POPULARITY CHALLENGE

[Bohemian Rap City]

The challenge is simple. Can you raise popularity in the new game without winning Battle of the Bands competitions? Please create your band on Hard Mode and post pertinent data here. If you do NOT wish to accept the challenge, PLEASE do NOT post a response.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2837107441

This is my new band, Dreadnought. It was created on hard mode and all members have 50 ego. I based them in Wichita Falls, TX. and they have one member with Playing Skill, a leader with Stage Presence, two members with Music writing and one with Lyrics. No business, production, or repair specialist.

If you wish to accept the challenge, please post your band makeup and start location here and update the thread every 2 months YOU DO NOT NEED TO CHOOSE THE SAME EGO OR SKILLS THAT I HAVE, but you do need to use HARD mode and maintain updates.

The real challenge is to see when you have a popularity high enough to get a manager. My rule of thumb for finding a manager is 6-7 month mark. Many people feel that it is impossible (under the new update) to meet this goal without the popularity boost of winning one or more Battles.

I hope I can interest at least a few of our community to take on this challenge.

[Eeyore Donkey Donk]

Challenge accepted:
My new band is the Start Of The Breakdown, hard mode, all members 50 ego. They are based in Glasgow, Scotland. Leader has Stage Presence, 2 songwriters, 1 lyricist and 1 production .. nobody knows how to play their instruments yet :) No repair or business skills.

Starting attitudes are the ever popular Sex, Partying, Drug Addiction .. cause well sex, drugs, rock & roll is our forte - and we catch 3 lucky breaks, Partying is the base attitude in Scotland, Drug Addiction is the base attitude in England, and Basic Musicianship is popular befitting our lack of any playing skills.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2837133125

This looks like fun.

[Bohemian Rap City]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2837201356

OK, as you can see, I am 2 months into the game. I spent week 1 busking and writing crap songs. As soon as I had 6 songs I stopped writing and started looking for gigs. I booked my first gig on Jan 14. It was a disaster. I had the next 6 weekends booked solid, with one exception. I took a gig on Sat, Feb 25 headlining for $117. It was a 70 seat venue that only had 19 people buy tickets, but I got paid.

Just after that gig, I drove to Lawton, Ft. Worth, and Dallas looking to see if I could get a manager. As you can see, my current Regional popularity is 1, which means any lvl 1 or 2 manager should sign me. Unfortunately the closest i could find was lvl 3 in Dallas, and he said come back when I gain half a point.

I am mainly busking for jobs (which raises my popularity) rather than accepting other types of work. I did accept the trash a hotel gig, but my pay for busking is now over $170/day which is better when you consider the popularity bonus.

I seriously am hoping to find a manager in Norman or Oklahoma City that will take us as we are. If not, I am hoping that by the end of March my popularity will be above 1.5 and I can get the Dallas manager to sign me.

I have been spreading my exp pretty evenly for all musicians. The only points spent outside of Writing, Playing (after busking to 20), and Stage Presence has been 4 points in Business and 13 in Production for Tank. Everyone else is focused on the top 4 skills.

We started the game with zero popular attitudes, but now have two with a local Texas shared attitude as well.

[Eeyore Donkey Donk]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2837256118

2 month check in. We spent our initial money on busking instruments at a discount store, and a trip to a standard music store for gear to get ourselves a bit of a boost early on playing and songwriting as need be. Fender Stratocaster/Marshall MG15MSII, Fender Jazz Bass/Hartke B900, Korg TR88/Roland KC150, Pearl Export ELX824B, Shure Beta 58A - nobody has purchased any effects yet as all our money goes into purchasing barely broken gear that we can further break while learning to repair it; and paying van repairs due to my terrible driving. Oh and we also bought nice band t-shirts on our first day so we could ditch the gray ones.

I kind of gooched myself accepting a gig offer from a friend band on automatic pilot, registering in my brain it was for a battle of the bands only after saying yes. So .. I skipped the gig, and took the -19 hit to reputation with one of the 3 small clubs in town. I have since been going to watch gigs at that club to regain my reputation on weekend nights when I am not playing a gig. Our day is spent further breaking gear in attempts to repair it, busking and then either writing a song or practicing. I never bother doing any jobs with other bands, so decided to keep with my tradition here, all we do is busk and mow lawns.

We have played 4 gigs so far, all were offers to play with from bands we've befriended watching shows. We have never left Glasgow, so every night we either practice or write a song. There is a very strict division of labor with regards to songwriting. This is due to my inexperience of dealing with band attitudes, and since I followed BRC's lead of creating the whole band, thus getting all with an ego of 50, I figured I should learn how to deal with them. My usual method is to hire and fire until eventually I get a band with everyone under at least 35 ego, so this is an extra challenge for me. It was very apparent that repairing gear and writing songs is what keeps the minions happy.

