Roommate situation

[ron1]

Property owners are encountering roommate shortages, and often move roommates in who dont contribute to a property. Me and another two of the other older owners have discussed this a lot, its a big problem. we feel that sims shouldnt be getting house bonuses if they dont log into the property and contribute. like my last thread about this, this situation leads to "leeching" where a sim who doesnt do anything for a property for days will get the same rewards as the sims that do. i dont know what to do about this as an owner. we need help. there arent enough slots for roommates. the limited roommates is supposed to encourage competition between propertys, but thats having a bad effect on the game because they dont log in as it is, they get paid either way. theres simply too many propertys and not enough sims congregating in single properties making reaching skill and money goals a lot harder. the cap of 24 sims instead of 18 makes this problem worse, the way to correct it is to raise the roommate cap so there is more consolidation of the houses and incentivizing current owners to be roommates. we need people as dedicated as owners. in 9 months ive only met 1 maybe 2 people who i would consider dedicated. its a struggle keeping people engaged with the game if houses are going offline and online all the time, all competing for very few sims at times. you could say this isnt a real problem, theres nothing stopping owners from "asking more" of their roommates, but that adds a lot of pressure on owners to rotate roommates in and out to even meet demand. constantly recuriting and kicking out inactive roommates is spoiling a lot of potential for the game. another argument is that the property bonus should not be used as reason to open a house. there is no incentive to do a lot of things, things that only end up being time and money sinks, and turning hosting into a dead end proposition. that makes the game beyond pointless. there could be a situation where a house has "4" owners and spots for 8 roommates, giving the owners more control over a property than a regular roommate. that would provide some reason for more dedicated players to stay at a property. i think the community would like this as well. there are a lot of new players logging in, but if they have nowhere to go they are likely to quit. cooking skill is still very popular with new players, giving them better rewards for their skills would immediately restore some activity to the playerbase.

 

[Rhys]

I don't get this at all. If they're inactive, will they even use the money they're getting? What benefit will stripping it from them do?

Are you hoping that that money will be given to you instead, as some kind of incentive for having 7 inactive roommates? In which case, why should running your house solo with 7 inactive roommates (and coincidentally, a ridiculously high object count) be more rewarding than running your house solo with no extra roommates at all?

FreeSO has a system where roommates can be switched out on a dime, much better than that in the original TSO. The true "owners" of the property can own all of the objects through a shared object limit, so that when a more temporary roommate is replaced, 200 of their objects don't follow them out, only really their personal belongings. This also means that owners don't have to multi-account to make the most of their object limit, meaning that their roommates have more potential to be actual real people. This removes all hassle from switching out these temporary roommates who would only occasionally host anyways.

Switching out roommates is not "spoiling the game", it's literally like three clicks (two for removal and one for invite) and encourages you to meet and get to know new people.

If you feel that much hatred towards your inactive roommates, remove them from your property. Roommates aren't meant to be dead accounts you stuffed your lot with to get a higher object limit. If they return to the game, it's as easy as quickly swapping out another of your roommates who have gone inactive. If you are worried about the object limit changing when you remove roommates, then only do it when you have found a replacement.

I don't know why you've even written a rant about this - the one about single money objects did at least make sense since they are flawed, but frustration over your roommates not playing the game anymore is not the game's problem, it's between you and them.

 

[ron1]

