[RELEASE] Risky Business (Jan 1985)

[justtxyank]

I'm not a fan of how you're making your point but I thought something along the same lines. That the high skill level of guys like Flair in contrast to the Cornellverse's big stars may be playing a part in the financial issues we're experiencing but it doesn't appear to be the case. Flair's written contract is usually in the ballpark of $45-$50k a month for national companies whereas Jack Bruce has a starting written contract of $70k a month for a national company.

 

The issue just comes down to roster size and number of shows I believe.

 

Mods aren't scaled like the CVerse is. In the CVerse a promotion is happy to run 1 show a week, some even 1 a month. In the real world this is not a reality for the majority of promotions historically.

[justtxyank]

Also, contract value is largely based off popularity. Scaling down popularity would lower contracts.

[Oyaji]

Would adding in something like "WWF house show (wed)" (a small or medium sized weekly event or several events) be a possible answer to generate more revenue for WWF, JCP, and MSW?

[Mattywood]

Believe me, I have no qualms about people bringing up something that may need attention. But as they say, it's not what you say but how you say it. That was the problem I had. But if that's not how it was intended, then I apologize for going off. So TLCJR4LIFE, I'll extend the olive branch and we can move on from this. If people feel it would be best for us to delete our negative posts, we can do that too.

 

Now, all that said, I'm trying to figure out how to go about scaling popularity and stats back. It would take awhile if I started scaling everyone back (though it would only be Already Debuted workers as I feel I've got Yet to Debut workers where I would like to have them). Reason for that, once I scale back so many points for Worker A, then eventually I would have to work my way around to everyone so we don't have something strange like the Mongolian Stomper autopushing to being a Main Eventer in the WWF or JCP right off the bat. Hope that all made sense.

[Oyaji]

So, I changed the owners' financial settings and ran another test. This is helping with the WWF more than JCP, as in the latest test it's January '88 and WWF still has $796k in the bank and are at national. They're losing anywhere from $90k-250k a month but it's better than them being in debt by millions at this stage. WWF is spending about $800k a month on talent and making $919k off ticket sales alone. It seems to be production and show costs as well as taxes that are hurting them.

 

JCP (June '86) and MSW (May '86) closed down. AWA is still alive and kicking as the #2 promotion in the USA. They've got just under $4 million in the bank.

 

I think for my next test I'm going to add two house show-esque medium sized events for WWF, JCP, AWA, and MSW and see if that impacts the outcome at all. This would purely be for the AI bookers, as human players could always delete these. I'm thinking this should help because touring companies in Japan make a crapload of money because of the volume of shows they run. House shows don't really work in-game as they did back in the day, so that's why Japanese companies tend to do so well in the game, at least with historical mods.

[Mattywood]

So, I changed the owners' financial settings and ran another test. This is helping with the WWF more than JCP, as in the latest test it's January '88 and WWF still has $796k in the bank and are at national. They're losing anywhere from $90k-250k a month but it's better than them being in debt by millions at this stage. WWF is spending about $800k a month on talent and making $919k off ticket sales alone. It seems to be production and show costs as well as taxes that are hurting them.

 

JCP (June '86) and MSW (May '86) closed down. AWA is still alive and kicking as the #2 promotion in the USA. They've got just under $4 million in the bank.

 

I think for my next test I'm going to add two house show-esque medium sized events for WWF, JCP, AWA, and MSW and see if that impacts the outcome at all. This would purely be for the AI bookers, as human players could always delete these. I'm thinking this should help because touring companies in Japan make a crapload of money because of the volume of shows they run. House shows don't really work in-game as they did back in the day, so that's why Japanese companies tend to do so well in the game, at least with historical mods.

 

Adding house show like events could be the answer. I'm guessing we're talking weekly events here?

[Oyaji]

Yes sir. I added 3 for WWF and JCP and 2 for the AWA and MSW. I also added a Superdome Extravaganza for Mid-South - it's a monthly big event held on Sunday. Trying to get these promotions to generate some sort of income!

[Mattywood]

The only thing I fear is if all these companies stay in business in every save. I mean, I don't want them all closing up shop every save, but I'm not sure we want the other extreme either, if that makes sense. Finding that balance seems to be the tricky part right now.

[Oyaji]

Agreed. I was thinking the same thing.

[justtxyank]

Oyaji is going down the right path. It's revenue. Two tv shows a week and low income from house shows just isn't going to support a "real world" promotion from the 80s.

 

Something that maybe should be addressed in the next version. Have house shows impacted by eras. In the 80s, what we think of house shows were VITAL to the business of wrestling companies.

