Audience Fatigue

[praguepride]

It seems possible to strap rockets to your promotion by running 2-3 shows a week even at tiny/small size and launch yourself into the stratosphere.

 

I would think that a tiny fed hitting the same market every other day would cause audiences to burn out and your popularity gains to decrease but that doesn't seem to be the case.

 

This means as soon as you can turn a profit you should run a bajillion shows to catapult your into the stratosphere causing unrealistic growth.

 

Jaded shared his audience records for his "RTG" game and by June 2020 he was seeing tens of thousands of fans per show every other night:

 

 

It ends up being like running a house show without all the downsides. I would imagine you would need to tour farther and farther from your home territory as you saturate the market. Even the WWE travels around because they can't hammer the same market too many times in a row.

[Self]

I agree. There is currently no reason to run lesser shows or touring or even TV, as 'Events' can do everything with no downsides and no audience fatigue, as you say. Wear and tear of the wrestlers, sure. Kinda. But it's unstoppabley powerful at building money, popularity and stars with no limitations.

[Taker4455]

I would put this in tech support. There's obviously something wrong if growth like that is possible.

[Teh_Showtime]

I agree and it would probably solve the problem of every Indy worker being super over because these promotions grow to ridiculous lengths, and the workers are able to grow with them.

 

If the companies didn’t shoot up in popularity the workers won’t be able to hit 60-70 popularity across the entire nation without being seen on something outside of the internet.

 

As is, on demand popularity gains for small companies are so overpowered that it goes against wrestling history, and gives you zero incentive to ever pursue a TV deal for more exposure.

[Donners]

I noticed this in the Effganic mod. A company generated with the "Constant" schedule, meaning it spammed events.

 

These numbers are from just the two regions where they're particularly popular:

 

 

Even their #56 best-attended show for that year had over 28,000 people - again, all from those two regions.

[praguepride]

From numerous discord chats it seems like as soon as you can turn a profitable event the game incentivizes you to spam shows as much as possible.

 

No reduction in audience size means you can pull maximum #s every other day. Why bother touring?

 

From earlier conversations there are no peak or lulls in days of the week so you can pull a sold out show every day of the week no problem.

 

Finally especially on lighter styles workers can pull off high quality matches day after day after day.

 

A Self said there is no reason to run B shows or House shows because you can run events 3 or 4 times a week and pull top ratings and sold out crowds with no downside.

[TheChef]

there is no reason to run B shows or House shows because you can run events 3 or 4 times a week and pull top ratings and sold out crowds with no downside.

 

 

Or you could just not do this. Just run a normal schedule with one show per week and not try to game the system.

[Teh_Showtime]

Or you could just not do this. Just run a normal schedule with one show per week and not try to game the system.

 

You can’t tell that to the AI

[TheChef]

You can’t tell that to the AI

 

Oh yeah. Good point. Sorry.

[sheik7]

There is repetitive booking penalty, which can be a reason why you won't spam too many shows with limited talents.

 

But more importantly, it is better to accept that TEW is not a particularly well made simulator that represents reality.

To enjoy TEW, sometimes you need to stop doing what you can do, or do what you don't really need to do.

[Self]

Or you could just not do this. Just run a normal schedule with one show per week and not try to game the system.

 

I'm not typically a min/max guy, but when there's an obvious strategy that's vastly superior to all others, it makes the other modes feel pointless. Or a needlessly uphill struggle.

 

As it is, I'm running 1 show a week with a Small promotion, drawing thousands, and earning major money. Logically it feels like the next step would be TV. In terms of real life. In terms of the goals of a video game. But that would mean suffering intense penalties for zero benefit. I could build myself into a new region, but unless I'm trying to woo a TV station, why bother? Which leaves just continuing along this path of gigantic event and gigantic event. Which feels unrealistic and boring. Very boring. If there was a downside to running events. If I was limited to one-a-month before diminishing returns? Maybe it would feel... I don't know. I've stopped playing my RTG game, and I'm not sure I'm going back. The gameplay loop doesn't give me exciting goals.

 

EDIT: I like the idea of audience fatigue at the Tiny/Insignificant level because it gives players a choice of how to build their company. You could run one big show a month, spending all of your money on the biggest stars, pre-booked to the hilt, it in the hope of one big score. Or you could run multiple shows with a cheaper roster, suffering reduced attendances (maybe it bottoms out at 50%) for each. This choice does exist right now with sponsorship money, but it soon goes away once ticket sales get moving.

[Jaded]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="sheik7" data-cite="sheik7" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="50529" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>There is repetitive booking penalty, which can be a reason why you won't spam too many shows with limited talents.<p> </p><p> But more importantly, it is better to accept that TEW is not a particularly well made simulator that represents reality.</p><p> To enjoy TEW, sometimes you need to stop doing what you can do, or do what you don't really need to do.</p></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> Or we could try and get it improved? If people hadn't bothered looking for issues with the game and just accepted them, the game would be in a VASTLY inferior place to where it is now.</p><p> </p><p> For everyone who keeps saying "Oh, just don't do it," please note that some of us want the game world to work well overall, regardless of what we're doing.</p>

[Jaded]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="TheChef" data-cite="TheChef" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="50529" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>Or you could just not do this. Just run a normal schedule with one show per week and not try to game the system.</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> Also using a schedule which the game gives you should not be 'gaming the system'. If it is - and it obviously is in this case - that's a sign of a flaw with the game.</p><p> </p><p> </p><blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="sheik7" data-cite="sheik7" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="50529" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>There is repetitive booking penalty, which can be a reason why you won't spam too many shows with limited talents.<p> </p></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> Why would you have limited talents, though? Thanks to the ridiculously cheap wages, you can get most of the best indy guys in the game for 60 dollars a night to start off with.</p>

[sheik7]

For everyone who keeps saying "Oh, just don't do it," please note that some of us want the game world to work well overall, regardless of what we're doing.

