Ideas for More Accurate Territory Era Simulation

[Jason Phoenix]

As things are now - and always have been in the series - TEW doesn't do a very good job at simulating a pre-mid 90s wrestling world. Outside of Japan anyway.

This is because TEW doesn't really understand the pre-TV era business model, which was radically different from what the mid 90s morphed wrestling into where it became a more TV product driven business.

I thought I'd list a few ideas for a future TEW to make pre-90s mods run better. I'm attempting to limit the ideas to what I assume could be realistic to add.

AMERICAN STYLE TOURS

Basically, a Tour feature for countries other than Japan. Even though Tours can be added for non-Japan companies as it is now, it is stated in the handbook that they are not intended for countries outside of Japan. I would suggest a American Tour feature where basically these events would be a bit like Lesser shows where they impact pop less than Normal events, but they draw a bit more than Japanese tour events do - and the AI will use the big stars on these Tour events, unlike in Lesser events as it stands now. If possible, it would also be nice if you could just have one show called something like "AWA Live Event" and just choose the days it runs - instead of having AWA Live Event Monday, AWA Live Event Tuesday, etc. which looks ugly and clutters the database. It would also be nice if you could have the option to micromanage the venues the tour hits. So, basically, these events would not be done to raise pop for the company or the workers, they would simply be there to get ticket sales. Hyping up the company would be up to the TV show, more on that later. But an American Tour Event would exist somewhere between a Lesser Event and a Normal Event. It could even be exactly like a Lesser Event for the human player - but the AI would understand to use guys like Dusty and Harley Race on them.

I am not sure if this is possible, but what would really, really be awesome is if you could sort of pre-book/pre-lay out the card for the entire tour. And then the game would just automatically use that booking for all of the events. So, Terry Funk vs. Dusty Rhodes would be my tour headliner, along with the supporting undercard, and if I so chose, I'd just get the results sent to me as I advanced through the days. The computer would basically book the shows for me. I would of course have the option to step in on the day of the show. But I understand if this is outside the realm of possibility with the way the game is set up.

Another idea is to just alter or tinker how the current House Show setup works; allow us to set up the card, and the ticket sales depend on the quality of the card and how over the guys on the card are, especially the main event, which would determine most of the ticket sales. And allow House Shows for below Medium companies - as well as allow us to use workers in house show even if they aren't on monthly pay.

NEW TV SHOW TYPE: SUPERSTAR SHOWCASE

Prior to the Monday Night War in the mid 90s, wrestling TV did not exist to give you competitive matches. For the most part, there were exceptions, and basically every company would have the odd competitive match here and there, but for the most part, the idea was just to showcase the stars and hype up the feuds in hopes to sell tickets to the live event tour that month. Currently, TV is completely broken for 80s, 70s, etc. mods where AWA has Hulk Hogan wrestle Jesse Venture and Bockwinkel every week. Because of course; the game thinks it's the 90s model of television. An option for the mod maker is to set the TVs up as B shows, now the problem is that the main event talent isn't showcased at all. This new type of TV would be a middle ground where the main event talent would wrestle, but mainly against lower pop guys. The top stars would have angles with each other, and the quality of the angles would weigh more in the show rating calculations. Additionally, to balance this out, good angle ratings could be made way more rare since they would now be more valuable. 

I will note that there were certain territories, such as Mid South, that would feature more competitive matches and would present a TV product that is a little closer to what we have currently, so some way for it to not be just black or white would be nice, but I am not sure what the limitations of the game and code are, so I'm just throwing this out there. But even just having this one new TV show type for retro mods would improve them so much.

However, I do understand the challenge of balancing this type of TV show from a gameplay standpoint. Maybe ot could even be an option in the Eras setting where this type of TV is the standard, or something along those lines. Or maybe "Exclusively Superstar Showcase, Heavily Favoured Superstar Showcase, Balanced..." Something like this, which would also allow mod makers to simulate the transitional era. The logic could be that the different Eras are there to sort of simulate the evolution of television; around the early to mid 90s, TV becomes a much more competitive market, meaning the squash match model no longer works. This is why WCW initially got the upperhand on the WWF because it understood the evolution of television better.

I would also second all of the people who have repeatedly asked for the ability to lock TV shows to specific venues to simulate studio wrestling.

I also find it a little odd in TEW that Events affect pop more than TV shows. More people see the TV shows. Historically, guys were way easier to talk into jobbing on house shows and PPVs because not many people see it. It was jobbing on TV that was the big no-no. When Flair went back to the WWF from WWF in 1993, I believe it was Ole who referred to Flair's clean loss to Mr. Perfect on RAW, saying the whole world just saw you lose clean in the middle, you're not worth a cent.

