Revamping Products - Fanbase Types & Gimmick Preferences

[GrindhouseArts]

Before I start: Yes, I realize this is a big ask, but I think it could address several other things that are not strictly product-related, too, so it might be worth it in the long run.

I generally like the change from sliders to Products, but I find the things that make (or not) a product what is a bit puzzling. A product summarizes the style of a company - how fans perceive them (family-friendly, risque, rebellious, traditional...) and how they book (types of matches, if they use many angles or not...). The latter is mostly fine. There are some settings I find questionale - for example, 'match length to achieve world class score' is debatable, and 'hard/easy on the body' shouldn't be in a product, but depend exclusively on the Athletic Abilities of workers (in my opinion). The wear and tear of their style would be the same everywhere because, well, that's their style. But that's minor.

What I think is not well-reflected at all is the 'public image', what a company is memorable for, what draws fans to them (or turns them away). Fans are very monolithic and it feels like everyone draws the same crowd - which then judges a show exclusively on you sticking to your list of product restrictions or not.

I'd like to propose to include the following in products:

TYPE OF FANBASE

Smart Fanbase: These are dedicated wrestling fans that keep up with the wrestling world in general. They are not easily impressed by certain things (Stunt/Crazy bumps are only well-received in high quality matches - depending on company size, matches that get an overall light-blue rating), know the significance of certain events (Unmasking/Shaving Bald is well-received, stronger reaction to successful turns), and more likely to react well to popular workers from other regions (excursions, big deals in other countries) because the fans know who they are. This last part would be reflected by using the worker's highest pop in any region instead of their local pop. This effect starts at 50 worker pop, so you can't just present anyone with a small local following as a big deal guest star.

Example: You run a show in Great Lakes, USA. Your smart fanbase knows that Mr. Big Deal (local pop: 3, average British Isles pop: 64) is a big deal elsewhere in the wrestling world and are excited to see him live. Mr. Big Deal is therefore seen as a 64 pop worker in Great Lakes.

Niche Fanbase: This fanbase is also 'smart', but the Fachidiot variety. They are into a specific style of wrestling which they follow internationally while not paying much attention to anything else. These are the people who know all career stations of that one obscure Joshi worker with a cult following in Hokkaido who nobody outside of Japan has ever heard of, but couldn't reliably pick Roman Reigns out of a line-up. This fanbase selects a style - Lucha Libre, Puroresu, Womens Wrestling, Hardcore/Deathmatch - and gets the 'smart' effect cranked up to 11, but only for workers their chosen style applies to (without a minimum pop restriction, unlike Smart).

Example: You run a Gory Hardcore show in Great Lakes, USA. Your niche fanbase likes Hardcore/Deathmatch. You book Violence Peterson (style 'hardcore', local pop: 3, Victoria, Australia pop: 31). Your geeks know him due to their tunnel vision on his style and therefore see him as pop 31 in Great Lakes. The same does not apply to Mr. Big Deal (who, for the sake of this example, is Technician.)

Casual Fanbase: This fanbase casually follows wrestling, may attend local shows, but not really because they are huge fans, more because it just happens to be the most fun-sounding thing going on that night. They care less about storylines (don't expect them, dislike 'Storytelling' and 'Technical Masterclass' aim), are only marginally aware of the significance of certain events (Mask/Hair loss has no effect), are easily impressed by Stunt/Crazy Bumps because it's not something they see often, and they react very well to people they recognize from non-wrestling stuff (Musicians, Actors, Celebrities increase heat). They also react better than other fanbases to matches that are easy to understand/don't need to be 'understood' much (Mayhem, Overbooked, Eye Candy, Comedy). The overall effect of a Casual Fanbase is that 'Charisma' is used for all calculations that would normally use Primary Skills if Charisma is higher. These fans want easy to digest entertainment. Good wrestling? Sure, why not. But if it drifts into 'so bad, it's good' territory, that's fine with them, too.

Example: You book Bobo The Rodeo Clown (pop: 13, Charisma: 54, atrocious Primary skills) in a Wild Brawl. Normally, he'd tank outside of comedy matches, but here, his better Charisma is considered instead of his 15 brawling. He still sucks, but at least he sucks in an entertaining way. On the flip side, Technical Terry (pop 24, Charisma 7, Technical: 56) can still rely on his in-ring skills to entertain this easily pleased crowd.

