Breaking Into New Markets Too Easy

[praguepride]

This is related to general finance stuff.

 

Also keep in mind these goals:

 

1. The goal isn't to model real life. The goal is create a fun and challenging yet rewarding game
   
2. I know that games can always be broken by dedicated power gamers. The goal isn't to make the game impervious but right now even the AI can get extreme amounts of money and popularity growth
   
3. Number's aren't set in stone. Obviously testing would need to be done. I am putting down numbers as placeholders just to get the conversations going.
   

 

 

Assumption

I think one of the problems is based upon how ratings are viewed outside of their home show. It appears that if I put on an 80 rated show on a global broadcaster that counts as an 80 show everywhere and allows for extreme amounts of rapid growth. However I imagine that if I put that same show on in a region where my workers aren't popular in that the rating would be heavily penalized due to overness caps. That 80 show in my home region might only be a 30 show overseas.

 

Another assumption is that there are no caps to popularity growth in areas that I have not had a show. I think there is a high decay rate but there doesn't seem to be a cap. I believe you can get to 100 pop (or close to it) in an area that you have never visited so long as you have a large broadcaster.

 

I also think these are problems that have been in the game for awhile but because of the new internet broadcaster it is much more accessible to even low level feds.

 

 

Solutions

1. Hard pop caps if you never visit a region. They should be severe, like 17. This should also be effected by spillover so if you go to tri-state then the pop cap for spillover regions raises to 50 or something. It should decay so that within a year or two it is back to that bottom which means that global feds need to be touring CONSTANTLY to maintain their market. While this might not be representative of the real world I feel like maintaining a global level fed should be challenging from a logistics perspective because money is no longer an issue.
    
    
   
2. Pop growth from shows should be scaled based on the difference between the pop wherethe show takes place and where it is being broadcasted modified by location. So spillover regions have very small penalties while different continents should have severe penalties.
    
   So if I do an 80 show in my home region where I am 80 pop and it is broadcast to a place where I am 20 pop then for growth perspective that should translate to something like a 35 show (75% weighted on 20 pop region, 25% rated on show rating). This still allows for growth but much slower if you're not touring and hitting those other regions.
    
   This will help stop companies like EILL from becoming the one of the biggest US companies within a couple of years. Apparently this was also a problem in 2016 where EILL because of broadcasters would be one of the largest US companies within 2-3 years.
    
   
3. Each month based on RNG + Economy + Wrestling Industry should generate a pool of potential customers for that region. As shows happen that pool dries up for the month. That means you can eventually completely saturate a market and have empty shows or close to it. Perhaps based on size there are some minimums but they should be abyssmal ratings and should apply across ALL attendance, be it internet/ppv/house/in-event. Perhaps it is something like %s where as the market is depleted it inflicts 10%-25%-33%-50%-66%-75%-90%-95% attendance penalties. This way constant shows hitting the same market will kill the market for everyone. Tours will have to actually tour and also not tour in the same region as other touring promotions to avoid killing the market.
    
   This also allows for advanced strategies of larger companies flooding the market to kill smaller companies. This is a feature, not a bug and allows for more interesting high level play of squashing rivals before they get big. This is a common tactic used in businesses across the world by absorbing short term losses to avoid long term rivals. Obviously the AI wouldn't do this but players can.
    
   
4. Language barriers should be stronger. Even with subcaptions/voice overs a lot is lost in the translation. Just like workers are penalized on angles for language barriers promotions should be penalized for that as well. It shouldn't be impossible to get to global but honestly I just don't think a US based company should be able to completely dominate a foreign market. There are just too many cultural and language barriers. It should be a huge force but maybe this means some hard pop caps. No more "I'm 100 over the entire world" games.
   

 

 

So what does this mean?

 

1) At low levels (Small and below) almost no change except that it will be more and more difficult to hit a crowded market, as it should be. Places like Southwest and Tri-State should be VERY hard for new companies to grow because they already are being hit with so many promotions already. Meanwhile places like Northwest or Great Lakes should still be easy for a new fed to grow up to small level.

 

2) Medium/Big should require some real challenges. You have to tour and because even with broadcasters you're not seeing huge growth beyond your spillover regions you can still get there but it requires serious planning and roster changes. You might need to dump some guys and bring in some more recognizable names in order to maintain your finances as you break into new markets within your home country/continent.

 

3) Big -> Large is a real roadblock. As it should. You now have to crack a new market which again should require serious disruptions to your logistics. You again need to reach out and revamp your roster to get people over in the markets you want to crack and now you have to tour. This would encourage different shows for different regions as you would probably want to push "home town heroes" higher on the card than normal. Breaking into Canada? Get some popular canadian wrestlers to main event your canadian tours.

 

4) Titanic should be a pain in the A** to maintain. You're constantly losing pop as your caps are dropping, you need to probably develop regional "brands" until your ME is popular enough around the world and should represent a real challenge. Money is no longer an issue but instead it is all about roster management and pop management.

 

 

I welcome feedback and thoughts but please try to keep it constructive. Some of these items might not be feasible but hopefully these discussion can help push the game into practical solutions.

 

Before anyone says "I think it's fine" or "Just don't powergame constant schedules" again these are exploits the AI is doing. EILL probably shouldn't dominate the US market in just a couple of years. It should probably be harder for someone on a global network to just jump to global dominance in a really short time without major overhaul of their roster and business operations. Once money is no longer an issue, my understanding is high level play is very repetitive because ther aren't any real challenges in maintaining a global presence like the items above would present.

