Angles/Matches should be reworked to make it easier to get monster heels over

[White Dolphin]

One thing that still seems to be a real pain from TEW2020 is that its hard to get high Menace workers over just off the backs of them doing menacing things. The way angles have been reworked help out a bit, but it does seem that "Intimidation" and "Attacker" are still less effective at getting good ratings than stuff like "Working the Crowd" or "Cutting a Promo" if you have equivalent skills for everything I listed, which is inaccurate to me based off the real world of wrestling. Jacob Fatu and Bronson Reed in the modern era are proving that, as long as you have the talent for violence and are enough of a bad ass, you can make an angle work and get more over off of it, and I'm sure people can come up with countless examples of Hogan era or Attitude Era guys who were tough and scary doing things that were tough and scary that got them more over. So I suggest lowering the influence popularity has on these types of angles (or really all types of angles but thats a separate debate entirely I guess), and increasing the influence that Menace/Brawling stats have on "Intimidation" or "Fighting" or "Attacker" type angles. It might also be a decent idea to create a new angle category called "Menacing Attacker" which would judge you on a combination of Menace, Brawling stats, and maybe a bit more influence from Charisma and Star Quality.

 

The other big fix suggestion would be in matches, specifically the Dominate road agent note. I was playing a 5SSW save with Monster Ishimura and had her Dominate a lower card worker, and Ishimura proceeded to lose 2 popularity points, which does not make any sense. The match was booked for 5 minutes and its not like the talent involved were THAT bad, so either the road agent note is bugged entirely or it only works when you have Charisma over a super high threshhold like 71 or 80, which is just ridiculous. If there is a threshold for Charisma like the game says, it should probably be lowered to like 50-60ish maybe, because then otherwise its harder to get your big bad monsters over as big bad monsters if they just have to win matches normally instead and get the normal gains that a regular joe mat wrestler would for winning normal matches.

 

Plus, this creates something really confusing for newer players if things are left as is. Say a new TEW player just getting their feet wet with this series starts with 21st Century Wrestling in the Cornellverse, and sees War Machine's bio, wheres its specifically mentioned that hes been crushing a steady stream of jobbers in impressive fashion to have gotten him over in the first place. Alright, so an enterprising new player would then put him in matches with the Dominate road agent note and then proceed to tank War Machine's popularity because hes not charismatic enough........... even though the game's been implying that thats exactly what War Machine has been doing to get over to this point. So then its like whats the point in having War Machine at all except to have him be a jobber, if he can't get more over from this starting point than anyone else in his popularity level. Monster heels are supposed to have an easier time getting over than normal wrestlers, and then you build them up to feed that popularity to a star or future star to make that star more popular. You could do that easily in TEW 2016, but it got changed badly in 2020 and is still a problem here.

 

Finally, I'd suggest that it should be easier to gain popularity from good angles and winning matches if you have momentum at Red Hot or White Hot, because as of now it seems like gaining popularity is slow for people who are supposed to be future stars getting the rocket strapped to them, unless they're just beating people more over than them at every turn, when in reality you can get over by beating Mr. No Name jobber or lower midcarder as long as its done right.

[FINisher]

Menace angles used to be OP as hell back in the day, especially with workers who had Menace skill of 90-100. Larry Wood in WEXXV would soon get A/A* angles even when WEXXV was tiny. But I do agree with your points here. I don't use Dominate or even Keep Strong that often in my booking. Does the worker get momentum boosts though, which would in turn help with gaining more popularity?

[benjirino]

Don't forget that menace means nothing without charisma or superstar quality. Someone can be thoroughly menacing, but if they're menacing and dull then they're not going to get anywhere in any bigger feds. Monsters are also *strongly* affected by momentum as much as anything.

[White Dolphin]

9 hours ago, FINisher said:

Menace angles used to be OP as hell back in the day, especially with workers who had Menace skill of 90-100. Larry Wood in WEXXV would soon get A/A* angles even when WEXXV was tiny. But I do agree with your points here. I don't use Dominate or even Keep Strong that often in my booking. Does the worker get momentum boosts though, which would in turn help with gaining more popularity?

Yeah I suspect that Adam or someone on the testing tea looked at people doing this in TEW2016 and was like NOPE we're changing this, but there is still some element of realism to having a big badass with the qualifications for it coming out and doing awesome things. Hell, look at 911 in ECW for crying out loud. That guy had very very little in the terms of any skillset, but when he came out the fans reacted because they knew his presence meant someone was about to get their ass beat. And again theres the modern examples of Bronson Reed and Jacob Fatu getting over huge off the back of a couple segments where they're just laying waste to guys and the crowd responds strongly to it. You can't duplicate that in the game because the game would be like "yeah the crowd has never heard of these guys so they'll just sit on their hands and do nothing."

