Career Mode Overview

Preamble

This post is about the Career mode of UFC 2010, with the newest patches.

Your career will last 12 years, giving you about 620 weeks of training you can do, about a third of which you will spend resting (doing nothing), and 8% fighting, neither of which counts towards training.  You must use them wisely.

Creating Your Fighter

I recommend using the Randomize option as much as possible to give your fighter uniqueness, in particular in the physical appearance sections.  This will also save you a lot of time over manually selecting everything.

If this is your first fighter, consider a stand up (striker) or ground and pound (wrestler) style.  Always choose the switch stance option, there's no disadvantage, and plenty of advantage.

In particular it is important to setup your skills.  It is best to specialize at the beginning, so put 20 points into each skill that will define your fighters style, and leave as many as possible at 1.

Conversely, i think it is best to generalise your attributes.  Put (approximately) 17 into each.

Decay

Your attributes and skills will decrease if you don't train them.  The gold bar for each one tells you how long until the stat starts to decrease; when the gold is gone, your stat will decrease the following week.  It is inadvisable to let this happen, so train your fighter in each area to keep the gold bar up.  There is no benefit to keeping the bar full.

Amateur fights

If you haven't played the game before, a few amateur fights will help you get acquainted with the controls.  However, you will spend more weeks fighting during amateur (less time training), and you don't earn any Cred or Pop.  In general, I recommend going Pro immediately.

Early Career


It is important to improve your conditioning early.  The most useful way to do this is while acquiring a few  techniques (see Camp Invites, below).  I recommend getting the Suplex from the double underhook position first, and then 2 or 3 punching techniques (anything involving punching pads).  The latter are easy to accomplish, and you needn't worry about your fatigue while doing them.  Once your conditioning is 100%, Rest and start into other aspects of you training

For your first few sparring sessions, you should put one point in each of the skills you started with each time until they reach a plateau (see below), with any remaining points on your more focused skill.

Difficulty

The level of difficulty you choose for your career affects the points you gain in Sparring and Camp Invites (see below).

Difficulty		Sparring Multiplier	Camp Invites Multiplier
Beginner		0.6	1.0
Experienced		0.8	1.2
Advanced		1.3	1.4
Expert		1.5	1.6

In terms of maximizing your point earnings, Advanced seems to be the sweet spot. The extra multiplier from Expert is not necessary to get all the points you need. However, the Expert multiplier will help offset the multiplier from fatigue (see Rest, below), allowing you to do less Rest, and more of your other training components.

Rest

Rest decreases fatigue by 60%, and fatigue reduces the gains you get from all your training components (Sparring, Training, and Camp Invites).  It is a good idea to rest whenever your fatigue is greater than 69%.

		Fatigue		Multiplier	Gain
0	-	29%		1.00	1.00
30	-	49%		0.80	1.25
50	-	69%		0.70	1.43
70	-	89%		0.60	1.67
90	-	100%		0.50	1.60
		Injury		0.4	2.00
		Injured		0.25	3.20

The Gain column is the multiplier equivalent you virtually receive for your next weeks activity as a result of Rest at that level of fatigue. For example, if you have 70% fatigue, resting before sparring gives the sparring session the equivalent of a 1.67 multiplier.

From this we can see that allowing your fatigue to reach 90% is inefficient, but clearing an injury should always be worthwhile.

Being well rested is not always the best option. If you are already maximizing your points (such as Sparring with other beneficial modifiers), doing an easy Camp Invite (such as those that involve hitting pads (at least for Level 1 techniques)), maintaining an already maximized attribute, or are having trouble maximizing your Conditioning (see Late Career, below).

If you find yourself at 100% Conditioning and 100% Fatigue, a good 4 week pre-fight regimen is: Rest, Training (Moderate), Rest, Training (Light). Starting 5 weeks before the fight you can end with a Game Plan.

Plateaus

Your Attributes and Skills plateau at 30, 50, and 70.  Once they reach these levels, they can never decrease below that level again.

For Skills especially, to avoid loosing hard earned points, you should increase to 30, and then focus on a single skill until it reaches another plateau.

For Attributes it often becomes necessary to do light training to increase conditioning, at which point it becomes advisable to break the plateau and increase things.  Try your best to keep your attributes up, but remember that there will always be more training sessions in your future.

