Here's a Tip: Party Like a Rock Star!

[SimPoseyYum]

I did this Challenge with just Vanilla, so I didn't have access to Motive Mobile, electric guitars, sleeping bags, etc.  Interesting to see how those things can affect the score!

I, too, am curious about parties.  Prince Jimi made a few mistakes early in his career and thus was a bit late in getting his final promotion.  Obviously that had an impact on how many parties he could throw.  However, once he was able to throw parties, he was never able to schedule one before 8am and the parties he threw always lasted 6-8 hours each (these people simply would.not.leave).  I suppose that's testament to how good a party thrower he was .  I'd love to know how someone got 20+!

[Veldmuisie]

I would like to know how people were able to have more than 2 parties a day.  The window of acceptable party time is just too small if your guests stay 5 hrs.  I even tried it with only 1 guest!

For the autographs, I made sure Gady Lala had zero charisma skills and did not take the observant trait.  Very early in the morning on a weekday at the supermarket was were I had the best luck. The concert payments seemed quite random.  I stopped going after I had two over 2k at the stadium.

[NancyJ]

I got my sim to Rock Star by Week 2, Day 6 so I had 10 weekends of parties. The earliest you can throw a party is 9am and the latest is 9pm. Your first set of guests need to leave by about 13:30 to give you time for the party end to register and to make the call by 13:59 for second party starting at 15:00, if that party ends before 19:00 you can throw another party starting at 9pm.
I only ever invited 1 guest to the party, sometimes they'd bring a friend but having a small guest list enables you to control the party better and make sure that its epic and that they leave. Guests will stay for at least 2 hours, more if they're having a good time so they key for me was preventing them from extending their stay any longer than necessary. About an hour before I wanted them to leave I would turn off the stereo and do the housework (basically keep my sim busy so they weren't interacting with the guests). If they had already exceeded their threshold for how long they were going to stay, they would leave within 15 minutes. If not, so long as they weren't busy entertaining themselves they'd leave as soon as their time was up. Its was a pretty reliable technique but if you're just 1 minute out you have to add another hour to when you can start the next party

[Metropolis Man]

Guests will stay for at least 2 hours, more if they're having a good time so they key for me was preventing them from extending their stay any longer than necessary. About an hour before I wanted them to leave I would turn off the stereo and do the housework (basically keep my sim busy so they weren't interacting with the guests).

Brilliant tip. Yeah, no wonder I could only host 2 a day — I was having as much fun as everyone else and the parties usually ran 5 to 6 hours. I should have shut down the TV and the stereo after 2 hours.

[Veldmuisie]

Brilliant tip. Yeah, no wonder I could only host 2 a day — I was having as much fun as everyone else and the parties usually ran 5 to 6 hours. I should have shut down the TV and the stereo after 2 hours.

I did that but it did not work for me.  My guests persisted no matter how many times I turned off the stereo/tv.  I tried napping and cancelling social interactions with my sim - no luck.  Some guests would even stare out the window rather than leave 

[MissPlumbBob]

That's highly amusing, Veldmuisie!

A napping party host + no entertainment = amazing party!!

[Anjielicka]

I only ever invited 1 guest to the party, sometimes they'd bring a friend but having a small guest list enables you to control the party better and make sure that its epic and that they leave. Guests will stay for at least 2 hours, more if they're having a good time so they key for me was preventing them from extending their stay any longer than necessary. About an hour before I wanted them to leave I would turn off the stereo and do the housework (basically keep my sim busy so they weren't interacting with the guests).

Nice!!! I thought of inviting only a couple of people but after the one party when no one came (I invited 6), i got scared and went back up to at least 8 per party. I also tried turning off the stereo to give them a 'hint' to leave but Devin Ashton just stayed long after the other guests left. I didn't invite him to my last party which was on a Sunday for fear that he'll stay until after 8am the next day.

[NancyJ]

I made my sim a party animal so whoever I invited had to show up, even if they were supposed to be at work.

[Anjielicka]

I did give my Sim the party animal trait as well. I guess Sims can be flaky at times.

[NancyJ]

Yeah - there are some things that just don't work how they're supposed to.  If you look at the source code the formulas listed for concert and tip payouts bear no relation to the actual numbers you get in game and I think some of the listeners are broken - most events have a minimum and maximum time to occur but sometimes they'll go over the maximum time and just keep going - like party guests not ever leaving (I have other examples but don't want to give hints for other challenges heh)

[Anjielicka]

If you look at the source code the formulas listed for concert and tip payouts bear no relation to the actual numbers you get in game...

