I have all expansions and I've pretty much played everything through, except opening my own business. Is this actually fun to do?

I'm sure opinions will differ but OFB is my favourite EP. Most of my game play is based around running a proper town so for me it's an essential part of the game.
It certainly takes some learning. I would suggest starting with something easy like a couple of family (teen up) running a small retail store or a ticket business. So no emplyees, no hand made items and someone assigned to every job. One on the till, one to restock and one to sell.
When you see a strange sim with a clip board make sure to chat and help them they are the reporter.
When a sim stands there hands in the air looking around they need help, click sales>may I help you. yes the display is right behind them, but sims are not too bright are they.
Don't jump right into a bakery, restaurant or selling made items. (hardest)

OFB was the last EP I got. I'd read the descriptions and thought bleh, run a business? No thanks, sounds super boring. I eventually got it just to have the complete set, so that I didn't have to pay attention to what EPs CC required since I'd have everything.

Turns out, I was dead wrong. I find businesses to be a blast, and OFB is my second favorite EP, after Seasons.

Like pretty much anything in TS2 I guess it really depends on what you enjoy! :-D

I quite enjoy playing businesses in some of my 'hoods, especially if I am going for a self-sufficient, small integrated community vibe. I find restaurants quite stressful to play as owned businesses as it's hard to make them profitable, at least in the early days - and I've never lasted long enough to see if it gets easier over time! I quite like playing different kinds of shops, though, or sometimes bars, night clubs or gyms.

I also like playing businesses which rely partly on the OFB mechanisms and partly on the use of mods. For example, I once used mods to play a photographer sim. He owned a small studio in town, where he sold generic photos that he'd taken (of things like flowers and landscapes and stuff) and he also provided a portrait and event photography service using mods to allow him to photograph sims and pets at his studio or at other locations (such as at their weddings, for example) and then they would pay him using mods for his services. Sometimes whole families would visit his studio to have family portraits taken, or newborn baby portraits. He was really fun to play!

There are many types of businesses that I would like to play. I would love to try to run a pet shop one day, I don't think I've ever tried that before. Perhaps one set up as a combined grooming parlour with pet photography/portraits studio, pet training school and pet shop. I'd like to run a proper book shop, using mods to sell novels as well as normal books, magazines and book-related deco. I'd like to use mods to run an adult education college, with different classes and facilities.

**ETA** Darnit, this is making me want to start a new integrated 'hood where I can do some of these things!

It varies from person to person.

I recently tried it again after years of not opening one. Businesses are not my favourite, but when I play them I prefer the home-business variation. It saves the hassle of going to a community lot, working all day and then dealing with that time paradox thingie, but I do find that it eats up A LOT of time. Like I actually find it quite challenging to balance running the business and taking care of needs at the same time.

I like the grooming and photo idea for pets. Shame cats and dogs can't be brushed and dressed up. I've done the photographer before and I've done a pet store before, but not the two combined.

I think a lot of people who don't like OFB haven't fully explored it. They try it, find it hard and give up. It takes time. Once you have learnt the tricks and have some mods for it (because like all EP's there are some really annoying things that came with the vanilla EP) then you can start to think outside of the box and come up with fresh ideas, like the dog grooming and photographs.

I felt the same way, but got OFB because of children dancing on feet and the extra craftables. Running a business is a good way to get extra time with your favorite sims, and it is more of a strategic challenge than other aspects of the game. Resource management is harder because you have to take care of the twirling customer who's trying to find the toasters in the restroom right now or you'll lose a star, regardless of how hungry you are, and you've got to learn how best to distribute everybody's time, which I find is a little different in every store, because one family will devote two adults to it full-time and another only has one person to do everything, and the different businesses run differently. The strategy that worked for you selling flowers doesn't work when you start a salon, and running a nightclub is another matter entirely. And then you get ideas and try new things, like: What happens when you take your cat to the store? Answer, people bring their pets and it's awesome! But you better have those pet items accessible, by golly! Ooh, so, couldn't you run a bark park? And so on.

All this and character play doesn't go away. Esteban Casa, the Grouchiest Man in Drama Acres, can't be trusted anywhere but the register or he'll start poking customers. All sales have to be delegated to his super-nice wife and youngest son. This sort of thing is not a problem when Frank Munny runs his music store, but he sells things faster than his wife Amanda can ring them up, because...well, because he's Frank! And so on.

So if you ever miss the strategic element in the game, OFB can fix that.

And you don't have to run any businesses to enjoy the new crafting stations (sims can sell them straight to wholesalers, just like paintings and crops), new animations like dancing on feet, and new objects like the toys.

@ labellavienna OFB can be a learning experience for you and your Sims, your businesses can be good or in the red zone. My suggestion for you is to enter into the neighborhood shopping community that came with OFB.
Name "Bluewater Village" and played Della Rosa lot her lot is a home base Flower shop. I think it is a good place to start to get some experience with OFB business.

