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Now, on to the very long text post by ButtPilgrim that shows you how to get the most out of your Universe Mode. I understand that it is A LOT, but I promise your understanding of Universe will be increased tenfold. If you care about Universe, please read through this.
If this helped you any or gave you any ideas or have your own tips, please post & tell me about it!
Setting Up Your Universe Mode:
Spoiler
Housekeeping
So, before you actually start your Universe, you need to do some things. The first and most crucial question is: What do you want your Universe to be? It sounds stupid, but hear me out. Do you want to start in 1997 or in 2013? How about starting in April of 2011, following the rise of CM Punk? This stuff is all possible, but you do have to accept one major limitation/opportunity: It must be a remix. It cannot follow the exact path. I'm not sure why you would want to model history- watch the DVDs if you want t hat- but it's a common misconception that you can program Universe Mode to work exactly how you want it to be booked. You can't do that, but you can offer suggestions- I'd estimate you can sometimes do up to 33% of the booking if you're lucky and if you work at it.
Okay- so for our scenario, we're going to assume that after Wrestlemania 29, the next week on Raw that Mr. McMahon came out and announced a new brand split. Three brands, Raw, Smackdown!, and ECW, with a draft that night. We're using the three brand split because it's very difficult to pull off correctly- the idea being that if you can make this work, you can make anything work. One more addition: Everyone is a full timer in my Universe. If you want part timers, just remove them occasionally. There's a way to open the possibility of their interference after they're removed, but we'll get into that in a later post.
Setting the Brands
So we've decided that we want to do three brands. We're going to include current wrestlers and some CAWs of current guys in this universe- Big E, Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose, and Roman Reigns are the ones I have made, but if you've got Fandango you ought to throw him in, too. Here's how I would do it.
First, I would delete the Monday Night Raw show as well as Superstars. It's possible Universe will give you shit about deleting a TV Show because of PPV stuff- that's okay, just reassign the brand as Smackdown for all of them. We will fix this near the end. Next, assign Attitude Raw Is War as the brand for the Smackdown show. It sounds weird, right? No worries- it's a placeholder. But next, we'll want to remove every Superstar from the Raw and Smackdown! brands and put them into Free Agency. CAWs go in there, too, and if there's anyone from the Attitude Era you want, put them in there as well- for me, Trish Stratus and Lita had to be included. With some DLC, some CAWs, and stock Superstars and Divas I had exactly 60 wrestlers in the Free Agent pool. This is just about a perfect number to start with.
Next, I had my draft. Pen and paper, on a notebook. How you do your draft is up to you, but make sure you have someone in mind as your champions. It also helps to make each brand interesting if you have a concept for each- so for Raw, I wanted guys like Cena, Lesnar, and Triple H, but for ECW I wanted CM Punk and Daniel Bryan. I had 20 Superstars and Divas in each brand before long.
Television
So now that you have your brands, you need to give them each a major show. When you put Raw on Mondays, you'll be asked to assign a major title. This can end up badly if you're anal about record keeping, but I got your back.
From the start menu (outside of Universe) go into My WWE and then Title Management. Hit R1. You can create custom championships here! There are plenty of people who have criticized this feature as a poor excuse for a Belt Editor, but it's actually really useful if you know what you want from it. Here, we want to use it to have good record keeping from the start of our scenario.
So, let's say we want to use the Spinner Belt (hey, maybe one of you does!) as our Raw title. We can change the colors of it somewhat if we want (I like to color code the straps, so mine would have red leather for Raw) and rename it as we want- I like to call mine, say, the WWE Raw World title. If you wanted, though, you could have the exact same appearance and name. It's up to you.
The important thing here is that it has no title history, so you can have clean records from the beginning of your scenario! I created major, minor, and tag belts for each of our brands. For Divas, I did something different: I created a Divas and Women's title. Women's is for ECW and Smackdown; Divas is for Raw. This lets you have Smackdown and ECW Divas on the same show. Unfortunately, you can't assign one Divas belt for all 3 brands- two is the max. This rule follows with any title. Note: There's a pretty cool way to have midcarders appear on both shows but not major stars, but it's not really what we're looking for in our brand split.
So let's go back to creating our show. We create Monday Night Raw with our new, clean, lack of history title. But check this out- if we assign it to John Cena like we want, it won't list him as having won it. This is bad for our hyper-anal record keeping. What do we do?
