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A wise person once said  so here we are.  What is Total Extreme Wrestling 2020? Total Extreme Wrestling 2020 (or TEW 20) is a pro wrestling booking simulator, latest in the line of simulation games created by Adam Ryland, the man behind Extreme Warfare Revenge and the TEW series. The latest, eight iteration of the long running series, TEW 20, was released in May 1st 2020. It is the best (quotation needed) wrestling sim on the market. Here’s the game in a nutshell: you take control of a wrestling company in the role of a booker* (or an owner) and run the day-to-day operations which include: - Putting together wrestling shows - Hiring talent - Making sure no one farts in the locker room - Keeping an eye out on finances And more! Sounds exciting, right? Cool! Can’t wait to see some photorealistic slamming and grappling action! Uh, no. The game is almost entirely text-based. While visually barebones (or just plain ugly), the core mechanics of the game are strong, especially if you are a wrestling fan and/or willing to use your imagination a bit. We don’t even get fancy dots rolling around the ring, we don’t have the budget of an ACTUAL sports sim! So you’re going take the reigns from Vincent Kennedy McMahon and run WWE to the ground? Once again, no. The base game is not set in our own universe, but the CornellVerse. Ryland’s creation of characters and companies has been running since the first TEW release in 2004. Created out of necessity (the EWR games were freeware and could get away with real world wrestlers and companies, TEW went commercial and to avoid massive license fees, we got a fictional database), but it’s not just an afterthought. Growing and developing over the years, sometimes influenced by the stories told by the players themselves over at the game’s forum, the CVerse is a rich and balanced environment for some fantasy booking. That’s why I prefer it over RW mods. You grow to like these characters, even if they are just a few lines of text and a bunch of numerical values. So, what EXACTLY are you doing here? I’ll be picking up a a promotion from the CVerse and run it until we’re satisfied/broke. There is no “end” or a set goal. You set your own goals, whether it is to try to completely revamp the company or drive every company in existence out of business. On the way, I’ll try my best to introduce the mechanics of the game and hopefully create some interest in this particular bunch of Excel sheets in disguise. Being a wrestling nerd, I’d like to share one of my favourite games with every one of you. I’ve been playing different iterations since 2013 (and even dabbled with a demo around 2011-ish) and while I can’t consider myself an expert, I’d say I’m pretty experienced with the game at this point. Pardon my French, but you keep saying ”we”? Yes, we. I’ll try to sprinkle in some good ol’ Goon participation every once in a while. I’ll ask your input in certain creative decisions, hiring/firing situations and whatever else comes up during the game. Consider yourselves members of the booking committee, if you will. I will probably need all the help I can get. Do I have to be adept at wrestling lingo? No, not at all. Hell, I'm barely adept at English! I’ll try to explain the key terminology as we go along. You’ll be talking about faces, heels, swerves, turns and ring psychology in no time. *booker /noun/ (the person responsible for the creative direction of the company, the head writer) *to book /verb/ (to put together storylines, matchups and wrestling shows) *booking committee /noun/ (a bunch of writers banging their heads together to figure out who does what and why) For wrestling discussion/ideas you can check out our very own Punch Suplex (Tokyo Joshi) Pro (title subject to change), where Goons discuss wrestling daily. The Thread Rules~ - Don’t be a dingus Update schedule: I’ll try to keep up weekly updates, try being the key word here. Table of Contents: 2020 Episode 1: Starting up Episode 2: Meet the boys Episode 3: Time for OzFest Episode 4: Bleeding money Episode 5: Some new faces, some new heels Episode 6: World Tour, Part 1 (Japan) Episode 7: Nighthawk's trial by fire Episode 8: Caged Showdown Episode 9: What was I doing again? Episode 10: Double Shot Episode 11: World Tour, Part 2 (United States) Episode 12: Duo No More Episode 13: Double Shot... Again! Episode 14: Let's Get Ready to Rumble Episode 15: World Tour, Part 3 (Mexico & Canada) Episode 16: Old mistakes Episode 17: Crowning of a champion (+ 2020 Year End Awards & Roster Review) 2021 Episode 18: World Tour, Part 4 (Europe & UK) Episode 19: New year, same problems Episode 20: Dangerous Pre-shows Episode 21: That doesn't work for me, brother Episode 22: Oh man Episode 23: Queensland calling Episode 24: I'm not agreeing to put anyone over, brother Episode 25: The revolution will be televized Episode 26: Trucking along Episode 27: Waves of change Episode 28: RAW Strikes Back Episode 29: Miracles in the Midcard Episode 30: Greetings from Puerto Rico (+ End of Year Awards) Episode 31: Roster review 2021 2022 Episode 32: State of the wrestling world 2022 Episode 33: Back for more Episode 34: Farewell to Fox Episode 35: Keep rolling etc. Episode 36: Days of Our Lives Episode 37: World Level Weirdos Episode 38: For Whom The Bell Tolls Episode 39: Spoiler alert - R & R are still bad BTF fucked around with this message at 10:53 on Jul 8, 2022 |
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Mar 7, 2021 16:31
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reserved, just in case
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Mar 7, 2021 16:31
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Episode 1: Starting up So, let's start up our game. You name your save and choose which regions (eight in total) are active during this save. This also determines the size of your database. Activating all regions should bring our game to around 2500 active workers. The game runs pretty well with this amount of workers, but will slow down a bit when new workers debut in the world. This is more of an issue with real world mods, where the size of the databases can be much larger. The game also supports "multiplayer" as you can activate eight user characters at once. There is no actual online function, so you trade the save file via email after every turn or pass around the keyboard locally. OR you use it to fix AI's fuckups by momentarily taking control of an AI controlled company and steer them back on track.  A new feature in TEW 20 are these intro screens that pop up when you start a new save. They give a really quick rundown about each of the seven major game areas (India is a new game area, but it doesn't have any active companies, yet). I'll be going a bit more in-depth with every company in later updates, but let's go through these anyways. These intro screens are the most visual flair you'll get out of this game. so enjoy it while it lasts.  USA has always gotten the most love in the game world and in the CVerse community. The war between the big three is the defining "story" of this edition, with USPW really pulling ahead of the pack. It's also a bit funny to say that "women's wrestling is on the rise" since the other American women's wrestling company, AAA, went out of business between editions.  Canada is the centerpiece of the BIG change in the game world. The two big Canadian companies have done a merger, pissing off fans of both of the old companies.  The big news form Mexico is that the biggest company went through a name change. Oh, and the biggest superstar of the generations went to Hollywood. Also highlighted here are LUCHADOR VIKINGS, one of the great gimmicks (characters) of the Cornellverse.  UK has the only new company added to the game world, CWW. I had my longest running game in this edition with them which ended with a computer crash.  Yes, the 2016 tsunami is canon in the CVerse and it has left most Japanese companies reeling and a few companies out of business.  Nothing happens in mainland Europe. This is mostly in line with the real world as well.  Last but not the least, Oceania. The game world doesn't actually include the 10 000 or so islands that belong in Oceania, just Australia and New Zealand.  The game has a few different Avatars to choose as your user character. For a first time player this cast of characters gives a good cast to choose from. The character you choose as your user character is immortal (I believe, I've never played/simmed a game long enough to find out) and don't actually get paid, so you basically get one free worker. These characters exist outside the game world and are not added in unless the player chooses to do so here at the beginning. You can naturally create your own character in the database editor before starting a new save. I normally just go with one of the Avatars, but not this time. You can choose any of the characters in the game world as your user character. After a quick search we find our guy.  I'm choosing a retired Australian wrestler Lanny Williams, as he already works for the company I will be running. He's a road agent (backstage worker who assist with putting together matches and angles with the wrestlers, usually a former wrestler) and a pretty solid one at that. I chose him mostly because I want to have a road agent who'll stay with the company. Before we move on, let's go through the two important things on the character selection screen: User Talents and Preferences.  Your UC has six different talents and you can appoint up to 30 points divided among them before the game starts. You'll get a point to spend every 50 successful shows (a show that raises our companies popularity) you complete. We'll be waiting for that extra point for a while. The maximum amount of talent points you can have is 45.Values 4-6 are considered neutral and have no impact in the game, values above or below those will have positive or negative effects. Negotiating impact contract negotiations, Motivating makes your wrestlers more likely to work hard, Creativity impacts how well new gimmicks and turns work out, high Leadership makes your backstage easier to control, Diplomacy affects how your workers respond to your handling of incidents and Silver Tongue impacts your ability to sweet talk your workers into, for example,  Preferences contain a bunch of optional settings. We'll be mostly sticking with the default settings, except for the "new-style coloured lists" option, which makes some screens of the game nigh unplayable. We'll be going through these effects when they become relevant/I remember to bring them up.  After choosing your UC, it's time to choose the company we'll be booking. Highlighted here is the Small sized Australian Pro Wrestling, APW, my choice. They are the second biggest company in the Oceania area and a company I've never played before. However, I've played in the Oceania area before, so I'm somewhat familiar with the talent base I'll be working with. They should offer a decent challenge for me.  You can check out every company's starting roster and the product they use before making your choice. We'll be getting to the product and roster shortly, but I'll show off the "Tour this Company" button. It gives a quick summary about the company's current popularity, financial situation and five of their most popular wrestlers. Again, we'll be getting to know these guys more in the coming updates.  Welcome to the homepage! Every in-game day you get a some news all over the game world. Every month has exactly four weeks, so the timeline is a bit off when playing real world mods. Every news item will be saved in a condensed form in a news archive which you access from the menu at the right side of the screen.  We made the news! Lanny, you are retired, you can wear a shirt!  TCW, the third biggest company in USA (and the world) ended their 2019 with one of their major shows. Show recaps are the most common news item you'll be seeing, but not this in-depth. This is a special Narrative news item, premade to happen on an exact date and can have effects on the game world. This feature mostly exists for modders to add events that will happen regardless of player actions. All of the news on this first day are actually Narratives (except the news of our appointment and the three bottom ones on that list) and are mostly about the yearly awards. The homepage in general acts as an infodump and you'll be spending most of your game in other screens, but there's still some worthwhile things to check out on the right side menu before moving on. Diary lists every wrestling event that is scheduled to happen during the year. Company Wars ranks each company on the basis of their total fan base. Power 500 lists the 500 best wrestlers in the world on the final day of every in-game year. The key to a high ranking is to have a lot of highly rated matches.  The Hall of Immortals is only for the greatest of all time. Every company can have their own Hall of Fame and induct people freely, but the HOI has far stricter criteria. To get to The Hall a wrestler has fill different criteria, which include having 99 or 100 rated matches, headlining the biggest shows in the world or getting chosen as the Wrestler of the Year. The Annual Awards tab keeps track of all awards and like the Power 500 is calculated the last day of each year. I mostly wanted to show off The Hall because of the man pictured above: Bruce the Giant. The biggest Australian star in the history of the CVerse and pretty much the Andre The Giant stand-in. (The CVerse has some direct-ish homages to real world wrestlers and Bruce is one of the most obvious.) It's finally time to move to The Office (the briefcase icon on the LEFT side of the window) and boy...  That's a lot of buttons. Thankfully, a LOT of these don't really concern a company of our size. The Assistant takes a lot of space and will give us reminders about expiring contracts and whatnot. Let's head over to the Creative part of the screen and find out what kind of a Product we are running.  