Where Does the Smackdown Series Go From Here?

[bears5122]

Re: Where Does the Smackdown Series Go From Here?

They need to give people a reason to play it for longer periods of time. The bread and butter in sports games there days are the season/franchise modes. The SvR has not done enough to enhance this or make it enjoyable. While some of the storylines are interesting, the user has little power in how it goes over. Sometimes they completely make no sense. My suggestions:

1) Go back to the old season mode that allowed as many humans in the season as you want. Treat it like any other multi-user season mode in sports. They used to do this back on the PS2.

2) Build an internal ranking system that changes as wrestlers win/lose matches. Guys in the top 4 of each brand would be considered main eventers and viable WWE/World Championship contenders. Those 5-10 would be mid-carders competing for the Intercontinental title or just getting higher in the rankings. Matches early in the card mean less than main events, and PPV would count for bigger boosts as well.

3) Allow you to build alliances/enemies based on your interactions with wrestlers. Allow your wrestler to interfere and help a wrestler or hurt them in their match. These alliances or enemies would determine feuds and eventually stables. Those close alliances would be tag partners and allow you to compete for the title there.

I don't think this is all that complicated. Most sports games have franchise modes ten times more sophisticated. All you need is a nice ranking system, scheduling algorithm, and alliance/enemy system.

Online mode would be where this works best. You could have a CPU GM or a human one. Each week is treated the same as a week in NCAA football or whatever. Get your matches in and go to the next week. Keep track of title history, records, etc and it makes it a fun system to play with friends.

[The GIGGAS]

Re: Where Does the Smackdown Series Go From Here?

I want a "real" GM mode which is why I haven't bought a Smackdown game since the first one with a GM mode came out (whatever year that was). I want a mode where I decide who is going to work with whom and what the outcome will be. The ultimate goal being to manage talent and compete agains the other GM's show in terms of ratings. Say I'm making Edge fight a bunch of hardcore or hell in a cell matches, maybe he complains that he wants more money if he's going to go through this type of stuff. Or perhaps Triple H doesn't like that I'm not using him i the main event. The unreal part of it would be that the other shows would be like seperate companies and you would have to compete for talent and operate within a certain budget. After every Wrestlemania you should get rewarded or penalized based on how well you did.

I think it would be a good marriage of the real and the fake side of wrestling and would make things enjoyable. You would also have the option of playing any match and the characters would have free will, so if someone is pissed that they're supposed to lose they might defy your orders. The mode would need a lot of tweaking and to make sure there isn't too much of that kind of stuff but I think its worth trying and would be a step forward for the franchise, and not a step back.

You sound like you'd like TEW, if you haven't already tried it.

[Jeru3131]

You have to agree that Yutes is the anti-SCEA. Scea, which makes the show, are constantly on here listening to the ideas of their consumers and trying to incorporate what the fans want. We've been screaming on these forums for years that all we want is a deep career mode. If they just gave us that we would all be happy. But they don't seem to care about their fans. They know they could add one little gimmick, update the roster and they're gonna make their money. I, for one, haven't bought a wrestling game in three years. Strictly a rental for me until they incorporate a deep career mode for my CAW.

[coffeeholic]

Re: Where Does the Smackdown Series Go From Here?

TEW is an excellent text based sim for the hardcore only. It has a massive learning curve-BUT-If you have the patience, it will reward you sevenfold. The roster mods at the TEW gamesite are great too. I'm currently working on a modern day WWE franchise and a late 90's one also.