We assign everything to Mr. McMahon, and beat the shit out of him for two or three shows! Really. This method shows the past champion as Mr. McMahon, which is sort of realistic if he created the title. You could alternately create a wrestler called Vacant- I've thought of this but never actually done it. Assign Divas titles to Stephanie, and make Mr. McMahon and Shane McMahon a tag team. Go ahead and create all three shows, with their respective Major, Minor, Tag, and Divas titles, and proceed to beat McMahons for a little while. Make sure you have Raw brand on Raw, Smackdown brand on Smackdown, and ECW on ECW- remember, we set Raw is War as a placeholder for a little.
At this point, you might want to vacate all other titles, so your superstars don't walk to the ring with the Brahma Bull Belt. It also might be nice to disband your tag teams and create a few brand-specific teams.
Rivalries and Allies
Okay, so we've gotten the titles on everyone we want, and it even has a "Title Win" in the column that we wouldn't have gotten if we had just awarded the titles. We also have our brands set up with 20 superstars per roster. Now, we need to go in and set rivalries and allies.
A common misconception is that rivalries actually mean the guys should feud. This isn't really the case; it just increases the chances. Random turns and friendships will always occur, because that's what we want from Universe mode! Still, we don't want ECW's CM Punk showing up on Smackdown to attack Mark Henry. So we go to Edit Superstar, hit square twice to sort by brand (REALLY useful) and clear allies and rivalries as we need. Maybe Punk should feud with Daniel Bryan. Let's put them as top rivals for each other and set Bryan as the Number 1 Contender. This give us our best chance of getting a rivalry. When you set rivals, put them next to each other in the rankings. Give guys allies for better chances of fun occurring. Do it by brand.
We've done a lot of work, so let's look at the match card for our next show.
Finally...
Okay, so you might notice you can interfere in pretty much all of your non-gimmick matches. Why? Well, storylines go in 4 week cycles, so our first month is going to be pretty lame. This is normal. Don't worry- if you set your rankings, rivalries, and allies diligently, you should get some action after Extreme Rules.
Which brings us to our final step- PPV settings. Yeah, we need to edit each one. Look at the assigned brand- it should probably say Smackdown only at this point if you had to assign it for everything in the beginning. So you try to assign three brands for each PPV. Alas, Universe won't let you!
This is probably the biggest problem with a three brand Universe. You can either have each brand have their own PPV, or go on a rotating schedule of 2 at a time, which is my preferred method- one brand PPVs tend to be boring. So Raw and ECW get Extreme Rules, but Raw and Smackdown get Capitol Punishment, and ECW and Smackdown get Money in the Bank. How you divide it is really up to you, but as a word of caution, make sure you give the brands at Royal Rumble the Wrestlemania PPV. Otherwise, some weirdness with challenging the champion might occur.
Will it be perfect? Of course not. Three brand setup is the hardest to do. You'll get non-storyline matches, and the rotating PPV schedule might suck at times. But with this setup, you have the tools to have a fun, lively Universe mode.
Misc.
-Make sure you play all storyline matches, or you lose the story.
-I've heard that it's beneficial to turn all stories off and back on. No idea if this really works.
-Branching storylines? They're rare, all right. I've gotten about 4, and every single one has involved a CAW and an Attitude Superstar. No idea if that's important.
Housekeeping
So, before you actually start your Universe, you need to do some things. The first and most crucial question is: What do you want your Universe to be? It sounds stupid, but hear me out. Do you want to start in 1997 or in 2013? How about starting in April of 2011, following the rise of CM Punk? This stuff is all possible, but you do have to accept one major limitation/opportunity: It must be a remix. It cannot follow the exact path. I'm not sure why you would want to model history- watch the DVDs if you want t hat- but it's a common misconception that you can program Universe Mode to work exactly how you want it to be booked. You can't do that, but you can offer suggestions- I'd estimate you can sometimes do up to 33% of the booking if you're lucky and if you work at it.
Okay- so for our scenario, we're going to assume that after Wrestlemania 29, the next week on Raw that Mr. McMahon came out and announced a new brand split. Three brands, Raw, Smackdown!, and ECW, with a draft that night. We're using the three brand split because it's very difficult to pull off correctly- the idea being that if you can make this work, you can make anything work. One more addition: Everyone is a full timer in my Universe. If you want part timers, just remove them occasionally. There's a way to open the possibility of their interference after they're removed, but we'll get into that in a later post.
