I haven’t owned a restaurant yet, mainly because I think it would feel too similar as owning a retail store. However, what I’m more disappointed about, even though I don’t regret buying the pack, are the lack of animations. In the Sims 1 and 2 there were more romantic interactions when dining out. In the sims 4 you wouldn’t be able to tell whether two sims are on a date or just friends.
I haven’t owned a restaurant yet, mainly because I think it would feel too similar as owning a retail store. However, what I’m more disappointed about, even though I don’t regret buying the pack, are the lack of animations. In the Sims 1 and 2 there were more romantic interactions when dining out. In the sims 4 you wouldn’t be able to tell whether two sims are on a date or just friends.
I agree. I was really hoping for a little romantic playfulness at the table. It's a pity and yet another missed opportunity that we didn't get it -- especially a proposal. That would have been awesome.
As with everything else, I have to pretend. In my story, I pretended as if there was a ring hidden in the Ahi tuna dish. After all, it already looks like a gift. I had the guy propose just after the female had begun to eat and it kind of looked okay when I caught the screenshots.
Still, for once, I would like things to really happen in-game, instead of just in my head.
I do miss the interactions while eating, I did find out that they can feed each other a bite of food. But can they toast? I can't recall, maybe that came with GTG? I miss them being able to play footsies (remember that from Sims 1)? Holding hands, steal a bite from each other's plate, have a food fight, and other activities that I can't recall right now.
I haven't tried owning a restaurant yet, but plan to in the near future. I would enjoy my sims going out to eat more, if they didn't get food poisoning every single freaking time.
I actually do enjoy Dine Out for what it's worth, since I seem to like taking Sims to eat out a lot though I haven't tried running one yet. I do plan on at least one household to try it out, but the mechanics of actually going out to eat seem to be alright, granted they could do so much more with what they had.
Does anyone have an issue with someone always dying at the restaurant? Ever since I installed Dine Out, every time my sims go to eat at the restaurant, the grim reaper shows up, someone dies, and then my sims are sad for hours and think about it all the time. Any way to make it stop?
There's actually a mod that allows for you to hire anybody in your restaurant: click for link
Hope this helps anyone who needs it
and I agree with all your points. I also kinda wish EA made it possible to actually be a cook in a restaurant rather than just management.
Waiters seem to be jack stupid. I currently have 3 hired, in the hopes it would speed things up.. but nope. Promoted and trained all of them. And they have been working for me quite some time now. They stand around and it takes ages for them to take orders. Meanwhile I have welcomed all the tables and they just stand there doing nothing. Whenever some food is done they quickly deliver it, but taking the orders is something they just cant do.
And cleaning is a nightmare as well. Whether one of the waiters does it (hint hint: they 🐸🐸🐸🐸 don't) or my Sim does it, 9 out of the 10 times they just end up putting all the dishes on another table instead of bringing it to the waiters table.
I haven't done restaurants but they are probably about as much of a nightmare as retail and the vet career. Your sim will be stuck in the business for the rest of their life, never leaving, if you hope to make any profit. Forget about raising a family or having any social life.
I have played pretty in depth with Dine Out. I have 2 male sims that have 3 restaurants each (A few others are single restaurant owners and I have a few vet clinics and retail). My first problem was hiring the sims I want to hire. I made the sims for each restaurant that I wanted hired into each position. I'd put them all together and just leave them "not currently in world" so I could hire them. It was such an annoying situation. I had to go in and out of the restaurant to continuously delete the game generated, awful looking townies. I'd finally get my people in after some really frustrating jumping through hoops. Why can't I just hire who I want? Why is there only 6 to choose from at a time? Just pull up the whole list of unemployed sims in the world and let me pick them. That's one thing I'd like to see changed.
Lately I've been having problems with my restaurants losing employees. I like to switch back and forth between sims and my 2 guys are 2 of the many. I will go and play some other sim for a bit, come back to one of the guys and all of a sudden a few of their employees are gone. Why? I didn't leave the restaurants open (I've done that in the past with those results.) My employees weren't unsatisfied the last time I checked. All my restaurants are 5 stars, my employees are fully promoted. Why do they leave for no reason? I don't even get an announcement, they just left. I then have to go through my first problem all over and get them back into my restaurant and pay for retraining of course.
My employees are all maxed out on promotions and skills. Why aren't they ever just happy? I give an inspirational speech to each of them every day when we open. I walk around and praise them throughout the work day. They are always neutral. Why can't they just be happy? My sim is a nice boss, he doesn't yell at them if they drop something occasionally. Why can't they just be happy? WHY? I guess neutral is ok but let's be honest, they might just up and leave with neutral (as I stated in my complaint above.)
