Extremely low attendances

[Questlove]

Attendances in TEW 2020 were definitely on the high side and needed to be reduced, but I feel it's been extremely overtuned to an almost comical degree. For an exaggerated example, I started a test save with WWE set to 100 popularity in an average industry and above average economy and for TV they drew 8.3k, 3.6k, 9.9k, 9.8k, 8.6k, 5.5k, 8.3k, 10.2k, 6.4k and 7.4k. I also added an event set to 100 importance and it drew only 50k. In a version with a more reasonable popularity of 80, they drew between 3-5k for TV and below 10k for events. These are AEW numbers but I don't think anybody would reasonably suggest they be given popularity that high.

For comparison's sake, WWE in real life right now are doing anything between 8-12k for TV every single week and had a stretch of months where they didn't drop below 10k. During their hottest period, they were doing 12-15k every week for TV and for Wrestlemanias, they obviously get anywhere from 70-100k, numbers which don't even seem possible now - especially in a scenario for an AEW who wouldn't be anywhere even slightly approaching 100 popularity but still managed to draw 72k last year and usually get about 5k a week for TV.

While TV being put closer in line with events was a great change because event attendance was always too high, I feel the better change would just have been to keep TV attendance roughly where it was in 2020 (or maybe not even touch it at all, it was fine) but cut event attendance, making sure that extreme numbers you'd see at Wrestlemania or All In for example were possible, but only with the highest event importance level, which doesn't seem to give a strong enough buff as things stand.

I was thinking in the meantime I could just fudge the numbers with an era, but then I realized that attendances are actually pretty okay the further down you go - a company with 35 popularity can draw about 700 people for example, so if I'm doubling the attendance slider in the era just to get an 80 pop company to draw 10k fans, I'll also have a situation where a company with 45 pop will draw like 3k per show. It seems that at some point you just stop gaining attendance at any reasonable level as your popularity increases, like a sliding scale of incredibly diminishing returns.

Edited August 11 by Questlove

[diamondium]

Out of curiosity, what are you using for ticket prices & industry/economy in that test run (I don't know if momentum also factors in but could be worth noting as well)? Both of those weigh into it as well so should be controlled factors. One more factor, was the 100 importance event marked as a season finale? I'm curious if that 50k is with that marked yes or no.

It could be within reason if the game is assuming IRL WWE is as big as a wrestling company gets, which means near-100, and the test is during a weak-to-average wrestling industry/economy. IRL today's wrestling industry would be rated as hot as it's been in like 20 years, and WWE has drawn close to your 80 pop numbers when certain points of the late 2000s & mid 2010s when the industry & company was much cooler.

I do suspect the current numbers are definitely a bit on the low side for sure, especially since IRL WWE is probably equivalent to a premium priced TEW company, but yeah one should make sure the above factors are correct to know just how off they are.

From a gameplay perpsective, I'd personally rather it be challenging to get good attendances as the current version of reigned in big company finances makes long-term saves far nicer than seeing every big company have unlimited money, but there's room for tweaking them for sure.

Edited August 11 by diamondium

[VBigB]

56 minutes ago, diamondium said:

From a gameplay perpsective, I'd personally rather it be challenging to get good attendances as the current version of reigned in big company finances makes long-term saves far nicer than seeing every big company have unlimited money, but there's room for tweaking them for sure.

This is pretty much my opinion as well. Hopefully after enough long term tests, Adam just tweaks things appropriately. 

[Questlove]

1 hour ago, diamondium said:

Out of curiosity, what are you using for ticket prices & industry/economy in that test run (I don't know if momentum also factors in but could be worth noting as well)? Both of those weigh into it as well so should be controlled factors. One more factor, was the 100 importance event marked as a season finale? I'm curious if that 50k is with that marked yes or no.

It could be within reason if the game is assuming IRL WWE is as big as a wrestling company gets, which means near-100, and the test is during a weak-to-average wrestling industry/economy. IRL today's wrestling industry would be rated as hot as it's been in like 20 years, and WWE has drawn close to your 80 pop numbers when certain points of the late 2000s & mid 2010s when the industry & company was much cooler.

I do suspect the current numbers are definitely a bit on the low side for sure, especially since IRL WWE is probably equivalent to a premium priced TEW company, but yeah one should make sure the above factors are correct to know just how off they are.

From a gameplay perpsective, I'd personally rather it be challenging to get good attendances as the current version of reigned in big company finances makes long-term saves far nicer than seeing every big company have unlimited money, but there's room for tweaking them for sure.

Ticket prices were untouched as those numbers were just from the AI running them. The event wasn't set as a season finale, but in another test they got similar numbers for Wrestlemania, so I'm unsure if the boost for that is much if anything.

I agree it's good that it's challenging to get higher attendances, but if you're not getting realistically achievable attendances at 100 popularity, that's less a challenge and more just being broken. Theoretically at 100 pop you've already weathered any challenges there are and climbed as high as you possibly can, so if you're still not doing better numbers than that, what's left to improve for the player?