Well a lot of the sims I spoke to feel the same way, at least 4 other owners, that roomys have no incentive to help in the same way that owners do because they get money for being offline. that isnt the only reason its only a part of it and its very complex. Its a bad situation trying to maintain a property by yourself. givign that money to the "online sims" is a bad solution i agree, but this discontent is widely shared. i dont know what do about it, it is a situation however that is a real drag. sometimes we have to bribe people to be roomys and bribe sims to even come to lots to play with others. one of the owners spent 100k on repairs whilel their roomys are just offline for weeks at a time. i dont use roomys for object limits never have. this is why skill type houses crash and burn pratically every week, the ones that are still open have gone downhill, its all because theres simply too much pressure on owners to manage roomys, objects and the lot all by themselves. there should be more shared ownership i dont know how, but roomys are essentially free agents because they have no connection to any of the places they can live at. gathering this information isnt easy and i do it because i see things from being here that are bad in the long term, its hard not to feel this way. sims who dont realize why places crash and burn, it never occurs to them why it happens. they dont play the game because they dont care about the lot, while there are TONS of new skill lots opening all the time, clearly its an issue because there is a high supply of the number of skill lots and a low demand to be a roomy. people dont realize how bad things get in the long term and some give up because they simply dont have the time to invest in making things work.
everyone wants to see payouts disappear, its sad when owners are forced to make up the slack that the game did on its own before. its important to get people into lots to socialize it creates community. paying off people for doing jams just feels wrong. it takes really dedicated players to breathe life into this and we continue to shoulder that burden but we do it the same reasons, we all love the game from the past and are happy its back. more roomys, more consolidation and better rewards for the nooby skills would build a stronger community, it would make skilling easier with more sims. right now even that is suffering because theres too many lots and not enough sims.

 

[Rhys]

I think not being able to find good roommates who can help you host lots is entirely on the player. If object limit is not a problem and you dislike the inactive roommates getting money, kick them out. I don't see how this is a hard problem to solve.

It seems more like you are complaining about the number of players, which is frankly unfixable from a technical standpoint (obviously). I don't see why you keep saying there is a downturn in money or skill lots - they are both in constant competition for the most popular lot type. As of right now, there are 6 skill lots open (38 sims), and 3 money (16 sims), and none of them look like they are having any problems that involve roommates getting money while being offline or whatever. It's not even peak time.

There is a downturn in ALL lots, and it is not because of roommates being hard to manage, it is because they're not finding any fun in the game. There's no easy fix for this, as I have said before, and its always infuriating when people say that changing one little thing would fix all of the problems in the world. People are also waiting for a wipe or something. This suggestion is particularly interesting because it would change literally nothing for the work-expensive addition of an entirely new system to determine if a sim is an active roommate or not.

 

[ron1]

pratically speaking, here is what can be done to alleviate the shortage of players: the kickback should be ~~$20 not $1. this would make everyone happy. owners would be able to manage objects and reward roommates who work to keep a property online. the more time they spend on the lot, the more objects they can place on the lot by decision of the owner, and the more of the kickback money they, the roommates, can earn. this wouldnt require anything other than changing the kickback. owners can easily control the flow of rewards, much easier than kicking out and moving in sims. get rid of the sim 'visitor' bonus for money lots, which tops out around 3-4k?? this way roomys wouldnt 'ditch' for a week and expect to come back with a bunch of money they didnt earn. if that cant be done - those free simoleans hopefully will be spent on repairs. the rewards of hosting should go to people who spend time at the lot, not people who house hop. and those rewards theoretically, i havent crunched any numbers, should be at least in line of what they are now given the same time investment. the net impact would be lower if the visitor bonus was abolished, so raising the rewards for kickbacks should be higher to make up for this net loss.

a plate of food costs about $5. you can spend 1000-5000 a day just feeding sims. lower the cost of using the buffet from 120 to 60. that solves more problems with the cost of running a skill house, which generates net negative revenue. other things to help skill house, they are money pits.

finally the most important one, raise the rewards for sims with noob skills. new sims love to study cooking. the cooking kitchen was already bad for money to begin with. the noobs who used them didnt know this and some didnt care. but its an important stepping stone for players to work their way up to other skill objects, find sims to get to know, and have enough money to spend on clothes and accessories. nobody is getting rich running a skill house. and nobody will get rich from hosting, but at least players will be incentivized to contribute to the success of a property.

these things encourage the community to act cooperatively and fairly. competition would still be there in attracting a fairer balance of rewards for roommates.

a lot of thoughtful features have made the economy better. giving those skill money objects a small step increase will accomodate sims at various levels of skill.
one last thing probably not practical? is to include two skills in factoring payout for the typewriter and the potion table, they are duplicate skill money objects. two skills = a little bit more. this would encourage skilling up and help sims into other things like code, pizza, crafting, etc and reward the sims who have 40 skill points but can only 'use' 20 of them on a single skill money object.

 

[ron1]

Lets turn this:

Into this!

