[TEW 2020] 2K1 WCW Lives

[Big Papa]

Greetings, salutations, and a very happy New Year. Let's take a quick trip back in time...


A mere 21 years ago, one of the most interesting periods in the history of professional wrestling in America was grinding to a conclusion. It was just a couple of months before WCW and ECW were gone, and Vinnie Mac was victorious. We all know the story, I expect, so no need to rehash the details. But various points in the whole "war" between WCW and the WWF are fun to rebook.


My personal favorite to rebook is the scenario where WCW survives beyond March of 2001. I was actually more of a "WWF guy" back then, but I've come to appreciate WCW much more since the company ceased to exist (ironic, I know). I've done several fantasy booking projects and more TEW saves than I can count.


Since TEW 2020 was released, I've wanted to try a 2001 scenario where WCW is still kicking. I've toyed with a few different ways but any way you approach it, such a project would be a ton of work. All of my my modding time went to The Yes Mod for a long time, and my intent was to work on a 1984 mod after that. But work on that has been almost non-existent for awhile (huge employment histories gets onerous to add to worker after worker) and I found myself recently mulling an idea, which has accidentally led to what appears to be a new mod project.


When I say this is in the early stages, I mean very early stages. At this point, its not impossible that I just lose interest and never go forward with the project. But progress has been fairly quick. While its probably too early for a hype thread, I find having a place to prattle on about such projects helps keep my focus. And so here we are.


The Mod

The mod is being built from scratch (sorta). The intent is to have a complete and detailed game world that take full advantage of TEW 2020's features. If you've looked at my 2013 mod The Yes Mod, you will know what to expect.


The intended start date in-game is July 2001. WCW will still be alive as a company. The intended scenario will be Fusient having bought out WCW, so Bischoff is the owner. The company has had a "shutdown period" and hasn't run any shows since the end of March 2001. The roster will be pretty much as it was in March 2001, minus any of the big names who had contracts directly with Time-Warner. From this point, WCW can be evolved into... anything. They won't be easy but also won't be exceptionally difficult.


The Method


A bit of backstory here... My first foray into large-scale modding was creating a personal version of Genadi's Death of WCW mod on TEW 2016. I didn't want to wait for an official release, so I converted over the 2013 version and started making some tweaks. Just adjusting things to how I prefer them, adding some missing future workers... and it snowballed into a pretty big project. It was never intended to be a public release. That project was a big key in me deciding to tackle The Yes Mod as a project from scratch (although I don't know that any TEW is ever truly from scratch, as pieces were definitely used from other mods, always with permission).


When the urge to book WCW past its actual demise hits, I've toyed with converting over my version of Genadi's Death of WCW mod. But that comes with complications - needing permission to release it publicly, the volume of work to optimize the conversion, and then a lot of adjusting I would want to do. So that process has never gotten very far. I've looked at other mods from the same relative era and considered how much work it would take to move them to the period and scenario I want... and it is a whole lot of work. I even thought about moving The Yes Mod back a mere 12 years, but again... a huge amount of work.


I kinda stumbled onto an idea - using The Yes Mod as a base, but indirectly - and decided to give it a try. I started with a fresh database. I imported base data (names, angles, etc) either from the Default database or from TYM. Venues and broadcasters got imported from TYM (and will have to be tweaked later). I imported companies from TYM that were active in mid 2001, and created a few that were missing. And then I began to import workers one at a time.


Obviously importing the worker and leaving them isn't going to work. As they get imported, I review each one. I adjust their employment history, add a finisher, give them an organic bio, and tweak anything else that might need tweaking (gimmick, status, etc). As I've started with the more important workers of the era, I also wanted to adjust their skills and popularity and Attributes. Its pretty necessary - not too many major stars are the same worker in 2013 that they were in 2001. And I've gone back to the same method I used for TYM but in a different way - I've imported some CV and TV workers that can I copy the skills of and then tweak. Using the Cverse worker modelling as a base gave TYM the overall balance I was hoping for, and that's the intent here.


