GM/Universe Hybrid Concept (All About The Fans)
Even if you were a GM Mode hater, give this one a chance. In my opinion the design for General Manager mode in past WWE games was flawed. You were supposed to take control of a brand, and beat out the other brand in ratings to win the GM of the Year award. In my eyes this was a fairly "arcade-y" mode that fell in line with what the WWE was trying to do at that particular time, where SmackDown! was a completely separate brand from RAW and there was a Bragging Rights PPV to see which brand was better. However, this shouldn't be the case, as WWE programming is not played out that way any longer. My vision for this mode would be to have it still run as Universe Mode, just with a few GM aspects sprinkled in. Additionally (and most importantly) everything would revolve around the fans. It wouldn't be about beating the other brand(s) rating, it would be about working together with the other brand(s) to achieve high ratings for your company, get money and spend that money. There will be one "company," that can have optional, additional brands, as well as one developmental brand. Using WWE as an example, you would work to get the WWE (company) more money through obtaining high ratings with the RAW, SmackDown! and Main Event brands, with NXT serving as the developmental brand. The more brands you run, the harder it is to get high ratings---I will explain this in the next few paragraphs. Much like College Hoops 2K8's Legacy Mode, a user would either A) be able to start their company from the bottom with a small amount of money, or B) start with a good amount of money (basically mimicking how WWE is today). The idea will be to earn more money by obtaining high ratings. Users would achieve high ratings in two different ways:
The first is building up superstars (represented by fan popularity/hate meters...popularity for the "good guys" and hate for the "bad guys") through promos/matches with other superstars that have high popularity/hate meters---The more superstars you have on the roster with high fan popularity/hate meters, the higher the ratings for the show going forward.
The second is having matches with superstars that have high fan popularity/hate meters. It is fairly obvious how this would drive ratings in real life, so I will save the explanation. However, I'm sure you're saying, "That's dumb, I can just put two superstars against each other that have high popularity/hate meters and make a ton of money every show." WRONG. If you put the same two superstars up against each other for too long, fans would start to get bored, (just like in real life) and the superstars who you so heavily relied on to get you good ratings are no longer as popular with the fans---You would then have to build their meters back up. To get less popular superstars "over" with the fans, you could either keep them battling against other less popular superstars, (which would have them
both develop slowly in the fan's eyes) or you could put a superstar with a low meter up against a superstar with a high meter, developing the less popular/hated one faster, and taking a chance on losing a little popularity/hate with the other). It would be hard to gain high ratings with more shows because not every superstar is going to have high popularity/hate, so if you spread these Superstars and Divas out over multiple brands it's going to be hard to consistently have high ratings. So, once you earn more money, you would be able to do one of two things: 1) Add a new brand (which could earn you more money if managed correctly). With this you would buy new arena, (aka create new arena from scratch using the arena creator) which if you chose to start "from the bottom," you would have to use the smallest arena they have and upgrade as you gain more budget...more fans = better opportunity to get higher ratings. 2) Buy special "packages" like in Madden with their XP packages for Superstar mode, such as: a) boost popularity/hate for "x" superstar for "x" number of weeks; b) boost momentum for a small raise in every attribute category for a superstar (like up to 5 points total); c) boost one attribute for up to something like 10 points total (don't forget there are attribute caps); etc. Two things left to get into---promos and the developmental brand. For promos, the developers could go back and add in promo scenes from the storyline editor to each Universe feud where it would make sense. From there, they could make things simple by adding small, but meaningful choices for each player to choose from, and for each promo, popularity/hate will rise or fall for the superstar and all other superstars affected. (This would also depend on their "promo" rating, which would be a new attribute.) For example, Brock Lesnar (a highly-hated superstar) comes out on the RAW after a PPV (which normally starts a new feud in Universe Mode) and has a promo scheduled. He stands with the mic to his mouth as a choice box comes up: 1) Criticize, 2) Show Respect for, 3) Praise, 4) Boast About Self, etc. Once you clicked on a choice, there would be another pop up asking for which superstar they would like to talk about (except the Boast About Self type choices). Let's say we make Lesnar criticize Kofi Kingston, who is a bit lower on the popularity meter. Lesnar's hate meter would be affected, as well as Kofi's popularity meter, but Kofi's meter wouldn't be affected as much as Lesnar's since Lesnar did the talking. From here, the game would dictate which storyline plays out, based on our input. This would help the amount of totally random story lines that happen on WWE 13's Universe Mode. The promo rating can come in handy here because someone who has a high "promo" rating will gain more popularity/hate for all parties involved. The last thing I want to get into is the developmental brand. This would basically be like what NXT is for the WWE. The developers can come up with a class of about 15 Superstars and Divas, (which we could import/export our own as well) all with different ratings. Once a Superstar/Diva reaches a point on the popularity/hate level that you feel good about, you can debut them on the main roster for TV. The balancing act here is that you can keep them in developmental with a meter fairly high with popularity/hate, but they won't be making you any money. However if you debut them too early just to get another superstar on the roster, they may not make much of an impact and fail to gain any popularity/hate. As you can see, it's not about simply "winning" the mode, it's about consistently gaining high ratings by developing your superstars while you grow your company as a whole. If you lose a ton of money, you might have to get rid of a brand and rethink your "booking" strategy. The WWE team should also add ON/OFF functions for the money/ratings aspect of this mode. This way the fans who do not want to play with the "GM additions" can just play this mode like the normal Universe Mode with the additions of developmental brands and promos. I will go into a few more additions to this mode on the next page.