The bandleader has Stage Presence, so she has zero into songwriting and lyrics, she splits her points on level up between Stage Presence and Playing. The only time I even bother combining any of her ideas is if it's just a "dump ideas prior to practice" night, and nobody else has any matching pairs, so that the production guy gets a +13 happiness boost for developing the ideas. That is because in my mind if she participates in songwriting she will be siphoning off potential happiness from other band members, and as leader she doesn't need to be kept happy. The 2 songwriters and the 1 lyricist split their points as 2 points to their main skill and 1 point each to Playing and Stage Presence. The fifth band member has production as a skill, and after putting 10 points into repair at the start to get us going on our hopeful instrument repair business. He splits his points now 1 or 2 to production, the other points between Playing and Stage Presence. I try to feature a contribution from each songwriter and the lyricist, so I know all three will get good vibrations from their songs being played at gigs as well as the buzz from helping write a song. The producer has no extra points other than gear bonuses to songwriting, but I'll use a few of his ideas now and then as a 4th wheel if I can in a song so he can also be happy during a gig.

The instrument repair business is just starting to come together to where we are starting to repair all the gear we reduced to red quality. And then the accident... I got distracted and drove the van into the side of a wall, and could not afford the van repairs or hospital bills, so we spent the month of February driving really slowly and way under our potential health. We finally got the van repaired at over $2400 on the 27th, but I haven't given the band any rest days nor been able to visit the hospital so health for all is at 82.

We've played a total of 4 gigs and sold 4 t-shirts. Most all our revenue comes from busking which we do every day unless we are mowing a lawn, though we are just now starting to be able to sell repaired gear so that revenue stream should open up. We've written 21 songs, forgotten/salvaged 11 of them, none in the archive at this point. We haven't made any contact yet with a manager, as we are at 0.98 popularity, and at this point I'm still upgrading our songlist to where everything is above 25 quality, which is typically my target for when I think we're ready to try booking gigs, rather than just play when invited.

Days Practiced 38, Days Rested 0.

[Eeyore Donkey Donk]

I made the rounds of clubs on March 5th signing up for gigs (all but the club that I skipped the gig at hired me), and then at 0.99 popularity visited all the managers in Glasgow. The level 6 manager (the lowest ranking on here) said I need to have popularity of 3.00 before he'd take me on. Next step I think will be to start lining up some out of town gigs to fill in the empty weekend slots for this month.

[jfoytek]

Interesting challenge, however now that I am back I just want to try things out in a natural way to see how the game is currently flowing maybe if I am still interested after my current band run I might give this challenge a go... but for now I just want to see how the new updates make the game feel.... if their has been improvement or not...

[Bohemian Rap City]

Originally posted by Eeyore Donkey Donk:

I kind of gooched myself accepting a gig offer from a friend band on automatic pilot, registering in my brain it was for a battle of the bands only after saying yes. So .. I skipped the gig, and took the -19 hit to reputation with one of the 3 small clubs in town. I have since been going to watch gigs at that club to regain my reputation on weekend nights when I am not playing a gig. Our day is spent further breaking gear in attempts to repair it, busking and then either writing a song or practicing. I never bother doing any jobs with other bands, so decided to keep with my tradition here, all we do is busk and mow lawns.

I did not mean everyone had to stick with first band. It might have been interesting to see how far firing/replacing band members might have set you back. In my own game, I do not have a Mongo repair bot, nor have I used my repair attempts to try to raise the skill. I repair through music stores and buy/sell/replace as needed.

I did notice after my 2 month posting that my popularity has stayed locked at 1.0 for the next month. I will be reporting my month 4 asap.

[Eeyore Donkey Donk]

I started March at 0.99 and am at 1.00 on April 23rd at the moment, I believe there might be a hard cap of 1.00 without winning any battles. We went from playing only 4 invite gigs to all weekends full and headlining, and our popularity only went up +0.01.

[Bohemian Rap City]

Originally posted by Eeyore Donkey Donk:

I started March at 0.99 and am at 1.00 on April 23rd at the moment, I believe there might be a hard cap of 1.00 without winning any battles. We went from playing only 4 invite gigs to all weekends full and headlining, and our popularity only went up +0.01.

If that is truly the case with the hard cap, it is exactly why I wanted this challenge. I intend to push on with this band regardless until I find a manager. My current surrounding cities have no managers below level 3 so I may have to travel to find one.