My curiousity is piqued - source code is available for the formulas that they use? Hmm... surely will be nice (for educational reasons, of course) to take a peek and figure out some of the mysteries.

[SimPoseyYum]

Ahhh I considered shutting off the music, doing the dishes etc. as doing things to "prematurely end" the party.  I assumed we all had to party hard until the guests decided to leave.  As a matter of fact, Prince Jimi often ended up chugging energy drinks to avoid falling asleep while he still had guests.

After a few parties, I did end up inviting just one or two guests.  Much easier to attend to the needs of a smaller group.  I was pleasntly surprised to discover that that still counted as a "party"!

[NancyJ]

Its mostly just variables and comments and it doesn't give the full picture - eg. The stadium object has a concertPayAmount method that specifies that the amount should be a flat rate of 2250-3750 (Base amount of 3000 and a variance of 25%). No modifiers for Guitar Star or Virtuoso are applied at that point and that number bears no relation to the figures we were seeing in game - I had a stadium gig as low as $800. The variables could be being altered at runtime. Its possible the trait and challenge modifiers directly modify those variables (although that would be odd because those things 'belong' to the Sim and the variables belong to the object).

I only got it really to look at the function that was causing Sims to get stuck and compare it with the fixed version in the mod I found. There's some good nuggets in there but there's just as much that doesn't pan out - like the concerts and tips thing.

[Joria]

I think I did as many wrong things as possible and still wound up doing ok.  Not great, not even good, but for me, ok.  First of all I didn't train my rock star having her perform, perform, perform.  I know that would have increased her tips.  I also wasted her time having her attend other people's parties when she really should have given more of her own.   I realized she could throw more than one party a day but didn't do it enough.  Her parties were always epic, that part is really easy.  Food+music+dance floor= epic.  My mistake was I built her a sound stage and all the doggone guests decided to perform!  Had to get rid of all those instruments and the stage in order for them to want to leave.  Toward the end I simply put out the buffet, turned on the stereo and danced till they left.  They left sooner and still had an epic party.  In retrospect the food was unnecessary as no more than two people ever ate it.  I never thought to limit the guest list!  DUH!  I never used Motive Mobile either as I thought it was forbidden to use.  I also had her do performances at the theater which wasted her time and brought in very little money!  The best place for her to hold a concert was definitely NOT at the theater.  Her best tips came when I did an autograph session at the stadium, followed by a concert at the stadium, followed by play for tips in front of the theater.  Needless to say I started her out very early, but probably would have done better with tips by just doing tips.  Just to make it more interesting I had her niece bring along her bake sale stand for daytime tip playing!  Hungry folks just went and bought a cookie and then were back to throwing money.  (Yes, I had her utility Sim sister marry the mixologist and produce a child just for that purpose.)  I thought it was a bit classier than throwing down bits of dried food which were unlikely to be available at the consignment store.  I didn't realize there was that fast song bit, but actually I did just keep queing those same songs over and over from sheer laziness on my part! 

Question:  would it be better to have a potential rock star NOT join the music business until he/she has gotten all the songs learned and maybe a thousand times of performing them?  Same question about playing for tips.

[Metropolis Man]

Question:  would it be better to have a potential rock star NOT join the music business until he/she has gotten all the songs learned and maybe a thousand times of performing them?  Same question about playing for tips.

Well, if you indeed want to max that career, then you might as well do it quickly right at the getgo. But, if it's only money you're seeking then skip the career entirely and just grind a guitarist with performances for tip playing.

[cathyknits]

Joria, I think playing for tips without a lot of performances racked up would have been a waste of time, yeah, but since you couldn't have parties until you made Rock Star it was essential to max the career as fast as possible for the challenge.

I'm embarassed by how long it took me to realize the stadium concerts paid a lot more than theater concerts. A lot of time wasted there, and not enough time to really fix it. For what it's worth, I think the payouts are random - I had a theater concert pay 450 while I had moodlets totalling +200 and all my needs high, and one pay 800 while my moodlets were down to +25 and my needs were getting down towards the middle.

My biggest mistake? I ended up getting my performance totals up to just under 1500. The last Saturday, I went out to play for tips, and the first couple tips I got were on the order of 5500 simoleons. I panicked, and started performing songs again to get the total up higher (I thought there might be a breakpoint at 1500), figuring I'd look for an audience after Sunday's parties, and never found one. I think if I'd been patient and tried to get a bigger audience at the tip session I bailed out on, I'd've gotten a double tip eventually.

