You can see the weekly stamina drain in an idols profile under the jobs tab, although it's split between contracts and shows. You can collapse the individual idols' profiles and just see their stamina if you go to view on the idol sidebar and choose compact (this is a new addition though, you used to just see their faces). Like your ideas, lots of small things that would increase playability.
Classified86
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A member registered Feb 28, 2020
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There is a tooltip, but it's only on the production screens for singles/shows. Cute gives a bonus to hardcore/male appeal for the single/show, cool gives one to hardcore/female, sexy gives one to hardcore/male, pretty gives one to hardcore/female, dance gives one to casual/male, vocals gives one to casual/female, funny gives one to casual/male, smart gives one to casual/female and team chemistry gives a small bonus to everyone.
The influence stat is levelled up by doing auditions, talking to idols, and I think taking loans. I think it effects how good idols you get at auditions are, or at least they seemed to be way better when I'd got up to rank 5 for my second round of idol auditions (using the same audition level).
All good ideas; about the money situation I'll tell you what worked for me. The key is to keep everything barebones until you hit the fifth single; only use 2-star staff, only use the digital single, take contracts where you can, but remember that the yield from using a break room in conjunction with the daily performance activities is actually probably higher. Use your first loan to get the break room, it really lets you do a lot in the early game without worrying about your idols stamina tanking, it'll pay off many times over compared to other expenses like hiring more staff. You can always take loans, in fact you'll probably have to, but you shouldn't need to take out more than about ten million before you reach the point where you make more than you lose each month. You can save some money by using the same girl as a perma-centre early on, idols that have less than 1 star fame will only ever ask for a negligible wage, so they'll be virtually free for a few singles. Your big money earner early on will be the concert, when you can get that things will start to change, just make sure you keep using the promotion activities to have enough fans to fill out the concert hall. And don't forget to jack up the price too, the game will tell you how much of the hall you can fill, so keep jacking it up until the projected income starts to fall. Also don't forget that you can make a few million by touring Korea in the early game, this is really good money, so use it when you're in a pinch because overseas tours are on a timer and you only get 2 a year.
Edit: By the way, using the choreographer and vocal trainer as your first hires is much better if you only hire 2-star staff imo, through the course of the game they'll pick up enough experience to remain useful training your new members, the 2-star production staff won't be any use when you get bigger
About boy bands; I probably wouldn't ever play as one, but I think the game would be much better with them in. I think the main constraint on having them, though, is that I'm pretty sure neither of the people working on the game was responsible for creating the artwork, I'm pretty sure they contracted it out to an artist, and I'm not sure they have the money for much more, and having boy idols would need a complete set of new assets. They might not actually be able to afford to include boy bands no matter how much it would improve the game and the number of people interested in the game.
I feel like we won't get totally separate groups before the release of the game, which is a shame, because I think that running an agency rather than a group makes more sense for the game's concept, and managing some solo idols would fit in really well with that. So I don't think we'll get it, but it'd be great.
1. Quite often the number of fans you have can change in a month, making it very hard to guess how many CDs you want, could we get an option to choose how many to print at the end of the production cycle instead of the start?
2. In real life idols' image can massively alter if they want an image change, maybe we could have a mechanic where we can invest a lot of time with the stylist to give idols a big image change with a bigger than usual change in phyiscal stats but limit it to once a year with the opportunity for it to go wrong?
3. I'd quite like it if new members could have their own oshimen if your group is famous enough. I don't even think it needs a mechanic tied in, it would just be a nice detail.
4. Also might be a nice touch if you can pick a place for your group to start in, with each member having a hometown. Would give a nice feeling of expansion as you switch to bigger auditions and see idols coming from further away
1. When you load up a game, the idols you had assigned as pushes aren't saved
2. Half bug, half suggestion; there doesn't seem to be much age logic for the members who end up dating each other, members over 20 dating members under 16 happens quite often, maybe put in an age filter
3. Demographic opinion still seems to reset to 50% if it ever hits 100%, happened a couple of times in my current save
4. During the politician chain, if you choose to just issue a flat denial of his claims, and then choose neutral reactions, on the third stage of the event change his name will disappear and be replaced by [politician_name]
5. Sometimes clicking the right mouse button to open and close side menus stops working
6. If you delete a room and replace it with something else, the game seems to consider it to be adding an extra floor to your building, leading to spiralling rent costs (I had four floors and deleted a few rooms to make the layout easier to look at and my rent quadrupled)
7. The issue with using scandal points to fire staff removing the points, but leaving the staff in place, is still there
1. Just a little thing, but I'm not sure what effects fame has, I think it was probably explained at some point in the emails we get, but I can't remember, could we get a popup that explains what our fame level is doing right now, like the scandal points one, when we mouse over it?
