Fan Interest issue in new Fictional League
I am starting an online league as commissioner. It's a fictional, international league with 10 teams, 1 per country.
When the 10 of us were forming the league as an idea, we decided we wanted to have as much parity as possible but didn't want 100% matching budgets. We also wanted to have a built-in history to the league so we are going to sim 20 years before GMs take over.
I've gotten everything just about the way I want it. The financials in the league or almost the same as out-of-the-box MLB financials with a few exceptions: no inflation, higher share of gate for visiting team, and all teams have the same media income.
On thing we decided to do so that each team could start on even ground was to equalize Fan Interest, Loyalty, and Market Size in the first year before letting the engine take over. So each team has exactly middle of the road FI, FL, and MS.
I've been running tests of the league to ensure things are working the way we want to since there are some unique things, like no home country for the league, and the parity, etc. I've gotten things almost perfect except for one thing that I haven't been able to figure out and that is Fan Interest.
In every test I run, every single team shoots from 50 FI to mid-70s FI just before the end of April in the first year. It's very rare for teams to dip down even to the low 60s. Teams that suck for years in the tests included. FI just never seems to go down naturally for bad teams. This feels very unrealistic and I cannot figure out what the root cause is.
Does anyone have any information that could help me figure this out before we get the league going? Is this due to starting each team with the same info in the beginning? Is it due to having only 1 team per country?
It's worth noting that I made an *** and an Independent League in this file also, and those teams all have different starting points, but the FI functions the same - every team is high, no team is below even 60.
|