I'm also irked by my last party: one of the guests walked in the door, said "Fun party? Not. I'm leaving." - and then didn't leave. That was still enough to make the party count as a "modest success". On the bright side, I noticed that I could have my utility sim herd the party guests while my rock star played guitar upstairs the whole time and still have epic parties.

[SimPoseyYum]

I don't know if everyone knew this but I discovered that not all songs are created equally and speeding up time does NOT properly speed up the time it takes to perform a song.   During a practice run, Prince Jimi performed each song individually while I timed him and kept notes.  He performed first at regular speed.  Then he performed randomly selected songs again at 2x and again at 3x speed.  Since I had only Vanilla at the time, all songs were performed with a regular, acoustic guitar.

Here are some of the results (shown in "sim-hours:sim-minutes" format):

Rails for Miles               @ regular speed =   :26                  @ 2x speed = 1:01                 @ 3x speed = 2:51
Pa Fights the Bear        @ regular speed =   :39                  @ 2x speed = 1:41                 @ 3x speed = 5:02
A Perfect Moment         @ regular speed =   :58                  @ 2x speed = 2:29                 @ 3x speed = 3:00
One More Dance?         @ regular speed =   :58                  @ 2x speed = 2:30                 @ 3x speed = 6:34 (odd how it didn't mirror A Perfect Moment)
Two Steps at a Time     @ regular speed = 1:08                  @ 2x speed = 3:06                 @ 3x speed = 9:00

Needless to say, since we couldn't queue-up-and-cancel, I had Jimi perform Rails for Miles over and over in real time.

Also, since I didn't have access to dried foods, I discovered that plain old fruits and veggies from the grocery store did well.  Jimi always scattered them about before and during autograph and tip sessions.

[NancyJ]

The perform times are how long it takes to play the sound sample in real-time. On the electric guitar there are 3 tracks that don't have a sound sample so the time is just the animation time of picking up the guitar, starting to twiddle and then putting it down again (approx 11 sim minutes - the animation speeds up relative to the game speed)

Joria, 'performances' and learned songs have no affect on the music career at all. You make just as much money from concerts with 0 as you do with 1000 and number. Performing songs only affects tips AFAIK.

[NancyJ]

Another thing I did for the parties was invite people I didn't know well, +20 moodlet for New Friend, +40 for Nicely Decorated was enough.

[Anjielicka]

Also, since I didn't have access to dried foods...

I didn't have dried food either and never really fed the crowd by sprinkling any food on the ground. Is there any other source for dried food aside from going on vacation?

[mtglady]

I didn't have dried food either and never really fed the crowd by sprinkling any food on the ground. Is there any other source for dried food aside from going on vacation?

I didn't have dried food, both since we couldn't travel and because I never saw any for sale at the consignment store.  Instead I had her husband set out fruit from his garden for all to eat.  Once or twice he actually brought along a plate or two of hot dogs for the crowd to enjoy.

I played in Riverview which was probably part of my wrong doing.  The crowds there are not as large as in the other towns.  I found that the stadium paid out the highest for autographs, but only on the weekends.  It seemed to me that larger and better crowds showed up on those days too.

I too made use of the Motive Mobile which kept her much happier.  My bad was that I her perform each and every song over and over again.  I like to keep my sound on when I play and my other half yelled that he was tired of hearing the same noise over and over again.  She had each type of guitar and I varied them, but it was still noisy and very repetitious.  I knew there were a few very short songs and should have just queued them up and turned my volume way down.  Oh well - live and learn!

As to the parties, I mostly was able to have 3 each day.  Marilyn was also a Party Animal so I had no problems hosting a no-show party.  Only her closest friends were invited and then only two couples to a party.  I tried to tailor the times I invited them to the times they worked.  Only one of my parties was not Epic.  The hardest part was to weed out the Vampires.  I kept adding to my handwritten list of who not to invite.  I think my entire town was being over-run toward the end.  

Joria, I had an entire addition built on her home that featured a stage and a dance mat.  It almost resembled a club.  I did what a few of the others did having Marilyn turn off the TV, the stereos, clean up the food and dismiss the bartender when I wanted everyone to leave so another party could be scheduled.  I did have one Epic party that lasted until 3 am the next day which I didn't count as it was after midnight when the last person left.  For some reason one person hung around napping on the couch even after Marilyn and her husband went to bed. 

I did complete all of the guitar challenges which was something I had never done before.  That alone was worth doing this challenge.   Thanks Metro !


 

[MissPlumbBob]

I am very impressed by such a strategy, mtglady! Hats off to you!