2. Talking about fame, some of the requirements for improving the daily performance/promotion activities can be a bit obtuse, how about just linking them to fame level?
3. And also, some of the demands from Fujimoto/idols can be quite odd considering their fame levels. Debut idols want to host a show for example, maybe these demands could be linked to your/the idol's fame level too? Eg. At level 1 fame Fujimoto just wants you to produce a single to approve another, at level 10 he might want you to release 3 anxiety cute dance enka singles. A level 1 idol might just want to be in a single, a level 10 idol might want to get 10 cool photoshoots.
4. Could we get the option to have teams? So when we're looking at the theatre schedules we could arrange for teams of idols to cycle the members performing on a given day, without the option that genuine sister groups have to release singles. The same could apply with making, say, an internet show with those members. Just a shortcut compared to assigning a bunch of idols manually.
5. I'd like it if the producer character had some basic competency with all skills. When you start the game, unless you want to try and go for weird strategies with making money through deals for months before actually starting work on a single you need to commit money for a dance studio and music studio and their staff up front. In reality a lot of start-up idol groups are run out of their producer's car and whatever rented practice spaces they can grab. I thought about the possibility of outsourcing options for songwriting, but I feel like this is better because it's easier to do within the existing framework of the game (if you drag a single to the producer's office you get lyrics/choreo/music/production options, if you drag a concert you get production/practice/deals, if you drag an idol you get vocal training/dance training/talk etc). This could be balanced by receiving less capital at the game start, but with very low running costs until you start to expand, so that you face choices about what element of your operation to improve first, including adding a lyricist staff option. I also think this opens up options to customise your producer a little, with the option to choose their area of expertise and skill points to spend when they level up, so you can have some producers who are straight lyricists like Aki-P, some who are songwriters like Nakata Yasutaka and some who are both like Tsunku. I feel like the producer should be the heart of your operation, busy 24/7, but quite often they're just researching
6. If the multi-ability producer idea is taken up, I think a staff pool would be a good idea, too. At the moment we have our pick of staff, but if their skills and wages were more randomised it could play into what areas we want to improve. If you can come across a good choreographer you might want to build the dance room before the music room for example. Sometimes you might have to pay more than you want for stylists if the ideal staffer isn't available etc
7. Tying into this, I think it would be a good idea to replace the current wage increase system with a wage review every 6 or 12 months. It seems a bit odd that idol wages set to 50% satisfaction at the beginning of the game can increase from 15,000 yen a week to about 150,000-210,000 yen a week for three idols as soon as they get their first fame star. Likewise, staff could come and ask for a raise slightly above what they'd get just from skill increases, so you need to decide if you want to keep on skilled staffers who are asking for too much or just let them go at the end of their contracts, when you might not be able to replace their skills.
8. As a note on this, I'm not sure what salary satisfaction does, maybe add a tooltip by mousing over idols salary satisfaction in the wages screen to tell you what it does? I think it affects graduation dates, but I'm really not sure
9. At the moment the game drains physical stamina for nearly everything, with mental stamina as a kind of backup battery after physical stamina is drained, with the chance of injury. I think it would make more sense if different activities drained different stamina types and going below a certain level raised the risk of injury/depression/leaving the group. For example, releasing a single costs 30 physical stamina, which doesn't make sense to me, what would make sense is if that was a mental stamina cost; idols would be mentally stressed from a digital single being released, but they wouldn't be doing any physical work. Some activities, like photoshoots would involve some tiring physical activity, but be more mentally taxing than anything else. Some work, like concerts, should be tiring AND mentally stressful. Keeping idols physical AND emotional stress levels under control should be a big deal, players should be scared of a scandal pushing an idol over the edge when her mental stamina would be under control based on your plans.