Setting the Brands
So we've decided that we want to do three brands. We're going to include current wrestlers and some CAWs of current guys in this universe- Big E, Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose, and Roman Reigns are the ones I have made, but if you've got Fandango you ought to throw him in, too. Here's how I would do it.
First, I would delete the Monday Night Raw show as well as Superstars. It's possible Universe will give you shit about deleting a TV Show because of PPV stuff- that's okay, just reassign the brand as Smackdown for all of them. We will fix this near the end. Next, assign Attitude Raw Is War as the brand for the Smackdown show. It sounds weird, right? No worries- it's a placeholder. But next, we'll want to remove every Superstar from the Raw and Smackdown! brands and put them into Free Agency. CAWs go in there, too, and if there's anyone from the Attitude Era you want, put them in there as well- for me, Trish Stratus and Lita had to be included. With some DLC, some CAWs, and stock Superstars and Divas I had exactly 60 wrestlers in the Free Agent pool. This is just about a perfect number to start with.
Next, I had my draft. Pen and paper, on a notebook. How you do your draft is up to you, but make sure you have someone in mind as your champions. It also helps to make each brand interesting if you have a concept for each- so for Raw, I wanted guys like Cena, Lesnar, and Triple H, but for ECW I wanted CM Punk and Daniel Bryan. I had 20 Superstars and Divas in each brand before long.
Television
So now that you have your brands, you need to give them each a major show. When you put Raw on Mondays, you'll be asked to assign a major title. This can end up badly if you're anal about record keeping, but I got your back.
From the start menu (outside of Universe) go into My WWE and then Title Management. Hit R1. You can create custom championships here! There are plenty of people who have criticized this feature as a poor excuse for a Belt Editor, but it's actually really useful if you know what you want from it. Here, we want to use it to have good record keeping from the start of our scenario.
So, let's say we want to use the Spinner Belt (hey, maybe one of you does!) as our Raw title. We can change the colors of it somewhat if we want (I like to color code the straps, so mine would have red leather for Raw) and rename it as we want- I like to call mine, say, the WWE Raw World title. If you wanted, though, you could have the exact same appearance and name. It's up to you.
The important thing here is that it has no title history, so you can have clean records from the beginning of your scenario! I created major, minor, and tag belts for each of our brands. For Divas, I did something different: I created a Divas and Women's title. Women's is for ECW and Smackdown; Divas is for Raw. This lets you have Smackdown and ECW Divas on the same show. Unfortunately, you can't assign one Divas belt for all 3 brands- two is the max. This rule follows with any title. Note: There's a pretty cool way to have midcarders appear on both shows but not major stars, but it's not really what we're looking for in our brand split.
So let's go back to creating our show. We create Monday Night Raw with our new, clean, lack of history title. But check this out- if we assign it to John Cena like we want, it won't list him as having won it. This is bad for our hyper-anal record keeping. What do we do?
We assign everything to Mr. McMahon, and beat the shit out of him for two or three shows! Really. This method shows the past champion as Mr. McMahon, which is sort of realistic if he created the title. You could alternately create a wrestler called Vacant- I've thought of this but never actually done it. Assign Divas titles to Stephanie, and make Mr. McMahon and Shane McMahon a tag team. Go ahead and create all three shows, with their respective Major, Minor, Tag, and Divas titles, and proceed to beat McMahons for a little while. Make sure you have Raw brand on Raw, Smackdown brand on Smackdown, and ECW on ECW- remember, we set Raw is War as a placeholder for a little.
At this point, you might want to vacate all other titles, so your superstars don't walk to the ring with the Brahma Bull Belt. It also might be nice to disband your tag teams and create a few brand-specific teams.
Rivalries and Allies
Okay, so we've gotten the titles on everyone we want, and it even has a "Title Win" in the column that we wouldn't have gotten if we had just awarded the titles. We also have our brands set up with 20 superstars per roster. Now, we need to go in and set rivalries and allies.
