Perhaps I misunderstood you, but I thought we were talking about randomizing popularity and/or price. My bad, if I was mistaken... ideally, price would scale with earnings drivers like we suggested, but personally I'm satisfied with my popularity cap of 50. I didn't have to edit anything but once, and the dev didn't have to do anything.Maybe everyone else likes it playing the same every time. Maybe everyone else goes and manually changes all their people before they start a new game. Personally I'd rather get variation, and I'd rather have it built into the game. Therefore I suggested it as an idea for future inclusion. You or anyone else is free to say you dislike this idea. The developer is free to implement it or not.
I don't quite understand why you want this feature "built-in" when girlpacks are user generated and customizable, which I think is a strength rather than a weakness. I wouldn't like forcing hiring limitations on everyone when the early game is already a pain. In my opinion, the whole point of a game like this is to set it up how you want instead of it being balanced giving the exact same experience for everyone.
Anyway, I absolutely agree with what you said about the negotiations being too opaque and the effects of the stats being too hidden though. You're right that the game doesn't give enough clues about what actions and stats do. For example, upgrading the club seems extremely potent, so it makes even less sense to pay more for hires in the beginning.
Thanks for the update. If popularity does impact other earnings-related stats, which I thought were randomized, then that's pretty much the solution to the pricing issue. I'm not sure if I want this built into the base game though, but I would run it against my packs when you're ready to share.To this point, the randomizer I am working on for TUSC relates proficiencies and persuasion-related stats to the scale of popularity and therefore expense. More popular girls are less likely to reject you in training and more proficient in performances which directly impacts earn along side their popularity.