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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Tevery Best posted:2. No, the pun is too terrible. Oh, Ryland loves puns so CVerse is riddled with things like these: 
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Mar 24, 2021 18:05
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Episode 6: World Tour, Part 1 The thread has once again spoken. We will be starting our overview of the rest of the world with Japan. A quick history lesson on the Japanese scene. Japan had the first wrestling promotion in CVerse history in Giant Pro Wrestling that had it's run from around 1900 to it's collapse in 1933 under shady circumstances. (This is radically different from the real world, as the first Japanese company, JWA, was formed in 1953 and thus starting it's first bloom period significantly after United States and Mexico). The collapse of GPW started "The Dark Era" of Japanese wrestling with no new promotions emerging in nearly 30 years with the public's respect for the sport shattered by the fall of GPW. 1960s finally saw the return of "puroresu" with the formation of both Golden Canvas Grappling (GCG) and Burning Hammer of the Wrestling Gods (BHOTWG) and the new rise of the sport. The two competed with each other for two decades before BHOTWG pulled ahead with their revolutionary junior heavyweight division in the 80s. GCG's business took a nosedive but was saved by an emergence of a generational talent that kept them afloat. The 90s saw the emergence of a new rival for the massive BHOWTG. Pride Glory Honor Wrestling (PGHW) stormed the scene with their "Golden Generation" of wrestlers that made them a viable competitor for the old monolith. The 2000s saw the rise of smaller companies focused on things like junior heavyweights or grimy hardcore wrestling. A major shakeup happened in 2011 when the Modern Japan alliance was formed with GCG, WLW, 5 Star Supreme Wrestling (5SSW) and Warrior Engine XX (WEXX). The alliance wanted to move the traditional touring format towards a more Americanized style of running shows. Then a massive tsunami hit Japan in 2016 (yes, a silly wrestling sim has a canonical natural disaster) massively damaging the economy and wrestling business. GCG and WEXX went out of business and Modern Japan was no more. Entering 2020 there are seven Japanese promotions left standing. Let's start with our new friends World Level Wrestling.   WLW has never been the "hot" company among the CVerse players during my time playing the game but the yakuza scandal still hurt the fans of the company. The WLW of TEW 20 is significantly different than the one players saw last with TEW 16. They've lost two of their biggest stars and a lot of veterans to either other companies or to retirement. The longtime booker of the company, Koji Kojima, was ousted during the scandal as he had been working with organized crime for numerous years. (Yakuza scandals have happened in real life too, most famously when Pro Wrestling NOAH was linked to Yakuza around 2012. It was one of the many reasons for their downfall). WLW now finds themselves rebuilding their fanbase and roster: in TEW 16 they were on the cusp of catching up to PGHW and BHOWTG with a few right choices. They are still ahead of the other small companies but the gap might start closing if they aren't careful. BHOTWG isn't making it easy as they are prone to steal a few solid talents and a future star or two in almost every save.  WLW might have lost their two greatest stars but they still have gems. Shogun Watoga and Nichiren Amagawa wait on the wings while the spotlight shines on the next superstar of WLW. Masa Kurata is an extremely charismatic high flyer who is the present and the future of the company. And unless something unexpected happens, he's there to stay. How come BHOWTG isn't stealing Kurata then? Because of the Loyalty system. When a worker is Loyal to their company, they will not sign an exclusive contract with another company. They might wrestle for other smaller companies, but they aren't going to take a paycheck and jump ship at the earliest opportunity. Worker might lose his loyalty if they become really unhappy with the booker or if they are released. Loyal workers are less likely to be fired by the AI. Rest of the upper card is filled with veterans past their primes. Haru Kurofuji returned home after a ten year spell with BHOWTG after he got offered a spot as the booker after the scandal. Kazuma Narato had a brief run in the US in the early 2000s but has been with WLW for 15 years now. His tag team partner Mokuami Maita had his run with BHOWTG in the early 2000s but has also been a solid presence in WLW for years at this point. Both stayed through the crisis showing their loyalty. Looking at their crop of rookies I see a lot of somewhat charismatic looking kids. The bad thing for us is that two of them are considered Technician Flyers. We'll see if they ever make the trip to us.  They also have one of the few formerly Oceania based stars working in Japan. Necromancer is much like our very own Lone Shark. A really solid wrestler who's just missing a bit in the entertainment department. If his career falters in Japan ZEN would love to bring him back. I wouldn't mind either. I CAN sign him now, as he is still available to work in Oceania but I don't think that is wise. And that's because of the other "Japan only" feature of the game, the touring schedule.  Smaller companies in other areas tend to have a show every month. Bigger companies have a TV show every week and a big PPV event once a month. Japanese companies work a bit different. They run a number of tour shows in a short period of time leading to a big show. For example WLW has already done 22 shows in the same time we have had three. Wrestlers tend to get tired working this schedule but the young guns develop quite a bit faster than their brethren in the west . The "tour" shows have smaller attendance than normal and have to be extremely good or extremely bad to impact the company's popularity.   EXODUS 2010 is the company everyone THOUGHT was going to get caught with a yakuza scandal. EX2010 is very much like WLW, presenting a product focusing on high flying junior heavyweight wrestling. EX2010 might be smaller than WLW but are already outperforming their big shows. They have been stagnant between editions, never really growing. Their roster has been mostly the same in every edition. Everyone there started young and has mostly stayed home. The Alumni list is really telling: only four wrestlers have left the company during it's ten years in existence. Three of those retired with the company and the fourth was an indy worker only wrestling a couple of matches with them. EX2010 are in a great spot at the start of the game. They won't conquer Japan with their current generation but are set to grow to respectable size.  The group of youngsters that started when the company launched have grown to be the stars and currently wrestling in their primes. Masao Tsubouchi here is their current top star and is loyal to them. He is one the finest high flyers in all of Japan, his only competition for the title being the very best guys in BHOWTG and a few guys around the smaller companies. Tsubouchi doesn't have to carry the load by himself. Extremely charismatic Pretty Okakura, the stoic warrior monk Orange Tsuchie and the supremely talented Tsuneyo Yanagimoto round up the main event scene. Behind them are one of the best tag teams in Japan, Massive Thunder, and an all around great tag team division. They really don't have that many rookies but that is a problem for the long term. Unless BHOWTG does a massive raid that roster is sticking together for the next ten years.  X-Calibre feels a bit wasted in the midcard of EX2010. He could easily rise higher on the card and would be a hot commodity back in Oceania, much like Necromancer. Except he has the charisma to carry himself.   5Star is one of the two women's companies that are open at the start of the 2020 database. They are the proud representative of Japanese women's wrestling (joshi puroresu, commonly referred to as joshi here in the west) but have seen better days. In a way the company has always lived in the shadow the "The Magic Three" even over a decade after their retirements. They had a rough patch right after those retirements but have somewhat bounced back. They have had their new stars but haven't risen to the same legendary level as the stars of the 90s. Now they are starting to see the post-Three generation reach the later half of their career and no new superstar in sight. DEVIL Karube, one of their biggest stars already retired but who's next? (Women in CVerse tend to retire younger than their male counterparts.)  Yuma Maruya and Shiori Jippensha are their current aces. They are great and will lead 5Star up a size or two before their retirements. (5Star can deliver great ratings for their size from the start: if the big two in Japan have iffy starts, 5Star can actually have the best shows in the entire area.) The talent doesn't end in the top two names. Megumi Nakajima and HEART Saitoh are generational peers with Maruya and Jippensha. Gemmei Oonishi and MAYA are set up for big runs at the top. And then there is Miss Perfection.  Fuyuko Higa is seemingly nerfed a bit form previous editions. She is currently "only" excellent. If you are starting a save with any company with a women's division the first question a player asks is: "Do I hire Higa?" In the few long-ish games I've run with TEW 20 she has become the best in-ring worker in 5Star but never the top champion. The reason is quite simple: she is a legendarily toxic backstage personality. You deal with her being an rear end in a top hat because she is that drat good.   SAISHO used to be a developmental company for PGHW but has been independent since TEW 16. They start as the smallest promotion in Japan and are already bleeding money. I don't know if they will survive. If you play with them you can probably keep them afloat. Their "function" in the game world is to be the Japanese tutorial company: a small roster, lot of youth to build on long term, getting used to touring system, even decent shows might grow you on popularity and a few tournaments to play around. (Almost every Japanese company has a tournament or two that they run during the year, WLW being the only exception).  "Mr. SAISHO" KAZ is pretty much the perfect representative for his company. Solid wrestler but terribly bland. SAISHO's calling card is their rock solid tag team division. Black Iron Corps are their awesome home grown team that are the biggest stars of the company. The Night Terrors are a masked duo hailing from the US cutting their teeth in the "West Coast War." The Hurt are a European team featuring Billy Robinson (no relation to the real world wrestler Billy Robinson) and everyone's favourite Swede Nigel Svensson.  Then there are the Diamond Dogs, former APW guys. They are solid and I wouldn't mind bringing them back someday if their career in Japan ends with SAISHO going under. The other calling card for SAISHO is their rookie department. Between editions SAISHO hired almost every young independent worker. Gidayu "The Lariat" Gatou, Motoyuki Miyake, MUSCLE Serizawa and Akira Arato all have great potential and if things go well will become stars with SAISHO or somewhere else.   BCG was born out of disrespect. Yoshifusa Maeda is THE reason GCG didn't die all the way back in the 80s. To him GCG starting the Modern Japan alliance was a huge middle finger to him and the whole legacy of the company. Thus, BCG was born. (BCG actually started from the GDS forums when someone created the company logo as an alternative for the GCG logo. This lead to Ryland creating the company itself in the next edition of the game.) Now they have outlived the grandfather of puroresu and are set to skyrocket to the place that GCG fell from all those decades ago. BCG has become a GDS forums favourite during the past editions and are now set to flourish: they are seemingly stacked with top line talent and a few promising rookies to boot. (Maeda is a bit of a handful as an owner. As you can see from the news headlines, three of their workers have gone and quit already. That's more than the rest of the Japanese companies combined. Losing SUKI hurts them a bit, the former GCG star was set up as a major figure in the company).  All four of their biggest stars could walk into the big two in Japan and quickly become one of their biggest stars. I have a soft spot for Bunrakuken Torii here. I brought him to the English CWW in my longest save thus far with TEW 20 and carried to company to Medium size on his broad and frankly awesome shoulders. Razan Okamoto is THE guy here and their future ace but Mabuchi Furusawa and Funakoshi are probably their biggest names right now. Any one of these four can carry a main event match by themselves. And that's not all. Second generation warriors Yoshinaka Taku and Tanyu Toshusai, big boys Rokuemon Matshushita and Naozane Goto with rock solid Blast Ikoma and Findlay O'Farraday form an intimidating upper midcard.  The gems of the tag team division are The American Cobras. They are the top independent team in the US but their future most likely lies in Japan, whether it's with BCG or one of the other companies. As if all THAT isn't enough, they have an extremely solid group of young rookies (it's why I wanted their workers on excursion). All of this makes BCG stupidly stacked and THE choice for almost everyone wanting to do a save in Japan. The AI might not be able to launch them to fight the big boys but the player just might be able to do that.   Only the big two left to cover. And if the signs are to be believed, we're heading back to the era with only BHOWTG as the big dog in the region. PGHW arrived to the scene with a bang in 1996 with their "Golden Generation" and wowed the country with their extremely intense (and dangerous) wrestling. The next 20 years saw all their stars spend considerable time on the shelf as it became more apparent that the style of the company was taking an extreme toll on the bodies of all the warriors fighting there. And one by one they all went, bodies destroyed by years of abuse. 2019 saw the retirement of the last member of that generation, Yoshimi Mushashibo, considered by many the greatest wrestler that ever lived. Now the proteges of the Golden Generation are left to carry the burden. And those proteges have already spent a considerable amount of time in this system that is custom designed to destroy human bodies. Oh, did I mention that BHOWTG has the habit of stealing their younger cornerstones? Can they save themselves from the almost certain decline? Maybe. PGHW has one of the most challenging starts in Japan and definitely offers a challenge.  On paper PGHW's main event is golden. Kozue Kawashima, Masaru Ugaki and Seiji Jimbo are all great and have the very lifeblood of the company running through them. All of them studied the art under the Golden Generation. Behind them is perhaps the top tag team in Japan, KitoGuchi. Consisting of Bussho Makiguchi and Chojiro Kitoaji, their road to the top of the company is set in stone. And then there is Magnum Kobe, the second biggest star in WLW's history who left his home company as they couldn't keep paying him after the scandal. These top six workers should be able to carry them until the next generation is ready, right? Well, not exactly. Based on my (limited) saves with TEW 20, PGHW doesn't exactly collapse but they heavily stagnate. They tend to rely heavily on Kawashima, who is on his way to being a physical wreck and in the worst case scenario already on decline. This won't stop the AI from pushing him. One of the most absurd things I've seen in this series is Kawashima winning their yearly Elite Series one night tournament FIVE YEARS in a row, absolutely refusing to build anyone else during that time. Kobe is either a hit or miss if he fits in at all. I've yet to see KitoGuchi actually break through. And suddenly you only have two guys you can reliably trust. PGHW lives and dies with Ugaki and Jimbo.  The roster does have talent, young talent even, but the AI never really seems to get all their potential out of them. Avalanche Takano here is probably their best bet on future success. Midcard also has perennially underused Eien Miyamoto, who I remember being a big prospect in past editions, Haranobu Kobayashi and SATO. All young-ish but will the company ever get behind them, I don't know. PGHW is one of those companies this year that is extremely interesting to follow through the years.   And then there was Burning Hammer. BHOTWG is the closest thing to the real world New Japan Pro Wrestling. Both have been the leading company in their country for decades, both had a junior heavyweight wrestling revolution in the 80s (NJPW had the original Tiger Mask and Dynamite Kid, BHOTWG had Elemental and Optimus) and both had their crises in the 2000s (NJPW went hard on "Inokism", flirting with MMA and in the process almost killing their business, BHOTWG had a significant part of the roster walk out and form INSPIRE, a shoot-style inspired company akin to the real-life UWF and it's successors). BHOTWG is the only company in the game that starts with a heavyweight/lightweight split on their roster.  They are not quite the unbeatable giant I've painted them out to be. They are starting to be in the same position PGHW was in TEW 16. Tadiyuki Kikkawa, the defining superstar of the past two decades is finally gone. A lot of the classic old guard have retired between editions. The main event is getting old, time to build someone new up. Thankfully they are loaded with money and can pretty much buy anyone who is not loyal to their company. The player can go wild with hires and the AI can get pretty spending happy as well. They've already thrown their weight around, hiring Panda Mask II and Eagle Kawasawa from WLW to strengthen their junior division and Reaver, Simon Flemmingway and Brute Kikuchi from PGHW weakening their closest competition.  The big focus with BHOWTG in this edition is with their stables. The two NEO factions (led by two of their biggest stars, Kinnojo Horri and Yasuhiko Taira) are fighting each other with "invaders" from the fallen WEXX and GCG are leading Senmatsu-gun and The Golden Army.  The junior division has always been the pride and joy of BHOWTG. The "Big Four" of Sensational Dragon, MYSTIC Dragon, Elemental III and Marihito Masuko have become "The Big Five." Emerald Angel WAS WLW. His feud with Magnum Kobe was a commercial and a critical success. And when the scandal broke, Angel wanted to stay loyal but money was the deciding factor once again. Angel is the best high flyer in the world and he doesn't really have an equal.  The top of the card is getting older but the emperors of puroresu have their ace in their sleeve. Matthew Keith is one of the many second generation stars of the game world (another way CVerse really differentiates from the real world, second gen wrestlers are generally good) and a budding superstar. If all goes well, Keith will very much become the same level of star his father was. BHOWTG is almost unrivaled when it comes to the depth of their roster. If they grow in size, they WILL go on another hiring spree. A shorter update this time, I'll try to get in another one this week where we, you know, actually play the game.
