Journal discussion thread

[djlightning]

[QUOTE=shamelessposer;413602]I love the inclusion of product explanations. Is there any chance we could get these added to the editor too?[/QUOTE] The way I understand it, it shows up when you click the Product Analysis button, which is already in the editor section.

[djlightning]

Ok according to Adam's post yesterday he said the Exact Same match, meaning the same type, and same competitors. My question though is say you have 4 guys in 2 storylines, and you had 3 tag team matches, but in each match, had new partners, so match 1, 1&2, vs 3&4, match 2 1&3 vs 2&4, match 3 1&4 vs 2&3. Would that still qualify as the same competitors, or because the teams are different, would it be considered each match be considered, a fresh idea? This might be something that only Adam knows for sure. Part of me says it's the same, yet part of me says it's different.

[mvargus]

[QUOTE=djlightning;413724]Ok according to Adam's post yesterday he said the Exact Same match, meaning the same type, and same competitors. My question though is say you have 4 guys in 2 storylines, and you had 3 tag team matches, but in each match, had new partners, so match 1, 1&2, vs 3&4, match 2 1&3 vs 2&4, match 3 1&4 vs 2&3. Would that still qualify as the same competitors, or because the teams are different, would it be considered each match be considered, a fresh idea? This might be something that only Adam knows for sure. Part of me says it's the same, yet part of me says it's different.[/QUOTE] that would be a question for Adam, but I would imagine that the system is going to check for the same names in the same spots, and since you basically have 6 different tag pairings, I see it as 3 different matches.

[Marcel Fromage]

Been away for a couple of days...come back and have to go back about 90 pages to catch up on this thread! :D Liking the 'controversial' feature of the repetitive booking penalties. But then I actually keep a spreadsheet on which I note down the last time 2 wrestlers fought. It's very rare I have 2 guys go at it more than once a year unless its the PPV main event, when I might run a match on a couple of PPVs running! The thing some people seem to be complaining about though is that it won't be so hard in the bigger promotions and make it hard for smaller promotions where there are only 2 or 3 really good workers. Well, in TEW you can easily raise a small promotion now to become a major promotion fairly quickly. In my opinion anything that makes that process more challenging is a good feature. It should be difficult for small promotions to put on consistently great shows.

[mvargus]

[QUOTE=Marcel Fromage;413728]Been away for a couple of days...come back and have to go back about 90 pages to catch up on this thread! :D Liking the 'controversial' feature of the repetitive booking penalties. But then I actually keep a spreadsheet on which I note down the last time 2 wrestlers fought. It's very rare I have 2 guys go at it more than once a year unless its the PPV main event, when I might run a match on a couple of PPVs running! The thing some people seem to be complaining about though is that it won't be so hard in the bigger promotions and make it hard for smaller promotions where there are only 2 or 3 really good workers. Well, in TEW you can easily raise a small promotion now to become a major promotion fairly quickly. In my opinion anything that makes that process more challenging is a good feature. It should be difficult for small promotions to put on consistently great shows.[/QUOTE] Nice post Marcel. However it seems to be a specific type of smaller promotion which brings out the cries and wails of anguish. I said from the start that I like to start an indy promotion and see how big I can grow. I even put together a dynasty last year where I set up a new promotion in the database, and set my user character up as the owner/head booker from day 1. I started with $100K and F- popularity everywhere. Two years later I had moved my promotion up to small and was making a profit every month, but growth was slow. Why? Mostly because i'd set up a product where overness of workers as well as in ring performance mattered and I just didn't have the funds to bring in high overness workers. Most of the dynasties I saw with small promotions that grow very fast operate in a very consistent fashion. They set up a product type that is heavily skill based and limits or eliminates storyline requirements and they hire from a small pool of popular indy wrestlers who have high skills, but no overness and ride those few wrestlers to cult level. They are the ones who will be most hurt by the changes since they tend to rely on a small pool of main event talent and don't have a lot of midcarders who can be expected to put on a decent match when up against the main event wrestlers. Not and bring in the same match ratings, which are all that matters when using this tactic. a smaller promotion won't have any real difficulty getting around this with imaginative booking. When I had the dynasty going I started with 15 wrestlers on the roster. 4 main eventers (2 face, 2 heel) 5 upper midcard (2 face, 3 heel) 4 midcard (2 face, 2 heel) 2 lower midcard (both face) Even with a strong face/heel divide I had plenty of combinations to use, especially since I had a product with 70% match/ 30% angle & storyline which meant that I used a lot of run-ins and promos to keep building feuds and setting up future matches. Even at 1 match a month I always had 4-5 months worth of matches and storylines plotted and some storylines were plotted out a year or more in advance, just so I knew who I absolutely had to rehire when contracts came up. My only regret was how slow the promotion overness rose since a D+ show was the best I could hope for while my promotion was still mired in F and F+ overness.

