Thinking of Creating Mod, Looking for Tips on Fighter Stats

[daddy_shelton]

Hey WMMA fans, first post ever on a GDS forum even though I've been playing since... I wanna say around EWR 3 or EWR 4 (and still regularly play EWR 4.2). I've been playing WMMA since 3 and I played A LOT of 4, most of that on an XCC save I loved. I haven't played 5 yet but I'll have the money to pick up a copy soon.

 

Right now, I'm having to post on a tablet since my PC died. Power supply and graphics card died on the same day, sad times.

 

My new PC comes in on Tuesday and in the week or so I've been stuck to a tablet, I've been trying to think of a project to break the new computer in with and I think I want to try my hand at creating a mod for WMMA 5.

 

I like the idea of the C-Verse and other mods I've seen on here from guys like London and Weidt and I'm thinking of doing my own customverse along those lines.

 

Where I'm getting the idea for fighters for my verse is the real world though. It's not a pure RW world, but more along the lines of a Cverse where fighter inspiration will probably be more blatant. Except I'm not just pulling from the world of MMA. I'm also looking at guys like boxers, wrestlers, kickboxers, and judoka. If I can I'd also like more esoteric stuff like karateka and sanda fighters but those are more than likely just going to be used as cross-training flavor for fighters since competitions for sports like those are harder to find data on.

 

I've never even made one custom fighter before though so I'd like to ask for the advice of other mod-makers so this idea doesn't turn into a disaster.

 

I have a few questions I'd like answers to for help as well as any other advice you'd be willing to lend. For now I'm JUST worried about fighter stats. Graphics, companies, etc., are a long way in the future right now.

 

I'm probably going to use template generation with a little customization for select fighters. So what do you feel would be appropriate skill levels for certain fighters? If I look at boxers for example, world champions like Muhammad Ali would obviously generate as World-Level boxers. But then you get guys like Earnie Shavers who are sort of cult figures. He never held a major title, but did challenge for them, and is legendarily one of the strongest punchers ever. So would something like National with an edited boxing power of somewhere in the high 90s be appropriate for him?

 

Or maybe more broadly, what would someone who was an Olympic gold medalist as an amateur boxer but had a bad pro career be? They were one of the best amateur boxers in the world, but as a pro fighter, they flamed out. World level boxing doesn't feel appropriate. Would they be National? Accomplished? Maybe World level but edit down stats like power and maybe give them a fast decline with Destiny?

 

Other sports as well present questions. Obviously Olympic gold medalists would get World level wrestling, but how far should that extend to? If someone was merely a member of the Olympic team but not a medalist (like say a Dan Henderson or a Mark Coleman) be ranked? Should they just be national? I'm thinking of limiting World wrestling to JUST Olympic gold medalists and possibly medalists of other events like the World Championships.

 

Kickboxing is a REAL iffy one on what to use as baseline for stuff like this. I think my only sure cutoff for World level kickboxers are winners of K-1 World Grand Prixs.

 

And the hard one to determine, what should I use for martial artists that don't have a preset category in the template? Judo doesn't have a category (or at least it didn't in 4), so what would they be? Would an Olympic medal level Judoka have, say, World level Grappling? What about other martial arts like Taekwondo or Sambo?

 

And HOW far back should I go in the timeline to generate fighters? I like the idea of a second coming of an old-school boxer like Sam Langford. A regen of him would be a 5'7" middleweight with 6 foot reach and one-punch knockout power. That sounds AWESOME to have as a fighter. But would loading too many old fighters of a high level just drown the verse in World level regens? I've never gone more than a couple of years in with the basic Cverse so I don't quite know how the regen engine works.

 

I do know at least one thing I can do to limit the effectiveness of some of these fighters and that's to turn off cross-training for anyone who doesn't have an MMA background. Floyd Mayweather could show up in the world, but he'd be a pure boxer to start with, so he could have a crippling weakness to anyone with a decent ground game. And I actually like that idea. That way you could have a real boom-or-bust type of prospect if they don't develop a good MMA game.

 

And when should I have fighters debut in the game world for the engine? For a lot of people I feel it's easy as MMA, Boxing, and Kickboxing have pro scenes and trackable records, so you can trace back to their pro debut. But what about wrestlers. Wrestlers don't go pro. ...Well, I mean they do, but not the kind of pro wrestling relevant to this engine. That's a different game. I'm thinking wrestlers go pro on their 23rd birthday to figure in a 4 year college career. Other sports like judo are harder to figure for that though. Same as wrestlers maybe?

 

Ultimately, I want to be able to have a rich world to draw from. A database like this could EASILY have over 10k different fighters from around the world. Dream matchups like Muhammad Ali vs. Mike Tyson could happen if they regen at the same time. Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor could happen in GAMMA. Aleksandr Karelin could try to outwrestle Brock Lesnar. Maybe even a PRIDE Rules fight between Jet Li and Bruce Lee could happen. Things could get absolutely wild.

 

...I just need to make sure I have a mod that doesn't turn into a broken mess for this to work though. So ANY advice to help make a database that's coherent and fun to play would be massively appreciated.