Pro Wrestling Sim

[Krabby]

Oh interesting, thanks @Meacon Keaton . I might go wishlist it sometime. 

[Mick]

Well, overall between TEW and EWR, I do appreciate all the bells and whistles that TEW has over EWR; Arenas, regional popularity, agreements with other promotions, and so on, to make it really feel like it's potentially an actual wrestling promotion. 

Now, with EWR, you're limited to 11 segments at the most (Assuming you're not pulling some kind of thing like copying .dat files to rig it). And I really feel that the limitation is that, as I said in the Essa thread, you really cannot emulate a territory type promotion. At cult level, which I feel is as big as the promotions would get, you're not drawing anywhere, when back in the day they were all pretty much running major arenas and selling the more reasonably sized (10-20K) arenas out. But in EWR I'd get like 500 people to the show. If it's a PPV event -- well, that's not exactly encouraging for Harley Race and Flair in that steel cage match at Starrcade, is it? Or the WWF, under Vince Sr, regularly selling out Madison Square Garden. That just doesn't happen on EWR unless you're global.  And that's fine, EWR is old enough to buy a drink if it wants and it's free, made by one guy. I can't complain or fault Ryland for this and developing a commercial version. 

 

But I do prefer how more straightforward EWR is with somethings. So, I guess it's pick and choose. 

I do hope this pans out, it doesn't look bad. 

[Benji]

I think my biggest drag at the moment is the lack of actual options for the match finishes and reasons. I feel like that's one of the biggest parts of booking and it's simplicity is just not enough for me yet. As I keep saying, its got a solid base and it's still in dev, so nobody should judge it as an end product. It's really good for where it is and I'm excited to see the rest of it develop.

[HunkyPants]

I'm really interested in PWS. I struggled with TEW as the amount of detail just sapped some of the fun out of it and EWR is still fun but so limited. I can't stand the 11 slots and my favourite thing on TEW was being able to book shows by length of time. My least favourite was spending so long actually booking the show itself!

Might have to give this a go.

[The Buscher]

Yeah I think I'm going to give this a try reasonably soon.  I'm playing as AEW in EWR and plugging along nicely but it's just....too basic?  Like I moved up to Global fairly quickly and now can pretty much do anything.  I already have a huge roster, WWE dumped a thousand other talented workers and no other promotion is big enough to sign them to written deals right now so I can more or less just do whatever I want as long as they don't have Japanese commitments.  Being unable to actually book Forbidden Door due to NJPW commits not wanting to work with me is really the only drawback I've had.  Otherwise I can just gleefully book along with impunity.  I imagine booking WWE would be even easier.

On the other hand, I haven't tried TEW in several years but every time I do I find myself making it not even a month before I have to throw in the towel.  I appreciate the level of detail but also find it much too overwhelming.

If PWS is somewhere in the middle of these two extremes I'll have a good time.

[HunkyPants]

Quote

On the other hand, I haven't tried TEW in several years but every time I do I find myself making it not even a month before I have to throw in the towel.  I appreciate the level of detail but also find it much too overwhelming.

 

This is me 100%. I started a game as WWE once, and just struggled because there was so many variables and things to play around with. It just wasn't fun, and then it took like an hour to book the show and by the end of it, I didn't care how well it did.

 

As for EWR - I started my own promotion at Cult level, and within 2 years was the biggest company in the world with the best wrestlers so there is no challenge there.

PWS feels like it might be somewhere in between them, alot more towards TEW but seemingly easier to play. I guess I'll have a look and see. It's only like £15 so should be reasonable enough with a good mod.

[apsham]

The thing that I love about the game is how things are setup. There's a wrestling skill stat. People sitting down to mod this game don't need to work out number values for each and every style. They provide a value for skill, stamina, psychology, etc. And then you can craft a worker's specialty from the trait values.

I know TEW has some people who are hammering in those updates - but it has to be tiring and stuff has to be falling by the wayside with how much there is to edit. Every time I played TEW, I spent more time editing values to make the game actually work as intended versus actually playing it. If I feel like I need to alter something on the fly with PWS, it's a helluva lot quicker and more straightforward.

The workshop integration is going to be a great step for this as well.

[Benji]

Honestly, I love TEWs stay breakdown, but in terms of actual stats, I have long felt that Grapple, Striking, and Flash (somewhat akin to technical, brawling, and high flying, but a bit more open to interpretation such as HBK being flashy but not a high flyer) should just be the base of the actual fighting attributes. I feel like wrestling to too simple, but by the same token it absolutely makes sense if you just pair it with a simple "style" for each wrestler and decide what clashes and what works well together.

Even if TEW retains the full breakdown, I definitely think it would be better simplified into a single wrestling stat in terms of profile viewing, which can then be clicked into for more detail on what specifically they are good at. Bring back the grades for the front profile view.

[KJE]

Do you see AI results in your games?

[apsham]

58 minutes ago, KJE said:

Do you see AI results in your games?

Yes. You can make the AI choose who wins based on overness and skill and what not OR make it truly random.

I dove in tonight, fired up the Summer of Punk workshop mod. Very impressed so far.

[Mick]

....So what I'm hearing is that I can actually run a Japanese style shoot promotion. 

I did buy this just now; maybe down the road, would anybody want to collaborate on doing Steam workshop scenarios, depending on how complicated this actually is?

[Mick]

So, I think there's a lot of potential with the game. I've liked what I've seen, it's like the perfect blend of EWR and TEW that suits my tastes. I think what we could do is probably use certain EWR scenarios as a baseline for promotions, and then go from there.

[Twist]

I've bought it and it's a fun little game. Scenarios on Workshop are limited at the moment but enjoyable none the less. Been playing as AWA in the 88 mod and it's been fun.