[D16NJD16]

Whether The repititon penalty ends up being a good idea is all a matter of execution. If you cant have Flair Vs. Steamboat in say a best of 3 series of matches over the span of 3 weeks without incurring a penalty, thats not so good.

[mvargus]

[QUOTE=D16NJD16;413832]Whether The repititon penalty ends up being a good idea is all a matter of execution. If you cant have Flair Vs. Steamboat in say a best of 3 series of matches over the span of 3 weeks without incurring a penalty, thats not so good.[/QUOTE] You could. With a properly booked series you'd see no penalty. Match 1, sets based rating Match 2, (rating averaged with match 1 to create target average) Now, to avoid any penalty you just have to have match 3's rating better than the average of matches 1 and 2 (plus perhaps 1% due to trap #3) As long as the 3rd match has a rating that exceeds the average match rating for the series, you avoid trap 2, avoiding trap 1 is just being better than the worst in the series to that point. Trap 3 is a big tougher, but for 3 matches it only increases the average a small amount (approximately 1% according to the journal post.) So if we put real % to the matches. Match 1, 91% (decent match) Match 2, 93% (the wrestler's did a bit better) match 3: levels to avoid traps. At 90.9% or less you hit all 3 traps 91%-92% you'll hit trap 2 and trap 3 92.1%-92.5% trap 3 will probably kick in, but you'll avoid traps 1 and 2 match ratings of 92.6% and higher would avoid all 3 traps for match 3. Now that would be as true for match 10. At that point per Adam's posts, the trap 3 increase could be 20% which would raise the target rating from the 92% average to 96.5% in order to keep the fans interested. Time to break out the hell-in-a-cell, major promo, road agent calling for all out, work the crowd fight.

[GardnerFTW]

Also worth noting, is that, as far as I've seen, its never been mentioned how big of a penalty we're dealing with on a repetitive match. I highly doubt that the penalty is going to be a major blow. A good match, that is repetitive, isn't necessarily going to be penalized to the point where its a complete bomb. Maybe an A- becomes a B+, we don't know, but I'm assuming that even if you incur a penalty, we're not talking about something that is going to completely destroy your show. At least that would be my guess.

[Dolfanar]

[quote]This should be particularly useful for newcomers to the series, and should make coming up with product definitions easier.[/quote] From Adam in his prodcut analysis post. That may be true, but I am one long time fan who also LOVES this. While we would probably figure this out before long, it's nice that these explanations will be right there from the start... kudos!

[Dolfanar]

[QUOTE=mvargus;413840]You could. With a properly booked series you'd see no penalty. Match 1, sets based rating Match 2, (rating averaged with match 1 to create target average) Now, to avoid any penalty you just have to have match 3's rating better than the average of matches 1 and 2 (plus perhaps 1% due to trap #3) As long as the 3rd match has a rating that exceeds the average match rating for the series, you avoid trap 2, avoiding trap 1 is just being better than the worst in the series to that point. Trap 3 is a big tougher, but for 3 matches it only increases the average a small amount (approximately 1% according to the journal post.) So if we put real % to the matches. Match 1, 91% (decent match) Match 2, 93% (the wrestler's did a bit better) match 3: levels to avoid traps. At 90.9% or less you hit all 3 traps 91%-92% you'll hit trap 2 and trap 3 92.1%-92.5% trap 3 will probably kick in, but you'll avoid traps 1 and 2 match ratings of 92.6% and higher would avoid all 3 traps for match 3. Now that would be as true for match 10. At that point per Adam's posts, the trap 3 increase could be 20% which would raise the target rating from the 92% average to 96.5% in order to keep the fans interested. Time to break out the hell-in-a-cell, major promo, road agent calling for all out, work the crowd fight.[/QUOTE] In some ways it makes some sense. You want the first match to have as LOW a rating as possible, but still high enough to be worth putting on. It'll certainly add another dimension to booking anything long-term. But then, part of that is backwards as well since first time meetings often get a boost (Hogan-Rock for instance), but I'm not sure if that is taken into account in TEW