Now while employee management can be a headache, I'm gonna move right along to the bigger one. The customers. Why can't they just sit down and eat? WHY?! I don't mind if they talk to the table next to them or even the one across the room but why can't they just sit down. The problems this causes are horrendous and I think it is predominately what is causing the bad restaurant experience.
1. The waiter can't take their order when they're roaming around the restaurant. This causes them to stand and wait for the customer to return to their seat. I've noticed that until the customer returns the waiters do not drop that queue and just stand and wait for that customer to return. I think this is what has our waiters standing around looking as if they aren't doing their jobs.
2.The customer gets angry about wait times. Well it's kind of their own fault. I'm getting close to just kicking them out at this point, but it's all of them so I'd have no customers.
It's quite possibly one of the biggest problems in restaurants because it leads directly into many others. Even my own sims get up and walk around when eating out. I have to constantly make them sit down to order. I'm pretty sure this attributes to the wait times experienced when taking your own sims out to eat. It does take at least 5-8 sim hours just to have a dine out experience. If all the sims would just sit down in their 🐸🐸🐸🐸 chairs and order their meals and stay put like normal people do then the flow of events wouldn't get so mangled. I would complain more about employee's standing around if I thought it wasn't directly related to the customers walking around, and I do. Until that is fixed, the employees are going to be stuck waiting for customers to do the right thing. The restaurant is going to be a mess and my sim is eventually just going to blow the whole place up, families and all.
I have poured hours upon hours into owning restaurants, it was my favorite thing to do in TS2. I am almost positive the root of the whole problem is with the customers not staying seated. It sets loose a chain of events of waiters not doing their jobs, other customers waiting longer for food and just chaos in the restaurant. Don't even dream of putting a bar or any other form of entertainment in the restaurant either.
I don't usually play with the management side because we can't make our sim cook or any other in the family. I have tried it once one or two months ago though and it wasn't too buggy for me. I was pretty much retail but slightly diferente because instead of influencing the costumers you have to please them with the food and environment.
Dine Out is okay. The management aspect is broken entirely by the game’s culling setup. Only being able to hire non-played Sims sets any business up for failure when all non-played Sims are subject to being deleted. They might say “the game shouldn’t delete those sims!”, but it does and it’s really annoying.
What if we could run restaurants like veterinary clinics; customers give reviews? I am fairly sure that is not a possibility for restaurants right now...
What if we could run restaurants like veterinary clinics; customers give reviews? I am fairly sure that is not a possibility for restaurants right now...
Customers already leave reviews similarly to how they do in the Vet business. Both use the same star ranking system. However the vet uses stress level instead of food quality.
What if we could run restaurants like veterinary clinics; customers give reviews? I am fairly sure that is not a possibility for restaurants right now...
Customers already leave reviews similarly to how they do in the Vet business. Both use the same star ranking system. However the vet uses stress level instead of food quality.
But the Vet Clinic is easy to run a restaurant not so much.
Disappointed to hear all the negative things about this pack! It's the one I was looking forward the most to owning. I got Get To Work instead during the last sale. Can't afford them at full price right now. This really bums me out. However, I'm glad I got the pack I did instead of this one. It's cheaper, but I would have been angry to be so disappointed in the one pack I bought. Still love playing. I'm more into building than gameplay anyway.
Disappointed to hear all the negative things about this pack! It's the one I was looking forward the most to owning. I got Get To Work instead during the last sale. Can't afford them at full price right now. This really bums me out. However, I'm glad I got the pack I did instead of this one. It's cheaper, but I would have been angry to be so disappointed in the one pack I bought. Still love playing. I'm more into building than gameplay anyway.
Actually I love Dine Out I love to have my sims go to dinner as a family to the restaurants. I don't like owning a restaurant.
What if we could run restaurants like veterinary clinics; customers give reviews? I am fairly sure that is not a possibility for restaurants right now...
Customers already leave reviews similarly to how they do in the Vet business. Both use the same star ranking system. However the vet uses stress level instead of food quality.
But the Vet Clinic is easy to run a restaurant not so much.
That is true. Something I have noticed is that Vet clinics perform much better when the owner isn’t there compared to restaurants. There’s also less moving around, once a Sim and Pet are locked into the exam table the exam/treamtment doesn’t actually take too long. Whereas restaurants rely entirely on the poor AI for the Sims.
