This game desperately needs a tutorial. I really have no idea what I'm doing and it makes it frustrating to play. It would also be nice to have an option to skip the intro after you've restarted the game.
Idol Manager is a business sim about conquering the entertainment industry using any means you deem necessary. · By
I'm not 100% sure what you guys have in mind for the final release, so my bad if some of these are what you're already working on! Super fun game btw, I can't wait to play the released version :)
I know you guys are working on more relationship stuff between the idols and player, but I love drama and think it will really flesh out the game so here's some ideas:
-Idols gossipping about the group to the press or releasing secrets, either while in the group or after graduating. For example, if they're overworked and underpaid in the group, or if one certain member is known to be a bully, they might go gossip about it to the press after leaving. I feel that this is something that happens with idol groups in real life and will make the way you treat your idols extra important. Also it seems to me like the girls are basically irrelevant after they graduate, so it'd be cool if they still matter somewhat.
-More of a minor nitpick but they all seem to go onto pretty average things after graduating, like becoming an office worker or teacher. I think it'd add realism if their fame level impacts what they do after graduating. If an idol graduated with 10 star fame I'd imagine her to go on to become an actress, author, solo artist, etc. rather than have an office job or working at a hostess club. (My bad if this is already a thing, maybe I haven't graduated enough high-star idols to notice.)
-Events relating to the fame and safety of idols. For example, idols having stalkers, or being attacked by a fan at a fan meet. While it's sad, this is also something that has certainly happened in real life. It might cause an idol to have depression, or take a hiatus.
-I know a lot of people have mentioned this but having subgroups would be cool, or even solos.
-Maybe more tangible repercussions for idols being bad singers or dancers. An idol can have a singing and dancing level of 1 and she can reach 10 star fame and no one will say a thing about it. I think in real life, an idol would get made fun of if they were unskilled. Might be even worse if the entire group has poor singing and dancing skills.
-Idols leaving the group on bad terms. Certainly not everyone has a happy and peaceful graduation in real idol groups!
-I think it'd be nice to have more rewards in the late game. Maybe sending idols on a really nice vacation, buying them really nice houses, etc. I know this is just the beta so I'm sure I'm missing out on a lot but as of now once I have 1,000,000+ fans and a bunch of money in the bank, it's like, "Now what?"
Anyways I love this game and the beta is already addictive! Thank you guys for working hard on this game, I'm always looking forward to the next update.
Hi LazyCrazyDream,
Have you tried getting a loan from Fujimoto and/or the bank? I have played through the initial stages of the game three times, and all I can say is that not going negative without the help of a loan is extremely hard, if not impossible. If you've already done that and are still having trouble staying afloat financially, take a look at the quick guide below, by user 'igorkeefe':
"Start out with two regular offices, your own office and a break room. Hire five idols and two sales people with deal skill. Research photoshoot -> set the salespeople to auto business proposal and make bucks -> get third office for production-focused employee and let them research when they aren't doing anything. At some point, start an internet show with all member cast for fame and that promotion requirement. Whenever you can, do promotion to steadily build your fanbase. Advertisement deals are good too bút watch the stamina.
Once you got decent fame, get a huge loan of 8.000.000 - 10.000.000 Yen from the landowner and pay off over six months.
Use the money to build a dance room and a recording studio and hire production focused people there. Start producing singles and release them each month whenever the button is green. Digital release is very good for at least the first seven or so singles because there's no production cost. You will lose money but the loan tides you over and eventually you make more and more profit until you are financially comfortable. Try to level your promo and performance for short-term money and lots of fans (more fans = more singles sales). I think the 720 fans promotion level is easily achievable and makes a large difference."
No, I'm with LazyCrazyDream... From a financial standpoint, the game has gotten markedly harder in the last couple of updates.
It started with Update 9 and the changes to idol salaries. You don't get the massive spike from famous idols, but your average pay goes up - way up. And it does so pretty early in the game, within the first year. Maybe salaries should be tied to longevity? Or maybe fame should play a role.
Then, something changed in Update 10 and it got a lot harder to make money early on. Concerts, my former cash cow (especially in the early game), don't seem to be making as much as previously. I'm following the same strategy that, in Update 8, let me get out of debt... and now, I can't seem to get out of debt. Used to be I could start having modestly profitable club concerts with 3-5 singles under my belt. Now it seems to be in the 7-9 range. Sticking to a once-every-thirty-days release schedule, that's two to four more months that I'm maxing out my credit cards.
That's a heavy load to get out from under.