Mainsteam/Balanced Fanbase: This fanbase is a balanced mix of the above. So balanced, in fact, that most of the effects above don't come into play. The exception is the 'Smart' effect - a better reaction to foreign stars - but it begins at 70 worker pop. A product that appeals to the mainstream can be expected to hype up a foreign star, and fans that follow mainstream wrestling (albeit not as in-depth as the smarks) can be expected to at least have heard of the real big deals (but not indie/niche darlings) from other regions.

Example: You run a show in Great Lakes, USA once again, and book Mr. Big Deal (Technician with 64 pop across British Isles, 3 pop in Great Lakes). Nobody cares; he's not big enough to be talked about in international mainstream. Once he gets 70 in Wales, that changes. Now there's a buzz, the mainstream whispers about that next big deal from Wales, and fans get curious enough about him to be excited around the world.

 

Each product would be assigned one of these 4 fanbase types. In most cases, this would be a fairly easy decision, and similar products could be set apart more by giving them different fanbases. With the same effects applied to the AI-controlled companies, this would also account for a more realistic game world since some companies would go for foreign workers more often (say, GCW importing half of Japan and British Isles) while others stick to domestic workers. This would also counter the issue (at least I think it is a bit of an 'issue' in regards to realism) that workers often make themselves available in new regions, but never get booked there because they have no pop - and never gain any because they never work there. Very Catch-22. If Smart & Niche products consider the higher foreign pop, it would more realistically simulate worker movement around the globe (and ultimately increase international pop for regional breakout stars).

 

GIMMICK PREFERENCES (or Mandarory Gimmick Types)

Question: What is the first major difference between 1992 WWE and 2022 WWE that comes to mind? Is it a) their match/angle ratio or b) that in 1992, millionaires, savage warriors, accountants, and voodoo priests seemed to be really interested in winning wrestling titles for some reason, and in 2022 that's quite rare? For me, it is very firmly the latter.

Another question: How often have you looked at a worker's 'Plays X Well/Can't play Y' attributes and thought 'Damn, guess my plans for this guy go down the drain then' instead of 'Well, he can't play Bad Ass, but there's a case to be made for him being a Legtimate/Realistic bad ass, soooo...' Yeah. Thought so. It's pretty gamey, but most of us have probably done this.

What I'm saying is - these Attributes could be a much more interesting deciding factor when hiring workers, and Products should make more use of that because the types of gimmicks you see on a show contribute a great deal to a company's public perception. I'd be very confused if I attended a deathmatch show and everyone on the card came straight out of 1992 WWE, gimmick-wise. Just like I'd check if I bought the right ticket/PPV if I didn't see any crazy gimmicks or masks on a CHIKARA show. Some products are strongly associated with certain gimmick types, or should be.

I envision this to be handled like storylines or match aims. Certain products require X workers with a Y type gimmick per card or the fans will be disappointed. Naturally, it should be possible to disable this, just like Match Aims and Storyline Requirements can be disabled, and this wouldn't apply to products that don't require gimmicks in the first place. A special effect for some traditional-leaning lucha products could be 'X masked workers' instead of specific gimmick types instead.

The 'preferred gimmick types' would contribute to show quality - insofar that fans get upset if you don't have enough of what is expected - and, on a match/segment level - workers with the preferred gimmick types get a slight boost compared to workers with a 'neutral' (neither preferred nor penalized) type.

Broadly speaking, I'd distribute the gimmick types like this:

- Family Friendly likes Comedy & Gimmicky/Cartoonish

- 'Rebellious' (hardcore, edgy, gritty, anti-establishment) likes Bad Ass & Offbeat/Unstable, possibly Mysterious/Occult

- Serious, realistic-leaning (if the product allows gimmicks) likes Realistic & Legitimate, possibly Dominant

- Any product with 'larger than life characters' in the description likes Realistic & Bad Ass

- (case to case decisions; like Comic Book Dark getting Mysterious/Occult & Gimmicky/Cartoonish, vs. Comic Book Light with Comedy & Gimmicky/Cartoonish,...)

As it is, there are only penalities for Comedy type gimmicks in some products. That doesn't seem realistic to me. If you unleash some over the top Gimmicky/Cartoonish character in an otherwise serious, gritty roster, this would likely be somewhat controversial among fans. And vice versa, if you put a Realistic or Bad Ass character in a ring with otherwise over the top Gimmicky/Cartoonish and Mysterious/Occult types, he might be seen as boring in comparison and not get over as quickly. So I think there should be preferences to reflect what the company's fans expect and would receive best. It would not make it straight up impossible to get a worker who doesn't fit that preference over, so that oddball breakout success is still in the cards. It's just realistic that some gimmicks would have an easier time to catch on in some environments than others. This would also help greatly to distinguish otherwise relatively similar products.

