Fan Loyalty movement

[the54effect]

In my experience fan loyalty changes on the last day of the season, One rung at a time, very slowly over multiple seasons. Recently in an online league my team went from "extreme" to "good" overnight, midseason, without any storyline or explanation. Is it possible that ootp24 or a recent update would arbitrarily correct this, and move a team four rungs? Looking for a plausible theory with anecdotal experience or ideally, official word from developers! THANK YOU!

[uruguru]

It potentially changes when the off-season starts. It's random. I've never seen it change in mid-season, though.

[the54effect]

I don't think it is random in the offseason- it may sometimes be random, but in my experience, sustaining high fan interest/attendance will eventually lead to fan loyalty and market size gains, while consistently low interest/attendance can lead to both measures dwindling.

My best guess is that, because fan interest goes above 100 (on a hidden counter) there is some sort of y2k type bug, where if it surpasses a certain threshold, it resets back to a 'true' 100. Kind of like a game 21 in basketball, if you score 22 your counter goes back to 10, you know?

Lets imagine that the hidden counter goes to 999, with 100 displayed and 899 hidden. If you go to 1000 fan interest, perhaps the game returns to a 'true' 100 and thinks that your team's fan interest just dropped by 899 points overnight, resulting in a four tier loyalty drop?

If the game assumes this would never happen (that the hidden threshold would be breached and reset) there's no accompanying storyline and I'm left with the current mystery. It's my best guess for something going screwy on the automated side, I am sure a manual change could do it, but I don't suspect it any foul play, so, looking to see if there's any other credible reasoning.

[snepp]

Sound like a bug, or shenanigans by the commish?

I've only even seen market size and loyalty change on the first day of the offseason.

[Bobfather]

Fan loyalty can be changed immediately in the game if,
Sign a Free Agent
Trade for an all-star level player,
Trade away an all-star level player
Extend a player
Any time you get a message saying fan interest has changed, it has changed.

[Bluenoser]

Originally Posted by Bobfather

Fan loyalty can be changed immediately in the game if,
Sign a Free Agent
Trade for an all-star level player,
Trade away an all-star level player
Extend a player
Any time you get a message saying fan interest has changed, it has changed.

Fan interest and fan loyalty are 2 different attributes.

Interest changes can and do happen immediately in those situations.

[KRSW]

I occasionally receive news on the first day of the off-season that Fan Loyalty has gone up 1, but by the middle of the following season it drops back down again.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by the54effect

I don't think it is random in the offseason- it may sometimes be random

If you save your game right before the off-season starts, you can save-scum until you get a increase in Fan Loyalty or Market Size.

It may not be truly random as perhaps certain factors like fan interest may affect the chance of an increase, but it's never 100% or 0%.

[the54effect]

I'm playing in an online league, I don't need a strategy to manipulate the system- I'm just looking to understand what happened.

I feel confident it wasn't malfeasance by the commish- that's I think, the obvious thing to jump to, and if I didn't have any context what my assumption would be as an outsider, but in this instance I am certain it is a game mechanism gone awry.

I imagine the dev team might have been (still be on?) holiday right now, so I'm just gonna try to bump the issue now and again and hope it gets noticed and addressed- maybe I should have posted in bug reports, but it seems more nuanced than a simple bug.

[futuremarlinsgm]

Originally Posted by the54effect

In my experience fan loyalty changes on the last day of the season, One rung at a time, very slowly over multiple seasons. Recently in an online league my team went from "extreme" to "good" overnight, midseason, without any storyline or explanation. Is it possible that ootp24 or a recent update would arbitrarily correct this, and move a team four rungs? Looking for a plausible theory with anecdotal experience or ideally, official word from developers! THANK YOU!

What was the team's record and did you make any significant transactions?

[the54effect]

Originally Posted by futuremarlinsgm

What was the team's record and did you make any significant transactions?

Hey, nope! We were mid-season and fan interest bar stayed steady at 100 (or 100+) but we sorta figured out what happened with the commish and a dev response.

The team's under the hood fan interest was 79 and the fan interest modifier was 110, with a fan loyalty of 10. Over two sims the modifier went from 110, to 109, to 108.

Then the next week, suddenly the fan interest modified plummeted from 108 to 40, a 68 point drop (70 total) that also resulted in the fan loyalty dropping to 7.

A dev stated in PM that it should only ever change by 1 and only at the end of the season, and that there was likely an inadvertent change. The commish restored it to previous levels, so other than a few weeks of bad attendance, no harm no foul. Not sure if it was a bug or a misclick of some sort, but either way, a satisfying result!