Ding Dong 3

I understand this, but how can you have 90 athleticism if you have banged up legs? If a worker "bulks up" and becomes more muscular, their look and menace improve. Is there a reason why body condition can't be directly tied to the physical stats? I assume at this point it's impossible to write into the game but to me it just makes sense.

Ah, I see. I misunderstood that then. In reference to that, why isn't body condition tied directly to the physical stats? If I could see someone's body degrading and it was directly tied to athleticism, stamina, power and resilience that would make more sense. But in theory these workers who have declining stats in those departments could have a body in perfect physical condition, which seems like a big contradiction to me.

Yes, but Austin suffered numerous injuries which shortened his career dramatically. As I said, I have no problem with injuries curtailing careers, that's perfectly realistic. Undertaker is 55, I have no problem with a worker age 55 to be broken down physically as he is IRL. And I have no problem with *any* worker being far worse at that age than they were at 38. That's perfectly fine. In fact I'd argue maybe my problem isn't with decline in general, but the rate at which certain stats decline vs. others and how someone with world-class fitness can drop so substantially in the course of two or three years in their late 30s. I understand this is just a part of the game and you can't really emulate it entirely, but an overweight worker with poor physical stats who doesn't decline until age 44 randomly could be in the same physical condition as someone who had amazing physical stats but began declining at age 38. I know workers decline, and that's realistic, but to me I just don't think any worker is fighting against father time to that degree at such a relatively young age, injuries or wrestling style notwithstanding.

Yes but the problem remains, if you set Cesaro or Jericho to decline at age 45, he'd be useless within a couple of years. I just think the rate in general is too fast. For anyone to hit the wall at 39, or in some cases even earlier, and be useless to the big employers within a couple of years is just overall unrealistic. Christopher Daniels is a great example. His career has slowed greatly, and he can't go to the degree he once could, but when he does choose to wrestle he can still put on a great match. In fact he could still wrestle great matches, albeit sparingly, for years into the future if he chose to. But whereas in real life he's clearly entered his decline phase, in TEW terms he'd already be useless as the decline in skills is just too fast. AI owners are also very harsh on this. Even if a worker has entered the first month of his decline and his contract comes up, they are often let go. As I mentioned earlier, this leads to big name workers not being picked up by anything other than smaller promotions, and within a year or two their careers are over. How often does this happen in reality? I think my main issue is just the rate of decline is too fast overall, which is why I suggested an option to slow as some people may like it the way it is, but for me as soon as I see a worker hit 38 I start to worry that next month they'll start to go downhill and before you know if they'll be suffering in the ring. The option is there to individually edit workers to decline at different rates, but maybe this could be an in-game editor option? Or maybe a "pause decline" option? In a real world scenario there are just too many workers to go through and edit individual decline dates, and as I said previously this takes some of the randomness away. That may sound contradictory but as I mentioned I don't have a problem with declining workers in so much as the rate at which they decline and how quickly a worker goes from world class to "meh".

Some of this you could fairly easily replicate I think. Expanding on the idea in general, you could tie the rate of decline of physical stats to certain attributes like the willingness to take risky bumps and steroid use and equally greatly lessen the effects by giving them the attributes relating to being a fitness fanatic etc. It's just frustrating that you can have someone like say, Cody, who keeps himself in great shape and doesn't take huge risks in the ring, be able to essentially have his career be over by age 41/42. Again the game doesn't know this, but the number of workers in general who are a physical wreck by age 42 is very low unless you're a death match worker who has no regard for their well-being or something. Again, for the record I have no problems with injuries curtailing careers, or workers deciding to leave the business for other reasons. But the idea of Vince walking up to Seth Rollins backstage and saying "Hey Seth, I'm really sorry, but over this last year I've noticed you've really started to suck and you just can't go anymore, I'm going to have to let you go" when he's only 41 or whatever just clearly isn't realistic.

Horowitz worked (sort of, briefly) because he had a sudden victory over a hated obnoxious heel and as you said, it was a perfect moment in the making. You could argue though that the moment he got that win, he had his gimmick change in TEW-terms. The moment the 3 was counted, he was viewed as something different to a colourless jobber, so the best way to emulate that in TEW would be to give Horowitz a gimmick called "Unlikely Hero" or something along those lines, maybe with a high degree of risk of failure as there's no guarantee the fans would take to it, then change it at the end of the match. Then if the gimmick is successful and the fans get behind him, his momentum would rise.

First of all, I know in the latest update Adam said there is an alteration to the rate at which workers stats decline once they reach that stage. I don't know whether this was sped up or slowed down, but I'm assuming it was slowed down slightly. I also know there are options in the game to make people decline at a specific age, or be given the attribute to leak stats slower. However I haven't found this attribute has make much difference in the few workers who have had it, and the option to choose a declining age takes some of the random elements away from the game file. Using the example of Cesaro, in my real world sim he started declining in this late 30s, and by age 41 he's practically useless. He had the attribute "Age is Just a Number" attributed to him as well. To be honest, I fail to think of many workers, if any, who are completely broken down by age 41 unless they're juiced up to the eyeballs or they've been through heavy substance abuse, etc. I don't have to tell you Cesaro isn't one of those people and in fact as personal fitness etc. improves as it has done in the modern wrestling business, I think we're routinely going to see workers performing at a high level way into their 40s and even early 50s. I'm sure this has been debated to the high heavens and everyone is sick of hearing about it and I'm just late to the party, but I did try searching the forum on the topic and I couldn't find much, maybe I was just using the incorrect terms. Anyway, the main point I was going to get at is this: would it be possible to introduce an option to have the rate at which workers decline to suit the preferences of an individual player? i.e. slower than the default, default, and faster than the default? This way it would suit different mods, so mods in the past before steroids and high-impact moves you could have a slower decline, then in the 80s and 90s mods a quicker one due to the eras of extreme, strong style and steroids, and in the modern day you could be slower again due to the reduction in drug use and improved physical fitness. I know I used Cesaro as an example but there are many workers in the WWE and AEW who are at the peak of their careers and they are released a short time into the file because the AI detects they are worsening, and within a year or two they struggle to be hired by even the smallest indy promotion and retire. To be clear I have no problem with a worker randomly retiring; that's an entirely separate issue and to me it's perfectly realistic. But workers who have great physical conditioning starting to lose it completely in their late 30s just makes no sense at all to me.

Overall this makes sense. As people have said, you can revitalise their momentum with a good turn or new gimmick. But if you suddenly started pushing say, Brooklyn Brawler as a viable star with no explanation the fans aren't going to get behind it. He was too ingrained as a total jobber so how can you dig yourself out of that hole? To be fair they tried a couple of times, and that was with new gimmicks, but they didn't work. Still though, that's a real life example.

Pretty sure the Itchy Feet attribute makes this more likely to happen, but it happens regardless of that. I was unlucky enough to have one half of two tag teams decide they wanted a new challenge and walk out... had to feel for their partners a little (and me as the booker...).

I was actually thinking this earlier and I think it makes a lot of sense personally.

Yeah, I understand it's a numbers game and there has to be a threshold which puts a company over the edge, but there really does need to be a bedding in period. It doesn't make a lot of sense for the world to say "Wow, this company is the new WWE!" then a week later mysteriously change their mind because a few people in Pontypridd turned sour on the promotion.

This was the number one missed feature for me, it really made navigating so much easier. The search is fine when you know what you're looking for, but sometimes you just want to lazily scroll through workers and I was surprised that was taken out. I'm sure there was a legitimate reason though.