Edited September 2 by GrindhouseArts

[danyp92]

This is definitely interesting, but I feel like bigger companies should always have a mix of different kinds of fanbases, and a feature like this should not be linked to products.

Then I don't see why a casual fan would dislike a match with a story-telling aim, taking the example the game gives of someone on a losing streak, it would just look to them as something different on the card. It could even bring them up to speed on what is going on.

[MisterSocko]

4 hours ago, GrindhouseArts said:

'hard/easy on the body' shouldn't be in a product, but depend exclusively on the Athletic Abilities of workers (in my opinion). The wear and tear of their style would be the same everywhere because, well, that's their style.

If your style is hardcore but you work for a family friendly company that never has hardcore matches and rarely has weapons spots and ladder stunts, there isn't going to be much wear and tear on your body.

If your style is comedy but you work for a more hard-hitting company, then even as a comedy guy who's there to get squashed by the "serious" guys, you're going to get hit hard and you're going to bump hard, so there will be a lot more wear and tear on your body.

4 hours ago, GrindhouseArts said:

As it is, there are only penalities for Comedy type gimmicks in some products. That doesn't seem realistic to me.

Sometimes people don't like penalties even when they're perfectly realistic... I think the tendency is to remove restrictions in order to please fans who like a more sandbox experience, not to add more for the sake of realism. And the idea that a performer would be so good in their cartoonish role that even fans of serious wrestling would be willing to accept them is not that absurd. Jushin Liger and Tiger Mask are actually pretty good real life examples.

[GrindhouseArts]

7 minutes ago, danyp92 said:

This is definitely interesting, but I feel like bigger companies should always have a mix of different kinds of fanbases, and a feature like this should not be linked to products.

Then I don't see why a casual fan would dislike a match with a story-telling aim, taking the example the game gives of someone on a losing streak, it would just look to them as something different on the card. It could even bring them up to speed on what is going on.

The 'dislike storytelling aim' is meant to say - these people don't necessarily know or care what makes a 'story' good. They don't watch every show and don't keep up with storylines, so to them, there is no losing streak. It's just guy A loses to guy B without the context of the story. I would apply this fanbase to some entertainment-based products like 'Wrestling Burlesque' or 'Absurdist Entertainment' - where it's borderline not really a typical 'wrestling' product, more an 'entertainment' product that happens to include some wrestling.

[GrindhouseArts]

11 minutes ago, MisterSocko said:

Sometimes people don't like penalties even when they're perfectly realistic... I think the tendency is to remove restrictions in order to please fans who like a more sandbox experience, not to add more for the sake of realism. And the idea that a performer would be so good in their cartoonish role that even fans of serious wrestling would be willing to accept them is not that absurd. Jushin Liger and Tiger Mask are actually pretty good real life examples.

That's why I said you should be able to disable this effect, same as you can disable Match Aims.

There is also nothing in my suggestion that would prevent a cartoonish character from becoming a Major Star in a company that has a serious style. What I suggest is a penalty for not having enough of what the fanbase expects to see. If I go to see a show that I can reasonably expect (based on their advertisements) to be over the top and gimmicky like CHIKARA or Lucha Underground, and the entire card looks more like Dean Malenko vs. Steve McMichael ca. 1996, I'll be irritated. "The fan expected to see more Gimmicky/Cartoonish characters."

The 'mandatory gimmick types' would account for 30 - 60 % of the workers on a card, not ALL of them. I have seen deathmatch shows where the crowd went wild for the 'calm the crowd' cruiserweight try out or the comedy match - neither fit the usual style, so I wouldn't want to penalize any type of gimmick on any show. Sometimes fans just like something that goes completely against the norm for a company, but that doesn't mean they'd want an entire show of only that.

Edited September 2 by GrindhouseArts

[MisterSocko]

37 minutes ago, GrindhouseArts said:

The 'dislike storytelling aim' is meant to say - these people don't necessarily know or care what makes a 'story' good. They don't watch every show and don't keep up with storylines

To my knowledge a "storytelling" match is not necessarily a match that furthers a long term storyline, it can simply be a match that, in itself, tells a little story that is more important than "they did a bunch of wrestling moves".

If it's your first time watching wrestling and you watch Hogan vs Andre with zero context, the match itself still tells you the basic story of "the big scary monster was impossibly big and strong, and the valiant hero struggled, but in the end, found the strength to slay the monster". As a casual fan you may still be bored by "they barely did anything in that match". But you wouldn't think "the match tried to tell me a story and I hated that about it".