[TheWho87]

I love when you suggest an idea and firstly the guy takes it in, and secondly it actually works.

[Bobfoc]

I like the idea of "wrestling skill" being a stat instead of all brawling, speed and all the others in EWR. I found that having to match wrestlers with similar strengths didn't seem true to real life.

[Mick]

Yeah, you're absolutely right, and that's a major gripe that I have with EWR. 

Look at WrestleMania 25. Shawn Michaels vs The Undertaker. A pure CLASSIC. And if we go by EWR, we'd be hearing about how they didn't really click because of their differences in style, and now Shawn Michaels wants to do a program with Funaki  . So when I play for fun, it's just this annoying thing that keeps getting in the way. So there's that. 

Hopefully with mods and whatnot it will cut down on that arbitrary "John Cena blinked too much on Raw last week, lower his charisma by 2 points" bullshit. 

[TheWho87]

1 hour ago, Mick said:

Hopefully with mods and whatnot it will cut down on that arbitrary "John Cena blinked too much on Raw last week, lower his charisma by 2 points" bullshit. 

Don't worry, there will be enough "X and Y are hugging in this social media post, add a friendship" to account for that loss.

[Mick]

Christ, don't remind me. I have a special folder with my EWR mods specifically called "CRAP" because of horrible decisions made that people never bothered to correct or research. If there is a hate relationship, and I'm trying to adjust the mod to make it "Fixed" (which I very well might start doing and then uploading them for the fuck of it), I'll at least research it to see what happened. Like, Jim Cornette will obviously have a long list, but he's made that publicly known. But then you have dumber things and it just drives me nuts. 

Then there's issues with stats, issues with nationalities, and so on and so forth. And what I mean is that, they're either all American or the Americans are American and everyone else is non-defined (which is fine for the most part). There's workarounds, like Aresnicing or modding in the Unique gimmick. Really, the best scenario's I've found, at least in terms of Pre-RaveX have been the 1992 Scenario, the I think it was the Master's April 1997 Scenario, and the 1987 Scenario, along with iDom (where it seems ol' Idol used the 1992 data to make it  ). 

[Benji]

9 hours ago, Mick said:

Yeah, you're absolutely right, and that's a major gripe that I have with EWR. 

Look at WrestleMania 25. Shawn Michaels vs The Undertaker. A pure CLASSIC. And if we go by EWR, we'd be hearing about how they didn't really click because of their differences in style, and now Shawn Michaels wants to do a program with Funaki  . So when I play for fun, it's just this annoying thing that keeps getting in the way. So there's that. 

Hopefully with mods and whatnot it will cut down on that arbitrary "John Cena blinked too much on Raw last week, lower his charisma by 2 points" bullshit. 

I would argue though that it's not their styles clashing there, it's the fact they are experienced and have enough psychology to overcome that clash. Wrestling isn't just techniques. The techniques themselves can be a clash of styles, but good workers can overcome them, be it by pure wrestling ability, selling, or psychology, or experience to work around it.

10 hours ago, TheWho87 said:

I love when you suggest an idea and firstly the guy takes it in, and secondly it actually works.

I in particular love the grades for body condition, it makes it much clearer that a particular body part is in a state of degradation than trying to decide if 70 is okay, but 69 (nice) is clearly troubling. Would love for them to add custom grade images like TEW used to have. Letting people add stuff like stars to their grades with custom skins was a cool little thing.

[Skummy]

13 minutes ago, Benji said:

I would argue though that it's not their styles clashing there, it's the fact they are experienced and have enough psychology to overcome that clash. Wrestling isn't just techniques. The techniques themselves can be a clash of styles, but good workers can overcome them, be it by pure wrestling ability, selling, or psychology, or experience to work around it.

There's a lot around the stats that I think has been historically misunderstood - in the early days of EWR I remember someone thinking that the "Speed" stat literally meant how fast a wrestler was, and there were countless arguments along the lines of "Kane just did a Hurracanrana, increase his Speed stat", because people were interpreting it in terms of a pretty narrow list of moves or characteristics, rather than "how good is this wrestler at performing in a speed-based match".

But then you're left to interpret what a "speed-based", "brawl-based" or "technical-based" match is, and, in TEW, when "brawling" becomes "hardcore", where "Puro" comes in, and where "flashiness" comes in - what does a wrestler with really good aerial skills but zero "flash" look like? Some of it is a lot more intuitive than others. One of the reasons I've never got on with GM Mode in WWE games is that a lot of these things are very narrowly defined and rigidly constrained - certain "styles" of wrestler work well together and others don't, and certain matches are only going to work for a certain style; but there's no reason two brawlers can't have a great Ladder match, it would just look very different to a ladder match between two high-flyers.

I think anything that moves away from just mimicking EWR/TEW's approach to stats is a good thing in terms of making other games stand out, and offer something different. I'm not sure if the balance is right here - perhaps Wrestling Skill, Entertainment and Psychology are a little too broad, and Agenting being a skill in its own right feels unnecessary, and also a bit of a cheat code in a way; I'd rather have to take a gamble on whether someone's likely to be a good agent based on the balance of their other stats, and it's unlikely that someone with a really strong grasp of Psychology and Skill could also have low stats as an Agent, in my opinion.

To the list of stats above, I would maybe consider breaking out "Entertainment" into some sub-categories, though that might be broken down elsewhere. I'd want Consistency added, and I've been arguing for a while that TEW should have a Creativity stat, so would like that included here as well. 

 

I've not seen enough from this game yet to make me want to play it, and I think it is still maybe using the language of EWR and TEW a little too much to feel like it has enough of its own identity to stand out for me, but I'm keeping an eye on it all the same.