10. Talking about stamina, I think deals need a big re-balancing overall. They can be really useful early in the game, but after a certain point they just become redundant. Why would any player want to spend 40-50 physical stamina (deals going way over the assumed stamina levels is common) for about 250,000 yen when the performance daily activity can give them about 200,000 yen for just 3 stamina? I know they can be levelled up, but then you need a staff member on research, their usefulness just ends as soon as you start to break even because of the enormous stamina costs involved.
11. One of the biggest complaints I see is that 1st Gen members start to become irrelevant as soon as you start getting new members in because the skill gap is so big. To counter this, and to make things more realistic too, I'd like to see the theatre's example of learning by doing applied to more activities. I'm not sure how granular skill gains are, but if, for example, you got 2% of a skill gain for the promotion activity for funny/smart and ran it 200 times a year, then you'd get a gain of 4 skill points for each category, not game breaking, but an acknowledgement of the work being put in. The same goes for activities like the weekly radio/internet/TV shows, it seems strange that idols would do those things again and again and never improve. I think this could also tie into making deals more useful too, because the work done there would be public and involve a lot of work from the idol.
12. Again, on the theme of making 1st Gens more realistically competitive against newer gens I think it would help to shake up auditions. Firstly, instead of the levels determining how many silver/gold/platinum idols you get, let them determine how many idols you get to choose from. Also, when it comes to silver/gold/platinum idols, I can see people have thought of a bunch of different measures to make sure they don't make your original idols redundant, the one I'd suggest is that while they should debut with better skills, maybe a platinum would have a few skills in the 50s or 60s, the main emphasis should be on those idols improving faster than regular idols. So a debut platinum idol should be about as good as a regular idol with years of experience, but she should improve much faster in the next year she spends in the group than the experienced idol, making her far superior as time goes on.
13. Also on the subject of auditions I'd like to see idols who are much stronger either visually or skills wise, like an idol who has all 40s visually and all 10s for her skills, doesn't happen very often at present but I feel like the visual/skill split is the biggest difference in debut idols in the real world. I'd also like to see more difference from the group policies (ie. better cool ratings if you emphasise cool, better dance/vocals if you emphasise quality and polish, better smart/funny if you emphasise energy and enthusiasm) and a tighter grouping of age ranges in potential idols with fewer idols under about 14 and over 18.
14. One odd thing that's struck me is that physical and digital CDs seem to have the same price, when in reality a real world idol single could easily set you back well over 1000 yen, especially with extras. I think it would make sense to make the cost of each physical CD much higher to match reality, but increase the cooldown for them from 1 to 3 months. This would make it worth it to produce digital singles early on to boost your fanbase, but as you start to break even you'd switch to physical CDs for the higher income, and would also make the release schedule more plausible. I also think that things like handshake tickets should improve both CD price and hardcore sales (has anyone ever paid for an AKB CD with an individual handshake ticket? Those things are EXPENSIVE). Or, if a choice has to be made for balance reasons, I think it would work better if they just improved CD price.
15. There are a few things I'd like to see come back; buzz and variable single quality. I know that buzz has been a bit divisive, and potentially hard to balance, but it seems odd that you can't get word of mouth fans/fans through sheer market penetration at all. I also liked the fact that songs used to be up and down in quality, all idol fans know their groups have dropped a few clunkers, and I'd like to see problems thrown up by bad songs (maybe lose instead of gain fans? Especially if buzz comes back)
16. I'd like there to be a chance to gain fans from concerts, I've been encouraged to check out various groups in real life because a friend said they put on a great show
17. I'd like to be able to name concerts too, it's not a big thing but "[Group name] Midsummer Concert" sounds better than "Concert (Music Hall)"
18. I'd like to see national, as well as world, tours
19. People have talked about reprints and ongoing sales. I think it should be possible to reprint a single after its release if you sold them out, basically the game would look at how many more singles you printed, compare it to how many "in theory" sales you would have made if there wasn't a limit set by the number you printed and then deduct the number you already sold. I think you should only be able to do this once, so there's still an element of risk. I'd also say that ongoing sales could be handled every time you gain new fans; if 35% of fans brought a copy of your single originally and you get 200 new fans then you'd get 70 sales of that single.