[lazorbeak]

[QUOTE=Rams;413589]Wait, specialty matches don't matter? I think that is a mistake. I can understand how the audiance might tire of seeing more then three regular matches in six months but specialty matches should be considered different matches. A cage or ladder match in my mind is just a fresh as a tag match. In fact I'd rather see two guys who have fought more then three time together go head to head in an HITC match then some 6 man tag.[/QUOTE] Allowing all specialty matches to count differently would take away the primary purposes of the feature. It's not any less lazy to book a gimmick match featuring your best two workers, and as long as you didn't have three cage matches in six months, you'd be fine. Besides, real life has shown that even with gimmick matches, fans [I]don't[/I] get excited to see guys wrestle again and again and again, just because the matches are gimmicked. The Cena/Edge feud and the Rock Mankind feud have already been brought up, and both featured gimmick match after gimmick match. Even if you don't think all singles matches are counted the same, it's pretty clear why the game says they are.

[D16NJD16]

[QUOTE=mvargus;413840]You could. With a properly booked series you'd see no penalty. Match 1, sets based rating Match 2, (rating averaged with match 1 to create target average) Now, to avoid any penalty you just have to have match 3's rating better than the average of matches 1 and 2 (plus perhaps 1% due to trap #3) As long as the 3rd match has a rating that exceeds the average match rating for the series, you avoid trap 2, avoiding trap 1 is just being better than the worst in the series to that point. Trap 3 is a big tougher, but for 3 matches it only increases the average a small amount (approximately 1% according to the journal post.) So if we put real % to the matches. Match 1, 91% (decent match) Match 2, 93% (the wrestler's did a bit better) match 3: levels to avoid traps. At 90.9% or less you hit all 3 traps 91%-92% you'll hit trap 2 and trap 3 92.1%-92.5% trap 3 will probably kick in, but you'll avoid traps 1 and 2 match ratings of 92.6% and higher would avoid all 3 traps for match 3. Now that would be as true for match 10. At that point per Adam's posts, the trap 3 increase could be 20% which would raise the target rating from the 92% average to 96.5% in order to keep the fans interested. Time to break out the hell-in-a-cell, major promo, road agent calling for all out, work the crowd fight.[/QUOTE] Well its a positive then

[Oregano Jensen]

With smaller promotions -- consider this. Most smaller promotions will run one show a month. Given six shows, you shouldn't have any trouble not booking the same exact match in more than three of them. And if you did, fans would see that and think "well, this is an awfully repetitive promotion." Now, if you have a local promotion, and you're running shows more than once a month (sacrificing cash to increase popularity?), you might run into a bit of a thing. But that makes sense -- if a small promotion ran weekly shows in the same city, it'd saturate the market. (Unless those shows were awesome. But in that case, the promotion's popularity would be increasing rapidly.) Anyway, what's the penalty? Let's say you've got an awesome match-up -- it gets an A three times, and you try it a fourth time. That time it gets a "natural" A, but the fans have already seen it three times lately, so that docks it to a B+. Or it gets a "natural" B+, but the fans are like, "eh, that wasn't as good as their match at Hanukkah Havoc last month", so it's effectively a B-. It's not like it's an automatic F or anything, is it? It's a good match that gets penalized a bit for not giving the fans anything they haven't seen before. You've seen that in real life, right? Two guys come together, and it's a good match as usual, but you've seen them fight so many times that it's hard to care THAT much about the outcome. (Alternately, it's not a good match, and you're like, "why do they keep putting these guys in the ring together?", and you're angry.)

[D-Lyrium]

Hey, I like this guy :p.

