I’m working on more documents on how to fix all of the problems (big and small) in The WWE Games Series. Here’s the link - http://tinyurl.com/FixingWWE13-1
-
Making one of those fancy Space Shooters.
So far I have two ships.
Player Ship -
http://i.imgur.com/00X06.png
And Enemy Ship -
http://i.imgur.com/2jFMF.png
Just started yesterday, so there’s a lot to do. I’m looking forward to it. If anyone has input, feel free to post it.
-
If THQ wants to stop people from cheating in their games, they need to make cheating worthless.
You have to look at the things people do, and then figure out ways to reduce the effectiveness of it. The primary reason people cheat is because it’s effective and they can succeed with it compared to legitimate tactics.
Take the Orton Kick spam (aka Cossack Dance). It’s difficult to counter (to some, it’s viewed as irreversible), so people abuse it. Removing it is an extreme option and would only have them migrate to the next best cheap move. What I would do is reduce the speed of combinations all across the board. Part of the reason people get away with it is because it’s so fast. In addition, they need to allow combinations to be broken by a 3rd party. I’ve seen people quit because they didn’t know how to counter it (timing-based), and their partner couldn’t break it.
Implementing some kind of auto-counter would be terrible. They do that for all ground moves (do enough and they automatically get up and will counter any move until they’re standing), and it takes away from the realism.
As for methods that would be effective, Damage Scaling would be wonderful.
In fighting games, moves to less damage in combos/sequences. For example, a move used as the 6th hit in a combo may do 40% of the damage it would’ve done as the first hit. This does a lot to deter extensive combos and infinites (assuming some are not patched or w/e.).
So in a wrestling game, each hit in a combination, including any move after (like if it makes them groggy and they do a groggy move after), should do reduced damage.
In addition, given the nature of the abuse, there should be a hard limit on the number of times a move can be done an a match before damage reduction. So if someone did the Orton Kick 7 times, and the limit was 7, then any future Orton Kicks (in a combo or not), then they do less and less damage. I would say that it can go to a point where it does 0 damage and is for appearances only. This is for all moves. You still get the effects like a knockdown w/ selling, etc, but no advantage as far as dealing damage. Of course, they have to ensure that there’s enough move variety if someone’s going for move damage on a specific limb for submissions.
I’d even go one step further and award the victim with some extra momentum, but not enough to earn a signature/finisher.
I suppose to summarize, you have to make it not worth it to cheat, but without letting the cheaters know. All of this stuff would be hidden from the players. Because when cheaters know a move isn’t working, they seek out a new one.
-
I wish Pro Wrestling games were like Fighting Games.
Whenever I watch/play fighting games, it’s always a focus on the competition, and everyone seems to have a good time.
Whenever I watch/play wrestling games, there’s an excess of crap to sift through to find anything of quality, and I’m wondering why that is.
The first thing I’ve noticed is that in the fighting game community, there’s no such thing as spam. It all boils down to the simple question of whether or not you/your opponent has done anything to deal with the move(s) being used. If someone insists on using an absurd amount of projectiles, see if there’s a way to negate them or avoid them. Anyone paying attention can maintain desirable spacing to avoid any problems.
In the wrestling game community, spam exists, and it varies from being a small annoyance to being blatant cheating depending on who’s complaining. I personally disagree with this, because in a wrestling gam, skill is primarily determined by how well someone can reverse a move used against them. A person can use the same move repeatedly, or use several different moves. The question that matters is “did I counter the moves?” If I didn’t, then it doesn’t matter what they did as I didn’t stop any of them. If I did, it’s still irrelevant because the moves were never used.
But unfortunately, wrestling gamers will let this get to them and cry foul, completely unaware that it had little to do with the outcome of the match.
Then there’s the balance issues. This is a doozy. Both genres feature characters that can perform the same basic moves (though they look different, have different properties, etc), but in wrestling games there’s little balance. The first problem is character attributes. Each character has a 1-100 rating in various attributes like offensive power, durability, etc. But due to the way the game is designed, the only relevant attributes are those relating directly to offense and defense. The gaps are so big at times (due to wrestlers being made to look better/worse than others on TV), that some characters go completely unused outside of a player customizing their attributes (which means essentially everyone is maxed out)
Secondly, there are the moves themselves. Moves are generally the same, with damage output being based on the character’s strength. However, due to various design issues, some moves are unbalanced or flat out broken. In a fighting game, a character with an unbalanced move is a small issue, but in a wrestling game, coupled with the freedom to customize movesets, there’s potential for a lot of crap, as every person you face is capable of using the move and you’d be unaware of it until it happens.
Lastly, there is no defined style of play amongst the different characters. Players can play a specific style, but are not required to do so. This means you can have a Super Heavyweight wrestler fighting like a Cruiserweight. It’s unrealistic, but not necessarily an issue for the reasons mentioned earlier.
Overall, there are too many factors that serve to make the wrestling games unbalanced.
So you’ve got broken mechanics freely available to every character, along with an attribute system that servers little purpose outside of asthetics, and no tangible difference between the characters.
The end result of this is the community itself. The Wrestling game community has been a self-hating entity for years. Everyone complains about so many things, numerous opinions on what’s ‘fair’ and what isn’t, coupled with rampant cheating that goes unchecked, and you pretty much have disaster.
Meanwhile the Fighting game community is bigger than it’s ever been. With streaming sites such as Twitch.tv and Own3d.tv, there are numerous outlets for viewing tournaments. The communities for the games are active and there’s very little to complain about outside of things that are actually broken.
So I see the differences and I wonder about what would have to be done to fix this.
First off, is to balance the game. This includes removal of any player attributes as well as variations to damage output for moves. This way, players have less incentive to stack movesets with ‘cheap’ moves since they’d afford no advantages. Moves should do damage based on the position they’re used in. A Scoop Slam used as a simple chain grapple should do less damage than one performed as a strong/groggy grapple.
Secondly, the community itself has to more or less deal with whatever gets thrown their way. If THQ/Yukes can get their act together and produced a game that lacks the exploits and broken mechanics, there should be absolutely no reason to complain about anything that happens in a match. This includes made up rules which only serve to weaken the players who follow them.
Outside of this, the only other issues to be addressed are those to be dealt with by THQ and the developer Yukes. Part of the problem with the community is the lack of quality product being put out there.
Eh, that’s all I have to say about this for now.
-
New Beginning.
No Mercy was a good game for its time, but wrestling games will never achieve greatness again with people dismissing them for not being a 100% clone of No Mercy.
These recent games have far surpassed No Mercy in providing an accurate wrestling experience. But like every game (including No Mercy and HCTP), there are bugs and other issues that can ruin the fun. That’s due to the circumstances more than the developers ability.
I even see people dick-riding SVR 2006, and it was full of all of HCTP’s glitches and exploits except it was online so you essentially had an environment full of cheating retards.
And yet, I keep hearing stupid people say things like “All they have to do is remake SVR 2006 and it’ll be 100% perfect.” Even worse, it’s from the mouths of people who constantly whined about how broken it was and wished they’d fix everything.
I won’t deny that the games had plenty of good points, but you can’t ignore the bad stuff.
In addition, living in the past doesn’t work for anyone. We’ve seen it in the Wrestling industry itself. WCW did it, TNA was doing it when Dusty and Hogan were in charge, and WWE was doing it with their infatuation with ‘big’ physiques.
If anything, we need a new game that can build upon the good qualities of the past and incorporate new things to surpass the old stuff.
Outside of that, I don’t know what else to say.