This process has been surprisingly slick so far. It feels far quicker than creating workers from scratch, converting over imported worker templates, etc. I'm expecting to end up somewhere around 2K active workers (I could be off by as much as 500 in either direction) and TYM will probably have 70-80% of those. The rest will be done from scratch but that's down the road. TYM will also provide a huge volume of Yet-to-Debut workers. My initial focus has been on bigger names and I'm starting to fill in the bigger companies. Once I'm through those and notable talent on the indy scene, I will probably move away from the process of copying the skills of CV/TV workers and just adjust as needed.


Ugh... Fantasy?


I'm very aware a fantasy scenario isn't for everyone. Or maybe you are fine with fantasy mods, but just aren't interested in particular scenario. That's fine. I'm hoping that once the base mod is completed, I can begin to create some alternative versions. One would be a "real" scenario, with WCW and ECW both dead and the WWF running their much-beloved Invasion storyline. Having both WCW and ECW alive should be relatively easy, as would having a version with ECW alive and WCW dead. Then there is the possibility of moving things back to earlier start dates. A January 2001 version, and maybe earlier. All dependent on the mod actually getting finished and playing like I hope it does, of course.


Intended Features


Some of the intended features of the mod:

• Approximately 2000 active workers (including on-wrestlers)
• Approximately 1500 Yet-to-Debut workers
• 68 Active companies
• A significant number of Yet-to-Open companies
• Custom pic pack based on nGo style
• Full employment histories, as much as possible
• All workers will have finishers, alter egos, where possible
• Active companies in all game areas except India (sorry, open to suggestions on that)
• Organic bios (sorry if you don't like them)
• Large number of free pics
• Custom end-of-year awards going back to 1980
• Specific cuts for Hall of Fame & Hall of Immortals
• Full title histories including # of defenses (again, where possible)
• Broadcasters will be based on TYM's broadcasters (with help from Asaemon's broadcaster mod)

Progress


TBD

[Big Papa]

Posted this on the GDS forum but I tend to post nonsense updates here more often so this feels right.

Should have passed the 100 worker mark. Not very impressive when the active worker total will be somewhere around the 2K mark. But... I'm starting with the bigger names. Of the first 100, probably 80 are active workers and quite a few of those are top talents. In game-world terms, your top roughly 250 workers will have an outsized impact on how the game world plays and how things balance out. Having something wacky with the midcard of Michinoku Pro is going to have less of an impact that the top workers in NJ or CMLL being underpowered or overpowered.

Once I move into adding the indy vets who never moved beyond that level, things will be fairly quick. so I'm hoping that the total number of workers continues to climb quick quickly. The only downside is that some of those indy vets who never made much impact won't be in The Yes Mod, so I will be creating them from scratch in some form. That doesn't necessarily make for a long process, but it does mean adding Employment Histories.

I'm pretty sure a lot of the top workers will have to be nerfed a bit once I get to the point where things can be tested. WWE is going to be overpowered as fuck.

[Big Papa]

I imported a batch of workers and am working through them. When I finish these, the WWE will probably be about 75% complete, minus fairly easy ones like refs and some road agents. Also starting to add a few female wrestlers, which is nice.

Eager to fill in other big companies like New Japan, Noah, AAA, and CMLL. Once those companies have partly full rosters, the game world starts to feel like a game world.

