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.
Comments
Now I don't even touch the retail system in TS4. It is too rubbish for me.
Indeed. This combo is the closest I've come to really enjoying retail and having it work without much of my guidance with proper employees. It isn't quite OFB but it works as intended so I highly recommend them if open to mods.
Otherwise I have little hope for a patch at this point sadly.
It's also quite sad that they have never added the shopping bag carry animation to the sims after they purchase something. I wish sims would also carry clothes from mannequins and try them on dressing rooms......that we don't have either.
Yeah I miss the shopping bag.
Yes! I wish I was more savvy in modding TS4 to add this. One of the main reasons ringing up takes some time is because the employee is constantly scanning the room and taking pauses to select the next target. Even with 6 employees a large store makes employees walk around too much to ring up customers, it'd be much better if the customers simply lined up at a cash register.
For me, TS2 Open For Business was and will always be my favorite EP in the entire Sims series. It all comes down to the detail, in my opinion. Shoppers with bags and getting frustrated waiting to be rung up. Getting upset and dropping the bag on the floor. That's so classic. I'd like to see some of that brought into TS4 Retail.....which I doubt will happen....but I'd settle if they cut out the idle chit chat so shoppers shop & employees work.
Definitely! Funny enough, TS2 OFB is also my favorite EP to date in this franchise, I had SO much fun. I've been testing with LittleMsSam her mod and it baffles me how they haven't updated retail, it's rather simple or should be for a development TEAM when a single modder is able to do it.
Check the stats on the lower right for 8 hours of retail. Yes, that's 55 items sold! (MCCC used to make days 2x longer, so with vanilla time it'd be around 27.) Also using More Customers mod by weerbesu, and my own 9 employees mod (using only 5 atm). Granted it isn't quite OFB, but I find the fact that the store runs logically and chaotically much like real stores amazingly pleasing. All I did there was help my restock employee keep up with the items and chat 3-4 sims up, and clean. My other 4 employees are tasked with "Answer Questions" but act as "backup ring up" so whenever there's 4+ customers to ring up they stop and go to them.
I love running a retail store, but the retail aspect IMO is a hot mess in this game. I've never used a mod for my game, just wish we didn't have to get a mod to fix what should be so obvious...No customer should spend 14 sim hours to decide whether they want a carrot cake lol
The dreaded idle chat + group chat + requirement to have met sim for employees to socialize properly. Yup, I gave up retail vanilla a long time ago, what saddens me most is that it is well within grasp to have a functioning store, hell even a mall with 9 employees! Why they don't do it, well, they are known to leave it up to modders to fix their mess. Also, why can't employees have shifts? That drives me nuts, I just wrote a quick mod to let them stay 24 hours and rode with it.
Now I had my sim finally get enough cash to buy a mall, complete with bakery, electronics store, clothing store, music store, art store, bookstore and furniture store, it is genuinely FUN. So much wasted potential. Since I know they won't do it, I want to try to translate the host functionality in Dine Out to GTW and make functional cash registers for sims to line up, I really miss that.
I would have been 100% fine if they just re-made TS2: Open for Business and only made improvements to an already great system. There is a reason packs such as players owning their own shops and restaurants were made back then — they offer far more player creativity and freedom than set jobs.
Like you, I don’t touch retail whatsoever in TS4. It’s boring to run one, and completely a waste of time to enter one, as a customer Sim.
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).
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.
Fun must be always -- Tomas Hertl (San Jose Sharks hockey player)