If anything, if you're the kind of fan who doesn't care at all about how good the performers are at actual wrestling then most matches should be about storytelling. Not in the sense of "so that's where we're at now in the long saga of Cody Rhodes vs The Bloodline", but in the sense of "you're here because you like the characters, and those characters need to do stuff and not just stand there, so when they have a match, that match needs to tell you something about the characters, not be about wrestling moves or stunts".

You take the example of the Wrestling Burlesque product, well to be honest I've never actually attended a Lucha VaVOOM show but I have attended non-wrestling burlesque shows and some burlesque routines have a "character" and a "story", they're not all about "that girl or that guy is stripping and dancing, sometimes singing". Obviously there's that, but there's more than that, and the audience enjoys it. So if the audience of a burlesque show enjoys that kind of storytelling I don't see why they'd be put off by a storytelling match in a Wrestling Burlesque show.

Edited September 2 by MisterSocko

[GrindhouseArts]

Exactly. The story did not enhance my enjoyment of the match because I may not even have realized there was a story at play. I wouldn't have the same appreciation for the match structure that a smarter fan has. That's the difference to a smarter audience. To a smart fan, a tag team worker who gets beaten up most of the match and then hot tags is 'great at playing Ricky Morton'. To a casual fan, he's just a guy who gets beaten up a lot and has to be saved by his better partner.

[MisterSocko]

1 minute ago, GrindhouseArts said:

I may not even have realized there was a story at play

Exactly. If you don't even realize that there's a story at play, you're not going to be put off by the fact that the match tried to tell a story.

[GrindhouseArts]

16 minutes ago, MisterSocko said:

Exactly. If you don't even realize that there's a story at play, you're not going to be put off by the fact that the match tried to tell a story.

I'd be put off by something I can't really follow going on. Such as 'the good guy got beaten up too much' because I don't get why he took a beating. Actually, this should also apply to 'Technical Masterclass', for the same reasons. I wouldn't know it's a 'masterclass' rather than 'kinda like amateur wrestling, I guess?'

Edited September 2 by GrindhouseArts

[MisterSocko]

To take the example of Hogan vs Andre again...

Most people in the audience seemed to be really into it, and there's a strong possibility that a lot of them were casual fans who hadn't followed the entire buildup. If you ask fans who liked it, why did you like it, they will tell you "it was a great match!", or "I'm so happy that Hogan won!", not "it was great storytelling".

Now there is also a strong possibility that even some fans who are not considered as "smart" fans hated it though! But if you ask casual fans who hated it, why did you hate it, they will tell you "it was a 3 hour bearhug, then clothesline/bodyslam/legdrop and boom it's over, it was boring". I can't imagine a casual fan telling you "I was befuddled when I saw the blonde guy struggle so much, and I have no idea why it was exciting to see him lift and slam the gigantic guy. I'm guessing they were trying to... tell me a story, maybe? About a brave man triumphing over a seemingly invicible man through courage and determination? Is that how stories work? Anyway, hated it. Absolutely hated it. They could have done that same sequence of moves in under a minute with no theatrics and no commentary. Then it would have been a match about nothing, and THAT is what I call professional wrestling."

The problem with that specific match is the pacing, it goes from "hardly anything happens for 10 minutes" to "10 seconds of action" and then it's over, so the story may not be enough to keep you interested. It's not that it has a story in the first place. Compare to Austin vs Hart, which is also a lot about the story of "Bret has become a bitter asshole and Austin may not be a traditional good guy but you have to admire that he simply won't give up" and is also a "good wrestling match". It's still your right to hate it but... if you (the general "you", I mean) do... it may be that wrestling is not for you, you know? It's not a case of "you like wrestling, but stories? ugh". At the very least if you're truly annoyed by the "drama" aspect of wrestling but still enjoy wrestling, you're not a "casual" fan, you're more in the niche audience that enjoys "wrestling as a sports" type of products (and I would argue that a good storytelling match would even work for a "wrestling is real" company, as even fans of competitive sports love a good story).

A casual fan is someone who enjoys wrestling but not to the point of watching every show, knowing every performer, and analyzing the quality of matches. It's not someone who is somewhat confused by the concept of professional wrestling, and kind of hates it. Not saying people like that don't exist, but those people will maybe watch wrestling once or twice, realize it's not for them, and stop watching, and companies can't base their product on the reactions of people who are going to stop watching anyway.

I'm really not trying to dismiss your idea as a whole, but since it revolves around different types of fanbases, it's kind of important that "casual fans" are accurately depicted, and it shouldn't be as "people who don't quite get that whole wrestling thing".

Edited September 2 by MisterSocko