A common misconception is that rivalries actually mean the guys should feud. This isn't really the case; it just increases the chances. Random turns and friendships will always occur, because that's what we want from Universe mode! Still, we don't want ECW's CM Punk showing up on Smackdown to attack Mark Henry. So we go to Edit Superstar, hit square twice to sort by brand (REALLY useful) and clear allies and rivalries as we need. Maybe Punk should feud with Daniel Bryan. Let's put them as top rivals for each other and set Bryan as the Number 1 Contender. This give us our best chance of getting a rivalry. When you set rivals, put them next to each other in the rankings. Give guys allies for better chances of fun occurring. Do it by brand.
We've done a lot of work, so let's look at the match card for our next show.
Finally...
Okay, so you might notice you can interfere in pretty much all of your non-gimmick matches. Why? Well, storylines go in 4 week cycles, so our first month is going to be pretty lame. This is normal. Don't worry- if you set your rankings, rivalries, and allies diligently, you should get some action after Extreme Rules.
Which brings us to our final step- PPV settings. Yeah, we need to edit each one. Look at the assigned brand- it should probably say Smackdown only at this point if you had to assign it for everything in the beginning. So you try to assign three brands for each PPV. Alas, Universe won't let you!
This is probably the biggest problem with a three brand Universe. You can either have each brand have their own PPV, or go on a rotating schedule of 2 at a time, which is my preferred method- one brand PPVs tend to be boring. So Raw and ECW get Extreme Rules, but Raw and Smackdown get Capitol Punishment, and ECW and Smackdown get Money in the Bank. How you divide it is really up to you, but as a word of caution, make sure you give the brands at Royal Rumble the Wrestlemania PPV. Otherwise, some weirdness with challenging the champion might occur.
Will it be perfect? Of course not. Three brand setup is the hardest to do. You'll get non-storyline matches, and the rotating PPV schedule might suck at times. But with this setup, you have the tools to have a fun, lively Universe mode.
Misc.
-Make sure you play all storyline matches, or you lose the story.
-I've heard that it's beneficial to turn all stories off and back on. No idea if this really works.
-Branching storylines? They're rare, all right. I've gotten about 4, and every single one has involved a CAW and an Attitude Superstar. No idea if that's important.
After Setting Up Your Universe Mode:
Spoiler
The Best Roster
You might have noticed that the internet is packed with different theories on what to do with WWE 13's Universe. Among the opinions out there are on what size to make your roster. The answer usually given is around 20-22 Superstars per show. Okay, why?
Well, let's look at a major show (while accepting that I have to go to Panera to write thise things and have no PS3 access!). So if you have 6 matches on a major show, that's 12 superstars minimum involved. A tag match is pretty typical, so likely 14. Counting possibilities of triple threats, "manager" cutscenes, and commentary/run in scenes, you're looking at maybe 18 superstars used in a show. So if you have a roster of 20 people, that's 90% of a roster involved in your show! That's not so bad.
Ah, but there's the rub. 90% of a show's roster means that if you have a roster that you like, say, 70% of the roster as real players, you still have Epico coming in and feuding with, say, Triple H. While I think we would all buy that PPV, it's probably not what you're really looking for. This is the crucial part of roster building, so I'll bold it: If you put a Superstar on your roster, you better want him involved in your storylines. Yeah, you can do some work to get the feuds you want, but you still can't book the majority of what happens. So if you don't want Santino to turn heel on John Cena, don't have Santino on the roster. Or John Cena. Whatever you prefer.
The other reason people prefer small rosters? If you have 20 guys, that means you can have 10 faces and 10 heels- and the better organized you have your heels and faces, the better feuds will work (especially the more likely you get heel vs. face). That means you can set rivalries for all of them, and that means your odds are better to get the feud you want- I'll repeat, that means your odds are better. Not guaranteed. Better.
The Champ Is Here!
A pretty common complaint is that your champion doesn't show up on television. "I think the WWE Champion should always be on TV!" you declare, beating your chest. "What is this- the buildup to Extreme Rules? He's never here!"
Well, I can help you out here, so long as you accept that in Universe mode, there are no guarantees. The concept here is not that you book a show exactly as you want. The concept is that we have a mostly self-booking, infinite WWE season. Once you got that, we can continue.
