The Masked Orange

I like this one. I would maybe add the current effects of the 'Desperado' attribute to it so that the wrestler doesn't retire for real until they are very old as well. That would reflect the kind of schedule a lot of older (55+) wrestlers end up working who can't just bite the bullet and retire.

Advice based on SWF product. Scythe is a fun worker to use who can have the dual problem of his psychology and stamina maxing out at levels that aren't enough to carry a main event match at PPV level. My advice would be to book him in some tag match main events on tv that run at 15 minutes. You'll get an idea of what kind of performance rating he's giving compared to your other stars you've put in the match, and it should give you a good indicator of where his stamina is (if he's getting penalties at 15 minutes it's going to be hard to get top tier match grades from him). Long-term, sometimes with bigger guys like Scythe in that upper midcard role the best thing to do is to wait until their psychology reaches a point where they can be put in matches with 'slow build' road agent notes, normally with a guy with much higher psychology, without dragging the rating down from not being able to do it properly. I often end up with two or three 'monsters' in a company like SWF that sit in the upper midcard essentially all fighting for the right to eventually be put into main event programmes by having their stats improve enough. Scythe usually gets there, but with a bad destiny roll he might never be the full-on 85+ match rating guy you'd want him to be. But some regular 15 minute slow-build tag matches with guys that can do that in their sleep is pretty much the best way to develop any wrestler's in ring-skills, so no big secret there. The only other thing I can think of is if you're falling into the trap of using road agent notes like 'domination', 'keep strong' or 'protect'. They're custom built for big guys that can't go, but Scythe can go so sometimes all that crowbarring that into the road agent notes does is disrupt the flow of the match and get you a lower number. You'll also want to check to see if you've been putting him in matches that are called in the ring with other guys that can't yet call a match in the ring, as Scythe probably won't be at that level for a year/eighteen months from the start date, so will only be able to call matches with guys with top notch psychology ratings.

Originally I was going to post this as a reply to The Blonde Bomber's post about nerfing attendances, but it ended up being long enough I decided it probably needs its own separate thing. For context: You can get very high attendances for even something like generic monthly live shows with big companies in the right markets, normally around 50,000 a month, in addition to your big event/ppv. That consistent turnout is a bit unrealistic and often as a gameplay result too much money is made by both players and ai. How do you get shows to reflect the very real popularity of a promotion without being able to ride that popularity to two sold-out stadiums every month? Even WWE knows that a lot of its PPVs (or whatever we call them now) can only draw a modest audience relative to the heavy hitters. I think a decent solution might be that based on company size (and how long you've been at that size) you get access to an increasing number of 'mega' events. A company like AEW can have a Wembley show or equivalent twice a year maybe. WWE can have four/five events that are kind of around that stadium threshold (with Wrestlemania being even bigger covered by the Season Finale and Legendary event mechanics already in TEW). You would allocate which events are 'mega' events in the Events tabs. Potentially even a large indy might get access to a 'mega' event (even OVW had a bigger outdoor show every year if memory serves), which would be a fun thing to book and a fun milestone to achieve as a player (and for those that don't always use the Season Finale mechanic it would be a good way to still have a 'mega' show or shows structuring your year). A 'mega' event to WWE or AEW means a stadium, to a large indy it might mean an outdoor venue or just a bigger arena. Small/Tiny companies get laughed out of the room. But it also means that WWE doesn't get to fill a stadium any given month, and that a large indy can't expect to fill out the local convention centre every show, they should have to go back to the bingo hall. If you were to do introduce this mechanic, you could get then probably nerf the overall attendance figures across the board while still being able to achieve those realistic feeling numbers for the bigger events. That way you could even run something like a big MSG-style house show while booking a WWE save without it accidentally feeling like another PPV. There would also be a much bigger incentive for your big events being as successful as possible, as the excess from those bigger events might be needed to help you through leaner periods. The 'mega' events might even have access to different ticketing options, as anyone that's ever looked at the Wrestlemania packages and so on knows. A lot of this logic already exists in game, it's really just adding an additional wrinkle to really double-down on it. Essentially, lower the attendances for (at least medium+) companies universally, but give 'mega' events that will allow players to break through the new attendance ceiling to command those big juicy wrestling-industry inflated attendance figures, and make back some of the difference financially. The only other thing I can really think of would be a complete rework of the scheduling system to work around much more intricate strategies, say having a very deliberate balance of small/big shows or sacrificing bigger show frequency to increase baseline attendance etc. That would allow you to rejig the attendance figures as part of that process. However, with all the hassle I understand the regular/touring schedule stuff has caused behind the scenes over the years in mind, this does seem like a much bigger job that would probably add a lot of unnecessary complexity for the average user. There is also the territorial/modern age thing. Sold-out large venue runs were more common back in the day and in certain markets, especially before TV and PPV. But without coding in a progressive ai that adjusts live attendance behaviours by era I think just going by the last 20ish years for the framework is probably fair enough. The whole 'mega' events thing is the only solution I can think of that doesn't require more work than is probably able to be put into it.

