Another thing I should bring up is that create a wrestler is SHIT these days and never got streamlined to benefit the player. Main problems I have with create a wrestler.
- It takes easily 1 to 3 hours start to finish to go through, make your look, and setup EVERY move for your wrestler if you go into detail.
- There has NEVER been a create a move. Bubububu I did 3 powerbombs, my taunt and a Death Valley Driver ! Thats called a "SPOT" not a "MOVE". We've had "CREATE A WRESTLING SPOT" not "Create a NEW MOVE" in these games.
I got nothing against the outfits and faces and all that. Design your entrance and look have all been done well several times. However, thats creating a look and intro. Creating a WRESTLER is about the moveset.
You want to know how the fuck to setup a more streamlined create a movelist of moves without cutting content for the players? Heres how...
- STOP USING CANNED SELLING FOR MOVES.
There are like 15 ddt animations to choose from, more than that for power bombs and the list goes on and on. Most of this crap is the same exact move with just a different sort of sell for it and not even a different landing or tieup pose for delivering it...just crap to change how you or your opponent put over the same 50 moves that clutter that move list up. This is how you do it people. Your "wrestling style" and "Personality" should load a list of various startup and selling animations for your moves. Big guys loom and stare on startup, flashy dudes taunt and flail, luchas snap into them and out of them all hyper. Which Startup or Sell you get is determined off of the list based on the hype level of the match and the level of health you each had at the time it was pulled off. Just set the percentage chance on each animation higher or lower based on these factors. Friggin' simple and it makes every match look and flow in its visuals the way it looks in a real match. None of this repetitious canned reselling everytime bullshit. Real flow is added this way and it trims the fat from move lists TREMENDOUSLY.
But what if I wanted to pin from my move or go into a submission from it? Then have it setup to hold a button during the move to go into one of those. Like, oh I dunno, the pin or grapple button :|
It wont cut out all the positions for moves and thats because you DONT want to cut moves out, but it cuts out a TON of useless filler that clutters up the process. You could even enjoy a randomize moveset feature in this manner but honestly I'd only enjoy that if I could choose what style of wrestling I wanted a random list of moves made for per tieup position. Turnbuckle=lucha style random move list, but standing grapples= power style. Congrats...you are Samoa Joe. Could get some weird stuff, but it'd be quick and easy for folks wanting a very general sort of thing on a character quickly. It'd be better than random all or clone movesets for folks wanting to play their character and thats a good thing.
- STOP ANIMATING WRESTLING MOVES START TO FINISH AS ONE FILE!
In 2000 I was in an indie fed and trained to wrestle and I can tell you I never learned a wrestling move all as one single motion. There is a tie up, a hold position, a lift, a drop, and a landing to EVERY move. Submissions of course or drag moves cut out parts of this, but the point is dont make every hold one big animation because the landing and selling for every move looks the same. THIS IS HOW YOU GET CREATE A MOVE IN THE GAME.
Setup every move in segments. Each move you select is actually a nested list of animation instructions and each animation has its own nested list of possible counter animations to it (many of which are specific counters based off player styles like "Lucha", "power", or "Shooter" and exclusive to them). This way if you have a "shooter" style for your character they will have different sorts of counters for a move than a "power" style guy would. Hell I'd make it so different styles would only have counters during different parts of a move's animation. Shooters tend to counter at the tie up along with power guys while lucha guys tend to counter during the lift or drop sections of a move for the suspense.
In any event the best part about this is that you dont can the selling animation for the move. You can literally use the in game physics to determine how the players land based on what they hit. Do a powerbomb in the middle of the ring you land clean. Do it near the turnbuckle they land like shit. Do it on a stack of chairs and watch the brutality. EVERY move would be different every time you did it and coupled with my list idea for how to make the selling of delivering the move and taking the move change for players based off of hype/ damage levels in the match EVERY MATCH WOULD BE DIFFERENT.
The best part? You can literally make a "create a move" for real using this setup. Hell you could even tap taunt during ANY portion of the move to insert a taunt between animations. Players enter the tie up they want, the hold position, the lift animation they want from it, the drop animation they want and how they want their players body to try to lay on the landing animation and where they want the opponent to land on their body as they go down.
For example I choose:
Tieup setup= Boot to the stomach
Hold position= Pumphandle
Lift = straight up for a pumphandle drop...nah lets choose something cooler...flip them stomach down onto your shoulder from this lift style.
Drop style= I choose to fall in a legs together sitout style
Landing style= I choose to land on my side so that my body wait goes into the move and not onto my tail bone and I choose for my opponent to land on his back meaning that he will flip forward in a roll coming down off my shoulder.
Result= Congrats...this is a pumphandle bodyslam with a sitout style drop. Even if I did it onto chairs or off the ring apron it'd be this move, but the landing would be different EVERY TIME including how we both sell the move. The game physics handle the drop and how cleanly we land after we go down in our respective landing poses and the list of animations based on our hyper and health determine how we sell it. Im on fire and healthy means I spring up yelling and excited and I press pin to see him run over and hook the leg quickly and with confidence. Im beat to shit and so are you and we both collapse afterwards and going for the pin is slower to do as I mash pin and watch his pin animation replaced with a crawling to lay an arm on you animation instead. EVERY TIME I DO IT THE MOVE IS SOLD DIFFERENTLY.
In this manner the player could create any number of new moves from any sort of tie up they could imagine because the moves are broken into segments and you can change the entirety of what they do in a huge number of ways if moves were setup in segments instead of as a whole animation. Of course springboard moves and such would have different progression trees to setup but its the same sort of deal. The best part? All new moves would ALREADY have counters to them in the game because all positional animations at any point come setup with nested lists of counters to them. New moves and they already have proper counters to them. Take that Yukes.
This is how you do it game companies. Listen to my gospel.