Fundraising
BeefyFiveLayer
Posted on March 7, 2026 12:55
I have a question about whether the fundraising is working as intended or if perhaps I am misunderstanding how it works. Last season, I tried out a few different ones. As an example for this post I'll use the Phone-a-thon. I was thinking that the scale of 0.6 and 1.5 (as it shows now) meant that the return would be 0.06*[original investment]+[original investment], up to 1.5x your original investment. I based this on the fact that 0.0 would see to be the baseline (0% return) and there are some other examples like the Bingo Hall which have negative returns (so -2.0 actually means -3, since 1.0 is baseline?).
So, I put in $50,000.00 to start and see what happens in the season. My thinking was the result would be a return of $54,000.00 (8% return) up to $75,000.00 (150% return). Putting money into a fundraiser like this is great. You may not completely win, but your cost at least will come back and maybe you'll earn a little more on top of that. It made sense to me at the time, considering how easy it might be to go bankrupt without having some method of increasing revenue from season to season.
But in fact, I ended up losing money on this investment, because as it turns out, 1.0 seems to be the baseline of return, not 0.0. This is strange. 1.0 = 0% return? Then 0.0 must equal...what?
I can demonstrate this because on my Phone-a-thon, I received only $40,000.00 on my investment of $50,000.00. A whopping 20% loss for 1 season. Does this make sense? And maybe more importantly, does it make sense for a game like this where player retention is desired? I'm hoping to look at it from both a game design and simulation perspective - it makes sense in real life that some fundraisers do indeed lose money. From a game design perspective, what I can see easily happening is that many, many corps will inevitable face going inactive/folding if they are unable to get lucky with a really high return from one of those really risky investments. To hire staff and members and register for shows and still have finances remaining for both potential loans and fundraisers is a really tall order.
All this makes me as a player never want to put money into anything with a return less than 1.1 (if 1.0 is indeed the 0% return as last seasons results show). At the moment, that means putting all eggs into the March-a-thon fundraiser. Sure, it's not as flashy as some of the other things, but it is the only option (outside of online donations) which does not lose your money and instead puts you in a (slightly) better spot from season to season.
@Director, can you please help the community understand this more, or could you please look into it if it is not working as intended?
Thanks!
So, I put in $50,000.00 to start and see what happens in the season. My thinking was the result would be a return of $54,000.00 (8% return) up to $75,000.00 (150% return). Putting money into a fundraiser like this is great. You may not completely win, but your cost at least will come back and maybe you'll earn a little more on top of that. It made sense to me at the time, considering how easy it might be to go bankrupt without having some method of increasing revenue from season to season.
But in fact, I ended up losing money on this investment, because as it turns out, 1.0 seems to be the baseline of return, not 0.0. This is strange. 1.0 = 0% return? Then 0.0 must equal...what?
I can demonstrate this because on my Phone-a-thon, I received only $40,000.00 on my investment of $50,000.00. A whopping 20% loss for 1 season. Does this make sense? And maybe more importantly, does it make sense for a game like this where player retention is desired? I'm hoping to look at it from both a game design and simulation perspective - it makes sense in real life that some fundraisers do indeed lose money. From a game design perspective, what I can see easily happening is that many, many corps will inevitable face going inactive/folding if they are unable to get lucky with a really high return from one of those really risky investments. To hire staff and members and register for shows and still have finances remaining for both potential loans and fundraisers is a really tall order.
All this makes me as a player never want to put money into anything with a return less than 1.1 (if 1.0 is indeed the 0% return as last seasons results show). At the moment, that means putting all eggs into the March-a-thon fundraiser. Sure, it's not as flashy as some of the other things, but it is the only option (outside of online donations) which does not lose your money and instead puts you in a (slightly) better spot from season to season.
@Director, can you please help the community understand this more, or could you please look into it if it is not working as intended?
Thanks!
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Replies (2)
MercySMH
Posted on March 12, 2026 10:24
With a corps in second place at the end of the season and with fundraising included... I have significantly less money than I would have if I just started over completely!
New players start with 1,000,000 in World Class and second place starts with 700,000. I was expecting to be rewarded for placing highly... and thats on top of a profit of $100,000 from fundraising (even after loan was taken out)
New players start with 1,000,000 in World Class and second place starts with 700,000. I was expecting to be rewarded for placing highly... and thats on top of a profit of $100,000 from fundraising (even after loan was taken out)
1 like