The best way to have your champion on television is to be proactive. I can't prove that Universe mode works with lowcarders, midcarders, and main eventers, but if you look at your Major show's card, it does sort of seem to be laid out that way, doesn't it? Usually, the top feuds are between guys that are near the top of the Major Championship ladder. We can use that to our advantage to increase the odds of the Champ being, uh, here.
At the end of each Pay Per View, but before you advance to the next show, inspect your rankings. You have a champ, and you have a number 1 and number 2 contender. These guys are all important here (and should be switched to whoever you want to contend now!), because number 1 contenders are usually made, not born in Universe mode. You will often have a story where a number 1 contender's match occurs. The best way to facilitate that is to make the number 1 contender and champion rivals. That's your start, but the number 2 contender can also be put in as a rival here, too. And though I can't prove it, it seems to be that the more "extreme" the rivalry is (so the more to the right in the rival setting screen), the more likely that it will occur. So put them all as big rivals with each other. You will likely now see storylines where the champ comes out to do commentary (and maybe will even get into an altercation with a contender, if you walk up to him), with a number one contender eventually being set. The champ might come out and applaud him, and they might have a preliminary match on your show the next week! I've seen this many times. What does this setup guarantee? Nothing! But it gives you better odds- and may the odds ever be in your favor.
Getting The Most Storyline Matches
This is all conjecture here, but I noticed that whenever I ran a one brand universe I would usually have only storyline matches and that whenever I ran a two or three brand universe I would have more non-storyline matches. I know for a fact that setting your rivalries and heel/face dynamics will help you to get the stories you want. If you want all storyline matches on your show, though, maybe it's better to pick one brand to play for.
Storylines work in 4 week arcs, so it's best to have everyone on 4 week PPV schedules to get the most stories.
Lastly, I've noticed that you don't always get a cutscene on Storyline matches- just "Tonight's Highlight Match!" matches are pretty much guaranteed. Sometimes, you didn't play it "right" in the game's eyes- so think of it like Attitude mode. Maybe you'd better go back and play as the other character to see if he got a cutscene. Even then, it's not guaranteed.
Want run ins? Then you need to go into Options and turn Run Ins on for literally every single match type that allows them.* It's tedious, it should be easier, but that's what you gotta do. I've seen a few run ins since doing this in Universe- usually, though, if someone runs in for one side, someone else runs in for the other. It's a non cutscene way to spice up Universe.
Here Comes The Money!
There is only one Money in the Bank briefcase at one time in Universe, and no MITB matches at Wrestlemania. Consider having MITB twice a year, 6 months apart, if that bothers you. I don't know when the reset happens with MITB (if it's at one year, or the end of the current "season") because the longest I've ever waited to cash in was at Wrestlemania. My bad.
The point of this section is that there are always options here. You can throw in an extra MITB themed PPV the week after Wrestlemania when all the Draft matches occur, if you want, as the "Wrestlemania Briefcase" match. Think of ways to "bend" the rules with Universe, because they're always there. The next section is proof of that.
Are there drawbacks? Sometimes. Storylines run in 4 week arcs, ending and beginning after PPVs (If you wondered why each PPV occurs 4 weeks apart in 13 and not in 12, this is why), so you might be sacrificing some cutscenes- but if you like the briefcase as much as I do, it might be worth it.
The Supershow
So you might have noticed that nowadays, the Brand Split is dead. I remember posting about a draft I had to set the brands with a friend right here on SquaredCircle, when a fellow Circlian commented that it pissed him off pretty good that the Brand Split was still in the games. I like the Brand Split, so I'd rather it be here than not, but what if you wanted to recreate today's semi-split?
Today in WWE, there are some superstars (Punk, Cena, Lesnar) that are Raw only except for very rare cases. There isn't anyone like that on Smackdown, though! Mark Henry, Big Show, Sheamus, Orton... these guys all appear on Raw pretty regularly. How can we best model this in Universe mode with a brand split? We could just have everyone appear on Raw, but that wouldn't be accurate. Ted DiBiase, Jr, on Raw? (or Smackdown these days. Guffaw!) It just wouldn't happen.
Universe Mode has mechanisms, and to solve this problem, it's about exploiting them. So let's set the United States Title on both brands as the Minor title. This means, if done with nothing else, that everyone will appear on both shows when involved with that title. Okay. It's a start. Let's go further.
