Ring Psychology/Telling stories with CPU Logic

[amsterDAN]

Dudes, I hope the day finds you all well. My big ol' open-ended question of the week is this:

What are some of your favorite methods to imbue your edits with a little bit of ring psychology? By this I mean: what combinations of moves, parameters, logic, and whatever the hell else have you used to support a character's gimmick and help tell their story in the ring?

I'll start it off with an example from my roster: I got a guy named N.E.O.N. Supreme whose deal is that he's suffering from a severe case of roid rage. (He's basically a spoof of the Ultimate Warrior.) Early in the match, he fights more or less as normal, but the longer the match draws on the more frustrated and enraged he gets. So in large damage, I've used a priority to loop his stomp to the stomach of a downed opponent back into itself, to try to convey that he's getting impatient. Early on he does a fair bit of shoulder tackles and lariats, but late in the match he often immediately follows up one running lariat or tackle with another, to show he's done messing around and actively trying to end this match. He showboats a lot throughout his bouts, but late in the match I have him flex and pump his muscles and beat his chest after quite a few different big moves to give him a sort of frantic feel, like he hardly knows what to do with all this frenetic energy. And I actually don't have him pin quite as much as you might expect in large/critical damage, leaving a lot of his priority pins at around 80% (usually I'd consider that a no-no for moves I want to end matches, but it works here) to try and give the impression of him occasionally getting carried away with mangling someone and not ending things when he should. 

So does anyone else have any intriguing or unusual examples of ways in which you told your edits' stories through their CPU logic?

[Senator Phillips]

Here's one from my last edit I uploaded:

Terence Crawford is an undefeated welterweight boxer who's known for his methodical approach, and his ability to turn up the heat when he breaks down the opponent. As such, I had two very clearly defined phases in his logic:

Early-Mid: Crawford has next to no logic to grapple in small damage. He has heavy logic on his jab and his 1-2 combination signature, as he does most of his early fight damage off counters. The focus is in keeping distance and landing quick, relatively long ranged strikes.  There's a high percent on both backing away and circling the opponent, as he cautiously judges their attack and avoids it.

Mid-Late: Crawford's logic to approach the opponent drastically increases, with a large decrease on backing away, but keeps a high percent on circle opponent. Like most of my Lightweight category boxers, he doesn't have huge percents on his heavy grapple combinations, to mirror the lesser power of the lighter weights, but he does introduce the combos in large damage. He gets a big bump in both neutral and dazed logic for his finishing uppercut, as he's been known to score KOs with it in real life.

The key here is that Crawford, a tactical master, is known for being able to adapt well within fights, so I wanted his logic to tell that story.

[Severla]

My edit Paul Beckham's shtick is that he had a bad experience with a death match and it's basically scarred him for life. He has the Blood skill, increased 'when bleeding' Breath/Regen/Spirit and has 1% usage on several of the fork/scythe moves. If he uses them he does a 'shocked!' taunt afterwards. I toyed with him doing a taunt chain after the moves (the newer DLC 'angry yell' taunt -> Look Around -> Shocked!) to mimic him realizing he went into one of his PTSD bouts, but he basically never gets the whole thing off so I put it back on the drawing board for now.
He's not nearly as 'purposeful shock-value' as say, Dawn's Riri edit, and it's supposed to be a bit more hidden. He'll go 4-5 matches without me ever even seeing him lose his shit.

My edit Debra Jameson has her actual finisher as a low-use piledriver with Over Turn as a skill. The piledriver is fairly out of place in her moveset because it's literally her getting annoyed and head-dropping someone on purpose. She's a bit of a bitch...

Illium Levanto has several 'flashy' moves as potential enders hidden in his logic. He's an older lucha, but sometimes he can style on the young guys.

[Professor Voodoo]

While I currently don't have the current build up, as I'm pining for a Valentine's Day release, the current build of Reina Stiletta has been explicitly designed as an edit that's far more show than go. (Being 280+ points, it's a great counterbalance)

Her early game (and most of her game in general) involves dancing around the opponent, and throwing chops, like a liontamer (or dominatrix) cracking a whip.

Mid to mid-late game, she's gonna start throwing out her signature heel strikes, and owing to one of her professions, she'll torment the naughty opposition with submission holds.

Late game, and this is her meat and potatoes so to speak, she'll spam the hell out of her Foot Stunner, which I have lovingly nicknamed (thanks Inokiists) "Violent Dancing", and abuse the foe with heel and dropkicks from all angles before she eventually hits an attack with match ending potential

Basically a dominatrix/ballroom dancer/vampire style haha



Also, for taunt chains, see Drinky Crow's "vomit" sequences.

