Damo

Outside of buying other companies, how do I grow my popularity in a country where it is capped? As a British company, I am 55 rated in the US due to having a TV deal with medium size. That makes sense to me. But when I run events in an area, the popularity doesn't increase which means I am struggling to get a larger TV deal there. What am I missing here? Also I have a few balance comments around money. I feel that the problem is that workers do not ask for enough money. In another save, my own broadcaster is making $500m a month (thanks to myself and several child companies all on it) and people who are hugely over are still asking for 10% increases on contracts of a few hundred grand. I wish that there was a way in which workers could estimate their value based on company revenue as well as popularity. I have a medium company on this save and Shawn Michaels is making $800,000 for the company in merch money per month. Merchandising is another thing that could do with a tweak as there's never any time that you shouldn't have it on Rapid improvement. The money it costs compared to the financial gain is miniscule so there's no decision to be made - even as an Insignificant company, there's never a time to take it off Rapid.

Do two people with bad chemistry get better chemistry if i keep using them together or is it stuck forever?

So if I hit Left The Business on some people who don't have a contract then that could potentially improve load times?

How does worker retirement work? I'm many years into my game now and between days is taking minutes due to the amount of workers being processed. Does the game automatically retire workers who haven't worked for a set time? If I forcibly retire everyone unemployed then will that have a huge impact on the game?

What's the best way for me to make the DB more efficient? I'm 30 years into a save and the loading times are now crawling, presumably due to the amount of workers/matches/etc being tracked in the database. Is there a tool or setting to promote a more aggressive attitude to removing workers who are just floating around (i.e. generated but not hired by anyone within a time frame)? Any other general tips on keep the game ticking over quicker?

Some small suggestions for the logic/AI of autobooker that's missing. Autobooker doesn't currently check whether face/heel divide is loosely enforced, leading to no matches available. A better system would be to do its usual run through, and then a secondary run through afterwards to book heel vs heel and face vs face matches if necessary On B shows, it overbooks angles for midcarders (usually managers) instead of using Unimportant talent in matches. I'd argue this is incorrect logic for the purpose of a B show. In the B show angles, there is no relationship checks on the workers used. For example, I cannot think of any time where I'd prefer using just 1 worker of a Permanent Unit tag team in an angle. It should book both of them if it's booking them in an angle. The same goes for managers - if I have a manager of a lower midcard talent then I want the manager and that talent in an angle together rather than just the manager. There's no product check enforced past match types. For example, if my show requires 20 minute matches to get a world class score than I obviously do not want my main event to ever be less than 20 minutes if using the Main Event focus.

Some small suggestions for the logic/AI of autobooker that's missing. Autobooker doesn't currently check whether face/heel divide is loosely enforced, leading to no matches available. A better system would be to do its usual run through, and then a secondary run through afterwards to book heel vs heel and face vs face matches if necessary On B shows, it overbooks angles for midcarders (usually managers) instead of using Unimportant talent in matches. I'd argue this is incorrect logic for the purpose of a B show. In the B show angles, there is no relationship checks on the workers used. For example, I cannot think of any time where I'd prefer using just 1 worker of a Permanent Unit tag team in an angle. It should book both of them if it's booking them in an angle. The same goes for managers - if I have a manager of a lower midcard talent then I want the manager and that talent in an angle together rather than just the manager. There's no product check enforced past match types. For example, if my show requires 20 minute matches to get a world class score than I obviously do not want my main event to ever be less than 20 minutes if using the Main Event focus.

That's just not the reality of the situation. Here is an incredibly niche game built by one person that is a database front end that is priced competitively, has great reviews and is evolving all the time. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1184770/The_Political_Process/

The game costs $10 more than Kenshi and Factorio which are also personal projects spun into big games. Having a niche game is not an excuse for poor design. I believe in games making as much money as possible to reward the developers financially, promote the franchise/brand to new audiences, and providing funds for a better development cycle the next time around. To do this you need the widest audience possible. The politics of the situation aren't really a concern. It's worth pointing out the that Football Manager series didn't start as a huge game and was initially a two man team working out of their bedrooms. This is how games grow - they consistently provide better and more modern experiences which leads to greater revenue. The CM UI was built using the old school Windows API but they evolved it over time. Technologically, TEW2020 isn't *that* different from EWR.