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Mar 31, 2021 12:08
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Burning Hammer Of The Wrestling Gods is the best company name without a doubt. Even the now defunct real world company WAR (Wrestle And Romance) pales in comparison. Episode 7: Nighthawk's trial by fire APW was profitable in March. We made a bit over 10 000 dollars even with the influx of new talent. That's good. More money is always more money so I decide to take a peek at our Merchandise Screen.  As you can see, our merchandise level is currently at 4 out of 10. We aren't making a huge amount of money in that department (around 2500$ a month) and at this point upgrading doesn't really give us much. The extra money we'd earn after the upgrade would go to the increased running costs. I'll have to keep this in mind for later after we grow in popularity and/or start getting more people in the arena. I want to do something a bit different for the next show which involves our friends in New Zealand. Since I struck a talent trading deal we might as well put that to use.  Here's the talent trading screen. This has changed a bit since I last used it in TEW 16. Previously you could send up to five workers in exchange for a single wrestler. Now you can trade only a single worker or an established tag team in exchange for a wrestler or a tag team for up to ten appearances. I also think that the AI doesn't accept that many workers as before. Now they only accept guys who would be considered Recognizable in their roster. And if you want a main event level talent, you have to send a main event level talent back. Currently ZEN would only like three of our guys: Lone Shark, SubUrban Legend and Pookie Possum. Shark and Legend have pop in New Zealand due to their previous work there and Possum is over all around the continent thanks to his RAW fame. Poor Massacre is not fondly remembered as ZEN don't want him back. I had an idea to do bit of a "ZEN Offer Match" in our next show and bring over the former tag team partners of both Legend and Massacre. We'd get a solid undercard tag team match out of that. ZEN would have no problem to trade us Legend's partner for any of our trio but the problem is with Massacre's pal. He has become one of their main guys and aren't willing to trade him for ANY of our guys. The same goes to Shark's old partner Devilfish. If we send our guys over there and ZEN books them well, we might be able to trade for them later. And we do have a young guy who can only benefit from working more dates...  So, talent offer. I can loan one of our wrestlers to ZEN and ask absolutely nothing in return for up to ten appearances. Here's the plan: we send Legend to them for those ten appearances (this doesn't exclude him from our shows since our events don't overlap with ZEN) and potentially get him a bit more over in New Zealand. I say potentially because the AI might just job him out mercilessly. I hope not since they get to reform a good tag team out of the deal for the rest of the year. And even if he gets booked awfully, he will still get some reps in and HOPEFULLY develop a bit faster in the ring. The downside is of course the heightened injury risk that comes from working more dates. I send Legend to ZEN and trade Lone Shark for an appearance getting Killer B in return.  Killer is a solid high flyer and definitely the in-ring worker in his team with Legend. He is terminally bland entertainment wise but he is one of the guys ZEN tend to build on. I might as well throw in that tag team match for our next show using Pre Booking.  A big part of pro wrestling is, you know, actually promoting the matches. If people don't know that two of your bigger stars are going to be duking it out in the big main event, they don't have a reason to buy a ticket/watch the tv show/order the PPV. By default TEW has the "mandatory pre booking" setting turned off. So all of the matches you put together when booking the show are considered to be announced beforehand. You can naturally do an angle where a wrestler does the classic open challenge for later on the night or whatever but in mechanical terms it is still considered announced beforehand. If the player wants to book something in advance just in case they forget their gem of an idea before they get to the actual date of the show, then pre booking is a good tool. I rarely use it but hey, it's there.  The Knight's Temple reforms for one night to take on the goon squad of Goliath Global since (spoilers) the other half of SHADOW LEGENDS is getting a big spotlight at the main event of our next show. Time to head to the show and go through the news as we progress.  That's nice. Quine is one of the biggest female stars of USPW so that's great PR for them. This is one of the many new news stories that pop up every once in a while so I try to show off most of them. Speaking of...  On the other side of the world 5Star starlet HEART Saitoh donates for charity. She likes the warm and fuzzy feeling so much she donates AGAIN just a few days later (yes, she got an almost identical news story).  Uhhh, WLW? Kurata is ALREADY your biggest star? (You get stories like this all the time, usually highlighting a young and rising wrestler in a company. It gets awkward when the story is about someone in your roster that you have no intention of pushing...)  After a week of intense negotiations Remo takes the money. He's going to earn around 220 000 a month for the next four years, making him the second biggest earner in USPW. And he's not the only one to jump ship.  Just a few days later SWF loses one of their most beloved figures. The Crippler is Chris Morrisette, one of the most beloved characters in CVerse. Actually, The Crippler isn't the character that defines Morrisette's career...  LOBSTER WARRIOR is one of the legendary gimmicks of the CVerse. Lobby sold loads of merchandise during his years as a lovable crustacean hero but he never accomplished his dream of being a world champion. Now at 47 years he takes the money and heads off to USPW and dons the mask and the claws once again. SWF manages to stop the immediate bleeding and resigns two of deal younger stars. They are scared of the day when their Top Star enters contract negotiations.  A LOT of people are expanding their horizons. So much so that I'm pretty sure this is a bug from the latest patch.  Here's an AI company changing their product. From the look of things, it's a pretty minor change in the grand scheme of things. (No, I have no idea what Stoner Hardcore is supposed to mean). What makes it weird is that two other companies also change their products inside a few days of each other. And I've rarely seen anyone change their product this soon. The new patch has clearly hosed SOMETHING up.  SPECTACULAR MACHINE is up there on the great AI generated worker names. After looking at his stats I can safely say that the name is the best part about him. He absolutely sucks and manages to break the finger of a fellow graduate in his first ever professional match. Around halfway through the month we get some surprising news.  ALREADY? WLW offers us three of their young guns for the next two years! (This is the first time I'm accepting people on their excursions so I had no idea they were willing to throw them to us this early. WLW is expecting their next dojo class to graduate in May, so I guess they are making room for them). Let's see what they've got to offer.   We get a team of Kazuhisa Hosotani and Keisuke Koroki who go by Next Level (25 experience tagging together). They are nothing special in the ring but potential charisma machines. I needed a tag team for the heel side so this is great. I can't put their good entertainment skills to use until they learn the language. They only speak Japanese so if they are in an angle and rated on a talking related skill (so Entertainment, Charisma, Microphone, Acting) they will get heavily penalized for not speaking the local language. They will learn the language bit by bit just by being around in our locker room. (If a worker doesn't speak the same language as everyone else in the locker room, their morale will be penalized for feeling isolated. We don't have that issue with three Japanese lads heading over and keeping each other company).  Naoji Azumi on the other hand is one of the top two prospects currently employed by WLW. Insane charisma and good psychology for his age make him an exciting get. He's the gem of trio. I mean, I will still use him mostly as a low card  DIW is trash aside from those top two matches. If I lose to them again I will be mostly pissed off at myself.  ZEN does their thing. Lone Shark's one appearance is used to put over one of their young guys. Legend starts his run with a win!   It's not always sunny in CVerse. A rising junior star in BHOWTG has suffered a big loss in his civilian life. This is the first time I've seen particular story. It probably won't be the last time we see death in this save.  Rock God's year goes from great to awful in a heartbeat. After being coronated as their champion he makes through two title defenses before a horrible injury. He somehow finishes the match (rated 90!) that main events an EILL PPV and even manages to win. If he ever comes back from this injury he might never be the same. After those bummers, let's move on to Beachfront Breakdown. Nothing noteworthy happens before the show. It's good for me, since I don't have to deal with the negative backstage incidents but bad for the LP since I really don't get to showcase that feature that often. (I think most companies actually start with backstage rating maxed out at 100%. I'd have to actively try to make things worse to start getting negative things to happen).  I end up with a card like this. Most of the new signings and the newly arrived young boys are still finding their feet in the pre-show as I figure out who's ready for a storyline. (Taking a two week break from this save is not particularly helping as I've surely forgotten some of the ideas I had after the last show.) SHADOW LEGENDS make the call that Nighthawk will challenge Hamstead in the main event. We open the night with the aforementioned tag team match where SubUrban Legend is victorius with a sneaky lucha pinning combination on Tate. Mattell and Shark manage to topple everyone's favourite undercard team of Positive Energy who can't get the extra energy from Barney Mason's encouraging grunts. Simonson and Macquarie grab a statement win before being jumped by Nameth, Tyrant and Prellinger. Two matches advance the ongoing rivalry between Fox & Possum and The Apocalypse where Warmonger is looking unstoppable but Fox finds a way to beat Hatemonger with a countout. The Duo call their tag title shot for next month and are left puzzled by the appearance of Dordevich who once again teases her client's identity. The semi-main ends in a massive clusterfuck when Goliath Global screw over Gerard and Devine against the Samoans. It doesn't help that Donovan Boon accidentally hits Devine when he tries to help. The main event is never in any doubt but Nighthawk still manages to put Hamstead much closer to the edge of defeat than anyone expected. Devine, still pissed from months of screwy results and run-ins batters Hamstead with a massive suplex and throws down the challenge for a steel cage match next month. At this point you can probably start to see which matches are going to do well and which are going to do, well, less well. Since Gerard could carry Massacre to a great main event I'm hopeful that Hamstead can do the same to Nighthawk. We'll see if this pays off.  The new arrivals are quite horrible as they have no popularity in these parts but hey, at least Hosotani's gimmick is a successful one!   Results like these make me, an avid fan of in-ring finesse, shake my head in disgust. Killer B could wrestle circles around these three goofs but since he has no popularity here the crowd collectively shrugs him off. The match is decent enough but the more 40+ results I see, the better.   Harding can't find a break as he scores bad chemistry with D-Pod.   I get to the semi-main and I get the feeling that I have done goofed up, again. This is a good rating, great even, but I fear I've screwed over our main event in the progress.   I'm proven wrong as Hamstead drags Nighthawk to a great main event, even if it just by a single point above the match before it. The post match angle succeeds as well and we got ourselves a show.  We marginally improve from last month!  I compliment three guys once again and finally see results. Hamstead is pleased that I gave him the thumbs up for his main event. This raises his morale. A happy wrestler is a better wrestler. I have a good feeling about next month's main event... After the show, we get an e-mail. Good news?  Nah, Massacre is just being a bit of an asshat. Mate, Dizzy was in the ring for like, four minutes last night? He probably did a dropkick and a twisting crossbody from the top in addition to getting pummeled by whoever he was facing. What the hell were you expecting? You get these kind of emails every once in a while from your bigger names. Depending on their personality they either bury a bad aspect on a lowcarders work or praise them for one of their high skills. Skipping days to the end of the month nothing that special jumps out from the news feed. BHOTWG raid WLW once again and grab a talented Canadian flyer Frankie "White Angel" Dee and one of the most important names in WLW, Shogun Watoga. This is not a surprise as Watoga gets hired in almost every save. And then this happens.  God dammit, Higa. This is what you could call a career suicide. Miss Perfection is talented and she is available to work in the US... but the AI is REALLY bad at hiring people with no popularity in their area. So Higa has doomed herself to be out of work unless: a) The 5 Star booker, DEVIL Karube, steps down and her successor hires her back. b) a US company does an uncharacteristic move and hires her despite having no popularity there. c) another joshi company opens up in Japan. (I could do editor related hijinks to save her career. At any point in your game, you can add another player who then takes over a character and a company of their choice. Hypothetically I could add another player, choose whoever books QAW, hire Higa and then delete that player and continue as if nothing happened. I'm trying to limit the times I use the editor to my advantage but hey, just letting you know that you can do stuff like that in this game.) Next time: Two shows in one update? Who knows!
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Apr 6, 2021 17:58
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Insertnamehere31 posted:Interesting that WLW would send three promising young stars off for such a long excursion right after restarting and as they are being raided by Burning Hammer of the Wrestling Gods ( Triple A posted:Perhaps WLW's management view that they are better off developing in the more chill parts of anglosphere, just to see how they perform in a strange upside-down land where nobody knows them. The reason is that No, this is them using the young lion/boy system. The three guys we got would be mostly filling the undercards of WLW shows and wouldn't really be in a position to be elevated to the positions left by the departures. Their audience would be weirded out if the young guys would get a push before "paying their dues" with their trip to overseas. So in a way sending these rookies to us relatively early, they will be coming back relatively early as well and (theoretically) ready to be pushed. Masa Kurata and Nichiren Amagawa can hold the company afloat as long as they don't get hurt for the next few years.
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Apr 7, 2021 07:13
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). You’d think they’d want as much talent as they can salvage at the moment.
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Episode 8: Caged Showdown At this point I've gone over most of the mechanics that concern a company of our size. There's still some stuff that I'll go over once those things actually happen to us but for now we can just keep going.  After four shows (where three made us grow in popularity) we actually haven't grown a single point in our home region where we have had our shows. We haven't had any growth in neighboring areas either. And at this point I remind myself of the Spillover.  So our company and our wrestlers gain their popularity in the area they work in (in this case New South Wales) but when they hit some thresholds some of that popularity "spills over" to other regions. Naturally once you get to TV this doesn't matter as much since at that point your shows are seen in every area that channel broadcasts in. But our broadcasting deals are at least a year away at this point. The challenging thing about Oceania can be seen in the above screen. Western Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania are so isolated from the rest of the regions that they get no spillover from other regions nor do they give any spillover. Expansion beyond Oceania is also extremely challenging since Oceania has no spillover to other game areas. But hey, those things are wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy ahead of us at this point.  On the news side some insiders are really high on SubUrban Legend. This tells the player that the worker in question has had a high potential roll so he should have a very high ceiling. That's good news. (There are actually hidden popularity and skill caps, determined randomly at the start of a save. You might want to make someone a star but they might just hit their popularity cap and are unable to grow past it. Same goes for skills. I've yet to have problems with caps in my saves but I also very rarely play Big companies who are more effected by those mechanics.)  A RAW news item that I forgot to include in the last update. APW alumni, one half of the Melbourne Blondes Blake Belushi actually won the RAW Television championship, their main prize. He becomes only the second APW guy after The Swoop to claim that prize.  Speaking of RAW and APW guys, they are splitting up God's Gift, former clients of our very own Max Forbes. Standish and Banks are both great and should become top of the cards names for them sooner or later... wish we still had them. Banks gets a Hernia just a few weeks later so I guess they split them up at the right time.  WLW has two randomly generated workers graduate from their dojo. The more "promising" one is Yuichi Shigemitsu here. A super heavyweight with promising entertainment stats, but unfortunately looking very unsafe and inconsistent at this point. Also, he boasts a whopping ZERO Star Quality. He tears his achilles in his first pro match against fellow graduate Saemon Imakura and is out for a year. I can't wait to get these guys to APW.  I guess Rusty hears me moan about lacking top of the card stars and decides to get in better shape to catch my eye. Wrestlers can go up or down in weight class and change their body type. These can have minor effects on their stats, usually on the physical side or Star Quality/Sex Appeal/Menace (Rusty's Sex Appeal went from 61 to 64!). Wrestlers can do this by themselves or you can ask them to do it. So, let's have a chat with Mills!  Talk to Worker is a new addition to TEW 20. The most commonly used actions are the options where you can ask a worker to work in new areas or change their in-ring styles. But we'll take a look at the Booking tab.  My plan is to put the Samoans over The Duo in our upcoming event so I thought I'd ask Mills here if he would agree to it.  Hmmm, that's an answer. He actually doesn't have an existing relationship with Malietoa, their personalities just happen to be almost the polar opposites. Mills and Boon still might agree to lose to them but I still might have to pull of some mind games to make them agree with me! (The real life booker/owner of the sports entertainment juggernaut WWE, Vince McMahon, according to at least few of his former wrestlers, uses "some sort of jedi mind tricks" to make his talent agree with his vision. I won't be going that far.) Since Mills just changed his body type, I won't be asking him to immediately to try put on some more muscle mass... but there is the best/worst option in the game hidden in the Physical tab.  We CAN suggest all of our workers to get on the juice, big time. (We can even call up wrestlers who don't work for us and suggest that!) They won't report us to the feds... I think. It depends on the workers personality if they'll do it. Actually, I feel like loving with RAW... Let me just find the number of one of their big stars, Luke Steele...  "And don't call this number ever again." (I actually don't agree with steroid use in pro wrestling or in any other legit sport. Abuse of steroids and the side effects of said drugs have taken many a wrestler to their early graves. Don't do drugs, kids.)  The one existing alliance in the game gains a new member with the Mexican CILL joining up.  The latest ZEN show is merely very good with no 70+ matches this time. Legend is losing this time but at least it's against the top team in the company, Cyanide and Dastardly. Oh hey, new emails! I wonder what this is abo-  OKAY THEN. By default all of our contracts are pay per appearance deals and set as ongoing. Our wrestlers however aren't willing to sit around with us forever. So every once in a while a wrestler might hand in his notice and start looking around for new career opportunities. Richie Fox decided that it was time to leave. After a worker leaves your company (whether they hand in their resignation, are fired or their contract runs out) they are unwilling to negotiate with you for at least six months. The way I see things Fox has two options: a) he either sits around doing nothing until he wants to come back in six months time b) he heads over to DIW in hopes of a main event push No, RAW ain't hiring him, he's not popular enough. I get WHY this happens, it keeps the game world alive with wrestlers moving on from their old stomping grounds. Unfortunately it is a bit too rare for them to find a new place to work. Fox leaving so suddenly actually puts a dent to my plans. I planned Fox & Possum to eventually beat The Apocalypse and move on to challenge the Samoans for those tag belts. Well, I guess plans change. I guess I'll have to find something else for Possum then... Oh hey there is also another thing in this email box...  ... Game, I do appreciate that I get to show off all these things that can happen but was this REALLY the best time to take my new manager who I had plans for? sigh Pregnancies happen. Dordevich is married to someone outside of the wrestling business so his husband is not actually a character in the database. She will be out for a while. Congratulations.  Another recent BCG graduate gets injured. I am not surprised as I find out that his opponent for the night was SPECTACULAR MACHINE. (It wasn't actually Machine's fault, the news story would tell me if he was the one at fault.) And thus we have arrived to Caged Showdown with no incidents. I'm going to blow off most of our starting feuds and start moving on to new directions for all performers involved.  And here's the card. We open hot with Gerard beating Tate and follow that with the Surfer Dudes stumbling upon the dreadfully boring interview segment of Wilkes & Lydecker. Legend gets to challenge Massacre for the Australian title but Goliath's presence ringside turns the contest in the champion's favor. Nighthawk makes sure Global don't try any funny business and throws down the challenge for next month. Assortment of babyfaces make short work of three low level bad guys and are saved from another post match attack when the lights go out and Vortex arrives to the ring. The four matches at the top all signal the end of their respective storylines. The Apocalypse are unstoppable and the match ends with an injury stoppage when Warmonger absolutely brutalizes Fox (thus writing him out). Mason and Mattell finally end their beef, one on one, no gimmick needed with Mason coming out on top. The tag title match is close but a rare miscommunication between The Duo allows Brisbane Devil to end the match by beating Boon. Afterwards tensions are somewhat high between the two and after a brief exchange of words (without a microphone) Boon leaves Mills in the ring. A steel cage surrounds the ring for the main event so no members of Goliath Global can interfere in the proceedings. It's not enough for Devine as Hamstead hangs on to his title.   I might not book Tate as strongly as he should be but he's still young-ish. I'm consistently putting him against or with our better workers so hopefully he'll learn a thing or two from them.   Samoan Demolition and The Duo put together a main event worthy match. As you can probably deduce from the little show writeup, I'm preparing to break The Duo up. I still feel there's juice for a program or two with both of them as faces, but I'll get feedback from you guys before I pull the trigger.   Hamstead and Devine deliver big time in the main event! I'll have to visit this matchup in the future.  So we once again improve our show with a single point. The Surfer Dude angle is, well, bad but we all have to start somewhere. Those ratings will get better once they get some momentum and popularity behind them. The Macquarie match is predictably not decent but rest of the stuff in the card more or less works. (Also worth noting, Lone Shark had one of the best performances hiding in the pre-show. I should have him in an actual storyline...) As you might have seen we have a thing to worry about. We don't sell out our show. Both economy and wrestling industry are still in a freefall and will bottom out before another rise. So that will probably take the rest of the year 2020.  May has been a month full of retirements but we end the month with a somewhat major death. Yoshi Oshino died while being the owner of EXODUS 2010 which means the ownership is up for grabs. Any time an owner (or a booker) of a company leaves the position, it can be applied to by the player.  Will we move our LP to Japan shortly, we'll see! (They probably won't accept and even if they did, I'd probably want to continue with APW). Goon poll~ So, we're moving on from a lot of stories and starting new ones. This is the point where I'd love to get some ideas and feedback on who to plug into what story and where to go with some stories I'm building. 1. Scottie Hamstead and the Commonwealth title. I'm comfortable keeping the title with him at the moment but he still needs a next challenger since the Devine story is more or less wrapped up. I have a few things in mind: a) Christopher Gerard. This is the option that will pull in the great segment ratings and is a logical continuation for Gerard's current story with Goliath Global. The reason I didn't move to this sooner was because I'm personally a bit slow to pull the trigger with matches between two of my top guys, always nervous I can't build up guys after that story sets the bar just a bit too high. b) The Duo. As suggested a few updates back, The Duo would work as challengers for Hamstead before I break those two and they feud with each other for a while. The winner of the Duo breakup would most likely return to fight Goliath Global afterwards. (At this point I've earmarked either Mills or Gerard to eventually topple Hamstead but plans can and will always change) c) Barney Mason. The wild card! Mason can be carried to a decent match and thus can at least try his hand in a main event setting for a month or two. d) keep the story with Dingo Devine going. A clean loss doesn't mean I can't do the match again! e) "Hey BTF, those suggestions are good/bad, but I had something else on my mind." Feel free to throw in your ideas as well! 2. The Duo. I've done the groundwork for Boon's heel turn (in a writing sense, I haven't actually started it in the game) but we can still brainstorm ideas how we do it. a) just go for it. Next show or two their relationship goes sour, Boon beats Mills up after a match and we're off to the races. b) unite against old enemies (turn afterwards). Apocalypse are without a dance partner. In canon Apocalypse/Duo is done to death but in game terms the crowd would probably be happy to see that feud come back. Easy to segway to Global feud (unite to win old enemies, take on the new big bad, lose and everything goes to poo poo). c) Hamstead needs a challenger or two. Turn afterwards. d) keep them both face. You don't have to be mad at each other, it's just wrestling! can do the previous two options and just not do the turn. e) turn them both heel. You know, we don't care about the fans anymore! You stopped caring once we hit a rough patch! And your local sports team sucks! f) "Hey BTF, those suggestions are good/bad, but I had something else on my mind." Feel free to throw in your ideas as well! 3. Samoan Demolition and the Tag Team Championship. Fox leaving leaves me in a bad spot as he and Possum were penciled in as their next challengers. The Apocalypse are also heels so that leaves my top team out of the question. What's next for the Samoans? a) The superteam of Devine and Gerard. I mean, I JUST did that match as a one off, but I can spin it to a story. b) a random assortment of faces. Positive Energy got trucked over, R & R are geeks and SHADOW LEGENDS are still locked with Goliath Global at the moment. Throw some random pairings together every once in a while and have them challenge until SHADOW LEGENDS are free and/or Surfer Dudes are done with Lydecker & Wilkes. c) Turn The Apocalypse face. I can't do this immediately (Hatemonger is still too early to turn) and it's not optimal (Apocalypse are better as heel but can play face) but I can do it sometime in the future. Comes with the bonus play of flipping Quartermaine to manage the Samoans (the old Mr. Fuji angle abandoning Demolition to manage Powers of Pain). d) "Hey BTF, those suggestions are good/bad, but I had something else on my mind." Feel free to throw in your ideas as well! 4. Dingo Devine. So, this is why Dordevich's pregnancy announcement hit my plans. After teasing her new signing for months, it was going to be revealed as Christian Blithe by attacking Devine. Now that Dordevich will be out for the next x months, I'm no longer comfortable throwing Blithe in there without a surefire mic worker with him. a) keep the Hamstead story rolling. b) team up with Gerard to take on the Samoans. c) Lone Shark. Shark is one of my best performers and is currently doing nothing. The unfortunate part in this is that I'm missing someone to do the talking for both of these wrestling machines. d) do the Christian Blithe feud anyway. Keep it short, keep it simple and maybe return to it once Dordevich returns. e) "Hey BTF, those suggestions are good/bad, but I had something else on my mind." Feel free to throw in your ideas as well! 5. Massacre and the Australian Championship. APW started the game with all three titles held by heels. I do tend to prefer longer title reigns (and with one show a month I don't feel the need to hotshot titles every month or two) but I feel like we need a face champion somewhere in the company. Hamstead and Samoan Demolition have both delivered as champions which leaves Massacre as the most likely one to drop his belt. Here's a few suggestions: a) Gerard. He starts the save with a feud against Massacre for the title. Gerard has kind of grown past the title but that is an option. b) Nighthawk. This is what I'm leaning towards. Nighthawk is good enough in the ring to hold the belt in the midcard level. c) Barney Mason. Unlike Nighthawk, Mason is heavily dependent on who he is facing. But once again, he's an option. Big muscular lad taking on another big muscular lad, what more could APW fans want? d) Alyx Macquarie. He is solid as a rock at this point and somewhat charismatic enough to carry his own programs. e) "Gosh dangit BTF, I already know what this last option means!" Feel free to throw in your ideas as well! ...That's actually a lot of different things to ask from all of you reading.
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Apr 12, 2021 12:31
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Insertnamehere31 posted:3 and 4: Devine and Lone Shark teaming and becoming the main challengers. If they get over you can use them as transitional champs before having them drop to the Apocalypse. Tevery Best posted:Make an entire thing out of searching for the contenders. Grab some legit shots, sprinkle a bunch of potential dark horses and a no-hope or two, keep the carousel spinning until the situation clears up a little (and we see anyone going at least a bit over with the fans) or someone is in a more convenient place to challenge. Doesn't need to be a formal tournament or anything, just a storyline to tide things over for now. Great suggestions here! Shark is a heel, so a team with Devine would be a face/heel tandem. I'm not sure how our fans would respond to that but it's an idea I'm willing to try. (I could turn Shark... ideas, ideas) quote:Also keep an eye out for manager prospects, since you're planning a hiring spree anyway. There's still a couple of managers in Oceania I'm considering bringing in, just none that could be easily slotted in as faces.
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Apr 17, 2021 07:52
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Just a heads up, the update pace might be getting (even) slow(er). I just started in a new job so I'm a bit drained but I see if I can squeeze an update in later this week.