I wish our sim can partake in the business, like real life Head Chefs. Watching my crew doing 'plum' jobs is awful. And it's not like I could do anything about it.... Paying them 10k to get better is unreasonable. It's not like the Chef Career gave me 10k to level my cooking skill either.
So I just built my own restaurant and let the AI managers run it. A few occasional food poisoning is reasonable, I guess.
Me, when triggered: "All this negativity doesn't add up."
Something I've noticed since I'm now playing with a family that has pets. The dog got sick once, and fleas the second time - though it's beyond me why they consider fleas an aliment, and you can't give them a flea bath like in Sims 2 and Sims 3. But anywho. Both times I had my sim take the dog to the vet, she signed in, and the vet tech just stood around. Sat down. Danced to the radio, then finally, after what seemed like 45 sim minutes, she took the dog back to get checked.
The second time she brought the dog, another dog was there, sick too, throwing up all over the place. Instead of seeing the dog right away the tech stood there. She then finally started cleaning up all the vomit. I mean, the dog covered the whole clinic, really wish I got a pic of it. I had my sim help clean up, and another NPC sim chipped in as well. Everything was cleaned up. So the take took my sim's dog to the exam room. The other dog started throwing up all over the place again. This caused the vet to stop the check up - she was getting my sim's dog up on the table - and she came out into the waiting area. She didn't clean up the vomit though, she just stood there. So I hurried up and had my sim clean up the mess. That allowed the vet to go and take care of my sim's dog. This took around three sim hours.
With the restaurants - I have yet to have a sim run one yet - but I've noticed that after the last patch the waiters don't clean up the dirty dishes. Or they will take the dishes from one table and set them down at the table my sims are seated at. I have to drag and drop all the dishes into the wait stand myself. They also refuse to clean up any dishes from active sims when they are done eating.
I just don't get why they didn't make Dine Out and the retail side of GTW based upon owning a business in the Sims 2 then built upon that. The main reason why I loved OFB so much was the fact that you could pretty much tailor the restaurant to your liking, hiring who you wanted, and your sim could cook in the kitchen. They ran the clothing store, replenishing the shelves, and running the cash register. I hate that you can even use it in this game. Why have it even? I loved sims standing in like, getting angry if your sim took too long to to ring them up.
How they'd slam the bags down on the ground then storm out. lol That was hilarious. I miss sims going into the changing room and trying on clothes. And being able to play footsies under the table (I think that was from Sims 1), steal a bite of food from each other's plate. Pop the question and slid the boxed ring across the table. Heck, even toasting to their love.
I was let down with the restaurant/retail side in Sims 3 and I guess I figured that they would have fixed it with Sims 4. Guess not.
I love the concept of Dine out and it's fun to build restaurants and customize the menu and take sims to eat, however the pack was poorly executed. The hostess will stand and do nothing for 20+ sim minutes after I request a table, the waiters take hours to bring my sims their food, and last time I had them dine out the food never even came (After like 6 sim hours I got tired of waiting)
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I agree. I was really hoping for a little romantic playfulness at the table. It's a pity and yet another missed opportunity that we didn't get it -- especially a proposal. That would have been awesome.
As with everything else, I have to pretend. In my story, I pretended as if there was a ring hidden in the Ahi tuna dish. After all, it already looks like a gift. I had the guy propose just after the female had begun to eat and it kind of looked okay when I caught the screenshots.
Still, for once, I would like things to really happen in-game, instead of just in my head.
click for link
Hope this helps anyone who needs it
and I agree with all your points. I also kinda wish EA made it possible to actually be a cook in a restaurant rather than just management.
Tumblr (WIP)
And cleaning is a nightmare as well. Whether one of the waiters does it (hint hint: they 🐸🐸🐸🐸 don't) or my Sim does it, 9 out of the 10 times they just end up putting all the dishes on another table instead of bringing it to the waiters table.
Lately I've been having problems with my restaurants losing employees. I like to switch back and forth between sims and my 2 guys are 2 of the many. I will go and play some other sim for a bit, come back to one of the guys and all of a sudden a few of their employees are gone. Why? I didn't leave the restaurants open (I've done that in the past with those results.) My employees weren't unsatisfied the last time I checked. All my restaurants are 5 stars, my employees are fully promoted. Why do they leave for no reason? I don't even get an announcement, they just left. I then have to go through my first problem all over and get them back into my restaurant and pay for retraining of course.
