TEW2020 Announcement & Developer's Journal

Adam Ryland · February 19, 2019

#24: Angles

The angle booking process has been streamlined considerably to improve how user friendly it is: the three main screens that people are used to (angle selection, angle booking, and freestyle angle booking) are now all the same screen in order to reduce clicking.

This modification also brings about another structural change in that when you go to modify a booked angle you are no longer stuck with the angle type that you began with. So if you booked a tag team interview and wanted to turn it into a tag team brawl, or even if you want to switch it to a freestyle angle instead, you can do that without the need to delete and re-add the segment. Changing the type doesn't affect the workers you've already booked either, so you wouldn't have to rebook them if you're just making a minor change.

On top of this, angles now have road agent notes just like matches. This allows you to add in crazy and stunt bumps, set workers to make cameo appearances, etc, etc. Turns are also now handled via notes, and there's a new road agent note that allows you to 'force' a storyline to advance even if you're not meeting the minimum requirements (useful if you want to do a one person interview and don't want to go to the trouble of booking a target / subject just to advance the story).

There is also a new Rated On category for angles, Fighting. This is for when you want brawls to break out.

Finally for today's entry, the way that angle ratings are calculated has been revamped so that there are more variables and randomness involved in order to make the process more detailed and realistic. The idea behind this is to make the ratings less predictable in general.

Adam Ryland · February 21, 2019

#25: Angles II

Searching through angles for the one you want is always problematic due to the sheer amount and possible variance of angles. To address this, the old system of angle categories has been removed and replaced with a new 'tags' system.

The way this works is that each angle has a line of tag text which can be up to 100 characters long. It is entirely up to individual database makers what format they use, but in the default data I use terms divided up by commas; so, for example, a wedding angle might have "Wedding, Marriage, Romance, Ratings, Heel Turn" as its tags. (For reference, the 2016->2020 converter automatically fills in some 'best guess' tags for each angle using the existing categories.)

When booking angles, right at the top of the page is a text box which the user can type any term in. The game then searches the angle's name, description, and tags for any matching term. So if you had an angle set up like this:

Name: "Pre-match interview"

Description: "A backstage interviewer grabs a word with a superstar."

Tags: "Backstage, interview, interviewer, short, talking, microphone"

Then searching for "interview" or "backstage interview" would return this angle.

Because this system removes the restrictions of having pre-set categories it means that database makers have a lot more freedom for how they divide their angles up, and the fact that the search looks at titles, descriptions, and tags means that it's quite powerful.

Another angle-related change is that the pre-booking screen has been updated to take the same format as the main angle booking screen that I described in the last entry; so it's primarily a single easy-to-use screen. On top of that, road agent notes can be pre-booked, and you can now add a pre-booked angle to the booking sheet even if one of the participants is not available (you'll obviously then need to replace that unavailable person, but this way you don't have to re-book the entire thing like you do at the moment).

Finally, I forgot to explicitly state this in the last entry, but with the addition of road agent notes this means that angles do now have a specific road agent assigned to them, just like matches do.

Adam Ryland · February 26, 2019

#26: Pushes & perception

One of the reasons I pulled the code apart and rebuilt it was to allow a rethink of some areas, particularly as some features had been in from the very earliest days of the game (and even back to EWR) simply because "that's how they've always been". Today we'll be looking at one of those fundamental changes.

In the past, pushes have always been done by picking your desired choice from a list, telling the game how you want the worker to be perceived. This was a system that worked fine, but it was very much a game-y feature rather than being realistic.

For TEW2020, we're ripping that system up and going with something far more natural.

So, first off, picking pushes from a list is totally gone, as are any related systems (such as auto pushing, complaints about being at the wrong push level, etc). Instead, you will now see a Perception level for each worker.

The Perception level, which ranges from Major Star down to Unknown, is how the fans see the worker. It is based on the worker's popularity and current momentum in comparison to the company's popularity. Unlike the old push system, this is not something you can directly edit, but is instead sensitive to how you actually use someone - so if you want to take an Unknown guy and make him into a Major Star you can't just pick it from a list, you need to book him strongly and get him over with the fans.

Because momentum plays a key part in how a worker is perceived this makes Perception far more volatile than pushes, so a worker can get hot and jump up a level or two and then go back down as he cools. This makes the roster more dynamic.

Of course, one major advantage of this new system is that it opens up the opportunity for fans to simply not take to a worker (or conversely to latch on to someone you weren't counting on) much more than in previous games - although you can of course try and book your way around any unexpected result.

