The Art of Balancing Edits: Share How You Do It.

[IGgy IGsen]

Recently I had to rework quite a few edits for my E-Fed, so this is a topic that's just been on my mind lately. So I've been wondering you people are doing it. I always find it interesting to learn about other people's way of doing things. So DO share your process if you have a specific one. After all, everyone has their own ideas of what a good edit is, how to do logic well, etc. So how we tweak our edits to get them just right can be just as different.

I mean, generally the very first thing you will do is most likely to watch a couple matches to see if your new creation's logic and moves work right and if there's any wonky bits to their appearance when in motion. But that's the broad strokes. I'm talking about the step that comes after: fine-tuning. And you can't really fine tune something off of just one or two matches.

Me? I have a huge-ass spreadsheet and one tab of it is called "Developmental"
This tab documents non-canonical dark matches against a set of ten opponents. Everyone not only faces these exact same opponents but the specific snapshot of them when I started doing this to make sure everybody is tested against the same criteria.

In my case I created my own ecosystem, so to speak, of edits that I made for my E-Fed specifically. They aren't really balanced against community edits. But you could easily do what I do by hand-picking a few community made creations you know suit your style. I picked both people I knew were stronger than average and some that were weaker than average as well as some middle of the road kinda wrestlers (they aren't sorted, though.)

I don't normally show it because ~kaye fabe~ but what you see here is the stats of obsoleted versions of an edit I made:

Meet The Ego. A wrestler who sucked so bad that they held the Jobber title you earn by losing for so long we sent them on excursion so they can come back repackaged. Simply put: I undershot it a tad when I made the moveset and logic. A character losing or winning considerably more than others is fine, but this guy was taking it to a new level by having the best storyline in wrestling: The Losing Streak (tm)
And while it CAN work for some characters (I know from experience) it wasn't for The Ego. So I decided to make some changes and package it as someone going on Excursion. Kind of like how Young Lions in NJPW leave for a while before coming back with an actual gimmick. Or how even already established guys like Tetsuya Naito were doing it to reinvent themselves as Ingobernable.

Now, this guy here went through a few iterations. Now when I say iterations I don't mean minor tweaks, I'm talking more new version numbers. In order from top to bottom here you see: Original, Repackaged version, and then the Repackaged but with a specific mod. And finally I arrived at the version you're not seeing here: The one that was tweaked again to account for the shift in balance that happened due to use of that mod.

- The original version that was sent on excursion with a whopping 2/8/0 record. But their two wins were flukes. They were not consistent. For the sake of my system winning 2 out of 3 matches is viewed as "consistent", however I only really do a set of 3 if I feel something is off.
- Then the first draft of the repackaged version with 6/4/0 I swapped out a lot of moves, completely reworked the logic and generally made sure they come across like a changed person. I also, in true WWE, fashion took away the first name (The) turning them into EGO (in all caps too).
- Now, that last version with 5/5/0 is actually the same as the first draft version only I have the forced selling for finishers mod active, at first anyway. I had to make some changes because matches ended way too quickly now. Which should theoretically increase their chances of winning because they have a running Kokeshi as a finisher and opponents usually get up too quick after that. It increased the times they won with the finisher (not documented here, just something I observed) but overall they stayed roughly the same in terms of Wins and Losses but the match rating and duration went down. While these numbers don't really say much about how good or bad the match actually is I still like to see how it develops across iterations.

- The as of right now final version is not shown here. It's not that big of a deal but I still like to keep this data under wraps and this still showcases my process even though you don't see the raw data for the end result.

I have a lot of numbers here and by themselves they are worthless, you'll have to be able to interpret them and even if I speed up my tests beyond the normal limit using mods I still observe whether a wrestler is winning of a Sig or Finisher more often than not or if it's random other moves. If it's the latter there's probably a problem with the CPU Logic.

You might also think this puts too much emphasis on wins and losses, after all the main goal should be fun matches. But again: It's not about the raw numbers, it's about how you read them. I use it more as a general indicator of whether someone is doing exceedingly well or poorly. Because ideally I want everyone to be able to lose and win. I will never allow a clean sweep (except for my intentionally overpowered gimmick wrestler, VACANT) If I were to book everyone to have a 5/5/0 record that would be boring and 50/50 booking in the truest sense of the word.

The reason I'm was showing this particular wrestler is because this was more involved than usual so you can see a bit of a progression going on. Normally I don't have this many (in this case four, three of which I'm showing) entries for just one wrestler.

But yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing how other people do this kind of work. Maybe I'm the only one who actually documents their tests? Maybe someone has a way more in-depth thing going on or prefers to play it more by ear? I'm always interested in stuff like this.

[LankyLefty17]

This is a great thread starter.  Maybe the thing I spend the most time in this game doing is balancing and re-balancing my edits.  It's some combination of fun and frustrating at the same time.  Here are a few random thoughts that I've learned personally through my own process.