I could side with you if there were sifferent difficulty options for the game, but otherwise, I must say I'm personally still finding the game to be a bit easy, even though it now takes a little more effort to stabilize your finances than it took 4+ patches ago. Of course it's no fun if you can't make your group thrive because of financial issues, but it's also no fun if within 3h of gameplay you manage to say "Alright, I'm rich, I've got no more debts, what now?".
Are you paying close attention to popular genres and styles? Are you catering to your fans' tastes?
Also, unless you're in love with one of your idols, let them starve to death. Let them throw a fit if they must, but keep their salaries down low until you're sitting comfortably on a pile of money. Idol salary money is better used if you invest it in the company by buying new rooms, hiring new staff. It's company progress over idol happiness if you don't wanna go bankrupt. At least in the beginning.
Sorry, I may have used the wrong wording to convey my thoughts. What I meant to say is that I understand that the game might be easier for some, and harder for others, but since Idol Manager doesn't have any kind of difficulty sliders, the developers can't just mess with the game's balance, make it easier or harder, without putting good thought into their actions. Things have to be carefully planned, keeping in mind not only the first hours of gameplay, but also the endgame. Right now, Idol Manager is still struggling to find its balance among the players, since there's people like you who are finding it too hard, and people like me who are finding it too easy. Maybe when the full game comes out, along with a tutorial mode, there will be less people struggling to get through the initial stages of the game, but no matter what they do, at least for now, not everyone will be happy.
Either they come up with different difficulties for the game, or they can simply allow modders to come up with 'Idol Manager Hardcore Mod' or something like that, with an even more challenging experience for the diehard players. The game's current state, balancewise, looks good to me. Sure I'd like an even more challenging grind, but I'm okay with what we've got at the moment. However, it's no use making the game harder, appealing to the hardcore players, if the casual players won't have fun playing the game, and the opposite is also true if the casual players will have a good time, but the hardcore players won't.
"Sorry, I may have used the wrong wording to convey my thoughts."
Yes, you did. And I was as polite as possible in my reply... But then you doubled down on the condescension in your second reply, so now the gloves are off.
I've been playing serious and complex games of various types (that is, more than Monopoly) since my senior year in high school nearly forty years ago. I've been beta testing games of various types off and on for twenty five odd years. I do not need you lecturing me on how the process works, as I'm quite well versed in it.
I am also quite aware of the stage of development of Idol Manager. And and important part of this stage is the developers hearing from users all across the spectrum - from those that find it easy as well as those that find it hard. Unless you have a private line to the developers, you have no idea of their intentions. Nor do you know if the difficulties some have encountered are intentional or unintentional. They could be a feature. They could be an unintentional consequence of the recent changes, or they could be a flat out bug.
And with that, I will end my part in this particular subthread. My apologies to others who had to wade through this.
This was not a lecture, nor was it a "condescending" message. I don't care if you're the master of videogames or some old lady who has never had a joystick in your hands. I'm not shaming you or anyone for having trouble getting through the initial stages of the game, if that's what you thought I was doing. Calling a player "casual" is not offensive either. Some players are, in fact, casual players - they just don't want or don't have the ability to put as much time and effort into a game as a hardcore player would and, therefore, do not wish to be greatly challenged when gaming.
We have different opinions regarding the difficulty balance in Idol Manager, and that's beautiful, vive la différence. I'm not here to say that I'm 100% correct (especially because there's no right and wrong regarding difficulty balance, it's a matter of preference), that you shouldn't be voicing your opinion, or that the developers should only listen to me. We both have the right to speak here, to voice our opinions, and this is what the forum is for, after all. If you disagree with me, that's okay, you don't have to side with me on this or any other matter regarding the game.
Now please, put your gloves back on. Your hands... kinda stink.
"Yes, you did. And I was as polite as possible in my reply... But then you doubled down on the condescension in your second reply, so now the gloves are off."
Lol, what is this. Keep them on, this reads like the start of the Navy Seals copypasta.
IMO the early game is quite challenging in a sense because it requires you to take a specific action to get through that is entirely optional in most other management / tycoon games: Taking a loan. I've had my problems with it because it's not intuitive but once you know it's not all that tough anymore.