One thing I will say anecdotally is that I care more about the other stuff on the booker profile than the booking rating. What I like one my dev territory is lots of matches with my best prospects being used, so tend to go for people (owner too) whose biases fit what I'm trying to do, before I even compare the ratings. Since it's a dev territory anyway I'm not sure how valuable a better booking skill is because higher ratings aren't all that important. I also have a preference in my dev territory for someone that likes frequent title changes, because that situation where they pick some little-upside scrub you forgot you had on a dev deal to be the champion for eighteen months is unbearable. I know you can force title changes in dev territories, but I always avoid doing that because it feels inorganic to me. Since your world champ is on pretty much every show, I like that love getting spread around a bit more. While I'm talking about it I'll also say that I'm pretty sure the owner skills are pretty much irrelevant to a dev territory as you handle so much of it anyway, and even a child company that isn't a dev territory would have limited use of a 'great' owner. If I had to make a choice I'd choose someone who likes a large/massive roster and who likes to splash the cash (quick scan through the database shows Eugene Williams is a good example of this, obv on a written deal at game start though). This is just in case there's anything in the game code which means an owner's preferences will make them run less people on a card than possible, which I'm not even sure is the case tbh. The big exception to this is if you want a booker who is able to give a mega-push (so needs a booking skill of 85+) or even just what the handbook terms 'special' pushes (65+). I debate the usefulness of this on a dev territory, as I either want to keep my dev guys unknowns so that I can control their push once they get onto the main roster, or it's a NXT-style deal where the territory has great broadcasting deals so can get guys to lower-midcard popularity (for your roster, which I find is normally what the popularity ceiling is for a champ in a dev territory) without the need for a 65+ quality booker. So, for example, if you were starting a game in NA with one of the big companies who would I recommend as the booker for your dev territory? Having gone through the options available Day 1 I've decided my number one draft pick would be... Oscar Ozymandias. No, seriously, I would even consider getting rid of Wilson Carlisle in RIPW for him (which opens him up to being brought on as a main roster ref anyway). He likes charismatic talkers, so hopefully the people the ones getting that precious promo and match time will be the people most valuable to big NA companies (Charisma and Star Quality rule the world, after all), but more importantly he is a proponent of crash tv so you know there will not be an entrenched champion at the top, and his booking skill being over 65 means that he should be able to effectively push people. As a worker he's not even too bad to help some guys get experience, but he's probably soon destined for your territory's broadcasting team and/or a gig as a manager. From what I can tell there is nobody available to hire in the USA (not going to do the whole game world, sorry) who has a booking skill of 85+ on game start for a territory position. But since I've got it open I'll do a quick list of people available to hire Day 1 that have at least 65 booking skill. I looked at the list twice, once with RIPW and once with a new territory as SWF that I gave the maximum starting popularity, remember the bookers you can attract is size dependent. Barry Kingman (78, only for biggest possible size dev territory, RIPW not big enough) Carl Batch (66, modernist) Chess Maniac (72, longer reigns, only for biggest possible size dev territory, RIPW not big enough) Chris Caulfield (72, modernist, only for biggest possible size dev territory, RIPW not big enough) Craig Prince (65, modernist) Damian Carvill (65, longer reigns) Frankie-Boy Fernandes (70) Genghis Rahn (69) Greg Sluchinski (78, longer reigns, only for biggest possible size dev territory, RIPW not big enough) Honest Frank (80, only for biggest possible size dev territory, RIPW not big enough) Joan Rodriguez (72,only for biggest possible size dev territory, RIPW not big enough) Johnny Martin (80, modernist, only for biggest possible size dev territory, RIPW not big enough) Lisa Bowen (65, modernist) Madman Boone (78, quite short reigns, only for biggest possible size dev territory, RIPW not big enough, maybe only rival to Ozymandias for me) Marv Statler (70, only for biggest possible size dev territory, RIPW not big enough) Mr. Lucha III (70, longer reigns) - also bit of a waste of a great talent to hide him in a dev territory this early Oscar Ozymandias (68, crash tv, GOAT) Pistol Pete Hall (68, longer reigns) Ricky Dale Johnson (72, modernist, only for biggest possible size dev territory, RIPW not big enough) Slayyer (80, quite short, only for biggest possible size dev territory, RIPW not big enough, okay Boone and this guy can rival Ozymandias) The Guru (80, only for biggest possible size dev territory, RIPW not big enough) The Wolverine (66) Tigre Salvaje Jr. (70, longer reigns) Too Hot (70) Also if you do start as SWF looking at RIPW I guess you have to throw in that you start with Wilson Carlisle, 88 booking skill with a longer reigns preference. As RIPW you also have the option of replacing him with Mean Jean Cattley as he is the CEO of RIPW, he has 84 booking skill with no length preferences. My quick response turned into a bit of a deep dive. Oh well, hope there's something useful here.

