Opinions- Building a promotion with the top fighters in the world

[BrokenCycle]

I got bored with my 25 year game, so I started a new GAMMA game like three weeks ago and it's going pretty well. Every new game I do I try to change up how I play and think what I could do to improve what I did from the last game. So I came up with this theory on signing the very best fighters around the world, and I would like some opinions. I've tried really hard not to immediately sign top talent and go with my already homegrown stars that I've created myself.

The first part basically is that I've noticed that it's very hard to really get guys on a roll when you're pairing great fighters against great fighters. When there's no food chain the reputation range is pretty even, mainly in the 50s or 60s. By actually feeding my contenders mid-level fighters, my reputations have been much better and the I would imagine the popularity of them has been better too. It also saves some money for me (even though it doesn't really matter) because I'm not wasting time and $30,000 per fight on a guy that is unknown in America to actually get him over enough to main event.

Also, I think it's good for the game world to not raid ALPHA-1, SIGMA, and FLB of their best fighters and basically run them out of out of town. It seems like the game is much more competitive and the promotions don't hotshot their young talent in bad situations quite as much.

Thoughts?

[Daffanka]

I'm doing this too with my new SIGMA game. No strict houserules but I've set a fair few general guidelines to make sure the game is more fun:

• Only sign fighters you could reasonably expect to fight for SIGMA; European talent and international veterans. No day 1 Lamont Banner and Manoel Cabral.
• No stealing talent from other promotions, especially champions and highly ranked fighters.
• Focus on winning streaks and momentum over evenly matched fights. In my last ALPHA-1 game almost every fight was evenly matched, meaning you ended up with a lot of middling fighters with mediocre records. I'm planning to run SIGMA more like a boxing promotion where the majority of fights will be lopsided and only the title/#1 contender/occasional main event fights will be actual meaningful, competitive matches.
• Protect the Europeans and throw the rest to the dogs. Signing international talent is fine if it's done with the intention to squash them and kick them out, no Marlon John as champ and no middling, 2-2 American wrestler who sticks around. He's going 0-2 so a couple of Europeans can go 1-0.

[Blackman]

On long-term it is indeed better to allow the top fighters at other companies to thrive for a while longer while you build up yours. Signing everyone like you say is kind of detrimental to some of them, as someone needs to lose obviously. I once had great fighters be 14-14 because of this.

[NWO4until01]

Originally Posted by Daffanka

I'm doing this too with my new SIGMA game. No strict houserules but I've set a fair few general guidelines to make sure the game is more fun:

• Only sign fighters you could reasonably expect to fight for SIGMA; European talent and international veterans. No day 1 Lamont Banner and Manoel Cabral.
• No stealing talent from other promotions, especially champions and highly ranked fighters.
• Focus on winning streaks and momentum over evenly matched fights. In my last ALPHA-1 game almost every fight was evenly matched, meaning you ended up with a lot of middling fighters with mediocre records. I'm planning to run SIGMA more like a boxing promotion where the majority of fights will be lopsided and only the title/#1 contender/occasional main event fights will be actual meaningful, competitive matches.
• Protect the Europeans and throw the rest to the dogs. Signing international talent is fine if it's done with the intention to squash them and kick them out, no Marlon John as champ and no middling, 2-2 American wrestler who sticks around. He's going 0-2 so a couple of Europeans can go 1-0.

This is really, really similar to what I do too. I leave the americans to GAMMA, leave the Japs to ALPHA and try to make SIGMA a 'best of the rest' promotion, which means its ok to launch raids on the likes of FCB. I book the cards only slightly differently, I let the internationals fight their way up to recognition and/or popularity so that the contenders are seperated from the pretenders. Fights are determined solely on win/loss records and recent form, along with popularity getting somewhat protected if need be. Dont give a hoot about skills... makes it a fluent flowing game.

[MJoseph]

I've done it both ways (signing all the top talent vs. letting them develop). Depending on the game you want to run, both can work.

Check this thread for ideas using all of the best fighters
http://www.greydogsoftware.com/forum...d.php?t=515338

For a long time I was letting each company develop before stealing fighters (including a few "watcher" games).

Now I am running with the best fighters (and companies) under one banner to figure out who really is the best in the world.