Camp Invites and Relations

Camp invites are among the most important uses of your training.  The level of techniques seem to act as a multiplier in the function calculating your ability (I view it as [Attribute + Skill] * Level).  If this is true, then a technique at level 3 with a skill and attribute of 30 each ([30 + 30] * 3 = 180) is better than a technique at level 1 with skill and attribute at 70 each ([70 + 70] * 1 = 140).

Once you have your attributes and skills plateaued, spend as much time as possible doing camp invites.

Your relations with a camp act as a multiplier to the points you gain during each session.  You can gain relations by doing camp invites, and during post fight interviews.  It is best to train at as few camps as possible for this reason.  Relations build regardless of what level of technique you train, so it is beneficial to train multiple level 1 techniques before moving on to the higher levels.

To boost your relations you need to fight someone from that camp, and then respect them. Relations are hard to acquire, and it is recommended you use every opportunity available to gain them. It is a good idea to take note of the fighters who train at your camp (check the details in the camp invites list).

If you train at a camp with no fighters in your weight class, you will be paired with a fighter from a higher weight class if available, which you will likely find more difficult.  If no one is of a higher weight class, you will be paired with someone from a lower class, which should be easier.  However, you will find it difficult to build relations with a fighter outside your weight class, since you can't fight them, and therefore can't respect them during post fight interviews.

Note that some techniques require your sparring partner to perform some precursor action, in particular defensive techniques.  The AI is not programmed to accommodate you in this fashion, so you may be unable to force the situation to occur.  Make sure that for such techniques you have some other technique that counts for points before doing a camp.

Also think about the prerequisite situations in the fight when selecting techniques to train.  For example, it's impossible to submit your opponent without getting them to the ground, which can be difficult without first knowing the suplex, which can be difficult to obtain without the correct pummeling technique.  So you should learn pummelling before throwing, and throwing before submissions.  This will also help with your relations.

Techniques which take the same button combinations are mutually exclusive.  Be aware that when you choose to learn a move, you forsake the opportunity to learn all other moves in that position with that same button combo.

Each technique requires 2 to 3 (depending on if you start with it) Camps to master, and many sessions will require a Rest afterwards. It therefore takes approximately 4 to 8 weeks to master each technique.

Free Sparring & Skills

Free sparring gives you basic skill points, and is the best way to improve skills up to at least 50.  From 50 to 70 it is generally better to do free sparring because you can only do a single focus sparring per fight.

It is best to use manual sparring, as this will give you (the player) extra practice, and will most likely gain you more points.  Your opponents successes count against your score for gaining points, so do your best to avoid letting them block and counter your techniques, as well as block and counter their techniques.

Getting a submission in sparring scores 20 points (not including the clinch and takedown points), and is probably the best way to obtain maximal points during your sparring sessions.  I suspect that flash knockouts will similarly score 20 points, but the submission method is much more reliable.

To avoid decreasing skills, it is best to save your basic points until you can reach the next plateau.

With the new patches, the maximum points you can gain in a single session is 50.  However, this cap is after the modifiers from difficulty, sparring partner, and fatigue.  So once you start obtaining 50 points per session, you can spar with higher fatigue.  Get better sparring partners to be able to push this even further.

Each skill requires 190 points to increase to 70, there are 16 skills, for a total of 3040 points, minus the 210 starting points is (3040 - 210 =) 2830, or about (2830 / 50 = ) 57 (maximal) free sparring sessions to get all skills to 70.

Focused Sparring

You may only focus spar once between each pair of fights.  It is best to do so close enough to your next fight that the skills won't begin decreasing before the fight, which means less than 9 weeks.

Increasing skills from 50 to 70 is mostly done with free sparring, but once you have a skill at 50, focused sparring can be beneficial, provided you score more than 10 bonus points.  Above 70 is nearly always better done with a focused sparring session and above 80 should be exclusively done via focused sparring.

The exception to this is submissions and ground grapple.  Submissions score (assumption) 4 bonus points each, and you can obtain 6 (or more) submissions in a 2 minute focus spar, meaning about 24 bonus points.  At that level of earning, using focus spars becomes viable for submission and ground grapple skills starting at 30 skill.  This will also fuel your free sparring, and is (in my opinion) the best leveling strategy.

You will only be able to spend points on the skills in the focused group you choose, and you only gain points for techniques in the area of the focus sparring.  Bonus points can not be saved, so spend them every time you focus spar.

A skill at 100 can not be improved, so you have to wait for it to decrease before you can top it up.  This can be frustrating, so you may want to aim for skills of 75 + ((# of fights under your belt) / 4), and add bonus points to each skill evenly during each focus sparring.  This will keep the gold bar topped up, and limit your decay.