Go into Ted DiBiase, Jr.'s Edit Superstar. R1 over until we see where he ranks in the belts. Now, hover over the United States title. Hit square. He's now no longer pursuing a minor title- which means that he should, in theory, no longer appear on Raw! Does it work? I haven't tested it out enough to be sure, but I think it would.
So in Smackdown, just make sure that no one but Sheamus, Orton, Del Rio, Swagger, Henry, and whoever else you want on Raw is no longer going after the United States title. You will have to do the Intercontinental rankings by hand from now on, but in effect you have created the Supershow that closest models the WWE today. Again, I've only done pretty rudimentary testing of this, but it could be bent to work for only midcarders appearing on both shows, or in this method provided you tinker with the rankings so only the guys you want are on both shows.
Tag Specialists?
As far as I know, if you have a tag team feud, a lot of the matches are going to be done by singles competition. If you saw Raw last week, you know that's pretty common, but if you don't want Primo fighting Road Warrior Animal all the time, I'd consider having tag teams of only guys that make sense as singles competitors, too, like Hell No.
By the way, if you put JBL and Jack Swagger on a tag team, I don't think you'll find a better color combo + character tag team in the game.
The Best Roster
You might have noticed that the internet is packed with different theories on what to do with WWE 13's Universe. Among the opinions out there are on what size to make your roster. The answer usually given is around 20-22 Superstars per show. Okay, why?
Well, let's look at a major show (while accepting that I have to go to Panera to write thise things and have no PS3 access!). So if you have 6 matches on a major show, that's 12 superstars minimum involved. A tag match is pretty typical, so likely 14. Counting possibilities of triple threats, "manager" cutscenes, and commentary/run in scenes, you're looking at maybe 18 superstars used in a show. So if you have a roster of 20 people, that's 90% of a roster involved in your show! That's not so bad.
Ah, but there's the rub. 90% of a show's roster means that if you have a roster that you like, say, 70% of the roster as real players, you still have Epico coming in and feuding with, say, Triple H. While I think we would all buy that PPV, it's probably not what you're really looking for. This is the crucial part of roster building, so I'll bold it: If you put a Superstar on your roster, you better want him involved in your storylines. Yeah, you can do some work to get the feuds you want, but you still can't book the majority of what happens. So if you don't want Santino to turn heel on John Cena, don't have Santino on the roster. Or John Cena. Whatever you prefer.
The other reason people prefer small rosters? If you have 20 guys, that means you can have 10 faces and 10 heels- and the better organized you have your heels and faces, the better feuds will work (especially the more likely you get heel vs. face). That means you can set rivalries for all of them, and that means your odds are better to get the feud you want- I'll repeat, that means your odds are better. Not guaranteed. Better.
The Champ Is Here!
A pretty common complaint is that your champion doesn't show up on television. "I think the WWE Champion should always be on TV!" you declare, beating your chest. "What is this- the buildup to Extreme Rules? He's never here!"
Well, I can help you out here, so long as you accept that in Universe mode, there are no guarantees. The concept here is not that you book a show exactly as you want. The concept is that we have a mostly self-booking, infinite WWE season. Once you got that, we can continue.
The best way to have your champion on television is to be proactive. I can't prove that Universe mode works with lowcarders, midcarders, and main eventers, but if you look at your Major show's card, it does sort of seem to be laid out that way, doesn't it? Usually, the top feuds are between guys that are near the top of the Major Championship ladder. We can use that to our advantage to increase the odds of the Champ being, uh, here.
At the end of each Pay Per View, but before you advance to the next show, inspect your rankings. You have a champ, and you have a number 1 and number 2 contender. These guys are all important here (and should be switched to whoever you want to contend now!), because number 1 contenders are usually made, not born in Universe mode. You will often have a story where a number 1 contender's match occurs. The best way to facilitate that is to make the number 1 contender and champion rivals. That's your start, but the number 2 contender can also be put in as a rival here, too. And though I can't prove it, it seems to be that the more "extreme" the rivalry is (so the more to the right in the rival setting screen), the more likely that it will occur. So put them all as big rivals with each other. You will likely now see storylines where the champ comes out to do commentary (and maybe will even get into an altercation with a contender, if you walk up to him), with a number one contender eventually being set. The champ might come out and applaud him, and they might have a preliminary match on your show the next week! I've seen this many times. What does this setup guarantee? Nothing! But it gives you better odds- and may the odds ever be in your favor.