[Oyaji]

Okay, so far so good on test #1 with these house shows. Mid-South closed down, WWF is the most popular and richest company overall, AWA is still #2, but JCP is also still alive and doing well. Those extra shows allowed the WWF to expand in a way more efficient and lucrative manner. Their finances are at $11 million after year 1 and they're all but at the national level just needing two more regions at C+ or better.

 

Crockett has $1.4 million in the bank and is nearing national level with a good number of "C" importance in America. AWA has about $3.5 million and are even closer to national.

 

I think adding one or two house shows to companies and maybe scaling back some worker skills and popularity would give us the balanced mod we're looking for. I think even just one house show event per week for companies would do the trick, as WWF stopped running three and were doing fine with just two "house shows" a week. We could even knock back down the WWF's starting money, as $11m after one year is a lot. I don't know if you want to go ahead and mass edit skills with the editor and then fine tune the major players or do it individually but scaling back some skills may also help.

[Mattywood]

Okay, so far so good on test #1 with these house shows. Mid-South closed down, WWF is the most popular and richest company overall, AWA is still #2, but JCP is also still alive and doing well. Those extra shows allowed the WWF to expand in a way more efficient and lucrative manner. Their finances are at $11 million after year 1 and they're all but at the national level just needing two more regions at C+ or better.

 

Crockett has $1.4 million in the bank and is nearing national level with a good number of "C" importance in America. AWA has about $3.5 million and are even closer to national.

 

I think adding one or two house shows to companies and maybe scaling back some worker skills and popularity would give us the balanced mod we're looking for. I think even just one house show event per week for companies would do the trick, as WWF stopped running three and were doing fine with just two "house shows" a week. We could even knock back down the WWF's starting money, as $11m after one year is a lot. I don't know if you want to go ahead and mass edit skills with the editor and then fine tune the major players or do it individually but scaling back some skills may also help.

 

I wonder if mass scaling skills back for all already debuted active and semi-active wrestlers by say, 15%, would work. On the one hand, we don't want to slate any workers, but on the other hand, don't want to overrate them either.

[Oyaji]

I would say 10-15% would be fine in regards to top row stats. I don't think changes to entertainment or basics would be necessary.

 

IIRC, according to Derek B's guide 80-89% in top row means world class, 90 and above is legendary and only a few wrestlers ought to have those kind of skills. I may be wrong but that would probably be what you're wanting to shoot for with the best wrestlers in the world. And because they're not working for national companies off the bat, even guys with C and C+ skills will be improving their company's popularity.

 

Alright, I found the chunk from Derek's guide:

Now.. the Top Row Skills! These will always cause a lot of debate and I’m not going to pretend to be able to judge everyone in the world for thse, because I can’t. I lack the knowledge to be able to do so but hopefully I can help people with better knowledge to balance this in their gameworld. First of all, you don’t need to have a 100 or even a 90 in this row to get awesomely high rated matches. Sure, the better you are here the better… but within the Cornellverse there are only a couple of workers per top row stat that have 90 or higher. That’s maybe 1 or 2 per 1000 people in the gameworld that hit the top levels and yet the gameworld still gets lots of A rated matches out of people with less than A level talent. Why? Because so many other factors weigh into a match that you don’t need to pimp the top row to achieve good grades. Chemistry, tag experience, title prestige, momentum, storyline heat, charisma, star quality are the first things that come to mind on terms of bonuses and each of those can be adding up to 5 points (some of them less). That’s a lot of bonuses! Similarly, there are a lot of penalties too that can also bring things down… low psych, basics, consistency, bad chemistry, low title prestige, momentum etc… identifying the right stats for each is the key and can help you work out which top row stats rock, and which suck. Keep in mind that a good in-ring guy only really needs a 60ish in a top row stat to be doing pretty good/above average, a 70 to be considered a fine worker and an 80 to be brought up in discussions about being one of the best for a particular attribute and you should hopefully be able to mod well.

