In this post, I will explain popularity and the benefits of being a popular fighter in GCC. Popularity in GCC won't effect your success in the cage but it does impact your fighters career and provides handlers with additional incentives for added IC bragging rights.
There are four categories of popularity. Fighters may start off as any of the following:
Unknown - All newly created fighters start here. As a fed head, I gauge your activity and scale you up from here. If you signed a contract but haven't posted anything and didn't submit a camp report, you are listed as unknown in the sim.
Regional - These are fighters who are newly created and have shown some signs of life. This could be twitter activity, forum posts, ooc dms or email communications. Basically, I know your an active part of the fed in some way at the time that I am running your sim.
National - All established characters start with National popularity. You are considered an established character if you are an active part of another e-wrestling efed or other mma efed or are otherwise seen as an active member.
International - This is the highest level. You can only achieve this status by attending press conferences, posting CD pieces, hyping fights on twitter, submitting reports and or hyping your fights by any means available.
From Regional popularity to International Popularity, it scales from 0 to 100. For example, someone with a National Ranking level at 0 is considered to be a ''Low level National'' fighter and is more popular than a ''High Level Regional fighter''; so on and so forth.
Fighters who start of as regional, start off as ''High Level Regional'' with 75 points already in the category allowing them to become Low Level National in just 1-2 fights with activity. Fighters who began as National start off with ''0'' making them ''Low Level National'' fighters. No fighters shall start off with more popularity than this unless otherwise stated.
Now, onto HOW you earn popularity. We have a scale and it's simple.
Social Media Activity/CD development: +5 pop
Press Conference: 15 + pop
Once a fighter gains 100 popularity at a High national level and becomes a low level International star, the gains listed here are cut in half.
Also, the sim will also provide you with + pop and - pop depending on fight performances. However, these gains/losses are minuscule compared to what you can earn by just being active and selling your fights.
Is there any other way my fighter can lose popularity?
Yes but only at international level, not hyping the fight or attending press conferences will lower your popularity at a rate of 50% in which you would have otherwise earned it.
How your popularity effects GCC within the sim...
In the sim, your fighters popularity will literally translate into ppv subscribers and increased popularity for GCC as a company within the sim. In other games, these numbers are simply made up on the fly with exaggerated numbers but in our sim, your fighters popularity literally helps sell shows and gains us subscribers!
As a company, GCC is listed within the sim as a high level regional company world wide on the brink of going national.
At the end of each event, the sim will generate a PPV subscriber number. Let's say for this example, GCC earns 20,000 subscribers.
Those 20,000 subscribers will be credited to the fighters in the following ways:
The most popular fighter in the main event will be credited with earning the company 30% (6000) of those subscribers. The second fighter will be credited with earning 20% (4,000) of the subscribers.
The most popular fighter in the co main event will earn 15% (3000) of the subscribers. The second fighter in the co main event will earn 10% (2, 000) of the subscribers.
The remaining 25% (5000) of the subscribers will be split evenly among any remaining fighters that are considered to be National level fighters or above but may not exceed the amount of 5% per fighter. Any remaining non-credited subscriber counts shall be credited to the most popular fighter on the card regardless of the fighters overall placement on the card.
More benefits
Beyond this, fighters with higher popularity will get better match ups, title opportunities and will be featured more prominently on advertisements and posters and thus be eligible to earn more cash within the game world.
This is going to add a really fun element to this game, I think. Glad you thought of this because it really is a big factor in any sort of entertainment or sports.