This one's been cooking for a while. I've been thinking about situations which increase the volatility of worker decisions. This is both to better reflect the real world for mods, but also to help the game in general which can feel very promotion-dictated at the level of the written-contract in particular. SWF outbid USPW for X, so X moves. Y stayed at TCW until TCW decided they were too old. Z was in a tag team which EILL broke up and then forgot about him. That kind of stuff. The decision making has always felt very promotion-led. My solution is for wrestlers to have 'Career Plans' that you can see on their profile. I see this as being a counterpart to the excellent attribute system, in that not all wrestlers need to have one. Most wrestlers will have a non-specific career plan. Why would Z care that EILL isn't pushing them if the money is good and they're on tv? That's most wrestlers. But some wrestlers from game start or over time will pick up a 'Career Plan'. This may be something innocuous like 'Wants to find a tag partner' to something career-changing like 'Wants to make a name in Japan'. These Career Plans will have different levels of severity. A Career Plan should start off as 'Vague', something they maybe see for themselves in the future, then either disappear or graduate to 'Significant', something that is increasingly on their mind, and then either decline again or eventually go up to 'Urgent'. At that point it will be the primary concern of their decision making. Your young wannabe-globetrotter you've hired and clipped the wings of at 23 to be your star in your territory might over time give up on their globetrotting ambitions, but (just like in real life) it may be an itch they just have to scratch and they will eventually refuse contract terms that do not fit their 'Urgent' Career Plan. If all they want to do is their tag team work in their 'Career Plan' and you split them up, it will impact morale. The usual game consequence kind of stuff. I like this for a few reasons. I like that a Career Plan doesn't have to happen. It makes saves different. I think the different severity levels and the fact that it's on their profile allows for the player to make informed decisions without just having a narrative get forced upon them at short notice. I think it is also a softer approach than using the Attribute system for this kind of probabilistic behaviour. An attribute (not that there are any in game currently I would put in this category) that forces someone to, at some indeterminate point, leave your company because they've decided for unexplained reasons that now is the time feels like a design a lot of people wouldn't warm too. Even if that is how things are in the real world sometimes. I think players can have that random obstacle itch scratched by turning up the injury frequency if that's the sudden challenge they want. If you've had a guy under contract for ten years and then he tells you he's finally going to go home back to Canada to wind things up, and you've been aware of this being on his mind for a few years, that feels like a more understandable bit of organic storytelling, and less like just some random occurrence in your save game. If your #6 guy says that he's leaving because he wants to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond and he hasn't reached the top here, they might piss you off in doing so but it's understandable. This could also give more utility to the 'Talk to Worker' mechanic, which I feel like at the moment 90% of my usage of is to get guys ripped. A few existing attributes, stuff like Fame Hungry or Musician, could eventually be swallowed up by this mechanic. I also have in the back of my mind that this is a mechanic which might help workers make career choices based on tag work. It may help with that, it may be totally irrelevant. Just an idea. Especially for people in game that are designed to be tag-workers maybe having them start in-game with something like an 'Urgent' plan which is 'Does Not Want To Split From Partner' would help. And then, if you notice that plan soften on one/both of them, that feels like an organic opportunity. Forcing myself to make it no longer than this. Hope there are some good, simple ideas in here.