So pop gains and losses on TV in general should be way more volatile. And that pop is what sells the Events - instead of Events selling the TV shows like it is now in TEW, it sometimes feels like.

COMPANY/OWNER STRATEGIES

Something that could spice up the game world a lot would be the added feature for specific owners to have their own strategies varying from Territorial to National - to maybe Global. And maybe something in-between. Vince Sr. is happy to stay territorial - but if Vince Jr. ends up at the helm of the WWF, his strategy is different from his father's, and that results in a vastly different company and business model.

I thought of this because some of these suggestions could be abused and to get an unfair edge on the AI. If you lock the AI to run studio wrestling in front of 100 people, how is it fair when you can then just draw thousands to your TV tapings and sell more tickets?

So, I thought of a system where owners' strategies could be fluent like the way the current Production Settings are. Let's say you start a game in 1970. Most companies are part of the NWA, and even the ones that aren't, such as the AWA, pretty much stay in their territories. Their owners use the Territorial strategy. They run their tours in their territory, do their TV there, all is honky dory. Then you adopt the aggressive National strategy, disrupting the Territorial peace. This wakes the owners up, and now those that can, will challenge you and the balance begins to shift towards a National strategy among the owners. Like companies attempt to one up each other in Production currently. So you would be blocked from being the only person running a more "advanced" company strategy.

This would potentially add a lot of replay value to the game and to different mods. Maybe this time, you run a Territorial strategy. Next time you try to go National and have all the other promoters be out for your blood. Also, some owners could randomly initiate a National strategy. To spice things up. Attributes could be assigned to determine how likely or unlikely this is. This could create a fun, fluid game world.

The way this could work is, things like signing national TV deals, offering exclusive written contracts, and holding shows in other promoters' territories could be seen as signs of aggression, activating the promoters to engage in a more aggressive strategy against you. If you follow the rules, everything is fine - but you also make less money of course. So it's up to you.

RECORD NAMES AND IN-GAME NAMES FOR TITLES

Self-explanatory. This would allow multiple companies to have titles called the NWA United States Heavyweight title (for instance) which was the case back in the day.

STATES AND CITIES

I know this is unlikely, and the developer has explained why, but still. Pretty please.

If this is not possible, I would suggest one alternative, still.

To add to the current Locations feature, I could add a Location to for example the South East. Then I would be given the option to set it as either a City or a State. I would set States first. I could add for example Florida as a State. And then Jacksonville as a City in that State. Then I could add "Home States" to companies, meaning if the owner uses a Territorial strategy, the company would only pick from Cities within its Home States - a company could have more than one, but maybe there could be an upper limit. This would be there to prevent seeing Florida run shows in Memphis for example, or vice versa, which is highly annoying and immersion breaking. Venues could also be linked to Cities.

The game would just run as is if no Locations are added to the Database. This would be up to the mod maker.

ATTENDANCE LEVEL ADJUSTMENT IDEAS

Attendances are extremely high currently in TEW, which leads to a lot of easy money, even at smaller levels. In general, attendances should be dropped. But some additional adjusting could be added with added Event Intents. I would suggest an added Event Intent called "Big Four". Obviously, only four of your annual shows could be part of the Big Four. These events would have boosted attendances by X%. They would also need a set amount of prestige to be eligible. And then, additionally, one of the big four events could be set as the big Season Finale, which would compound the attendance bonuses. So ONE OF the BIG FOUR Events could also be a Season Finale, which would allow for the unique special case WrestleMania level attendance numbers when company pop and other factors are sufficient.

The remaining Events of the year would do closer to 20k max and even 20k in wrestling is huge.

These were just some ideas. Maybe some ideas can be derived from them, maybe not. Thanks for reading.

[Mattywood]

For the Superstar Show Case TV show suggestion, what if that was a third TV show setting to go along with A Show & B Show? And maybe there could be rules in place such as TV ratings will only be slightly lower than A shows, but not much lower. IIRC, I believe the WWF did well in the TV ratings for their syndicated shows in the 80s during their peak years. Another rule would be along with what you said about angles weighing more on the final show grade than the matches. Something like 70% of the final show's rating could be determined by your highest rated angle, then so on & so forth from there. I don't know how that would go along with products that have different angle/match ratios, but thought I'd throw the idea out there. Attendance levels could also be slightly less, but not much less. So instead of drawing 15,000 people, you might draw 8,000-12,000 depending on if your Major Stars are booked, if you use your figurehead (should you have one), state of the industry, etc.

[Stennick]

I really like the showcase idea. Some sort of feature to more easily play the pre Monday night wars era would be great. I also really like the attendance idea.