 

[Bikki]

Finding quality players who have the same motivations that you do are always going to be an issue regardless of what game you play. And theres a couple ways to handle it. Quality vs quantity. Sometimes just making an extra step and talking to them on Discord, letting them know theres a human behind the sim makes a difference. It sounds silly, but that way you can see if you like them and also set out your expectations as a lot owner. It makes a big difference if you get to know the roommates living you and have a relationship with them vs meeting some stranger and asking if they are looking for a place to live. That isn't to say one is better then another, but personally I have more successes when I look for people in other games if I talk to them. If you have a means of communication with your roommates like Discord where as a roommate they can leave a message to let you know if they are going to be out for a week - you can be mentally prepared for that. Hell if you even make the expectation that anyone who is gone for X amount of days will be kicked due to inactivity - but are welcome back if there is still room for them , might motivate them to be more communicative vs not. Yes its more work upfront for you when you set up your expectations, but in the long run people aren't shocked when they get kicked due to inactivity either.

 

[ron1]

time for my daily rant about FreeSo: a lot of problem would begin to be solved if things that were popular in TSO, things that people paid a subscription fee to do knowing it was inefficient, which FreeSo isnt catering to at all. its puzzlingly bad business sense. the game is becoming too much like real life where sims become isolated doing menail tasks that dont allow us to socialize like spending time grinding on job lots and too much empasis on group objects that dont allow sims to socialize. i have been asking for months what is the point of this game if we arent allowed to socialize? what are we supposed to do, have to have a separate everything for socializing? that sims shouldnt be spending their time doing things they enjoy, like socializing with other sims, because it not what ONE person wants? what about the community. its not being encouraged AT ALL. the community that is being sustained by dedicated players who are treated like we are expendable because there is a sucker born every minute who will quickly realize why so many places fail within a day, week or month and that ends up preying on others ideas. where did this cruel mindset come from? talk about missing the point of this game entirely. the point of the game is to meet other sims not to segregate and punish us at every opportunity. i dont understand why that is so hard to understand or get across. the roommate situation is yet another symptom of a larger problem with the game, the economy is being overmanaged, sims have no money and no idea how to make money. instead they are dumped into the game with the expectation of "pulling themselves up". its become some kind of cruel joke. theres simply not the demand for stores, casinos, money lots, skill lots that there was at the BEGINNING of the beta. the roommate situation could easily be remedied by the suggestions i made, removing the visitor bonus for money lots by increasing the kickback for single money objects. allowing more roommates to live at a property, this would give the owner much more flexibility in managing which sims get rewarded, by letting the owners control who owns which objects, for how much they are willing to participate in making a place successful. the brilliance in this idea is how SUBTLE the change would be and the players that understand how the game works would immediatly shift their focus. the players that didnt would eventually learn and EMULATE like they have always done in the past. I for one KNOW that i would be more than happy getting nothing from hosting ALL the time if roommates had one iota of incentive to live at a popular property. they did at first, but quickly saw we were getting NOTHING in return for doing a HUGE service to the community, pratically sustaining it ON OUR OWN. goodwill of the community only extends SO FAR and its been stretched way too thin. the dynamic we have now is discouraging being a roommate because there is simply far too few rewards and too many sacrifices people have to make to sustain anything popular. people are going to be left wondering, why this didnt work out as many many people hoped and i dont want to be the person who didnt say anything when i knew things were off track and then nobody would benefit and left without any answers in the long run. there is simply NO incentive for ME to invest my time in something that will always be a substandard model that doesnt allow ANYONE to succeed. FreeSo has become a much worse place than TSO ever was.

 

[ron1]

here's no easy fix for this, as I have said before, and its always infuriating when people say that changing one little thing would fix all of the problems in the world. People are also waiting for a wipe or something. This suggestion is particularly interesting because it would change literally nothing for the work-expensive addition of an entirely new system to determine if a sim is an active roommate or not.