[Guest The Aussie]

[QUOTE=D-Lyrium;413987]Hey, I like this guy :p.[/QUOTE] Referring to Oregano Jenson? I echo your fondness

[shamelessposer]

Looking at today's new feature, I think we may have gotten a backdoor introduction of the "pay for a TV slot" feature a few people have asked for. What interests me is how much strategy the cost/benefit changes could introduce, especially if different networks will have different standards. Risky/Cult networks might be willing to air anything if you'll cover all of the costs, whereas a mainstream network might be more generous but come down harder on your show's content. I think this is another case of Ryland giving us something no one asked for but everyone is going to like.

[Blackman]

Yea, booking now is still doable for 5SSW, but with 3 main eventers to start from, you will have to be lucky in chemistry (meaning you hope that no one has very bad chemistry to start with) Add the fact that the promotions is high on kayfabe (heel vs face) you will have to lower the occurence of face-face matches on the card. But I still love the feature, just mentioning it's gonna be tough. :) But I like that. :)

[shipshirt]

I really like the feature that can penalize you for running the same match too often. I think a lot of people are forgetting that TV shows are going to be handled differently in '08 so there won't always be the need to have a 5 star match on top of the card to keep your ratings up. I like the challenge and it's very realistic...VERY few wrestlers can have series longer than three matches in 6 months without fans getting bored. It's not like all of a sudden Cornell-Tornado is going to drop to an F rated match.

[Sartagis]

[QUOTE=Oregano Jensen;413958]With smaller promotions -- consider this. Most smaller promotions will run one show a month. Given six shows, you shouldn't have any trouble not booking the same exact match in more than three of them. And if you did, fans would see that and think "well, this is an awfully repetitive promotion." Now, if you have a local promotion, and you're running shows more than once a month (sacrificing cash to increase popularity?), you might run into a bit of a thing. But that makes sense -- if a small promotion ran weekly shows in the same city, it'd saturate the market. (Unless those shows were awesome. But in that case, the promotion's popularity would be increasing rapidly.) Anyway, what's the penalty? Let's say you've got an awesome match-up -- it gets an A three times, and you try it a fourth time. That time it gets a "natural" A, but the fans have already seen it three times lately, so that docks it to a B+. Or it gets a "natural" B+, but the fans are like, "eh, that wasn't as good as their match at Hanukkah Havoc last month", so it's effectively a B-. It's not like it's an automatic F or anything, is it? It's a good match that gets penalized a bit for not giving the fans anything they haven't seen before. You've seen that in real life, right? Two guys come together, and it's a good match as usual, but you've seen them fight so many times that it's hard to care THAT much about the outcome. (Alternately, it's not a good match, and you're like, "why do they keep putting these guys in the ring together?", and you're angry.)[/QUOTE] Not to mention if you're booking good and are running a good storyline with good heat, you're gonna get a bonus to your match anyway, to be the counter balance.

[1PWfan]

[QUOTE=Oregano Jensen;413958] Or it gets a "natural" B+, but the fans are like, "eh, that wasn't as good as their match at Hanukkah Havoc last month", so it's effectively a B-.[/QUOTE] Firstly, I am so using the event name 'Hanukkah Havoc'. Secondly, I like the brand focus feature. I don't use brand splits myself as I never use big enough promotions, but the option to run effectively two separate types of show in one company is intriguing.

[The Bus]

The latest one sounds just awesome! Recently I've been wondering if there would anymore be any interesting new features and BANG! Thank you sir Ryland!

[G-Prime]

Holy crap! Different brands can actually be different!!! That's awesome!

[Self]

I normally just do one show a week, with one static roster, but with B shows and different brand styles... I may have to mix things up come TEW08.

[Blackman]

I really like the brand focus a lot. I tried to do a similar thing with NOTBPW in 07. Now I can optimise it. Whoo!

[James Casey]

I guess the only problem (sort of) with this feature is that you can't necessarily have your B shows be a match-only version of your A show - it would still have to meet the same standards as the rest of the brand. Saying that, the 'angles' in B shows tend to lengthy recaps of the main show, so a twenty minute Undertaker/Edge/Batista hype video seems the way to go. With that said, I am stoked about this feature. The SmackDown Six will rise again :D