RNG is a bitch.  Fire Pro is great because we have so much control over how an edit works and acts.  But the one thing we have zero control over is who wins grapples.  That's completely random, and can make the most dominant edit look like shit and visa versa.  So with anyone I'm testing/balancing with I run a lot of sims.  10-20 before I even start to make a change.  Otherwise you're overreacting potentially to just bad luck RNG.  I've found more success taking trends from a larger sample pool of matches and making edits off of that lead to more satisfying results.  Also, if you use mods, enabling health bars can go a long way to figuring out how your edit is performing in matches.

Rotate a variety of edits as opponents when trying to balance someone.  I find I have some of my edits will always crush other edits, but perform the complete opposite with others.  Throwing in a variety of opponents while going through that 10-20 and mixing up styles and tiers is really helpful to get a sense of where my edit stands within my own ecosystem.  This lets me know things such as my main eventers are beating lower card guys and going roughly 50/50 with other main eventers, or my mid carders are going 50/50 with everyone- things like that.  I also don't stat track everything while testing, its more of a trend.  Are they mostly winning, mostly losing.

I try not to get wrapped up in "point tiers" because an edits points don't matter as much as we may think.I find personally, if an edit seems off, its likely something to do with his move set, logic, or prios.  That's my first place to check if I think they're winning/losing too much.  An early mistake I made was if I wanted to get an edit more over was to just pump up their parameters and hope for the best.  But the reality is often guys are going for the finish too much, or not enough, or have finishes that sit behind prios that don't fire, things like that.  Re-looking at logic and the move set often uncovers reasons the edits are out of balance with each other more than adjusting point totals.

Fire pro's engine wants competitive matches.  You can game it to get mega powerful edits and jobber edits, but at its core it wants to have edits that have a competitive match.  Which means each edit has a shot to win any given match.  So I just roll with that, knowing that some of my rookies may beat a main eventer every once in a while.  As long as over a larger sample size the main eventer wins more than he loses, and the rookie loses more than he wins, I consider that close enough. 

[Severla]

Aug 15, 2019 16:55:48 GMT LankyLefty17 said:

RNG is a bitch.

Truer words will not be spoken.

Had an edit this week hit his 10%, 'hidden' back finishing move 6 times in about 10 matches. He hit his 25%, standard finisher ONCE during that. I also lowered his front finish from 7% to 5% and he hit it three times in a row the following match. The game will mock you to the core sometimes.

I also stand with Lefty on the 'not worrying about raw win percentages' but instead just feeling out 'are they winning more often than not.' You can easily make Edits a bit more 'go for the kill' by simply increasing the amount they go for pins/subs and that will rapidly increase their chances. If some 250 point edit pins once every 5 minutes, but he's against a 100 point edit that pins once every single minute. . .

I think the Parameter/point-tier mindset is usually just tied up with how fast they progress the match, due to what their potential Offense params are. If an Edit is a bit too dominant but packing 6+ in all Offense, rolling all the O-params back 1-2 points each will only extend it's matches and give the opposing Edit a longer window to get their offense in. I do think everyone has mostly been rolling Offense backwards lately, though, but keeping Defense high to draw the match out more. My personal tier stuff lately (for simplicity sake) is just flat Offense/Defense based on Rank/Card Positioning, because it's easy to quickly raise/lower params as an early tweak (if the Edit suddenly loses 3 Defense from everything, they're still fully capable of winning but they're going to be put in the danger zone much faster, etc). One day I'll actually hard specialize it, but not right now.

Those tied up solely by the point total of edits are potentially too fluffed on thinking it's all stats. Fast Movement absolutely eats points. High Breathing can eat points on an Edit that would practically have zero issues even if set to Low. High bleeding statuses can take up points when the Edit is facing those who have 0% chance to cause blood. Etc. Etc.

[Senator Phillips]

I consider my approach more that of an artist than a scientist. I have a general sense of what works in my head, a vision of what I want to see, and will run sims until I like what I'm seeing. With wrestlers, I always start from absolute scratch unless it's an edit I'm retooling from a FPR port. For boxers, I make a copy of someone in the same weight class from their relative era, as the fewer variables mean that the points and logic operate on finer margins to get them to work right with each other.

Once I get the main stuff done, I run a lot of sims, first against their intended rivals, then against a wider spread of opponents, generally going back after every few matches to adjust something. With originals, the key is to get them to display a personality and style in their matches, and usually if I get that right, everything else follows. For real wrestlers, it's a matter of getting the right results against the right people, most of the time, and having them hit their proper spots to replicate their actual matches. For boxers, I want to make sure first and foremost that I can replicate real fight results, and after that, making sure they have some standout qualities to differentiate themselves from others.

