What would you change or leave the same?

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A couple things that immediately come to mind: For a game that's meant to represent the American suburbs, there was a lack of some traditional store objects like these shelves and windows. It would have been nice to visit home businesses with a different Sim.

I'd make NPCs buy without actually putting items into their inventory and spending money. They don't choose what they really need and lose a bit of money at normal prices. Like when they go out to a resturant, to buy coffee or donate to music players, they don't actually spend money. Maybe there could be an option to choose either and please all players.

Employee wages could be rebalanced. They cost too much for all roles on Shop 2 and when selling cheaper items. A member of the owner's family costs nothing.

Look at the employee uniform and prevent it from deleting the character's face.

Add a way of manning two objects that are close by when the workload is low in an early shop. For example, coffee bar and juice bar or cash register. This is related to employee wages because they spend most of their time doing nothing while working the objects.

Fix the reward sign with a cooldown to prevent visitors from endlessly nodding in approval.

Fill the BlueWater Village with some handcrafted content so that it doesn't look so barren initially. Dress up the NPCs by hand without random number generator so that they look unique and with with respectable clothes.

I know it is possible to mod some of the things, except the uniform, where the behavior is hard coded.

Very much agreed that just the chain/franchise business aesthetic was severely lacking. I also think if we're imagining a re-release of this game knowing all the other game features that were done later, I would have wanted to see a similar approach to owned community lots as was done for apartments, where maybe you're just renting a storefront rather than buying out an entire city block all for yourself- even small-town downtowns usually have adjoining businesses, and not being able to do that well is one of the things I most often get frustrated with OFB over!

One thing I would like is the option to own one shop in a mall-like the ones that Pleasantview or Downtown have-not the whole darn mall!

Instead we have to built our own shops but they can't all be in the same building. That's a shortcoming of the EP.

A way to make bets or wagers. I want more gambling options and ways to make it a business (boxing, dog racing, etc)

More options for employees. You need mods (such as SimWardrobe's custom controllers) to make them farm or fish, for instance.

I'm not sure I'd actually make many changes to the rewards/perks system actually though... Yeah, it's a little overpowered if you exploit it, but so are most things like that, and that can be fun sometimes too. And I definitely enjoyed seeing my Sims become more savvy entrepreneurs as they expanded their business empires

I'd also like an option to have a yard sale. It's kind of awkward having to set up a cash register in your front yard to sell some knickknacks.

Also something like the commission shop in TS3 would be cool.

Zarathustra's suggestion is the main thing I feel is lacking, the ability to just have a section of a lot rather than the entire thing. Most stores I go to are part of a mall, or is set in the lower floors of an apartment complex. Thanks to MogHughson we can have businesses on an apartment lot, but they can't be owned businesses which is a bummer. I also very much agree with jonasn that the wages need to be rebalanced somehow, it sucks that it's hard to really make profits with the type of things that you might actually want to sell like a grocery store or clothing store. I solve that by making essentially playable townies as owners, setting the business up and then only ever visiting it from a customers perspective, giving the owner plenty of funds so whatever loss from employees while my Sims visit does not matter. But it would be fun if I could actually play those businesses from the owners perspective, as it is now my real playables are limited to business types that can be net neutral or turn a profit, and that's boring when so few things can actually be profitable.

I would have liked to see more stands selling things. Jewelry, perfume and clothing is great but we want more options! Gayars has some custom ones, but it would have been nice to have EA themselves add more since they are a great way to be able to buy different things in an unowned way. Business shouldn't just be owned, it should be both versions. In general I would have liked to see more variety in the type of business you can run. We really only have three, set an item for sale, charge to be on the lot, and restaurant. Restaurant in particular I feel was a big let down, you can only do the fancy sit down style with a person placing people at tables, waiters and a chef. We have the refrigerated stands to sell food, but why can't the customer then sit down and eat the plate they bought on the location? I wish Sims could order food at the cash register, and pick it up at the counter, that format is so much more common than sit down restaurant.

I also wish it had been better incorporated with other EPs, like AL and BV. Would be really neat if our Sims could run businesses in the vacation destinations, and live there permanently. After all someone does live permanently in tourist spots. And why can't our Sims be the landlord of a local apartment building? Have normal career-esque off lot from the Sims end if you want, or can go to the apartment to collect rent or interact with your tenants.