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Apr 20, 2021 17:07
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Triple A posted:Can we at least expect an update this month? Maybe??? Sorry, just haven't been able to find the time/energy to play and write. So, let's try to get in that update... Episode 9: What was I doing again? It's been a while since I did the last update so I take a few moments to collect my thoughts and try to recall what I was planning to go with things. The thread feedback is helpful in recalling things. So, here's what we're going to do: - The Duo will challenge Hamstead, which leads to the break-up and the feud. - Gerard goes after Hamstead after The Duo business. - Samoans start an Open Challenge, that will lead to the team of Lone Shark and Dingo Devine to challenging them! - After a coin flip, Massacre will drop the belt to Nighthawk and we'll see where we go from there.  Vortex responds to his first "official" appearances by immediately starting funny business in the locker room. I don't think this actually creates any negative relationships between our workers, it just signals that Vortex might be a bit of a problem backstage.  Our EX2010 takeover bid ends predictably. Their new owner is a legend in Japanese wrestling and the first ever three time BHOTWG World Champion (which included a massive FOUR YEAR reign from 1991 to 1995). A change in ownership can sometimes lead to changes in product. We'll see if EXODUS starts drifting away from their current approach with the heavyweight legend in charge.  And their new booker? Just Yoshimi Mushashibo, one of the GREATEST WRESTLERS EVER? Two legends form two different eras and two different promotions joining forces in EXODUS2010?  this is wild.  I still need a guy to do carry the entertainment side of things for our babyfaces so I decide to bring in this guy as a backstage interviewer. Experience is probably the best free agent left on the manager side of things in Oceania. He IS better as a heel, but I'll keep him as a face for now. He can also be slotted in at the announcer's desk if our color commentator gets poached/leaves.  Tragic news come in from Europe. Bam Bam was a massive Norwegian beast who was one of the top stars of the European EWA promotion alongside his equally massive brother Hercules.  DIW loses a member of their roster. Panther is extremely flashy. That's it. He has nothing else to offer. I still might bring him in for a show or two to lose to our lower end talents. Remember, even if a wrestler is bad, they still might have some popularity to try to leech out of.  Remember Dirty Tricks? This is what happens when a Trick fails, spectacularly I might add. I am ashamed for my allies in the North. BHOTWG being controlled by devil-worshippers, that's nonsense! Everyone knows that RAW is the one being controlled by them!  Bad news for the rest of Japan. BHOTWG grows to Big size with a killer PPV show rated 90. This will undoubtedly lead to another hiring spree.  Frank is doing good work keeping the boys in check. Forgetting a handshake, unacceptable! (It is an old wrestling business custom to shake everyone's hand when you enter a locker room. Yes, even if you've met them earlier in the day.)  My backstage meddling is once again successful as Dingo Devine and Nighthawk become friends. Friendship! Maybe this will blossom to a mentor/protégé relationship and Devine can start sharing some of his knowledge to the young gun.  Beer Bash ends up looking like this. Boone starts preparing for his turn by not-so-subtly demanding to get out of the tag team division and into singles competition. Goliath Global arrives to mock him for his loss and are ready to beat some sense to him until Mills arrives to help his friend who doesn't look pleased to get any help from Mills. The opening match ends in an upset when Nighthawk pulls of the victory and becomes the Australian champion for the first time in his career. Two of our lower card storylines are rolled into one in a big ten man tag team match with the mysterious, yet handsome stranger Vortex picking up the win over Lydecker. Apocalypse end up bulldozing over Azumi after Mason gets sneak attacked by D-Pod and Pookie Possum's attempt to get revenge on The Apocalypse ends up badly for our Japanese import. The Samoans steamroll through R & R and afterwards cut a very shouty promo demanding real challenges. After that both Devine and Lone Shark wander to the interview set to get their promos in, Devine swearing to rebound back to the top and Shark insisting he should be the MVP of APW. Gerard and Legend pick up the win, but with a DQ when Massacre, still extremely pissed off after losing to Nighthawk attacks Gerard and batters him pillar to post even after the bell has rung. The semi-main ends in a draw when Shark and Devine are both counted out after a massive spot outside the ring. The main event sees The Duo win, but there is clearly more trouble in paradise and tension between the two. Let's see how this goes... Pre-show goes, well, poorly. I try out the team of Pookie Possum and White Wasp because, you know, animals. They end up having ZERO chemistry together, the worst possible chemistry note between tag team partners. The match itself (versus Next Level) gets the flavor text of "embarrassing wrestling." I think that's a first for me.   Nighthawk and Massacre end up having a great chemistry together! Another match-up we can revisit in the future.   A solid tag team match but it is really apparent that Gerard is the one carrying the whole thing. Blithe is not ready (granted, it's his first match on the main show) and both Legend and Mattell need to start getting their performances to the better side of 40. Legend's character is also getting kind of stale, so we have to remember to either tweak it (extending it's lifespan) or change it (re-roll gimmick rating, bonuses and penalties)   Main event is solid if a bit unspectacular after the barnburner we had last month. But that's just how it goes, ebbs and flows. Devine/Hamstead had a six month build behind it and as much as I'd like to pull off matches like that on a monthly basis, the fact is that I don't have the tools for it (yet).  The show as a whole is actually our second worst yet but I'm not panicking. Yet. We were still better than DIW. Our attendance jumps back to the sell out of 1000 which is great.  EXODUS honors their former owner by making him the first inductee to their Hall of Fame.  It begins. BHOTWG pillage WLW, hiring Necromancer, a talented and young upper carder Akio, veteran Incedible Koyama and a promising rookie Little Dragon. They also absolutely WRECK PGHW's midcard. The Ring Generals (Dean Waldorf and Marv Statler), solid veteran William Hayes and two of their young core in SATO and Haranobu Kobayashi take the money and jump ship.  The beginning of July gives us the favourites to win the year end awards at the halfway mark. APW or our guys are nowhere near to be considered for any of these awards. The British juggernaut 21CW is having a killer year, with the halfway predictions giving them the Wrestler of the Year, Company of the Year, Match of the Year (the Cornell/Cornell/Burton Ladder match that scored a 100), Show of the Year (World War 13, rated 91) and Team of the Year (Tommy Cornell and Adam Matravers) awards! (The tag team of the year award never goes to an established tag team as the AI always puts together teams consisting of two big time main eventers, as is the case with Cornell and Matravers). Next time: Boone goes for the belt and Nighthawk gets his first challenger.
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May 8, 2021 11:54
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Insertnamehere31 posted:drat, BHOTWG must be reaching WWE levels of roster bloat at this point. They have 81 workers currently on the payroll, so nothing compared to the the whopping numbers that WWE had a year or two ago (around 300(!) wrestlers "employed" between a dozen shows). For comparison, USPW has 80, 21CW has 78 and CWA has 72 workers on their rosters. Episode 10: Double Shot  I decide to tweak Legend's gimmick a little bit. His gimmick is rated Very Good and has some great perks. The merchandise part is still not useful for a company our size but the boost in Star Quality is always a net positive.  BHOTWG decides that hey, maybe there is a thing called roster bloat? Relampago is really good but is lost in the shuffle in an all time great junior division that BHOTWG currently has. All of the smaller Mexican companies would love to have him back home.  Big Bam Bam gets a similar treatment to Oshino as he is posthumously inducted into the EWA Hall of Fame. He is also the first inductee, probably pissing of the owner/booker/icon/ace/forever champion Byron. It was supposed to be him, drat it! (Inductions usually happen when a notable wrestler retires. It just happened to be that in this save two deaths triggered the first few HOF inductions.)   Two pieces of news hit the feed in almost back to back days. The body positivity news story is a new one for TEW 20 and is mostly for flavor. It just happens to be that Electric Dreamer is also a mega star in waiting for OLLIE so these stories coming up back to back make it seem that the first was the cause for the second. Kind of cool, really.  WLW isn't the only company trying to pull off Dirty Tricks. USPW commentary spends an uncomfortable amount of time on their weekly B show trash talking their closest competitor. That'll put butts on the seats.  USPW are the ones smiling at the end. Valiant is one of the biggest stars of SWF and a cornerstone of the company for almost fifteen years at this point. He joins second generation superstar Jay Chord in the big USPW hires for the month.  I'm sorry, not just a second generation superstar. THE BEST WRESTLER IN THE WORLD, Jay Chord. USPW is quickly becoming stupidly stacked with no Loyalty mechanic stopping them from grabbing almost every major star the continent has.   ZEN and DIW have their shows. DIW almost hits it out of the park. THREE matches rated over 40? Without Boo Smithson? Wake me up, I must be dreaming.  APW's Finest Hour (citation needed) is here and the card ends up like this. We open the show with a trios match. Gerard is still clearly hurting as he wrestles with his ribs taped but the faces survive when Possum manages a complicated pinning combination on the inexperienced Maniac. Afterwards the still angry Massacre shows up to shout towards Gerard and wants to end him in a big stipulation match next month. He then makes short work of poor Azumi. D-Pod explains his actions last month in a short promo. How come he has had to scratch and claw on the small time shows when a piece of stupid meat like Mason can bask in the spotlight? SHADOW LEGENDS face off against the technician duo of Mattell and Blithe and come up short when Mattell cheats to beat Legend. Devine wants a rematch after the draw last month but Shark has other ideas. If you can't beat them, join them? A three way tag match ends with Lone Shark coming out on top, after tagging himself in after Devine's finishing maneuver and stealing the pinfall. Midcard stories are progressed when the mysterious Vortex beats Prellinger and the Samoan Destruction Tour defeats Macquarie and Simonson after Team Forbes provides the interference. Duo vs Hamstead feud takes a center stage in our last two matches as Mills defeats Tate and Boon comes up short against Hamstead.   Warmonger is really good, you know. Him against Gerard is a match I'm keeping in mind whenever Gerard is back as the Commonwealth champion.   Shark and Devine don't get a chemistry note but still carry The Dudes and Those Boring Guys to a solid little match. Lucas is notably getting better performance ratings every time he steps to the ring.   The main event performs in a level we need it to. Hamstead/Mills should be (without a bad chemistry note) just a smidge better.  The show overall is NOT our finest hour, but still a good show. The Shark/Devine angle is Not Good, even with The Experience providing the entertainment as the interviewer. On the other hand, D-Pod's promo is really good considering he's very much an undercard guy popularity wise.  The start of August brings us a couple of interesting news bits. Over in USA SWF rises back up to Large. A hiring spree is sure to follow.  The number three company in USA is the first of the big three to hit a MOTYC. Funnily enough, it's also a Ladder match, much like the previous 100 rated match in the save. Andrews and Hawkins are their two best guys so this is no surprise. They don't even main event, as that honor goes to Sammy Bach winning the vacant world title (thanks, Jay Chord) for the first time in his career. It's a great match (89) but pales in comparison to the previous bout.  Europe livens up a bit with a new promotion popping up. I'll go over ELPF here a bit more whenever our World Tour hits that particular part of the world.    CWA stalwart Erik Strong gets blasted on Twitter for "some light banter." This Social Media Storm is quite a common new news story. It usually ends up with the worker in question getting the attribute "Shuns Social Media", meaning he will never be involved in another social media related news story. However, we don't end our update quite yet. We currently make around 10 000 dollars each month. This will not satisfy our owner goal when the time comes at the end of our second year. So, screw it, let's see what another show in a month would do to our finances!  I set up a new event for the first week of August. It will be shorter and cheaper and significantly more non-canon that our bigger shows. When creating new events (or modifying old ones) you have a number of options. Some are quite clear: give the show a name or ask the game for suggestions, set the length (between 1 hour and 8 hours) and date, choose a logo (without a logo the game defaults to the company logo in show results) and set ticket prices. You can also set specific A.I. instructions (for example, have every title on the line or book only 1 vs 1 matches), set the event as a "season finale" (the biggest show of the year, the culmination of all of the big stories, your WrestleMania/Final Battle/Wrestle Kingdom) and add special attractions like live music, celebrity cameos and a special entrance set.  Here's the results of this quick show. This is mostly about getting reps for the roster and checking out how badly it will wreck my finances. If I end up adding another show every month I will put more effort into them. This is me just throwing all the big guns in a massive main event and letting Warmonger spread his wings a bit in a singles environment. Next time: World Tour, Part 2. We'll check out the largest part of the CVerse, USA. Also, APW's Championship Carnival is headlined with Hamstead/Mills and Massacre/Gerard in a Last Man Standing Match!
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May 22, 2021 11:30
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Triple A posted:Perhaps we could try doing a show in West Australia or New Zealand at some point, to check on how the locals would be interested in APW. At some point, yes. Here's our popularity in all regions of Oceania:  We have zero popularity in New Zealand, Tasmania and West Australia. So, if we would go and do a show there, it would draw... approximately 10-ish people? Maybe less considering economy and wrestling business and wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy down (3 and 1(!) and still falling, baybey). I could go there, put on an absolute shitshow and STILL get a (fraction of a) point in popularity. It would unfortunately be a huge money loser. You can't set your production values to be show specific: even if I bring in the absolute skeleton crew of wrestlers (you can basically do an hour show with less than ten workers) the production values would still make the show a big money loser. And I can't reduce my values for every "small" show and up them back up for the major ones, as upgrading costs money. If I want to take the show on the road to other regions, my best bet would be Queensland or Victoria. When we get a broadcasting deal (next year would be the earliest possibility) we will start gaining pop in all areas of Oceania, slowly but surely. Insertnamehere31 posted:Definitely support the idea of occasional second shows to boost reps. It’s a shame about the Shark/Divine angle not doing so hot though. Hopefully they can work out the kinks or get carried by their work rate. They WILL be carried by their workrate. When I actually throw them against the Samoans, I'm pretty certain they'll get some decent ratings. Even angles with the Samoans added in should do better (Menace is still helpful for good angles, see Massacre/Hamstead/etc).
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May 22, 2021 18:03
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Testekill posted:I've gotta say that the ban of technician flyers is actually a bit rougher than you'd think; Sure there's only 8 technician flyers in the region but that includes the Diamond Dogs, Halloween Knight and Killer B. ZERO is also very talented but he's got no entertainment skills at all so he's a bad fit for a sports entertainment product like APW. I didn't even realize (i.e. I forgot to check) both Diamond Dogs were classified as Technician Flyers. As far as the unemployed side goes, I'm missing out on both Black Flash and Monday Next. Both belong on the upper echelons of in-ring workers in Oceania but are otherwise lacking in the charisma department. Next is also a former RAW guy and his pop is in the 50s so he'd easily be our most popular guy by quite a wide margin. Testekill posted:And I'm just going to say this but I miss Dusty Ducont being poo poo. If you lost someone to a competitor then you'd just give them a going away match/matches with Dusty and they'd almost certainly come out with an injury. Ducont being... shockingly competent is still a fact I'm coming to terms with. (CVerse, much like the real world, has a long lineage of larger wrestlers, whose only worthwhile quality is "being big." Dusty "Dusty Bin" Ducont is one of the joke characters included in one of the earlier iterations of CVerse. The joke is that he was horrid in all facets of professional wrestling so it was a challenge for the player to make something, anything out of this guy. Later years have seen him become passable in a minor miracle.)
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May 27, 2021 19:58
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Episode 11: World Tour, Part 2 Before we dive to the current state of the US scene in TEW, a quick history lesson... Professional wrestling stayed as a sideshow attraction for decades, before the early 60s saw the beginning of regional promotions starting to make professional wrestling a true business. The "Traditional Era" lasted around 20 years with these territories content to rule their set areas and wrestlers moving from company to company keeping their act fresh. Then Supreme Wrestling Federation hit the scene like a thunderstorm. A young promoter Richard Eisen shocked the system, poaching most of the big names from around the country, putting on the first wrestling PPV event in 1980 (Supreme Challenge, headlined by Sam Strong and Rip Chord) and marketing his wrestling as the greatest show on earth. The regional promotions couldn't find an answer in time and were all extinct by the end of the decade. (This is extremely similar to the real life by design. Vince McMahon, owner and promoter of WWF/WWE, did the same in the 80s. SWF was pretty much the WWE stand-in for the longest time in CVerse.) Much like in Japan, 1996 was a turning point. An I.T software billionaire J.K. Stallings Jr. founded his own company, Hollyweird Grappling Company, and made some big name signings, including the mega stars past their prime Strong and Chord. This launched HGC to compete with SWF. At the same time, the east coast saw the rise of multiple competing companies, After a brief war, only one of those companies survived. Danger And Violence Extreme (DAVE) was everything that SWF and HGC were not: hardcore, anti-establishment, in your face, balls to the walls action. In short, it was the CVerse version of ECW. While DAVE never rose to the size of SWF or HGC, it presented an alternative and changed the entire landscape of the industry. HGC lasted until 2004, until Stallings was bought out by a consortium led by his star wrestler Tommy Cornell. They rebranded as Total Championship Wrestling and adjusted towards a more pure wrestling based product, differentiating themselves from the sports entertainment of SWF. DAVE died in 2007 and their stars spread all over the scene. Sam Strong resurfaced and bought a small regional promotion USPW and led them to the number three spot just below SFW and TCW. 2014 saw a complete role reversal between the big three, as USPW was bought out by Alan Packer, owner of the revolutionary streaming service Reverie. With a large influx of money and a massive global reach thanks to the streaming platform, USPW leapfrogged both of the giants and started poaching their bigger stars. USA is the centerpiece of the pro wrestling world, both in real life and in the CVerse. At the beginning of the 2020 database, USA has 12 promotions active, the most of any game area. Traditionally the US companies get the most players (at least when judged by the GDS forums) and most attention from the creator Adam Ryland. The 2020 edition sees the power struggle between "The Big Three" evolve, the west coast war continuing, Confederation of the Territories keeping the smaller companies gelled together and a new opportunity to play with an established company. Let's start with the smaller companies and work our way up.   The death of DAVE is still felt in the CVerse after almost fifteen years. FCW is one of the companies born out of their ashes. Offering a very traditional wrestling product harkening back to the good old 80s with clean cut heroes and despicable villains with a local flavor, the Puerto Rican stalwart have been a solid company to play with from the start. Puerto Rican Power, the owner and founder. has finally retired. This is both a positive and a negative. PRP was their biggest star and a guaranteed draw. But now you can book them without having to keep him ultra strong all the time. They have also lost two of their blonde stars at long last, as "The Marksman" Kirk Jameson and "Mainstream" James Hernandez were predicted to jump to bigger and better things for years.  So they've plugged those holes with... Frederique and Harlem Haynes? Both past their prime midcard stalwarts from the big leagues? No, FCW's next crop of stars come from the inside.  MUTANT is their big success story of the past few years. And there are guys like the insanely charismatic Joffy Laine, Xavi Ferrera, Cobra and the former can't miss rookie Davis Wayne Newton waiting in the wings. FCW is the outsider of the US scene, both geographically and politically. They have never flirted with the COTT but have never been at odds with anyone either. They currently have an ongoing talent trading deal with PSW that is very rarely used. If FCW forms relationships, it's most likely with someone south of the border. I have personally never played with FCW but they look like a very fun promotion in this edition. A solid tag division, some exciting young talents and an established upper card. Just looking through makes me want to start (another) new save...   Rhode Island Pro Wrestling has been part of the CVerse since TEW 2007 but this year is the first time that players get to actually play with them. The BIG new feature in TEW 2020 was the long awaited ability to play as a developmental company. Developmental companies are usually owned by another company and used as a training ground for young wrestlers, usually for those who graduate from your own wrestling school. (Real world examples include OVW, DSW, FCW and NXT, all of which were at one point developmentals for WWF/WWE). Whenever a wrestler is deemed "ready" by the game/player, they are called up to the owner company to start their career. Unfortunately, the AI cannot handle this mechanic AT ALL. A wrestler is called up, used as undercard fodder for the duration of their contract and then are let go to try their luck in smaller companies.  Most of the guys working in RIPW are brand new additions to the CVerse world as only four of the 26 wrestlers were in the 2016 database. It's still hard to say which of these guys will break through and become the next "Supreme Superstar." I'm placing my bet on Mr. LaRoux here.     The next two companies have been linked together for their whole existence. GSW and IPW have been stuck in "The West Coast War" for years at this point with no progress towards a clear victory for either side. Both are focused on hardcore wrestling (they actually have identical products) but still manage to have a different look and feel from each other. GSW is more urban and has that grimy, low budget feeling. IPW is more "corporate", hardcore wrestling done by the numbers and have the added benefit of being a part of COTT and having a talent trading agreement in place with the non- West Coast hardcore promotion, PSW. Following the two companies during different saves, it is quite common for wrestlers to jump from one company to another.  