One interesting dynamic is that the CVerse workers I'm using to update skills are sometimes a bit surprising. On the Yes Mod, I was picking a given CV or TV worker that I wanted to use as the base, imported them, and then converted them over. So changing the name, details (some of which would occasionally get missed), fill in an employment history, tweak the skills, popularity, attributes, write a bio and done. It wasn't necessarily a quick process. For this mod, I'm importing the corresponding worker from TYM and then adjusting. The adjustment is switching to an organic bio, picture, adjust any details (role, gimmick, physical condition, correcting things like language), add finisher, and then adjust the Employment history. When it comes to reskilling, I'm still using the Cverse as a base, but there is no direct way to do that. And its not always clear who should be used for the skills. The easiest way to use the Compare dropdown that exists on the Skills, Popularity, and Attributes screens in the Editor. Because they also have a one-buton overwrite function that allows you to overwrite the existing skills, popularity, or attributes of a worker... but it only works within the existing database. So what I've done is imported a load of CV workers and renamed them a bit so they sort more easily and I can see a bit about them. When I'm reskilling a given worker and I don't necessarily have someone in mind already, I can scroll through and find someone who fits what I want the given RW worker to be skilled like and overwrite. Then tweak.

Why is this interesting? Well, its probably not at all interesting. But when I would troll through the CV or TV to look for who I wanted to use as a base for a given worker in TYM, I probably took into account elements I shouldn't. If you've played either of those two fictional mods, some of the workers are clearly inspired by RW workers. Whether its names, career arcs, skillsets, or even their pictures. Now the TV have very intentionally moved away from that, redoing a lot of worker cuts so they aren't obviously trying to "be" someone from the RW. But I probably took that into account more than I should have in the TYM process. Doing it this way, I'm really only considering the type of worker they are, experience level, talent level, and where they fit into the game world. The interesting part is that I've end up using some CV workers that I wouldn't really connect in any direct way to a given RW worker. I am working on Scott Steiner. My immediate thought is Big Smack Scott - a notorious character in the CV, as he's got a great muscular look but is limited in the ring, a complete egomaniac to deal with, and has a history of being dangerous in the ring. And the BSS render has always used Big Poppa Pump as an inspiration. But look at BSS... no. I ended up using Findlay O'Farrady, a bruising Irish brute who works in Japan and might be compared to a more dynamic Sheamus. Recently reskilled William Regal and found a few CV options lacking... ended up using Tommy Cornell (the namesake of the mod and the single most talented worker in the gameworld) as the basis, but with some nerfing.

Haven't been using the ThunderVerse yet but will probably start a bit more, just for some diversity. Especially amongst the indy scene.

As I've mentioned, I won't keep reskilling this way all the way through. At some point, I'm going to just start reskilling without a base. Which is fine, especially for fairly generic indy talent and low level talent. I just want the more important workers to have a talent baseline that should hopefully give me the gamework balance I'm looking for. Popularity plays into that equally, but has to correspond to actual popularity levels a bit more. And once I move into Yet-to-Debut workers - a long way off, but still something I keep in mind - I will probably be using templates / models much less.

[Big Papa]

Picked away at it over the weekend. Haven't done a count but might but up over 125 workers now. The WWE is close to being done. Don't have some of the non-wrestlers like Mae Young and Moolah, and will need to add in the road agents and refs. But as I've mentioned, those are pretty drop-in and don't require a lot of adjustment.

A few of the WWE talents weren't ones that I had in the 2013 data... Perry Saturn, Debra, and a few like that. So I just did them from scratch.

Been doing some lucha workers like El Texano, El Texano Jr, El Terrible, and the Brazo's. But they haven't really started filling in the lucha companies that much yet.

Now that the WWE is nearly done, i'll probably try to do some more WCW talent, as there are some key talents that aren't in the data yet - Jeff Jarrett, Chris Kanyon, etc. But I'll probably keep bouncing around where I add workers. Japan and Mexico both have a very long way to go.

[Big Papa]

So apparently I'm tackling WCW now lol. Wasn't really intentional but kinda fell down a rabbit hole. Only added a couple people yesterday but spent some time finding matches for the WCW talent that needs to go in. That will make adding many of them easier and faster. I'm going to have to create a few from scratch as the workers weren't active, relevant, or possibly alive by 2013 - the likes of Sean O'Haire, Shawn Stasiak, Big Vito. They don't take too much longer, but adding in the employment histories can add up if the workers have a long history.