This screen might seem intimidating and contains some wrestling lingo but it's the key to understanding what we are expected give to our fans. Sports Entertainment doesn't actually mean anything (it was a term created in the 80s to avoid paying regulation fees that actual combat sports had to pay to authorities) but it's a widely accepted term nowadays that basically means pro wrestling with a focus on stories. As you can see, we're a family friendly company, so we're probably not going to book a story which involves two men wanting to stab each others eyes out. We have a strict face(hero/protagonist)/heel(villain/antagonist) divide. We have clear good guys and clear bad guys and our fans would react negatively if we would make faces fight other faces or heels fight with other heels. We CAN do face/face or heel/heel matchups but have to be aware that the rating WILL be penalized somewhat heavily. We don't have a weight split, so heavyweights can freely mix it up with cruiserweights. We also feature stables and managers regularly. We unfortunately don't have a women's division. You can change the size of your division from here, make your company only for women or make it integrated, where men and women are free to wrestle each other. Match and Angle Focuses determine the way our shows are rated. With the Regular Match Focus our overall rating is weighted heavily on our main event (70% of the grade) and the second best match on our show (20%). Our Highlights Angle Focus means that the grade is calculated by the average of our three best angles of the show. Then there is the list of effects that is a bit long.    In a nutshell: - Our fans want to see a lot of matches in big show. - The 70/30 ratio means our matches are rated much more on the popularity of our performers - the more popular the wrestlers facing each other, the better the grade. The in-ring work still matters, but we are more about Andre/Hogan than Savage/Steamboat. - Our fans want the wrestlers to keep it short and simple. We're not going to be putting on a 60 minute draw in our shows, I don't think we'll even be hitting the 15 minute mark that often. - Lots of different stories going on at once. - None of that hardcore or TNA content here, no sir! I have had my best saves with products that value the in-ring performance over popularity so this will be a bit of a learning experience for me. I can't get away with throwing a bunch of talented wrestlers in an undercard tag team match and, you know, just wrestle to fill out my shows with decently graded matches. Back in the Office, it's time to head to the Creative button that is coincidentally sorted under the Creative banner. Its a useful place to quickly check out the highlights of your roster. The Creative screen lists five of your top wrestlers in a few different areas: your best talkers, best in-ring workers, who has the most momentum and...  ...Your Franchise Players. This definitely Not A Good Thing. This screen SHOULD hopefully have five guys lined up. We have one, which is not optimal for our product. Our fans want to see STARS and we don't really have any. Let's take this chance to start getting to know our roster of wrestlers. I click on the face of Christopher Gerard and we get his profile page. I'm cropping this quite a bit, but here's his bio, skills and attributes.    Gerard is a strapping young lad. He's been with us his whole wrestling career and slowly build up from an opening match wrestler to our biggest star... mostly because APW has lost a lot of their biggest stars to the biggest company in Oceania, RAW. Looking at his skills, I'm not that impressed. And this is a good point to go over all of these drat numbers. Every skill has a value between 0 and 100. The game calculates on decimals but only shows the player whole numbers so a skill might have a value of 56.7 but shown to the player as 56. As I have the Fog of War enabled, I can't see exact value of most of the skills here. For example, our Brawling skill is valued 62-70 which means that the value is somewhere between that range. So, the the skills themselves. The five first skills on the list (Brawling, Hardcore, Puroresu, Technical, Aerial) are your Primary skills: how well you can throw a convincing punch, how you handle yourself in an environment with tables, ladders and chairs, how you can handle a "Japanese style" match, how you wrestle on the mat and chain moves together and finally how well can you jump through the air. Wrestlers are rarely good at all of these, and in a regular match, only the best of these stats is used for the grade calculations. Flashiness goes almost hand in hand with aerial as it measures how spectacular your moves are. Psychology is one of the most important skills for your worker as it determines how well you can actually tell a story and improvise in the ring and it is famously one of the hardest skills to grow. High psychology gives bonuses to every match, low psychology gives penalties. Experience is a new skill added in TEW 20 and it's pretty self explanatory. Every new wrestler starts at zero and gains experience as they keep wrestling. As long as Experience is below a certain threshold (I believe 20) the wrestler gets a penalty for his match performance. Respect and Reputation measure how the wrestler is perceived by his peers. Charisma, Microphone and Acting are your Entertainment skills. They echo your general charisma, how well you can cut a promo and your acting skills. Since we're mostly dealing with wrestlers, the Acting skill is usually the lowest. Charisma is the most important of these three as it can effect your in-ring performance as well as your angle performances. Star Quality is basically your "It-factor", are you a star or not. It's not important in isolation, but with a character with good stats it's a big extra plus. Sex Appeal measures attractiveness. Menace is how menacing you are. These two stats are fairly static but can be affected by some events like aging and changing weight classes. Fundamentals consist of Basics, Selling (making the beating you are taking in the ring look good), Consistency and Safety. You need all of these to be a good wrestler. Physical abilities are Stamina, Athleticism, Power, Toughness and Resiliency (the last two not visible in the worker profile without scrolling, because this game is poorly thought out at points). Physical skills are the least essential of all the skills but can give minor bonuses. When looking for new wrestlers, I tend to focus on three major stats: Psychology, Charisma and a high Primary skill. These three can carry you far but naturally the bigger the numbers for all the skills, the better. The more green (or blue) I can spot looking at a worker's skills, the better. Which bring me to my slight problem with Gerard as our top guy. He's a bit lacking in psychology and merely above average entertainment wise. Thankfully he has good looking Brawling and Technical skills (for our level) and mostly in the green for his Fundamentals.  Before we wrap up this update, let's talk about Attributes. A new feature in TEW 20, they are contain worker personalities and other extra flavor and special powers. Most of the attributes are about the wrestlers ability to perform certain gimmicks (characters) which we'll get to later. Highlighted here is one of Gerard's attributes, Fitness Fanatic. He'll probably stay in good shape for the duration of his career, which is always great. Next time: Get to know the rest of our roster and take a look at the rest of the Oceania. Maybe we'll even move to the next day!
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Mar 7, 2021 16:32
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This looks very interesting. An OOTP but for wrestling sounds like a lot of fun.
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Mar 8, 2021 08:26
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I am here for Out Of The Ring Wrestling
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Mar 9, 2021 04:35
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This looks interesting. I'll be following along with this for sure, some good old wrassle booking fun.
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Mar 9, 2021 04:42
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I've always been tempted to pick up a TEW game but they just seem so drat intimidating. Looking forward to seeing this.
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Mar 9, 2021 09:16
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i am excited to offer many bad tag team names and almost nothing else.
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Mar 9, 2021 11:12
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Episode 2: Meet the boys So, let's head over to look at our roster. We currently have 31 active wrestlers on our payroll. The size of your company determines the minimum size of the roster you have to keep employed or get a penalty for every show you run for looking amateurish. With a Insignificant company (the smallest possible company size) you have to have at least 12 wrestlers employed and the floor rises with as your company grows. As a small company we need at least 20 wrestlers so that isn't really a worry. I'm not planning a firing spree, probably the exact opposite. The only maximum wrestler cap you have are your finances. We're pretty well of with 125 000 dollars in the bank but I'd like to see how actually doing shows affects our balance. But hey, wrestlers. Every member of your roster has a Perception rating which updates after each show. It measures how our fans actually perceive our wrestlers: the wrestler is a Major Star, a Star, Well Known, Recognizable or Unimportant. The game's handbook (the in-game help file, which can be accessed via the '?' symbol at most times) has the more in-depth calculations, but it goes something like this: if the wrestler is has more popularity than the company in the company's home region (the game world is divided into regions, APW is located in New South Wales, which is around the Sydney area), they are considered a major star. If the popularity is 90% or over the company, they're a star, 70% to well known, 50% to recognizable and under that are unimportant. Our only guy who is currently considered a major star is Christopher Gerard. So let's start with our Stars... which we have two.    Dingo Devine here is a really solid 20-year veteran. He's our best technical wrestler (with quite a margin), can brawl almost as well, has good psychology, has great fundamentals and physical abilities... but is just a bit too dull in the charisma department. He'd fit in better as a midcard workhorse or a tag team division stalwart, but the constant talent raids have pushed him into a spotlight. He isn't exactly young, but luck willing he can still go for a few good years. (Every worker has a randomly rolled Decline age that is between 35 and 55 years old. After a wrestler hits his Decline age, he will slowly start to decline in most of his stats.) The charisma IS a problem though. He can't really carry a storyline on his own. He also has two really good attributes: Dynamo and Loyal. Dynamo means he will always give his all and won't take off days on minor shows. Technically we aren't even running minor shows but hey, he's dedicated. Loyal means he's more inclined to stay with us for a long time rather than seek new challenges elsewhere. He's ALREADY been with the company for 13 years so I guess he really likes the catering backstage? (spoilers, we don't have catering backstage, yet)    Our other Star is our current Commonwealth champion, Scottie Hamstead. Commonwealth title is our top prize and APW has had nine different champions during it's lifetime. Devine and Gerard are both former champions (with Hamstead just winning the title in the last event of 2019) as well as one other member of our roster. The other five work for RAW. Mr. Hamster here is a one-dimensional brawler. Thankfully for him (and for us) he's a pretty good one. A classic big man, who's not really that great at selling but is very menacing. He's a born heel and can't really play the role of a babyface. Charisma wise he's around the level of Gerard with one major advantage: this man as his manager.  Viktor Goliath is our top manager (a person doing the talking for a wrestler/ a group of wrestler, most famous real world example would probably be Bobby Heenan) and one of our best talkers in general. Managers in real world were almost a lost artform in mainstream US wrestling but AEW has started to bring them back. Managers can be a huge part of the wrestlers whole act. Goliath here has his stable of three menacing guys who can't really talk. His skills can bring them all up a level and just being with him in angles can help our other people develop. Moving on the Well Known crew and I'm starting to see what our calling card is: a good tag team division. So, let's start with the three teams.       Donovan Boon and Rusty Mills are The Duo, our best tag team with 100 experience together (tag experience is different than the Experience stat. When a team is formed, they start gaining experience points for every month they are together and for every match they are together). They've spent 10 years as a team with five tag team title reigns. Their bios suggest that we'd break them up and send them up for singles careers. Blasphemy! I'll officially keep them together but push them as singles acts! Both are among our best in-ring workers but Mills is the one with some form of charisma and thus marginally better. A few notable traits between these two. Tag Team Specialist gives an extra bonus if the team has more than 15 experience together and no negative chemistry (we'll get to that). Boone is also a Smoker and a Horndog. Smoker reduces his lifespan and takes a toll on his Physical skills over time. Horndog is, well...  That might be a problem if we had more than one woman on the roster. Who happens to be the wife of his tag partner. This has no chance in ending in a disaster... although it gives me an idea for a tasteless break-up angle...       Hatemonger and Warmonger are THE APOCALYPSE aka every indie Road Warriors rip-off ever. I kid, Apocalypse are our best heel team currently and also have 100 tag experience. They also have one of the best named tag team finisher moves I've seen in the game, Apocalypse Nowish. Hatemonger is quite clearly the weak link here. Warmonger is younger and better in almost every single way. He's the guy to elevate from the heel side of things. Unfortunately they are both negative locker room influences. They mostly care about themselves and getting paid so I'm a BIT worried RAW will try to come calling for Warmonger or the whole team. The are managed by Sean Quartermaine, another one of our talented managers. Quartermaine was actually the booker before we took over, so sorry about that. (He probably won't mind. He used to manage Lanny and his tag partner Debonair David Peterson for years. Peterson is still with the company as he's another one of our road agents.)       