Both companies have some solid tag teams, but I'd give IPW the edge here thanks to EVIL KILLER CLOWNS, Coulrophobia. The two also work in Mexico with OLLIE.  IPW's current big star is the former TCW low card talent Aldous Blackfriar. He was a fairly unassuming rookie in previous editions, so it's fun to see him flourishing outside the TCW system as an extremely entertaining brawler. IPW might not have the deepest roster, but still boast guys like Hustle Muvva, Frantic Ali and Hugh De Aske. Their definite weakness in this edition is the fairly bad crop of rookies they are working with.  GSW's definite ace is and has always been Fro Sure, who is like Blackfriar but even better. Behind him are top line talent like Busta Capp, Deaf Touch (the only deaf wrestler in CVerse) and Cali Slick. IPW and GSW are both fun companies to play around with and follow. I don't think I've seen the war ever end in one way or another in any of the TEW editions I've played.   Mid Atlantic Wrestling is the CVerse tutorial company and the centerpiece of COTT. The classic question on the GDS forums is always "what's a good company to start with in CVerse" and the answer is MAW nine times out of ten. (The only bad part with playing your first game with MAW is the fact that they start their year with a tournament show, The Rip Chord Invitational, which can be challenging to do when you are dealing with a brand new roster.) Their role has always been to build up new talent and see them fly the nest and move on to bigger and better things. Every edition a new, hot talent debuts in MAW, have found their way to the top of the card in the next edition and have found a new, bigger home in the next. I did my long TEW 2016 game with MAW and it is probably my favourite promotion in the US. The change between editions is the working agreement with TCW. TCW sends their young talents from their training camp to work with MAW and MAW gets some financial aid in return. This also means that the legendary Mid Atlantic Boot Camp wrestling school has closed it's doors.  Looking at their roster, they've once again lost most of their big names from 2016. Greg Gauge, Roderick Remus, The Dynamite Express and George Wolfe have all moved on. Their top dog is the charismatic brawler Bradley Blaze, who has really benefitted from getting a new picture. (The GDS forums have an active re-rendering community, who create new versions of the in-game portraits almost weekly. As the database is highly moddable, it's easy to change the picture of any wrestlers in the game. Sometimes Ryland changes the picture between editions, usually signaling a change in character or perception. I'm currently playing with all the default pictures, as I haven't found the time to search for killer alts in the forums.) The rest of the upper card is still solid, featuring one of my personal favourites, the underappreciated workhorse Miller Fjorde that has finally climbed to the top of the company. They also still have perennial GDS forums favourite THE ARCHITECT (Of Your Destruction) and two future great tag teams in DeMarcus & Grey and The Hearbreak Express.  Most of their undercard is filled with the last of the Boot Camp trainees and a bunch of TCW trained rookies. Pictured here is Joey Fili, a man that is in no way, shape or form influenced by Roman Reigns, current WWE big dog. Despite this, I'll surely be starting a MAW game at some point of the TEW 2020 lifespan, as they are always a fun promotion to play with.   If companies like MAW and FCW are considered a bit old school, NYCW IS old school. They are stuck in the 1970's and drat proud of it. A body slam was a high spot back in the day and drat sure still is in NYCW! Charismatic heroes, big menacing villains, that's how we roll. Traditionally they've had a nostalgia act or two clogging up the card, but not anymore. The roster is shockingly young with a few solid veterans sprinkled in.  NYCW also have EVIL LUMBERJACKS.  THEY HAVE EVIL ELVIS (or just a Honky Tonk Man.)  A HEROIC BASEBALL.  A STRAIGHT UP MAFIA. NYCW is a fun regional promotion, has always been. They cater to a fanbase that loves their clichés.   QAW is the other active women's wrestling company in the CVerse. They used to play the second fiddle to AAA, the the family friendly women's wrestling company in the USA but the arrival of TEW 2020 brought a shock to many a CVerse enthusiasts. AAA closed down in 2017, after providing twenty years of excellence, seeing their fanbase move on to QAW and to the excellent women's division of USPW. In-ring QAW is strongly influenced by the Mexican lucha libre style and as mentioned, have a budding friendship with the Mexican CILL promotion.  I have very little to say about their roster as I've yet to play with any of these characters. It's still an extremely solid roster, filled with talent from all around North America. And since they are the only women's only company in the region, they suffer very little from poaching. (Both USPW and CWA have women's divisions, but you rarely see them aggressively raid QAW. A more major thread would be one of the Mexican companies growing big enough to lock up talent on exclusive deals). Foxxy LaRue is a clear highlight of the bunch, even if her heel run has already gone slightly off the rails. (Ronin 3, the stable mentioned in her bio, has already broken up in my save).  Pinky Perez, merely one of the best wrestlers in the world, also regularly wrestles with QAW in addition to her home company CILL. In summary, QAW is a fun and unique promotion in the US and definitely worth a try.   DAVE might be dead, but their soul very much lives on. PSW is very much like DAVE, just on a much smaller scale. The revolution that they promised to keep alive has floundered during the thirteen years they've been in business. DAVE might have taken over the world by storm, PSW have merely coasted along with the reputation of it's predecessor and seen it's thunder stolen by the west coast hardcore promotions who do the same thing with a bit more edge. Even PSW have realized that. The top of the card doesn't really any of those hardcore style workers. It's all about guys like Nelson Callum and Ernest Youngman, two excellent technicians who can effortlessly control the crowd both in the ring and on the microphone. Both are destined for bigger things outside the Steel City and in all likelihood won't stay long enough to "complete the revolution." They don't really scream "PSW" to me, even if Callum has pretty much spent his entire career there.  Ash Campbell, the son of the DAVE legend, the late Nemesis is much more PSW than the aforementioned duo. For the longest time, he was one of the more average second generation wrestlers with the feeling that he could never step out of the shadow of his father. Now, he is one of the guys PSW can be build upon.  The undercard can be pretty dire. Wicked Lester is one of their "hot" prospects. He can talk, he can hit a guy with a trash can but can do very little else. But he BLEEDS pure PSW spirit. The true young highlights are guys like second generation star Logan Wolfsbaine, a guy who screams MAW in Austin Smooth and charismatic Xavi Ferrera. PSW are also quite the fun promotion to play with. I did my first ever save with them in TEW 2020. It's a crew very much carried by the talented top card, but with a few good hires and using the limited wrestlers in the undercard with the best of their abilities, you can create some really fun shows.   Pro wrestling had always been a big man's business in the US, until CZCW changed the game. They built their entire presentation around lightweight wrestlers wowing the audience with jaw-dropping athleticism and break neck speed. This was unheard of back then and still their calling card almost 30 years later. Even if smaller wrestlers have prevailed in bigger companies over the years and their style has been adapted by the big boys, CZCW is still the best at what they do. In 2020 they have changed the game again, being the first US promotion to go full on intergender, with men and women fighting against each other equally. None of the women have leaped to the top of the company, yet, so that's up to the player. (CZCW buffed up by the Mexican based female talent is a scary thought.)  Many of their former stars have moved on to bigger companies or have retired, so CZCW is in a bit of a minor rebuild. Their heart and soul is Masked Cougar, an excellent high flyer who, alongside Frankie Perez, are the two veterans holding up the top of the card together.  CZCW also sees the "The Priest of Pain" Pablo Rodriquez, slow down his career on the west coast. Formerly a huge star in Mexico for almost two decades, he is now the leading man of the entire COTT alliance, holding the COTT Heavyweight championship at the beginning of the 2020 database. (Alliances can have shared title belts. COTT has two, the heavyweight title and a tag team championship. Champions and their respective belts can be loaned by any member of the alliance on any shows and defended as normal.  Much like QAW, CZCW has a strong connection to Mexico that has seen many a luchador enter their hallowed bingo halls. Tigre Salvaje Jr. and his tag partner El Jaguar provide the good lucha things in this edition and are without a doubt the premiere team in the promotion, alongside Japan-bound American Cobras. If any company is set to grow in size and truly become the next "big" American company, it's CZCW. It all depends how their next generation develops and how the player can guide them through that transition period. But the gap between the small companies and The Big Three is still a massive one.   TCW is the one that has drawn the shortest straw out of the three. They were on the cusp of actually outgrowing SWF around 2014 before things went a bit wrong. The near-bankruptcy set them back considerably. They can't throw around the same kind of money that SWF and USPW can. They lost the man who basically molded the company to his own image, Tommy Cornell almost five years ago. Generational superstar Rocky Golden left to SWF. Last of the HGC originals Ricky Dale Johnson has retired. And in this particular save they have already lost just THE BEST WRESTLER IN THE WORLD Jay Chord. But TCW aren't out of the game quite yet. Not as long as they have Aaron Andrews and Wolf Hawkins.   Andrews and Hawkins are the heirs to Cornell in both talent and legacy. But there is clear gap behind them, especially with Chord gone. Sammy Bach and Joshua Taylor are both trusted veterans but their best days are behind them. The burden to develop and step up fall to guys like Freddy Huggins, Mighty Mo and this man:  Much like his brother, Greg Gauge is also ridiculously talented and a surefire third superstar alongside Hawkins and Andrews for the next decade. TCW is currently pretty barren for truly young (under 30) rookies, as none of the MAW squad doesn't look like a budding star, yet. TCW tend to be the one to hire the cream of the crop of the smaller companies as SWF and USPW raid their top stars. Guys like Sure, Youngman, de Aske, Perez, Cougar and Ferrera tend to end up there sooner or later. TCW is all about "pure" wrestling. No shenanigans, no gimmicks. It's all about sportsmanship and serious, sports-like presentation. The good old sports entertainment is left for two of the giants of the business.   SWF has always been the WWF/WWE stand-in and undoubtedly the most played promotion in CVerse. In 2020 they are in the biggest slump period in their history, thanks to USPW and Operation Lullaby (three undercover FBI agents entering the pro wrestling industry to try to get to SWF and expose the suspected tax fraud of their owner Richard Eisen. Yes, seriously). For the first time in their 40 year history, they are facing a company that can outbid them for almost any talent. For many, myself included, it's karmic retribution. But somehow USPW has become almost worse when it comes to hiring almost everyone with a pulse. (This is mostly due to the changes to the AI between editions. The AI is more ruthless when hiring people. Overbloated roster? No problem, we have the money.) They have lost almost ALL of their main eventers from 2016 to either retirement or to USPW, some of these happening in this particular save (the hires of Remo and Valiant). SWF is the classic sports entertainment style company. Larger than life heroes and villains fighting with some dumb soap opera slotted in.  Former TCW star Rocky Golden is the current megastar of the SWF universe. He has never been the greatest in-ring technician, but he has the famous "it-factor" that has made him the biggest star on the planet. Whenever his massive contract (325 000 dollars per month) comes to an end, the bidding war will be a sight to behold. The departures and retirements that have plagued SWF are in the process of being filled with a younger generation of homegrown stars like The Bumfhole Twins, large beasts Scythe and Ekuma and independent standouts Mikey Lau and Mainstream Hernandez.  Their undoubted future megastar is Spencer Spade. This man has been a budding megastar since he was added in to the database in 2010. Players have had their chances to make him that star for years at this point, but SWF are finally at the point of pulling the trigger with his push. He WILL end up as the best wrestler in the world in almost every save that I've done in 2016 and 2020.  SWF also employs the biggest rear end in a top hat in CVerse, Big Smack Scott, a man who is loved/hater in equal amounts in the GDS forums. SWF are in a better position to bounce back than TCW but it is still a massive uphill climb to claim the position usurped by USPW.   USPW are the biggest company in the world. The difference between them and SWF isn't massive (a popularity point or two across the USA) but the bigger issue is the money. As I've said before, USPW has a massive amount of money in the bank (around 69 million at this point of the save  ) and can and will outbid anyone. This leads to the roster quickly going from "kind of top heavy" to "holy loving poo poo."  Meet Rich Money, one of their biggest stars, a booker and one of the first men to "jump ship" from SWF to USPW. Despite nearing 50, he's still on of the biggest tools USPW has in their arsenal.  The face of USPW has always been Nicky Champion and that hasn't changed and won't change anytime in the future.  The stars of USPW aren't just the men. Their women's division has some serious talent, the biggest of them being the daughter of Sam Strong. Alicia Strong is probably the biggest star in women's wrestling history at this point and without an equal in wrestling today (besides Higa and another second generation star making a name for herself in Canada).  Operation Lullaby was outed to the public, but two out of three agents decided to stay in the business. Agent Braun has somehow become one of the hottest stars in the biggest company in the world. CVerse is just silly at points, really. You want to play TEW on easy mode? Play USPW.
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Jun 5, 2021 12:31
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I do apologize for the infrequent updates. Episode 12: Duo No More  RAW starts off their month with two title changes. Midcard stalwart Lynx defeats former DIW break-out star Tombstone for the RAW Quest championship. On a quick glance Tombstone is moving up the ranks and is ready to be moved up to main event angles, thus the title change. The TV title changes hands the next week, when not-interested-in-steroids (the fool!) Luke Steele ends APW alumni Belushi's title run after four months.  Reggie Tate, possibly feeling that he should be more than just a loss post for Goliath Global, starts wheeling and dealing backstage. Once again, this actually doesn't DO anything... yet. It is possible for a group of friends in a locker room to form a "clique" and start some trouble together.  At this point I also remember to release our road agent Markus Rush. I actually haven't been paying him, since I haven't been using him since his awful first showing. But I really have no use for him as he doesn't have the qualities to be a manager and our backstage morale doesn't rely on him.   SWF realize that they really should be building a new generation of stars. The tag team titles move from arguably the best SWF tag team of all time, The Amazing Bumfholes, to the new pairing of Spencer Spade and Mainstream Hernandez. The world title sees a shock change happen as Golden drops the title to second generation star, uh, Hollywood Brett Starr. Exciting times at the land of Supreme.  Over in Japan, WLW makes a huge acquisition. Recent BHOTWG departure Hijo del Relampago stays in Japan and buffs up the upper card of our Japanese allies. They also make some smaller hires, including EX2010 star Commander Kawagishi (who will be working for both companies from this moment on. If he works all shows, that's around 15 shows... a month.)  PGHW goes back to well as Kozue Kawashima wins the PGHW World title for the fourth time in his career. This isn't as disastrous as I feared when I wrote the Japan part of the world tour. Kawashima has been excellent this year.  On the surface Team Taku winning the BCG tag team titles isn't really noteworthy. Sure, it's one of the only father/son tag teams in the database winning gold together for the third time, but that's not the catch here. The father, Toshinobu, pictured in the article is actually retiring from the ring in three months time at 53 years old. So, a feel good moment for the family, one final hurrah before Toshinobu moves on. But why were the titles vacant in the first place? Titles are usually vacated when the champion is either injured or leaves the company before dropping the title. I haven't seen any major departures or injuries lately from BCG, so I take a peek at the title history. I find out that one half of the previous champions, Yorii Ippitsusai, retired with the belt, leading to vacating the belts. BCG, you wouldn't do the exact same thing twice in a row, would you?  God dammit Hellcat, you JUST left CILL under the exact same circumstances!  Over in England, 21CW are sweating bullets. Tommy Cornell, the guy this whole database is named after, is getting to the end of his contract and the vultures are circling. USPW and SWF both immediately throw their contract offers towards the man. Even if he's 42 years old, Cornell is STILL one of the best in the world and his return to America would be a major story.  Championship Carnival is here and we have incidents to take care of...  Hey, more karaoke!  Hey, Tate is being handled before I even get there!  Still waiting to see ONE negative incident, I turn myself to meddling with the rest of the gang.  Friendship!  Ignore the fact that I typod the name of our main title in that last angle. We open with a mix of two angles, where the focus is on Boon, who barely even tries to be in the match, leading to Mattell getting the win of Legend. We keep up with the theme, as D-Pod and The Boring Ones manage to get one over Our Heroes With Abs, with a post match scuffle. Since this is a show called Championship Carnival, Nighthawk defends against Blithe in a quick match. Team Forbes challenge the trio of Simonson/Macquarie/Vortex to an elimination tag team match next month, the faces naturally agree. Samoans maul Possum and Wasp, with The Apocalypse mocking the small challengers ringside during and after the match. The de facto #1 contender's match between them and the dysfunctional duo of Devine and Shark sees the shocking roll-up win by Shark after Possum distracts Warmonger. The double main event is pretty clear cut. Gerard finally bests Massacre in a Last Man Standing Match and is definitely head towards Hamstead. Hamstead and Mills have a close contest, but the difference maker isn't Viktor Goliath. It's Donovan Boon, who "shockingly" knocks his tag team partner out with a steel chair. The show ends with Boon standing over the body of his fallen friend with Goliath and Hamstead celebrating their victory on the background.    Rating:  Nighthawk's first title defense is fine enough. When (if) Blithe gets over and develops, this should be a better match months and years down the line.   Rating:  Gerard and Massacre have a good match. Massacre has been solid, but he might be taking a bit of a backseat for a while. He's taken losses from our top babyface and our new midcard title holder. He's still over, but I'm drawing a bit of a blank who should he be feuding with next.   Rating: Hamstead vs Mills is exactly one point better than Hamstead/Boon. This had more interference and a big storyline progression, so it's a BIT disappointing, but what can you do? Speaking of...  This is the point where we officially pull the trigger on the Boon heel turn. When you set up a turn (or a gimmick change), you get to choose the segment where it happens. The game will remind you every time, when a worker setting up a change appears. When doing a turn, it is wise to build it for a bit. Sudden turns CAN work, but they might go awry.  Boon's turn is a complete success. Now I'll just have to change his gimmick, since a "Fan Favourite" character won't really work anymore. Feel free to suggest a new gimmicks for Boon. Championship Carnival scores a 51. Even with two equally good main events, the angles bring the show down a bit.  Another one of these new social media related flavor stories. Melody, one of the bigger women's division stars in USPW, heads off for her maternity leave and stirs up some poo poo on Twitter before she goes. Gorgon, a respected veteran and one of the great women monsters of the past fifteen years (and a fellow USPW wrestler) responds. Melody might be getting a less than a warm welcome whenever she comes back...  Steffi Chee is one of the many wrestlers retiring this month, but the only one opening her own wrestling school. When a wrestler retires, they have a somewhat random chance to open up a wrestling school of their own. It will take a year or two before the first crop of rookies graduate from there. (A big change in TEW2020, almost all workers now graduate from a wrestling school instead of just appearing in the database.)  SWF make an interesting hire as they randomly decide to show the middle finger to WLW. Brave just won the WLW tag team titles a few weeks ago and now he's heading back to SWF. (Brave actually graduated from the SWF wrestling school in 2005 and had an unremarkable six year run. He's a strange hire at this point, as SWF should be going for a youth movement.) But hey, who cares about that, when another former SWF wrestler returns home just a few days later.  It took around 225 000 dollars a month, but Tommy Cornell is indeed coming back to SWF for the first time since 1997. This is HUGE both for the in-game power struggle (21CW loses their top wrestler, SWF plugs a hole in their main event and USPW doesn't get another ridiculous star) but for the lore~ of the CornellVerse. SWF in 1997 was happily presenting a family friendly product, designed to manufacture as much merchandise for kids to pour their parents money into. Thus, the in-ring products and the stories told where quite simple and harmless. And then an February edition of their "Supreme Assault" TV show happened. Allow me to quote one of the CVerse history articles written by Ryland over a decade ago: quote:For one of the most influential matches ever held, this was very low profile. Held in 1997 on SWF's weekly "Supreme Assault" TV show, the match was not even announced as taking place until that very night. Nemesis was one of the hottest heels in the promotion at this time, and was being groomed for a main event run against world champion Christian Faith. Tommy Cornell was a young babyface rookie who was seen as having potential, but hadn't been given much to do other than defeat expendable midcard heels. The match was put together simply to give the two wrestlers something to do, as the main focus of the show was on a main event battle royal that neither was involved in. So yeah, Cornell "coming home" is a Big Deal. August comes to an end, so I head over to check our finances. Did our attempt to do two shows a month pay off in the finances department?  Yeah, it did. Even with cheaper ticket prices for the Canberra Special, we make around 5000 dollars more this month than the previous. When we do a second show a month with normal ticket prices, we should be making closer to 20 000 dollars a month and that's before the economy and wrestling business start to bounce back (Economy at zero(!) and falling(!!!) but wrestling industry at one and RISING(!!!)). The unfortunate part is the fact we have to do the shows in the New South Wales region to actually make the money, so expanding our popularity beyond our home area has to wait. But two shows is still better than one: our wrestlers get more work and theoretically develop faster, they grow in popularity faster, the company grows faster and we get more money. Goon Suggestion Time~ Our schedule currently looks like this:  I would be adding a show on every Saturday, Week 1 of every month. And here's where I'm once again asking for suggestions. These events need names. So, suggest names for our 12 new annual shows! Next time: Why, Boon, why? Also time to get two shows in an update, hopefully.