thinking there isnt an easy fix is how we got to where we are, thats ignoring and denying what has happened. i dont care about a wipe. people spread these rumors because they HOPE something will change but I am certain they will be sorely disappointed. this is because a wipe would create HUGE and NEW problems that clearly werent anticipiated months ago when you patched the game. nothing fundamental would change and everything would get much much worse. if people are asking for a wipe as quick fix that is very misguided.
forget a new system. i dont want that, nobody wants that. thats not what we need. forget if roommates are active.
all we need is a reason for people to play the game again! Here is the danger now: is the damange irrepreable? short term its been very bad since march! long term -people will gradually rediscover the community but you have to give them a reason to play. the emphasis on new players doing ALL this work helping people discover the game, doing all this tech support and putting out fires then dropping them off on an abandoned street with a stick telling them they are on their own while your sitting there asking for more information but only taking the information you want. thats unfair to us. these sims dont come back. its baffling and humorous to witness this happening all day every day!! its like preying on the right person to find out what is wrong when im sitting here been saying this for months!
try making chalkboards, gnomes, all of those not suck, they sucked before! red flag! if it sucks why do people do it? because they could TALK to other SIMS. that community factor ISNT negotiable in an online multiplayer game and should be EMPHASIZED not thrown in a trash can with all those sims going in the trash with it. put back a very very critical piece of TSO that has been taken out and now people are running around hoping that some miracle like a wipe or custom content or whatever pie in the sky idea. sims can tolerate A LOT more shortcomings, llike this have been around for years can be overcome if players are allowed to do things that require MINIMAL attention allowing players to SOCIALIZE. this isnt rocket science, that money and skill lots have a symbiotic relationship. if one of them suffers, they both suffer. there isnt some 'new' dynamic that will emerge and fill the space left by the destruction of chalkboards jams and all the rest. thats a simple change that could be done very easily??? raise the kickbacks on things like painting, telemarketing, all of those, and suddenly you have roommates FIGHTING over who gets to host a place instead of AVOIDING hosting because its a fools errand hoping you will accomplish anything BUILDING and SUSTAINING this community on ones own. its too much to ask!

 

[Bikki]

I am in awe right now. This is a game and a free game at that. All I see is a lot of whining. I remember a lot of the social aspects previously were when people were showcasing radio to their skill house and promoted it that way. People would log in to whatever they were broadcasting and call in or just make requests via sims. All of the social aspects were organic and not driven by the game itself, it was driven by the people. I don't see any these problems you're talking about, but then again - I'm here for fun. I have 3 sims barely over a week old and all but 1 in homeless. If youre upset you're not having fun, maybe you're doing it wrong. If you knew you were going to be so upset about this, maybe you should host your own site and put hours/days/months/years into redeveloping your experience so someone can complain to you all the time. Theres constructive criticism and then theres beating a dead horse.

 

[ron1]

I am in awe right now. This is a game and a free game at that. All I see is a lot of whining. I remember a lot of the social aspects previously were when people were showcasing radio to their skill house and promoted it that way. People would log in to whatever they were broadcasting and call in or just make requests via sims. All of the social aspects were organic and not driven by the game itself, it was driven by the people. I don't see any these problems you're talking about, but then again - I'm here for fun. I have 3 sims barely over a week old and all but 1 in homeless. If youre upset you're not having fun, maybe you're doing it wrong. If you knew you were going to be so upset about this, maybe you should host your own site and put hours/days/months/years into redeveloping your experience so someone can complain to you all the time. Theres constructive criticism and then theres beating a dead horse.

lets upack what you said: this is a free game. that ignores the fact that parts of this game were popular in TSO that people had to pay for. that misses the part of my argument. now those things that were popular, people wont even do them now even though they are free? why? because for a very abritrary reason it was changed with no feedback from the community. that should be a red flag.
social aspects were driven by people: that is the point im making, that again your missing. these things were popular now that they have been removed has made the game much much LESS popular. how can anything be driven by people if there are FEWER people having the opportunity to play let alone socialize?
not having fun? doing what wrong? my goal is to see that others are having fun, that is the entire point of my posts. another aspect you are PAINFULLY oblivous of.
another problem with your argument: blame shifting. your whole reply is about blame shifting, you never considered that i might be right for who knows what reason. why dont you tell us?
for all we know you havent even been through 300 days of this game like i have, witnessing the effects of these changes and the utter devistation its had on the community.
you are also character attacking, saying because Im not doing what YOU want that means im not doing what ANYONE wants which couldnt be more untrue.

who are the valuable members of the community? those who dedicated themselves to building a community where people could achieve goals or some random showing up acting like they know everything yet cant point to anything they have done for the success of this game? Please tell me what makes YOU such an expert??

the fact that you know who cherry picks all sorts of points people makes this all very disturbing. at this point i really dont care what happens to this game anymore. its been ruined by bad decisions.

