The Spectacle Of Pro Wrestling, Played With A Straight Face (Kotaku)

[Steve_OS]

Calling pro wrestling "fake" is neither accurate nor informed. The term is "kayfabe."

Check out Kotaku's Owen Good and WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2011's Producer, Marcus Stephenson talk about the game, which releases on Tuesday, the 26th.

"A typical wrestling match in lasts seven minutes, and we as WWE fans know there'll be a period where the face puts on the offense while the heel takes the beatdown. Then we know that the heel will reverse the match flow. And at the end, the face will turn it on, pull off his signature move, then his finishing move, and win," Stephenson said. "We can't really do that."

[oneamongthefence]

That's one thing that No Mercy accomplished well... A decent ebb and flow to the game. Momentum swings and such. A health bar and a momentum bar would be to separate things. You can have low health but high momentum and still pull off a finisher and the like.

[goh]

Re: The Spectacle Of Pro Wrestling, Played With A Straight Face (Kotaku)

"A typical wrestling match in lasts seven minutes, and we as WWE fans know there'll be a period where the face puts on the offense while the heel takes the beatdown. Then we know that the heel will reverse the match flow. And at the end, the face will turn it on, pull off his signature move, then his finishing move, and win," Stephenson said. "We can't really do that."

"We're presenting this to the user as a competition," Stephenson continued, "so we try to make the computer AI difficult enough to where they put the offense on you, and it's up to you to reverse what they're doing, so that you have an extended amount of time to dish out offense on an opponent."

At all times, though, your opponent is fighting you; he's not laying back just because he'd been beating on you for the first three minutes and now it's your turn.

"It's tricky," Stephenson said. "We get communication from our fans about this, they ask us to make the matches follow what you see on TV. My question back to them is, ‘Well, if you want them to stay down, then you better expect us to keep you down for a certain amount of time.' After we say that, they go, ‘You've got a point.'"

Yes you can do that.
Maybe if whoever these people are stopped saying you've got a point said well obviously instead...

[Jukeman]

Re: The Spectacle Of Pro Wrestling, Played With A Straight Face (Kotaku)

Yes you can do that.
Maybe if whoever these people are stopped saying you've got a point said well obviously instead...

"Damage meter"

^ Should be based on momentum, whoever has the momentum should be winning the match, with momentum swinging like a tug of war thru out the match...

Physical damage should limit your opp (moving slow and etc)

this beat em up thing is lame

Where's Aki???

[Jukeman]

Re: The Spectacle Of Pro Wrestling, Played With A Straight Face (Kotaku)

That's one thing that No Mercy accomplished well... A decent ebb and flow to the game. Momentum swings and such. A health bar and a momentum bar would be to separate things. You can have low health but high momentum and still pull off a finisher and the like.

exactly!

why is this so hard?

and btw, FPWR does a great job wit the selling of moves for both AI and user...

[goh]

Re: The Spectacle Of Pro Wrestling, Played With A Straight Face (Kotaku)

"Damage meter"

^ Should be based on momentum, whoever has the momentum should be winning the match, with momentum swinging like a tug of war thru out the match...

Physical damage should limit your opp (moving slow and etc)

this beat em up thing is lame

Where's Aki???

I don't think it should be winning and losing at all. Just performance but I'm not going over alllll that again. I know Marcus already saw it.

Aki? Re-named to Syn Sophia and making extremely poor quality games. Can we get a sticky on that or something? People keep asking. Aki is done folks. I doubt the people that made the old games are even there anymore.

Also for all the complaints about this on legend with the reversals,do people not actually remember the Aki games? They'd literally reverse everything on the high difficulties/later in story mode and the only way to win was through a count out glitch or cheat for unlimited momentum. For that matter the glitch itself had a glitch/something just plain wrong in the game in that standing on the appron was equal to standing in the ring.

[adembroski]

Re: The Spectacle Of Pro Wrestling, Played With A Straight Face (Kotaku)

I don't think it's as simple as momentum.

The game has to look at what the purpose of the match is. A new heel monster is created and needs to be established? He should be put against smaller opponents in squashes to built up heat. This does not mean that you auto-win your matches in these scenarios, but that the game adjusts things to encourage that type of match.

The flip side is the guy you're squashing. Maybe he pulls off the perfect reversal and hits his finisher out of nowhere. Typical Jeff Hardy match... get his *** kicked for 4 minutes, then when swung into the turn buckle, pulls off the shooting star press and turns it into a win. Now your series of matches to build heat has turned into a rivalry. You spent 4 minutes utterly dominating the face, but the face got the win.

What should be altered, I guess, is the chance of getting a 3 count or to reverse certain moves. The flow of the match shouldn't be forced, but there should be a significantly improved chance to pull off the finisher and get the 3 count at appropriate points in the match, and momentum should serve to facilitate those points occurring. Don't make happen automatically, but encourage it.

In this scenario, a 'face wouldn't simply put the controller down and take his lumps, but when he does lose momentum then he plays the minimalist if he's smart. He'll wait for the perfect time to execute that big reversal to get the win.

Throw in worker abilities. Some guys might "hulk up" once momentum is 100% against them. Some guys might be able to swing momentum instantly by hitting one specific signature move.

Sometimes I wonder if developers think this stuff through. "Well, to recreate what happens in the ring, we have to force it"... no, you just have to subtly nudge it. Let the player retain control, but make it difficult to overcome momentum... however, momentum, once overcome, should swing suddenly and wildly.