My next suggestion is to get this mod by Numenor this will help you train a Sim on the cash register, before starting your business, the worst thing to happen is to have a Sims on the Cash register that do not know what he or she is doing.
A Sims on the cash register being slow can run your Sims customers out the door ( they will drop their bags and walk out lol ) with the mod the Sims can practice on the cash register and even gain a badges,

I use this mod to train my Sims even before they attempt to have a business or open a store, It is also good to help train a Sims who have teens to help out in the family business.
This Mod by Numenor is very useful this one is the Global Mod ( Meaning all Cash register will be affected ) http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=215415
Custom mod > this is the one I use also by Numenor > this mod will not affect all cash register http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=215417

Just remember you have to have patience with the business just as in real life so it is in the Sims world.
I think you will enjoy experiences with OFB, but to be honest some of my business was in the RED and some of my Sims had to file Bankruptcy

For a while, I really liked setting up businesses, and got quite good at it, too. I haven't played around with businesses in a long while - but I do love a lot of the OFB features, like the toys, flowers, and various other things, so I wouldn't like to be without it.

For me, TS2 is best as a whole, as there's something from every EP/SP I like, whether it's various objects or added features.

If it weren't for OFB, I doubt that I'd have half as much fun as I do..because of that EP, I can open working banks, gardening shops, pawn shops, etc-everyone gets their houses decorated and their food from these places.

Yes, I think OFB is fun to play, in other words.

My top three of most fun packs to play consists of FreeTime, Seasons and Open For Business. And try as I might, I can not decide which one of these is the best. Each on its own is great. But together I think they are Da Bomb!
OFB for its business opportunities, Seasons for the grow-able crops, and FreeTime for its hobbies. There are connections between all these packs.

Some of my sims only start growing crops, because they're Neat, like Cleaning, and/or have Nature as a hobby. And then they start a business to sell their produce.
Others start painting, crafting toys, sewing clothes, or making pottery because they have a passion for Arts and Crafts. And then they start selling their creations in a shop.
Or they're interested in Tinkering, start making robots or restoring cars, and make lots of profit selling their handy work.
Yet again others like Music and Dance, so they become musicians, do some DJ-gigs in nightclubs and start performing for money. Or they OPEN a club where other sims can come together to enjoy these things.

So yeah, there are a lot of ways to enjoy the features that OFB offers.

Aside from the running-business thing (which I find fun to the point where I have to actually make sure I don't keep my Sim at a business lot for days on end), OFB has one of my favourite features - servos.

'Course, depends on the person. I played a lot of business management games.

Personally, I hate OFB, but Jo's right that I never took the time to get the hang of it. I just got sick of all the "You're so stupid" pop-ups from EA while I was trying to figure it out. As soon as I added Bluewater Village to the current iteration of Strangetown, I had everybody call and sell their businesses because I couldn't be bothered to play them.

Ticket businesses aren't too bad, though. These are businesses that don't actually sell a product, but you place a ticket machine and Sims pay to spend time on the lot doing fun things. My BaCC has two: a nightclub where the owner just plays DJ the whole time, and a sports hall where the owner plays pool or darts and argues with every customer who walks through the door (I tried to direct him to better behaviour, but he was determined, so now I just leave him to it!). I've also had a Sim in a previous game who ran her own made-items pottery business, and I actually found that easier than a regular store where you buy goods from the wholesaler. Also, you don't have to actually run a business to have Sims work from home and make a living from crafting things: the pottery, quilts, etc, can be sold the same way as paintings, and I use this feature quite a lot.

I think having Sims running businesses does give a more realistic feel to the neighbourhood, especially if they're selling their own produce or crafts, but it just takes some getting used to. I would suggest that you either start small or use the Bluewater Village businesses as experiments you expect to fail, then start up businesses you actually want to succeed when you've had some practice.

The pre-made Bluewater Village businesses are like most Maxis pre-made content in that they are demonstrations/tutorials to show the player what the new features are and how they work. Obviously some lots work better than others for this and some of the pre-made businesses are oddly laid out.

I prefer owned community lots to home businesses. Home businesses can be overwhelming to both the player and the sim(s) and I rarely bother with them. Another important feature for me is that my playables can visit a community lot business owned by another playable. They can't do that if the business is on the other playable sim's home lot. It's so much easier to get the kids into private school if my family with insufficient cooking skill can just visit the local bakery and buy a baked alaska to impress the headmaster with.

Getting your first cash register badge is a royal pain in the neck and several modders addressed that problem. I use Pescado's smartercashier. "Operating a cash register is not rocket science anymore. You no longer have to ring in 50 people before your cashier stops looking like an incompetent dolt, making it the single hardest badge in the game to get." I forget what the exact number is with this mod in - I think it's something like 2 to 4 customers and then you have your bronze badge.

