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