LP Rating Tips
Сrеdit gоеs to Kyouko Tsukino !
Release spin-offs, sequels, ports, or even budget versions of the IP you want to increase.
Each new game for a franchise, as long as it’s good enough (70%+) will increase IP value. The better the quality, the higher the increase. Having any game of the IP win an award will increase the IP rating too.
IPs are one of the most important mechanics in the game – releasing fifty different, unconnected games may keep you floating in Easy or Medium for most of the game, but in higher difficulty levels, “unknown” games will sell much less than those with an IP value of three or more.
Increasing your IP rating will also help increase your studio rating, which will further increase your sales.
I solve the IP decay issue by using all genres. I use only 9 IPs, but each has a spin-off of a different genre, with one of the IPs (generally the one that includes RPGs) getting one extra genre.
9 IPs, even at one game every two months, is more than what’s needed for the game to not have stunted IP growth. I also never use free updates or add-ons, IMO the laughably low increase in sales they give is negligible, compared to just making a new game which will be earning a lot more money and growing your IPs quicker. Past 1985 I’m not even bothering with contracts anymore (unless I’m doing a contracts-only run, fun in their own, painful way,) I just go full “sequel factory” on my IPs. I tend to have. When I unlock a different genre, I just release “bad” games for it to learn those genres (which will still be barely above 90% most of the time, due to their sub-genres and topics being already at five stars.)
IPs grow as fast as you want them to grow – if I focus in one single IP (all genres within one IP) I can get it to five stars before 1985 (and if I win too many awards, it could happen before ’83 at times.)
What I haven’t tried in a while is an arcades-only run. The sheer number of techs needed for it, even with the current automation system, could prove to be a challenge (or at least very annoying.)
Development speed is heavily linked to number of employees you have… And while you can inflate it with the development speed options, creating fake difficulty, I value my time more than “realism” so I use short development time, and normal game speed so I don’t have to be sitting on my rear looking at a screen for ten minutes between starting development of a game and finishing it.
In early game I hire whoever I can hire (used to be picky until I realized that’s a stupid idea in Legendary,) until I unlock marketing and can be picky. By 1978 I’ll have fifty employees, most of them in game development. By 1980 I’m likely to have a hundred employees. That allows me to pop B-sized games out once a month, and since I know when going up one size is needed, I can keep up that one-per-month ratio basically forever. I start making B+ games around 1990, when B-games start being rather annoying to keep above 90% rating.
AAA and AAAA games are bonus content IMO, I never saw the need to go above AA, which my 400+ development and development-adjacent employees can get done in a week or two, leaving the rest of the month for polishing. I could be doing one AAA (and possibly AAAA) in one month too, but that would just give me more money, which by that point in the game (2020+) I really don’t need more of, ever.
You don’t need to go up one game size the moment your game has ten suitable gameplay features. Most initial gameplay features are useless by 1985, because they give way too few stat points, so they can be taken out in favor of newer, better features.
Keyboard support in a console-only game? A Worthless 8/11 points to the two stats you’re already getting hundreds of in early game just from your employees. Pause function? Realistically, few games should be without it. In-game, it’s as useless as keyboard/controller support, so I stop using it when I have more than ten gameplay features available, allowing me to extend the lifetime of B-size games and keep their ratings above 90%. Same goes for B+, I tend to switch from B+ to A by the time I have thirty gameplay features for the genre chosen, not as soon as I have twenty to use.
Smaller size = smaller development cost and development time, and since I’m pretty much mass-producing games, the numbers make up for the lower profit of smaller game sizes.
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