Pre-live: Popularity

[paul.cockburn]

I'm mystified by my current game. My band's popularity has reached 16 in its home city, 83 total (I assume this is what 16/83 means). Our manager is saying we don't have the popularity generally to get a record deal. Seeing that made me realise I hadn't seen a Pop +1 flag at a gig in forever. What drives this? We are selling (cheap) t-shirts by the 100s; we give away CDs, and we perform monster theatre gigs... but we are stuck at this level of Pop.

Three things have happened in this game that I wonder of they influence this. One, my Manager only books 700+ audience gigs... is Pop driven only by small venues? Two, I lost a band member and we are struggling to get our Playing Skill back to the same level. Three, I blew a recording deal before because I can't read the difference between Song Quality and Recording Quality... doh! Logically, I can see a penalty to getting a new deal because of this, but does it also affect Pop?

[katzowy90]

It was sad it's hard to get another record deal if you blew previous one :P. Yeah your pop is pretty small, 83 is your total popularity so if in your home city you have 16 then the rest is 67 which means you have 1-2 popularity in cities in nearby states/countries : D. Popularity is mainly gained from CD charts, you can occasionaly get pop from shows when:
- texts about "drinks" and "scout from laber" appear in post show summary
- you won BoB
- you played a hit song/s in the venue 1500+ (idk its still works, because something was changed in those hits songs which constantly gained pop even if it maxed in Canada update from november 2020)

of course first two are totally random

unfortunetly there's no other ways to manage popularity. I hope and finger crossing there gonna something coming in next big update and we be able to do interviews, perform in radio/tv or sign cd in clubs/pubs where are NPC.

It's quite unrealistic that game forcing you to making album every ingame year.

[Bohemian Rap City]

did you miss any gigs?

[Bohemian Rap City]

Blowing a gig pisses off the club and seriously drops it.

[paul.cockburn]

No, the only thing I did wrong was mess up the record contract. It looks like you are right, katowyz90... Popularity depends on record sales (I've checked another save). Now, if that only rises with chart records, I'm sunk, since I can't get a deal. I'll try self-releasing some CDs and touring the heck out of them to get the points I need.

[grrizo]

Start doing tours, rise the pop outside your town. You're going to have more attention for your next release and you'll be busy doing stuff until a record label is interested in you again (it might take 6 months, probably)

[paul.cockburn]

Useful advice... I'll add that to the plan.

[wotA]

I blew 2 record deals. Give it time, you'll get another deal. Just takes time.

[grrizo]

The only downside of tours is the money, they can be expensive.

[Lora Craft69]

Mowing the grass can help with the travel costs.

[paul.cockburn]

Tours actually make me money... which is what is so frustrating. We can play theatres, and even the odd arena, on tour, and make loads of cash. But popularity doesn't rise at all. I feel certain now that there needs to be better linkage between successful concerts and local pop. The update, after two month-long tours (so 40-50 dates) is Pop has risen from 83 to... 85. I am certain that you need the RNG to give you a drunk audience to get a rise in Pop after a gig, I am also wondering if that outcome is even possible in theatres. My next plan is to play every club (700 capacity) I can find. Oh, and releasing my own CDs hasn't helped at all. CDs need to chart if they are to help Pop, and that means a record deal.

[Bohemian Rap City]

You have to admit, in a lot of ways this sim has become much more realistic. There are some awesome live bands that never made the big time as studio artists and vice versa. All the improbabilities and conjecture on what you need to do to be successful can make it frustrating. In the end your band will sink or swim on their own merits.

[flu007]

I'm having sort-of the opposite problem. The record contracts offered to me are too high for the skill levels of my songwriters.

My band's popularity is 14/126.
I have music writers at skill 65 and 84, and a lyrics writer at skill 55.
The highest riff/melody etc puzzle piece I've gotten was a 17, the highest lyrics piece a 7. (Always at 100% inspiration.)
The record contracts offered are a mix between qual. 90 and 70 requirements. There's no way we can fulfill that at the moment.

The above are the stats in Dec. 06, but the issue has been the same for a while. I didn't record an independent CD (yet) and waited until my guys could handle quality 30+ songs before asking for a record deal, which was maybe May or June, but then the only contracts offered were qual.70.

A bit of guesswork at what's behind the issue here:
Am I right in assuming that the level of record deal offered is tied to popularity, rather than to the musician's skills? That would seem to be the logical conclusion when looking at my numbers here.

If that's the case, perhaps this balance needs some tweaking.
- I only have one 18 month game on non-pre-live to compare to, but leveling up seems to have been slowed down a little in this new version? That may be just an impression though.
- What's not an impression is that I'm definitely getting lower quality puzzle pieces than I was getting at this stage in my non-pre game. But I don't know if that's plain old bad luck or if that was a programming tweak.
- I don't remember my popularity in my previous game, but I'm assuming it wasn't quite this high at this stage, almost a year in. A factor there is that I started this game in Western Europe, with lots of cities within driving distance around me, and I've been doing plenty of local gigs in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Germany. Perhaps this has made my popularity a bit artificially high for a 1 year old band without any CD released, compared to if I had started in the USA with only 8-10ish cities within a 1 day drive, rather than 25+?

Anyway, I assume it's an issue which will probably sort itself out once my band members level up a bit more, so perhaps it's not exactly a problem that needs a lot of sorting out, but since this is a test version, I figured I'd type it out, perhaps there's some helpful info in there.

(Cool game by the way, been hooked on it for a few days now.)

[paul.cockburn]

Levelling up has definitely been slowed down, at the same time as the cap was raised from 30 to 50.

I *think* I'm right about smaller (bars and clubs) venues as being the only ones which trigger local popularity, which seems odd. I can play in front of 5,000 people, and that does nothing, but a few drunks at a 500 venue, and it's Pop +1.

I've dragged myself up to Pop 114 now; still no deal. I'm gonna try a bigger city so I can get more gigs like this. I think headlining is a big plus too.

[flu007]

Yeah, after reading this topic, I paid attention to it the last few hours, and the drinking or talent scout thing triggering +1 popularity does only seem to happen in smaller venues. Indeed a bit odd.

Winning a Battle of the Bands competition is a good way to raise it as well (by +2 or +3 usually.) And those can happen in the 200-700 type venues as well.
(From what I can gather, when your popularity in a city is 0-5, you qualify for BotB in the small venues, like bars and clubs, and at pop 6-10 in the 200+ venues.)

As for my own "issue," bad puzzle piece RNG seems to at least have been a part of the issue, as I got a few better pieces shortly after writing my post. Have since leveled my composers a bit more and we're ok now. The lyrics writer is lagging behind a bit, but we can scrape it above 70 now, so we're working on our first album.

(I wouldn't mind being able to save more than 10 pieces though, now that the attitudes and musicianship add several more factors to take into account.)

[Yeol]

Flu007, at completely confirm your observation and experience from your first post here above. I'm in that same situation where popularity is growing faster then my skills. I'm six month in the game, song quality is far below standard (5-12) and CD-contracts with minimum level 30, and now 70, are totally unreacheable. So I'm playing gigs like mad, to gain experience for song writing, but my popularity is rising faster (same region of Belgium and surrounding countries)

I believe a little tuning of the outcome of music puzzle pieces (raising the chance to have +1 pieces at -20 song writing skills). The start is a little too slow and became very grindy to reach CD-recording level.