It was quite fun and very rewarding (for me at least) to find out what works and what doesn't though. What can I do better next game, that sort of stuff, so I'm not really sure what to think about an easier early game. It's actually refreshing to see a management game that doesn't make you auto-succeed over time. Perhaps what is needed isn't "easier" but "more options"? I could see an alternative working where certain events or oppurtunities replace the need to take a loan but come with other trade-offs down the line. ("Remember when we sponsored you back then? Yeah, your famous idol belongs to us now" ... or something like that)
Agreed that figuring out the optimal plays over multiple games was a lot of the fun for me. Also agreed that more options could be the solution rather than tweaking to make things easier. A lot of my beginning difficulty originally came from not wanting to ever be in the red, and only taking loans to get out of bankruptcy once I did go red. As I see it right now, with the pricing of rooms and the money you start with, it’s impossible to not be in the red for 30 days if you don’t use a loan. You start with 5M, 3.5M you need for singles necessities (marketing, dance, song, your office) leaves 1.5M, staffing+rent+idol salaries is probably around 100k a week if you hire only the minimum number of idols, 2 auditions are 200k. That gives you about 13 weeks/3 months before you hit 0. You have to take a loan and have to use it to make more money, such as with a new office worker or a break room so your idols can take on more jobs. The only major negative I see is that a minimum 1M loan is pretty much a necessity, not that it’s impossible to not go bankrupt. More financing options that players know they can employ could be a solution.
From my experience I have to disagree on the game being too difficult in the early stages: on this latest update I’ve gotten out of debt faster than I ever have, and with fewer singles (6 months and 5 singles). Started with staffed Manager office, 2 offices, dance and recording studio, spammed performances and did digital releases, had the office workers working on photoshoots and then switched one to advertisements as soon as they were available. Took out max loan from Fujimoto over 6 months to build a break room. I dipped into the red essentially every Monday with a 200k loss each week but I had a lot of high cute-stat idols and set my preferred deals to cute so I’d have have at least a couple of windfalls each week. Debt was always manageable in the 5digit range at this point. Digital singles also started making about 100k+ each release with the third single. Now I’m working on my first concert and first physical release with 1500000 in the bank, and it’s the fastest I’ve ever gotten to this point. What strategies are others using to start the game?
so I’ve gotten to the first awards show: It was extremely well done, the hosts’ conversations and jokes were very funny and I read through all of them, the speeches were also nice. The hosts have a good character dynamic, but the only issue I saw is I think the hosts’ names were occasionally swapped? (ie one host would get addressed with a Ms. prefix but then the host had a masculine given name/the character with a masculine given name had dialogue the female character would probably say “Soandso would probably enjoy this Gravure Idol” etc.) Maybe speech bubbles or portraits or a small animation would help clear up which host is which? Anyways I hope the hosts have a lot more conversations I didn’t see!
Also when my idol won an award and thanked one of the staffers, and then that staffer the next day thanked me for hiring them and talked about how their mom saw them get recognized: that was a great moment, and I hope the final game might have lots of moments like these.
In my opinion, the thing that makes it hard in early game is that there is very few and very particular starting strategies just to not fail, let alone succeed (must have x number of offices, must research this first, must work your idols to the ground without any salary increase etc) This is like chess but any play that doesn't start with the Queen's pawn moving exactly 1 step and then the King's knight to the space in front of the Rook's pawn (or something) is doomed to fail. It discourages exploration and experimentation at the very start of the game, making players hesitant to do any later on, even when they do have the money.
One starting move to not fail, all others are dead ends. That's not a game. That's a visual novel.
I suggest something like a safety net, a once-in-a-playthrough cash infusion the first time you touch negative balance. Most (every?) Kairosoft games, for example, have a sort of "oh, you're in the negative, here's some money to get you back up, but this is only once" kind of deal. Maybe the landowner decides to invest another 1M into the group. Maybe you bought a winning lottery ticket. Maybe you get some inheritance from a dead uncle.
When we click on the page with previously released singles, I would like a little button displaying who the center of that single was. I like to try to have a different center every single so that everyone will have lots of stamina during concerts. As far as I know there is no way to tell this right now.
And I know this has been mentioned before but I'll bring it back up again. When getting girls into contracts (TV shows/advertisements) it'd be super useful to display how many contracts they're already in and how much stamina they're losing per week. If a girl is already losing 50 stamina per week I don't want to get her into any more contracts.
Also I'm not sure if anyone knows - what is the point of idol salaries? Will idols leave the group quickly if they are underpaid? I have never noticed a difference in paying idols to 50% satisfaction versus 200% satisfaction.
Anyways thank you for working hard on this game, every month I look forward to the next update!
"When we click on the page with previously released singles, I would like a little button displaying who the center of that single was. "
With the latest update, just hover your mouse over the song to see the center.