20. I'd quite like to have albums, on a year long cooldown. You could add all the songs you released as singles that year, then a number of specific album tracks to make up, say 10 tracks on the album. You can write songs a lot quicker than one per month, so this would make up the downtime that songwriting staff have.
21. I'd quite like to change the quality of singles from an aggregate of the idols' skills to an average, to make smaller Perfume-style groups more viable. I think that while small groups have their advantages, there are also drawbacks (losing a member wrecks your fanbase, chain graduations hit hard, individual handshake events aren't viable etc) so they shouldn't be penalised.
22. Just a small thing, but I'd like to see some idols ask to go on hiatus at the age and time of year when they'd be studying for exams
23. Another small thing, but I'd like idols' physical and mental stamina to be visible under their portraits in compact view, it'd make it way easier to do things on the fly
PS. I know this is a lot of things, but I don't want it to come across as critical of the game, if I hadn't enjoyed it so much, I wouldn't have played it enough to come up with all these thoughts while playing
1. The first floor's supposed to be rent free, it's not
2. Training stamina drain can be a bit odd, because it looks like it's deducted by day spent training and each training request, rather than by time spent training. So, if you start two idols training at the beginning of the day, but one takes the entire day to train a point, but one only takes half a day, they both lose 7 points of stamina. This can have some strange effects, like the fast training trait being far less useful than you'd imagine, because stamina is a bigger constraint on idol activity than time, and training low stats effectively using a lot more stamina than training high stats over time (eg. if you take 5 days to train 8 points in a low stat you'll lose 56 stamina, compared to 35 stamina if you take 5 days to train 5 points in a higher stat). I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, though. (Sorry if this is hard to understand, I explained it as clearly as I could)
3. I got one incident of a text bug where I asked idol A about gossip and she said that idol B was dating idol B
4. Sometimes blaming a staffer for a scandal removes the scandal points, but doesn't fire the staffer. I think this might happen if you take this action while the game is paused.
5. I got one incident where a concert didn't start production when I put it in the producer's room (time was definitely running)
6. It seems like if you hit 100% opinion with a demographic, the opinion will reset to 50% when you release a single, or load that save
7. Sometimes idols being styled will be counted as idle, so you can assign them to two rooms simultaneously
8. The stamina drain for going to France in the World Tour is only 10%, compared to 20% for every other country (again possibly, but not probably, intentional)
9. Scandal points at the bottom of the screen sometimes display incorrectly, for example I once got 4 points, but two idols graduated and this dropped to 1, but it still said 4 (the tooltip when I moused over said 1 though, and it correctly displayed 1 when I reloaded the game)
10. Theatre shows don't seem to use stamina, given how much money it makes I'm sure this can't be intentional
11. There doesn't seem to be any age logic for scandals involving adults and idols under 18* (this could happen in real life, but at least give an extra option for the player to call the police)
12. When you combine a 2-shot (-75%) with the stamina drain for all single releases (-30%), it's basically impossible to do one without a severe risk of injury, which seems very over the top even if it's intentional
13. If your floor rent multiplier is high enough, additional cafes (or even the first one) can cost more in rent than they make (this applies to theatres too, but they potentially make for more money so it's much less likely to happen). Not sure how this could be dealt with, maybe make assigned idols increase income directly instead of sales? Again, could be intentional but doesn't seem logical
14. When you improve the lyrical/dance/music styles some of the ones that have negative modifiers improve and some get worse (so some with a -10% modifier will be -8% at level 2 and some will be -12%). I'm sorry, I made a note of some of the styles this happened with, but I deleted it by mistake.
15. Lastly, this is something I'm not sure about, but I'm worried that the sales bonuses for having a handshake event for singles don't work. In games where I have enough of a money cushion to start producing physical CDs with handshake tickets I look at the units sold per fan and expect to see a noticeable rise (with a fanbase at around 65% hardcore), but I never do. It's hard to test this with any accuracy because there are lots of variables, but I'm not sure it's working properly.