Once again, i find it interesting that the CV workers I'm picking to use as a base for the real world worker aren't ones I would naturally correlate at all. But the skills match up close to what I want, and that's really all I'm looking at here.

As I've mentioned, pretty sure some of the WCW talent are going to need to be nerfed a bit to keep grades reasonable once everything is finished up. But I will worry about that minute level of balancing down the road. I'm trying to find a balance between wanting WCW workers to be reasonably solid (because they realistically mostly were) but also not having them be overpowered as that will make the rebuilding process too easy. In the 2106 version, I probably erred on the side of under-skilling a lot of them a bit and I've always regretted that. If anything, I might leave them skills on the possibly-high side and keep their popularity a bit lower.

[Big Papa]

Nothing really enough progress to give an update.... so here's an update!

Dumped in WCW-contracted talent. No one too exciting - the likes of Buff Bagwell, Chuck Palumbo, and Sean O'Haire. Other thing notable about them is that none were in the 2013 mod so I had to create them from scratch. Thankfully, none have extensive work histories to go through.

The WCW roster is starting to fill in. Probably still under 50%. When I'm pretty much done the roster, I should go back and add in the non-wrestlers to both WCW and WWF as they are still missing quite a few. I can technically start running some tests if I want as there are enough non-wrestlers, at leas tin the WWF, but no point yet as I don't want to start the tweaking process.

I also added in a few puro workers. Notably Masahiro Chono, but also a few Noah youngsters. Japan will be probably be the next area of focus after I get the WWF and WCW rosters more complet and maybe tackle a few of the ex-ECW guys.

[Asaemon]

Are you going for what Eric Bischoff have confirmed in interviews? Based in Vegas, a FX tv deal, and the ECW announcers or are you leaving it open for the players to select?

[Big Papa]

Are you going for what Eric Bischoff have confirmed in interviews? Based in Vegas, a FX tv deal, and the ECW announcers or are you leaving it open for the players to select?

Partly.

Relocation yes. At least at this point.

ECW announcers... maybe. I'm kinda learning towards having the roster be exactly what it was in March 2001, minus the Time Warner contracted workers (although I might have DDP available). Having Styles on board isn't a bit change from that, but as soon as I add one person to the roster, the temptation will be to add others. So I will see in testing how things play out. If Styles always gets signed immediately by the WWE, then maybe he does start on the WCW roster. If he doesn't, then I might leave it up to the user.

Fox / FX no. My current intent is to have WCW start with no broadcast deals at all. The idea is that there should be hopefully 3 or 4, minimum, broadcasters that deals can be agreed with. I'm thinking for TV, it would be FX, USA network, and a couple of smaller ones. There was a dynamic on the Cverse 2016 with TCW... you start with a shitty TV deal and you could cancel it with financial penalty, and then had several to choose between. And it became a strategic decision of whether you wanted to have the biggest audience size, make the most money possible, or have easy broadcaster requirements. I'd like to replicate that to some degree. Getting on USA or FX would mean more money but less coverage (not outside of the USA) and require you to be pretty much be at the edge of what you can reasonably achieve grades-wise. someone running WCW will have to make a strategic decision right at the start.

Then again, I could end up finding another ownership idea that I like more and change everything around...

[Big Papa]

Getting very close to 200 workers in the data. Will be a nice threshold to cross. And even more encouraging since I actually took a look at the 2016 version I did. I hadn't been in there since I started to work on this - I'm not using anything from it directly at all. But I was surprised there was only around 1350 active workers in the data. I thought there was more. I was thinking that this mod would need somewhere around 2000 active workers, plus a whole load of Yet-to-Debut workers. But 2K might be high. I will want more active workers than the previous version as there are a couple more companies, particularly joshi companies. And I'd like to have a slightly deeper indy scene, particularly in regions like the UK, Europe, and Australia. This will provide more free agent options for anyone to pick form. So while 2K might be high, we might end up splitting the difference and being somewhere in the 1600-1700 range.