Getting The Most Storyline Matches
This is all conjecture here, but I noticed that whenever I ran a one brand universe I would usually have only storyline matches and that whenever I ran a two or three brand universe I would have more non-storyline matches. I know for a fact that setting your rivalries and heel/face dynamics will help you to get the stories you want. If you want all storyline matches on your show, though, maybe it's better to pick one brand to play for.
Storylines work in 4 week arcs, so it's best to have everyone on 4 week PPV schedules to get the most stories.
Lastly, I've noticed that you don't always get a cutscene on Storyline matches- just "Tonight's Highlight Match!" matches are pretty much guaranteed. Sometimes, you didn't play it "right" in the game's eyes- so think of it like Attitude mode. Maybe you'd better go back and play as the other character to see if he got a cutscene. Even then, it's not guaranteed.
Want run ins? Then you need to go into Options and turn Run Ins on for literally every single match type that allows them.* It's tedious, it should be easier, but that's what you gotta do. I've seen a few run ins since doing this in Universe- usually, though, if someone runs in for one side, someone else runs in for the other. It's a non cutscene way to spice up Universe.
Here Comes The Money!
There is only one Money in the Bank briefcase at one time in Universe, and no MITB matches at Wrestlemania. Consider having MITB twice a year, 6 months apart, if that bothers you. I don't know when the reset happens with MITB (if it's at one year, or the end of the current "season") because the longest I've ever waited to cash in was at Wrestlemania. My bad.
The point of this section is that there are always options here. You can throw in an extra MITB themed PPV the week after Wrestlemania when all the Draft matches occur, if you want, as the "Wrestlemania Briefcase" match. Think of ways to "bend" the rules with Universe, because they're always there. The next section is proof of that.
Are there drawbacks? Sometimes. Storylines run in 4 week arcs, ending and beginning after PPVs (If you wondered why each PPV occurs 4 weeks apart in 13 and not in 12, this is why), so you might be sacrificing some cutscenes- but if you like the briefcase as much as I do, it might be worth it.
The Supershow
So you might have noticed that nowadays, the Brand Split is dead. I remember posting about a draft I had to set the brands with a friend right here on SquaredCircle, when a fellow Circlian commented that it pissed him off pretty good that the Brand Split was still in the games. I like the Brand Split, so I'd rather it be here than not, but what if you wanted to recreate today's semi-split?
Today in WWE, there are some superstars (Punk, Cena, Lesnar) that are Raw only except for very rare cases. There isn't anyone like that on Smackdown, though! Mark Henry, Big Show, Sheamus, Orton... these guys all appear on Raw pretty regularly. How can we best model this in Universe mode with a brand split? We could just have everyone appear on Raw, but that wouldn't be accurate. Ted DiBiase, Jr, on Raw? (or Smackdown these days. Guffaw!) It just wouldn't happen.
Universe Mode has mechanisms, and to solve this problem, it's about exploiting them. So let's set the United States Title on both brands as the Minor title. This means, if done with nothing else, that everyone will appear on both shows when involved with that title. Okay. It's a start. Let's go further.
Go into Ted DiBiase, Jr.'s Edit Superstar. R1 over until we see where he ranks in the belts. Now, hover over the United States title. Hit square. He's now no longer pursuing a minor title- which means that he should, in theory, no longer appear on Raw! Does it work? I haven't tested it out enough to be sure, but I think it would.
So in Smackdown, just make sure that no one but Sheamus, Orton, Del Rio, Swagger, Henry, and whoever else you want on Raw is no longer going after the United States title. You will have to do the Intercontinental rankings by hand from now on, but in effect you have created the Supershow that closest models the WWE today. Again, I've only done pretty rudimentary testing of this, but it could be bent to work for only midcarders appearing on both shows, or in this method provided you tinker with the rankings so only the guys you want are on both shows.
Tag Specialists?
As far as I know, if you have a tag team feud, a lot of the matches are going to be done by singles competition. If you saw Raw last week, you know that's pretty common, but if you don't want Primo fighting Road Warrior Animal all the time, I'd consider having tag teams of only guys that make sense as singles competitors, too, like Hell No.
By the way, if you put JBL and Jack Swagger on a tag team, I don't think you'll find a better color combo + character tag team in the game.
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