What are your Retail Experiences?

TS1299

Playing retail and I enjoyed it. My sim was earning a lot if money, and hadn't encountered any game breaking bugs at my playthrough. Recently I started to Create a business from ground to up. It took me a while but now its very profitable and my Customers keep buying. Employees follow the my commands. Sims immediately by products. etc.

However this isn't the same for others. I've heared that retail is a nightmare. And one of the buggiest feature in the game. Can I ask how do you play the game?

mctsimmer

Happy to hear someone is enjoying the game. The EP is very buggy. I have employees not show up to work or get employees I never hired.
I have found the game businesses the easiest to run only with family members. Employees cost too much and never follow direction.

But when I do use employees I have to keep the store open for five hours or less. When I keep the business open longer everything falls apart and I lose money. Customers are great and profits are coming in when I advertise and work a few hours.

Dine Out is better and the Cats & Dogs Vets business are great and those packs are not buggy.

Honeydew

if or when I do a retail I like doing a bakery. I don't higher employees cause they get annoying I just have my sim by her self. And I keep it open tell like 4 or 5 or people will start steeling food cause there hungry if its open to late and I also make sure shes eaten before I take her to the bakery or she'll do the same thing cause shes hungry.

TS1299

mctsimmer wrote: »

Happy to hear someone is enjoying the game. The EP is very buggy. I have employees not show up to work or get employees I never hired.
I have found the game businesses the easiest to run only with family members. Employees cost too much and never follow direction.

But when I do use employees I have to keep the store open for five hours or less. When I keep the business open longer everything falls apart and I lose money. Customers are great and profits are coming in when I advertise and work a few hours.

Dine Out is better and the Cats & Dogs Vets business are great and those packs are not buggy.

Can I ask, when did you last play the retail? I don't get that bug for a long time.

When it comes to enployees, I mostly set them to work at when I reach almost all perks, and when customers are all interested when they buy.

But yeah while I enjoyed retail, Restaurants and Vets are much better.

TS1299

Honeydew wrote: »

if or when I do a retail I like doing a bakery. I don't higher employees cause they get annoying I just have my sim by her self. And I keep it open tell like 4 or 5 or people will start steeling food cause there hungry if its open to late and I also make sure shes eaten before I take her to the bakery or she'll do the same thing cause shes hungry.

I also love doing bakeries! I don't know but there is something that I feel on retail bakeries that dosen't exist in a restaurant for some reason. Still can't forget how painful it was before the lock doors came in lol

Livinity

My experience has been good overall! I usually set the price to the highest because this way I can take things slowly so there's enough time to clean up, restock or remake my products and manage employees with only one or two sims, while also attending their needs. While I enjoy playing large households, I get kinda lost in retails with more than 2 sims, it's a solo experience for me. If I set the markup to normal or low prices, the customers get frantic and I can't do anything, it's like sims black friday

I try not to relly on employees too much, I know they are supposed to get better when they improved their work ethic skill or something like that, so they won't slack often. But I never got to this point, everyone I hire just wants to listen to the stereo and god forbid I place a TV somewhere they have access to...I just hire one or two and let them do their own thing.

MasonGamer

I do Enjoy it, the only thing is Hiring Employees, I was trying to create my own custom staff, and I wish the game listed all the sims who are unemployed.

TS1299

MasonGamer wrote: »

I do Enjoy it, the only thing is Hiring Employees, I was trying to create my own custom staff, and I wish the game listed all the sims who are unemployed.

Agreed. Its the only thing that I wanted about the employees

EnkiSchmidt

It's fun while I play the retail owner. Normally they are already wealthy sims, so I don't notice or care much whether the business is profitable or not.

The "nightmare" part begins when I play my other households to buy all the high-skill meals at the retail lot. In this case the game assigns random employees (which I've come to terms with since I prevented the game from grabbing my own unemployed sims by means of giving them a fake "Self employed" career). The problem is that those seasonal workers, as I call them, do not wear the uniforms I designed for that store. Any help would be apprecciated!

Sha2520032003

I think Retail has gotten a little better over the years for me. My biggest thing was that there was too much socializing & not enough shopping. As a super fan of Open for Business in TS2, I was used to customers actually shopping....so even though this a different game, I had that same expectation. Now, I use the socialization to my advantage....I let them all talk in a big group, & when you sell to 1 you sell to all that's in the group. So in a group of 5, I usually can sell to at least 3 or 4 of them in a pretty quick time span. So I use what I used to find annoying to my advantage for more sells.

The employees still don't do what I tell them to do so that is still a shortcoming. I find employees work better at restaurants in Dine Out & vet clinic in Cats & Dogs. So now, I just have my Sims family....teen & older help out at the store. It saves my Sims money, & I can increase those perk points quickly.

In a nutshell...I'm enjoying Retail a lot more than I did when it first came out.

Jestina

I didn't like it because my sim never had a life outside the store. The stores don't run effectively unless your sim is there so you have you to live on the business lot. Like active careers, it may be okay if you only play a single sim.

TS1299

EnkiSchmidt wrote: »

It's fun while I play the retail owner. Normally they are already wealthy sims, so I don't notice or care much whether the business is profitable or not.

The "nightmare" part begins when I play my other households to buy all the high-skill meals at the retail lot. In this case the game assigns random employees (which I've come to terms with since I prevented the game from grabbing my own unemployed sims by means of giving them a fake "Self employed" career). The problem is that those seasonal workers, as I call them, do not wear the uniforms I designed for that store. Any help would be apprecciated!

It might be a bug. I don't know for sure, as we don't have an Settings for the retail lot type in BB. Maybe @SimGuruGraham or @SimGuruNick can tell us if this is by design?

EnkiSchmidt

TS1299 wrote: »

EnkiSchmidt wrote: »

It's fun while I play the retail owner. Normally they are already wealthy sims, so I don't notice or care much whether the business is profitable or not.

The "nightmare" part begins when I play my other households to buy all the high-skill meals at the retail lot. In this case the game assigns random employees (which I've come to terms with since I prevented the game from grabbing my own unemployed sims by means of giving them a fake "Self employed" career). The problem is that those seasonal workers, as I call them, do not wear the uniforms I designed for that store. Any help would be apprecciated!

It might be a bug. I don't know for sure, as we don't have an Settings for the retail lot type in BB. Maybe @SimGuruGraham or @SimGuruNick can tell us if this is by design?

Might be a bug indeed. I found a screenshot from 2016 where the game drafted the esteemed Professor Bellamy to work part-time in the garden furniture store and he's wearing the uniform I assigned for that store.