Improving Rookies

[LandMass]

How do you lot go about growing the talent that you want to mold into stars? I'm trying to figure out if there is something I'm missing about improving young guys' skills.

[Self]

I pair them up against wrestlers with high experience. Ideally 100 experience. If I want to get really granular I look at specific stats. I want a rookie with 60 high flying to be wrestling a veteran with more than 60 high flying. After that, it's just lots and lots of matches and rematches and ring time. 

That's less about making 'stars' and more about making quality performers. My rookies get beaten a lot. 

[VBigB]

To add to this a good head trainer helps a lot. Make sure you are using that new mechanic.

[codey_v3]

As far as actual skill improvement goes, it really just comes down to lots of matches with guys that are more skilled. Wrestlers learn in the ring, so get those reps in. If a guy doesn't fit on the main card, make sure you book them in a pre-show match. If you're running weekly cards, the guys you want to improve need to be wrestling every week.

There are natural limits to how much a guy can improve in any given month, but generally what I look at is this: if I have a guy on roster for one year and his primary skills only went up by 2 points in that time period, I write him off as a lowcard guy for years. He's not going to improve fast enough to be useful for a very long time if he's being used every week and his improvement is that slow. 

But if you see a guy who's primary skills are raising 4-5 points in a year? Strap a rocket to him as soon as he gets to 20 experience, that's a guy that you won't need to worry about strategically improving, he'll do it all on his own. 

As far as gameplay strategies for improvement go, this is what I like:

I typically play saves that go 10-15 years, so I'm big on long term development. In my last save in 2020, I instituted a young lion system and a development promotion in my US promotion.

Essentially, if you were a graduate of my dojo (I kept it to 4 a year) you would be a young lion jobber for a full year on my main show, which usually got guys' experience up to around 20. After that year was up, I would ship them off on excursion to a with a touring schedule for 1, 2, or 3 years depending on how much more seasoning I thought they needed. That way they get a ton of experience overseas, and get to come back with good skills and a new gimmick and I get to skip the part where I stick them in a tag team for 2 years to get better.

Development was for people I didn't train in my dojo or dojo grads if they still weren't good enough when they came back from excursion. For them, I liked to sign 2-3 years contracts, that way I felt like I gave them a fair chance to improve enough to be called up. 

Take advantage of all the training mechanics. Like someone else said make sure you assign a head trainer to your inner circle, and if you've got a performance center make sure you assign your prospects to train there.

[LandMass]

3 hours ago, Self said:

I pair them up against wrestlers with high experience. Ideally 100 experience. If I want to get really granular I look at specific stats. I want a rookie with 60 high flying to be wrestling a veteran with more than 60 high flying. After that, it's just lots and lots of matches and rematches and ring time. 

That's less about making 'stars' and more about making quality performers. My rookies get beaten a lot. 

At what point do they start getting wins? A year or two in?

 

2 hours ago, VBigB said:

To add to this a good head trainer helps a lot. Make sure you are using that new mechanic.

Dumb question but how do you know if someone is a good head trainer? 

 

1 hour ago, codey_v3 said:

As far as actual skill improvement goes, it really just comes down to lots of matches with guys that are more skilled. Wrestlers learn in the ring, so get those reps in. If a guy doesn't fit on the main card, make sure you book them in a pre-show match. If you're running weekly cards, the guys you want to improve need to be wrestling every week.

There are natural limits to how much a guy can improve in any given month, but generally what I look at is this: if I have a guy on roster for one year and his primary skills only went up by 2 points in that time period, I write him off as a lowcard guy for years. He's not going to improve fast enough to be useful for a very long time if he's being used every week and his improvement is that slow. 

But if you see a guy who's primary skills are raising 4-5 points in a year? Strap a rocket to him as soon as he gets to 20 experience, that's a guy that you won't need to worry about strategically improving, he'll do it all on his own. 

As far as gameplay strategies for improvement go, this is what I like:

I typically play saves that go 10-15 years, so I'm big on long term development. In my last save in 2020, I instituted a young lion system and a development promotion in my US promotion.

Essentially, if you were a graduate of my dojo (I kept it to 4 a year) you would be a young lion jobber for a full year on my main show, which usually got guys' experience up to around 20. After that year was up, I would ship them off on excursion to a with a touring schedule for 1, 2, or 3 years depending on how much more seasoning I thought they needed. That way they get a ton of experience overseas, and get to come back with good skills and a new gimmick and I get to skip the part where I stick them in a tag team for 2 years to get better.

Development was for people I didn't train in my dojo or dojo grads if they still weren't good enough when they came back from excursion. For them, I liked to sign 2-3 years contracts, that way I felt like I gave them a fair chance to improve enough to be called up. 

Take advantage of all the training mechanics. Like someone else said make sure you assign a head trainer to your inner circle, and if you've got a performance center make sure you assign your prospects to train there.

What does the performance center actually do? Does it just improve fundamentals or does it improve actual skills too?

[VBigB]

42 minutes ago, LandMass said:

Dumb question but how do you know if someone is a good head trainer? 

On the inner circle screen if you click on the words “Male/Female Head Trainer” a popup will tell you the criteria. In addition, when you have the list open to select a candidate you can click on search and filter out unacceptable candidates (note you can do this for all inner circle roles).

Edited August 19 by VBigB

[Hawk1665]

Another thing to keep in mind, unless it changed in IX, is rookies will naturally progress on their own over time. Even if they aren't wrestling, they'll get better. It's not as fast as wrestling matches but it helps. The idea is the 20's is growth, 30's is prime, 40's is decline, late 40's/50's is retirement. Though there's some with wonky settings who might retire super early or late or hit their prime later.