[turrible666]

I think my biggest use of in-ring storytelling is probably with the Coke Brothers, a tag team of recently-disinherited children of privilege who turned to pro wrestling to fund their massive cocaine habits. Mainly, both make heavy use of the Misawa sweat-wipe taunt, paired with a hissing sound, to simulate post-rail sniffling. Ricky Coke has a bad habit of just getting way too fired up and doing endless backflips (priority chained into each other at I think 85%, followed by a 100% priority into the nose wipe) when he really should be going for a pin. Also, thanks to all the chemical stimulation, Ross Coke's body moves faster than his brain, meaning he forgets that he's 40 years old and overweight, so he goes for the corner-run-up "Oops" move a lot.

Aside from that, the tag team of the Masked Tuds, when chosen in the proper Turd #2/Turd #2A order, do an entrance taunt where one hits the sumo squat and grunts, followed by the other doing the aforementioned nose-wipe to simulate one of them just intensely farting as soon as he hits the ring. I am almost 40 years old.

[Professor Voodoo]

Jan 18, 2019 1:34:45 GMT turrible666 said:

I think my biggest use of in-ring storytelling is probably with the Coke Brothers, a tag team of recently-disinherited children of privilege who turned to pro wrestling to fund their massive cocaine habits. Mainly, both make heavy use of the Misawa sweat-wipe taunt, paired with a hissing sound, to simulate post-rail sniffling. Ricky Coke has a bad habit of just getting way too fired up and doing endless backflips (priority chained into each other at I think 85%, followed by a 100% priority into the nose wipe) when he really should be going for a pin. Also, thanks to all the chemical stimulation, Ross Coke's body moves faster than his brain, meaning he forgets that he's 40 years old and overweight, so he goes for the corner-run-up "Oops" move a lot.

Aside from that, the tag team of the Masked Tuds, when chosen in the proper Turd #2/Turd #2A order, do an entrance taunt where one hits the sumo squat and grunts, followed by the other doing the aforementioned nose-wipe to simulate one of them just intensely farting as soon as he hits the ring. I am almost 40 years old.

That's (the farting) rank hahahaha

[ligerbear]

I have one guy who is a dirty sleezy evil landlord. His finisher is called the Rent Drop. Hes fat and wears cheesy clothes. Not even really a pro wrestler. His whole schtick is to be annoying and cheap.

He circles and avoids ALOTS. If you finally grab him he will try to kick you to the floor with a shin kick or nut shot. After a nut shot he will go for a magistral cradle(its a lucha company.) If you end up on the mat he does repeated kawada small face kicks with disdain.

Only tries real moves if he manages to get opppnent hp low with his non-engagement dirty tactics. His finisher is really powerful though. Hes a low card guy so on the occassion he wins its glorious

[amsterDAN]

turrible666 I find your flatulence and drug dependency truly inspiring! That's the kind of reply I was looking for when I started this thread.

Spent the whole day sprucing up edits and got some guys more storied up. A nice example for this topic is my caveman Cro-Mag. I figured a caveman shouldn't know how to wrestle. Indeed, he shouldn't even be aware that he is participating in a wrestling match. With that in mind, I made it so he never looks as though he's pinning someone on purpose; he only uses pins like the brain claw and the occasional Thesz press or flying crossbody, so when he scores a pinfall it looks like a happy accident he didn't actually intend on.

[LankyLefty17]

These are all cool concepts. My general philosophy is around building movesets that fit the edits "fight style" more than personality. A brawler will do less technical stuff, a small guy less power stuff, ect. Sometimes I'll do more subtle stuff like Rampage- a big strong former NFL lineman that ragdolls people around the ring, but gasses out hard because he doesn't know how to pace himself. But again most of that is kinda basic stuff that most of us think about with any edit.

Two exceptions, though these are guys I sometimes feel less comfortable with since its outside my usual wheelhouse:

Massholes- a Boston based tag team that follow your stereotypical drunk annoying sports fan. I have them do annoying cheers throughout the match at every opportunity, even after simple moves. The smaller masshole even does all the Hogan pose taunts.

Loco Dixon- is a hardcore backyard wrestler that self taught himself by watching old lucha matches on TV. His moveset is meant to show a lack of polish (his strikes are hammer punch, which look like awkward untrained strikes) but also involve lots of dives to illustrate what he is emulating.

[turrible666]

Jan 18, 2019 15:46:01 GMT amsterDAN said:

turrible666 I find your flatulence and drug dependency truly inspiring!

if I had a dollar for every time someone's said that...