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1990: Ultimate Crossroads [HYPE]

lazorbeak

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lazorbeak Newbie

lazorbeak

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The beginning of a new decade sees big changes in store for the sport of wrestling. Almost across the board, major promotions look to new talent to transition them into the next decade. Here's a look at what's going on around the world:

 

North America:

 

WWF: the WWF is riding high, even as what's left of the territory system crumbles. Wrestlemania V in early April broke every major record in PPV history, and the promotion spent most of the rest of the year selling out huge arenas showing re-matches. But after 6 years on top, is Hogan's act starting to wear as thin as his hairline? Is it time for the Warrior to seize the controls of the WWF?

 

WCW: the relatively young company (purchased by Ted Turner in 1988) finds itself at a crossroads. Ric Flair is obviously the biggest star in the company, having recently turned face by a crowd that seemed reluctant to boo him, with #1 contender Sting positioned as Flair's ally. Behind the scenes, many wonder whether the 41 year old Flair should still be in the main event, particularly with Sting, Lex Luger, and Scott Steiner waiting in the wings. There's plenty of talent on the roster, and plenty of ways things could go, but could the company survive Flair jumping ship?

 

The Rest of the Indys: USWA finds itself in a position similar to WCW's, but on a smaller scale: after buying out WCCW, the company now has markets in Texas and Tennessee, but will Jerry Lawler be able to keep the ship afloat long enough for the young talent (Steve Austin, Dustin Rhodes, Mark Callaway, etc.) to rise to the occasion? Pacific Northwest and the AWA find themselves in danger of shutting down, with main event scenes consisting of over-the-hill performers or completely unproven green young workers to try to salvage what used to be powerful regional promotions.

 

Japan: the Japanese land-scape is wide-open, as a new promotion emerged in 1988 and has already made a huge impact. Frustrated with New Japan, and with a reputation as a legitimate fighter, Akira Maeda left NJPW to form UWF (Japan), and promptly sold out the Tokyodome, showing the huge potential market for "shoot"-style fighting, distancing itself from the goofy WWF product. Both All Japan and New Japan have incredible young talent, but how will this new generation hold up under this style that seems to focus more and more on dropping guys on their head?

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lazorbeak Newbie

lazorbeak

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Interesting starting point for sure (I'm assuming you're going with January 1990). I could get into righting 1990 WCW and doing Sting's first title-run properly without the Black Scorpion idiocy...

 

Yes, the plan is a January 1990 start date. Right now there's 20 active promotions and 684 workers available on day 1, although there's probably a few free agents I may add. Right now there's not any plan to have any workers who debuts post 1995, with a few potential exceptions.

 

Beyond the start date, there's a couple of big changes I've incorporated, namely:

 

1) The industry has already begun shrinking, and is set to take a major hit. Using Adam's sliders, the "community size" is lowered from Adam's C-Verse settings or even the 80% "neutral" standard mentioned in the help, so if you're used to filling 2,000 seat arenas at regional, it's going to be tougher. This is totally separate from the [TWENTY THREE YEAR SPOILER ALERT] Zahorian indictment in March 1990 and subsequent trial the following summer.

 

2) Different popularity set-ups. I looked at a lot of different popularity set-ups and created my own system based around how big of a crowd (and match rating) could be expected from a worker if they're the bigger star in a match. This resulted in a median popularity score that's a bit lower across the board, but the idea is that this creates depth between better known "stars" who have significant TV exposure and can reliably headline as "regional stars," or more talented, but less known guys that haven't made a name for themselves. In concrete terms, Kamala can pop segment and match ratings up a bit because people know who he is, but an unknown guy like Sean Waltman is pretty unquestionably a better worker. Which one makes a better signing should really be context-specific.

 

The other part of this is I don't like the "start at 0" nature some mods (and even the C-Verse) take with popularity. The way I see it, true "enhancement" talents are virtually unknowns who aren't even at the "recognizable jobber" level (Gangrel and Al Snow are two guys at this level in 1990). Above that are guys who Dave Meltzer has heard of, but that have either never had a break in a big company, or are jobbers at the national level; guys that have enough reputation to have a real gimmick. So if a new worker comes into the game, if he has a "name" trainer like Killer Kowalski, and an above-average look, he shouldn't enter the game as a complete unknown, but at a level where he starts off a level above "no-name" jobbers when he debuts on a national company's B-show with a dumb name like "Terra Ryzing."