Once I finish up this the run of joshi workers I've been working through, I will probably go back to working on finishing up the WCW roster getting more workers into NJPW, Noah, AJPW, AAA, and CMLL.

Also been doing some research for broadcasters. To start out, I've imported the broadcasters from The Yes Mod. But I will need to go through them entirely and that's gonna be a length process. Done like 5 so far lol

[Deco90]

Really like the sound of this dude!

Been looking to play a stable WCW 01 mod but the ones I found on GDS Forum are a little shaky, or not finished.

All the best with it Papa, I'll be checking it out once it's ready.

[Big Papa]

Really like the sound of this dude!

Been looking to play a stable WCW 01 mod but the ones I found on GDS Forum are a little shaky, or not finished.

All the best with it Papa, I'll be checking it out once it's ready.

Thanks Deco. Moving a mod over from 2016 is a LOT of work to do it fully. So a lot of earlier mods haven't been converted over and fully optimized for 2020. And honestly, that's part of what led me down this path. If there was a playable and stable and solid mod already, I wouldn't bother.

Still plugging away. Moved past 200 workers in the data and should be over 225 now. Its weird that I can't easily put a number on it but the data has a bunch of templates loaded into it right now that make it hard to tell without manually counting lol

Just did a bunch of refs. Those are fun. Actually, those are fast lol

Haven't focused on the WCW roster as I intended. But that's fine. I've been adding some puro workers and some luchadors. They all need to go into the data. Realized that CMLL are going to have a HUGE roster, but that's pretty standard for them.

Made this comment on the GDS forum, but its still blowing my mind how much quicker this feels. The first 1000 workers seemed to take forever to get into The Yes Mod. As I've said, for that project, i would find the CVerse or Tverse worker I wanted to use as a base, import them, change everything to make them "be" the real world worker, then tweak as needed. Adding in the Employment Histories is a quick process individually but starts to add up if they have worked for a lot of companies over a long career. "Time spent" is always a bit dicey to assess based purely on memory. But I was putting some big chunks in back then. I was not yet married and lived alone. I would spend entire evenings after work modding. I would spent much of a Saturday - get up early, hit the gym (ahh, pre-pandemic times), home to shower and eat, then spend the rest of the morning and a chunk of the afternoon watching footie while modding. I can't and don't want to put that kind of time into this project. But I'm still making good headway even without it. And as I've mentioned a few times, as we move out of workers who were working for bigger companies and those who eventually would, we will start to get into workers who spent their whole career on the indy scene and who generally aren't going to be strong workers. When I hit that level of worker going into the data, it should get even quicker yet as I probably won't be worrying about reskilling them as much. I can "free wheel" the skilling a bit more. But I will also hit a point where I need to create more workers from scratch, and that means... doing full employment histories. Gah.

[Big Papa]

Did a glut of mostly-WWE non-wrestlers last night. Mostly road agents and the like. That's getting close to closing out the WWE roster. That's fun!

Teddy Long did present a bit of a conundrum. I'm using the same "Ref First Last" name convention that I used for The Yes Mod, which I lifted from the ThunderVerse. So he's in the data as Ref Teddy Long. But he switched from reffing to authority figure not too far down the road. I can't really set that up in advance, though. Not really a function you can preset in TEW. I will set up an Atler Ego and hope that works but it won't prompt an AI-run WWE to change Teddy's role.

I'm going to have to take some time to find some Tverse workers and import them as templates. The Tverse workers have a bit lower baseline than the Cverse. So mediocre indy vets in the Tverse are pretty mediocre. Gonna use those kind of level on some of the RW indy scene. I mean, there will be some talented workers there - the future ROH generation and TNA talent, etc. But the average guy who never moved beyond APW or CZW is gonna need to be skilled about where you think they would be.