"When getting girls into contracts (TV shows/advertisements) it'd be super useful to display how many contracts they're already in and how much stamina they're losing per week."
Right click on the girl's portrait to see this information.
Ah sorry, I didn't notice the ability to hover over the past singles in the new update. Even so, I think it'd be nice to display a little logo of the face of whoever was the center. I don't really have my idols names memorized but I know their face and hairstyle haha. I can then keep in my head "blondie and bob cut were the last 2 centers so I won't put them this time."
As far as contracts, I mean when the contract window pops up with the 3 idols to choose from. It'd be nice if alongside the new stamina logos, there was perhaps a minus sign, showing minus how much stamina they are losing to contracts per week or something like that. I usually have 15 idols once I have enough money and that's too many contracts for me to keep track of without it being displayed. So it sucks when I accidentally give an idol 4 contracts because she has high stats but then I have to cancel 1 or 2 so she's not losing like 60 stamina a week.
Also I'd love to have some faster way to tell idol's relationships to you. Maybe a "Sort by influence" button or something? It's hard for me to use the socializing aspect because I don't feel like individually clicking through everyone's profile to see who I have high influence with, even though I KNOW I have high influence with some of them.
so after digesting the latest update, these are strictly my thoughts on three major things I hope to see the game add
Making the Idols Matter:
This may just be due to how ambiguous a single's sales calculation is, but as far as I can tell, you can essentially swap out an entire formation of established girls for freshly-hired idols and not suffer any perceivable consequence. (To test this, I put my 15 idols with the lowest fame out of a roster of around 25-30 in one single, most of them having been in the group for around a year or less: the previous single in that save sold 490k, and was composed entirely of the top 10 of that year's election. This test single sold 470k+, becoming my second best-selling single. The single before had the same marketing strats as the test one. Test single's center had 5k fans, with the rest of the girls reaching up to 10k at best: The previous center had 33000 fans, with the rest of the formation being 15k and up.)
I guess this test reinforced my belief that there should be consequences and benefits to important things like deciding who should be in a single. People have noted the idols are slowly moving away from being "money-making robots", but in some aspects they still seem like dolls who contribute their stats to singles and nothing else.
Additionally, the graduation system, while neat and definitely improving with each update, doesn't have any impact by the time you start hitting major graduations (OG members, important idols and frequent centers.) other than "well, can't use this high-stat idol anymore, time to swap her spot out for the next platinum idol!" By that point, a few clicks of the promotion tool or a single release will easily replace her lost fans. With AKB, the graduations of the establishing members was a HUGE deal and something AKS STILL hasn't completely recovered from. Something mirroring this would help making the mid/lategame engrossing and alleviate the "huge pile of money with nothing to do" problem.
I think the root may be that it feels like an individual idol's fans are tied to her only for election results, but the game looks at the group's total fans for a LOT of things. A scandal is huge for an idol (appropriately so, I had a fun scenario where one of the idols I was prepping to easily place in the election got into a scandal and didn't even place in the end due to how many fans she lost.), but not for the group as a whole, really. I could see some tweaks:
1. Capping/adding a soft limit on fandom growth as time goes on
While the promotion tool is VERY helpful for getting off the ground at the start of the game, it either becomes useless as you do more (What good is 10k additional fans when your singles sell 500k already and make 100M yen?) or takes out any challenge (Idol caught dating and her 8000 fans abandoned the group? Promote a few times or release a single and you'll be good as new.).
In reality there's max saturation, where everyone is aware of a product and if they're ever going to consume it, they probably already have. The system right now is following the singles problem of Beta 9 where you can get 490% appeal with adults or hardcores and proceed to sell 3M, as if there's an infinite supply of fans. It's causing a runaway effect where releasing more always makes the next release gather more sales/fans. There could be a point where pretty much all of your group's relevant target audience knows you exist, and then your fan gains via singles and the promotion tool become less effective and start approaching zero.
2. Using set demographics?
For example, say 10M people live in the game's setting, and 2M are teens, with 500k being girls. In this fix, your total amount of hardcore+casual female teen fans can never be greater than 500k. As you approach 500k, the game starts limiting how many female teen fans you add with each release/promotion.
3. The participating idols' fanbase contributes to a single's success
For example, an idol with 8000 YA hardcore female fans is put in a single. The appeal of the single to YA hardcore female fans goes up and it's likely her fans will buy it. The game could look at the total group's fans and makeup for assigning gained fans to newer idols, but the idol makeup of the actual single should have more influence over the sales.