I also tend to run a sim or two after uploading, and seem to find stuff I didn't catch earlier more often than not in those sims, which means I go back and reupload, sometimes repeating that process on loop.

[amsterDAN]

I'm definitely with Senator in the art>science approach. I like to do everything by feel; overthinking things is one of the surest ways to suck the fun right out of any given activity. I used to maintain a big crazy ass spreadsheet but have since junked it since it felt more like a chore to maintain than a useful, insightful tool to have handy. So personally, I never use the health bars or spreadsheets or anything like that to evaluate an edit anymore, to me it's entirely down to whether or not the edit is moving around the ring how I envisioned, hitting the things I hoped they would, and staying true to gimmick. Typically when I make a new edit, I already have an intended rival in mind, so first order of business is simming several matches between them and making some adjustments until I'm getting a roughly even split of wins and losses. Then I take the edit on a little tour of the rest of that tier, run a league against everyone who should be comparable to the new edit, and try to achieve something close to an even split there. Then I put them against a few people they should whoop the shit out of, and a few people that should whoop the shit out of them, and if I don't get any startling surprises there, I consider the edit ring-ready.

[IamAres]

I really never use the lifebars either unless there's some weirdness with people winning/losing when they shouldn't, or getting into damage ranges at times they shouldn't and I can't figure out why any other way.

I basically run them against people that I know they should have good matches with and tweak until the match looks right. I've done this building on the same edits since FPR, so I've got a pretty big pool of serviceable guys to run against. Of course, even the guys from 2005 aren't "done," but I have a fairly solid baseline to work with at this point.

I could probably write up a dissertation on what I do, but that's the general gist for now.

[Guacamole Anderson]

I use a combination of points, Special Skill, the number of pinning moves and the percentages thereof.

But at the end of the day, I just remind myself this is pro wrestling. The Honky Tonk Man CAN beat Ricky Steamboat for the Intercontinental Title. It's part of the fun.

[xstraightedgedavex]

A good thing I like to do is set up a league of 5 or so wrestlers.
Made up of edits I've refined already,the couple of edits I want to test, some of the Njpw Base wrestlers & some reproduced 'Returns' guys.

I let this league play out & make notes of what I want to change & by how much of the edits I'm testing & maybe even tweak the others too.

As mentioned above don't make snap judgements based on one match.

My initial set up of an edit is based on feel though,like say this guy is a good kicker, I'll give him a 7 etc.

I tend to stick to making guys I like though & already have a feel for :)

[DM_PSX]

I'm happy with my system of shine/heat/comeback ukemi, and I don't even worry about stats much anymore. I get the back and worth matches that are always 90+ for the most part, and I don't pay attention much to the rest. I tried something out for awhile where I gave all my faces 10 in submission defenses, and 1 in offenses to the heels so they could work their holds more and more in the early matches, but it made little difference I think. Ukemi and skills are the real difference maker for simming (for me).

[mortula13]

Aug 19, 2019 11:23:00 GMT DM_PSX said:

I'm happy with my system of shine/heat/comeback ukemi, and I don't even worry about stats much anymore. I get the back and worth matches that are always 90+ for the most part, and I don't pay attention much to the rest. I tried something out for awhile where I gave all my faces 10 in submission defenses, and 1 in offenses to the heels so they could work their holds more and more in the early matches, but it made little difference I think. Ukemi and skills are the real difference maker for simming (for me).

This is what I've been trying to do. Read a lot on how to use Ukemi to create face/heel dynamics, but don't quite have the whole "shine/heat/comeback" down tight yet. 
Care to give a bit more detail here? 

[DM_PSX]

Aug 30, 2019 2:35:43 GMT mortula13 said:

Aug 19, 2019 11:23:00 GMT DM_PSX said:

I'm happy with my system of shine/heat/comeback ukemi, and I don't even worry about stats much anymore. I get the back and worth matches that are always 90+ for the most part, and I don't pay attention much to the rest. I tried something out for awhile where I gave all my faces 10 in submission defenses, and 1 in offenses to the heels so they could work their holds more and more in the early matches, but it made little difference I think. Ukemi and skills are the real difference maker for simming (for me).

This is what I've been trying to do. Read a lot on how to use Ukemi to create face/heel dynamics, but don't quite have the whole "shine/heat/comeback" down tight yet. 
Care to give a bit more detail here? 

Face: 25/75/50 (Make the face look good early on).

Heel: 75/25/50 (Make the heel punish the face during the middle heat).

Go for the kill at the end. No kidney punches or other moves.

The 50/50 at the end is so both guys get their stuff in at the end. But it could be any number that lets both guys eat each other's moves. Do some searches here. I've ranted about it a lot, and it's a bit off topic for this thread.