WWE is hot but it's hard to say they are both as hot as they've ever been and literally as hot as a wrestling company can possibly be, especially when we know they aren't - they've had better numbers in the past. Hell, until recently, it wasn't a rare occurrence at all to see AEW getting attendances the likes of which you now see for companies with 80-100 popularity, and it feels like lunacy to suggest that's where they should sit at any point in their history.

[TheDeep5ix]

I was going to bring up how TEW 9 has an Attendance section under Eras, but I see you already mentioned how that would overtune lower companies. I wouldn't be surprised if some tweaks happened to the attendance number in a future patch, at least on the higher end since the lower end seems fine at the current level.

[Questlove]

Just to make sure it wasn't a weird mod issue I hadn't thought of, here are the numbers for the first month of USPW set at 100 popularity in the CVerse in a Strong industry.

[DanLockey25]

I’ve just come to book All In on an AEW save I’m doing on the converted RWC mod, and even with 60 popularity in the UK, Economy effects turned off and tickets set to very cheap, I’m still only being forecast 19,000. I’ve also set it to be my season finale. I know attendances were adjusted from 2020, so wondered if this needs to be tweaked. 

[Thane of Fife]

Have you tried messing with the momentum of these companies? The handbook says that this can impact the attendance (9.4), and I feel like it would be reasonable to say that WWE and AEW have or have had fairly high momentum in recent years.

[Questlove]

4 hours ago, Thane of Fife said:

Have you tried messing with the momentum of these companies? The handbook says that this can impact the attendance (9.4), and I feel like it would be reasonable to say that WWE and AEW have or have had fairly high momentum in recent years.

WWE are set to maximum momentum, makes no difference.

[TheDeep5ix]

If you feel the numbers are too low, you can also modify the Era by boosting the Attendance section from 100% up to 500%. Just note that all other events would also get a similar boost.

Have you also tried to boosting the importance of the Wembley event to see if that would affect ticket sales?

It is odd since Wembley is a huge outlier for AEW events in general regarding attendance, so it's hard to simulate that in TEW without inflating Popularity or other metrics.

[Adam Ryland]

9 hours ago, DanLockey25 said:

I’ve just come to book All In on an AEW save I’m doing on the converted RWC mod, and even with 60 popularity in the UK, Economy effects turned off and tickets set to very cheap, I’m still only being forecast 19,000. I’ve also set it to be my season finale. I know attendances were adjusted from 2020, so wondered if this needs to be tweaked. 

NB Moved to the Suggestions forum.

AEW are a bit of an outlier because their events, being relatively new, have little in the way of prestige and so (even with a season finale) you don't get access to the higher levels of attendances. For simulation purposes, database makers might want to consider upping the prestige levels to unrealistic levels in order to achieve attendances that are closer to reality.

[Questlove]

1 hour ago, Adam Ryland said:

NB Moved to the Suggestions forum.

AEW are a bit of an outlier because their events, being relatively new, have little in the way of prestige and so (even with a season finale) you don't get access to the higher levels of attendances. For simulation purposes, database makers might want to consider upping the prestige levels to unrealistic levels in order to achieve attendances that are closer to reality.

Since this is RWC it should be set to 100% importance. I'm not sure if the importance boost is big enough, I've not tested it much yet, but my gut feeling is there should be an absolutely enormous boost for anything specifically on 100% and it's not quite strong enough at the moment.

This does go hand in hand with the issues I've noticed and have posted about in the other thread (linked below), maybe worth a merge?

 

[Big Roguey]

Merged both threads since they're about the same topic (I had to go and eat a bagel first).

[FINisher]

I have no affinity for real life mods, since I always think that they can never copy the real world to the extent that they should. Plus it's all subjective, I'd rate everything 20-40 points lower than what people think the stats should be, but that's a discussion for another time.

If the balance of attendance has been adjusted for the sake of game balance purposes and not realism, I'm fine with these lower numbers, if it means that the overall game world in Cornellverse will stay more balanced. That's the most important thing in the game, that things stay in balance and in general, in working order. How do we even know how many people are alive in the Cornellverse, maybe there's half less population and those numbers are amazing in that world. After all, it is all done so that Cornellverse works.

[Questlove]

1 hour ago, FINisher said:

I have no affinity for real life mods, since I always think that they can never copy the real world to the extent that they should. Plus it's all subjective, I'd rate everything 20-40 points lower than what people think the stats should be, but that's a discussion for another time.

If the balance of attendance has been adjusted for the sake of game balance purposes and not realism, I'm fine with these lower numbers, if it means that the overall game world in Cornellverse will stay more balanced. That's the most important thing in the game, that things stay in balance and in general, in working order. How do we even know how many people are alive in the Cornellverse, maybe there's half less population and those numbers are amazing in that world. After all, it is all done so that Cornellverse works.