Richie Fox and Pookie Possum form the team of... Fox & Possum. They can't all be winners. They have decent experience together (39, you'll start getting small bonuses after 36 if I remember correctly) but once again we have a clear standout in Fox. Possum is not bad but the tag division is a correct place for him. Fox might have a chance being a bigger star, but he really needs to develop his brawling and psychology. He is a former drinker (slight reduction of lifespan, higher chance of relapsing) but he loves the business and has a great trait in Giving Performer. Basically when facing people significantly worse than him, he tens to "shine them up" and make them look better than they actually are. Warmonger has the exact opposite trait Selfish Performer which makes himself look better compared to worse performers.    Then there's the rest of our well known guys. Alyx Macquarie was a tag guy for years and has been a solid hand after his (more talented) partner jumped ship over to RAW. He's once again perfectly competent but already 33 and unlikely to develop any more.    Lone Shark here is the first former ZEN guy and a guy I have a soft spot for. When I did a long-ish ZEN save in... TEW 2013 I brought him back home and he was a big star alongside his tag partner Devilfish. And look at these stats, rock solid in almost every aspect of the game... except entertainment? What the hell, I remembered you were better than that! His lack of entertainment stats is the only reason I'm not strapping a rocket to his rear end and throwing him in the main event (I say this before actually booking a show, so I don't know how well he will ACTUALLY perform) but he should do good for us.    Another former ZEN guy. Massacre is big, powerful, menacing and not much else. So a perfect monster of the month! He currently holds the Australian title, our second singles championship, and is also managed by Goliath.    Nighthawk... I have very little to say about him. In previous editions he was a very underwhelming prospect and still really not that special. I'm willing to try with him since his bio blurb says that the company has been high on him. He's also only an average entertainer at best but has star quality and sex appeal. We have surprisingly many attractive lads so I guess we are the eye candy promotion for the moms bringing their kids to watch some rasslin? Nighthawk is also easily marketable (face paint? check. muscles? check. not a PR disaster? check) and his merchandise sales are boosted... when we start making wrestler specific merch.       Let's start going throw the Recognizable part of our roster with another bunch of tag teams. Samoan Demolition is one of the many Samoan tag teams that have found success in the CVerse and they are our current tag team champions. Being two menacing brawlers, they are perfect for our tag division. They mostly suffer from the fact that The Apocalypse already does their stuff a bit better than them. Malietoa has the trait of Squash Master so he gets a boost on his performance when he gets to squash some poor geek (squash match being a match where an established wrestler beats another wrestler in an extremely short and one-sided contest).       Chuck and Kasey are a couple of young pretty boys so they are perfect foils to get their asses kicked by Apocalypse and Samoan Demolition. Chuck is the one to keep an eye on as he seems to have really good psychology for his age and experience. I'm hoping these guys can develop as we MIGHT have a good team in the making here.       Warren Lydecker and Whirwind Lee Wilkes might have wild names but that's where the excitement ends. The are the very definition of perfectly competent: they are safe, handle the basics and have a good grasp of psychology. They'll never main event a show but they should never disappoint either.    Barney Mason has the look, brother, but very little else. He is also easily marketable but I doubt he'll ever rise above the status of a midcard hero. Unfortunately, his personality is also Insecure which means if he isn't perceived as a Major Star or a Star, he is a negative impact on our backstage environment. Every worker in the game has a personality trait which is the one listed at the top of their list of attributes. Personality mostly tells you what kind of an impact they will have on your backstage.    Dexter Mattell is one of our prospects I'm somewhat excited about. He's a pretty good technical wrestler, might have the psychology to match and is decently charismatic. Well, I THINK he is decently charismatic but this is where Fog of War might cloud me judgment. His charisma might be anywhere between 57 and 70 and his bio seems to imply it's a lot closer to the former than I'd like.    The bio really tells everything about Felix Harding. He might look like a million bucks but only pretty good at anything else. His selling makes him worthwhile to keep around as working with him should help others to develop in that skill as well.    Harry Simonson is the last of the former Commonwealth champions we have employed. His glory days are past him but he is still rock solid. He was never the most charismatic guy but still one of the most beloved Australian guys in the CVerse.    Reggie Tate is also managed by Goliath. Great physical skills, good fundamentals, might be a good brawler, menacing, star quality and looks for days. And, once again, not as charismatic as I would hope but that's why Goliath is there. Also he is an Agitator, which means he has a negative impact on the backstage and has higher chance of causing negative backstage incidents. We'll get to those when we start running shows.    After complaining about the lack of charismatic wrestlers for the duration of this update, we get to last of the ZEN alumni, SubUrban Legend. HE is our top rookie and undoubtedly a guy I should start building up. He's still a bit raw on most areas of his game but I hope those will come around. This isn't just me speculating as the game agrees with me. Let's take a quick look back at the Creative screen, where we looked at out Franchise Players. There's a lot of other info there as well:   Next Big Things and Hot Prospects are almost the same thing. Other one tells you about a high Destiny roll and the other about a high Potential roll. No one can ever remember which is which. This is also the reason why I'm high on Chuck. These lists aren't the be all end all. Not all prospects will pan out. I have had multiple guys who have hung around on the Top Prospects list for YEARS, seen new rookies come in and pass them by and still sucked. I am in no way suggesting that Mason will be that guy in this save.   Even more good news for Legend, he might already be OUR BEST TALKER. He also tops our Show Stealers list so he might be better in the ring than a quick glance at his stats might suggest.       We're finally wrapping up our roster as we only have the Unimportant guys left. Brian Rampage and Paul Reinhold, imaginatively named R & R, are both young and bland as hell. They are generic undercarders and they are here to lose. A lot. They might develop, they might not. They are cheap, so might as well keep them around. Most of our wrestlers work for extremely cheap. TEW 20 really downscaled the wrestlers pay to be more realistic. Pookie Possum is actually our highest earning wrestler, thanks to his RAW fame, and gets 190$ per appearance. Rest or our wrestlers get between 50 and 20 dollars per appearance. Living that superstar lifestyle.    Leon Nameth is also young and seemingly loaded with potential. Rock solid fundamentals and he is paired with a great manager in Max Forbes. I'll see what I can do with him, but he is still extremely green. It might take years to actually see results with him. He is best suited for short bursts of action: his Explosive Ring Style trait which gives him a boost when booked in short matches where he is allowed to dominate.    Nice hat. Lothar Prellinger is a solid enough hand with a fun sounding gimmick (Flamboyant Madman) but not really that charismatic. What's surprising here is that Menace. It's rare to see a Lightweight with that high of a menace.    Prellinger is MORE MENACING than jacked, ex-military guy with an eyepatch called TYRANT. He's a solid guy who would benefit if someone would do the talking for him. If he becomes a bit more popular, he might be a good guy in that midcard position.    Lastly we have a guy who would fit much better in ZEN. A masked high flyer doesn't really scream APW to me. He's really flashy and is good at selling so he is good for his role. He is also a Soft Drug User, which slightly increases the chances of Wild Wasp developing behaviour issues. Before I introduce the three companies that are also based in Australia, I advance to the next day. Mostly because you get your first e-mail. Our owner, James J McMinister, has sent us a list of goals.  If you are not playing as the owner, you sporadically get some goals from your owner. These vary depending on the size of your company. Bigger companies might have goals where you have to get a specific wrestler over. (Get someone over basically means to make someone more popular. The term overness is usually used hand-in-hand with popularity in the game and in real life, see H, Triple). Our goals are pretty standard. Earn a quarter million dollars in 2 years which MIGHT be an issue. I also shouldn't hire wrestlers whose styles are either Technician Flyer on an MMA Crossover. This is a bit more easily circumvented than in previous editions as you can talk to any worker in the world and ask them to change their style. They probably won't but it's a possibility. We CAN hire wrestlers with those styles, but our owner's opinion of us worsens every time we do. IF he is pleased enough (have good shows, don't break lesser goals), he might not sack us when we fail to reach the critical money goal. And now, our competition. Well, in the case of the big dog of the continent, I use the word "compete" extremely loosely.  We might be Sports Entertainment but Revolution Australian Wrestling has almost completely disregarded the whole concept of wrestling and are mostly running a soap opera with some wrestling sprinkled in. And it's hugely popular. As you can see, they have close to 3 million in the bank, almost 70 pop in every region in Oceania (for comparison, APW has 46 popularity... in one region) and roster filled with great talent. They are a special company in the CVerse, since they don't run any PPV events, just their weekly TV show (the closest comparison in the real world would be Lucha Underground). Most of their wrestlers could walk to us and immediately be a main eventer with their popularity and (in most cases) actual skills. A lot of them are actually former APW guys that have jumped to the big leagues during the ten years since RAW was founded in 2009. These include The Melbourne Blondes (Blake Belushi & Rick Stanz, a killer tag team that have just recently split up), God's Gift (Alexander Banks & Spiffy Stan Standish, who controversially jumped after being made the vocal point of our company after both being Commonwealth champions), Nathan McKenzie (another former champion), Maurice Jackson (ANOTHER former champion), Cole Taylor (Macquarie's charismatic tag partner) and the second biggest Australian star of all time after Bruce the Giant.  What if The Rock was Australian? You get Swoop McCarthy. He's good enough in the ring, but blows most of the world away with his entertainment skills. If he ever decides to venture outside of Oceania, he would immediately be the hottest free agent in the world. (Every worker has their active areas where they can work, for example Swoop here only works in Oceania. This can change via events or if the player can convince them to broaden their horizons). "The most lucrative contract in Australian history" has me intrigued. The rest of their big guns get around 2500 dollars per appearance, so I'd assume they are paying him something around 5000 doll-  WHAT IN THE EVERLOVING gently caress? I was legitimately stunned when I saw this. He makes almost as much money in a month that we have currently in total. Not only is he making insane money, he is treated as an icon (he is guaranteed to be booked as one of their biggest stars), has creative control (you can say "no" to a decision and the booker can do nothing about it) AND hiring veto (Swoop doesn't like you? You aren't getting hired). As I said, their roster is stacked. Even if they butchered one of the greatest gimmicks in the world.   I mean, this is literally a license to print money.  Since we have brought up ZEN a couple of times, let's take a look at them. Lucha libre is the Mexican style of wrestling, which usually includes a lot of high flying, masked luchadors and a plethora of arm drags. ZEN is basically the stand-in for the real world Chikara (stylistically, not behind the scenes). Comic book style storylines, lots of comedy and wacky characters. ZEN's advantage has always been an extremely young roster. Most of their key wrestlers are around 30 years old or younger. They have lost some of their key wrestlers to Japan over the years, but they are still good and possibly better than us.  I'm highlighting one of their top stars here. Damian Dastardly has RAW written all over him. If he leaves ZEN and ISN'T going to RAW, I'm almost certainly grabbing him. (I actually can hire him. His style is an Entertainer so it wouldn't break our owner goals. I just personally prefer hiring unemployed wrestlers only as people who are popular elsewhere might have issues with certain booking decisions).  One of the new characters who debuted between editions. He is, surprisingly, a face.  If APW is PG friendly sports entertainment, RAW is closer to Days of Our Lives than pro wrestling and ZEN is lucha libre wacky fun, the final Oceania promotion is an antithesis for each of them. DIW was founded out of spite and has somehow survived all of these years. It's everything we're not: bloody, hardcore and not for kids. If we put on worse shows than them, we absolutely suck. I would probably want to hire multiple people out of the ZEN roster (Massacre, Lone Shark and SubUrban Legend all have established tag partners that work there), but DIW is almost the absolute opposite. They have almost NOTHING. The owner and founder finally retired, their next superstar Tombstone jumped to RAW and are now headlining with APW alumni Boo Smithson, a genius technician but one of the dullest men around.  Their hopes for the future lie on the shoulders of Mace Muller. He isn't charismatic enough to be poached by RAW so he should be the face of the hardcore underdogs in the coming years. Next time: First show, maybe? We also take a look at our starting storylines.