 

It is sad to say but TEW is a bit different from games like football manager series. Not only it's visually simple, but the game system also depends a lot on imagination of users. I mean, some of attributes and features are just cosmetic and doesn't even mean anything in this game. I am not just saying "just don't do it", but talking about limitations that we need to accept when we play a game like this.

 

Why would you have limited talents, though? Thanks to the ridiculously cheap wages, you can get most of the best indy guys in the game for 60 dollars a night to start off with.

 

Again, I suggest you don't hire them even if you can. That doesn't mean I like or satisfied to do so, but that is the realistic way to enjoy the game.

[Donners]

I don't think that a broken strategy which the AI can exploit is a limitation we should accept.

 

If it was something exclusive to the player, I might understand that argument, but an AI company can generate with a "constant" schedule and produce these results. At best it breaks immersion, but it also risks unbalancing the game world.

[Jaded]

I don't think that a broken strategy which the AI can exploit is a limitation we should accept.

 

If it was something exclusive to the player, I might understand that argument, but an AI company can generate with a "constant" schedule and produce these results. At best it breaks immersion, but it also risks unbalancing the game world.

 

Exactly. I don’t understand the desperation some people seem to have to make sure the game DOESN’T improve. Very weird!

[Taker4455]

Exactly. I don’t understand the desperation some people seem to have to make sure the game DOESN’T improve. Very weird!

 

Agreed. It's all very odd.

 

I've opened up a thread about this in tech support. Hopefully we get a fix of some kind, because this type of growth is ludicrous.

[VBigB]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this an issue with past TEW's as well that was significantly negated by the way attendance worked in those past games (it's been a long time since I played TEW2016. I believe in the past attendance was based on both your popularity and your company size. This resulted in step changes in attendance whenever a company rose in size but also prevented small companies from reaching ridiculously high levels of attendance.

 

The broken finances get even worse if a company continuously increases their merchandising allowing them to reach completely broken levels of merchandise sales.

 

I kind of already covered it in my own thread:

http://www.greydogsoftware.com/forum/showthread.php?t=548141&highlight=merchandise

 

In that thread I was trying to come up with a formula that could do attendance scaling without step changes but haven't really put a lot of effort into it. Audience Fatigue is something that is needed as well.

 

So I was trying to think of how to do attendance scaling without having jumps when a company increases in size. I think it could be accomplished by having the attendance set up as follows:

1. The attendance that is based of the region the show is held in has diminishing returns at higher popularity levels.

2. More attendance is added on top of the base single region attendance based off of the popularity in adjacent regions (lower additions in attendance based off of distance from where the show is held).

 

This could be set up so that companies that have most of their popularity in one region would not reach the ridiculous levels of attendance whereas say a company that had 80 in BC and 60 in the rest of Canada could reach the higher levels.

[BuddyGarner]

The thing about this bug is that it makes it possible to have a complete game experience within the demo period which may decrease game sales.

 

It's why I didn't buy 2016. I got everyone to 100 popularity within the demo period.

[Dross]

Man, this is completely bonkers. I hope that this gets a MAJOR overhaul.

[d12345]

<p>The weird thing was that in 2016 there was a penalty for running too many annual events per month.</p><p> </p><p>

Personally as of now I've taken constant schedule types away as it's broken.</p><p> </p><p>

Edit: Constant schedule should generate Lesser shows.</p>

[Kafei01]

Not only running too many show per month should generate penalties, but running few events should generate bonuses as well as the event would have been much expected by the audience.

[Gungner]

Man, this is completely bonkers. I hope that this gets a MAJOR overhaul.

 

Agreed. This is one of many reasons why I'm still on TEW'16.

[Ghost of Benji]

Agreed. This is one of many reasons why I'm still on TEW'16.

Isn't there a similar powerplay exploit in TEW 2016? I never powerplay or use these exploits, so I honestly don't know, but I think people were complaining about the same thing. However, these games have always been, and probably always will be, easy if you want them to be. There's only so much complexity you can add, and once we become familiar with the mechanics, they will inevitably become easy to game.

[Donners]

Isn't there a similar powerplay exploit in TEW 2016? I never powerplay or use these exploits, so I honestly don't know, but I think people were complaining about the same thing. However, these games have always been, and probably always will be, easy if you want them to be. There's only so much complexity you can add, and once we become familiar with the mechanics, they will inevitably become easy to game.

 

There are plenty of exploits, which people can use or avoid - the problem is that the AI uses this one, and it unbalances the game world.