Friction Shows

Hereâ€s a thought. Might be a way to encourage plots and character advancement. It might seem complex, but only because I preceded the explanation with a history essay, as is my wont.

Friction used to have a top ten ranking system, to encourage competition and collaboration and generate plot points and give non-title girls something to strive for. However, it had a few fatal flaws, essentially being a closed loop and highly dependent on people being both generous and frequent with their matches. So we donâ€t have a ranking system no more.

However, it would still obviously be useful to identify the top AFW talent pool, in a way that goes beyond having one or two PPV matches a year. The recent Friction World Cup was also relatively successful in giving players a way to contribute to a wider project, without being penalised for slow posting or losing matches.

So. What if AFW were to have individual ‘Shows†which were basically mini-promotions within the promotion (obviously inspired by Smackdown and Raw)? Only a select few girls would be signed for each (am hazy on the numbers, say 12-16 at a guess) - so obtaining a Show contract would be a badge of honour, similar to the old top ten. Completing threads with other Contracted girls would count as advancing your character in the Show, earning points in a meta-competition similar to the Friction World Cup. Unlike the old top ten, an inactive character would be no big deal, their individual points share would simply decay and they would ultimately lose their Contract. Obviously players can do whatever the hell other matches they like as well without impacting this at all, they just get a bonus if it is a Show match.

Hopefully you are with me so far. The existence of two shows would generate competition on a larger scale, as everyone contributed to try and make their show the best (so all the individually earned Show points get pooled into a total for the team). This should give the plot benefits of having factions, but none of the drawbacks (a big unified faction wonâ€t have internal conflict and no-one will pick a fight with them, whereas duelling promotions will have more internal fights than external). Each show would have its own manager who would run things, or try to entice girls across from the opposition etc. The two shows might end up differentiating on content grounds as well (e.g. the more hentai-focused characters congregating in the same one) but that would probably help characterisation.

Comparing the shows points totals wouldnâ€t just be based on thread quantity - you could also have show-specific PPV events (in the gaps between the seasonal AFW ones) where the Friction general manager could award bonus points for exciting matches and ultimately decide which show was the best.

Hopefully one side wouldnâ€t dwarf the other, though if that did happen you could always mix things up by forced drafts etc.

Did you read the whole post? Do you have an opinion? Have you thought of really cool names for the shows (because all I can think of is ‘Diamond†and ‘Platinumâ€)?

I like most ideas that involve creating a more involved IC world in which to rp, but if history has taught us anything, it's that AFW people only want an AFW with rough guidelines (Friction, Tension, there are titles somewhere), and nothing else. Everything more involved than that that has ever been attempted has failed.

Well yeah, this was posted more as an interesting idea rather than something I would expect to get off the ground. Itâ€s not completely true that all the embellishments have failed, though… the PPVs seem to work. There are the occasional hentai tournaments as well. Maybe short-lived one-off stuff fares better than permanent structures. I donâ€t really know the reason why to be honest.

It's definitely ambitious, I'll give you that. A lot of details would need to be hammered out, including maybe having a vote on whether enough people are interested and would be able to contribute with some regularity. If player participation was one of the bigger issues last time I suppose that system of inactive characters losing their contract or losing points would help.

It WOULD be enticing to have something going on between PPV's, but what do I know? I'm just the humble new guy...

They're not bad ideas. I like 'em. It's like 'mouse said though: most of the ideas to do stuff here have flopped.

...killcarrion, you're hardly a new guy anymore. ;P

Stick to the new direction of AFW! to the firing wall with you Hamish!

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The idea of a 'top 10' Sounds cool to me, though its fallen from its grace and into obscurity. If there was any chance of a revival, and that's a strong if, I would have it as not who the strngest was, but participation. Starting from a future date so many would have a fair chance.

About side-shows, it seems like they would be sagas that would be interactive across the whole board

Winter is coming, remember that well.

The thing with the top 10 is that many people here approach their matches like a video game, where they want to do as well as possible, and people naturally wanted to advance their character to the top. In order to move up, someone else had to agree to move down, and there were many more move-uppers than move-downers, so the list was largely stagnant. I think while I've been around, outside of a couple matches, the order only changed when someone was removed from the list due to inactivity, and everyone else moved up.

It's true.