[IGgy IGsen]

Aug 30, 2019 3:08:01 GMT DM_PSX said:

Aug 30, 2019 2:35:43 GMT mortula13 said:

This is what I've been trying to do. Read a lot on how to use Ukemi to create face/heel dynamics, but don't quite have the whole "shine/heat/comeback" down tight yet. 
Care to give a bit more detail here? 

Face: 25/75/50 (Make the face look good early on).

Heel: 75/25/50 (Make the heel punish the face during the middle heat).

Go for the kill at the end. No kidney punches or other moves.

The 50/50 at the end is so both guys get their stuff in at the end. But it could be any number that lets both guys eat each other's moves. Do some searches here. I've ranted about it a lot, and it's a bit off topic for this thread.

Maybe my idea of a face-heel dynamic is just different compared to other people but I think it works way better to make the heel get their shit in in the start for the babyface to make a firey comeback in the middle and then evening them out for the final stretch. I also personally don't set my Ukemi any higher than 40 as I feel it creates a way one-sided dynamic if you go much higher. But that's a matter of preference mostly. I prefer matches to be more straight back and forth with some bias rather than A gets to wreck B then B gets to wreck A and then they actually fight.

Well, except for a face jobber I have, he's 75/50/25
They'll lose almost guaranteed due to a variety of settings (only one match-ender, for starters, low defense and attack stats, etc.) but the Ukemi gives the matches the feel that the jobber's chances improve over time kinda creating hope spots.

But whatever one might prefer as a dynamic. Ukemi is pretty important to control the pace of a match and it's an invaluable storytelling tool. I really recommend experimenting with it until you find something that you like. The style a wrestler uses also factors in quite a bit. There's so many variables to all of this.

[DM_PSX]

Shine / Heat / Comeback is the standard. Not just in wrestling, in story telling.
www.tapatalk.com/groups/uwe/7-stages-of-a-wrestling-match-t13127.html

[dnmt]

Aug 17, 2019 22:31:59 GMT amsterDAN said:

I'm definitely with Senator in the art>science approach. I like to do everything by feel; overthinking things is one of the surest ways to suck the fun right out of any given activity. I used to maintain a big crazy ass spreadsheet but have since junked it since it felt more like a chore to maintain than a useful, insightful tool to have handy. So personally, I never use the health bars or spreadsheets or anything like that to evaluate an edit anymore, to me it's entirely down to whether or not the edit is moving around the ring how I envisioned, hitting the things I hoped they would, and staying true to gimmick. Typically when I make a new edit, I already have an intended rival in mind, so first order of business is simming several matches between them and making some adjustments until I'm getting a roughly even split of wins and losses. Then I take the edit on a little tour of the rest of that tier, run a league against everyone who should be comparable to the new edit, and try to achieve something close to an even split there. Then I put them against a few people they should whoop the shit out of, and a few people that should whoop the shit out of them, and if I don't get any startling surprises there, I consider the edit ring-ready.

I gotta say, I already had a big spreadsheet but yours blows it away. I hope you don't mind, but I've incorporated a few of your ideas in my NJPW eFed tracker.

As for balancing, I focus a lot on the parameter breakdowns as I have found that to be the best way to determine wins/losses since I have a very universal approach to logic that I apply to all of my edits, with tinkering only to take into account their real-life nuance. So, since everyone who has a back grapple finisher has it set to 30% and the back grapple to 70% in opp. dazed (for example), I don't have to worry as much about logic as I do balancing with parameter points. I also try to calculate without using the MMA or Entertainment parameters as those are, for the most part, useless in most of my edits.

[IGgy IGsen]

Oh, I missed the spreadsheet plugs. I love looking at other people's spreadsheets. I love just looking at stats and stuff. Here's a screencap of about a quarter of the Roster page my own sheet. I set it to only display stats from up until a couple months ago because I can. It's huge and the initial load is slow. I have to trim it down some. It has features I never even use.

Although I have a lot of numbers I don't use them for booking much, I keep them for fun, mostly. It's still really helpful for a lot of things, though. And it's cool to lay on some interesting factoids such as "this wrestler has spent a total of 4 hours in the ring since they debuted" and stuff like that.

Despite all the numbers I have I play it by ear more often than not. This is also true for my edit balancing. Though there's still merit to raw numbers. I said it multiple times, but it's not about having the numbers it's about how you read them.

Aug 30, 2019 17:04:45 GMT DM_PSX said:

Shine / Heat / Comeback is the standard. Not just in wrestling, in story telling.
www.tapatalk.com/groups/uwe/7-stages-of-a-wrestling-match-t13127.html

That's interesting, but I guess I really just prefer "Heat / Comeback / Even Fight to a Finish" for a match structure in Fire Pro (Though you can get more detailed than that if you mix it with the right styles). But then again, I don't really set my Ukemi according to a formula. I try to think "what kinda match would this wrestler wrestle" and then set it up accordingly. But the last phase of the match is always more or less the same. Somewhere between 15 and 25.