TEW2008: Adam's Developer's Journal

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#75: Brands Focus[/B] In TEW08 you will be able to give each of your brands a specific focus if you wish. This is done via a simple dropdown box selection; you can select either Normal (which means the brand follows the same product as the rest of the promotion) or one of the twelve existing product types (i.e. Traditional Focus, Risque Focus, Mainstream Focus, etc.) The brand's focus, if not Normal, is used when shows are run to modify the promotion's product. For example, if the promotion has a Sports Entertainment type of product and runs a show from a Hyper Realism Focussed brand, the game will automatically raise up the Hyper Realism and Realism product parts while simultaneously lowering the Comedy, Risque and Mainstream parts. It would also raise the match intensity levels. This feature allows brands to offer different experiences to the rest of the promotion.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#76: On-The-Fly Angles[/B] For convenience, TEW08 now has an angle writer available in the booking screen itself; this allows the player to write new angles on-the-fly without needing to exit out to the main editor and then import them back in, saving time and effort.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#77: Interactive Creative Team[/B] The old Talk To Road Agents and Talk To Booking Team have been combined and upgraded in TEW08 to form the Creative Team section. This is something of a throwback to EWR, as it allows you to select from a pre-set list of questions and get answers as if you were talking to your advisers. These questions range from being able to ask Who's Hot and Who's Not (showing who has momentum on their side and who doesn't), to who your ring generals are (useful for pin-pointing your key in-ring men) to which free agents they think would be good signings. The idea is to give all the information that was available in the '07 screens, plus several extra sections, and package them in a more convenient and user-friendly manner.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#78: Expanded Independent Shows[/B] Independent shows (i.e. shows for unemployed workers) remain in 08, but have been expanded. Rather than sticking rigidly to one show per month they can now expand to do two per month if there is a large amount of unemployed workers. The idea is that this will make sure that there doesn't send up being a situation where some workers never get to work matches because there are so many unemployed characters. With two shows a month, virtually every unemployed worker should get at least one or two matches every few months, allowing them to develop and perhaps impress enough to find work.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#79: Speed[/B] Loading periods have been [I]significantly[/I] reduced in TEW08, in some places showing over a 75% reduction at times. On average, between-days loading is around 40% faster than 07. Obviously the actual time will depend on the user's PC settings and what database they are using, but as an example an average day-to-day loading period using a full CornellVerse took about 15-20 seconds on my PC in TEW07. Using the exact same data, TEW08 completes the same loading in 8-10 seconds.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#80: External Marriage[/B] A small feature that helps with realism, workers can now be set to be married to someone outside of the database. This stops them from getting involved with other characters when they shouldn't, and means that database creators don't have to add in superfluous people.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#81: The Power 100[/B] The end of year Top 100 wrestlers list has been overhauled in TEW08, and now becomes The Power 100 (available via the in-game web site, as you can see from the screen shots). As a lot of of people didn't seem to get the concept of the list being an opinion piece in 07, and therefore intentionally featuring surprising choices and a large element of randomness, the new version is now entirely statistics based instead. The list is based on each worker's match ratings over the past 12 months, primarily on the best ten that they achieved. As before, the minimum requirement to get on the list is ten matches.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#82: Flash Pins[/B] A new finish for '08 is "flash pin". This is an out-of-the-blue roll up or cradle that allows one worker to get a surprise pin on an opponent. It's useful both for realism and starting feuds off slowly.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#83: Overhauled Booking[/B] The booking section of the game has been redone to try and streamline the entire process. The emphasis is on reducing the amount of clicks \ screens needed and making information more readily available. Some of the changes are: - All non-wrestling roles (announcers, ref, road agent) are now picked from the main screen via dropdown boxes, rather than having to open a separate window. Furthermore, there is a filter toggle next to each that flips between showing only people who have the appropriate push and showing everyone. - Booking the competitors now takes just one pop-up. The screen that appears contains dropdown boxes to select the competitors on the left hand side of the screen, and roster information on the right. This allows you to get all the information you need and input it with a minimum of clicks. For example, booking a singles match can now be done in just four mouse clicks; click to open the booking window, two clicks to use the dropdown menus to select the wrestlers, click to press Save. - From a menu at the bottom you have access to things like Storyline Recap and Titles, which allow you to quickly look up information you may have forgotten. The overall effect is to make booking far quicker than TEW07 without losing any of the information.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#84: Proactive Owners[/B] As well as giving you goals, owners can now take a more hands-on role with the running of the promotion; they can make their own extension offers. As with TEW07, you cannot outright fire workers who the boss has a strong relationship with, he'll block you. However, new to TEW08 is the fact that you can't simply get around that by letting the worker's contract expire; the owner can go ahead and do the re-signing himself. So, for example, if you were playing as SWF and wanted to get rid of Eric Eisen and so did not make any attempt to extend his contract, Richard Eisen (your boss \ his dad) will likely do it anyway, giving Eric the length and amount that he feels appropriate. It is, after all, his company!

