Forum topic: [NEWS] Fans & merchandise balance changes, and division clean up

Fans & merchandise balance changes
We have made a set of balance changes to the fans and merchandise system. The goal of these changes is to keep fans valuable, while reducing the effect where already-popular teams could generate very large amounts of easy income and pull further ahead financially.

The main changes are:
* Merchandise income from fans has been reduced significantly.
* Large fanbases now have diminishing returns when generating merchandise income.
* Gaining new fans is now easier for small teams and harder for teams that already have a very large fanbase.
* Merchandise pricing has been rebalanced.
* Expensive merchandise now has a stronger downside on both weekly sales and fan growth.
* Cheaper merchandise is now more clearly focused on growing your fanbase over time.

This means that teams with millions of fans will still benefit from their popularity, but the advantage should no longer scale as aggressively as before. At the same time, smaller teams should still be able to grow their fanbase naturally, especially when making fan-friendly choices.

These changes are part of a broader effort to improve long-term game balance and reduce runaway financial advantages.

Division clean-up
The last few seasons we've had teams who had to queue to join division 3 until the running season ended because there were no more free spots. Therefore I've removed all teams from division 2 and division 3 who are inactive and who have less than 2 drivers. All remaining teams who were active in division 3 have been moved up to division 2. If you are a manager of a -now- division 2 team and would've preferred to stay in division 3, then please open a helpdesk ticket.

finally, thanks Frank

Love the idea of the division cleanup, 2.3 was looking a little sad and it's nice to see it with 8+ active players again.

This clean is absolutely the best way forward.
Now i'm scared for my spot though

Seems to to be fine update for Fans department. Renttu Racing economy is quite stable without the big fans income (based on last 2 season income totals), which was anyways burned to cash cost. So nothing really changes for the top team, but hopefully it benefits a lot of the young teams on a rise.

i don't think that top teams will be able to have multiple people with a salary of 2 millions per week anymore, but yeah competitiveness of young teams and old teams who struggle with finance will rise on the long term due to this update

As much as I welcome some kind of balance of power, I don't see fan income as the only root cause. The large one-off income from selling shares, combined with cash cost, forces managers to spend massively before the capital evaporates. You can see it at Renttu, it was visible at Minardi before Matteo left, and at Paolonio Racing too. The usual ways to burn money are salaries, expensive supplier deals and works contracts that are heavily overpaid to buy a sporting advantage.
The timing of this change, without any announcement, is disastrous, but that's nothing new here.

if you are saying that the issue is how big it is the reduction of the merchandise income, you don't get how still it is easy to hoard money if a team don't need to pay 2-3 top salaries imho. before it was possible to win, pay few top salaries and hoard money all in the same time in a perpetual loop. now it needs some skills to understand how to manage properly the economic part of the game

btw when i was at minardi i never went public, the team was already public when i took it over...at the time i raised a lot the fans number after winning 3 championship in a raw and i started to gain a lot of money from merchandising, that's it.

and yes, the cash cost tax push the players to spend money to win, and not to hoard infinite money to destroy the market later, so i only see positive outcome where only the players and their skills can make the difference more than before.
if the cash cost % is too high, it will be reduced i guess, just wait at least a couple of seasons to see how it goes.