My suggestion list to make 1.3 playable

[kysmartman]

Not sure if this is the right place to put this as a lot of these are bugs, but I figured a checklist would help Mark out a bunch.

 

1. Fix the numerous database linkage and corruption problems. That's what is causing people to lose artists randomly. In my game, Ariana Grande's tour is literally printing money, but because there is a linkage failure, she's getting nothing but the sponsorship money and the small merch sales total (only selling $563k through 15 shows?). Not sure if that's a cap limit issue to prevent popular artists from becoming super-rich as she's likely going to make over $100 million from her 50 show tour. The label screen no longer works for displaying region certification stats and doesn't work for any other label as they just show diamond.

2. The AI needs a massive overhaul. The main thing is that they're barely putting their artists on shows, which means they're not getting any more reputation/pop or their albums and singles aren't getting any hype, which means their sales blow. It also means that the player can just spam shows with little difficulty because they're all available, except for the one-day-per-week shows. They also need to get out of the 1)Make an album 2)Release an album 3)Release a couple of singles. Albums take a long time to hype up, which they aren't doing, and they're rushing to put it out there so there's no song quality control which tanks the album when the absolute crap songs get put on there. But I'm talking super-popular artists selling less than 300k albums or less than what 2 of my low-popular artists did with EPs. And 3 singles don't total 1 million in sales.

3. Related to #2, artists' value should be tied more towards their reputation than their social media subs unless their sales are tied more towards them. The game's generated artists are super-popular with low social media subs, and the few that have released singles for me haven't had that much of a difference with Ariana Grande. But this is tying the top unsigned artists to being unemployed forever as the AI that has the label reputation high enough to sign them won't, and I'm not even to 50 in the US yet (granted in only 4 months but starting with Ariana should have boosted it better than that after 3 massive singles and having a total of over 1k gold certifications amongst everyone on the roster) so they won't sign with me. Plus, they'll be horribly used by the AI.

4. The price to buy-out contracts needs to be looked at. I stole Camilla Cabello who was on a 360 deal with several more albums to go for $10 million. That's inexplicable since she has an 8% rate instead of the usual 16-21% royalty rate and much lower tour rate. Granted, she's one of the ones that has barely sold anything because her singles were all 30s and AI tours are broken so maybe the AI just gave up on her despite being one of the most popular signed artists in the default real-world mod.

5. Speaking of which, the AI tours are completely broken. Only one tour in the game has made any money other than my own. Most don't even have a major sponsor, just the 2 minor ones which shouldn't be possible. Then they all look like they've been canceled as everything is zeroed out which means tours, which print money in general, lose money. The AI when it works properly does produce good competition. Also, it looks like they're doing a single day of tour practice, which oddly got displayed twice in a few that I checked on which might be the bug causing the problems. Good singles that get some media hype beforehand perform exactly how they should. Good albums sell well too. They're just the exception that highlights the massive problems with the AI. Note: I am getting the proper money from the tour. Just not her.

6. Please, please, please, please if it is even possible given the language you're using, merge the calendar and the media screens. If you can't make it drag-and-drop, at least let us see our calendars so we don't waste a slot that is already full. Also, focus on eliminating clicking. This game takes way too many clicks to do stuff. Plus, if you improve the AI media booking, that would let the player rely on that being handled instead of painstakingly having to spend 1 day every 2 game weeks booking shows for everyone on your roster. That takes forever once you have over 10 artists/bands all with singles, EPs, or albums, and is the single most time-consuming thing about the game.

7. Also, please put the help file in the installation files so we can figure out what we're doing. None of the little question mark things that say they take you to the help file but don't even if I'm signed into the game. A manual would be tremendous. Plus, it would stop players from wasting time creating their user character with less than 50 judgement because you can't sign anyone.

[kysmartman]

I knew I'd forget something.

8. Australasia either needs to have its sales increased, or have the sales staff figure out that it is a tiny sales total because the suggested CDs amounts think it is on par with Asia wanting you to have 50k or more for that region if they have any popularity. For reference, Ariana's 3 CDs, the first 2 are at almost 7 million sold each (all together not just CD sales as this isn't 1992). Total CD's sold in Australasia? 12,700 for one and about that for the other with it going up maybe 100-200 per week. The rest of the regions are fairly accurate so something is amiss somewhere, likely on what the expected sales should be. It told her to have 300k per single so I have a metric ton that will never be sold. Wish you could ship them between regions.