[Big Papa]

Nothing really worth an update, so here's an update...

Didn't TEW mod much as I spent more time with FM. But I am trolling thru the Tverse and making a list of workers to import to use as reskilling bases. Its not the quickest process - go thru and make a list, import then, and then rename them.

What's interesting and cool - to me - is that the Tvere is deviating more and more from the modelling of the Cverse. Its been an ongoing process over the releases of the Tverse. I would need to export the database to an Excel and do some actually data analysis to be sure how much my perception of it matches the actual numbers. But the Tverse scales a little lower on in-ring skills for the workers. Fewer workers with high (80+) in any given Primary skill. More workers that are solid workers but don't actually have a Primary skills above 60. More low level workers with sub-50 Psychology. The Tverse is a bigger and more diverse game world so all of that makes sense in that regard. But more than that, I think the scaling is a bit lower. If that perception is correct, then its all good but I just need to be a bit careful when using Tverse workers as a base, as a pretty good TV might not quite match up to what a pretty good CV worker is. So I have to be careful of that.

My intent at this point is to use the Tverse workers more for lower level indy talents in the mod. And maybe for less-developed areas of the gameworld like Australia, Europe, and the UK (sorry UKers).

[Big Papa]

Still just picking away, but did almost nothing yesterday. Most days I manage to get something done but lazy Sunday turned super-extra lazy lol.

In addition to adding a few more workers and finding Tverse workers to use for reskilling, I've also been going over some of the broadcasters. Not too far along in that process, but its basically a matter of checking them. A few need to be adjusted - they existed under another name, were smaller back in 2001, or something similar. Many adjustments are just relating to the media groups. Once all of the broadcasters are updated, Ill have to tweak them a bit so they are providing a range of coverage and options and such. No use having ever US-based cable broadcaster at the same size, even if it was relatively accurate.

Think I've mentioned, but I'd like to a balance things so anyone running WCW will have 3-4 broadcast options they can agree to. Different sizes and therefore different requirements. Like you can get on FX or FSN and have an easy time or on USA and struggle to achieve the required grades.

[Big Papa]

Managed to get through the Tverse workers and imported several hundred to use as reskilling bases. Well, not all of them. But some. It will be nice to have a great diversity of worker types and skill structures than what just using the Cverse alone would allow for. Back to adding workers to the data.

I did also take a look at the January 2001 mod from The Mod Squad on TEW 2016. As I've mentioned, I'm not importing any data directly from TMS' work, but I figure looking over companies and workers and such for ideas can't hurt. There are a copule of companies I don't have in the data that I may end up adding. XPW being one of them. I don't think I'm going to go in the low-level UK and European scene like that mod has. that takes some pretty in-depth knowledge of those scenes, and the issue with putting low-level companies into the data is that they tend to survive and often grow, creating scenes that are pretty divergent from reality in a few years. The downside is that the UK might only have 2-3 companies at the start. But there will be plenty of joshi companies and a pretty active US indy scene. If anyone doesn't wanna bother with the mod because it only has 2-3 UK companies and no Swedish companies, then so be it, I guess...

[Big Papa]

Been targeting owners of active companies to add. Well, I started going thru the bottom of my list of names and adding that way, which I will probably revert to. But then I figured more owners will be necessary - once we get to the testing phase, that will ensure companies operate to a degree even if the rosters aren't properly full. About 70% done in that regard.

Then just back to dropping more workers in. Probably not quite to 350 workers yet but getting there. Full rosters allowing for proper testing is still a long ways off, but gonna keep plugging away.

[Big Papa]

No updates for awhile as I haven't been doing fuck all. Kept picking away it into March and then I decided to take a bit of a break. Been doing this weird thing were I actually PLAY the game instead of just modding lol

But messing with a March Real World Chronicles save with AEW. Had a couple of false starts but gonna try to kept it proper rolling. Big roster, though. Holy fuck its big.