Various bugs ought to be fixed. In particular, when you send other Sims to owned shops, the owning Sims' funds should be properly debited cost of sales, including wages, and properly credited with the sales revenue. Too often in my game I've found the owners debited with all the costs, but not credited for the sales they have made. I'm fed up having to manually do their bookkeeping, using cheats to give them the money for the stuff they've sold, so that they don't go bust. Frankly, bookkeeping IMAO is the game's responsibility, not mine. I don't play the Sims to be their unpaid bookkeeper! Frankly I'd play owned businesses a lot more than I do, if this issue was solved.

Compared to that, other improvements are minor. But it would be good to fix the uniform issue, and to allow Sims to visit home businesses, even if they can't get into the rest of the house. I'd also like Bluewater to include examples of successful businesses (maybe the Landgraab ones). As things are, all the businesses are struggling at starting level, while the owners (for the most part) live in over-furnished mansions. Spending all this money buying and furnishing their houses has left their businesses woefully under-capitalised. Sometimes they struggle to replace stock that they have sold. Surely Sims who are trying to establish new businesses should live quite frugally until their businesses are successful. Much as the Larsons are currently doing in my game. They have both taken salaried jobs to try to build up some capital, and they have just bought a tiny lot (2x1) across the road from Club Dante, where they hope to shortly open a small shop. By the way, their jobs are in the Politics career, where they hope to meet and influence Sims who can help them.

My own preference as a retail strategy is the "Pile 'em high, flog 'em cheap" approach, which I think seems reasonable in a basically poor community like our Veronaville. But I don't think it works well in TS2, and I'd like the rules tweaked a bit so that it might. Mind you, I'm not that much of an expert; when I tried to run a shop in Real Life, I'm afraid the truth is that I did even worse than my Sims!

I believe simler90's business mod fixes this. Does a whole lot of other stuff as well unfortunately, but worth checking out to see if it might be to your taste

Servos are kind of... disappointing, especially compared to TS3 plumbots. I'd like additional customization of them, at least their appearance.

Not famliar with an American suburb.

Understanding the mall thing - I have had sims owned the entire mall, though - after all, in RL, other business owners just rent their shops in malls anyway, so the mall is owned by one group (or sims family )

I enjoy playing businesses While it is not easy vanilla game wise, it is something I find fun. I intend to have a sim run a hotel in the main hood (okay, okay - hear me out? - by asking an entrance fee. Send sims there to pay the entrance fee and then they book in. Hotel will probably have to be small, but I can't see why it cannot work).

I also make my sims support my business owners, which I find fun too. And I don't care if they buy masses of junk with their money - we just sell it again when they get home

Add more/better door and window options for stores, along with the more standard wallcolors you find in stores. The boring, bland, eggshell white or similar.

Add more options on what handicraft objects the Sims could make.
Knitting/Crocheting (which Sims 4 has with Nifty Knitting)
Wider variety of clay options
Wider range of cuisine stuff, including a distinction between cooking and baking (Again, Sims 4)
Better handling of paintings, to make art stores
Cheaper variations of hobby items like guitars, even fitness equipment, to make some cheap sporting good stores
Tinker items, like creating the tiny racecars, cellphones, etc

An overall improvement on restaurants.
Like I can make one focusing only on sweets, to be akin to a café or bakery, or 'steakhouse' or even 'vegetarian only' options. (Again, Sims 4 did make something akin to this if you had Dine Out + Get To Work, though it was only you being the manager, but I will say I like what they did there)

A consignment store akin to Sims 3 would be nice.
Or a more modern setting by allowing you to open an online store via computer/cellphone, where you sell handmade items via online and send them off via mailbox. (Call it Simsy or Simtsy) Would also be a really cool, cheap starter way to make up a business without spending money on a business lot or a cash register for a home business.

I would also personally entirely remove the mascot outfits in CAS, have them only be available as clothes on a business lot. But that's because I really don't use them and don't like them. I consider them similar to the animal outfits in Story Of Season games. They are an option, I don't have to use them, but I can just as easily do without them and would even prefer an option to remove them entirely. (Which I have hiders for in Sims 2, so that's fine)