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Jun 19, 2021 11:18
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Sorry, it's been a while... again. I haven't been on my computer for the past three weekends for various reasons, so playing/writing time has been quite nonexistent. Episode 13: Double Shot So, September arrives. I add Muscle Carnage to the calendar for Saturday of the 1st week.  Boon's gimmick also has to change, since his "Fan Favourite" character isn't really going to work anymore.  Just put "ex" in front of it, we're fine! (He'll be doing a classic weaselly character, and I'm keeping the gimmick change quite safe and generic. A teammate turning isn't really breaking new ground in wrestling storytelling).  Since I'm starting to get some extra income, I might as well start upgrading our merchandising department. Merchandise is divided to ten levels, the higher the level, the more money we earn from merch. Once we hit the next level, we should be getting info on our top ten merch sellers. You can upgrade to the next level on three different paces: Conservative is slow (1% a week) but cheap (120$ a week), Normal is a bit faster (2%) but also a bit more expensive (250$ a week) and Rapid is fast (4% a week) but the most expensive (600$ a week). You can change the pace anytime you want, I'll be starting on Normal. So we should be leveling up a year on from now.  TCW make some... interesting hires. By which I mean dumb. Harry Allen and American Machine are two tag team guys well past their primes. I fail to see the point here. (The answer is popularity. Both are former/current TV guys, so they have pop across the nation, unlike all the great young guys killing it in the smaller companies. Allen and Machine can be easily slotted into the midcard without any buildup.)  A DIW stalwart decides to leave our dear competitors. Mulhoney is getting old and has really nothing special to offer to me, except his popularity. He might be getting some pre-show duty, losing to some undercarders hidden in there. Let's get right to it! Muscle! Carnage!  Hey, I guess our foreign friends are gelling with the locker room, nice!  Here's the card. We open with Gerard officially making it clear that he's coming for the Commonwealth title. Next, we wrap up our two midcard tag team stories, when The Apocalypse finally beat Possum and Wasp and The Dudes defeat Warren & Whirlwind. D-Pod once again talks about Mason but is quite clearly ducking a singles match with Captain Caveman. Oliverio gets fed to the angry Mason as D-Pod observes from ringside. Mattell is heading towards a title match with Nighthawk so he gets a singles win over Legend. Boon arrives to rant to the crowd, going on about how he wasn't even Mills' best man at his wedding, was always second billing from him and was just used. No more, Boon is his own man and wants to start with proving that he is better than Mills, one on one. Mills doesn't arrive to provide a rebuke. Boon goes over Simonson, who is distracted by Nameth, being the final buildup to the elimination match in the next event. Samoans are quite clearly worried about Devine & Shark, so they assault Devine. Shark saves his impromptu partner and is pretty much a babyface at this point. He manages to still steal a cheeky rollup win over the bigger Malietoa, almost certainly featuring an eyerake, stomp to the toes and a low blow preceding the pin. Main event sees the babyfaces beat Goliath Global once again.   Let's get right to the results. The Bad: - Boon's promo BOMBS with a 35, even with Alex Arturro Experience providing the entertainment in that angle as the interviewer/microphone stand (he will be included in most segments going forward, I always need a solid mic guy in there.) When I put Mills back on screen next month, he'll have to pull up this angle a bit before it is dead on the water. - I forget to officially turn Shark in the segment before the Shark/Malietoa match, which means they get penalized for a heel/heel match. Shark is also off his game, so while the match is decent, I expected a bit better. The Good: - Mattell did really good on his match, reassuring me that Mattell/Nighthawk will be a real solid affair. - Mason/Oliverio was shockingly decent. Yes, I' still being surprised with Mason not sucking absolute balls. - Main event was great! Devine and Gerard having good chemistry together is a thing I'm willing (and able) to exploit once in a while.  SWF is really on a roll with bringing the boys back together. Enygma made his name in SWF, but his big main event run was so badly fumbled he jumped to USPW in 2008, pretty much starting the hostilities between the two companies. Enygma flourished in USPW but was let go recently, presumably being deep in time decline, but gets on more payday from SWF.  SWF also throw some more money around as the Mexican sensation El Leon joins the Land of Supreme. Leon is the biggest star EILL has after Champagne Lover's retirement and Rock God Alvarez' major injur-  oh. ...so this is a blow to the big dogs of Mexico.  Good news, it's a girl! Dordevich will be returning in about four months and I DEFINITEVELY have a guy who could use a mouthpiece...  Tragedy strikes in Japan as the former BCG young lion dies in a traffic accident.  DIW gives the title to their next top guy Mueller, which is a smart move.  D-Pod is singled out as a future star. I HOPE that this is the case, but his in-ring performances aren't up to par... yet.  APW's Coming Home is our next stop and the card shapes up to be something like this. Goliath doesn't want Gerard having a title match, so he does a quick promo about how Gerard hasn't won an "official" number one contender's match. The first matches go to the SHADOW LEGENDS, putting that small feud to rest. The Team Forbes versus assortment of faces goes to the faces and ends that feud as well. The Dudes get some mic time, stating their intention to get to the tag title hunt, but get attacked by Maniac Monster out of the blue. D-Pod has new, shinier and bigger muscle in the form of The Apocalypse for the time being and Mason can't carry Positive Energy to victory. Mills gets to mic and isn't really in a hurry to start fisticuffs with Boon. Brisbane Devil and Dingo Devine have a singles match that could've been a main event but I decide to throw the biggest guns to the top. A predictable double DQ prolongs the two feuds, sending the fans home happy and excited to come back next month. Or something like that?  And here's the results. The Bad: - Mills' promo is better than Boon's but not great. - Team Forbes is not really growing on their performances despite constant air time and even some wins. - Nighthawk/Mattell is merely good, because Nighthawk has a major night off. A bummer. The Good: - Surfer Dude Lucas is like six months away from being a top ten guy in the company at the pace his performances keep climbing. I'm sticking The Dudes to another low card feud while the Samoans and Devine/Shark go through their angle. - I'm blessed with another great chemistry, when Mills and Gerard have good chemistry tagging together. The main is great thanks to that, with Boon and Hamstead being their solid selves.  TCW continues their puzzling moves as they sever their ties with PGHW. The news that we should worry about are these two:   Pinn is a no brainer to bring on board, one of the two or three guys worth something to us from DIW. He's going downhill pretty soon, but is popular in our area and a hell of a talker. Even if he can't wrestle, he's real easy to shift to a manager role.   Louie Louis, a former APW guy and shares the same problems most of our current roster do. He's not particularly entertaining, nor is he a top line wrestler but he seems solid and is popular as hell compared to our top guys. Once I shift the title to Gerard, I could use a few top line challengers. I have Boon and Warmonger as fresh guys to face him, but I could definitively use Pinn and maybe Louis would agree to lose in a main event program despite his newfound fame. So, should we bring in Pinn and/or Louis?
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Jul 17, 2021 11:04
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Triple A posted:Louie is a no-brainer but the fat man is a bit on the old side of things. Don't we already have a lot of roster to work with though? Our roster is getting quite large but that's just how my games always end up. "I go on a hiring spree" is a common term among TEW players for a reason.
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Jul 17, 2021 15:14
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Triple A posted:We could take an overall examination of our whole roster at the start of next year then. That is very much what I was planning to do when the next year (eventually) rolls around. Who has gained popularity, who has fallen, who have developed, who have not.
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Jul 17, 2021 17:13
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Insertnamehere31 posted:We’re still on per appearance contracts, right? So the only real issue with a large roster is getting enough time for everyone, which the second monthly shows should help with Yeah, everyone has a (more or less) cheap PPA contract. The guys that aren't used in storylines/the main card are getting their reps in on the pre-shows, either developing/waiting for the right inspiration to strike/being a designated loser. Also, I'm glad to see that you lads are still following along despite quite lengthy breaks between updates.
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Jul 17, 2021 17:55
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Testekill posted:Louis Scorpio isn't particularily appealing, at best he's okay but he doesn't offer much. I guess maybe try a program to establish the next champ. Pretty much this. He's on the lower end of interesting RAW talent but is notable for being the first wrestler to leave the Aussie juggernaut in this particular save. His relative popularity makes him a worthwhile get (even if it is just for a short six-ish month run), since we are a pop over performance company. The thread wants him in, and I have an easy program for him. He was in APW for a few years before going to RAW and never sniffed the main event scene. Now he's returning as a big shot "star" (he was never more than a low card guy in RAW) and expecting to waltz right to the top of the company. He'll get a quick title shot, lose (hopefully without blowing a gasket) and slide to a more of a supporting role.
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Jul 18, 2021 09:34
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Episode 14: Let's Get Ready To Rumble The thread has spoken and we will be bringing both Dumfrey Pinn and Louie "Louie Louis" Scorpio in once they leave DIW and RAW respectively. I've penciled in their debuts/returns in my head for last show of the year, Early Christmas Bash, to end the year with a bang.  Some drama has been going on behind the scenes. The seemingly happy marriage of Rusty Mills and Stephanie Drucker ends in a divorce out of nowhere. This results in a negative backstage relationship every time (I believe). Drucker hasn't really been doing anything special, being the manager for Pookie Possum and not having the entertainment skills to carry angles any better than Possum. If I was playing with another type of company, this would probably tastelessly play into the angle with Mills and Boon. Since we are a Family Friendly company, I'll keep it to few jabs from Boon on the microphone.  Speaking of Possum, he officially changes his style. This has very little impact in the game and it mostly just represents his skillset rounding up to a more all-around wrestler.  The internet is buzzing about Naoji Azumi, who is still mostly hidden in our pre-shows. He's doing better than our other two Japanese imports and is developing a bit even with his limited time in the ring. He'll one day be a big asset for WLW, I'm pretty sure of it. Our first event for October is a new one, Rumble in the Concrete Jungle. Since Gerard hasn't won an official contendership, might as well do a Rumble match! X amount of wrestlers enter the ring, all but one leave over the top rope, winner gets a title show. Classic stuff.  The Rumble (in this case, a ten man version) is the big draw for this show. It has all the big guns and also Barney Mason. Thus, the rest of the card is a bit of a scramble. D-Pod opens the show fairly certain that Mason won't get past his two big boys all the while War and Hate are counting the money they are getting for this gig. Mason flexes on the ramp and promises he'll be throwing them both over the top rope tonight. First match of the night sees SHADOW LEGENDS defeat the Team Forbes combination of Nameth & Prellinger, but get thrown around the ring by Tyrant afterwards. Maniac Monster gets his chance to "shine" when he defeats Jesse. Tate gets an "easy" match but struggles a bit more than expected against Azumi. Simonson is getting interviewed about his future plans, but is interrupted by Mattell and Blithe who are quite sure Simonson's time in the spotlight is long gone. The following tag match ends with Mattell cheating to beat Vortex. Hamstead gets a solid non-title match against Macquarie and we end the night with Gerard "overcoming all the odds" to win the match and earn a title match against Hamstead. The joy is short-lived as Goliath Global beat him up after a quick celebration. As you can probably see, I'm banking A LOT on that main event being decent enough and also hoping Macquarie can perform in a big spot. Putting all my surefire guys in one match is always risky.  And as long as I can get the two final matches to click, I'm fine. The Good: - Macquarie didn't poo poo the bed, nor he did particularly impress. The 54 rating is mostly thanks to Hamstead. Hamstead/Gerard WILL be (without bad chemistry) the APW match of the year. - Monster and Jesse had good chemistry! It didn't matter that much, both are still extremely green, but useful to keep in mind for the future. We might have something with these two in... five years, maybe? - Dexter Mattell is really coming on his own in the ring, quite accidentally. He has been featured, yes, but I haven't been especially gung-ho on pushing him. He might even be a decent program for our top babyfaces (Gerard/Mills/Devine) in the near future. The Bad: - The midcard matches were quite woeful. Out of the guys featured only Mattell and Nighthawk were in a position to carry the match by their performances.  Out in Puerto Rico, FCW is getting swept up in the hardcore craze sweeping over the American independent scene. It's not a huge change in their product, but they might start focusing on hiring more hardcore-style wrestlers in the future. After a quiet month of news, we arrive at our next show, Super Saturday.  "I just wanted to sleep." "I'm not hearing any excuses, Tyrant!"  The card shapes up like this. Goliath is clearly shook that Gerard is actually coming for the title and is swearing he won't make it to the title shot. Gerard isn't alone and gets backup in the form of Lone Shark and Devine (and I will finally remember to officially turn Shark here). Tyrant beats Legend convincingly and sets his sights to the Australian title (yes, I'm definitely overusing the "heel beats Legend en route to Australian title shot" strategy). Surfer Dude Lucas gets a win on the main card from Lorenzo Oliverio, which will play into the Monster angle. Mills is drafted to team with Simonson and subconsciously keeps going for classic Duo double team offense, which just doesn't work. Boon comes out afterwards and gets in Mills' face. Mason overcomes the first Apocalypse hurdle and is saved by Macquarie and Vortex afterwards. Gerard and Tate have a rematch from earlier in the year with a predictable result and we finish with a tag title match where the returning MASSACRE costs the match for the faces and does massacre-things in the post match segment with Goliath cackling on the background. (Massacre has been out of main card action since his defeat to Gerard).  Things go relatively well as we continue our string of solid shows. The Good: - Mills/Boon finally have a good angle together?! Helps that they are both on screen this time... - Tate and Gerard improved a bit from the last time, great! The Bad: - The tag title leaves a bit to be desired... especially since I couldn't do the drat turn with Shark! For some reason I wasn't able to hit the "Handle Turns" button on the opening segment. I had no issues turning Boon so I don't know what I've forgotten about playing the game during the summer months.  One half of one of the most notable monster tag teams in the US, Java of Savage Fury, decides to call it quits, which leads to USPW inducting him and his partner in their Hall of Fame as a team (here pictured is his partner, Tribal Warrior for... some reason?) Originally you could only induct workers separate into the Hall, but since TEW 16 the AI and the player can add tag teams as well.  SWF are really yo-yoing in the thin line between Medium and Large as they once again fall to Medium. Next time: World Tour, part 3. Canada and Mexico.
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Aug 8, 2021 09:32
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Insertnamehere31 posted:So Gerard is winning the title, right? Do we have another top heel set up for a program with him? Yes, Gerard is very much going over (winning) brother. And yes, I have programs ready for him: Warmonger has been kept strong the whole year, Donovan Boon is an option and I have Pinn and Scorpio coming in. After that... Brisbane Devil is doing well pop wise and Dexter Mattell is not a top program but can go with Gerard. I have pretty much saved most Gerard vs top line heel programs for this upcoming title run. None of these (barring Pinn and/or Scorpio really working out) is on the level of Hamstead but no one is. Also, Hamstead has pretty much run the well dry on big face challengers, barring Mason and Shark. BTF fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Aug 8, 2021 |
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Aug 8, 2021 16:38
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Veryslightlymad posted:You can have about 3-4 matches in a short(ish) time window and still not have a pairing be stale. I forget how long that window is, though, or if its even a static figure. Yes, the player can run the same match three times inside a six month period without getting penalties on the rating. I very well could have run Hamstead/Devine in singles matches a couple of more times for those sweet 60--ish rated matches but that is usually not my style as a booker.
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Aug 9, 2021 07:28
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Episode 15: World Tour, Part 3 Time to check out the dear neighbors to USA, Mexico and Very much like in the US, wrestling was a regional thing with small promotions popping up and closing in short order in the first half of the 20th century. OLLIE (Original Lucha Libre Is Eternal, the only challenger to Burning Hammer for best company name in the database) was founded in 1955 and actually managed to stay alive. And not only stay alive, but become the first stable company in the area and becoming the biggest (and only) company in Mexico by 1965. For the next decade, OLLIE was lucha libre, still heralded as the "Golden Age" of Mexican wrestling, headed by El Patron (basically El Santo). Their first real competitor, MPWF, was founded in 1975 by four OLLIE stars leaving the promotion due to pay disputes. MPWF was a success and the two promotions became equal rivals for the next two decades. The third powerhouse entered the scene in 1998. SOTBW (South of the Border Wrestling) came in with big money and grabbed a few top stars from both OLLIE and MPWF and immediately became competition. The 2000s saw SOTBW pull ahead thanks to Champagne Lover, a super charismatic wrestler who achieved unprecedented fame by playing a sexy fireman Antonio Ramoray in the hit soap opera The Young and The Fearless. Lover (and a great supporting cast) propelled SOTBW past MPWF and OLLIE and almost to the point of breaking through in the US. MPWF finally died in 2014 with all of their remaining big names jumping ship. OLLIE is still alive but a mere husk of it's glory days. Two smaller promotions have risen up to fill the void left by MPWF, OLLIE is on it's last legs and SOTBW changed it's name to EILL (Empresa Internacional de Lucha Libre), lost their owner in a traffic accident and Lover to Hollywood.   The first of those new companies is CILL, Comite Internacional de Lucha Libre. The smallest of the four Mexican promotions, they offer a very basic and family friendly wrestling product. They are very much in the same vein as MPWF or OLLIE, a "classic" lucha libre product. They are on good terms with a lot of promotions. They are friendly with CZCW (their top team, The Wild Cats, working for both), OLLIE and now with QAW. They also accept BHOWTG workers on excursion, currently housing the team of Tomonaga and Yunokawa, a pair of bland but promising junior heavyweights. CILL is also a member of COTT, being the second Mexican company to join after OLLIE.  As their bio states, they are heavily promoting luchadoras, female wrestlers, as a big part of their show. And for good reason. Their women's roster is rock solid and the clear highlight of the company. Pinky Perez is their biggest star, and the best active Mexican luchadora and a top five female worker in the world (off the top of my head, Fuyuko Higa, Alicia Strong, Perez, Megumi Nakajima and a certain second generation star we'll be seeing shortly). Behind Perez are solid hands like Estrella Blanca, Celeste Moon and Poison Ivy, who make CILL worth a watch. (Another reason to heavily invest in luchadoras: EILL don't have a women's division, so they won't get poached quite as easily as their luchador counterparts).  Most of the original stars of CILL (guys like Fallen Angel, Magik and El Pavo Real) are starting to get a bit old and taking a step back. Filling the slots in the main event scene are home grown guys like Aztec Prinze and the current CILL World Champion Monkey Man. CILL is missing on the big prospect department, but most of their core guys are just hitting their prime so they are in a really good place. They also have the best team in the CVerse. Not for their skills, but for their gimmick.  LUCHADOR VIKINGS. LUCHADOR. VIKINGS.   I have no idea why LUCHADOR VIKINGS haven't arrived to EMLL (Extremo Moderno Lucha Libre) yet. EMLL is, well, it's Lucha Underground. It's full on comic book style company. It's much more about different timelines, multiverses, ancient snake gods, evil forces from literal hell, mysterious rings of power and Captain Lucha than traditional wrestling stories.  Captain Lucha is their currently their biggest star and the backbone of the main event scene. He is the leader of forces of good, fighting against villains like Snake King or Guerrero Muerto.  As you've probably gathered, EMLL is all about the more or less wacky characters. Dolphin Master is a highlight in a roster including guys like Anarchist, Cyclops, Zebra Man, Lucha Ref and Goblin Prince. EMLL is hindered by their blatant changeup of lucha traditions: gone are the multiple tag or trios matches, as every match (barring for an annual battle royal and a four-way match for The Rings Of Power) is a singles match. Thus, as a devout lover of tag team matches, they are very much not for me. But hey, those wacky characters are sure to charm players!   OLLIE is a shadow of it's former self. Once the kings of Mexico, they are now playing a distant second fiddle to EILL. So much so, that in this particular save they have bended the knee and are now accepting developmental workers for EILL. No workers have been sent down yet so OLLIE is still working with their own group of guys and girls. As mentioned, OLLIE is very much like CILL, offering a traditional lucha libre product. Unlike CILL, OLLIE is filled with stale acts, veterans past their prime and a few guys at the prime of their careers taking the spotlight before inevitably being picked up by EILL.   Guys like Extraordinario Jr. and Mr Lucha III are prime examples. Both have (finally) risen to the top of the card and are almost certainly leaving OLLIE sooner rather than later. OLLIE is in a very similar position to PGHW in Japan, except they don't have the Loyalty mechanic to protect their young homegrown stars.  Much like CILL, OLLIE's hopes and dreams lie on their solid women's division. Electric Dreamer is their top star and en route to becoming the biggest female star in Mexico, having the potential to surpass Perez. OLLIE's division doesn't quite have the depth of CILL, but they have the great Mystery Pink, solid Purple Viper and the menacing Amazon Queen.  OLLIE is quite thin on the prospect department as much of their future hopes lie in Phoenix IV, the fourth man to wear the legendary mask. Masks are a big deal in lucha libre, more important than any titles. Luchas de apuestas ("a match with wagers") matches are the biggest matches you can book. Luchadors put their identities on the line, in form of their masks (or their hair). The AI generally does poor job with this integral part of lucha culture. Apuestas matches are rare and when they happen, they rarely main event of even happen in big shows. OLLIE is a challenge in this edition and a fun one at that. Along with PGHW, they are one of the most interesting promotions to follow in this edition. Whenever I start my Mexico save in this edition, I'll probably going with OLLIE or CILL.   EILL is the big dog, even if they have been wounded particularly in this save. They have already lost two of their top stars, Rock God Alvarez and El Leon, to long term injury and to the US companies. Thankfully for them, their roster is ridiculously deep with a main event scene ready to step up with the absence of Leon, Alvarez and Lover.  Their current world champion is the golden boy of lucha libre, Gino Montero. Destined for greatness ever since he stepped in the ring, he first became the star of OLLIE before going to the big leagues. Bad luck willing, Montero will become a legend on par with his father and a major drawing card for EILL. The main event scene is red hot with Dr. Rudo (literally Dr. Evil), Multimillinario (golden suited luchador, a parody of the company's money spending ways turned into a legitimate star), El Heroe Mexicano (Champagne Lover's protege) and Yellowjacket (excellent technical wrestler but lacks the charisma to be THE top guy in EILL).   Waiting in the wings are guys like Velocidad and El Mitico Jr, soon to be the next big stars of Mexican wrestling. EILL is stupidly stacked compared to their Mexican "rivals." Some of the talented midcarders are destined to be left in the wings and eventually leave the promotion for bigger roles in OLLIE, EMLL and CILL. EILL's biggest challenge is to grow past the borders to the USA. They might be the big dog down south but don't have the financial muscle to fight with USPW or SWF... yet. Give them a few years and maybe the big stars from the American big three might start getting serious offers from down south... --- So, onwards some miles to north and to Canada. Once again, a quick history break... Canadian wrestlers started to make their name in the US territories in the 60s, but no native promotion had established themselves. This changed when Ed "The Strangler" Henson retired in the early 70s, returned to Calgary and founded Canadian Wrestling Federation, CWF. After a slow start, Henson persuaded the biggest Canadian stars working in the US to come back home. Dan Stone, George DeColt, Whipper Spencer Marks and "Canadian Superstar" Jackson Andrews headlined CWF for the next decade with great results. CWF became a powerhouse and not even Richard Eisen dared to try to invade the Canadian territory. Things changed when Dan Stone, with the blessing of Henson, left CWF and started his own promotion, NOTBW (North of the Border Wrestling). The two companies had a healthy relationship up to the demise of CWF. Ed Henson's death spelled the end of CWF in 1989. His assistant booker and biggest star after Stone's departure, George DeColt, joined SWF for a year. He fell in love with the sports entertainment style and returned back to Canada to kickstart CGC (Canadian Grappling Company), headlined by his own sons. CGC and NOTBW had a more or less friendly rivalry for the next 25 years. The DeColts and the Stones became two of the greatest wrestling families in the business. Behind the two giants a few smaller companies were founded. 4C was a mishmash of styles and the underground alternative for the big two. ACPW was the CZCW high flying, high action company for your junior heavyweights. And then some soap opera bullshit happened. George DeColt passed away and while attending his funeral, his friend and rival Dan Stone suffered a fatal heart attack. Following the double family tragedy, the sons of the patriarchs decided to combine their forces. NOTBW and CGC became CWA, Canadian Wrestling Alliance. Separately both companies were in the downswing, seeing their greatest stars retire and business slowing down. Together, they suddenly became invigorated. The young talent from both companies had seized the opportunity and rose to the occasion. 4C tried to leapfrog to the open number two spot, but their big signings didn't have the results they hoped and they crashed and burned out of business in 2019. Entering 2020 CWA is a massive company and is once again set to defend the Canadian territory form the invading US company.   All Canada Pro Wrestling didn't go the 4C route and are alive and well. They are pretty much the Canadian CZCW, presenting a high flying product with integrated roster with men and women fighting each other equally.  Ant-Man might be a walking Marvel lawsuit waiting to happen, but he is one of their biggest stars. The ACPW top card is solid as hell. These guys have spent the last decade together and they have lost only a scant few of their core. The Nest of Vipers, Mimic and Dagger, are still probably their two best workers and also their most decorated team. Jamie Atherton is a charismatic star waiting to break through. Grimm Quibble, Mario da Silva and Gram Gorman are solid wrestlers keeping the shows together. Jayson van Pelt is working OLLIE and SAISHO in addition to ACPW.  In addition to the well established names, they have a few rookies worth keeping your eyes on. Americana Jr is the highlight here and if my few long term saves are to be believed, will become the next top line star for ACPW. ACPW is fun. They are, by default, the new alternative company in Canada. They are nowhere near CWA in size and mostly get to focus on doing their own thing.   CWA was a shock to many in the GDS community when TEW 2020 came out. NOTBW and CGC were both fan favourites in their own ways and fusing them felt... wrong. CWA is MASSIVE, having pretty much all the notable names from CGC and NOTBW from the last edition with a few additions from their respective training schools and a few free agents. This growth is proving to be unsustainable. CWA have notably gone to the red, having over TWO MILLION in debt. I know that the database in launch was almost custom built to kill CWA to debt but that issue was fixed. Companies can survive on the red form six months to three years, depending on the size of the company. CWA have at least a year before they have to panic...  As much as I loved Intrepid Ian Identity/Ian DeColt, those characters were never going to become anything more than midcard filler in CGC. Now Aaron Knight has truly blossomed into a major star for CWA. He is very much the new face of the company for the next ten years, alongside with other CGC young guns like Donte Dunn and Christian Price. The other big stars are technical wizards Cameron Vessey and Shooter Sean Deeley.  The living legend Sean McFly is on his last run with a major title. Two time SWF world champion, six time NOTBW world champion and now a one time CWA world champion is on the short list with Tommy Cornell and Yoshimi Mushashibo when considering the greatest all-around wrestler of all time. McFly is in decline but still a major asset for CWA for the next few years. His finishing move? The DeLorean Driver.  Much like USPW. CWA's "hidden" ace is found in their women's division. Brooke Tyler is the aforementioned fifth woman in the top five list. A genius technician is the face of the CWA women's division. It's not a one woman show, as Amber Allen, Lauren Easter, Nadia Snow and Laura Flame round up a killer women's division that is set to steal the show almost every show.  The DeColts and Stones are still around. Jack and Ricky DeColt are stars and the last remaining DeColts of their generation with brothers Alex and Steve retired. Most of the Stones have retired with Dan Jr, Jeremy and Duane all working behind the scenes. The black sheep of the family, Edd, is out in TCW. The next generation is here, as the son of Dan Jr and the grandson of Dan Sr, David Stone has finally debuted. Wrestling is in his blood and he will become a star. The other third generation Stone (Lucy Stone-McFly, daughter of McFly and Victoria Stone) is set to debut sometime in the future. CWA is big and very much like EILL. The biggest challenge isn't coming from Canada, but from the US. As long as they can keep their finances balanced, they will become the fourth/fifth wheel in those bidding wars for the big stars in the US market.
