I had a runner ask about this;

As far as playing a custom character, that seems fine to me. However, the runners also brought up the fact that you could, in fact, alter the moves of everything single stock character in the game, and wanted to know if such an approach would be acceptable.

If not, just got to be a little careful verifying runs, so that it can made sure that AI moves are stock moves the game gives them or not.

If so, then, I mean that's pretty straight forward.

I didn't want that full decision since it could really affect runs without running it by the community. So, here I am, throwing this out there as something that needs to be determined to be acceptable or not acceptable.

What do you think?

Just to clarify,

Apparently stock characters can't be altered... so the real question just is then, is there any reason anyone can think of that playing against custom characters should be disallowed for Royal Rumble/Exhibition/Cage matches?

If not, I don't see any immediate issue with it myself, so I'm inclined to allow that.

I'm looking into throwing some times on the boards, and this was a question that I had and came here for. My only question is do wrestlers have different stats? Strength, speed, etc.? I don't think that they do, and if that is the case, I don't see why a custom character would be disallowed. Sure, you can pick and choose different moves, but then again, so can ANYONE running the game, so I would lean towards allowing it.

And if this is the case, I will probably create myself before I come for some of these records. LOL

I think they may have some types of stats. or at least certain moves are more powerful than others (obviously but allow me to elaborate) like for example in WCW/nWo Revenge runners will typically pick Chris Jericho for the no ring out runs because the lion tamer (walls of Jericho) can finish and opponent in 4 to 5 rotations where I used Dean Malenko for the cloverleaf because when he comes off the submission in the midst of rotation I have more control of how to knock the opponent down and start the move over again to avoid a rope break than you can with Jericho but with that, it takes 6 to 7 rotations to get a tap out depending on the spirit meter and the opponent.

My copy is in the mail and I haven't played it in years so my opinion of created characters can't hold water cause I am not educated enough on this subject. But aren't all the moves that you are able to give a created character, the same moves that are just in the game period anyway. Like the advantage would be that you can put badass moves all on one character but that does not sound to be unfair when anybody` who runs the game could do the same. It actually adds depth to running the game because we introduce builds and the quest for meta. at that point it's RNG again.

@BryBad, there are offensive and defensive strength levels that can be toggled for custom characters along with attributes like speed and recovery rate, but in the same light as your point about the moves, everyone running the game would have the same ability to set them for their characters. Thus, the playing field would still be level amongst all runners.

@Megamatt79, yes, I totally forgot about that menu! Sorry, it's been a few years.

So looking at the stats for some of the top superstars, it's clear that custom characters, as a whole, are going to be stronger than most (if not all) base characters. It seems that only the top tier superstars have all 15 stat points to spend in offensive or defensive ability (although even Steve Austin has all 15 offensive points and only 13 defensive points).

This, combined with choosing moves, means that once custom characters are allowed, custom characters become nearly must-use to be competitive. In my humble opinion, this isn't a bad thing though as @Pottsie91 said it just becomes a way for us to tweak things to our liking and add depth to how we do things. However, I can understand if more purist speedrunners dislike the concept because it's not an original character, even though I feel like they would still end up using only a handful of wrestlers themselves anyways.

In the end, I don't feel that I have too much say in a community that I'm newer in and in a game I haven't even uploaded any times yet, but my vote would be to allow custom characters, simply because it allows us to pick and choose different abilities, moves, and strategies in order to optimize our runs, and it's fair because anyone can choose to build a character however they would like. Plus, it's more fun...and that's what we are here for, right?

Hi! I'm here to put forth my two cents, if they mean anything. 😋

The No Mercy board has split subcategories for CAW and non-CAW runs, where any run involving a character not in a default slot counts as a CAW (even if you're playing a default character and the opponent is set to a CAW). I thought it would be better for consistencies sake while making things more open to any type of run someone may want to try out, but I also came across the issue of "how do I make sure the defaults are really defaults". I also allowed edited attires on default characters to still count as non-CAW since clothing and music doesn't affect the run in any way (unless some sort of glitch is found someday), which made it a bit harder to tell. I just created a rule where the person has to show the characters they selected before the run starts, so you can just see what type of slot the character is in.

Now, the problem with that rule in WM2000 is that No Mercy has a pinkish backing of the name/picture border in the select screen for CAWS and green for defaults, but WM2000 doesn't have any distinction (especially since you can just select "Trade" to switch what section the character is on). I guess the closest thing would be to have the person quickly show the character(s) moves/attributes in the Edit menu, which is a little faster to access/look through than in No Mercy. It might be a little extra for the player to do, but just doing it once during a string of run attempts wouldn't be too bad, and would go far in helping accurate verification.

Sorry for the wall of text! 😅

I'm going to leave the board as is, and allow the use of custom characters for both the player and AI, based on the feedback here, and a decent desire to try to boards as clean as possible. I suppose things could change in the future for sure, but for now I will leave as is and revisit the question of yet another subcat in the future if and when there is a stronger desire for one.

Thanks everyone for the input.

Both the player and the AI? So if someone were to do a one on one exhibition match, one could play as a custom character and go against an AI custom character? I'm pretty sure this is what you are saying, but I just want to be crystal clear before I start to grind for more records. :)

This is correct; sorry for the delayed response.

One could create a custom character specifically to play as, and another custom character specifically to play against. Additionally, for Royal Rumble runs, one could do the same, including created 3 custom characters specifically to play against at the beginning of the game. (Once the first three AI are eliminated, the game automatically pulls from the stock characters in the game for the remaining AI).