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Mar 9, 2021 13:52
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Galaga Galaxian posted:I've always been tempted to pick up a TEW game but they just seem so drat intimidating. Looking forward to seeing this. I fully agree, they are intimidating. Some of it is the depth of it all, some of it is the lack of any real in-game tutorial (the handbook is there but is a pain to navigate and rarely directs you to the exact topic you'd like to read) and some of it is the very off-putting UI. But if you just manage to get into it and wrap your head around some of the dumber game mechanics, it becomes easier to manage and enjoy. The game's forums are a good help for any newcomers. When I first played the demo for TEW10 I was overwhelmed with everything. I managed to book one show and then had to stop due to a headache. I never touched 2010 again. It took me three or four years to try again with TEW13 and that's when I got hooked. ItohRespectArmy posted:i am excited to offer many bad tag team names and almost nothing else. I'll make sure to add up some tag teams in the future just so we can get some goon approved tag team names in.
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Mar 9, 2021 14:05
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Hell yeah, Wrestling Championship Manager. I'm down. 
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Mar 9, 2021 16:20
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I'll be following this. I want to learn more about the engine and how to mod it. I bought a copy because I had an idea for a pro-wrestling AU project, but found the sheer number of variables daunting (like setting a promotions catering service  )
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Mar 10, 2021 01:56
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It's nice to see a game where you can make good use of managers; managers were a big thing when I was a kid falling in love with wrasslin', and I've always loved the role. If I could make any request it'd be to make heavy use of managers to cover up for some wrestlers' lesser charisma - I want us to develop someone to be so drat scary that you can get those "Oh poo poo, Mr. Fuji brought his cane" moments. (for the uninitiated: if Mr. Fuji - who was a terrible racist caricature but a stellar manager who played the crowd like a fiddle every time he showed up - brought his cane to the ring, you knew the ref was going to get distracted and Fuji was gonna hit your favorite wrestler with his cane and try to cost him the match. You knew it like you knew the sky was blue. He didn't always have the cane the way Jimmy Hart always had his megaphone, so it was a neat little way to signal "poo poo just done got real" in a way that even a seven-year old would have no trouble picking up on)
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Mar 10, 2021 08:32
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This is a really fascinating game, and I started an LP that for various reasons I didn't keep doing, but I'll be happy to see this one continue. One fun thing about this game that people might not know is that if you start with an "organic" database, which has only the bare minimum of data in it, and starts in the '20s, and turn certain options on, you can let the game play itself without taking control of any of the companies and it will generate all of the promotions and wrestlers and shows randomly, and eventually you'll have a unique playable database mod that's been randomly generated from scratch and has all unique wrestlers, companies, show histories, title histories, rises and falls, all of it. By the time you get to the '90s there's so much in the database that it's real slow going, but I was able to get to the year 2000 in my own version. Chicago Style Wrestling managed to be the WWE of this universe, reaching Titanic size, and their version of Hulk Hogan (minus the racism (hopefully)) was a Mexican luchador named Abilio Perez.
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Mar 10, 2021 10:39
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:It's nice to see a game where you can make good use of managers; managers were a big thing when I was a kid falling in love with wrasslin', and I've always loved the role. If I could make any request it'd be to make heavy use of managers to cover up for some wrestlers' lesser charisma - I want us to develop someone to be so drat scary that you can get those "Oh poo poo, Mr. Fuji brought his cane" moments. Yeah, managers are going to do a lot of heavy lifting in our angles. Warmonger is the only guy on the heel side who's able to be a top level mic worker. Thankfully we have three great managers for our level: Viktor Goliath (who manages Hamstead, Massacre and Tate - the three of them forming the Goliath Global stable), Sean Quartermainne (The Apocalypse) and Max Forbes (Leon Nameth). We'll make sure to give them other clients as well. I'm also looking for new managers, as I'd like to have at least one of two more but we'll probably start the hiring spree after the first few shows. El Generico posted:This is a really fascinating game, and I started an LP that for various reasons I didn't keep doing, but I'll be happy to see this one continue. Doing an organic save is a thing I've thought about every once in awhile. My old laptop (rip) was a bit on the slow side so it couldn't handle simming through any amount of years.
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Mar 10, 2021 13:25
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Episode 3: Time for OzFest Let’s finally start advancing towards our first show. APW has events scheduled Saturdays on week 3 every month. If you don’t care about following the news cycle you can easily multiadvance and just sims to the days you have shows. The multiadvance will stop if there is a decision that requires your attention (like a contract negotiation) but I won’t be doing that. So let’s take a look at some of the news that start popping up once you start advancing.  The guys writing these news have exceptional sources in every company. Every time an AI controlled company starts a storyline, you get a little news story about it. RAW here is starting a story between two of our alumni and it’s probably going to lead to great ratings.  Every face/heel turn (character changes their alignment from good to bad or the other way around) is thankfully not reported, just the ones from Big (or larger) companies that happen to their major stars or stars. I personally can’t believe that a guy called Rock God Alvarez was ever a tecnico (Mexico uses the terms tecnico and rudo instead of face and heel). He is one of the bigger stars of the Mexican giant EILL and the heir apparent to the Hollywood-bound Champagne Lover.  RAW has their first weekly TV show. The main event is by default listed at the top of these card recaps. You get to check their attendance and viewership alongside their show ratings. You can check out the details of every match by clicking on them. Our ratings won’t be anywhere near that main card. The AI booking doesn’t really highlight the “Wrestling Soap Opera” aspect of RAW as it is still kind of match heavy.  More news from Mexico. The oldest wrestling company still standing, OLLIE (Original Lucha Libre Is Eternal) has bent the knee to EILL. Player and AI both can start a partnership like this with another company. OLLIE will still stay independent but they will accept any young and green workers EILL will be sending their way.  The first few days/weeks are mostly filled with news about new tag teams forming. The AI generally wants to have more tag teams than most companies have pre-set, so you get these a lot. Just wanted to highlight this because it’s really fitting and by complete chance as well. When the AI forms a tag team, the name is picked by random from the game’s database of tag names. In this case it just happened to be that Necromancer used to work for ZEN, in a stable called F.E.A.R. A fun coincidence.  More company news, as two European companies see their relationship get worse.  RAW is clearly flustered by APW changing bookers, so they randomly turn Blake Belushi back face. I don’t blame them, the Melbourne Blondes are a drat good team so it makes sense to put them back together.  Wait, what? But I didn’t even do anything!  So, we are at War with DIW. This means that a worker can only work for one of these companies at a time. Technically we haven’t responded to this declaration of war but that doesn’t really matter. We COULD be dicks about it and try to steal all their wrestlers (they have 1/5 of the money that we have) but I don’t want to pay for trash. If they go bankrupt while we are at war (if we respond and the war goes on for at least a year) all of our workers get a boost on their morale for “winning the war.”  Since we are at war, we now have access to a few Dirty Tricks. I believe these can hurt the opposing company’s popularity, momentum and sponsorships (the handbook shows it’s usefulness and doesn’t tell you). These can also blow up on your own face. AI companies at war with each other can do these too. We are also Hostile with RAW. This doesn’t have any gameplay effects, it just means we’re a bit more likely to end up in a war.  ZEN, blissfully unaware (or just not giving a drat) about the brewing hostilities in Australia has their first show. Yeah, we’re not beating that either. We will get more people in the door, but I’m assuming the internet will be mostly raving about that all-star main event match.  On the eve of our OzFest, DIW puts forward their best effort. If that main event had delivered this would have been an easy high-40s show. Smithson is one of their better workers and Pinn is popular so I can only assume they got slapped with a horrible chemistry note.  The show didn’t end up well for Australian Devil here. A misaligned spine sounds like it loving sucks. But we have a show to run, so let’s hit that advance day button one last time...  Thanks game. You don’t usually have to touch the venue selection as the game is usually pretty wise with the autobooking. In this case, our first show will be in our home region in a venue that can hold 1 000 people. Most of our shows will probably happen in Fuster Hall until we grow in popularity enough to start filling the next biggest venue.  Welcome to OzFest. The first screen when you get to the show allows you to set your broadcasters (we don’t have any) and check your results from previously booked years. We also get our first chance to interact with our locker room, as the yellow BACKSTAGE INCIDENT! warning has possibly tipped you off.  I hope you didn’t do anything dumb, Mr. I Used To Be On TV.   Backstage incidents can be either positive or negative. We thankfully got a positive one as Possum  You also have your selection of locker room controls. These are pretty self-explanatory, so let’s try to meddle a bit.  Meddling is the players way to create new relationships (friendships, rivalries etc.) between your workers. Not all personalities are compatible but at least the game tells you if you have a chance to succeed or no (this wasn’t the case in the previous game where this mechanic was introduced). Let’s try to get our two young prospects to gel. “Hey kids, I heard you like this new-fangled music called... hip-hop?”  It doesn’t work. I’ll be trying my luck with different pairings at the start of every show we book. It’s a bit gamey, but hey, friendship is magic. You can still access most functions of the office while booking the show, so let's take a look at our starting storylines.      A storyline is hot when it's heat is equal or over a requirement that is dependent on the size of our company. For us that requirement is 35 and we need three hot storylines running at all times to meet the demand from our fans. You get more heat by having segments involving people who are currently in a storyline that scores five points or higher than the current heat. Having particularly high or low heat will have an effect on your angles: a segment that is part of a cold storyline will get penalized a bit. We currently have only two hot stories going on so we need to make sure at least one other story hits the threshold of 35. I trust that I can get the tag team championship story there but just in case I'll start up another story. Just hit the Add Storyline button, name your story, add an optional description and add in your workers. I throw The Apocalypse and Fox & Possum in a quick story as they are don't have anything going on.  Then I forget to screengrab the empty booking screen, whoops! You have two different types of segments you can add to your show: Matches and Angles. Let's start with the matches. You can choose the match formation and the stipulation from the left side menu (hitting the search bar will reveal all of the default match types) or create your own specific match type. We'll mostly stick with the default match types. The upper part of the screen has a short description of the match type you chose, chance to check out further details and the possibility to set the time, announcing team, referee, road agent and put any titles on the line. The game automatically picks the default announce team, a road agent and a ref. You really don't need to mess around with these, unless you really want to put your best road agent and ref in a particular match.  Clicking the Competitor Details part of the screen let's us pick our wrestlers for this tag team match. You can drag and drop or choose the wrestler from those drop-down lists. You can easily filter to find the wrestlers you are looking for, which is particularly helpful when running larger rosters. It also gives a quick run down when you highlight a wrestler.  Here's the main event I'm going to go with (you don't have to start with the main event, as you can freely swap around segments in the booking screen). A quite standard affair between the challengers and champions. The road agent notes let's you set up the finish of the match as well as any other specific things you want to include (interferences, crazy/stunt bumps, wrestler instructions and match aims, which we'll get to when I actually try to use them). We're having an open match, so every competitor is getting a roughly equal amount of time to shine here. The match is set up to end with the third Goliath Global member Reggie Tate distracting Gerard (and the ref) which allows Goliath himself to interfere. This leads to Hamstead pinning the former champion again but under not-so-clean circumstances. But why is this match our main event? A couple of reasons: - We have three of our biggest names in one match, so unless multiple things go horribly wrong I'm fairly certain they can deliver a good match to end the night. Remember, 70% of our show grade is calculated from our main event. A great main event can somewhat save a show that has bombed on other aspects. I'm kinda putting all of my eggs in one basket, but I trust that a few other guys can pull off something decent in the undercard. - I want to see how Devine, Gerard and Hamstead actually do in the main event spot. I know that Massacre is the weak link here, but in a best case scenario he can step up a bit (and gain popularity and/or skills in the process). - We're advancing two of our top storylines at once with a (hopefully) good segment, so the heat will stay high.  