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Aug 15, 2021 14:25
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Insertnamehere31 posted:Man, if CWA falls apart that would lead to one hell of a feeding frenzy. Does the game organically create new promotions to fill holes in the market if other promotions fold? There is around 20 promotions in the default database that are set as "yet to open." Most of them are set to open as random, which means every year there is a chance of a new promotion opening. The rate of which new companies open is influenced by many different factors, most notably the amount of free agents in the game area and the general "health" of the industry in the area. The European ELPF that opened some updates ago is one of these companies.
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Aug 18, 2021 19:39
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Episode 16: Old mistakes A thing I actually missed going through the news cycle from last month. The COTT Heavyweight title changed hands for the first time in this save, when Pablo Rodriguez dropped the belt to Mr. Lucha III. This means that Mr. Tres will probably start visiting the US more often, defending the title in other alliance companies. (Thus far in my saves, OLLIE has quickly taken the initiative when it comes to the alliance belts, as their wrestlers tend to hold both of them for long periods of time.) Rodriguez probably doesn't mind since he almost immediately becomes the CZCW champion.  DIW realizes that Pinn is gone and decide that they should probably disband the stable carrying his name, even if it would have been hilarious for them to keep going. (Stables aren't forever. The AI is always creating new ones and disbanding old ones, usually when enough members have either left the company or turned to face/heel. Once again, in my limited long term saves, stables usually stick around for one to three years.)  RAW does the same with the LiberTeen faction, a group of annoying pretty boy wrestlers. This boy band ends with quite a bang.   One of the three remaining members (the hottest prospect on the planet Will Beaumont has already left before the start of the save and CJ LiberTeen/Romeo has turned face and left the group during the summer. Yes, of course the boy band are the bad guys) and the de facto leader, Frankie Libertine storms out after a huge argument with owner Tristam Day. Frankie is... a project. He has seemingly good charisma and stamina but is otherwise lacking on many areas. The more worrying part looking at his stats is that he has developed very little during the calendar year. I might bring him in for a one shot in the future, but he is pretty expensive.  Then DIW tries to pull some shenanigans. As they have declared war on us, we can't share any of the same workers. Out of spite, they try to hire my champion. I get worried for a minute but a quick look into Hamstead's contract situation reveals the truth. Usually, if someone makes a contract to your talent, you have to navigate to the "Negotiate" part of that worker's bio. There, a "View Rival Offers" button pops up... except when it doesn't. If a worker outright refuses the offer, you can't even see the offer that they got. I can only imagine that Hamstead has no issue sticking around with us and probably shunted that email straight to the bin. DIW, just hire Richie Fox, he's good! And unemployed!  Toshinobu Taku retires. I am not surprised to find out he retired as tag team champion, leaving the BCG tag titles vacated second time this year, for the exact same reason. The AI is sometimes... a bit dumb.  TCW bolsters their roster with one of the greatest technical wrestlers of all time. Bloodstone was one of the great soulless wrestling machines that made NOTBW the sanctuary of wristlocks. At 44 years old he only wrestlers occasionally and is almost ready to hang his boots up. I'd criticize TCW for bringing another wreck to bolster their roster, but this mostly a play for their backstage. Bloodstone is already pulling double duty as a road agent and with his stats he is probably one of the best agents in the world. Boogie Night arrives with no incidents and I put together a card, as I frequently tend to do in this game.  We open the show with a Goliath Global promo, gloating about the return of Massacre. The babyface brigade interrupts and we have our main event for the night. The opener sees Mason, Macquarie and Vortex face D-Pod and his boys, where D-Pod's showboating and taunting of Mason costs him as Macquarie rolls him up for the win. Rusty Mills backs up the SHADOW LEGENDS for a match against Team Forbes, but after a Boon interference lays Mills out, LEGENDS can't pull of the win two against three. Tyrant pins Nighthawk, dominantly staking his claim to a title shot. Samoan Demolition have a quick open challenge. One team can't stop them and neither can three, even if Positive Energy puts up a fight. Mattell gives out about Simonson for a few minutes, claiming that he is the greatest technical wrestler Australia has ever seen, not some "overrated, overhyped, over the hill grandpa." Simonson still shows he has it, even if he struggles to beat Blithe. Boon uses underhanded tactics (and interference from Maniac Monster) to defeat Lucas. Mills makes the save before Monster or Boon can do permanent damage. The main is a classis six man tag where Goliath Global gets the victory by targeting Lone Shark.  The show scores a 52. Some notes: - I finally actually turn Lone Shark (he's been pretty much a face in the storyline for a while, but now he is one mechanically too). The turn is a complete success, but unfortunately his new gimmick (Comic Book Hero) bombs, getting the rating of poor. Thankfully there are no negative (nor positive) effects for this new gimmick. - Surfer Dude Lucas gets a big chance to shine and while he doesn't hit it out of the park (still his best performance to date), he does better than Chuck in a similar position a few months back. He is definitely my top prospect and this is the first loss he is eating outside of maybe a pre-show match when he debuted (when teaming with Jesse, I always have Jesse take the pin if necessary). - Speaking of Chuck, he does shockingly well in the big four way tag team match, being the fourth best worker behind the Samoans and Possum. He is still wayyyyyyy behind those three, but significantly better than his partner Kasey (who is once again off his game... he should have high consistency but this is very much not the first time this happens). - The second best worker on the show (after Hamstead (57)) is not Gerard (53), but Brisbane Devil (56). The strong push of the Samoans is paying off for the brawler.   OLLIE grows in size. This leads to a selection of pretty great hires. Former BHOWTG, current WLW luchador El Hijo del Relampago "comes home" (he was a MPWF guy before going to Japan). Recent EILL departure "The Red Scourge" Pirata Malvado who flirted with the main event a few years ago but drastically dropped down the card before leaving. Free agents Green Diamond, Fray Valiente Jr, El Hija del Phoenix and Velvet Suarez bolster the depth from the free agent pool. Despite the doom and gloom of their bio, they have done pretty well for them-  what  hold up  STOP  OLLIE goes all out on the burning bridges front. Somewhere in the luchaverse, EMLL are pretty happy to stay out of this cluster.  The opposite of the "workers make friends through social media" news story happens. This is a bit rarer, but sometimes the Twitter banter goes a bit too far. Spillane and Idol are pretty unlikely to work together in the same company before this, but now with them having Simmering Tension together? Not a chance. (Watch SWF/USPW prove me wrong and hire them both.)   DIW doesn't let Hamstead snubbing them to get in their way and swiftly throw offers to both members of the Apocalypse. Neither bother to open those offers. Good for me.  Longest Night is here and we have incidents! These start to look like we might actually have to do som-  ...Okay then? Apparently Massacre has stuffed Frank Mucciolo in a box and has assumed the duties of Wrestler's Court Judge.  Now THIS is interesting and introduces the Promises mechanic. Your veteran workers might spot a bright young talent and take a liking to them. Then that veteran worker might offer you a chance to put them over. In a normal situation, the popularity cap between Chuck and Warmonger would be so big, that War would be absolutely furious if I asked him to lose. But now, Apocalypse wants to help Chuck and Kasey a bit. So, for the next six months I have a chance to give Positive Energy a win over The Apocalypse. That's... well, that doesn't exactly fit in my plans but that's a great spot to improvise. A win over Apocalypse would do wonders for Chuck especially and I pencil in a short program between the two for early 2021 in my head. (I actually didn't know that tag teams could make promises, since I have only ever seen singles workers give these promises).  Here's the card. Goliath Global mock Lone Shark for being undersized and the fall guy, which fires up our aquatic grappler for a main event match with Hamstead. Opening match sees Apocalypse beat Mason and Vortex as Mason is still unable to beat D-Pod's muscle. D-Pod himself gets some redemption after his defeat by cheating his rear end off against Macquarie. Mills and The Dudes get a victory over Boon, Maniac and Oliverio with Mills finally losing his cool and accepting that he has to FIGHT against Boon. A big eight man tag follows with Chuck getting a shock rollup victory over King Malietoa. Nighthawk retains against Tyrant but is swarmed post match by Team Forbes. Legend suffers a deadly powerbomb through the table while a screaming Forbes forces Nighthawk to watch. Devine and Gerard unite once again to take on Goliath Global and get the win, albeit by DQ after Goliath himself takes out Gerard's knee. Main event can only end one way, but Shark gives Hamstead a hell of a battle before falling like every challenger before him.  Show scores a 48. Some notes about Longest Night: - The Hamstead/Shark main event suffers for the EXACT SAME REASON as Gerard/Shark earlier in the year. While Gerard/Shark/Devine are united against Goliath Global, I have actually separated them into two different stories, being Hamstead vs Gerard and Devine/Shark vs Massacre/Tate (as I am wrapping up Gerard/Hamstead in December while the rest keep going a bit longer). So, since Shark and Hamstead are mechanically in different storylines with no connective tissue (a Massacre interference or a Gerard at ringside), the match gets penalized for not having a storyline and suffering as a result. Once again, that's completely my fault. - The second best match of the night is thus the opener, mostly thanks to The Apocalypse. Mason is solid enough with Vortex being the weak link (Vortex is miles better as a wrestler than Mason, but he still has very little in the way of popularity). - Nighthawk vs Tyrant is solid and will be the best match I'm getting out of this small LEGENDS/Forbes feud.  USPW is no longer Big. They are Titanic (not the ship), the highest size a company can achieve in TEW. This means they have 77 popularity in five game areas. This (should) mean that they can offer a contract to ANYONE, even if they are not active in the US. Could this mean another hiring spree?   PGHW and TCW both have big tournament shows this month. TCW rationally has their biggest star win their King of Kings one night tournament. PGHW on the other hand has almost the right idea. Seiji Jimbo is probably their best wrestler but his partner, some six years past his prime Mamoru Nagahawa is the worst non-Young Lion wrestler in PGHW. He truly is a guy who needs a prestigious Elite Tag Team Series win in his trophy cabinet. Next time: Let's wrap up 2020! Gerard and Hamstead finally collide for the title! Mills and Boon one on one!
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Aug 25, 2021 15:29
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Insertnamehere31 posted:Our backstage is so wholesome It's lovely that every Wrestler's Court sentence involves buying everyone a drink after the show. In game terms, I LOVE the fact that everyone is getting along so well. In LP terms, I'm slightly irked I don't get the chance to show off the incident interactions at all. I feel controlling the backstage is quite easy in TEW 2020. Most CVerse locker rooms already start at 100% or near it and it takes a lot of player induced mayhem to make it worse. Even a few bad eggs (in our case, Blithe, Apocalypse, Malietoa, Tate and Vortex are currently all mildly negative influences) won't break your backstage rating.