4. Fans could lose interest in the group over time and leave for good
This is a phenomena in real life that I think could add longevity to the game: With the AKB OG graduations, while some fans switched to newer idols, a lot went with their fave when she graduated, and transformed from hardcore fans to casuals, at best (if they didn't stop following the group entirely). When the girls graduate (Or threaten to), it could be made impactful by her fans being SERIOUS assets who can't be replaced: If they leave, their sale is gone, and it'll take clever play to garner new fans to replace the supporters of your OG and critical idols. Adding in some of the above tweaks, it may require targeting a new, untapped audience entirely because you've already saturated hardcore, adult males, for example.
Making the fans matter
(As a tie in to the point above, I think the fan opinion/appeal mechanic is ambiguous right now. I think that fans of the group as a whole and individuals getting upset over your choices and threatening to withhold support would help spice up gameplay.)
Intrigue:
The game's tagline is something along the lines of "bring your group to the top by any means necessary", which I found exciting, but I really don't think there's anything in the game as of now that piques interest like the phrase "by any means necessary" does.
I've seen people suggest making the game grittier/darker/edgier/more realistic by adding things like suicide/assault/exploitation etc. but I think that's adding realism at the consequence of fun. I do think the blackmail angle is good, but could be implemented more.
Maybe something like an intrigue system? Right now idols' wishes are sort of passive and must be initiated by the player, but what if they were more elaborate in their ambitions and personalized to the girl?
For example, the one dance practice event that exists right now: One of your idols feels the dance would look better if there was a costume change, and asks you to talk to the Choreographer about changing it, and that can result in conflict with the idol, conflict with the choreographer, conflict between the idol and choreographer or with other idols. All resulting because one idol asked you to make her look good. There's also the "Idol A thinks Idol X isn't deserving of center/gigs" events. I'd like to see more of this, and I feel like they wouldn't have to have super-scripted story beats, either. Right now the wishes sorta hint at what I would imagine intrigue to be, but they're really passive and just seem like whims randomly assigned to idols, rather than steps in their goals. What if all idols in your agency essentially had the wish to be the top idol within it, but their definitions/methods of how to get there varied slightly and scaled up as you played?
To draw up a scenario, we have five idols: One has an "ultimate goal" of being a TV host, another being a solo act, another as an actress, one more of starting her own group as a producer, and another wants to be a top girl in your group. All five are idols in your group not to simply grow it, but to benefit somehow. So they ask for favors to help themselves get to their ultimate goal, which incidentally helps you grow your agency.
Perhaps even other characters could take part in this? Fujimoto asking for a say in musical direction/pushes and lineup in exchange for assistance with assets?
Franchise-building:
It seems like a major goal of a lot of idol groups is to take a the success of a singular group and build it into a franchise (AKB>SKE, NMB, HKT, Nogi>Keya, Hina, =LOVE>Not Me, etc.). Subgroups seem to have been a popular feature request (And I know I've suggested it as well!), but now that I think about it, I believe they could offer a lot of new aspects to gameplay:
You start out as usual with just your single group "ABC46". For one reason or another, due to your success with ABC46, you have the opportunity (or are encouraged/tasked) to establish a sister group "XYZ46" and make them popular as well. Your current fans won't drop ABC in droves for the unknown XYZ, and won't all have the money to support both, so you need a way to attract attention and new fans to XYZ. I could see several gameplay scenarios that build off of it, like trying to garner fans at first by giving an XYZ member a major position/center in an ABC single that she can take back to boost the XYZ group (Like AKS did for Jurina in Oogoe Diamond), transferring a major member of ABC to XYZ to give a quick boost to the fanbase, trying to boost sales of a single by combining distinct fan demographics in adding sister group members to the main ABC group's singles (Like AKS does nowadays), weaponizing the system to get rid of bullies/cliques and punish problem idols by "demoting" them to a more obscure sister group (Like Sashihara's move to HKT), rewarding/gaining influence over idols by promoting them to the main group or adding them on the main's singles, etc.
I could see this feature leading to girls within one subgroup having a rivalry with other subgroups (Maybe the original ABC girls will resent the player/sister group if XYZ becomes a trending group, or two sister groups will develop resentment if they have similar identities and feel like the player/group is trying to "replace" the original.), or better relationships/fiercer resentment within their own subunit depending on how well it's doing/how recognized individual girls are within the franchise as a whole (ie girls who are always in XYZ singles have a good relationship but are resentful against girls who get to do XYZ AND ABC singles). Perhaps even fandoms could fit into this system? (Such as questioning the group if two sister groups have similar concepts or feeling alienated if the flagship ABC girls has its members phased out in favor of sister members, like is happening with the real AKB franchise.)