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="awesomenessofme1" data-cite="awesomenessofme1" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="47578" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>This take in particular doesn't make any sense to me. Why would lack of a Steam release speak to poor management of the game? The one and only reason for lack of a Steam release is that on a project like this, the amount of increased sales that would come wouldn't make up for the large cut of the price Steam takes. Or at least that's the belief. It's not like it's difficult at all to release a game on Steam.</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> It's more a project management than game development issue. Firstly in regards to ease of pirating the system they currently use plus the increased brand awareness, offers and the legacy sales, Steam is almost always worth it.</p><p> Any game from a serious developer in 2020 should be looking at releasing on the widest possible platforms. My point was that it speaks to a very old school mentality in their thinking.</p>

<p>Adam is a 20-year developer who is developing projects like it's 20 years ago. It's not "vitriol" to suggest that he hasn't kept up with trends in game design when he is releasing these types of interfaces and using the technologies that he's using. He could build a better interface, with a more modern design and features that people expect such as UI scaling in one of the free engines in a few days. This isn't a time issue, it almost certainly took him longer to build it this way than the modern way.</p><p> </p><p> I said this in another thread but the problems here aren't to do with the interface specifically, they are project based. </p><p> </p><p> The fact that the feedback from the private testers was SO positive that Adam believed the game would be very well received is an immediate red flag. Testers are "employed" to be overly critical and to break software, they aren't there to be friends with the developers and when the reception from them becomes like Adam has described then they become pretty useless to the process.</p><p> </p><p> But again, this is a project problem rather than the fault of the testers. I'm sure that they were hyped to play the game and either were swept away with it or didn't want to seem "negative". Picking your testers from the most loyal fans is a recipe for disaster and there's a reason that no companies do this. You already have the money of those fans, he needed to reach further out in order to get clear feedback. Given the amount of problems that the game came into a public beta with, it's also clear that the testers didn't seem to take their role very seriously or more likely, weren't managed well. They wanted early access to the game and the fun that comes with that. I'd be interested to see the project documentation about testing strategies assigned to different testers but I fear that it probably doesn't exist.</p><p> </p><p> The management of this game is fairly poor. A lack of a Steam release, the biggest gaming platform in the world, speaks to that as does the continued use of outdated designs and tech. As much as I feel disheartened to use the word, my overwhelming feeling as a developer looking at TEW2020 is that it feels so amateur. There are first year college students who are turning out more polished products than this and that's pretty damning and personally as a fan quite depressing. You can slice it any way that you want but there's screens in TEW2020 with over forty different buttons or UI Elements on it and that's crazy. </p><p> </p><p> I feel that we're heading towards a Vince McMahon type situation, to use an analogy relevant to wrestling fans. Vince's way of thinking is very old and although he's the industry leader in a semi-niche market, he's there because of a lack of competitive alternatives. Moreover he's surrounded by people who are telling him how brilliant everything is and when criticism is offered, his comrades run to his defence. While that may not be a big problem on an internet forum, in any creative industry that is cancer to the project and sinks them faster than almost anything else.</p><p> </p><p> There's so many factors that go into the future so it's pretty presumptuous to say "this should happen", but I'd probably argue that he should spend the next 3 months bug fixing and then move onto a 2022 release which uses modern game design fundamentals. There is no shortage of tutorials, literature, examples and code samples for him to upskill upon - it has never been easier to learn than it is now, especially if he's willing to invest money into this. </p><p> </p><p> Again, it's 2020 and the game doesn't have a window resizing option. There's no excuse for that. It's a 5 minute job to introduce it.</p>