In particular, the J'Adore Bakery has glitched food that can't be eaten. You have to take everything off the shelves and replace it. (I have a headcanon that they hadn't been back since Yves' death and the food went bad - and then used it as an opportunity to redecorate and update their menus.)

Not only that but the kitchen is misleading in how its set up and the chiller displays are right next to the cash register which will block customers trying to pay when other customers are browsing those displays. Its a terrible set up. If that is a first players intro to a bakery its no wonder they never want to play one again. So no I would not recommend any of the pre made OFB Bluewater shops as a starting point.
Even Delroasa doesn't have all the flower badges so you are starting from scratch.

For me, it depends on the situation. Some households are way too busy for a home business. But also some businesses are not suited to be run from the home lot.
A home grocery store can very well work, for example, because the produce must come from a garden/greenhouse that gets enough play time to grow the crops.
But a home games and/or music hall, where people pay at the ticket machine, has never been a great success for me. The latter is really much better to play on a comm lot.
And a business where your sims can go to purchase additions to their wardrobe, or food baskets to fill their fridge, is also a business that you want to be accessible to sims that don't belong to the business household. Thus, a comm lot is then more practical and profitable.

But it always requires quite a commitment to play a business in whatever form. That much is certainly true. It's not for everybody. And even if businesses are not your thing, there is still some fun to be had from some of the flower arrangements, toys and robots that one can build on the crafting stations.



I don't think ALL badges would really be needed. One badge would already have been a start. But indeed, Florence doesn't even have THAT when you open the lot for the first time, which is rather disappointing.
And as for the Jacquets with their bakery... I've always found it rather stupid, that many of the premade playables even have kids in their teens, and still cannot even boil a pot of water without setting the kitchen on fire. One or two cooking skill points for at least one of the parents in each household should have been the least! But for the Jacquets, who are supposed to run a BUSINESS based on their cooking skill, it's absolutely maddening that they couldn't be bothered to put in one or two points somewhere.

I finally had to turn off the ticket machine at my home winery since they were making far too much cash. They had around 20K by the time the wine was ready so I turned that off and am now selling bottled wine. They did pretty much nothing with the ticket business, they just turned it on and got on with life while the money and stars rolled in. Of course being founders they have most of the town already as friends, but that was the easiest home business I have ever had.

OFB is boring and hard work. Well, that's what I used to think. I'm getting back into it - mainly with retired elders. No way an expert, but my part-time shops are fun.

A retired couple spend their time painting, and then, rather than just hitting the sell option, they hang them in a small gallery (which only opens when they have a wall full). Then they get to play with the till (which always makes me laugh - memories of 'Open All Hours' )

The PlantSim commune runs a small shop selling veggies and fish (being plant sims they don't need to eat!)

A divorced super-star opens his sporting memorabilia shop on the days he doesn't work.

And another retired elder has just opened an ice-cream parlour for the local kids - we'll see how that goes, if not well I'll just blame maxon

And when it all gets too much like hard-work, I just pick another family in the rotation!

I've tried running a business once (Malcolm's electric store), but quickly felt overwhelmed. I'll definitely give it another try at some point, but probably not while playing rotations.

I find it fun in many ways There are options, not all businesses have to be big. One of the most successful businesses in my game was selling lights

Oh, I do have a confession to make about running businesses: I cheat like hell.

The customers don't complain. They don't run around playing with water balloons-they get their stuff and get out.
Customers don't have the problem of waiting for everyone else to get out of their way because of a really stupid cashier (as one, I'm insulted by that depiction..)
Everyone is always in a good mood. The business reviews are 99% great, and I rarely have a failing one.

Several dozen hacks make running a business a whole lot better..and I'm not going to sweat the badge thing, either.

Next to Seasons, OFB is my absolute favorite expansion pack. I really love running businesses and trying out new types of businesses. I've changed my play over time. In the beginning, I gave my sims a crap ton of money for their businesses, but now they have to take out loans to open it up. I like to watch my sims work for it.

The ticket businesses are the most successful and usually having easy to grab food makes customers happy. They stay a lot longer. For businesses that sell items, I've learned to use items I'd like to see in my sims houses, like pillows or clutter that anyone would buy for their home.

Bakeries are the only eateries I really enjoy playing. People buy pies and cakes. They may enjoy free samples and then leave. I've never been fond of restaurants because the employees and their drama drives me crazy. Why do you want a raise after DAY ONE?! I keep trying though. I'm a glutton for punishment. Still, I love trying new types of businesses. The next business I'll open is selling candles! (Have the craft station for it already!)

OFB makes Sims 2 more an arcade game, a feature I love and I wish there was more of that kind activity. Still I rarely reach level 7 or higher but it is still fun.

The business type I have enjoyed most is a themed bar - music is very important then.

Yes, it is. I rarely pursued half of the options when I originally had OFB or the other EPS. Now I can run it well on my ancient laptop I am doing all sorts of fun things including having a thrift store.

Yes, it's another nice addition to Sims 2.