Maybe there are a few other things, I think the answer is that the game has now (fnally!) nerfed the impact of popular players down to a much better level. In my opinion, this is good for the game but will hurt teams who's current FI is highly leverages to these players with bloated popularity. Teams like mine. (http://montybrewster.net/forums/viewtop ... 60&t=49235)
An Aside: For those who haven't looked at the game's setup process, Fan Interest is built on two factors: (1) The core level of Fan Interest, and (2) an adjustment that goes up and down over time to reflect short-term signings and leavings. As an example, my Bikini team finished with a FI of 100 (which makes no sense), but converts in at 55. I admit I don't know what the numbers really are, this makes me guess that my base FI is maybe 50-52 and my adjustment is a few points. I can dig this.
Check out the teams that faded. I'm guessing they have more popular players in their organization. At least I'm aware that some of those GMs seem to value popularity.
If I'm right, that means crappy teams (and good ones, for that matter) will be limited in their ability to artificially pump up fan interest by doing what Bikini did last year (our big drop is a metric of how poor that system was...feel free to call it gaming the system if you want).
Anyway, here are the data in both graph and table forms:
| Team | V24 | V25 |
|---|---|---|
| NSH | 100 | 97 |
| SAC | 100 | 97 |
| LV | 100 | 96 |
| LBC | 100 | 91 |
| TWC | 100 | 86 |
| PHX | 100 | 81 |
| BIK | 100 | 55 |
| CCJ | 98 | 88 |
| SFB | 98 | 72 |
| MTL | 97 | 89 |
| CLG | 96 | 86 |
| RMO | 90 | 85 |
| HAW | 89 | 86 |
| YS9 | 88 | 80 |
| MEX | 87 | 87 |
| CHA | 84 | 75 |
| DM | 84 | 72 |
| OMA | 83 | 82 |
| NO | 81 | 80 |
| VAN | 80 | 74 |
| CHI | 77 | 71 |
| POR | 77 | 69 |
| BOI | 77 | 66 |
| MAD | 75 | 66 |
| JAX | 72 | 77 |
| ATC | 72 | 73 |
| VAL | 68 | 68 |
| RCK | 62 | 64 |
| LOU | 62 | 62 |
| EDM | 55 | 54 |
| SA | 52 | 52 |
| BRK | 47 | 45 |
| Average | 82.8 | 75.8 |