I could also see this system having good synergy with the "backdealing" nature of intrigue and helping individualize idols+characterize their fandoms. (Unhappiness upon getting demoted to another sister group after the request of an ambitious rival idol?) Maybe there could even be options in how transfers are organized by allowing some Team Shuffle event, which would be more palatable to fans and would build interest, rather than a quick and sudden notice of an idol being sent to a different group.
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Well.... that was a lot, and a post that took me three days to finish. These are just musings/ramblings of mine, but these are basically the only additions I think would make the game completely fleshed out to me! thanks for reading, haha
Well, one thing's for sure: this guy idols.
There's no way to know if your feedback will end up being featured in the game when it's released or not, but I'm sure the devs will read this and I'm sure it'll be food for their thoughts. There's still at least 3 months of development until Idol Manager starts being sold on Steam and other platforms, so maybe there's still time to add more stuff, other than the rest of the main story and some features like the cafe and the theater.
While there's nothing wrong with the current graduation system, I'm kind of curious: I assume idols in real life sign some kind of contract about how long they have to stay? I know K-pop idols sign a 7 year contract but I don't know about Japanese idol groups. I don't imagine an idol can stick around for only 6 months then be like "I'm outta here y'all bye!" and suffer no consequences for it. After all, a lot of money is invested into training a new idol. Any company would want that idol to return them a profit or pay a fee if they leave before their contract is up.
For the final game, I think it'd be interesting to have a little more gameplay surrounding graduation. For example, being able to haggle with idols over their graduation, or know exactly why they are wanting to graduate. Kind of going off of 8thPrince's ideas above. Such as, "I feel my mental health isn't being taken care of in this group" or "I feel I never get center position," maybe you can fulfill her wish to keep her from leaving. Or maybe an idol says, "I'm too old, I think it's time for me to go," you could offer her her own TV show to get her to stay longer, or maybe have her work at a very slow rate so she can have more of an outside life in her late 20's.
It seems to me right now that idols leave after some unspecified period of time and I don't know why or get any input in it. Seems as if it'd be more complex in real life.
Also I'd love to see more consequences and drama surrounding the election. For real idols, it'd suck to go down several spots, or to not even be in the top 10. It might make them rethink staying in the group. Maybe other idols who place in the top 3 will expect more money or opportunities. In the game right now, after the election everyone goes on with life as usual, except some idols have a few stars of fame added.
Anyways I'm super excited to see how fleshed out the game will be with new writing added! The core gameplay is really fun now but it just lacks that replayability without the drama, struggles, and pretty much humanity of the idols and their fans. Not sure if this is an unpopular opinion but I do hope a little bit of darkness is added. I know many real idols go through terrible things behind the screen of cute costumes, pop-y music, and smiles. I'd love to see some light shined onto that.
"It seems to me right now that idols leave after some unspecified period of time and I don't know why or get any input in it. Seems as if it'd be more complex in real life."
I know AKB and Sakamichi work like part-time jobs, they're free to leave at any time if they give notice. But the most popular girls generally need to wrap up their commitments before leaving and are asked to stay (AkiP haggled to postpone many of the 1st Gen AKB girls' graduations, but let Sasshi leave the first time she asked, for example.). But I see what you're hinting at, graduations are usually things that have to be approved/negotiated with management and might follow the end of their contracts/another single release. I'd also like to see some "haggling" (Although this would mean giving individual idols and their fans more worth so it's actually beneficial to keep girls, like you said.).
I do know the latest update apparently allowed you to convince girls to stay somehow, admittedly I haven't gotten enough graduations yet to run into this.
I think election drama sounds really interesting! There's been drama in the past like announcing a secret relationship, snafus where members shaded other idols, surprise graduation announcements: could be fun.
Had an single/concert/election cycle conclude at the start of July before the awards: game froze upon loading awards sequence. Loaded the autosave which was 15 minutes ago (despite setting mine to 60 seconds.). Landed after the single release but before the concert: concert never triggered after that, and therefore no election either.
Posting here to add that this is the second time this election bug has happened to me, and like I suggested last time, I really think the player should just trigger the concert+election themselves rather than trusting the game to do it so this bug is avoided entirely, it really quashes any enjoyment to play anymore when it happens since you lose progress and you're penalized in game for cancelling the election.