***UPDATE***

I found and signed with a lvl 1 Manager in Waco on April 3.

[Eeyore Donkey Donk]

Looks like there is a hard cap of 1.00 if you do not play any battles. We were at 1.00 and played our last gig of April and had a cable cut out and so went down to 0.99 to finish the month, we started this two month stretch at 0.98. Our songbook is 14 songs (4 songs in the 50's, 6 songs in the 40's, and 4 songs in the upper 30's), enough material of a quality that would qualify for a first album. I personally think we are a much better band than our 0.99 popularity lets on.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2837614751

Band leader maxed out her Stage Presence with enough extra points she can continue to use her Ash Strat Vintage White forever, and is now splitting her points between Playing and Business, since if we're going to do this without a manager at least she'll get us good deals. Because she doesn't participate in songwriting or repair she is now 3 levels behind the rest of the band, she is a level 13, the rest are level 16. Everyone else has been splitting points with primary skill and playing/stage presence and all are around 60 primary and 30ish in the others. We have two band members now with repair skills over 90, and two others in the 70s. Interesting in that RNG seems to favor some with a natural ability over others.

The lowest ranking manager anywhere within 1 day driving distance of Glasgow is a level 3, and he said we need to be 1.5 to hire him. If indeed there is a cap of 1.0 without battles, then we will be SOL unless we can hire someone further away. The problem there is we would not want to be gigging that far away from our home, and managers ability decreases from out of their home city and diminishes the further they get. I would envision if we were to find a level 2 manager somewhere in England that they would be pretty much useless to get us any gigs in Scotland anyhow.

I'm going to keep going with this band and see if I can max them out to level 50, maxed out stats, and all the finest equipment available, with song quality in the 70-100 range, heavy with 100s, and see if we can write hit songs .... all the while maintaining our low profile 1.00 popularity. Our current new goal is to become the greatest undiscovered band in RS2.

Total Money Earned $17,960
Songs Written 44 - Songs Forgotten 29
Gigs 21
money from gigs $541
money from tee shirts $700
Days practiced 76
Days rested 0

I think we're going to record an EP to sell at gigs for this next stretch to get a bit more money. at this point most of our money comes from busking and equipment repairs.

[Bohemian Rap City]

***4 Month Update***

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2837638445

The hard cap hurt, but at the March 3 mark I drove to Waco (245 miles) and found a lvl 1 manager who signed and immediately got me my 4 highest paying gigs, unfortunately, the next 3 weekends were booked solid by me so it will be month 4 before I can reap the reward.

He also rapidly gained 2 levels booking gigs for me, and is consistently keeping me 5 weeks of bookings in advance. All of the ones, so far, are headlining for fees ranging from $350-$600 with a sole $98 gig thrown in as an outlier.

I decided to stop booking gigs and see if he could get me a record deal, but after 2 weeks of his saying I needed to give up looking, I took his advice. Therefore, I only have the next 3 weekends booked but anticipate he will soon get more gigs for me.

I am pretty evenly distributing skills, as I know the lowest level record deals only demand 20 point songs. I am easily reaching that mark now, and decided to hold back any push to crank out better songs. I am curious to see whether I can continue to pace the AI by not skilling my band faster than the 'industry' demands.

My lone exception is playing skill, as I want to be able to quickly rehearse songs in advance of gigs.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2837643667

In regards to band happiness, I only use repair skill attempts (all members are still only 1 skill point) on triple exp days. Even so, the only unhappiness I ever see in my band is when a random event or injury affects happiness.

[Eeyore Donkey Donk]

I'm curious at what point a manager might reach out to a band to hire them, and if it's only the level 50 managers to a band that is in their 20's or so with hits and so forth like I've experienced. It might be interesting if there is some possibility that level 3 manager would deign to give us a shot even though we're 1.00 instead of the lofty 1.50 he requires, maybe if we have songs that are hits in the pubs and clubs in Scotland and are selling our EPs and tees.

[Bohemian Rap City]

Originally posted by Eeyore Donkey Donk:

I'm curious at what point a manager might reach out to a band to hire them, and if it's only the level 50 managers to a band that is in their 20's or so with hits and so forth like I've experienced. It might be interesting if there is some possibility that level 3 manager would deign to give us a shot even though we're 1.00 instead of the lofty 1.50 he requires, maybe if we have songs that are hits in the pubs and clubs in Scotland and are selling our EPs and tees.

My only experience with this is the high level manager reaching out. That band was in the middle of a 2 album low-level contract with a manager that we had signed at low skill who was up above 20 skill at the time we fired him.

