What's in The Sims 4 Retail: Reloaded Mod (Patreon)

Retail Reloaded has been a passion project for me. I want to run a store in The Sims 4 and manage it top to bottom, but some of the behaviors of NPCs are aggravating and the process itself is pretty unbalanced. For this reason, I set out to make a ton of changes to how things work... and, of course, fix some bugs and annoyances along the way.

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For now, Retail Reloaded is in Early Access as a perk for Patrons $5 and up and will be released the public when it's got a good feature set and stable enough I feel confident for everyone to have it. My Burglars and Dine Out Reloaded are now available to all in Gameplay Overhaul Public.

Retail: Reloaded Features

Ring Up at Register

The Retail system comes with a cash register, but you only use it for purchasing advertising or opening and closing the store. It doesn't really serve a big purpose. In Retail Reloaded, both the player Sim and NPCs can be instructed to man the register. Once a customer is ready to check out, they'll automatically come over to get rung up!

While a register is active, Sims will by default choose to come to it for their purchase needs. If a group of customers are all ready and you man the register after they're ready, you will find they know you've done so and will route over to get into line. I found the register to be so convenient, that I slowed down checkouts a bit with it so as to balance the experience. You'll still get boosts when NPCs level up and if you purchase the faster checkouts perk, however.

Click the register to pick an employee to man it. Remember, employees can still slack off until you level their work ethic, so stay on top of them!

Less Annoyances

I find Sims 4's Celebrities to be the most annoying NPCs that visit stores. They bring paparazzi and chaos. They use interactions that make everyone around react to them. I've worked hard to cut down on these behaviors, but also fixed a bug. Sims were unable to use the retail socials on Celebrities, meaning you were unable to help them to make a purchase decision.

Paparazzi are no longer allowed in retail stores. Much like restaurants, no sane owner would allow famous clientele to be harassed in their establishment. The fact they show up and crowd the store without buying anything makes 0 sense, so they're disabled entirely.

Children make less messes, and Sims are a bit less focused on chatting with Retail Reloaded. The favored NPC activity is to browse, which is as it should be. But there is a lot more to say about the Browse interaction!

Smarter Customers

Browsing in Get to Work is fairly simple. Sims might get a bonus to their Purchase Intent (a stat that makes them buy things) if the markup is low. However, in Retail Reloaded in order to speed up the process for shops with many low value items, customers are likely to get bonus Purchase Intent from browsing items when the markup isn't too high (under 25% and higher the lower the markup). This change is meant to reflect that I do not need a sales pitch from an employee in order to purchase a doughnut. In fact, I do so quite fine on my own.

In Get to Work, customers actually have a preferred buying range. However, if you have a bakery, many customers' low end price range will be higher than the average of your stock. Because of this, I balanced it to inspect the value of your wares and bring their low end down to average. This means they'll still prefer higher value objects but it won't be out of their range.

Retail Craftery Lot Challenge

Under Lot Challenges you can find the Retail Craftery challenge. It's only here so it won't take up your precious lot traits. It offers both benefits and penalties. For the latter, your Sims will have to re-bake or craft any objects that are sim-made once a customer purchases. There is no restocking of any crafted objects in a Retail Craftery.

In order to balance things and reward your Sims for selling home-made items, I've given a minor bonus to low-value items (sub $50) that increases the sale price by 25% without accounting for markup. This gives you some bonus cash for your extra time, but will slow your sales. Items under $500 receive a 10% markup, and it scales upward a bit the lower the base cost of the item.

Can you tell I want you to be able to live off a store with lower value wares, like a bakery, and not feel you need to buy only high end stuff?

Balance Improvements

My friend and I found a lot of little annoyances, but the big ones are mostly related to employees. First, they were leveling way, way too fast. I've slowed the skill gain rate for the highest levels of the three employee skills. They offer big bonuses, so it's worth it to keep an employee happy as they level up.

Additionally, Elders make horrible employees. They don't IRL, but in Sims 4, elders act like they're 90 with a bad back and do a lot of idles that slow them down. Until i can fix this, we disabled Elders in the potential employee pool while also bringing the average skill levels down a bit.

Since I lowered the average skill range for employees you can hire, I also tweaked the amount of slacking they'll do. Low level employees are far, far too prone to slacking and outside the realm of believability. I reduced it 25% or so across the board so they will stay on task more often.

New Conveniences!

Starting a shop in Sims 4 is a pain. You have to go over every single item for sale in your shop and mark it. One by one, possibly 30 or more times. I've offered a way to cut this down dramatically using the magic of custom scripts. Simply click a retail display or counter, and your Sims can mark all items on it for sale. You can still mark individually if you'd like to avoid setting some décor for sale on accident.

Did you know there isn't a way to tell how much your food is worth without going into build/buy? Well, with the help of my friend Lot51 I managed to make a custom string for the 'Set for Sale' that will show you exactly how much those cookies will sell for, based upon your current markup and even use of the Retail Craftery lot trait!

---- Download Here ----

DOWNLOAD LINK 

For now, Retail Reloaded is in Early Access as a perk for Patrons $5 and up and will be released the public when it's got a good feature set and stable enough I feel confident for everyone to have it. My Burglars and Dine Out Reloaded are now available to all in Gameplay Overhaul Public.