My employees are all maxed out on promotions and skills. Why aren't they ever just happy? I give an inspirational speech to each of them every day when we open. I walk around and praise them throughout the work day. They are always neutral. Why can't they just be happy? My sim is a nice boss, he doesn't yell at them if they drop something occasionally. Why can't they just be happy? WHY? I guess neutral is ok but let's be honest, they might just up and leave with neutral (as I stated in my complaint above.)
Now while employee management can be a headache, I'm gonna move right along to the bigger one. The customers. Why can't they just sit down and eat? WHY?! I don't mind if they talk to the table next to them or even the one across the room but why can't they just sit down. The problems this causes are horrendous and I think it is predominately what is causing the bad restaurant experience.
1. The waiter can't take their order when they're roaming around the restaurant. This causes them to stand and wait for the customer to return to their seat. I've noticed that until the customer returns the waiters do not drop that queue and just stand and wait for that customer to return. I think this is what has our waiters standing around looking as if they aren't doing their jobs.
2.The customer gets angry about wait times. Well it's kind of their own fault. I'm getting close to just kicking them out at this point, but it's all of them so I'd have no customers.
It's quite possibly one of the biggest problems in restaurants because it leads directly into many others. Even my own sims get up and walk around when eating out. I have to constantly make them sit down to order. I'm pretty sure this attributes to the wait times experienced when taking your own sims out to eat. It does take at least 5-8 sim hours just to have a dine out experience. If all the sims would just sit down in their 🐸🐸🐸🐸 chairs and order their meals and stay put like normal people do then the flow of events wouldn't get so mangled. I would complain more about employee's standing around if I thought it wasn't directly related to the customers walking around, and I do. Until that is fixed, the employees are going to be stuck waiting for customers to do the right thing. The restaurant is going to be a mess and my sim is eventually just going to blow the whole place up, families and all.
I have poured hours upon hours into owning restaurants, it was my favorite thing to do in TS2. I am almost positive the root of the whole problem is with the customers not staying seated. It sets loose a chain of events of waiters not doing their jobs, other customers waiting longer for food and just chaos in the restaurant. Don't even dream of putting a bar or any other form of entertainment in the restaurant either.
Customers already leave reviews similarly to how they do in the Vet business. Both use the same star ranking system. However the vet uses stress level instead of food quality.
That is true. Something I have noticed is that Vet clinics perform much better when the owner isn’t there compared to restaurants. There’s also less moving around, once a Sim and Pet are locked into the exam table the exam/treamtment doesn’t actually take too long. Whereas restaurants rely entirely on the poor AI for the Sims.
So I just built my own restaurant and let the AI managers run it. A few occasional food poisoning is reasonable, I guess.
"All this negativity doesn't add up."
The second time she brought the dog, another dog was there, sick too, throwing up all over the place. Instead of seeing the dog right away the tech stood there. She then finally started cleaning up all the vomit. I mean, the dog covered the whole clinic, really wish I got a pic of it. I had my sim help clean up, and another NPC sim chipped in as well. Everything was cleaned up. So the take took my sim's dog to the exam room. The other dog started throwing up all over the place again. This caused the vet to stop the check up - she was getting my sim's dog up on the table - and she came out into the waiting area. She didn't clean up the vomit though, she just stood there. So I hurried up and had my sim clean up the mess. That allowed the vet to go and take care of my sim's dog. This took around three sim hours.
With the restaurants - I have yet to have a sim run one yet - but I've noticed that after the last patch the waiters don't clean up the dirty dishes. Or they will take the dishes from one table and set them down at the table my sims are seated at. I have to drag and drop all the dishes into the wait stand myself. They also refuse to clean up any dishes from active sims when they are done eating.
I just don't get why they didn't make Dine Out and the retail side of GTW based upon owning a business in the Sims 2 then built upon that. The main reason why I loved OFB so much was the fact that you could pretty much tailor the restaurant to your liking, hiring who you wanted, and your sim could cook in the kitchen. They ran the clothing store, replenishing the shelves, and running the cash register. I hate that you can even use it in this game. Why have it even? I loved sims standing in like, getting angry if your sim took too long to to ring them up.
How they'd slam the bags down on the ground then storm out. lol That was hilarious. I miss sims going into the changing room and trying on clothes. And being able to play footsies under the table (I think that was from Sims 1), steal a bite of food from each other's plate. Pop the question and slid the boxed ring across the table. Heck, even toasting to their love.
I was let down with the restaurant/retail side in Sims 3 and I guess I figured that they would have fixed it with Sims 4. Guess not.