4-Down Fantasy: Phase 2 Update

I have the majority of the backend scripts completed now - I finished up the one that totals all wrestler scores and stores them per show and total for the week. 

I've started on the next script, which will factor together some "extra" things for each wrestler each week, to give each wrestler some bonus value.  The factors for this are: position in WWE's Power 25, position in the Wrestler Review Voting here at the site, and what titles the wrestler had at the end of the week.  It'll be enough of a bonus where if you bought someone who didn't appear at all on WWE's Power 25, and he/she suddenly makes it to the top 10, that that wrestler will have gained quite a bit of value.  But if he/she falls off the list the following week and you kept that wrestler on your roster - you'll likely have missed out on the chance to have sold that person and bought quite a few other wrestlers!

Once I have that script done, I'm going to start testing out different ways to have wrestlers gain/lose value.  That'll be pretty important since I don't want anyone to be able to make too much money on one wrestler where they could simply buy the entire roster and never miss out on any points for the rest of the season.

I also have to figure out when the roster management can occur.  I could just go the simple route of having your roster reset every week, and not fuss around with buying/selling wrestlers.  (and it'll default to using your roster from the previous week if you don't make changes)  I could always run a WWE Fantasy "classic" game alongside whatever I come up with, but I don't want things to get so confusing with 100 different rankings on the site.  I'll think about that. 

But I think it'd be a lot more interesting if you bought Kofi Kingston for $1000 on week 1 and at week 5 he's become intercontinental champion, winning matches weekly, and now he's worth $5000 - meaning you could sell him and buy 5 more guys who are all at $1000 still.  The top guys, like Cena and Edge, won't really have the ability to gain that much value, since they're already at the top.  They could drop for sure, but they'd really just be a high cost for guaranteed points each week.  So "investing" in some mid-carders early on, and then being able to buy a couple of top guys a few weeks later from profits, could be a good strategy. 

But I'm not sure when you'd be able to sell a wrestler and buy another.  If in week 1 your wrestler goes up in value, well, week 2 starts the next day (it will run Sunday - Saturday), and by either Sunday night or Monday night, you'll already have had a chance to see if your wrestler is starting the week off well.  So if he was worth a lot last week, and it looks like he's going down this week, you could just sell him off immediately.

Though I guess how it could work is that you'd have all week to sell him, but he's the switch doesn't happen until the week has finished.  If he's doing badly, his value is going to drop, so selling him off might lose you money.  Essentially you would always be taking a risk choosing to sell someone from your roster, since you won't know what you'd be getting for him/her until the week is finished.  (and you can only change your mind up to the time the wrestler's value is calculated)

But then the trick is, when can you buy your new wrestlers with the money you got?  You won't know the value of wrestlers until the week is over, so you wouldn't be able to pick who you can buy since you won't know how much you'll have and you won't know how much they'll cost.  I could make something where you put in a priority list of wrestlers, and the system automatically buys the ones you can afford. 

And all of this pretty much means I have to always be on the ball ready to run this stuff every Saturday night.  I think I'll have to think of a way to do this where if I'm out of town on a weekend it doesn't screw the game up.  Other fantasy sports have this a lot easier since there are XML feeds available that have all the data ready-made for you to use for scoring!  Even though there are a lot of people who've said they'll help, I'll still have to verify everything before it's officially scored since any mistake would potentially mess the season up.

So now that I've written all that out, maybe it makes more sense to stick to the "classic" WWE Fantasy style, with no selling and no sense of "investing" in a wrestler.  Just a few tiers of wrestlers with a specific cost, and you buy your roster each week for the following week.  That's definitely easier for me to build and maintain. 

Luckily I'm right at the point now where I can go any way I want for that part of the game..  if anyone has any ideas or suggestions, I'm open to hearing them. :)