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Aug 26, 2021 10:34
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Episode 17: Crowning of a champion December is quite slow on the news front and mostly filled with articles like these. Whenever a somewhat notable worker goes without a match for six months or a year, it generates a news story like this. And since we are closing in on the end of the year, there is A LOT of people in the database who haven't seen work all year. Mr. Bush is one of these guys as he hasn't had a match since working one match in APW at the start of the year.  TCW finally makes a somewhat reasonable hire. Frankie Perez is one of the brightest talents on the west coast and a CZCW legend. Multiple time tag team champion with Mikey Lau (who is heating up in SWF) and a two time CZCW champion. He also managed a brief run in GSW during this summer, winning their annual King of California tournament. Truth be told, he's never going to become a big name with TCW, but more of a solid midcard presence. A first ballot CZCW Hall of Famer for sure whenever he decides to hang up his boots.  Holiday Hijinks arrives fast. Mucciolo has found his way out of the trashcan Massacre dumped him in last month and is back on judge duty. Mattell makes a mess and pays dearly. Mate, you're making 30 bucks a show, you can't afford to do this often.  Here's the card! We open with another opening promo segment. This time Goliath tries to court Boon in the fold, promising him backup for his match against Mills, Boon promises to think about it. Samoan Demolition put their titles on the line in a four way contest that also sees The Dudes and Monster & Oliverio added to the mix. Nighthawk cuts a passionate promo about Team Forbes and swears to take them all on with Legend on the shelf. Forbes takes that promise literally and dares Nighthawk to a handicap match. The one on three match doesn't go too well, as Nighthawk loses to the damned numbers game. The babyface brigade take on D-Pod, Mattell and Blithe and come out victorious with Mattell challenging the old man Simonson to a Submission match next show. Lone Shark build up his momentum beating Reggie Tate, Mason finally topples Warmonger and the main event ends in a giant brawl, with Boon leaving Goliah Global to fend for themselves.  ...But someone isn't too happy about one of these results. I think this is actually the first time I have to deal with this. Depending on their personality, your workers might get a bit irritated/angry/absolutely nuts if you ask them to lose to someone below their status. For example, Hulk Hogan would have never agreed to lose to, I don't know, BROTHER BRUTI clean (or agree to lose to anyone) without throwing a massive fit (or just invoking his creative control to just... not do it). Warmonger isn't as high on Barney Mason as he is on Chuck and Kasey, so he's a bit unhappy. Thankfully, you can alter your booking. I add the booking note Keep Strong on him and that keeps him happy. (Keep Strong: the worker is made to look strong even in defeat. Mechanically, it puts a minor penalty on his performance and drastically lowers the hit to his popularity he'd get from losing the match. And vice versa, Mason doesn't get that big of a bump in his pop due to the note). Keep Strong is useful note for every booker if you want to keep your locker room of primadonnas who just can't comprehend your great booking visions happy.  And here's the results. A 53 makes this the third best show of the year. The Good: - Just a top to bottom good show with the only "bad" (under 40) segment predictably being the Mattell promo. - Brisbane Devil is carrying these Demolition matches almost by himself. He is once again the second best performer of the night. Once the Samoans drop the belts, he's getting a shot at the Commonwealth title. - Despite some bad promos at the start, the Mills/Boon program has become quite hot and I'm expecting big things for their upcoming match(es). The "Bad": - While Reggie Tate is once again part of a good match, his performances haven't really seen any progress during the year. It's mostly because his popularity has stayed stagnant, being the designated fall guy for Goliath Global.  EILL find a new developmental company in... CZCW? Yeah, sure. It might be a bit awkward since CZCW are in the same alliance with OLLIE. If EILL actually send some of their young luchadores to CZCW, it will be a great deal for both of them. We'll see...  DIW realizes they have to start making moves with Pinn gone and bring in Gregory Grace. Grace is one of the most popular free agents in the Oceania market, being a former RAW star (their first tag team champion, actually). He's a solid-ish brawler and above average entertainment skills but is getting up there in age (37) and I didn't consider him worth his paycheck (900 dollars a show) to bring him in...  So naturally DIW headlines with him and he helps them to their best show of the year. Balls. I still subconsciously undervalue popularity when it comes to bringing the match ratings for my (and DIW's) product.  RAW does another major title change. Nathan McKenzie is another former APW alumni, an upgraded version of Scottie Hamstead, who left APW in late 2018 to jump to RAW. Good for him but a bit puzzling for RAW. He is a step below RAW's top guys so I can't really see this title reign going for that long.  Another major tournament happens, this time in Canada. CWA's two major stars Aaron Knight and Shooter Sean Deeley win the CWA Tag Team Grand Prix, the biggest middle finger to the legacy of Canadian wrestling. To explain, NOTBW had their yearly Ed Henson Classic, a yearly tag team tournament named after the legendary Henson. For some UNGODLY reason, the CGC/NOTBW merger decided to abandon the old tournament titles and do a new tag tournament with a more generic name.  Final show of the year! Early Christmas Bash! The Card! Nighthawk has to face Team Forbes all alone in a four way match, but since Forbes can't decide who should win the match, they devolve into infighting, which allows Nighthawk a chance to retain the title. D-Pod tries to talk his way out of the match against Mason, but The Apocalypse don't care to help anymore with no more money on the line. Mason has D-Pod where he wants him and the Full Nelson Lock gets him the win. The Dudes vanquish Monster and his handler wrapping up that small feud. The Samoans haven't forgotten the surprise roll-up Chuck got on them last month and want to teach these brats a lesson. However, Chuck has another surprise pinning combination up his sleeve and manages to hold the Devil down for the three! Mattell and Simonson have a quick technical match, with Blithe providing the assistance for Mattell which leads to a dirty win. Dingo & Shark manage to defeat The Goliath goons. Boon and Mills finally have their one on one match, but a surprise interference by Mattell and Blithe allows Boon to take the victory. The trio beat down Mills afterwards to massive (citation needed) boos. The main event is the big one, with Gerard finally getting his title match. And we get our title change but a new threat is already in the horizon as the cigar chomping Pinn arrives post match to stare down Gerard.   And, thankfully, the guys nail it. Best show of the year with a 57, best match of the year in the main event and three other matches getting a rating of 50 or over. The Good: - I am astounded that Mason/D-Pod hit a 47. Not only that, it was almost purely because of Mason. Beating Warmonger last month boosted him up significantly. - The main event delivered in a way I expected it to, barring a negative chemistry note. I have a few great defenses in mind for Gerard (Boon/Warmonger/Devil/Scorpio/Pinn/possibly a few others) that can hopefully get us to 60+ ratings during 2021. - Pinn's gimmick didn't bomb and the angle with him did very well. - Mills/Boon was great as well! The Bad: - I have no idea what happened in that D-Pod/Mason/Apocalypse angle. I must have not rated D-Pod on entertainment? - I expected just a bit more of Mattell/Simonson, but the former didn't have the best of nights and Simonson isn't what he used to be. - The Dudes match was always going to be the weakest of the main card, but I had a sliver of hope that Lucas could boost the match a point or two higher. - Paul Reinhold, one half of the jobber team R&R suffered a Strained Bicep in the pre-show. Thankfully it was really minor and is back into ring-shape just a few days later.  USPW celebrates hitting Titanic by grabbing CWA star Cameron Vessey to a three year deal. It's a major hit to the boys up north, who don't quite have the depth in the main event scene... yet.  We finally hit 2021 which means the game hands out the year end awards. Wrestler of the Year goes to Adam Matravers, the current 21CW World champion. The British veteran is already a living legend in his part of the world and the Wrestler of the Year honors is just a cherry on top to the future Hall of Immortals inductee. His average match rating was a whopping 88, second highest in the world (Edward Cornell, number three on the Power 500, has 93 but he wrestled only half the matches). His year is highlighted by winning his fifth World title, defeating Edward Cornell in a barnburner. His feud with Cornell was the cornerstone of 21CW the whole year, including seven title matches, four of which got a 99 rating. A quick recap of the rest of the top ten of the Power 500: #2: Wolf Hawkins (TCW) Hawkins was on a tear through 2020, losing only once during the entire calendar year (losing a TCW World title ladder match to Sammy Bach). The top TCW guy was mostly out of the title picture, with his only World title match being against Bach but he capped of the year winning the King of Kings one night tournament. For some reason, he had whopping 16 singles matches against veteran undercard wrestler Dean Daniels. Despite this, the number two spot is deserved with an 86 average match rating, including the Match of the Year Candidate Ladder match against Aaron Andrews as TCW Summer Showdown. #3: Edward Cornell (21CW) "Cousin Edward" is finally a made man and has truly stepped out of the shadow of his more famous cousin. Highest average rating in the world, a killer World title reign, great feud with Matravers and a Match of the Year Candidate against cousin Tommy and Leigh Burton make it a great year for Cornell. I think the only reason he doesn't hit #1 is the relatively low amount of matches he had. The rest of the top ten have had 50 to whopping 85(!) matches during the year, but Cornell took it easy, only stepping into the ring 23 times. #4: Tommy Cornell (21CW/SWF) It's probably the last time Tommy Cornell makes the top ten of the Power 500. The two time wrestler of the year award winner is sliding down the slippery slope of time decline at 42 years old. But despite his slowly eroding talents, he still had a hell of a year. He had a great feud against his cousin in 21CW (including the MOTYC three way ladder match) before shocking the wrestling world and "returning home" to SWF. His SWF run has been solid enough, but likely won't be a title contender anymore. The last stand of Tommy Cornell has begun. See you at the Hall of Immortals. #5: Aaron Andrews (TCW) Andrews started the year TCW champion, but quickly dropped the belt to Jay Chord. Despite this, he still headlined the biggest TCW PPV events of the year against Chord. After Chord left, Andrews didn't win the belt and only challenged for it once. He still had a MOTYC with Hawkins during the summer. Andrews was just a bit better than Hawkins, having a 87 average match rating, but is a few places behind his eternal rival. He will become TCW World champion once again sooner or later and is a surefire contender for the best in the world as long as he doesn't hit the time decline. #6: Mighty Mo (TCW) Mighty Mo is definitely the surprise name on this list. He has the lowest average rating of the top ten (80) and spent most of the year either working with a crop of PGHW excursionist or in the tag division, carrying the physical wreck of the TCW legend Troy Tornado to a tag title reign. His year picks up during autumn with three awesome PPV matches against Hawkins and a few barnburners against Freddy Huggins. Mo is one of the bright future hopes of TCW and if he gets to the level of Hawkins and Andrews, he has a real shot at becoming #1 in the following years. #7: Leigh Burton (21CW) The youngest man on the top ten at 28 years old, "The British Lion" is the future of British wrestling. Barring a catastrophic injury (or a move to America), Burton has the 21CW World title locked up in a couple of years. Highlight of his year is the MOTYC Ladder match with the Cornells, but he also had some other killer matches during the year. Titles might have eluded him, but 2020 was a storm warning to everyone. #8: El Heroe Mexicano (EILL) With Rock God Alvarez and El Leon out of the way, EILL now belongs to El Heroe Mexicano. Trained by Champagne Lover, he still has ways to go to reach the whopping heights of his mentor (four Wrestler of the Year awards), but getting to #8 is a beginning. Heroe had an average rating of 86, tied with Hawkins and only behind Andrews, Matravers and E. Cornell. He ended the year winning his first title, Campeonatos de Trios with Multimillinario and Pharaoh King, and is only looking to grow his trophy cabinet in the coming years. #9: Atom Smasher (SWF) Atom Smasher is definitely the unheralded workhorse of the star studded SWF roster. Younger homegrowns, returning legends and more beloved "indie darlings" will steal the headlines, but Smasher has quietly put together a great year in-ring. He wrestled 85 matches during the calendar year, an ungodly amount for any top guy in the States. With a quick scroll through the Power 500 listing, no other top guy gets even close to him... except for our number 10. #10: Mikey Lau (SWF) Mikey Lau wrestled 81 matches, a lot of them with Atom Smasher with the duo being a constant in weekly TV main events. The former Cali Dragon might not have the charisma of every other top ten member, but he is a hell of a wrestler. Neither Lau or Smasher won any titles during 2020, but they get another award for their efforts. Sadly, no APW wrestlers made the Power 500 this year. Curiously, despite USPW being the largest wrestling company in the world, they have no guys in the top ten. Jay Chord (#19) and Nicky Champion (#20) get the closest.  As I alluded to, the Tag Team of the Year award goes to Atom Smasher and Mikey Lau... which is bullshit. First of all, it's two singles main eventers teaming up and thus easily getting the award. Second, THEY AREN'T EVEN AN OFFICIAL TEAM. The game never officially made them to a team. They just... team together a lot!    21CW swoops the rest of the big awards. The Company of the Year award is pretty clear, since they had 29(!) events that had a ranking of 85 or over. For comparison: TCW had 13, CWA had 12, USPW had 10 and EILL had 9. The Match of the Year was a coinflip between the two 100 rated Ladder matches, but the British one got the edge this time. The Event of the Year goes to 21CW World War 13 from March, headlined by Cornell vs Cornell in a cage for the World title and Matravers vs Burton.  Most Improved Company goes to USPW. Quite deserved with their growth to Titanic.   There are also four more wrestler specific awards. Young (under 24 years) and Veteran Wrestler of the Year (over 42 years) awards both go to EILL. Hurakan had a great year and a great Campeonatos de Pajeras title reign with Itzamna. Just 21 years old, the sky is the limit for the potential mega star. Soul Taker is a living lucha legend who has left his mark in OLLIE, PWF and SOTBW/EILL and a world champion in all three promotions. His award is well deserved, as the 46 year old climbed all the way to #13 on the Power 500.   Alicia Strong is still the best women's wrestler in the world, ranked #68 on the Power 500. It's her third award in four years and likely won't be the last. Independent Wrestler of the Year is the award for the best wrestler who wrestled in a less than Medium sized company. BCG might have risen to Medium near the end of the year, but Mabuchi Furusawa (ranked #237) made his case before that with great performances up and down the card.     The awards aren't only about the wrestlers, the matches and the promotions. The supporting cast also gets their shine here. Manager of the Year goes up north to CWA's Drake Young, the hyper charismatic mouthpiece of the Elite stable (not to be confused to the real world Elite). Duane Fry, the "voice of SWF" and the bizarro version of Michael Cole is awarded his whopping seventh Announcer of the Year trophy. Veteran color commentator Tommy Townsend gets surprisingly his first award. Member of CWA announcing team, his pairing with now retired Tommy London was regarded one of the best duos in history. CWA also gets the Referee of the Year award with Alan Gray, junior official of the CWA three referee team. I am truly disappointed Lucha Ref didn't get the honor. That's a wrap for the year. For APW, it was a year of rebuilding, trying to plug holes left by the major departures of yesteryears. Despite not doing super hot, we still made a respectable amount of money and grew in popularity. So, let's take a look at our roster at the end of the year. How is everyone coming along? Much like when I introduced our roster, let's start from our Major Stars and work our way down the card. I'll skip over Dumfrey Pinn (he starts at Well Known) since he is yet to do anything with us. Notable stat changes listed are their highest primary skills, Psychology and Entertainment stats. Most of our guys had their biggest growth in areas like Basics, Consistency, Safety and Stamina but those aren't as important to me than the aforementioned stats. Major Stars  Christopher Gerard Current Commonwealth champion Notable stat changes: Psychology +1, Charisma +1, Microphone +1, Acting +1 Unsurprisingly Gerard was the MVP of APW. Still our biggest star and booked like it. He will remain the vocal point of our company for the foreseeable future. He was featured in seven of our ten best matches and was often the best worker in those matches. He got some relevant stat gains during the year, most notably in the entertainment department. That's what happens when you work the stick with Viktor Goliath basically the whole year. 2021 will be very much the same, just swapping Pinn in the place of Goliath.  Scottie Hamstead Notable stat changes: Psychology +2 Hamstead, along with Gerard has carried the company performance wise. He also was featured on seven of out top ten matches. I've booked him strong as the only pinfall he took was losing the title to Gerard at the end of the year. He'll be downcycled a bit with him having faced a lot of my key babyfaces at least once. Hamstead is actually a marginally better brawler than Gerard (and has higher psychology) and is pretty much on Gerard's level on performances. I hope some of our lower card guys will learn a thing or two working with him. Stars:  Barney Mason Notable stat changes: Brawling +1, Hardcore +2, Psychology +1, Charisma +1, Microphone +1, Acting +1 I can't believe it. Mason's feuds with Mattell and D-Pod (and most importantly a win over Warmonger) popped Mr. Beef all the way to a star status. If his performance against D-Pod is to be belived, he is actually... one of our top tier guys. As I've often stated, Mason isn't really a type of guy I'd usually book. But if it works, it works. As much as it pains to say it, Mason is about to be slotted as our number three babyface (behind Gerards and Mills). Devine is still very much better than him, but I'm not sure how many years I can hang on to him on the top of the card.   Samoan Demolition (Brisbane Devil & King Malietoa) Current Tag Team Champions Notable stat changes: Devil: Psychology +1, Acting +1 Malietoa: Brawling +1, Hardcore +1, Psychology +2, Charisma +1, Microphone +1, Acting +1 The Samoans have really benefited from their year plus tag title reign. Brisbane Devil has become a top three wrestler in the company (behind Gerard and Hamstead) and Malietoa has stepped up his game as well. They have definitively become our top tag team with The Duo being no more and Apocalypse not quite up to their level. Devil is the one with brighter future ahead of him, but both the Samoans will play a big part in the near future of APW.  Dingo Devine Notable stat changes: Psychology +1 Devine might be 40, but he is still so drat solid in the ring. He had a great year and his teams with Lone Shark and Gerard have both been pretty great. Naturally at his age he ain't developing that much, but it is nice to see a small bonus to his psychology. (Despite psychology traditionally being the absolute hardest stat to grow, most of our roster actually saw some growth in that area!) Devine is too good to be left out of the top of the card. Will he get another Commonwealth run in his resume? I doubt it, unless RAW goes absolute haywire on the raids.  Donovan Boon Notable stat changes: Brawling +1, Technical +1, Psychology +2, Charisma +1, Microphone +1, Acting +1 The Duo was great together but thankfully they are also great separately. Boon is a great asset to the heel side of the card. He has a lot of fresh faces to fight and is one of the better in-ring guys we have. He will never be a good mic worker on his own, but it is still nice to see some progress on that front as well. The feud with Mills isn't quite over yet so I'm sure Boon will see a lot more main event time in 2021. Boon is in the role that I had in mind for Lone Shark at the start of 2020 - the solid in-ring worker on the top of the card on the heel side.  Rusty Mills Notable stat changes: Brawling +1, Technical +1, Psychology +2, Charisma +1, Microphone +1, Acting +2 Mills is always one of the five best workers on any given show. It's fitting that Mills' stat gains are almost the exact same as his former tag partner. The feud will continue, but after the direction of our number two babyface is a bit of a mystery. One last scuffle with Apocalypse, mayhaps?  Warmonger Notable stat changes: - Warmonger was the stronger part of The Apocalypse and it showed in my booking as well. Hatemonger was usually the one taking the falls in tag team matches. He'll get his run against Gerard/Mills in the main event this year. His lack of any major stat changes has me worried that he's the next one to start sliding towards time decline. I don't have the time to wait around with War. Well Knowns:  Chuck Notable stat changes: Technical +3, Psychology +1, Microphone +1, Acting +1 With a shock win over Brisbane Devil, Chuck leaps to well known status, leapfrogging his tag team partner. He's still a project in the ring though, but we'll see how his big win reflects on his performances. And remember, he and Kasey still have a free pass to go over The Apocalypse. 2021 might prove to be a big one for Positive Energy. Hopefully he can develop a bit faster. He did gain 3 points in Technical, but his highest primary stat, Brawling, stayed the same.  Dexter Mattell Notable stat changes: Psychology +1, Charisma +1, Microphone +1, Acting +1 Mattell has been great in his role as primary midcard antagonist. If he can become just a bit better, he might have a shot at becoming a main eventer. He's good enough to be a one off defense against Gerard at this point but still behind some other, hotter heels. His new alliance with Boon gives him a bigger spotlight for 2021, as he (currently) is the guy expected to carry that trio on the mic.  Harry Simonson Notable stat changes: Technical -3, Stamina -7 As much as it pains me, Simonson is not the man he was just a few years ago. I was hoping he'd be able to keep up a few years longer, but he is the first member of our roster to feel the nails of time eroding his abilities. The loss of stamina is the telltale sign of the dreaded Time Decline. He won't be shunted to pre-show duty just yet, but he will be on the losing end of his upcoming programs. People in time decline can still be useful, but Simonson will be a midcard gatekeeper for the rest of his run. He will be a first ballot Hall of Famer, so he will ride out the rest of his years somewhat in style.  Hatemonger Notable stat changes: Brawling +1, Hardcore +1, Psychology +1 Hatemonger... is there. Really, I have nothing bad to say about him. Even if Samoan Demolition passed Apocalypse in the pecking order, Hate and War are still very much a great team. Hate doesn't get the spotlight that War gets, but he is still pretty solid guy to have. Never underestimate 100 tag team experience, baby.  Lone Shark Notable stat changes: - I wanted to stuff a rocket deep inside this man's rectum and make him at least a Star level guy with us. Well, that didn't happen. Two underwhelming main events (that were completely my fault, keep in mind) torpedoed a lot of that. Face turn and the team with Devine had him in a slightly bigger role, but was kind of slotted as the "expendable" member of the trio feuding with Goliath Global. Shark still has the skills to keep up with the top of the card so hopefully I can use him a bit better in the future.  Massacre Notable stat changes: Hardcore -2 Massacre had a solid year. He had a lot of shine working with our top names for most of the year. And he was a fine dance partner for Gerard and Nighthawk. Still, he's 37 and he's not getting any younger. Him regressing in Hardcore is not a good sign. He'll be featured member of Goliath Global for a while though. Despite not having any special chemistry with Hamstead nor Tate, I can easily see a potential tag title run in his future.  Nighthawk Current Australian Champion Notable stat changes: Psychology +1 So, Nighthawk has been... decent. But I want to see more. His biggest drawback is the fact that Legend has to cut his promos for him. SHADOW LEGENDS works as a duo. But... I'm thinking he's not going to grow that much as a performer anymore. A solid midcard and a tag guy but nothing more. And I need young-ish guys who can someday step up to main event roles. He's good at this role, but it's seemingly as high as he's going to go.  Tyrant Notable stat changes: Psychology +1 Tyrant is the biggest benefactor of the attention the three Team Forbes guys got. He's the best of the three currently. Nameth should be able to pass him in the coming years, but Tyrant should stay a reliable midcard act. Recognizables:  Alyx Macquarie Notable stat changes: Brawling +1, Technical +1, Aerial +1, Flashiness +1, Psychology +2 Macquarie has been a rock solid cornerstone of the midcard. He pretty much held together the Forbes vs Macquarie/Vortex/Simonson angle by himself. He can be easily slotted anywhere in the card. He'll hang around the Australian/Tag Team title level, but should be ready to be heated up to bigger things if the need rises.  D-Pod Notable stat changes: Aerial +1, Flashiness +1, Psychology +1, Charisma +1, Microphone +1, Acting +1 Despite the shockingly good match with Mason, D-Pod is still very much a project. His mic skills are really valuable so he'll be a featured player for years to come. But if he ever wants to escape the midcard, he needs to step up his game in the ring as well.  Felix Harding Notable stat changes: Psychology +1 Oh Felix... He is doomed to be a jobber to the stars. Whenever he wasn't eating a loss at the main card, he was working the pre-show trying to regain whatever is left of his momentum. His performances were solid but nothing more than that. His high Selling skill is a good reason to keep him employed. I'm sure some of that talent will rub off to our younger roster members.  Kasey Notable stat changes: Brawling +1, Psychology +2, Charisma +2, Microphone +2, Acting +2 Kasey hasn't grabbed my attention the same way as Chuck has, but he's quietly improved more than his partner during this year. He's still significantly weaker than Chuck, but hey, maybe we have something here! Let's see how he can handle matches with The Samoans and Apocalypse.  Leon Nameth Notable stat changes: Brawling +1, Flashiness +1, Psychology +2, Microphone +2, Acting +2 It's a long way to the top. Nameth started as the only client of Max Forbes, but ended up playing the second fiddle to Tyrant. He's coming along, but slowly. I always need midcard heels, so Team Forbes will keep trucking even after their defeat to Nighthawk.  Lothar Prellinger Notable stat changes: Psychology +1 Prellinger has been, well, solid but nothing more. I think I have a fun dysfunctional trio with him, Nameth and Tyrant but he's the one with the lowest ceiling.  