Looking at the Perception gives the user a clear view of what effect that worker is having. A Major Star is somebody who you know is going to "move the needle" when it comes to attendances and ratings, whereas your Unknowns, however talented they may be, simply haven't connected with the fan base yet. This makes it more intuitive for users to get a feel for their roster.

Perception applies to everyone on the roster, which has the added advantage that it allows any divisions to be automatically taken into account - for example, unlike previous games where a women's division was a single push, in TEW2020 you could have a whole range of different Perceptions within the women.

Unlike the push system, Perceptions are absolute. That is, how the worker is perceived is not calculated in relation to the rest of the roster. This means that unlike previous games you don't have to have a certain roster "shape" - you could have an entire roster of Major Stars, or only Major Stars and Unknowns and nobody in between. This makes things considerably easier for database makers to put workers in their "correct" place on the roster without needing to fudge values.

It should be noted that although workers do take into account Perceptions when making decisions, they also still know their popularity too. So if you have one worker who is 10 popularity across the US and one who is 40 popularity, both working for a company that is 80 popularity, both would probably be Unknown to the fans but the second worker would still "know" that he's significantly higher up the food chain. So although Perceptions flattens out the roster in terms of the number of tiers, it doesn't make the game less detailed or nuanced.

So, overall, this makes the game more realistic both in terms of how booking impacts workers and how momentum affects the fans' view, removes a lot of annoyances regarding the necessity of auto-pushing and dealing with push-based complaints, takes away a lot of clicking and general admin work from the user due to the feature's automatic nature, makes database creation significantly easier, and allows women's division (and non-wrestlers) to be better integrated into the roster.

Adam Ryland · March 1, 2019

#27: Cosmetic immersion touches

As such a large proportion of the community likes to play historical scenarios, a couple of small cosmetic touches have been added to help with immersion in those situations.

Firstly, the Website (now just known as "Main Screen") has multiple skins that come into play depending on when you are playing. This includes a monochrome newsletter from the early days of wrestling, a colourful magazine for the end of the 80s / start of the 90s, and a garish 'early design' website for the late 90s / early 2000s, before the regular-look website becomes the standard. This doesn't change the functionality of the screen, it just helps give a better feel for the era you're in.

Secondly, all the news stories for that screen have been rewritten so that references to the modern world are time-appropriate. This means that you won't see references to social media until the quite recent past, and websites / the internet won't start popping up until the mid 1990s.

These changes aren't in any way ground-breaking of course, but they're just nice little extras to help people feel more connected to the game world.

Adam Ryland · March 5, 2019

This week will have daily entries and cover everything about broadcasting. It's like Shark Week, but less bitey.

#28: Broadcasters

The following are the changes that have been made to the Broadcasters themselves.

By request, each broadcaster can now have profile text to explain a little about them. As with workers, companies, etc, this just adds some colour.

The types of broadcasters have been expanded; there are still Pay-Per-View, Commercial, Free-To-Air, and Subscription, but each of those now has three versions, Terrestrial, Cable, and Internet. So that makes twelve in total. (I'm not sure there's actually such a thing as Terrestrial PPV in reality, but it would actually be more work to take it out, so I've left it in - it might be useful to someone somewhere down the line.)

The difference between the three new sets is one of power. Terrestrial offer the greater revenue sources but are the most demanding and hardest to negotiate with, whereas Internet broadcasters offer the least revenue per viewer but are pretty undemanding. This adds in a new layer of strategy when it comes to choosing who to deal with, as well as allowing things like iPPV to be properly simulated.

The old product settings for each broadcaster have been removed and replaced with a broadcaster style, which can be No Focus, Mainstream, Pure Sports, All Sports, Kids, Adults, or Sci-Fi. (The difference between Pure and All Sports being that the latter are more willing to allow entertainment-related wrestling). These styles do pretty much exactly the same thing as the old product settings, but the advantage is that it's significantly easier for database makers (one setting rather than twelve to achieve the same thing) and it's far more intuitive for the player.

The old Must Cover Home setting has been reworked to be a minimum requirement for the company base: it can be set so that the company must be in a specific region, a specific area, or a combination of areas ("North America" for example). This is far easier to understand and offers more control.

Each company can now be set to have maximum limits for how many companies in total they'll have deals with at any one time, and also how many individual broadcasting deals they'll have. This reintroduces and upgrades the ability for database makers to limit a broadcaster.