 

Right now there are probably too many wrestlers with 90 and above top row stats, I certainly did my fair share of this because quite a few of them are in Japan. As I mentioned in a PM a while back, Japan had 5-10 really great wrestlers and another maybe 5-10 really good wrestlers then a bunch of average and below average wrestlers. I don't think I really reflected that in the skills the Japanese workers have. Right now, many Japanese companies are having 30-50 A rated matches a year and that doesn't reflect reality. They are in a bit of a unique situation compared to American stars because they got national coverage on TV and wrestled throughout the entire country whereas most American stars didn't do that (Andre being one of the few exceptions). So, Japanese wrestlers main eventing for New and All Japan would probably be more popular in their country compared to Americans but skill wise, I think there's too big of a gulf between them. Jumbo, Fujiwara, Choshu, Fujinami, Tenryu, Maeda, Takada, Jaguar Yokota, and the Crush Gals were the great, great top of the line wrestlers in the country around '85. Then you had the tier beneath them with wrestlers like Fuchi, Onita, Kengo Kimura, Tiger Mask, Yatsu, Hamaguchi, Masa Saito, Kobayashi, Koshinaka, Dump, Devil Masami, and the youngsters not near their peak yet (Misawa as Tiger Mask, Kawada, Yamazaki, Yamada/Liger). Right now, everybody is having awesome matches all of the time.

 

So'z, I lowered the WWF's money to $2.5 million, increased Mid-South's one notch to $250k, gave each AWA, JCP, MSW, and WWF one "house show" a week and found the results to be pretty good one year into the testing. WWF had around $5 million, was still doing the best but not making crazy money like with the prior test. Crockett was in debt, AWA had $3 million, and Mid-South had about $1.5 million. I just stopped simming and it's now October '86. WWF is #1 at national with $9.5 million in the bank, AWA is #2 at national with $7.3 million, and Mid-South is #3 at cult with $1.85 million. Crockett closed in February 1986. I'll run some more tests to see if there's any variance. If JCP keeps shutting down, we can give them an additional house show. We want companies to eventually close down but not right away, correct?

[Mattywood]

I would say 10-15% would be fine in regards to top row stats. I don't think changes to entertainment or basics would be necessary.

 

IIRC, according to Derek B's guide 80-89% in top row means world class, 90 and above is legendary and only a few wrestlers ought to have those kind of skills. I may be wrong but that would probably be what you're wanting to shoot for with the best wrestlers in the world. And because they're not working for national companies off the bat, even guys with C and C+ skills will be improving their company's popularity.

 

Alright, I found the chunk from Derek's guide:

 

 

Right now there are probably too many wrestlers with 90 and above top row stats, I certainly did my fair share of this because quite a few of them are in Japan. As I mentioned in a PM a while back, Japan had 5-10 really great wrestlers and another maybe 5-10 really good wrestlers then a bunch of average and below average wrestlers. I don't think I really reflected that in the skills the Japanese workers have. Right now, many Japanese companies are having 30-50 A rated matches a year and that doesn't reflect reality. They are in a bit of a unique situation compared to American stars because they got national coverage on TV and wrestled throughout the entire country whereas most American stars didn't do that (Andre being one of the few exceptions). So, Japanese wrestlers main eventing for New and All Japan would probably be more popular in their country compared to Americans but skill wise, I think there's too big of a gulf between them. Jumbo, Fujiwara, Choshu, Fujinami, Tenryu, Maeda, Takada, Jaguar Yokota, and the Crush Gals were the great, great top of the line wrestlers in the country around '85. Then you had the tier beneath them with wrestlers like Fuchi, Onita, Kengo Kimura, Tiger Mask, Yatsu, Hamaguchi, Masa Saito, Kobayashi, Koshinaka, Dump, Devil Masami, and the youngsters not near their peak yet (Misawa as Tiger Mask, Kawada, Yamazaki, Yamada/Liger). Right now, everybody is having awesome matches all of the time.

 

So'z, I lowered the WWF's money to $2.5 million, increased Mid-South's one notch to $250k, gave each AWA, JCP, MSW, and WWF one "house show" a week and found the results to be pretty good one year into the testing. WWF had around $5 million, was still doing the best but not making crazy money like with the prior test. Crockett was in debt, AWA had $3 million, and Mid-South had about $1.5 million. I just stopped simming and it's now October '86. WWF is #1 at national with $9.5 million in the bank, AWA is #2 at national with $7.3 million, and Mid-South is #3 at cult with $1.85 million. Crockett closed in February 1986. I'll run some more tests to see if there's any variance. If JCP keeps shutting down, we can give them an additional house show. We want companies to eventually close down but not right away, correct?

 

Thanks for all this. And I think you're right as it concerns companies closing, have the chance for them to close, but not with the same results in each game save, if that makes sense.