[Dross]

This post deserves an award. Seriously, thank you so much for your well laid out and sensible thoughts. This would solve a lot of problems, some of which I haven't even thought of until now.

 

The three biggest takeaways that I *really* hope can be fixed in this iteration of the game:

 

- Have show ratings be contextual: As has been said, it's very unrealistic that workers who have no pop in a foreign region can still produce a match that is an instant classic in said region.

 

- Stop companies from dominating foreign countries: The EILL/SOTBPW problem has been around for a while and I wholeheartedly agree that it is very annoying. Looking at the cultural differences, there is just no way that AAA/CMLL would ever be bigger than the WWE in the States. No way. Ever.

 

- Have pop decay at least for regions where a company is very popular: I think it's very easy IRL for a big company to gain *some* popularity throughout the world (I live in Europe and am very aware of all the big companies in the US and Japan), but there is no way that any company will ever become a cultural phenomenon in regions where they ae not present.

[christmas_ape]

I agree with most of this, the problem definitely exists and these are some interesting solutions.

 

Dross's 3 point do sum it up well. And I strongly agree that language barriers should be much more important. It's easy to think of many different ways you could implement this.

 

I think something like a hard cap (especially as low as you put it) isn't that fair. I completely get your point that game should be geared more towards fun and challenging gameplay than real life, but still to use an example let's say WWE stops visiting Australia (I know it tends to go every so often but let's say they stop), assuming they keep good tv deals/the WWE network is available there I don't think they would lose too much popularity. Maybe there should be a cap but I'd say it should be say 80% of their home region popularity or something like that.

 

One idea I like though would be to use this in the area battles. For example... USPW and RAW start in an area battle.. I'd suggest that USPW get a big penalty if they haven't physically put on a show in Australia. So this wouldn't by itself make expanding into areas much harder, but it means once you hit the point where you're actually competing with the home promotions you have to be putting on much better shows to out-do the 'locals'.

[Teh_Showtime]

I think this is a magnificent suggestion to the point where the only thing I thought wouldn’t work is that as proposed, a Large/Titanic brand could just have house shows in every region of the world to maintain their popularity which is pretty much the same as it is now.

 

Maybe requiring areas to have “big” events (not house shows) makes sense in that context. If you’re required to have 1 per year to maintain “Big” status in a foreign country, then when you have every region covered you might be running more international PPV events than domestic, which is exactly how a truly global company should feel.

[praguepride]

<p>I dont think it should be impossible but having to put on house shows all over the world should require a massive roster of people popular around the world. If you can do that, then I think you really are titanic.</p><p> </p><p>

It would make sense IRL if WWE had a WWE Japan brand and a WWE lucha brand to capture those markets. </p><p> </p><p>

The point isnt to make it frustrating but to have to adopt a different mindset and strategy to grow/maintain at global levels.</p>

[christmas_ape]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="praguepride" data-cite="praguepride" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="50610" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>I dont think it should be impossible but having to put on house shows all over the world should require a massive roster of people popular around the world. If you can do that, then I think you really are titanic.<p> </p><p> It would make sense IRL if WWE had a WWE Japan brand and a WWE lucha brand to capture those markets. </p><p> </p><p> The point isnt to make it frustrating but to have to adopt a different mindset and strategy to grow/maintain at global levels.</p></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> I think working that into my point before, where if a company doesn't hold a show in a game area it's penalised in area battles, perhaps house shows could be used to lessen (although not completely remove) this effect. </p><p> </p><p> I think even if international house shows didn't require huge roster, as long as the costs of travel and production were very high there would still be the interesting trade of how much money are you willing to spend to keep popularity in a region that isn't your base.</p>

[Teh_Showtime]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="praguepride" data-cite="praguepride" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="50610" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>I dont think it should be impossible but having to put on house shows all over the world should require a massive roster of people popular around the world. If you can do that, then I think you really are titanic.<p> </p><p> It would make sense IRL if WWE had a WWE Japan brand and a WWE lucha brand to capture those markets. </p><p> </p><p> The point isnt to make it frustrating but to have to adopt a different mindset and strategy to grow/maintain at global levels.</p></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> At that point you’ll be swimming in money so you don’t care what the actual house shows draw, so you can just put anybody on the house show roster and reap the benefits that stop decay. Unless you could get penalties for house shows not having enough stars or something else like that, which encourages regional talent.</p>

[njmcfreak]

Absolutely beautiful post.

[Taker4455]

This might be the best post and suggestion I have ever seen on here. I really, really hope Adam reads it.

[absolutelyridiculous]

Gains via broadcaster should be very low, and/or foreign companies shouldn't have access to top-top level broadcasters as easily as they do. Look at WWE's real life TV situation in the UK, they don't do huge numbers there. For one obvious issue, it's not live prime time TV so either it's on at 1 in the morning or it's on the next day and the hardcore fans go in spoiled.

 

But US <----> Canada and to a lesser extent UK <----> Europe and Mexico <----> US/Canada (same time zone but more distinct culturally/linguistically) shouldn't be hit by the time zone, live TV issues.

 

So I'd like this to be nerfed, but I'd also like something on the other side that helps your pop growth abroad if your company features a big name from the region as a Star/Major Star. I can see how calculating what region someone is from can be trickier than it sounds, especially in deeper games where the current system spits out guys with 70 pop all over the world like it's nothing. A Mexican guy who for whatever reason has 80 pop in Australia and 10 pop in Mexico should count as an Australian star, not a Mexican star for example.

[CloudyDay]

Wow this is fantastic, would love this in the game.