And as for the momentum thing I'm not sure that exists in angles anymore unless they're part of a storyline cause they took away the Major Success/Success/Minor Success part in the angle system unless its part of a storyline.

 

3 hours ago, benjirino said:

Don't forget that menace means nothing without charisma or superstar quality. Someone can be thoroughly menacing, but if they're menacing and dull then they're not going to get anywhere in any bigger feds. Monsters are also *strongly* affected by momentum as much as anything.

Yeah but Monster Ishimura's got 69 charisma and 70ish Star quality and is very specfically said to have gotten over with a strong All-Asian title reign where shes been beating everyone up, and the game's just like lolno lose 2 popularity for dominating someone when you try to book her as the big badass. It makes it feel like the game's lying to you.

Heres an even better example than War Machine and Monster Ishimura: Siale Valhalla in USPW. The game SPECIFICALLY says theres money to be made from his size and aura, and he gets several narratives in the game where hes beating up criminals like hes Batman or something, and yet if you tried to push him it would fail because ooop 52 charisma do not pass go do not collect a future superstar monster heel. So if even the apathetic PG content loving USPW crowd would just sit on their hands during his squash matches and refuse to acknowledge him, why write all that stuff to snow the player into thinking Siale's possibly good when in reality the game's nudging you to push the lower card jobbers who can work better than him but don't have any of his menace cause they get better match ratings and can actually help you put on better shows and make more money. What kind of sense does that make?

Maybe this is a bit more of a Cornellverse problem than a game problem, but I think something's gotta be done either way, whether its fixing the ratings for workers in the DB or fixing the game itself, because while veteran players like me who've owned this game since TEW2010 know how the system works and how to grease it, new players trying this game in the Cornellverse for the first time are going to be hopelessly confused as to how and who they're expected to push to get decent results, and having the game straight up lie to them is not a good look.

[Historian]

Question -- what do you consider to be decent results? I've had zero issues in using dominate to get monster heels over -- and I think the thing you're over looking with at least the Jacob Fatu explain is that he came in and has been immediately put in a position where he's mixing it up with stars. He's not going out and thrasing local indy guy #34 in an angle. He's beating up guys who have popularity that help get the angle over.

 

[Spoons]

Frankly, we don't see nearly as many squash matches nowadays as we used to; I think boosting squash matches until a certain year (maybe like, '97, when the Attitude Era started) would make sense, since olden-time stars like Hogan, Savage, Warrior, etc. would often squash jobbers when not working a storyline match, but I think that should dwindle out to a lesser bonus nowadays, and should rely less heavily on menace and more heavily on things like brawling, power, and how much bigger they are than their opponent.

Edited August 17 by Spoons

[White Dolphin]

9 hours ago, Historian said:

Question -- what do you consider to be decent results? I've had zero issues in using dominate to get monster heels over -- and I think the thing you're over looking with at least the Jacob Fatu explain is that he came in and has been immediately put in a position where he's mixing it up with stars. He's not going out and thrasing local indy guy #34 in an angle. He's beating up guys who have popularity that help get the angle over.

 

Okay after getting back from donating blood plasma I spent a few hours testing things and now I've found the magic number for Charisma for the Dominate road agent note to work: 72

71 or less Charisma, the note drops popularity, 72 or more Charisma, Dominate works as planned. I tested this with Monster Ishimura and Unstoppable Tai in the CVerse with 5SSW, even put them up against a strong fundamentals worker in Purple Viper, when I set them to 71 charisma via editor, they lost 1 popularity point in Kansai, 72 charisma they gained 3. Even ran multiple save/reloads to be sure inconsistency wasn't doing anything.

Then to be extra sure I just ran a test one show save with USPW. Opening match was noted professional and fundamentals guy Greg Black as the job guy, and I put him against six people in USPW with 70+ menace and 71 or less charisma: Atlas, Bash Street, Bulldozer Brandon Smith, Dusty Ducont, Petr Novak, and Siale Valhalla. At their current charisma level, I ran the match against Black with them set to dominate, every single one lost popularity. I raised their charisma to 72 via editor and changed nothing else, got popularity gains (EDIT: or standing still in Novak's case, probably due to bad momentum).

 

Now I'm sure we can have a heated barbershop debate over who out of those six would deserve popularity gains from a "if this were real" standpoint, but I'm very convinced that 72 is the magic number for Charisma for the Dominate road agent note to work in this game, so @Historian if you've had it work for you I'm guessing thats the reason, but if you've made this note work with 71 Charisma or less on your target please let me know what you did and how it worked. Am I supposed to add other road agent notes too? Cause I just added four: Guy to win, guy to win via pinfall, guy to dominate, and the clean win note. Am I supposed to add Keep Strong or Protect or something?

 

To keep this post topical to Suggestions forum, I would suggest lowering this 72 Charisma threshhold for the Dominate road agent note, if it does exist, to maybe 60ish?

Edited August 18 by White Dolphin