That's some good info 👍

If I understand what happened when you bought them out correctly I believe that you can't get a hold of those workers because they are signed to CWA and not to you. If you send workers to CWA you should be able to borrow them back but those folks that have CWA contracts don't work the same way. I quickly tested this with SWF/RIPW but the workers impacted there like Curt Meritt don't have written contracts so it may be a little different. You can try to terminate the contract he has with RIPW (but in this case the owner MJC stops you, not sure if all owners would be like that), but you can't call him up. For a rule of thumb, I think you can only use the 'borrow' mechanic on workers that appear in your 'Developmental' tab. If those CWA workers you want are on non-exclusive deals then you can negotiate with them yourself and then send them back as a dev worker. If they're on a written, you may be stuck waiting for the end of the contract to negotiate.

Quick on inspired by a post on the general forum. It is a bit weird that workers that become colour/announcers can start at a number and get worse over to time to 'meet' their cap. You can also game this a bit if you have a lot of great entertainers in your company by going through your roster and seeing whose number goes down before actually putting them in the booth. I think having it so that everyone (above a certain level) started at a mid-level stat would be better. Say, 50? Good talkers can still be better/more useful from the go thanks to the 70% of mic thing but very few people will have hit the cap at that level.

Had a thought about personalities so I guess this is the place for that since they are attributes now. Note: It may already work like this behind the scenes but I've found nothing conclusive in the handbook/in-game text. There are some personalities that are amplified/mitigated by position on the card. Say Needy vs Bully. I really like that the backstage impact is dynamic like that. I thought it'd be fun if some of the personalities are also amplified by the respect stat. A Scumbag with low respect is less likely to get away with their BS as people are more likely to stand up to them. They might have a lower backstage impact but a higher incidence of causing negative events. On the flipside, a high respect Scumbag will have a huge negative effect as their actions go largely unchecked by the rest of the locker room, but there are less likely to be confrontations as a result. My suspicion based on playing the game a bunch is that respect already does influence how influential a worker is in the locker room (pushing 'mildly positive influence' to 'positive influence', that kind of thing) but it's hard to tell whether that is to do with overness/perception or respect as they tend to go hand-in-hand a lot of the time. I would like it if there was a stronger strategic element to a worker's respect stat, and if it already operates in that way to slip in a couple lines about it somewhere so that the player can have that in the back of their mind. Also I like the idea that high respect can be a negative for certain individuals, as it is mostly just a positive modifier in game with no downside.

I think the best way to do this is to have a setting where wrestlers are set to debut with a narrative, since that has a % chance of happening built in, and if the narrative requirements aren't met than they never debut. Would be a cool additional narrative type. It could also allow you to set up multiple versions of the same wrestler to debut, say Jim Cena and Mirror Universe Jim Cena, and only one would debut based on the narrative requirements. Could be a fun fantasy way to deal with the future child problem as well, set up a few plausible versions and let rng take the wheel.

Sounds like a lovely place.

I believe workers still do develop in developmental. This is at least based on the experience of having had workers entertainments skills improve in dev territory's with 0% angle products. Now, putting your dev worker in a performance centre in my experience is basically cranking up their development to the max. But really, the main benefit of a performance centre is being to develop main roster workers better than they would have been just working dark matches. I find it really works for workers with stamina issues, as long as they haven't already hit their ceiling.