No offence, but "broken and unrealistic attendance is fine because we don't know how many people are alive to attend in the CVerse" feels like we might as well just be saying "who cares about literally any weird stuff happening, it could just be that way in the CVerse". Are we saying it's impossible to balance for slightly more realistic attendance and we shouldn't even try because the fake universe that ships with the game has rules of its own that we can entirely make up as we go along? Why don't we just go the other way in that case and say an "unbalanced" CVerse is also fine lmao

Edited August 12 by Questlove

[Adam Ryland]

Let's stop that nonsense right there, please. We don't make the attendances (or any other numbers) to fit the CornellVerse, we try to make them match reality as close as possible and then work the default data around that.

I've adjusted the TV attendance figures in the next patch to try and bring them closer to what was requested.

[Questlove]

8 hours ago, Adam Ryland said:

Let's stop that nonsense right there, please. We don't make the attendances (or any other numbers) to fit the CornellVerse, we try to make them match reality as close as possible and then work the default data around that.

I've adjusted the TV attendance figures in the next patch to try and bring them closer to what was requested.

I'm not really seeing much if any change after installing the new patch. Here are attendances for USPW (buffed to 100 popularity, just as an extreme example), SWF (default 78 popularity) and TCW (default 75 popularity) in the first month with a High & Rising industry setting plus Very High economy:

Still far, far too low in my opinion.

Edited August 12 by Questlove

[JMaestro]

45 minutes ago, Questlove said:

I'm not really seeing much if any change after installing the new patch. Here are attendances for USPW (buffed to 100 popularity, just as an extreme example), SWF (default 78 popularity) and TCW (default 75 popularity) in the first month with a High & Rising industry setting plus Very High economy:

Still far, far too low in my opinion.

Can't you just adjust this in the era like was suggested earlier? As wrestling is definitely going through a boom period at the moment.

15,000 for RAW recently was the highest it's been in 5 years, it's generally all over the place week to week which doesn't really translate in TEW and I'm guessing would be too difficult to do that also.

WWE get huge attendances for their big shows and much less for the other PLE's(generally). 

[Questlove]

Just now, JMaestro said:

Can't you just adjust this in the era like was suggested earlier? As wrestling is definitely going through a boom period at the moment.

15,000 for RAW recently was the highest it's been in 5 years, it's generally all over the place week to week which doesn't really translate in TEW and I'm guessing would be too difficult to do that also.

WWE get huge attendances for their big shows and much less for the other PLE's(generally). 

I could, but it seems unnecessary to do that and mess up the entire game world just to fix 2 companies when attendance lower down the scale actually works pretty well.

If wrestling is currently going through a boom period and the numbers are significantly higher than in a TEW-simulated boom period even with a company set to 100 popularity something's clearly off.

[JMaestro]

2 hours ago, Questlove said:

I could, but it seems unnecessary to do that and mess up the entire game world just to fix 2 companies when attendance lower down the scale actually works pretty well.

If wrestling is currently going through a boom period and the numbers are significantly higher than in a TEW-simulated boom period even with a company set to 100 popularity something's clearly off.

Is it not about a balancing act too though gameplay wise?

[FINisher]

9 minutes ago, JMaestro said:

Is it not about a balancing act too though gameplay wise?

This.

[VBigB]

Just to better understand the data have you spot checked where some of those shows were held (just double click on the show in the list), because isn't the other factor in attendance the potential fan base of the game area it's held in. Just looking at my own save I'm sure at least some of those shows on the list were with a potential fan base of 100% (such as Tri State) but it's worth verifying that there isn't something else going on.

[Questlove]

2 hours ago, VBigB said:

Just to better understand the data have you spot checked where some of those shows were held (just double click on the show in the list), because isn't the other factor in attendance the potential fan base of the game area it's held in. Just looking at my own save I'm sure at least some of those shows on the list were with a potential fan base of 100% (such as Tri State) but it's worth verifying that there isn't something else going on.

They're all over the US really. I would argue that a 100 pop company holding an event in the ass end of nowhere should be getting far higher numbers than that though

5 hours ago, JMaestro said:

Is it not about a balancing act too though gameplay wise?

Yes but I already had this conversation and Adam made it pretty clear the aim is for the numbers to be realistic, hence the patch. If revenue gets increased too much (you SHOULD be getting a lot of money in ticket sales with high attendance though, kind of how that works, but the cost of getting it should also be high) then it would need to be brought in line a little. I'm not asking for one or the other here lol

Edited August 13 by Questlove

[Adam Ryland]

14 hours ago, Questlove said:

I'm not really seeing much if any change after installing the new patch.

That was my mistake, I had put them in 'test' mode while running simulations and forgotten to switch it back before releasing the patch. 1.14 will have the new figures enabled.

[Questlove]

18 minutes ago, Adam Ryland said:

That was my mistake, I had put them in 'test' mode while running simulations and forgotten to switch it back before releasing the patch. 1.14 will have the new figures enabled.

That explains it, I actually reinstalled the patch to make sure I hadn't messed it up somehow 😅