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#85: Defence Mechanism[/B] On screens related to title belts is a new button, Defences. Simply put, it lists the history of title defences (and changes) for that belt. This makes it easier to get a sense of the history of the title, as well as to keep track of who has already had a shot at it.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#86: Size Expansion[/B] The amount of worker size categories has been slightly expanded to allow for a better breakdown. As before, they are not just about weight, but are meant to include body type and height too. The categories are now: Very Small Small Lightweight Middleweight Light Heavyweight Heavyweight Big Heavyweight Super Heavyweight Giant The help files go into more detail about basic limits for each.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#87: User Owner Freedom[/B] In '07, once you had had created your own promotion (during gameplay) you had to remain with it for the rest of the game or until bankruptcy. This was to stop people creating multiple promotions. This has been changed in '08. You will still be required to stay with the promotion for a while, but after a five year grace period you are allowed to resign. Once you have increased your user reputation back up to the required level you can start another promotion. There is no limit to how many promotions you can start, just as long as you spend a minimum of five years with each.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#88: Last Visit \ Last Seen[/B] TEW07 kept track of the last time a promotion had been visible in a specific region - by either holding a show or having it broadcast there - and that was used to help decide whether the promotion would visit. TEW08 expands that by keeping track of both when the promotion physically last ran a show in a region and when it last had a show broadcast there. With the information now split into two it gives the AI more to work with and therefore come up with a better plan for where to go. This also changes things from a player's point of view, as it means changes to how long you can stay away from a region before you start experiencing popularity loss. Basically it means that promotions with TV deals can now use that more to their advantage; for example if an American company has a TV deals that shows their programs in the UK, they now have to visit Britain less than they would have done in TEW07 because the game can recognise that the TV deal means that the British public can still see the promotion's output.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#89: Owners Remaining Bookers[/B] A small addition, but one that may help real world mod makers, is that it is no longer automatic that an owner of a promotion will look for somebody to be his (or her) head booker. If an owner is a sufficiently good booker in their own right, and has an appropriate personality, they can decide to handle everything by themselves. Of course, as personalities can change over time, the owner may at a later date decide to change his mind and bring in somebody new to book the promotion after all.

[Adam Ryland]