Pookie Possum Notable stat changes: Psychology +1, Charisma +1, Microphone +1, Acting +1 The departure of Richie Fox hosed over Possum royally. If Richie had stayed, Possum would probably be a tag team champion at this point. He started the year at the cusp of being our third biggest babyface (if the original Tour This Company screen is to be believed) but lackluster performances, Fox leaving and key losses have seen him drop down the card quite a lot. When I can convince Fox to come back, I'm sure Possum can rebound a bit.  Reggie Tate Notable stat changes: Psychology +1 Tate has been fine. He's always the weak link in the big Goliath Global tag team matches but I had hoped his big roles would see him develop during the year. Well... nope. He's solid, but I'd like to see more. Giving him a solid stream of wins in the undercard should help, instead of always eating the pin in big Goliath Global multimans.  SubUrban Legend Notable stat changes: Brawling +1, Technical +1, Flashiness +1, Psychology +2, Acting +1 Even after working more dates than any other APW wrestler (thanks to his ZEN loan), Legend is not developing as fast as I had hoped. Sure, Nighthawk has stolen his thunder when it comes to wins, but Legend has been pretty stagnant when it comes to performances. He is one of my best mic workers regardless but he needs to step up his game in the ring. I look at his great ZEN performances and wish that he could do the same with us.  Surfer Dude Lucas Notable stat changes: Psychology +1 Lucas is doing fine. Even if he doesn't develop that much, he already has skills eclipsing Gerard. I just need to get him to grow in popularity. And I'm getting him there, slowly but surely. 2021 might not be the year I pull a trigger with him, but The Dudes are on the shortlist to dethrone The Samoans. We'll see what happens...   Warren Lydecker & Whirlwind Lee Wilkes Notable stat changes: Lydecker: Brawling +1, Technical +1, Psychology +2 Wilkes: Technical +1, Psychology +2 Lydecker and Wilkes should have been a nice cornerstone team. Should have been. Their awful chemistry together ruined that chance and has kept them mostly in trios action. They are both still solid wrestlers, but maybe they should find new partners at this point. They have some of the highest psychology stats of the entire crews, so they are super helpful to have around, even if it means just pre-show duty. Unimportants:   R&R (Brian Rampage & Paul Reinhold) Notable stat changes: Rampage: Brawling +1, Psychology +1, Reinhold: Technical +1, Psychology +2 2020 hasn't really raised the profiles of R&R. They're still bland and still quite bad in the ring. 2021 will be another year spent mostly in pre-show duty. It would be cool if these guys developed to respectable workers but it's looking like a long shot.  Christian Blithe Notable stat changes: Psychology +1, Microphone +1, Acting +1 I'm kind of trying to fast track Blithe towards the midcard, pairing him with Mattell (and now Boon) but I've yet to get notable progress on that front. He has the skills on paper, just like Lucas, I just need to get him over. I have the time with Blithe.  Dee Lucketti Notable stat changes: Aerial +1, Psychology +1, Charisma +1, Microphone +1, Acting +1 Dee Lucketti has the thankless role of losing a lot. Along with Next Level, he's the primary job guy on the heel side. He's nothing special in the ring, but if he can find the right tag team partner he might just find his way to a push. He's still only 19 years old. He's not a prodigy, but a multi-year project.  Dizzy G Notable stat changes: - Dizzy shares the same role as Lucketti, just on the babyface side. What is EXTREMELY worrying is his absolute lack of stat gains in core areas. Sure, had had some growth in secondary skills, but even those are not on the level of some of his same ages companions. At 23 years old, Dizzy should be on the prime age as far as developing goes. Some prospects never pan out, but he is fine in his pre-show jobber role. If his 2021 doesn't see any development, he'll probably be on the chopping block and I'll find another rookie to fill the low card.   Next Level (Kazuhisa Hosotani & Keisuke Koroki) Notable stat changes: Hosotani: Aerial +1, Flashiness +1, Psychology +1, Microphone +1, Acting +1 Koroki: Brawling +1, Technical +1, Aerial +1, Flashiness +1, Psychology +1, Microphone +1, Acting +1 Our Japanese friends are bad. Really bad. R&R bad. There's a reason why they've only appeared once in the main show. Their strength is their charisma and since they're finally picking up on the language, they can be used in angles without getting language penalties. They still have over a year with us before returning but let's not forget their main utility is to lose.  Lorenzo Oliverio Notable stat changes: Psychology +1 Oliverio is paired with Maniac Monster for now. He hasn't done anything special yet but should have the charisma to be decent enough for us.  Maniac Monster Notable stat changes: Brawling +1, Hardcore +1, Psychology +1, Charisma +1, Microphone +1, Acting +1 Monster is still a growing big boy. I'm really high on him as our future "big bad" but that is still years away. His progress has been quite decent and I can only hope he can keep that up.  Naoji Azumi Notable stat changes: Brawling +1, Psychology +3, Microphone +2, Acting +1 Azumi is a bit better than his friends, but he has ways to go himself. With a right opponent, he can hang for sure. He might be due for a bigger role since he has overcome the language barricade too. But I always need people who can lose and Azumi, despite his bright future ahead, can lose really well.  Surfer Dude Jesse Notable stat changes: Psychology +1, Microphone +1, Acting +3 Jesse was always going to lag behind his more talented tag team partner. I had hoped he could pick up more brawling skills but no. He'll ride Lucas' coattails to success and hopefully develop along the way. If that doesn't happen... well, Jesse can always be Mason 2.0.  Vortex Notable stat changes: Psychology +1, Microphone +1, Acting +1 Vortex has all the tools on paper. He can go in the ring and is decently charismatic. And yet he still is near the bottom of this roster recap. Despite his continued appearances on the main show and decent-ish performances, Vortex is yet to capture the hearts and minds of the APW fans. Hopefully 2021 is better for the mysterious man.  White Wasp Notable stat changes: Aerial +1, Psychology +1, Charisma +1, Microphone +1, Acting +1 Wasp is happy as long as I don't bust him for his soft drug use. Him teaming up with Possum had some potential that was immediately flushed away by zero chemistry. It's probably hard to believe, but I have something small in mind for Wasp in 2021... -------- The APW Top Ten Matches of the Year 2020 DVD (only 24,99 Australian dollars!) 1. Scottie Hamstead(c) vs Christopher Gerard - APW Commonwealth Championship (Early Christmas Bash, December 2020) - 62 The match APW fans wanted to see all year! The reigning champion Hamstead faces his toughest test and tries to extend his reign over the one year mark! 2. Scottie Hamstead(c) vs Dingo Devine - Steel Cage Match for the APW Commonwealth Championship (Caged Showdown, May 2020) - 60 Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run and no one to help you! The former champion finally gets his man locked up inside the sinister steel cage! 3. Christopher Gerard & Rusty Mills vs Scottie Hamstead & Donovan Boon (Coming Home, September 2020) - 58 Mills and Boon meet for the first time after the shocking events in August! The rivalry between Gerard and Hamstead heats up! 4. Rusty Mills, Christopher Gerard & Dingo Devine vs Scottie Hamstead, Massacre & Donovan Boon (Holiday Hijinks, December 2020) - 57 It's the penultimate stop before the holidays! APW faithful get to witness a six man tag team match for the ages! 5. Goliath Global (Scottie Hamstead & Reggie Tate) vs Christopher Gerard & Dingo Devine (Muscle Carnage, September 2020) - 57 Goliath Global keeps their stranglehold on the Commonwealth title, but Devine & Gerard will not stop trying! 6. Donovan Boon vs Rusty Mills (Early Christmas Bash, December 2020) - 56 The Duo explodes! Former partners finally settle their differences the only way they know! 7. Lone Shark, Dingo Devine & Christopher Gerard vs Goliath Global (Scottie Hamstead, Massacre & Reggie Tate) (Boogie Night, November 2020) - 56 Lone Shark is not the weak link and is set out to prove just that! Can the Aquatic Antihero match the brutal strength of Goliath Global? 8. Massacre(c) vs Christopher Gerard - APW Australian Championship (Fight Night, March 2020) - 56 Massacre's reign of terror meets it's greatest challenge! Can Gerard stop the monster on it's tracks!? 9. Dingo Devine & Christopher Gerard vs Goliath Global (Massacre & Reggie Tate) (Longest Night, November 2020) - 55 Another high stakes tag team match between Goliath Global and the home team heroes! Who has the advantage heading into December? 10. Scottie Hamstead(c) vs Rusty Mills - APW Commonwealth Championship (Championship Carnival, August 2020) - 55 Rusty Mills has finally earned his first shot at the Commonwealth gold! With his trusty partner Donovan Boon watching his back, he will surely be victorious! Next time: Let's (finally) wrap up the world tour! Time to see what's going on in the UK and Europe. BTF fucked around with this message at 13:06 on Sep 17, 2021 |
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Episode 18: World Tour, Part 4 Unlike The US, Canada, Mexico and Canada, neither Europe nor United Kingdom have a multi decade history of pro wrestling in the CVerse. Let's start with Europe, probably the weakest and least developed area in the game. Europe had it's nameless independent organizations that lasted for a few years at a time until the Spanish Ultimate Combat Ring (UCR) was founded in 1998. UCR never quite found it's own style, drifting from hardcore to sports entertainment to serious old school rasslin' approach during it's ten year run. UCR folded in 2007 and gave birth to two stylistically very different promotions, European Wrestling All-Stars (EWA) and Ultimate European Wrestling (UEW). Two years later Victory Wrestling Association (VWA) hit the scene. The scene has been locked in a three way power struggle for the following decade, with none of the three really pulling away from the pack. While they start the game quite friendly towards each other, the companies tend to start fighting sooner rather than later.   But we won't be starting with any of those three, but with the brand new European League of Professional Fighters (ELPF). New promotions have a "random" chance of being opened every month, the chance being determined by the amount of free agents in the area and the overall state of the business. You'll see a new company pop up once every few years or so on average. Founded in August 2020, the pseudo-MMA company is yet to really make an impact in the European wrestling scene. Their quirk is to run singles matches only. Most of their roster is made up of guys who also work for one of the other three companies. But their top star is actually wholly unique in this save.  Meet the Swedish kickboxer sensation Helmar Gustavsson, a randomly generated worker in my save. While the characters that are already in the database have a short bio about their history, the random gens have a quick info dump about their wrestling school, debut, style, finishing move and one or two other tidbits. He is the biggest star of ELPF and completely home grown, fitting their style to a tee. The bad news? He is very much not good as a pro wrestler. He has no primary skills to speak of, bad selling and safety and really no psychology to speak of. Already 29 years old, he likely won't develop that much more. He's also an Agitator backstage, a negative influence and more likely to stir up drama. ALSO he has a sidegig of doing MMA fights, which sideline him at least for six months to focus on training. This lead him to vacating the secondary title of ELPF... that actually main evented each of their shows thus far over their "actual" top belt. You might be asking yourself, why is this guy the top star then? Popularity, dear goons. Helmar has 42 pop in every region of Europe thanks to his kickboxing escapades. This makes him the most popular European wrestler active in the game area (not employed by 21CW) and a somewhat valuable tool even for the performance over popularity product that ELPF has.  The other top guy not working anywhere else is Scott van den Berg, an aging punch-kick style old school goon. He is also not that good and a weird fit for ELPF. The company does have actual talent, like VWA figurehead Landon Mallory, Polish technician Pavel Vanzycha and two good tag teams in The Foreign Legion and Brecher & Grimm. Europe has the least amount of active workers at the start of the database (alongside Australia) and probably the worst pool of free agents, so ELPF have a bit of a climb ahead of them.   VWA is currently smallest of the three "big" ones in Europe but probably the most interesting of the bunch. Started by a multimillionaire, VWA has something for everyone. Charismatic crowd pleasers, wild high flyers, traditional lumbering bad guys, a yeti and the next generation of Japanese wrestling.  VWA is the other excursion destination besides TCW for PGHW's young wrestlers. Much like with APW and WLW, this is also not very good for the Japanese side. Their guys get to work maybe once a month with significantly less talented people than at home. Shinji Mihara, one of the few future hopes PGHW has, is seeing his growth stunted working in Switzerland. But VWA gets some decent low card wrestlers out of the deal!   The true stars of VWA are the Landon Mallory and Walker van Cleer, two charismatic brawlers at the peak of their careers. Both have already started to branch out of their home promotion. Mallory also works ELPF and van Cleer works EWA.  VWA is probably the most interesting promotion of the bunch, even if their tag division has probably the most generically named team in the game: two Russian lads named... The Russians.   UEW is the MAW/NYCW of Europe, without the charm. Old school wrestling with very serious wrestlers wrestling each other in very serious wrestling matches. In summary, wrestling. UEW is also home to Japanese wrestlers abroad, as they have become the excursion destination for BHOTWG and also a developmental territory. UEW undercards are filled with "stars" of tomorrow but are lacking in homegrown rookies. Most of their "originals" are nearing the end of their road. Owner Ali Bloxsome retired from in-ring action years ago, Norwegian star Stig Svensson retired in 2018, head booker and top star Joey Beauchamp is 44 years old and current world champion Kalu Owusu already 43 years old.  Thankfully UEW has the next best thing in European wrestling. Konrad Makinen is basically a Swedish Dolph Ziggler. Great at selling, flashy as hell, entertaining and a solid brawler to boot, Makinen should be set as a big name in the area for the next decade.  UEW has also put a lot of stock in younger guys like Marcello Ricci, Clubber Kohl, Gordon Leve, the tag team of Lars Brecher and Ralph Grimm and Menace. Menace is a notable character in the CVerse, being the first openly gay character in the database.  UEW is also the home for personal and a GDS forums favourite "Trademark" Thomas Morgan. He is considered to be the best wrestler that never got a major run anywhere (he is with NOTBW in the CV97 database, but that is considered somewhat non-canon). He was a rock solid technician and the third ever graduate of the prestigious House of Stone wrestling school, but time decline is finally starting to take it's hold on the 46 year old veteran. Morgan has played his part to perfection in three of my big games over the editions. In TEW 13, Morgan was the cornerstone of a startup company in the US, ending up as the first triple crown champion (triple crown = winning three of the major titles in a promotion at least once, usually world/midcard/tag title). In TEW 16, a bit older but he still had a big part to play in MAW. Then in TEW 2020, I hired him to the British CWW after he was fired from UEW. What followed was an unlikely cinderella story, where Morgan ended up at the top of that company at 50 years old, main eventing shows in front of ten thousand people. Trademark has been great for me for so many times, so it will be a sad sight to see him finally hang it up.   Sports entertainment rules the landscape in Europe as EWA has pulled ahead of UEW and VWA for the time being. Much like when I stepped in as the booker of APW, they are also really lacking in stars for a popularity over performance company.  Does the lack of stars have anything to do with owner/booker Byron, who is on his eight reign as EWA Universal champion and didn't lose a single match during 2020? Mayyyyyyybe? The years might keep adding up, but Byron still rules supreme. This latest reign is not a power play, but a somewhat reasonable move. The previous champion, Bam Bam Johansson died as champion, so it is not far fetched to go for the stable choice Byron after the tragedy... or they could have gone with his brother.  Hercules Johansson is a big boy, much like his late brother and currently the top heel in EWA. So he has won ONE MATCH in EWA during the year. Just... what?  That's the same amount of wins that undercard enhancement talent (and future main eventer) Bret Heartbreak. Heartbreak is a mirror image of his dad, just without the massive ego. If you don't think Byron is not going to push his boy to the top, you are sorely mistaken. (Real world wrestling history is filled with nepotism and CVerse happily follows the tradition).  EWA also has the only women's division in Europe and the UK, led by the talented "Black Widow" Zofia Jankovic. Despite being a walking lawsuit waiting to happen, she is the undisputed ace of the division and probably the all around best wrestler in the company. Unfortunately, the rest of the division is mostly green, except for Thee Davis, who actively wrestles on the other side of the globe with 5SSW. All three European powers have their pros and cons and should be pretty fun to play around with. Europe just suffers from a major lack of good free agents. --- Moving on to the UK. The British Isles had their first "major" company in Men of Steel Combat (MOSC). Founded in 1980, the company mostly offered grimy brawls for the drunk and blood hungry crowds. MOSC never really conquered the entire country, mostly sticking around in Northern England. Another company, Ring of Fire (ROF), popped up in 1998 with the polar opposite style. ROF was all about good clean pure wrestling and probably the closest to the old World of Sport style wrestling CVerse had to offer. The British landscape changed in 2006, when the popular British Strongman TV show host Jeff Nova bought a struggling 21st Century Wrestling (21CW), changed the company to an sports entertainment style company and used his media connections to grow the company to a national powerhouse and a cultural institution. MOSC and ROF couldn't keep and and went bankrupt in 2010. It took a few years for new companies to pop up on British soil, trying to profit off 21CW's massive success.   I've mentioned Championship Wrestling from Wigan (CWW) a few times already. They are the only brand new company in TEW 2020, being founded between editions in 2018. I had my first big save with them, lasting for five-ish in-game years, leading the company to Medium size, made Thomas Morgan a household name and was on my way to greatness until a computer crash ended those plans. They are pretty much filling the hole that ROF left behind all those years ago, with a hint of puroresu mixed in there. Most of the roster are hard-nosed technicians who are either students from the Ring of Fire dojo (which is still active, despite the company going under) or have a background in legit martial arts. They might have like two guys who know which way to hold a microphone but god drat I've grown fond of these soulless wrestling machines.  If owner Curtis Jenkins ever wants to let go of his spotlight (spoilers, he probably won't), then Lenny Mochin is the face of CWW for years to come. He's already a one time CWW Champion and has won their yearly King of the North tournament twice already.   Padraig O'Hearne and Martin Heath are the guys next in line after Mochin and probably have the tools to surpass him. All in all, CWW was a really fun company to play with. They are the smallest company at the start of the database, so they can only grow. They have a solid core, some solid prospects and a decent free agent pool to pull from, especially when 21CW let's go of some of their rookies who fit better with CWW or our next company.   Scottish National Promotions (SNP) is a massive grift. They can lose money for five years straight and still be on the black thanks to their massive five million dollar grant. SNP is kind of like the real life Scottish wrestling promotion Insane Championship Wrestling, both providing a hardcore flavoured product geared to their local fanbase. The two promotions have one massive difference and that is the owner.  Fittingly named Mark Carnie is the biggest piece of poo poo in the CVerse and that is a lot considering such legendary asshats as Big Smack Scott or Peter Valentine. Carnie is the reason why SNP exists and also the reason they will never hold on to talent for that long. I mean, what is the drawback of having the worst person in the world as your boss?  oh  Oh no. I can only imagine the carnage if a player chooses to be the booker and leaves Carnie as the owner. Something I really don't want to try.   While CWW fills the legacy of ROF, SNP is the "modern" version of MOSC. This means they have a lot of more or less talented brawlers filling up the card. The most high profile duo being The Ivanoffs, biggest hirings SNP have made during their short existence. Ivanoffs make the SNP tag team scene quite exciting, filled with good teams like Maximum Damage, The Bridges of London (who also work with CWW) and probably the top two guys who could become stars outside of Scotland.   The Northern Lights of Alton Vicious and Riddick Jordan, two ROF dojo guys have great upside. In the aforementioned CWW save they became fine members of the Wigan promotion as well and with a bit of polish could be the next big 21CW tag team.  SNP is a perfect place for guys like Meathead McAullie, who probably have no upside elsewhere but can be stars in their own little corner of the world. If the shadow of a huge Carnie wasn't hanging heavy above the promotion, SNP would probably be a fun promotion to play around with.   And then there is the big one. The best promotion in the world in 2020. 21st Century Wrestling is the big success story of British wrestling, a true rags to riches story. Sure, it's has nothing to do with "traditional" British wrestling, opting to go for the sports entertainment style to wow the masses, but you can't argue their success. In the end they have made the scene healthier. Their National School of Wrestling training school has supplied the company and the scene at large with a crop of new, young talent that might have never come up without them.    Even without Tommy Cornell, the 21CW main event scene can match the main eventers of other Big companies around the globe. The wrestler of the year Adam Matravers, Edward Cornell and Leigh Burton are top ten wrestlers in the entire world. And that's not all. Stars of the previous decade like Jonathan Faust, JB Cash, Buff Martinez and Philip Cooper are still good and are already making room for the stars of tomorrow, like National School graduate Wade Orson, former VWA star Sebastian Koller and menacing War Machine.  In this save, 21CW have strapped the rocket to Apollo Prince. Young, charismatic and a good brawler, Prince has all the tools to be the next big thing (after Leigh Burton, of course) in British wrestling.  The tag division is still great, even without The Ivanoffs. CROUCHING STORM, HIDDEN SIFU is the highlight both in talent and in name, but the division has a boatload of talent. Absolutely Flawless is a rock solid veteran twin brother duo, The Red Devils fill the "evil Russian" quota that every wrestling company just has to have, Hot Stuff has charismatic top stars Cash and Martinez, The Men of Steel of Mark Adonis and Mass Hulk are two pieces of BEEF with high hopes for the future and two future main eventers Orson and Koller have been paired up as a killer tag team Kiss This in this save. 21CW is probably the "easiest" and most approachable of the big promotions of the world. They have no local competition, money in the bank, great roster, surefire school providing good talent for years to come... They will be hurt from time to time, when big companies from across the pond come calling for the big name talent but maybe someday 21CW can become the behemoth that does the same to the US juggernauts. And that's it! World tour, in the books. Next time, back to the trenches of Australia. Speaking of... Goon Poll~ New year, new stories so a fitting time for feedback. 1) Christopher Gerard and Pinn Enterprises. Gerard is putting the basically year long feud with Goliath Global to rest and moving on to the big bad of 2021, Dumfrey Pinn. I've yet to test out Pinn in the ring, so I'm not yet sure how he compares to the rest of our current top guys, but his big upside is as a wrestler-manager. DIW got years of stories out of the Pinn led stable Pinn Enterprises. And as they, imitation is the highest form of flattery. (Also, I'm a fan of wrestling stables popping up in multiple promotions). Pinn will be getting his group of own guys to throw against Gerard to get the title (and the big money) to himself. So, what parts do we use to build this group. a) Build the stable from within. The Boon/Mattell/Blithe trio could use a surefire mic worker (would also tie in Mills as a frequent Gerard partner for the duration of the angle), The Apocalypse have been established as guns for hire during the D-Pod/Mason feud and Samoan Demolition could give the group instant credibility as dominant champions. Each combination would offer a fresh slew of title matches with Gerard (Boon/Mattell/War/Devil and Pinn). I mean, it's b) One-off mercenaries from the outside. The Aussie free agent pool has a few former RAW/DIW guys who are more than ready to step in for a paycheck or two. Pinn brings in a big bad for a month or two, Gerard beats them and they move on. Rinse, repeat, keep the stable in flux. This is the point to bring in Louie Scorpio, arrogant former APW midcarder who made it "big" in RAW as the second in command. c) Mix of the two. Few guys from the current APW roster as the core, with the flow of free agents in and out for a month or two. d) "Hey, I had something else in mind!" Feel free to give your ideas! 2) Future of the tag team division. Samoan Demolition have been great, but I feel like its time to move on. At this point I have three (and a half) face tag teams that could somewhat reasonably be the next champions. Each of them would be a downgrade (Apocalypse is the only team that can hold a candle to the Samoans currently) but I feel that Devil in particular has grown past this status. a) Positive Energy. With Apocalypse promising to put Chuck and Kasey over, I'm suddenly a lot more into this duo. Building the pair as giant killers, going over the Samoans and Apocalypse in quick succession, would probably make them both. b) SHADOW LEGENDS. Nighthawk is the best of the six guys I'm suggesting to take out the Samoans and has the best mic worker of the bunch in Legend. Can easily be built as a double title feud, with Samoans gunning for the Australian title with LEGENDS going for the team gold, possibly ending up swapping the two. c) Surfer Dudes with Attitudes. Lucas is a star in the making and a big title win would probably shoot him up the promotion pretty quickly. Jesse is the weak link here, but could hopefully grow to the role, that's the reason he's with Lucas in the first place. d) "Hey, I had something else in mind!" Feel free to give your ideas! 3) Who do you want to get the spotlight next? Is there some talent that you want to see in more? Do you want to come up with a new gimmick for someone and see how that pans out? Feel free to shout out ideas for anyone! Triple A's idea for L&L was so blatantly obvious (and fun!) I'm a bit ashamed I didn't come up with it by myself.
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Sep 27, 2021 08:49
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