Camping, what's in it for 4 owners?

Personally, speaking as a merchant, any mall that starts using camping chairs loses my business, permenantly. I want REAL traffic - aware and conscious people that actually walk by my store display and have money and buy stuff. Dead-broke zombies are worthless to me, and just lag down the area, keeping paying customers away.

The same goes for shopping. As a consumer, if I see in the classified ad that a mall or merchant has camping chairs, they don't get one L$ of my business. I'll go to a lag-free mall or merchant rather than shop at any lag-fest that is gaming their popularity numbers.

Clubs? Casinos? Again, I see a camping chair, or a dance pad that bribes people to remain motionless, I am out of there, and never will come back. I go to a club to socialize, not to stare at living statues. Camping chair filled clubs or casinos are so laggy I don't see why ANYONE would go near them.

There is only one merchant I have ever gone back to that uses anything resembling a 'camping chair'. They have precisely ONE "Lucky Chair' in their store, that gives away a free merchandise item to someone who sits in it, if their first name starts with a randomly chosen letter. The needed letter is clearly marked in hover text, and changes every 30 min. There is absolutely NO incentive to sit in the chair longer than it takes to collect the prize, because as soon as you sit in it and win something, the needed letter changes.

And that's your right Ceera, and no one is arguing that right. I am arguing though, that the higher the traffic, the more likely others will come.

Not many people scroll through the pages to places with traffic under 1000. Shopping and leaving, if under 5 minutes doesn't register anything (at least it was 5 minute increments last time I looked through the LA) so while it's may lose 1 person, it may drag in 5 more.

Risk versus reward.

Not true. I (and most people I know) rarely go to those high traffic areas. I have found some truely awesome places with a very low traffic numbers. Its a great way to explore and find new places, designs and clubs. Your limiting yourself if all you do is go "where the action is".

The sim where my main store is has 2 stores that have camping chairs. One only has 5 or 6... not to big of a deal to me. The other has 15 or so and one time put out so many that the sim was plugged with zombie campers. He has since reduced the number of chairs. IMO he was hurting his own business and everyone elses in the sim. His "real" customers coundn't get in.

While you may do this, it's just not true for most gamers. In my mall, I've sat around and watched with and without, and asked my vendors. They did quite a bit more sales with only 4 camping chairs there. (FYI, I sold my mall before open registration too.)

Same with my current store now. Before the camp chairs, it wasn't very traveled at all, and sales weren't great. With just 2 menial camping chairs, I've done more in business, and people are often stopping by to check on the green dots.

I don't personally care about a few chairs, but 15 is crazy for a simple store.

I wish there was a better way, but right now, there just isn't.

Higher sales is rather subjective. If you're selling things aimed at newer residents, and pricing accordingly, then you probably would do better with a higher traffic score, because everyone searches and goes by the list when they're new and before they wisen up.

And while a camping chair won't stop me from buying anything, it will make me wonder how much the price was hiked up to support those zombies or to fund ridiculously priced classifieds.

Typically, when searching for places to go or buy things, I tend to go to the BOTTOM of the popular listings first... less lag, less likely to run into noob griefers, much more likely to find interesting people/places/products.
Or maybe I'm just really anti-social, hard to tell. But to me, camping chairs are useful landmarks for finding places where I don't really want to bother battling the lag to see a bank of the same vendors by the same designers.