 

4) Related to the above, I've consciously tried to give the wrestlers in the data different strengths and weaknesses. In some mods, "body" guys are given horrible star quality, when it was their look that got them hired. Young wrestlers improve quickly, but unless they're in the right promotion or circumstances, they won't get over. I've tried to give different workers their own strengths and weaknesses so that it doesn't behoove a booker to sign 35 identical workers. Even workers that are virtually flawless statistics-wise can have hidden flaws, namely their body condition or their personality.

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lazorbeak Newbie

lazorbeak

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Interested to see your work lazor. Warming on the community adjustment, be careful that you don't make national impossible. I've done a lot of messing with that stuff and it is tough to strike a balance where national isn't impossible due to the importance formula.

 

Importance is distinct from community size. I've actually made the importance a bit higher in some cases.

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  • 1 month later...
lazorbeak Newbie

lazorbeak

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Work on this has been a bit stop and start, but I'm pretty happy with how the big two American promotions are playing out after some fiddling.

 

One of the major issues was how to address that in 1990, house shows, not TV tapings were the major draw, so Superstars and the Wrestling Challenge tended to feature Black Bart vs. the Red Rooster or something equally yawn-inducing for the average fan (no offense to Terry Taylor). At the time, WWF was running a crazy schedule, running "A" house shows in major markets (averaging between 8 and 15K per show), "B" shows in smaller markets (averaging closer to 4-6K per show, often headlined by Ultimate Warrior, Dusty, DiBiase, etc.), and "C" shows that would only draw about 1-2K, in small areas. In December 1989, WWF ran Hogan vs Perfect as their top attraction, drawing 10K fans three times, and in the 6-9K range a few more times. Piper also returned from a break and main evented a MSG show that month against Rick Rude for their 4th 10K show of the month.

 

To duplicate this in TEW, I've made Superstars an "A" show and two hours long, so that players can just book every Superstars like it's a major house show (just assume that it gets edited down). I did the same thing with WCW Saturday Night, where WCW can reliably get around 3K for regular shows, running most of them out of the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, and closer to 5-10K for its PPVs. I've also included WCW Main Event and WWF Wrestling Challenge as B-shows to give players the chance to book "B" house shows, or to put their midcarders in squash matches, since that was pretty much what that show was there for.

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  • 3 months later...
lazorbeak Newbie

lazorbeak

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I haven't forgotten this, but having a 50+ hour a week job makes it hard to put work in on the regular. That said, I'm closing in on having a beta I'm happy with, so hopefully people can start messing with it soon.

 

I've been doing some long-range tests to see how the game works a few years down the line, and sometimes the results are frighteningly accurate:

 

http://i.imgur.com/Wakyv4z.jpg

 

Notice the release after Bischoff gets hired. Obviously stuff like that isn't planned, but it was funny enough I thought I'd post it. As a reminder, this is a mod set in 1990 and is really meant to be played before 1995. That said, in these long-range tests, I'm finding a lot of war-like behavior happens organically, if a bit slower, if the AI is running things (since the AI is pretty bad at building new stars).

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  • 4 months later...
lazorbeak Newbie

lazorbeak

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Apologies that I've been MIA, I really haven't had the time to get where I want to be on this on the international side of things on this mod (and data from this period tends to be very sketchy when it comes to Mexico). That said, I know a lot of players like to focus on the US side, so I should be releasing a beta in the very near future (like, within a week). I did a quick play through with WWF, and just played a year with WCW that was way too much fun. I think it would be impossible not to book WCW better than it was actually booked in 1990. I ended the year by jumping to national and throwing bags of money at some midcarder tag team guy in WWF.

 

Needless to say, this ruined all my booking plans:

 

http://i.imgur.com/qsOOTKp.jpg

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