I'm working on a January 1997 real-world mod. Any requests or suggestions?

[Razor's Edge]

Hello folks. 

 

For about 5 years on and off I previously worked on a January 1996 real-world mod, only for the data to be corrupted. I gave up at that point and took a hiatus from the game. However, now I'm back with a new PC, and I'm not really in to modern day wrestling. It's back to working on creating the most accurate mod from my favourite period of wrestling from when I was a kid. It is based off of the January 1997 mod from the Home of Pro Wrestling link in the sticky on these here forums. Having said that, it is going to be edited so much that it will look nothing like that mod when I'm finished. Just used it as a starting point to save a little time. 

 

So far I have spend many, many hours sifting through the Workers, deleting many and creating many more, as well as editing every entry one by one. It's a painstaking process and I'm only halfway through that right now. I am also trying to include as many relationships as possible, as I feel this makes the game more interesting. I'm also trying to put together a general salary structure based off of Overness, to make the game more balanced. This includes giving workers with Written contracts a slightly higher rate of pay than a worker on an Open contract with the same Overness. Once I have implemented this I am considering giving every WCW worker say... +40% salary, as we all know they loved to overpay. 

 

I am editing the data to be accurate up to that time period. So relationships that were formed after that period won't be in the game, nor will tag teams or alter egos. I am also going to be adding wrestlers who retired around the period as Staff, as I hate using the computer-generated Staff option. Nothing crazy, just things like Nikita Koloff working in Production, Biff Wellington and The Dynamite Kid as Road Agents. May be a bit of fantasy, but I find the generated staff are painfully bad. They all seem to have names of football/soccer players from the England football teams of the late 90s and early 00s. I also intend to expand on the Sponsors and make them relevant to the time period, as there's only 46 currently in the data. 

 

The wrestler stats at the minute are very much ballpark figures and I am sure there would be some who don't agree with what is there. I am currently debating how to approach the stats. Considering once I have completed adding Workers to then make spreadsheets for each stat ranking everybody from best to worst, then altering their stats as appropriate. For example, I am down to editing Workers beginning with K. so I've done a basic edit for all Workers from A through J. Here is a list of the top Brawling, Speed and Technical Workers from those I've completed editing:

 

Brawling

95 - Bret Hart

90 - Jushin Thunder Liger

85 - Goldust

80 - Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, Hunter Hearst Helmsley, Jado, Jeff Jarrett, Jinsei Shinzaki and Justin "Hawk" Bradshaw

 

Speed

100 - Juventud Guerrera

95 - Christopher Daniels and Hayabusa

90 - Billy Kidman, Jerry Lynn and Jushin Thunder Liger

85 - Eddie Guerrero, Hector Garza and Jeff Hardy

80 - Chris Jericho, Christian York, Devon Storm, Evan Karagias, Flash Funk, Gedo, Jamie Howard, Jinsei Shinzaki and Johnny Swinger

 

Technical

100 - Bret Hart, Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko

95 - Chris Jericho

90 - Curt Hennig and Johnny Smith

85 - Dan Severn and Jun Akiyama

80 - Arn Anderson, Eddie Guerrero, Jeff Jarrett and Jushin Thunder Liger

 

You may see imbalances here, but believe me, this is an improvement from what I started with. One of the main conundrums is wrestlers who were just starting out in this period being given ridiculously high stats. Edge, for example, had all stats set at 90+. Another example is Charlie Haas, who is 24 in the game. I've lowered his stats to 60 Brawling and Technical, and 50 Speed. I'm sure with a year in Development he can be called up to the main Roster with some fine stats. As I said the stats are far from finalised and at the minute I'm satisfied to round everything to the nearest 5. I will be doing the fine tuning once I have completed the first run through and got all the Workers added that I want in the game. At the minute I've whittled the number down to 358, but I will be looking to increase that to over 500. 

 

Another issue is there only being the big three; WCW, WWF and ECW currently in the game. I will probably release the first version of this mod with only those three, and add more Promotions to future versions. This is a project which could drag out for quite a while. At the minute I'm very motivated to get all the Workers added as that's the most time-consuming part and I'm already over halfway through editing those that are there. Also, I won't be able to sort out the GFX for the mod as I'm useless at that sort of stuff. In the ideal world someone will jump on board to help with that side of things.

 

Anyway. Apologies for the length of the post, just thought I'd give people a heads up on what I'm upto and what is hopefully in store. I'll keep you posted. Any input is greatly appreciated.

[Razor's Edge]

Just a small update. I finished sifting through the Workers in the game and am currently adding more. I went to the Pro Wrestling Wiki and started with the page for workers who debuted in 1950 and were still active in 1997. I'm working through that, and am currently upto 1966 debuts, with 409 Workers in the database. I have also cleared out all the fake Staff members and added many real ones. The database currently needs 10 more Owners and 5 more Medical staff, but I will get around to that. The Titles are all correct, and the Alter Egos and Relationships files contain a lot of data and are as accurate as possible. I haven't touched the Sponsors, Promotions or Events files yet. 

[Mancuerda]

I would consider looking at my 1998 data. I put a ton of effort into getting data for promotions, workers, relationships, etc. Obviously there will be some workers who will need added who passed away in 1997 (Brian Pillman for example), and some workers you will want to adjust stats for, dispositions, who they're employed by, the champions would all need adjusted, etc. But it would at least give you a big base to start working on, even if promotions and other things wouldn't be necessarily accurate.

Also, just in my opinion, I never give a worker a 100 stat for virtually anything, except in some cases I will for charisma. I never do for the wrestling stats, as I don't feel like it is realistic. I usually go for the low to mid 90s as a cap (I think in my 1998 scenario I capped around 93-94 for the wrestling stats). I never give anyone perfect stats because even if you have two workers on paper who are excellent or amazing in a certain category, sometimes they just don't click, or they still occasionally botch a move, have an issue, or whatever the case may be. For example, you've got Bret Hart and Chris Benoit both rated as 100 in technical wrestling. While their match against each other in tribute to Owen Hart was excellent (granted it occurred in 1999), it was not rated "five stars" or considered an all-time great technical wrestling contest. Benoit and Malenko had numerous matches against each other, or with Jericho involved, and none of them were technically perfect.

I would reconsider the rating scale, and I'd also reconsider who is placed in the highest tiers for each group. I think Guerrero is a better technical wrestler, or at least the equivalent of Chris Jericho at this time. I'd also rank Rey Mysterio Jr. as the best speed-based wrestler in the world in 1997, or at least up there with guys like Juventud, Ultimo Dragon, etc.

But anyway, best of luck on your scenario. If you want to use my 1998 scenario as the basis for yours, I'd recommend it. I wound up having around 1,800 workers, and I think around 15 or 20 promotions, so it would make your scenario a lot easier.