I know a lot of people miss the old feature of dojos which made them more likely to produce certain types of wrestlers. This is kind of a spin on that which should also add a little bit of risk/reward to the system. Basically, a graduation requirement would be a skill (or set of skills) that a graduate would have to have in order to graduate from a dojo. For example, say you're fed up of producing wrestlers that don't have the stamina for your work-rate product. You could put a 'requirement' on your dojo that graduates pass a fitness test. The positive is that graduates are more likely to have higher starting stats (not potential) in this area to reflect the emphasis of the dojo and the training to 'pass' that part of the course. The negative is that workers that would have come through your dojo that 'fail' simply don't graduate to the game world any more. Your graduating class of 6 might become a graduating class of 4. That may not be an issue if you're a promotion with little room for developing those who aren't naturally gifted, but if you're a promotion that cares more about brute-forcing prospects through with good fortune in star quality and/or charisma rolls, maybe being picky just made you send into the ether that 90 star quality prospect that gets blown up a bit easily at 19, but that would have developed decent stamina over the first phase of their career. I like this more than a return to the old system just because it gives you a little more control of your dojo, which has become increasingly important, while adding a real strategic element with a real downside to trying to impart that control. For a promotion with a dev territory having some rough graduates is no big deal as you're likely sending them to that territory anyway, but for a company (say CZCW) with no dev territory and not the biggest roster in the world, but with a great dojo and probably a few too many graduates coming through anyway, it allows you to better bridge the gap in homegrown quality. In my head this takes the form of a check list for each relevant category (Striking, Technical, Aerial, Fundamental, Physical, On-Camera (mic/acting)), with the ability to turn on as many as you like. Do you want only graduates that are all-round prospects from the go? If you're that picky, you may not get any able to graduate! I think this would all have to scale with the quality of the facilities. So a local-level dojo might only need for you to have a 30 average in your fundamental skills whereas a national-level dojo might need you to have, say, 55. I know some people also miss being able to specify wanting 'big workers' and things like that. Maybe that could operate on a similar system called 'Recruitment Focus', where you specialise in that type of worker but it reduces the size of your graduating class. A dojo looking for athletes with good fundamentals is going to have more graduates than a dojo that is looking for athletes with good fundamentals that are at least 6' 5''. I like the idea of a recruitment focus as well because it allows you to potentially add a few different recruitment styles (say, converting athletes from other sports, recruiting from the entertainment industry, national tryouts...) but my favourite idea is that it allows you to play with the upkeep cost of the dojo. The more you specialise the recruitment focus, the less people you get paying fees to train, and so the more expensive your dojo is to maintain. Again, I think a nice way to have a real gameplay impact from a dojo interaction. AI dojos would have the impediment as well, so if a retiring wrestler founds a dojo and has their heart set on producing a certain type of wrestler, they would produce less graduates than if that same wrestler had taken on all comers. The potential to have dojos with wildly different recruitment focuses also takes us into the forbidden realm of companies having multiple training facilities, say a general entry dojo and a special program for recruiting ex-athletes, but perhaps that pandora's box is for another time... Anyway, sorry for the long one. Been going deep with a CWW save recently and am starting to really rely on the generated graduates from the UK scene so I've been thinking about the worker generation system a bit.

I think that only applies to subscription broadcasters you own. If you're working with an outside broadcaster you shouldn't take on any losses.

I do find it a bit weird that with the dojo system the generated workers are divided into 'graduates' and 'spawned from nowhere'. I would like it if generated wrestlers had a 'training profile' or something like that when they spawned in. My suggestion would be 'Self-Taught' (pretty obvious), 'Privately Trained' (for most workers, went through a not noteworthy dojo or a training camp or something like that) and 'Privately Tutored' (obtained personal, one-on-one training somewhere, would be the rarest). This could even then be reflected in the quality of some of the skills they spawn in with. I think it would help round out some of the immersion with the generated wrestlers. I think for all but the 'Privately Tutored' they would be considered to be less refined than the bog standard dojo graduate.