After that I set up an angle. There's a bunch of premade angles that you can use and you can create your own to use in the future but I almost always end up using the Freestyle Angle. You can freely set up how many people participate, are they on or off screen, are their lines scripted, how does the participation affect their storyline (from Major Negative to Major Positive) and what basis is used for rating their performance. A worker can be rated on Overness (popularity), Entertainment (a mix of Microphone and Charisma skills, 70:30 ratio favoring the one that is better, with Acting, Star Quality and Sex Appeal adjusting the performance further), Fighting (highest of the Brawling/Puroresu/Hardcore skill), Microphone, Charisma, Selling, Star Quality, Sex Appeal or Menace. Each of these are weighted heavily on popularity as well. You can have 100 in Selling but you won't get a high angle performance if you don't have any popularity. In addition, if the angle is under 5 minutes in length, it is considered "inconsequential." These angles have extremely limited or completely negated effects on the workers skill boosts and momentum changes. Thus we kind of want to have most of our angles at least 5 minutes long to maximize skill gains. This is EXTREMELY gamey, as most talking segments in pro wrestling are definitely under 5 minutes. TEW 20 has also closed some loopholes of previous editions. Back in the day, you could plop a guy with high menace in angles to just stand around menacingly and see their momentum and popularity skyrocket. Now Uninteresting Angles are a thing: if the segment goes 5 minutes or longer without anything interesting happening (as in it doesn't feature anyone rated on Entertainment, Microphone, Selling, Acting or Fighting) it gets penalized. Anywho, I'm throwing together an angle to start our show: Goliath Global brag about their championships and hype up the main event of the night by promising to hurt our heroes real bad. This, of course, brings out our heroes who get their witty comebacks in ("You say you're going to kick our butts tonight? Well, I think WE'RE going to be doing all the buttkicking tonight, ya dang baldie!") with the situation ending in a standstill before any punches are thrown. As I forgot to screengrab the setup (I was clearly on fire) I'll just recap who was being rated on what: Goliath and Gerard on Entertainment, Devine on Overness and Hamstead, Massacre and Tate on Menace. Most of the talking is done by the guy who can actually do it (Goliath) and the guy who SHOULD be getting better at it (Gerard). The rest of the gang aren't mute, they just get in a line or two at most.  I spend the next 15-20 minutes putting together the card which comes up like this (I end up swapping the places for the Fox & Possum tag and the six man tag after this). The first few shows you do with a new roster or when you are new to the game might take a bit longer to book. I'm a bit out of my comfort zone here (a main event that's under 20 minutes, what the hell) and I'm trying to make sure I can explain my reasoning for most of the decisions I do here. So let's go through what I've done here before we actually run our show. I immediately notice that I kind of hosed up. That opening tag team match was supposed to be on the pre-show. Pre-show segments are not calculated on the final rating of the show and I had no intention of putting this match on the main card. Mainly because I hired a local worker to fill out the card. We had an uneven amount of wrestlers and I didn't want to throw in a multiman match. Oh yeah, local workers. In every show you have the chance to hire a worker who is based in your area. This selection is somewhat randomized each time, but we had quite a few New South Wales based workers to pick from. I gave a young and extremely green high flyer Dizzy G his moment in the sun. He will naturally be the one eating the pinfall (pinfall being the most common way of winning a match). I made sure to use the Keep Strong road agent note on Reggie Tate as it reduces the possible popularity loss he might suffer. We REALLY open the show with the previously discussed angle. We follow up with a tag match where the random pairing of Nameth and Tyrant pulverize the poor jobbers R & R (jobber, a wrestler whose primary function is to lose in a convincing fashion) and beat them up afterwards as Nameth's manager Max Forbes talks his client up. We follow up with the six man tag where the story between Positive Energy and Lydecker & Wilkes continues, but no actual resolution is achieved as Simonson beats Prellinger. We get in a quick angle, where SubUrban Legend comes to the ring to cut a promo but is interrupted by Goliath who offers him a spot in his stable. Legend doesn't give an answer, I'm just planting a seed for a potential story in the future. From pure number-crunching viewpoint I'm seeing what two of my best talkers can do together. Barney Mason gets a win over the directionless Felix Harding with Dexter Mattell following the action from ringside but doesn't actually interfere. Apocalypse steamroll White Wasp with Macquarie and throw out a challenge towards Fox & Possum. The good guys don't back out of a challenge but still manage to slip in a few jokes about the Apocalypse's face paint. The tag team title story is continued with two singles matches. Mills accidentally ends up hitting his own partner in the first match which leads to the win of King Malietoa. Mills manages to beat Brisbane Devil later in the night, but Boone is notably missing from ringside. Lone Shark and Mattell manage a bit of an upset and beat the established tag team when the Apocalypse interferes, furious over someone making fun of their facepaint. And then we end the show with the main event that we went over earlier. The first few matches WILL suck (as people lack talent, popularity, experience or all three) but the latter half of the card should bring in the results. You can leave people out of your shows if you need to save money or are willfully keeping them out of action due to a storyline but I tend to book everyone, even if it's just for pre-show matches. So, let's finally hit that Start Show button.  This is the results screen you get for each of your segments. You get a short description with some notes about the performances of the talent involved. Dizzy was the worst performer of the match (and the night) as expected. He will do a bit better next time, as even in loss he should have gained a popularity point or two just for being featured in a name company for the first time. Tate and Nighthawk were the highpoints and Legend was a bit disappointing. For our level at the start of this save, I'll consider any performance over 40 good. The wrestler's in-ring performance is calculated from his skills and popularity. This rating is further modified by things like morale, momentum, backstage atmosphere, the match aim, health, possible traits, gimmick etc. The handbook suggests that HUNDREDS of modifiers might impact the performance of the wrestler. We actually hit a few of the modifiers in this match, both positive and negative. Let's start with the bad, highlighted in red. Nighthawk was off his game (and was still the best performer in the match). This was most likely due to his low Consistency stat. The lower the Consistency of a wrestler, the more likely they are to have off nights. I say most likely because if he is off his game very often there also might be some involvement from drugs/alcohol. The second red penalty is one I've actually never seen before.  Markus Rush is our third road agent and apparently he sucks at his job. I don't remember him getting this penalty in previous editions of the game. His Psychology and Respect, the stats used to rate the road agent performance, are both pretty decent so I'm at a loss for a moment. Then I remember TEW 20 changed how road agents are rated: it's Psychology and Experience now with Respect giving a small modifier. Rush had his in-ring career cut short and thus has low Experience. This fucks him over because Experience is only gained by wrestling. Referees, managers and announcers don't have any use for the stat but Road Agents do. He is UNABLE to get better at his job, unless he maxes out his Psychology doing road agent work... which he won't do because Psychology is the hardest stat to raise. And it is something I don't want to do, because he will penalize every segment he is agenting. This, dear readers, is a gently caress You move by the game. I swiftly return to the Booking Screen (a new feature, thank god) and swap him out for our other road agents in the following segments. Back to the positive stuff on that segment. Goliath did good work ringside which in turn gave the segment a boost. The GREAT note we got is the Excellent Chemistry with Nighthawk and Legend. Workers can have negative or positive chemistry with opponents, tag partners or managers. Positive chemistry is when something just clicks between two workers. My favourite example is probably the chemistry between Randy Orton and Christian. Orton is notoriously boring and plain but when paired with Christian he always stepped up his game and the two delivered some great PPV matches in 2011. Negative chemistry is the opposite: even two great wrestlers might just not click. Nighthawk and Legend having excellent chemistry gives them a performance boost every time they tag together. If we put them in an official tag team and get the tag experience, they get another boost...  The first angle of the night gets the crowd to perk up a bit. I'd consider this a success, since the rating is higher than any of their popularity.  I won't be showing every result screen as this update is getting a bit long but here's our worst match of the night. I'm using this match to showcase the Dirt Sheet feature. If enabled it allows to player to see the hidden bonuses and penalties that influences the rating of the segment. I personally rarely check it but it's a good place for a beginner to see what possible went wrong when booking a segment. We mostly got penalized for the inexperience of the three of the four wrestlers.  Goliath and Legend pull of a great segment! We might get segments in the 60s (or even the 70s) once we get both of them more over.  We nail the semi-main with both men pulling their weight. The Duo/Samoans tag match should be a bit better but this is a good sign. Now I'm a bit worried that we've overshadowed our main event (if your semi main is TOO good, it can leave the audience burnt out just before the crescendo) but then...  The lads hit it out of the park! Excellent chemistry with Gerard and Devine is a good thing as I'd expect our current top two faces to be teaming somewhat frequently. Massacre was the weak link as predicted but he has great chemistry with his manager! This is all Good News. What's not as good news is that Gerard, Devine and Hamstead were the only ones to have their performances in the 50s (Warmonger had 49). Most of the good performances were around the low 40s. That... is a gap.  Yeah, take that DIW! Kiss my rear end! I'm happy with the final four matches. Barney Mason wasn't as horrible as I predicted (with 37 performance he actually outperformed Harding) but I have to learn to love these musclebound lumps for what they are. Time has taken it's toll on poor Harry Simonson as he wasn't especially convincing in his tag team match. This is a good baseline for us. We gained popularity so let's hope I can keep that train running. Next time: Did we make any money? Should we talk about gimmicks? But before that... Goon Poll~ 1. Here's "Super Agent" Max Forbes.  He's one of our managers and he currently only has one client, the young Leon Nameth. We have a lot of heels who can't talk their way out of a paper bag so it's high time Forbes offered his services to someone else as well. Should he start managing: a) "The Urban Pirate" Tyrant (the guy with the cool eyepatch, no positive or negative chemistry tagging with Nameth) b) Lothar "The Scientist" Prellinger (the guy with the hat, also a Flamboyant Madman) c) "The F Bomb" Felix Harding (he is extremely ok... except he got outworked by Barney Mason) 2. I've made the call to team up Nighthawk and SubUrban Legend. This doesn't necessarily mean I'll be throwing them to the tag division just yet but I'm fairly certain they'll be wrestling together quite a bit. So we need a team name and a name for their tag team finishing move! Legend's gimmick is a Rapper and Nighthawk's gimmick is a Comic Book Hero. 3. The Duo of Rusty Mills and Donovan Boon have been tag team champions in APW for five times. They just lost the titles to Samoan Demolition in November 2019. They have done everything there is to do in the tag team division and they will be losing the title rematch to the Samoans when I get to it. So what is their future? a) Do we split them up? I can keep them together and put them in a program with Goliath Global once they wrap up their business with Devine and Gerard. b) If we do, who goes heel?
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Mar 11, 2021 19:15
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What are Road Agents responsible for?
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Mar 11, 2021 19:49
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SirPhoebos posted:What are Road Agents responsible for? In real life (and in the game) road agents act as the liaison between wrestler and management and help the with the planning of the matches (how they are laid out, which spots happen at what points etc.) and stories beforehand. They aren't really a thing in smaller independent organizations (a veteran wrestler might act in a similar role helping the younger wrestlers) but the larger American promotions (WWE, WCW back in the day, AEW) utilize them.
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Mar 11, 2021 20:09
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I dunno about the finisher but how about just combing a bit of their names? Night Legends?  As for the manager situation, I'd say whoever is the best prospect, probably Tyrant? BTF posted:I fully agree, they are intimidating. Some of it is the depth of it all, some of it is the lack of any real in-game tutorial (the handbook is there but is a pain to navigate and rarely directs you to the exact topic you'd like to read) and some of it is the very off-putting UI. But if you just manage to get into it and wrap your head around some of the dumber game mechanics, it becomes easier to manage and enjoy. The game's forums are a good help for any newcomers. Do you know of any good user-made guides?