[Mattywood]

So what I'm going to do is mass lower the Top Row Skills of all the Already Debuted workers around 10-15%, maybe somewhere in between there like 12 or 13%. I'll leave the other skills as is because they should be alright, plus there are those skills that either don't improve much, and also play a role in how much the other skills improve. IIRC, Derek B said Athleticism factors into how much workers improve in Basics, Top Row, etc. And I think Derek B said that workers who were competent enough in the ring should have good basics, and make sure there are enough workers with good psychology so that veterans can teach rookies (especially in 1985). I'll also proceed with lowering the pop of all the workers. I already got a little under halfway there, so I might as well keep going. Most everyone will have their pop lowered by around 5-10 points.

[TLCJR4LIFE]

Athleticism is also a pure multiplier along with stamina and to a lesser extent power in terms of a workers ability to put on good matches.

 

I always look for top flight Athleticism in star prospects.

 

As far as top row, a lot of US based wrestling was Entertainment/Performance based. I wouldn't go much higher than 70s for most US workers.

[Beejus]

From what most people in wrestling have said, Crockett WAS horrible with money. So maybe him being forced to shut down without help from the player (or in the real world, help from Turner) is as realistic as it gets.

[Mattywood]

From what most people in wrestling have said, Crockett WAS horrible with money. So maybe him being forced to shut down without help from the player (or in the real world, help from Turner) is as realistic as it gets.

 

This is true. There's a reason he had to eventually sell to Turner. At the same time, I'm trying to shoot for the possibility that any company (or at the very least any one of the big three, WWF, NWA (JCP) and AWA) being the one that comes out on top at the end.

[Midnightnick]

This is true. There's a reason he had to eventually sell to Turner. At the same time, I'm trying to shoot for the possibility that any company (or at the very least any one of the big three, WWF, NWA (JCP) and AWA) being the one that comes out on top at the end.

 

Maybe add a narrative that adds some cash flow?

[Mattywood]

Maybe add a narrative that adds some cash flow?

 

There's always that. I can put in a narrative, and put the two asterisks in front of it in the editor so that players that don't want narratives affecting gameplay can take it out. Good thinking, Midnightnick!

[Oyaji]

Didn't have much time to do testing today but I'm having good results with the WWF and Mid-South now. Both have one weekly "house show" medium sized event. WWF's starting cash is at $2.5 million and Mid-South's cash is at $100k. Mid-South has about a 40% survival rate from what I've seen and don't seem to be a true threat to the #1 American promotions if they do survive into 1990. WWF almost always survives but to varying degrees of success. They're either a runaway #1 promotion or perpetually shifting from cult to national back to cult. Maybe dropping their cash to $1 million will find a sweet spot between success and failure for them.

 

JCP with a starting cash setting of $500k seems to close by '87 75% of the time. I'd like to get the odds a little bit higher, but when they have two house shows they become sure fire survivors and that's not what we're going for. Not sure how to do it without giving them more starting money.

 

AWA is always either #1 or #2 and I have yet to see them shut down in any simulation to this point. I don't know what to do to lower their survival rate. I could try removing their "house show," lowering their starting cash, or dropping their popularity.

[Idolized]

In my 2004 mod, I had to do something similar to what you guys are trying with scheduling "House Shows" only I had to create a monthly event never on PPV for TNA so that the weekly PPV model would work without the AI creating additional monthly PPVs. I called it an "Arena Show" just out of preference and to not confuse people with the house show system in game.

[bayonnebrawler]

I am unable to open a .7z file. Any chance of including a regular zip file for those of us who are a little more "computer challenged" lol

 

By the way, given the time frame, this should be real good one!

[TheZies]

In my 2004 mod, I had to do something similar to what you guys are trying with scheduling "House Shows" only I had to create a monthly event never on PPV for TNA so that the weekly PPV model would work without the AI creating additional monthly PPVs. I called it an "Arena Show" just out of preference and to not confuse people with the house show system in game.

 

After seeing this in Idol's mod and a couple of others, I started trying it out. And I've become a big advocate of the "tour" show especially at the regional/cult level.

 

Now that WCCW is up to 60 midsouth pop, i've re-organized the shows making Star Wars a Monthly show and annual shows out of the traditionally bigger events. And added a weekly Tour Show (hour and a half) to go with the weekly TV show.

[Mattywood]

I am unable to open a .7z file. Any chance of including a regular zip file for those of us who are a little more "computer challenged" lol

 

By the way, given the time frame, this should be real good one!

 

Do you mean that your computer is unable to open 7 Zip files, or you just don't know how to do it? Because it's actually rather easy if you're unsure how to do it. Right click, find "Extract All" and click on that, and you're done. Hope that helps if that's what you were having trouble with! ^_^