interactions with customers so I did not help there. They sold on their own by employees. It can be done EAxis.

https://i.postimg.cc/1tfBT7Wf/01-29-19-3-21-18-AM.png
  • I seem to do okay with base retail ops (no cc currently) however, the celebs that come in definitely do not like to be interacted with and more often than not I end up asking them to leave w/o a purchase. I really miss some of the features that were part of S2 OFB. As has been said many times though: the developers are going to take this game and the content they produce in the direction THEY want to.
  • GTW & Seasons.

    I bought the expansion pack to function like OFB in SIMS2, where I was able to stage aspiration awards for sale in my little "bodega."

    But because of other reasons, I never really paid attention to the features in this expansion pack up until now. So, I'm trying to run a retail operation and I've found that it's easier to run if you have multiple family members assisting in the business to keep it running... but at the same time (especially with seasons) it's hard to pay attention to the business while also paying attention to the gardens at home. Any advice?
  • "pjericksim;c-16950846" wrote:
    GTW & Seasons.

    I bought the expansion pack to function like OFB in SIMS2, where I was able to stage aspiration awards for sale in my little "bodega."

    But because of other reasons, I never really paid attention to the features in this expansion pack up until now. So, I'm trying to run a retail operation and I've found that it's easier to run if you have multiple family members assisting in the business to keep it running... but at the same time (especially with seasons) it's hard to pay attention to the business while also paying attention to the gardens at home. Any advice?


    There's 3 ways I'd do that (2 vanilla, 1 modded):
    1-Have one of the household members commit to the garden, once you raise his skill enough to unlock "Tend Garden", just set him to do that (he'll automatically water and weed all plants in the area). You could always hire a gardener but I'm guessing it'd be more in tune if you have one of your sims do it.
    2-Bring the garden to the retail lot if you spend a lot of time there and do the same as step 1.
    3-(Modded) LittleMsSam Retail Overhaul. If you sell items that are cheaper (say, $50-$500 range), I cannot recommend this enough. Your employees will be as useful as family members, your customers will be more logical. With employees taking care of sales, ringing up and cleaning, you can even let them take care of it all while you focus on your garden (at that point I'd recommend bringing it to the retail lot)

    **Be aware that AFAIK plants will grow/produce harvestables between 5-7 AM (Can't remember the exact time). You MUST be present in the lot they are in at that time frame, so if you bring the garden to the bodega, you have to be there at that time. Some people do a hybrid of house/retail where they have sims live at their retail lots, it works well (kind of like TS2 OFB home businesses but not quite since the game doesn't think of it as your actual home).

    If you go unmodded I'd definitely recommend sticking to using family members to run the business, you'll pull your hair out with employees vanilla. Maybe use one only for ringing up customers, but that's about it.

    I can relate to this, I currently run (modded that is) a rather big mall, with 8 stores (one of them being a grocery shop selling harvestables). I set the markup to 15% only (it balances it out well given that customers buy a great variety of things, from clothing, to $4k plasma TVs, to $10k PCs, to $100 baked goods, to $50 harvestables, etc. so there's always profit without being overwhelming). Also paying 9 employees takes a good $2.5k or so from my budget after 8 hours. For harvestables only I'd recommend going at least 50% markup and sucking up to customers a lot (getting the sales perk helps a lot too).
  • "Iiyonce;c-16959205" wrote:
    wow thank you for this. i love the idea of the stores but, like everything else with this game, it feels really rushed. definitely gonna try those mods out and see how it works for me. i love that you have an actual running store!


    My pleasure, I too LOVE retail ever since TS2 OFB and was severely dissappointed here. So I wasn't going to stop until it worked properly, huge thanks go to LittleMsSam for letting me test side by side with her to get it right.

    Once I expand my mall I'll post some pics as right now I only managed to open a furniture store next to the bakery, but it's going well. The customers spread out between them and the employees cover the whole area. No customer is left without being rung up, currently have 5 set to pitch sales and 1 for restocking. I use my sim as a backup for every task, gives me a lot to do.
  • I'm not planning on owning any businesses until the next generation, so I'm bookmarking this thread. Thanks for the info!
  • Thank you so so much for this thread and the mods! I haven't used them before but have been thinking about it, especially where GTW is concerned. I LOVE games that allow me to run something like a store, but it's honestly a nightmare, plus the scientist career is a mess now too. ? It's a shame because I love the packs I have dearly, maybe moreso because I don't have them all, so to see the ones I have always buggy and poorly thought out...it's just sad. Anyway thanks, I'll look into these suggestions!
  • I tried running a business not long after GTW came out, but was quickly bored. I now use the retail system plus cheats to create businesses where my Sims can shop. My current save I'm working on unlocking all the career outfits -- several generations from now I'll set up a clothing shop where active Sims can shop, playing the owner only when I want to switch out outfits (also want to test and see if the outfits remain unlocked if I move the Sim and the shop to a new save). It'll likely take a few generations, even playing on Long lifespan (my current Sim has maxed out the acting skill but I want to get him to the top of the Actor career just for the sake of completion, while his wife is just starting out on social media).