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Mar 11, 2021 20:23
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Looks like things are starting of swimmingly. The wrestling's bout to get rolling along real well. As for polls: 1: I'm compelled to say he should manage Lothar, it seems to fit to me. 2: I'm not sure about the team name, but when I see their gimmick combo, it reminds me of things and I want to suggest Hammertime as their tag team finisher name. Looking forward to more wrestlin' management action.
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Mar 11, 2021 20:33
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Looks interesting! Just to confirm a hunch, you’re not taking submissions for custom workers?
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Mar 11, 2021 21:22
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1: Tyrant. He seems like the exact sort of a fella who prefers his hands do the talking, so he could use somebody who uses his mouth. 2: I second Hammertime as a finisher name. Team name, Streethawks. 3. If they are to be split up, make it as a result of the Goliath match where their failure to win results in tensions between the two finally deciding to call it quits. Boon goes Heel, with the angle of his vices being the main issue and Rusty being tired of them.
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Mar 12, 2021 00:45
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Triple A posted:1: Tyrant. He seems like the exact sort of a fella who prefers his hands do the talking, so he could use somebody who uses his mouth. 3. Keep them together for now and have them work with and put over some up-and-coming teams, turning them as necessary.
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Mar 12, 2021 02:36
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2. should clearly be SHADOW LEGENDS for the big sponsorship money.
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Mar 12, 2021 07:21
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Do you know of any good user-made guides? Unfortunately I don't any. I personally got in with the help of an LP of TEW 13 in the RPGNet Forums. A lot of the mechanics from almost a decade ago (jeezus) have been updated in the editions since though. I'd recommend trying out the demo (it should give you three in-game months to play around). I give poo poo to the in-game handbook but it can be useful for anyone new to the series. HereticMIND posted:Looks interesting! Just to confirm a hunch, you're not taking submissions for custom workers? Wasn't really planning to. You can't add any custom workers in once you've started a save.
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Mar 12, 2021 08:59
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1. Prellinger. He's got a very standout style in the promotion and I think giving him more air time could help make the show more colourful. 2. Suburbia Protectors, with Sydney Sprawl as their finisher. Make it some kind of elbow drop combo and we should be golden. 3. Yeah, split them up. It's no good for us if half the roster has Goliath talking for them. Donovan would do better as Heel, I think - our Babyfaces don't have the kind of on-mic support structure the heels do.
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Mar 12, 2021 09:59
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BTF posted:Wasn't really planning to. You can't add any custom workers in once you've started a save. Ah, ok. Makes sense. Good to know!
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Mar 12, 2021 14:11
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Cool to see another TEW LP here. I'm voting for Max managing Lothar, he's too weird to pass on. ItohRespectArmy posted:2. should clearly be SHADOW LEGENDS for the big sponsorship money. Seconding this as well and the finsiher being called Hammertime
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Mar 13, 2021 14:53
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Episode 4: Bleeding money So, our first show was success. We found some great chemistry notes, we gained popularity and got some ideas for the future. Let's see how we screw it up in the coming months.  I head over and make the team official: SHADOW LEGENDS are born. You can have three types of teams: Permanent Unit, Unit or Individuals. Units share the effects of wins and losses regardless of which of the members wins/loses. With Individuals all the gains and losses are not shared so the lions share of the the pop gain/loss goes whoever is involved in the deciding fall. These are mostly for the AI to use. Permanent Units will never be broken up by the AI and Units only if there is a good reason for it to happen (the other member being significantly more popular/better). Despite some requests, there is no option to create a regular Trios team. Maybe in a future game. At this point I start advancing days to get to the end of the month so I can get a good look at our finances. You can naturally look at them anytime you want on the Office screen but I want to make sure I can see all of our income and expenditure at once.  Once again going over some notable news items before we get there. DIW does dumb DIW things and decides to headline their future shows with Smithson and Pinn. On paper it's the best they got but they clearly got rocked with an awful chemistry note so do something else. Or actually don't, its a bit easier for me this way.  Some companies know that war isn't the only answer. American women's wrestling company QAW and the Mexican company CILL apparently adopt a positive relationship. This is possibly a first step to partnership. I know that both could benefit from a steady influx of fresh talent.  The news story about a wrestler missing sounds exciting, but it stops being interesting after the fifth time you see it... inside a month. AI can randomly have one of their wrestlers miss a show. As far as I know, this has no further effects. The wrestler always returns for the next show and doesn't gain a negative relationship with the booker for missing a show. This also never leads to, you know, the wrestler actually disappearing from the game world.  The former largest company of the world is seemingly in a downswing. You get a news story like this whenever a company falls in size: in this case SWF went from Large to Medium. This shouldn't be as radical as the story suggests. Their sponsorships might suffer a bit, but they still have their TV and PPV deals in place. (It didn't hurt them. At the end of February they made more money than the previous month, had two great PPV events and extended the contract of one of their top stars). I get to February and click over to the Finance screen located in the Office. We drew 1000 people to see wrestling so we HAD to make some money, right?  Wrong. We made some decent money form our sponsors, but we are still on the red? You can probably figure out the problem here.  We are paying 22 000 DOLLARS A MONTH for what, exactly?  Production costs are a thing. These are once again pretty self-explanatory. The more money we spend, the more professional we look. There are two actual effects in the game. If your production values are worse than your competitors (companies of the same size in your current game area) your final show grade gets penalized. Our production values are so much better than DIW and ZEN so we can easily downgrade these and save some of that drat money. The other reason why production values matter are your broadcast deals. TV/PPV providers won't even look your way if you film your shows with an iPhone and have haybales for crowd barriers. We currently don't have to worry about this as we don't have any deals in place and won't for a while. (Our production values should be good enough for one of the lower end deals, we just don't have the popularity).  "I have this wild idea... what if we DON'T pay 10 grand a month for music? I know three guys who can pull of a great Wonderwall cover." I also downgrade our Live Event Experience so I only pay 2 500 dollars per show. I NEED to make money and I WANT to do a hiring spree so this is the easiest place to save (more than) few bucks.  The other "usual suspect" in unexplained financial losses used to be Drug Testing. It's expensive as hell for smaller companies, so for reasons never fully explained some of the previous versions (at least in TEW 13) had it set as a default for all companies. So most newcomers would be dumbfounded by the fact they were losing money for no clear reason and veterans had to start every game by heading over to the Drug Testing screen and disabling it at the first possible chance. This has thankfully been fixed. We don't have a drug testing protocol but we are free to do tests whenever we want to whoever we want. I don't want to throw away money so White Wasp doesn't have to worry about getting caught.  The REAL reason we are already losing money is this. The World screen gives a small bio about every game area and region. The actually important data is Economy and Wrestling Industry which are randomly rolled by the game at the start of every save for every game area. These impact both your sponsorship and the amount of people willing to head over to watch wrestling. Since BOTH are down and still falling I think our growth will be a bit more difficult. If I got a "normal" amount of sponsorship money, I would have been on the green for the month. Most of the world is in a downturn. Wrestling Industry is bottoming out almost everywhere and Economy isn't that much better. We'll see if this kills a company or two in the coming years.  The wrestling business might be on the downturn in the UK but it hasn't impacted the in-ring quality yet. The main event of their weekly show is a barnburner of a ladder match (a match where the goal is to retrieve an item, usually a title belt, hanging above the ring by using a ladder) for their World championship. You get this news story whenever a 100 rated match happens in some part of the world. "Still the best wrestler in the world" Tommy Cornell, his cousin Edward and one of their greatest future stars in Leigh Burton have the honor of getting the first 100 in the save.  A new event in TEW 20, two wrestlers currently working in different companies have a chance to form a relationship via the power of social media. Events like these make the world feel just a bit more alive.  Rock God's rudo turn was beneficial for him as he almost immediately wins their top prize in a major PPV show. Good for him.   ZEN and DIW both pull off good shows. Devilfish and Dastardly once again steal the headlines but we'll see whose laughing once we hit the pay window! (I checked, both ZEN and DIW are bleeding money. They can't really pull the people that I do because I have better starting popularity. They WILL start to catch up with shows like these). So, let's start APW's Big Night Out!  One of our rookies organizes a video game tournament. He smugly wrecks everyone's poo poo in Super Smash Bros but this is indeed considered a positive backstage event.  Here's the empty booking screen I forgot to include last time. I went over the Add Match and Angle things last time so let's focus on the other useful things here. Auto Booker does what the name implies. It books the show for you. You might think that this is dumb in a game where the idea is to do exactly that but it can help players who just want to get through some of their smaller shows. (The real life WWE currently produces around 10 hours of wrestling in a week... when there isn't a PPV. When playing a mod I'd cladly use the auto booker for meaningless shows like Main Event, 205 Live and NXT UK). Placement Mode is a dumb quick fix to a massive UI issue discovered in the demo/"open beta." In the demo you could only move your segments around using the small arrows next to each segment. So, if you wanted to move your main event to the opening slot, you'd have to click and follow the segment down the booking screen. Now you can right-click any segment to "activate" Placement Mode and move the segments around a bit easier.  Booking Analysis gives a quick reminder what we need to include in our show (storyline progression and a specific match aim), every worker currently not used in anything and an estimation on how much money we use for said workers.  I didn't go into detail in Road Agent Notes last time so here's the basic gist of it. In addition to basic instructions (who wins, in what way the match ends, who interferes) there are Match Aims, Individual Focus and Match Style. Match Aim is basically what kind of match we asking our wrestlers to do. The Aim we are required to use once a show is Story Telling. This doesn't mean that is the only one where the wrestlers bother to tell a story in the ring. With the Story Telling aim, the wrestlers focus on hammering home a certain story point and thus take the match a bit easier. Some match aims are used to manipulate the crowd (Work/Lift/Calm the Crowd), some are best used for certain types of wrestlers (Wild Brawl for brawlers, High Spots for high flyers, Technical Masterclass for technicians) and some are used to get that extra something out of a really big match (Spectacle, Epic and Once in a Lifetime). You can get high ratings without using these but they are another valuable tool for a booker. Individual Focus is shockingly used to give specific instructions for certain wrestlers in the match in question. These are mostly used to keep your talent happy ("You don't want to lose? How about we make you look really, REALLY strong in defeat?") or keep slightly injured/slightly awful wrestlers out of the spotlight.  Match Style is used for a few extra instructions: Open Match is the most common, which keeps the match somewhat even for all participants. All Out/Slow Build are two extremes: go balls to walls for a short amount of time or really build the contest and save your stamina for a longer bout. Scripted means that the road agent and wrestlers go over the match in pain-staking detail before the contest and perform the match as planned with little deviation from the script. ("Macho Man" Randy Savage famously planned all his big matches in advance and practiced them again and again to make them perfect). This is useful for short bouts with people with really low Psychology. Call in Ring is pretty much the opposite. Wrestlers go to the ring with very little/nothing planned out beforehand and pretty much create a match out of nothing and adjust on the fly depending on the crowd response. You need wrestlers with high psychology to pull this off but if they do it's always a positive bonus for the match.  