Ghost of Benji

TEW doesn't necessarily do the best job at conveying to you that a segment may have been perfectly fine and well done and a success, even if you don't hit 100, which we automatically assume is the same as 10/10 - and everything else is subpar. And it's not really the player's fault, the game fails at being intuitive.

Trish and Lita also retired at 30, I believe. Beth Phoenix. Molly Holly, I think. Sure, all of these have made wrestling appearances since, even in the ring, but they definitely stopped their active in ring careers at 30. Not saying there aren't exceptions, but those exceptions surely aren't a rule.

I think it's fair to look at things from Adam's perspective, though: people who are happy never say anything, so it's only the people who have things to complain about that post on the Suggestions forum. So all Adam had to go by when designing a new game were the people who complained about the "gamey" playstyles. The people who liked these things never said anything during 2016's life cycle because they, obviously, had nothing to complain about.

Yeah, it was either one of the dev team guys or the graphics dude who said that the "people complaining wanted TEW 2016 with a new coat of paint, instead of a new game", and while this comment was meant as a derogatory remark to insult, discredit, and put down the negative people, I have to say that in my case it's actually a true statement. I think I just wanted TEW 2016 with a few new features to freshen up the game. The game that ended up happening is a more ambitious project for sure, and I applaud that. But I don't think it's for me. Others seem to enjoy it, though, and I'm glad. Maybe I'm the problem.

Women generally retire younger in wrestling.

Women get kids. Women retire younger. This is real life.

You can't change the in-game status of a worker anymore. In 2016, you can set people in and out of business, hiatus, retirement, etc. This was removed from 2020.

I do feel that if a strategy is not viable in real life - such as something like running a pay per view every day of the month - it's absolutely fair to make it not viable in TEW. There isn't really an argument to be made for making a non-real life viable strat viable in TEW because then TEW fails at its purpose of being a wrestling world simulator.

A lot of people report these exploits in the Suggestions forum, requesting to get them changed. So Adam gives the people what they want, as any dev would. I think the main issue TEW is facing is that of an identity crisis; it happens to lend itself relatively well to a number of different ways to play, so the playerbase consists of varying play styles. So when TEW picks one play style over the others, there will be dissatisfied customers, inevitably.

Ah, gotcha.

Isn't there a similar powerplay exploit in TEW 2016? I never powerplay or use these exploits, so I honestly don't know, but I think people were complaining about the same thing. However, these games have always been, and probably always will be, easy if you want them to be. There's only so much complexity you can add, and once we become familiar with the mechanics, they will inevitably become easy to game.

Well said. Maybe TEW 2024 could have angry shareholders who push you to make more and more, creating a realistic challenge.

Sadly, I have always been of the belief that a truly realistic wrestling booker AI will always be out of reach, even for the greatest programmer in the world, whoever that might be. Wrestling is such a unique and wacky business, I'm not convinced it could ever be possible to truly suspend one's disbelief reading the AI's show reports. I've actually always felt that the AI's show reports should simply be hidden. Showing them will only ruin immersion. Just give us the show ratings, viewers, buyrates, etc. but leave the actual card to be up to our imaginations. Then the problem is solved and the AI never does anything unbelievable.

Yea, 2016, unlike any version prior to it, has aged extremely well, and still holds up. It was a tough act to follow, and 2020 may not have been the act to do it. All the games prior to 2016 had some obvious improvements to look forward to. 2016 was pretty complete. There are still loads of things that could be done improved upon, of course, but it would probably require a complete revamp on a new programming language. And that may not be happening. 2016 is still fun. I personally think that the strength of the TEW entries has been in story creation and fantasy booking, whereas 2020 attempts to be more of an actual game. And the added restrictions that come with that just take away from the series' core strength. But then again, that's just me. Some people like 2020 a lot, some people say it's too hard, others say it's too easy. So clearly there's a wide variety of ways people experience these games.

Regarding the testers, I must play devil's advocate for a little bit here. It needs to be taken into account that the testers were not on a payroll. It's my understanding that they were just a bunch of volunteers working for the fun of being a privileged beta tester. And there's only so much you can get for free. These people were not and are not professionals. They were probably just busy marking out about getting early access to do any serious testing. It's perfectly understandable. And since it's not allowed for anyone to actually ask to be a beta tester, this prevents anyone with actual experience and talent in that area to try. It all comes down to a random picking, and the end result is just about what we got.