Rules Discussion

Hey, so.. I was looking through the rules, and I remembered the one rule that bothered me the most of the old rules.

Experience. Not so much on the gaining side, but definitely on the losing side. Instead of losing 1 XP every time you lose, changing it to losing 1 XP only if your XP were equal or greater that your opponents. It'll still provide the same bonus for winning, but reduce the penalty for losing, which'll mean that people will be more likely to just play, and not worry about losing their precious XP.

Yeah, just to warn everyone, this is what I got into sometime in the last 4 years or so. Messing with games and trying to make them play better.

Honestly, the only flaw I have in your system is that it will cause people who have high XP to only take matches against other people with the same amount of XP, in order for them to never lose it. Then I may have someone with 10 XP on a 5 match losing streak, but never losing XP.

The reason the XP system works is it acts like real wrestling does. If you're winning, you get a push. If you're losing, that push is taken away.

I don't really know what you mean by it will cause people to just play, because they won't fear losing XP. If you have 1 XP and you never wrestle because you fear losing it, thats fine.. but while you're holding onto it, the guy next to you just got 3 XP. Its a risk/reward system.

The goal of most games is to make it competitive. The rule as it currently stands does some weird things, not the least of which encourages people to face people that are much below them in XP so that they can keep gaining XP. It's a lot easier to win when you have 5 or more XP than your opponent.

The idea was to give people some carrots while still keeping a bit of stick in play.
-Keep people generally going against opponents with the same-ish XP.
-Keep people from taking sudden drops in XP if there aren't any opponents within their XP range.
-Still incorporate the idea that losing and winning streaks matter as long as they're against reasonable competition.

Generally, people want to have fun. Being stuck at 1XP because everyone else is at 10XP isn't fun for the guy at 1XP.


Of course, there's the other problem that making a truly fair XP system would probably take equations and the like, where certain XP separation were normal and other ones weren't.

I guess we could say it's normal unless the XP is 5 or more greater?

If we're using an actual ranking system on wins and losses, they'd still count as normal, so there'd be a reason to risk that one XP for another win. At the same time, it would remove the excesses of the "Let's hunt for XP by all wrestling the guys with low XP".

We may have to agree to disagree on this one and pitch it off some of the other refs for a general census.

I look at it more the opposite way. I've never seen GWA where one guy had 1XP and everyone else he had to fight was at 10XP. That's why we reset XP at the beginning of every season, to even the playing field again and make sure it never gets that bad. I get your point of head hunting and people with high XP going at the guys with a smaller value, but this game was always built on strategy and luck. If your strategy as a 1XP having wrestler is to accept a match with a 10XP main eventer.. you're either making a very bold or a very stupid move.

Like I said, compare it to real wrestling. If back in our day Bob Holly decided to jump in the ring with The Rock or Stone Cold, do I feel sorry for him because he stepped out of his element?

I'm trying to avoid technical game theory terms because that won't make this conversation go anywhere, but I think part of this conversation involves some basic terms in game theory. Mainly, Gamism vs Simulationism.

My suggestion are focused on the gamism part. That everyone, in a perfect world, wants to be the main event, so everyone should have the opportunity to do so, given enough time and effort. You still need to win to get up the card, but the dropping effect means that there aren't really jobbers/momentum/etc going around as the game continues.

Your suggestions (and feel free to correct me if I'm reading too much into it) is to simulate the feel of actual pro wrestling, where there are tiers of stars, and the main event usually beats the new guys, etc etc. The current rules do simulate that a lot better than my suggestion does.

I'm a gamist at heart, so that's why I brought up the XP rules. They're always felt like they're trying to focus too much on the simulation and not enough on the fun, but that's opinion. I fully agree that we should get some other opinions on it, to see which way we want to go with this.

I think it's a more rewarding experience when you work your way up the ladder. When a rookie wins the World Title, it's considered a big deal...and it should be. My first season, it felt good winning secondary titles (remember the AOL Title for rookies, and the United States Tag Titles) and getting on PPVs. I started to establish myself as a main eventer in my second season, and in my third season Rockshade finally won the GWA World Title. As much as this is just a hobby, that was genuinely exciting for me because of the effort I'd invested. I'm not saying rookies should expect to fail, but I feel the game would be a lot less fun if everyone started on top of the mountain.

With that said, the game is deceptively complex. It's not all about XP, which in fact gets reset after each season anyway. There's a learning curve. It takes some time to develop a consistent winning strategy. If we take those elements away, we're just rolling dice.

I generally agree that "everyone, in a perfect world, wants to be the main event, so everyone should have the opportunity to do so, given enough time and effort," and the classic rules achieve that. The key words, though, are "given enough time and effort." Everyone is in the same boat. You start with no experience, no real idea of what you're doing, and you improve until you can hang with the veterans.