Here's the show. There's reason I don't just book the same card as last time. First, it's boring. Second, the Repetitive Booking Penalty is there to prevent me from just spamming the same money matches (Gerard vs Hamstead every month) to success. You are allowed to book the exact same match three times inside a six month period. Every match after that gets a penalty that gets bigger every time you do the match until you take a break from that specific pairing. You can still book tag matches and multimans even if you just change one participant so it's not that terrible. Also, the AI companies don't have to care about this penalty because of reasons. The Goons gave equal amount of votes to Prellinger and Tyrant so both of them get to enjoy the services of the Super Agent. The Forbes Squad makes short work of the three face side Mattell and Mason keep their story rolling. Mattell agrees to face Mason one on one but with only if a 10 minute time limit is put in place. Mason agrees and Mattell spends most of the ten minutes running away, ending the match in a time limit draw. I blow off the Positive Energy/Wilkes & Lydecker story with a #1 contenders match, winner facing Samoan Demolition next month. Chuck and Kasey earn the ticket to getting absolutely demolished next month. Goliath Global grab a statement win over Simonson and Macquarie, the seemingly united Duo throw out the challenge to whoever wins the tag title match (so the Samoans) and grab the win in the following eight man tag. We finish with another #1 contender's match where Gerard earns his shot against Massacre probably next month. Goliath Global go for a post match beat down only for the damned numbers game to be equalized with Devine and SHADOW LEGENDS making the save. This is me mostly keeping it safe. The main event should be great unless it gets torpedoed by bad chemistry (the chemistry notes aren't as common as I make them out to be. In my years of playing TEW I've had around 2-3 actually important pairings get bad chemistry). As far as I can tell, a lot of the rating comes from the strongest performance in the match. So even a match like Devine/Tate should at least be decent with Devine in it. The wild cards are Mason/Mattell and the Energy tag match. Neither have a real top line performer in them and both have Match Aims (Storytelling for the first, Steal the Show for the latter) attached. So let's see how it goes!  The pre-show match isn't anything special and the worst match of the night, but there's sometimes a silver lining. You guys made the correct call with Prellinger as he scores great chemistry with Forbes. I'll have to remember to try out Prellinger/Tyrant and Prellinger/Nameth as tag teams as I'm in need of teams for the heel side.  This is a... shockingly decent angle considering who's in it. Granted, Mason was rated on his highest possible skill (Star Quality) but still, good job. The match is decent (42) as well so this has actually turned out to be a solid little midcard story.  What's the complete opposite of solid? Liquid? The match isn't bad (still the worst on the main card) but Lydecker and Wilkes having bad chemistry together sucks. I'm already short on teams so I don't really want to break them up. I'll have to keep them in trios matches to bypass the penalty. If I remember correctly, the bad chemistry note is ignored if the team has enough experience together but I have no idea what "enough" is in this case. The big eight man tag and the preceding angle deliver so I'm ready to take my victory lap before the main event.  ...Wait, that math doesn't match up? This should've easily been a 50+ rated match... and then I realize I hosed up. They got penalized because the match didn't have an actual storyline attached to it. Yes, in my head it connects to the Gerard/Goliath story but the game has no way of knowing that. If I had just put Goliath standing ringside it would have counted. My inexperience playing this kind of product bites me in the rear end.  Our show was worse than DIW's and that's entirely my fault. I just have to remember to add a totally random run-in next time to tie it in to an ongoing story.  A feature I forgot to showcase last time, post-show speeches. You can give positive or negative feedback to a maximum of three your wrestlers. Depending on their personality they might get a morale boost or even form a relationship with your user character. These take time and people won't respond immediately but keep showering your top guys with praise and in time they'll be really happy you remember to pat them in the back a bit. If you want to piss them off you can also repeatedly insult them.  Mr. Hamster seemed pleased, as did the two other guys.  Some major-ish news stories to wrap up the month. Enygma is one of the classic CVerse characters as he's been a major player in both SWF and USPW. Much like most original CVerse heroes his career is coming to an end. He won't end up in the Hall of Immortals without a late career resurgence but he's a first ballot Hall of Famer in both of the companies he's represented. Bafflingly USPW also let's an awesome manager go. I'd try to talk her into working in Oceania but I'm 95% if I do that RAW will snap her up.  Wrestling Schools are the primary way for new talent to debut in the game world. Some are premade to join the game world on a certain date, like Lone Wolf here, and the rest will be randomly generated. Each wrestling school varies in the quality of talent, how many people graduate in average and at what point of the year graduations happen. Oceania has two wrestling schools so I will be keeping an eye open for truly fresh talent.  We actually make money! Who knew that burning 10 000 DOLLARS A MONTH for music was a bad idea for a company our size? Next time: I go on a hiring spree.
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Mar 16, 2021 19:02
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BTF posted:Next time: I go on a hiring spree.
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Mar 16, 2021 19:44
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Would you consider entering into an agreement with one of the Japanese clubs to accept excursions? You'd only get temporary (likely) workers, but you'd also get an occasional influx of men (or women!) who you can safely job to better stars, and maybe even a few that you could ultimately hire back if you play your cards right.
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Mar 17, 2021 04:32
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El Generico posted:One fun thing about this game that people might not know is that if you start with an "organic" database, which has only the bare minimum of data in it, and starts in the '20s, and turn certain options on, you can let the game play itself without taking control of any of the companies and it will generate all of the promotions and wrestlers and shows randomly, and eventually you'll have a unique playable database mod that's been randomly generated from scratch and has all unique wrestlers, companies, show histories, title histories, rises and falls, all of it. By the time you get to the '90s there's so much in the database that it's real slow going, but I was able to get to the year 2000 in my own version. Chicago Style Wrestling managed to be the WWE of this universe, reaching Titanic size, and their version of Hulk Hogan (minus the racism (hopefully)) was a Mexican luchador named Abilio Perez. This sounds kind of appealing... Its probably weird, but one thing thats always kinda held me back from these booking games is how everyone focuses on real-world mods. Despite loving wrestling I've barely paid attention to it in almost two decades and, tbh, I don't care about real world wrestling. I am more interested in fictional setups so I don't end up making comparisons to what actually is/was. I don't suppose there is a 1980s Cornellverse roster/database? I'm gonna assume no cause the series isn't that old, and why would someone? Galaga Galaxian fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Mar 17, 2021 |
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Mar 17, 2021 05:18
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Veryslightlymad posted:Would you consider entering into an agreement with one of the Japanese clubs to accept excursions? You'd only get temporary (likely) workers, but you'd also get an occasional influx of men (or women!) who you can safely job to better stars, and maybe even a few that you could ultimately hire back if you play your cards right. That's a good idea! I'll try to send feelers for the Japanese companies in the next few updates. Galaga Galaxian posted:This sounds kind of appealing... Not exactly 80s but there are actually two old school CVerse databases! CVerse 1977 is an old mod that has been converted over to TEW 20. I personally haven't played it but it has always had its fans. CV97 is my personal favourite mod and has also been released. Both can be found over at the Greydogsoftware forums.
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Mar 17, 2021 08:02
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if at all possible, i think that somewhere down the road we should be friendly with ZEN. they're nice.
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Mar 17, 2021 18:45
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If we go all-out in going for a commonwealth approach, find a friend in Canada and UK as well.
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Mar 17, 2021 19:39
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biosterous posted:if at all possible, I think that somewhere down the road we should be friendly with ZEN. they're nice. We should. Mostly because they are nice but also because I really don't want to be hostile/at war with every company in Oceania. I can try to adopt a positive relationship with them in the future... if the owner let's me. Triple A posted:If we go all-out in going for a commonwealth approach, find a friend in Canada and UK as well. We CAN try that and we could even try to form an Alliance with multiple companies. I'll go over that particular aspect in a future update as well.
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Mar 18, 2021 08:14
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Well grats, it only took a week for my will to break and I bought a copy. Being the masochist I am, I decided I shall immediately jump into the "Road to Glory" challenge. Or I would, if I wasn't spending my entire evening trying to figure out what kind of promotion to make. Where to put it, what its product is, and, most importantly, what its called. Leaning Wales/Britain (North America and Japan just seem too crowded), but I dunno. Anyways, back to the LP, I agree that it'd be cool to become buddies with someone else eventually.
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Mar 19, 2021 06:23
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Well grats, it only took a week for my will to break and I bought a copy. And if they have properly updated the rules for RTG for 2020, I gotta start one of my own.
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Mar 19, 2021 06:36
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I might do that if I actually make any progress (especially since I wouldn't want to muddy this LP up). For now I'm stuck with what I mentioned before, that and potentially multiple databases (mostly stock CV vs CV97 mod vs trying that organic thing). Thanks for pointing it out. Oh and the road to glory thread for 2020 on the Gdog forums is here, I think. Galaga Galaxian fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Mar 19, 2021 |
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Mar 19, 2021 06:53
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| # ? Apr 18, 2024 05:48 |
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In the week between these updates I quickly started another CVerse save in Australia with a company more geared towards in-ring action (75/25 split with performance over popularity). Ran through a year of monthly shows and got annoyed with how easy it was to get good ratings off the gate compared to APW. Episode 5: Some new faces, some new heels  I start working on the thread's request on making friends with ZEN. Here's the list of actions we can take. Sister Companies are rare and they never organically happen in the game world, it has to be initiated by the player or pre-set in the editor. When you become a sister company with a company, that bond will be unbreakable. Sister companies are always on positive terms, always considered allies and far more willing to engage in positive interactions with the other. Excursions and Developmental deals are something we aren't really going to do with ZEN since we're not a Japanese company or big enough to hire people to developmental. I adopt a friendly attitude successfully. Encouraged, I propose a talent trading agreement.  They accept! We can now exchange talent for up to 10 appearances. We probably won't be doing this that much but I'll go over talent trades in probably the next update.  Veryslightlymad suggested that we try to start a partnership with a Japanese company to accept workers on excursion. So, in Japan some companies have a tradition to send their young wrestlers on a learning trip abroad. Most commonly seen in real world with New Japan Pro Wrestling, once a wrestler graduates from their dojo they spend some years (at least two, usually more) working in the undercard and always losing. After that they leave for their excursions (usually to North America or UK) and spend a few years honing their skills and finding their characters before returning home and starting their rise up the card. (A famous real world example would be The Great Muta/Keiji Muto, who managed to become a featured name in late 80s with JCP/WCW on his excursion and became one of the biggest Japanese stars of the 90s once he returned to NJPW). Being a destination for workers on excursion would give us a somewhat steady stream of young workers to  And get denied. At least MY owner isn't cockblocking me from these proposals. How about Pro Wrestling SAISHO? Currently the smallest Japanese company but they do have a strong legacy of developing great talent...  Nope. Usually I'm the one too small to be even considered as an partner. How about WLW? Their style is more about high flying and high speed so everything we're not. Let's try it.  And we have a match. We'll see when/if we start getting wrestlers in during the calendar year. I'll go into bit more detail with our new partner in a future update, whenever we take our World Tour to Japan.  Another idea from the thread was to look for pals from the Commonwealth. This gave me the idea to start an Alliance. Members of the alliance don't run shows on the home region of another member, they can trade and loan talent, have shared title belts and potentially share their earnings from every month. Pictured here is the only alliance still standing in the game. We unfortunately can't join COTT as their membership requirement is to actually be located in North America. So I click the Start Alliance button and...  