Apparently the previous entry was a duplicate, so here's a replacement. [B]#89: Lifetime Removal[/B] To aid realism, Lifetime contracts have now been removed from the game. Instead, the code has been enhanced to use relationships in a more intelligent manner. As the majority of lifetime contracts were used for family members \ loyalists of the owner, those are the main relationships used. So, for example, if a rival promotion tries to sign the son of the owner, the blood relationship that exists will play heavily into his decision. It won't make him "unstealable", but it will severely effect his decision. Personalities also play into this, as if the son is a very mercenary type of person, he may leave for a promotion that isn't that much bigger than his father's, whereas a very loyal person may not leave unless the promotion that is trying to sign him is much larger. This should allow most real world situations to be correctly simulated. For example, you're unlikely to ever be able to sign Shane McMahon from the WWE unless they have a disastrous fall, but in a historical mod you may well be able to sign Bret Hart from Stampede to the WWF due to the size difference between the promotions. Of course, the fact that owners now get involved in contract extensions means that people who were previously under lifetime deals are unlikely to get released either.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#90: AI Call Ups[/B] As an addition to the development territory changes mentioned in an earlier post, the way that the AI handles its developmental workers has also been altered. In previous games computer-controlled promotions would only bring development talent onto their main roster if they were genuinely a worker that they were interested in anyway. In 2008, it is handled in a more realistic manner; once the worker has developed sufficiently (based on his stats, personality, stat caps and destiny), the parent company will call them up and add them to the main roster. This results in a better flow of talent in a promotion, and also makes AI development territories much more important.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#91: New Match Options[/B] By popular request two additions have been made to potential matches; the ability to specific a Strap \ Chain as being part of the match, and Touch All Corners as a finish. This allows traditional strap matches, dog collar bouts, etc, to be added.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#92: Pay Parity[/B] Based on the concept from WMMA, pay parity has been introduced to the TEW series for the first time. In essence, when negotiating with a worker the talks do not happen in a vacuum; he will take into account what other workers at his level are getting, and that can affect what he will accept. For example, if you hire a big star and end up paying $500,000 a month to him, any other stars of that magnitude who you later negotiate with will probably want at least that amount, even if normally they'd only want much less. This means that the user has to be careful about making big money signings, as what was meant as a "one off" may end up setting a bar for many more workers.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#93: Further TV Improvements[/B] Several additions, modifications and tweaks have been made to the TV handling of the game. The AI has been vastly upgraded; CPU-controlled promotions will now actively look at getting their shows expanded onto other networks in order to improve their coverage and prepare to run shows there, will more aggressively go after new deals, and also have the ability to bring back old shows (i.e. if, in a real world game, WWE lost all its TV shows, then later managed to get a brand new deal, they may well "re-debut" Raw rather than creating a new show from scratch.) "Other TV shows" (i.e. non-wrestling programming) has been removed from the game entirely; it was a pain for database makers to write them, they didn't change over time, and didn't add a lot to the game. Their effect is replicated in a different way; each network has a visible grid of the quality of their programming in each time slot. So, you could look at Network X and find that they have a very strong line-up on Thursday nights; running a wrestling show on a Thursday night on a different network may hurt your ratings as a result. This programming quality grid changes each season. Furthermore, TV ratings have been altered to be more in line with reality.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#94: Eye Of The Beholder[/B] As it seemed to cause confusion - albeit primarily amongst people with an aversion to reading help files - the use of Looks and Superstar Quality have been altered to be crystal clear. Looks has now been renamed, and is Sex Appeal. The stat is now specifically a reference to physical attractiveness and nothing more. Superstar Quality remains with the same name, and is a cover-all stat that refers to a worker's appeal as a superstar. It is specifically designed to be wide-ranging, so to take real world examples all three of Andre The Giant, Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair would have high scores; Andre because of his impressive size, Hogan because of his larger-than-life appearance, and Flair because of his intangible "X factor". Hopefully that should improve the use of those stats in mods.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#95: Quicker House Show Reports[/B] In 07, there was a lengthy delay when waiting for chemistry reports to come back from house shows, usually between five and ten days. The reports have been altered to be quicker in 08. This is to make the feature more productive for the user, especially taking into consideration the new 'B' shows that would allow lower-level pairings to be tried out too.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#96: Popularity Summary[/B] One of the problems with finding out how popular a worker was in TEW07 was that it was too long winded, as you could only do so by viewing his entire popularity screen. This has been altered in TEW08 by the addition of the popularity summary box. When viewing a worker you are given a rough guide to how over he is in the form of categories like "X is a regional worker", "X is a national star", "X is a global superstar", etc. This is designed to give the user a quick "snapshot" of what sort of levels of popularity the worker has, and if further information is needed [I]then[/I] the user can visit the popularity screen.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#97: Menacing Wrestlers[/B] With the change from Looks to Sex Appeal, as described earlier, there has been a corresponding change to angles. A new rating category has been added called Menace - as you'd expect, this is virtually a male-version of the Sex Appeal rating, in that it allows someone to be rated entirely on their presence (much in the same way that the "T-shirt firing" angles can be run to utilise pretty-but-untalented women). This allows some classic parts of wrestling - the menacing bodyguard standing in the background of an interview, the silent monster heel glaring at the camera as his manager talks - to be simulated properly.

[Adam Ryland]

[B]#98: Retirements[/B] The use of retirements has been redone to make for a more realistic experience. In the past there were only retirements for wrestlers, and these could cause unwanted side-effects (like the aforementioned giving up of positions of power). TEW08 now has the more realistic set-up of having two separate types of retirements - active and full. Active retirements are when a wrestler decides to call time on his in-ring career. However, the game recognises that this does not necessarily mean that he is done with the business, and so he can continue to work in other roles. Full retirements are when a worker decides to leave the business entirely. As this is now a separate part of the game, the AI can handle it in a superior manner, leading to things like the inheritance of promotions (as mentioned earlier in the journal).