 

[ron1]

wow look at this its prime gaming time in the USA and theres a total of ELEVEN people at a money lot and they are only there because the owner has been forced to do payouts! what a sad result for what could have been. those sims shouldnt be there they should ALL be at a job playing with NPC's and socializing with NOBODY. yes, thats the answer!!!

 

[Bikki]

lets upack what you said: this is a free game. that ignores the fact that parts of this game were popular in TSO that people had to pay for. that misses the part of my argument. now those things that were popular, people wont even do them now even though they are free? why? because for a very abritrary reason it was changed with no feedback from the community. that should be a red flag.

What are people not doing because this is free now? I see skill houses that are close to full daily.

social aspects were driven by people: that is the point im making, that again your missing. these things were popular now that they have been removed has made the game much much LESS popular. how can anything be driven by people if there are FEWER people having the opportunity to play let alone socialize?

TSO was different the first year vs its 7th year. It grew. It progressed. It got more popular. People got more active. I'm confused what has been removed from the game to deter the social aspect. From my memory it was all people driven. But please, by all means - expand on what has been taken out and has no hopes to be worked on in the future to help me understand your side/point.

not having fun? doing what wrong? my goal is to see that others are having fun, that is the entire point of my posts. another aspect you are PAINFULLY oblivous of.

It was hard to see all the fun you were having over the "change this- do that". Did I miss where you said something positive to make me assume you were having a good time?

another problem with your argument: blame shifting. your whole reply is about blame shifting, you never considered that i might be right for who knows what reason. why dont you tell us?
for all we know you havent even been through 300 days of this game like i have, witnessing the effects of these changes and the utter devistation its had on the community.
you are also character attacking, saying because Im not doing what YOU want that means im not doing what ANYONE wants which couldnt be more untrue.

Hmm, tell me what utter devastation has happened. Enlighten me. Where did I attack your character? Did I call you names? Perhaps I attacked your actions of making post after post saying the same things on how you would like things a certain way and I came up with ideas of all the things you could do to help yourself with those issues. You don't even have to pick one I said. You can do something else that you come up with. There are several ideas of how to fix these issues your experiencing. All of them involve not rewriting the game.

who are the valuable members of the community? those who dedicated themselves to building a community where people could achieve goals or some random showing up acting like they know everything yet cant point to anything they have done for the success of this game? Please tell me what makes YOU such an expert??

I'm sorry, did I say anywhere I was an expert? Or were you suggesting that you were one? In order to be a success at this game you must only say negative things? What have I done for the success of this game? I've gone to skill lots and got up my skills daily (which in turn has helped said skill lots in earning money). I've gone to money houses and played pizza, made preserves (made them earn money), Ive gone to store houses and bought some things (I think you got the point). I have been an active member in the community. I've been social in that community. But apparently only builders matter or are better?

 

[AquilaSim]

Only things you do is to keep complaining, that you dont like the game as it is rn, but no you decided to keep posting on that forum and didn't leave that community yet, why? you clearly figured out you dont even like that game although you are still crying about stuff you dont like so why not just leave it...? anyway since you unable to take that initiative I will help you with it, goodbye.

 

[Rhys]

Seriously, I don't think screaming complaints at me will get me to make changes to the game any more than before, given that I do this as a hobby, not a job, and because I'm too busy to make any changes at the moment at all. If you can't try making these changes yourself, the better option is to do absolutely nothing, because at least I don't have to waste my time and motivation reading that.

I have always maintained that we will not leave beta without fixing the problem of the gameplay getting stale. This has not changed, thus why we haven't left beta for a year, but that doesn't mean I've had the time to work on it, or have worked on it at all...

If it makes you this frustrated, you should definitely leave. Being essentially a 1 man gig, this project has always been for the patient. A few weeks after you've reappeared, you've devolved into throwing attacks at me for changing a number slightly, and making other things actually viable. (online jobs were unplayably low paying before)