Get swiftly blocked by my owner. I have no idea why McMinister feels so strongly about the matter. Now, time for that hiring spree. I want a nice even number of wrestlers so please welcome nine new additions to the APW locker room. I focused heavily on few different things when making these hires. Overall entertainment skills, youth and somewhat decent stats in general. Oceania has very few surefire hires that are over, entertaining and good in the ring, but here's the closest thing to a no-brainer signing we can make:   Surfer Dude Lucas will be coming in as a face. The Fog of War clouds his stats somewhat but I can still see few things that make him a potential top level player. He might already be better than our current top dog Gerard. He's probably our best brawler right out the gate. Psychology is already looking solid as hell. His entertainment stats are ridiculously good compared to the rest of our roster. When we get his popularity up, he should be our next star... unless RAW comes calling.   Lucas isn't the only surfer to come on board. Jesse Tasman will also be a face so no evil surfer versus good surfer feud just yet. Tasman is more of a project in ring but covers for that weakness with possibly insane charisma and great star quality. He also immediately tops our Next Big Things and Top Prospects lists over at the Creative screen so that is a good sign. (Lucas doesn't make either list which is... weird and somewhat worrying.)   Something about Christian Blithe just screams future top heel to me. Promising fundamentals, can brawl and chain wrestle and seemingly promising entertainment stats. The psychology might be a problem but he's young and still developing. I even broke my usual rule to not hire negative backstage presences (he's an Agitator, increasing the chance of negative backstage incidents) to get him.   You can never have enough monsters and Maniac Monster is one of the most promising ones in Oceania. He's green but already a good brawler with good charisma. He probably isn't as good as my first glance would suggest but I'll see what I can do with him. He's naturally a heel.   On the surface Vortex just looks like a solid addition to the face side of things. He can wrestle, he can fly and he might be able to talk without fainting at the sight of a microphone and an audience. Great fundamentals are a cherry on top. Creative screen is hyping him up big time, topping the Show Stealers and Ring Generals lists.   Rounding up our face side of hires for the moment is the local competitor we gave a shot at OzFest, Dizzy G. He's probably not a future star but an addition to the undercard. Before I get fresh and sacrificial blood from Japan I still need people to lose and Dizzy looks great for that role.   D-Pod used to wrestle for APW but got lost in the shuffle back in the day. It's a perfect time to bring him back to the fold with stars of the yesteryear moving on and us needing his particular set of skills especially on the heel side. He's nothing special in the ring but those entertainment stats make him a must hire. He might not be able to tell a wristlock form a wristwatch but boy, he can talk.   Lorenzo Oliverio is a lot like D-Pod but just a bit worse. His entertainment skills make him a good hire. He will be working as a heel as well.   Heel side still needs someone to lose. I'm already cycling down Felix Harding to that role but Dee Lucketti is another guy who is here mostly to lose. Extremely green and extremely flashy but he might have some charisma showing under that lovable face.  I promised more managers, so here's Ceri Dordevich. She was the best manager still unemployed on the Oceania market. Her starting popularity is on the other side of the continent so she needs to grow her popularity before we get to reap the full rewards of her skills. I have an idea who I'm going to pair with her but we might spin that to a storyline.  Now, since we brought in a lot of new talent, we might as well showcase Gimmicks at the same time. Our assistant handily informs us that all of our debutants are set to debut with some sort of gimmick. Every worker in the game has their default gimmick they will debut with but you can naturally change that before they show up in your show.  I'm choosing "Demented" Dee Lucketti here. We're PG here so let's try to spin something new for our teen "prodigy."  Here's the Gimmick screen. The whole Gimmick system got overhauled in TEW 20 so I'm a bit unfamiliar with it myself. I'll try to go over this with the best of my abilities. Gimmicks get a rating ranging from Awful to Legendary. Awful and Poor gimmicks give penalties to your performance and Very Good, Great and Legendary gimmicks give you performance bonuses. (A poor character can really hamper the perception of a wrestler's actual performance. A modern-ish example: Chad Gable is a legit Olympic level wrestler who has been employed by WWE for years at this point. He has showcased some glimmers of charisma and has been compared to young Kurt Angle on more than one occasion. So then he gets a new gimmick: Shorty G, person that is short and thus, a loser. Storytelling everybody). You can't play the same character forever. Every gimmick has a randomly rolled lifespan that lasts from six months up to six years that the player cannot see. The gimmick is considered "fresh" during this time and it can improve up to a (random) upper limit, so an Awful gimmick might grow on the audience over the years and end up in a Legendary status. After the gimmick starts getting stale, you either change it all together (basically re-rolling the lifespan, rating and pros/cons) or tweak it (adding new elements to the character), extending it's lifespan.  In addition to performance bonuses a gimmick might give the worker a set of pros and cons. For example Tyrant currently has a Legendary gimmick of a Ex-Military Mercenary which gives him the following effects. As you can see, these can have quite the impact on the workers skills and even his booking. Pros and cons don't change if you tweak the gimmick, only if you change the whole gimmick.  Back to Lucketti. The Creative/Safe/Generic/Unique is actually a 5x5 grid (and NOT a static image as I first thought, the only grid based thing in the entire game) which has the effects listed on the window itself. I want to go a bit creative and a bit unique and see if we can get some interesting pros and cons out of this. Every gimmick also has a Basis listed on the right side of this window. Every worker has gimmick bases they can't perform, for example scrawny Lucketti here can't exactly play a convincing Bad rear end. On the other hand he gets a bonus when he's playing an Offbeat/Unstable or Weasely/Underdog character. The gimmick name is purely flavor. You can use the Get Some Inspiration button to get a list of pre-set Gimmick names if you are feeling particularly uncreative. I Speaking of Gimmicks, both Surfer Dude Lucas and Jesse Tasman are coming in with the Surfer Dude gimmick. This gives me the idea to give Tasman an Alter Ego.  Clicking the wrestler's name on the Roster screen gets us to character details page, where we can give him a mask, manager or bonuses. But what I'm going to do here is give him a new Alter Ego by giving him a new name and new description.  Meet Surfer Dude Jesse! Of course all surfers are somehow related. Usage refers to the probability of the AI using this particular Alter Ego in the future.  I regret nothing. (You are free to suggest a better name.) Jesse can grow a bit under the wing of Lucas before the latter gets launched to the top of the card. At the moment it's either these guys or SHADOW LEGENDS that will eventually topple the samoans for the tag team championship.  Time to start moving towards our next show and go through the monthly news round-up. This news story is somewhat common. Workers can randomly activate themselves to work on new areas. If a wrestler spends considerable time unemployed they usually activate a few new game areas to try to find work. Monty here is a tag team guy in SWF and just added Japan and Mexico as new areas for himself. The DUMB part about this actually relates to us. I've yet to see ANY worker activating themselves in Oceania. We can talk to workers to agree working Oceania but is a minor annoyance of mine that Oceania is flubbed by the AI.  A really minor thing in the UI. On set holidays the main screen gets a small makeover. St. Patrick's Day is one of the dates that gets it's own color scheme.  ZEN is also happy with us! They have returned our gesture and adopted a friendly attitude towards us.  Juicy drama going on in Mexico. Hernandez is one of the best women's workers in North America but a bit of a backstage problem child. This news story tells us that she has ended her employment with CILL (she still works QAW in USA) and has gained a Strong Dislike relationship with their owner. She will not be hired back because the owner will block that particular hire.  One of the "dumb" news stories that you will constantly see. Workers can change ring style to something that more accurately fits their current stats. It's great that the game informs us about these changes but I've always found the wording of these a bit dumb with wrestlers setting up PRESS CONFERENCES and exclusive interviews to tell the world about a very minor change in their style. This doesn't happen in real world, thus my reaction.   ZEN and DIW have their shows and are both hit with wrong matches in the main event. DIW keeps shooting themselves on the foot as long as they keep running the Smithson/Pinn program on top. (Meanwhile at RAW Swoop keeps losing main events to their current top champion Frogue Element. Element is decent but he's not Swoop so I have no idea what the hell they are doing.)  APW Fight Night dawns on us with another backstage interaction. This time we have two people involved and I immediately worry that Mason has done something stupid to our color commentator.  Wrestler's Court! These are minor "negative" incidents that aren't handled by you but by the boys themselves. The judge is an older worker with high Respect. These incidents usually give a slight morale boost to the sentenced party. Yeah Mason, cheer up and use your 30$ paycheck to offer a round to around 45 colleagues after the show!  Also, I meddle with the Surfer Dudes and manage to a relationship out of it! The cousins now have a Strong Friendship with each other which is considered a positive effect on out backstage rating.  Here's the show. I've cropped out the pre-show here as I'm using it to see where our new hires start with performance wise. We open the card with Samoan Demolition retaining their titles against Positive Energy with Mills ringside scouting the competition. We follow up with another tag match where Tate gets the win after somewhat ridiculous amount of cheating by his team. Afterwards Hamstead and Goliath are so drat sure about their superiority that they grant a title match to one of the SHADOW LEGENDS next show. Forbes rolls out and taunts Macquarie with his squad, only to see his clients suffer two losses in a row. Barney Mason dispatches Wilkes with Mattell once again taunting him at ringside. Post-match our new manager strolls to the ring and teases a "RAW" level superstar client. She teases that it's Mason but our slab of beef is not the guy in question. Devine keeps building his momentum back up with a win and in the semi-main Warmonger beats Possum because Warmonger is awesome. Main event Australian title match ends in a huge clusterfuck double disqualification with Goliath Global and SHADOW LEGENDS all running in at the end. It's a finish I'd probably hate to see in real life but I'm (somewhat) sure our fans will love it!  Bad news. Blithe's gimmick absolutely bombs. LARGE penalty to charisma? That's just awful. I CAN try to change the gimmick for our next show but that might not be the wisest idea. If the gimmick is new, you will get penalized for changing it too early. Lucketti's gimmick get's a Great rating but surprisingly doesn't get any pros or cons. None of our new guys have a particularly great night, mostly because they are almost unknown in the area. Lucas and D-Pod do the best but don't crack 30 in their performances. Monster is awful with a 14 performance. Ow.  The SHADOW LEGENDS/Goliath Global match scores a great rating. Tate and Hamstead don't get a negative chemistry note which is always great. The storyline lost a bit of heat (I added SHADOW LEGENDS to the Gerard/Goliath story) but gets it back with a better post-match angle.  I am baffled with these Mason match ratings. I keep expecting worse. He's just so solid for us.  Boom, our fans just love an inconclusive ending! Our best match in the three first shows which means...  Success! The show scored a 52 rating which is our best show yet. Let's try to keep this rolling this time.  One last news story to end the update. Every once in a while a BIG star sees his contract come to an end (most contracts have their length randomized) which might start up a bidding war between the major companies. Remo here is one of the biggest stars of SWF, a multiple time world champion and one of their centerpieces. He has spent his entire career with the former wrestling kingpin company and is now courted by the new big dog in town. Every company that throws in an offer at this point gets a news story announcing they've joined the bidding war. At the early stages of the save only a company or two might try to start a bidding war over a big star but a few years in you might see almost dozen companies throwing their money around to court a superstar. Remo is almost 100% going to USPW as they can offer him more money. It would make him another big name to leave SWF to grab a big money offer with USPW. This is a theme in all early TEW 20 saves, as USPW WILL grab a lot of big names from SWF, TCW, CWA and EILL. USPW make almost 3,5 million dollars a month, over double what SWF makes in the same time. Next time: World Tour, part one! Goon Poll~ 1. I'll start introducing the rest of the game world a bit more in depth an area or two at a time. What area should I start with? a) Japan b) UK & Europe c) Mexico & Canada d) USA 2. I kinda need big stars to carry the company before I can get the next generation ready for the top spots. Usually every game area has few "built in" quick solutions for smaller companies. There are two good/great wrestlers I'd love to use but our owner doesn't want us to hire them. And then there is a guy who isn't currently active in Oceania:  Molokai Milk is ridiculously entertaining and really over (46 pop in ALL regions in Oceania) so it doesn't really matter he's merely (below) average in the ring. He's 100% Babyface so he would probably be slotted against Goliath Global. Two problems that immediately arise: if I talk him into working back in Oceania, there is a real chance that RAW just grabs him back after a few shows. Also he will probably complain a lot if I ask him to lose as his popularity exceeds all of our guys by quite a lot. Also he is quite expensive. Should we hire him anyway?
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Mar 23, 2021 13:17
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