In this way, you will need to accrue 120 bonus points. Ballpark estimate of 10 points per focus sparring gives 12 such sessions.

Training Sessions

Don't bother with intense sessions, they increase fatigue too much.  The following regimen is the most efficient way to increase your attributes: Light, Light, Moderate, Light, Rest, repeat.  If your regimen leading up to your next fight results in between 20% and 40% fatigue before your Rest session, a moderate training may fit, otherwise stick to light training.

In general, training should be a low priority.  Top them up before they begin to decay, and attempt to time your training when your fatigue is higher.

The average fighters total attributes (maximum) is approximately 270, minus the 53 starting points gives 217. You can earn about 2.25 attribute points per week (average, including rest) using the above regimen, giving (217 / 2.25 =) about 97 weeks of training sessions, including rest.

Game Plan

While game plans can have a dramatic effect on the performance of your fighter in a single fight, their benefit is not permanent.  For this reason, it is best to use game plans only once you are near the end of your career (see Late Career below).  Each game plan is a week not used for other training that permanently increases your fighters stats.

The other important aspect of game plans is their effect on your conditioning and fatigue.  Towards the end of your career, this is one of the few ways to go into a fight not being tired.

Cred, Trainers and Sparring Partners

You gain cred by fighting, with bonuses for exemplary performances, putting sponsor logos on your gear, and through certain options when doing post fight interviews.  The logos are a good way to boost your earnings, but won't make you rich.  By the time you get post fight interviews you won't need cred anymore.  The best way to make cred fast is to move up to higher level fights.

Cred is used to hire new trainers and sparring partners, gaining an opportunity to do so every 5000.

Trainers increase your attribute maximums, as well as allow you to increase two attributes (and stop them from decreasing) simultaneously.

Each level of sparring partner increases the multiplier for your sparring sessions by 20%, as well as your skill maximums.  If you are focused on skills, get better sparring partners, but be aware that they genuinely are harder to spar with, so getting in over your head may lead to less points from sparring.

Assuming you are getting high scores (close to 50) in your free sparring sessions, you should choose sparring partners for your first 2 upgrades in order to raise your skill cap to 70.

Difficulty and sparring partner multipliers stack. For example Advanced with the best sparring partner gives a multiplier of 2.34.

Popularity and Events

In general it isn't very difficult to increase your popularity, simply win fights, and disrespect fighters you will never train with.

Events take a week out of your training.  This time is better spent increasing your stats.  I recommend avoiding them entirely.

Pre-Fight Regimen

In general, your regimen should look something like;

1. Spar or Camp
2. Rest
3. Goto 1 unless week 1
4. Light training

Career

If you take the hardest fights possible and win them all, you can get an UFC title by about your 15th fight. I don't recommend this method, since you will be in over your head for many of the fights.

The main reason to move up quicker is to get more cred, which gives you better sparring partners and trainers earlier, which improves your fighter quicker. If this is your goal (and it should be), choose your fights based on the payout, not the ranking, until you obtain all the trainer and sparring partner upgrades you need.

I recommend moving to UFN (out of WFA) quickly, by picking higher ranked fighters (and winning). Once in UFN, linger there by picking lower ranked fighters. This will get you more cred, while (hopefully) getting you a solid record, and giving you time to improve your fighter.

Aim for your first UFC title shot between fight 20 and 25. You will need to defend about 5 times before being offered to switch weight classes.

Putting this all together, you should be in WFA for about 5 fights, UFN for about 10, UFC (first weight class) about 10 to 15, UFC (second weight class) for 20 to 25.

Late Career

As you progress through your career, your fighter will get tired more easily.  It will become nearly impossible to keep your conditioning up, and your fatigue down.

Do your Sparring (Focused) session, anything until your conditioning is nearly 100% (fatigue will also be 100%), Rest, and Game Plan.  This will give you conditioning 85%, and fatigue 30%, which is about the best you can hope for at this point in your career.

Consider skipping the Game Plan if you are confident in your ability to win the fight without it.

Wrap Up

The following are best case approximations, and include appropriate Rest intervals.

Activity		Weeks
Training		97
Free Sparring		114
Focus Sparring		24
Fight		75
Other		314
Total		624

Assuming 8 weeks to master each technique in Camps, this means you can aspire to have max attributes, 12 skills at 70, 4 skills at 100, and master (314 / 8 =) 39 techniques in a perfect world.