Different mechanic for hardcore/ultraviolence/daredevil feds

[The Masked Orange]

So I was thinking about how it was a shame crappy no-talent wrestlers taking a stunt bump or crazy bump barely moved the needle on how bad their matches are. Then I thought that didn't quite make sense to me, as a lot of smaller feds are entirely built on the compromise of quality for violence.

 

I thought a neat way to simulate that would be to make it so any match that featured enough excessive violence (in my head this is just a stunt bump or crazy bump, maybe there'd need to be a third called 'grisly bump' or something like that for certain style of feds) would be immune from certain negatives, like cooling the crowd or certain wrestlers' performance penalties for being low in certain attributes. It makes sense from a worker's point of view, as they're trading their life and limb for noticeably better performances, and all the relevant momentum stuff, and not just a potential 1 or 2 increase on the match rating. Another way to do it would maybe just be for a match with such a spot to basically ignore anything bad from the match rating, but if you want any positives you'll have to put on an actually good match. I like the idea of basically hot-shotting your roster, ECW style with a talented main event and then a bunch of bozos filling out the undercard, knowing it'll implode the moment you run out of willing meat on the undercard or lose the sizzle at the top end.

 

It makes sense from the booker's point of view in that you'd be making a strategic decision about your young prospects, whether to hide their greenness behind spectacle, or whether to try and protect them physically so you've still got something to work with in five years time. It also makes hardcore feds better suited to do the thing they're supposed to do in the game world, take on all the cheap crappy wrestlers without having to worry about 'lowering the tone' of their content. They'll struggle to become big companies but they can sit reliably in any part of the game word as a solid small company without hiring all the same indy guys everyone else does.

 

A slight variation on the mechanic I had in my head as well is that a card with enough violent spots can avoid any popularity losses up to a certain size, as the core fans got what they came for. Basically just trying to better marry the idea that a lot of fans of ultra-hardcore know the wrestling quality is bad but that doesn't put them off if the violence is out there enough, something I'm not sure is covered by the match rating system. Anyway, just something that came to mind after playing TEW again the past few days.