We had actually fired him, despite him really boosting our gigs and income while raising his own. He had called saying he wanted us to fire the lead guitar player, so the next morning we fire the manager and hired a new one. A couple weeks after that change, we got 4 phone calls from a manager in Chicago wanting to sign us. The first couple calls we ignored. After the third I made a note of his name and decided to go to Chicago when we had a break, just to see what he was.

The next call came on a Sunday and we were in a airport hub City so we could fly down and back same day. We got to Chicago and finally found the office. I was blown away that his reputation was 50 and immediately fired the manager we had and signed up.

[Eeyore Donkey Donk]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2838050072

The Start Of The Breakdown has settled into a very comfortable spot, perhaps one of the finest unknown bar bands in Scotland. At this point we have self-released 2 four song EPs that sell a few copies at every gig. All of our material is now in the 50's and 60's for song quality. The band leader is level 16, everyone else is level 18 and 19, due to her not participating in equipment repairs, and only contributing to songwriting when she has a tile that cannot be beat and we want to really write a song or stash some ideas.
The RP I've come up with to justify their situation is that they all work at Max's Deluxe Music Store in Glasgow. Jori the leader probably gives guitar lessons and works at the counter since after maxing out on Stage Presence has been putting 3 points into business, as she is our de facto manager, and 1 point into Playing. The others likely also give lessons in their instrument, Skye is a vocal coach; and all of them work in the repair department, and they are all at this point 90+ repair skill. They go around town getting all the red gear to repair, as well as scour music stores for red gear when we visit other cities. We did spend two weekends not gigging in May to watch shows at the bar we skipped the accidental battle gig booking to get our reputation there back to positive so we can book gigs there now.

We've gotten to where we have a nice routine. Sundays are repair, busk and practice songs written on Friday and Saturday. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are repair, busk, practice new song days. Thursday is repair, sell repaired gear, busk, scour the city for red gear, and then either practice or record a song. If I write two songs over the weekend I'll need a Thursday practice, if I only wrote one song then likely we can record something, unless we have songs in the playlist that are not at 100% and nothing I really want to record, in which case we'll practice those songs. If we only write one or no songs on a weekend then we'll use the days we do not need to practice to record our best songs and save them up for a future 4 song EP, unless we have a few ideas that are ready to drop away we want to stash, in which case we'll write songs that go direct to archive for future salvage operations. Typically the lowest quality song in our songlist is moved to archive and replaced during writing, unless it's salvaged and recycled on the spot.

Interesting in that since we never leave Scotland (well never say never two exceptions), we can get by with just our best 12 songs, though I have a few extra slow and medium songs practiced up at the end of the month in case I get one of the energy attitudes shifts when a month changes. We play gigs now in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen. Sunday first thing we do is go back to the venues we played that weekend and book a future gig, and then busk and repair gear, and then practicing the song or songs we wrote on Friday and Saturday. We're also some lawn-mowing MFs and maintain a park we can busk at in all four cities, so we don't miss out on our busking experience while on the road. With the repair business, steady gigs and now the regular recording sessions I've had no problems at all with maintaining happiness.

Due to the repair business individual members of the band also have some cash reserves, Skye MacDuff the singer has $1,672, bass player Ross Kincaid has $3,111, Stuart Cassidy the keyboardist has $8,112, and drummer Priscilla "PMac" MacKinnon has $4,351. We also played one gig in Liverpool because we like The Beatles and wanted to play in their hometown. We intend to play a gig in Bath (well Bristol as that's the closest thing to Bath on this map), as homage to Tears For Fears, as we stole our name from one of their song titles, and all our song titles from lines in their lyrics.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2838050109

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2838050026

[Eeyore Donkey Donk]

AND ... we have our first toe tapper song. In front of 33 people at a small bar a quality 55 difficulty 35 song. No effect on our popularity which is still 1.00. The plan is to record and self-release this one as a single to sell at gigs, as opposed to putting it on a future EP.

[Bohemian Rap City]

Originally posted by Eeyore Donkey Donk:

AND ... we have our first toe tapper song. In front of 33 people at a small bar a quality 55 difficulty 35 song. No effect on our popularity which is still 1.00. The plan is to record and self-release this one as a single to sell at gigs, as opposed to putting it on a future EP.

I would record it as a single, add it to an EP, put it on my first self-promoted album, AND add it to my first contract album. It will massively raise the income you need, as well as spreading popularity faster.

But hey....that's just me.

My band is 2 weeks from 6 month mark.