Coverage remains as it was, but the different levels are now absolute. That is, a "Big" rating means the same number of people regardless of the type of broadcaster (whereas before it didn't - for example, a PPV broadcaster with Big across America was not reaching the same number of people as a Commercial broadcaster with the same coverage setting).

The reason for this is that you can now see in-game the number of people this (roughly) equates to and how the various viewership numbers are calculated - this should make it easier for database makers to get in the right ballpark for what they want. The figures themselves have also been reworked to be more accurate, with an emphasis on trying to replicate WWE's real life numbers given that this is what I'd imagine most real-life database makers are most concerned with.

This will mean that database makers will need to spend some time rebalancing their broadcaster coverage levels if they convert them from 2016 to 2020, as otherwise you're likely to end up with overly high pay-per-view revenue for example, but I'm afraid that's not something I can really automate as it's something that requires a judgement call on a case by case basis.

Tomorrow we'll move on to broadcasting deals / contracts.

Adam Ryland · March 6, 2019

#29: Broadcasting deals

Broadcasting deals have had the following additions.

Firstly, there is now a "Company Pays" entry; this details how much the company has to pay each time it broadcasts a show using this deal. Normally this would be zero, but a company can choose to pay extra in order to secure a better deal, for example to get a prime time slot that would otherwise have been unavailable to them.

In a similar vein, there is also a "Broadcaster Pays" entry; this is how much the broadcaster pays per show. This is to simulate the real world situation where the WWE get paid a large amount of money to have Raw and Smackdown on a specific broadcaster. Generally only big broadcasters looking to strike a deal with a major company are going to be willing to pay for high value content.

Each broadcasting deal now also has a Revenue Split. As the name suggests, this shows how the revenue from the deal is split between the company and the broadcaster. Sometimes a company may want to accept a lower split in order to get a higher level of exposure.

Before moving on to the final element, first a related change needs to be explained. In previous games you could not broadcast a show if it had clashing coverage; that is, if two broadcasters had coverage in one or more of the same regions. This is not the case in TEW2020. You can broadcast even if there is clashing coverage: if this happens, the fans will always take the most convenient / cheapest option and this can impact the viewership on other broadcasters.

For example, you may run a show and show it on a single PPV broadcaster and get 500,000 views. If you were to re-run the same scenario but also show it on a free-to-air broadcaster in the same regions of which 450,000 of those fans have access, then your PPV buys would drop down to 50,000 - because obviously the fans are not going to pay when they could watch it for free.

If the viewership on a broadcaster drops too low because you're showing it elsewhere at the same time then the broadcaster is going to probably get annoyed with you for undercutting them, and, you will lose any related popularity gains from that specific broadcaster because not enough people are watching for it to be effective. Of course, you also potentially lose money - in the example I have above, you're throwing away 450,000 buys of PPV money by giving it away for free.

With that in mind, the final addition to the broadcasting deals is Exclusive Rights and Exceptions.

Exclusive Rights are when the broadcaster wants a guarantee that you won't using clashing coverage. They can have exclusive rights across their entire coverage, or just to specific areas. So if they have exclusive rights to Japan, a company can't use that broadcaster at the same time as another who have coverage in any Japanese region. If they don't have exclusive rights then the new "clashing coverage is allowed" system is in effect.

If an Exception is in force, it means that the company is allowed to ignore the Exclusive Rights in one specific circumstance, and that is if it's being shown on their self-owned broadcaster. This is very specifically to simulate the real world situation where WWE show their own programming on their network at the same time as one commercial stations.

Broadcasting week will continue in tomorrow's entry.

Adam Ryland · March 7, 2019

#30: More about broadcasting

Here are some more changes that have been made to the broadcasting section of the game; today is all about ratings.

The viewership figures / ratings for each show are now more closely linked to the revenue that will be generated for Commercial and Subscription broadcasters. In previous games this was not the case, where big swings in how many people were watching would not have affected the revenue very much as long as the company and broadcaster had not changed in size. This new change makes the ratings you receive more important, and means that losing or gaining viewers will have a real impact on your finances.

To tie-in to this, there is now "rating disruption". That is, if a company is running a show in the same time slot as another, the more popular show can potentially hurt the viewership of the lesser show because viewers are tuning in to the former. This allows the use of counter-programming as an attacking strategy, for example putting a big event on the same day as a rival is running a show in order to take eyeballs off their product and cost them money.

In addition to this, Other TV Shows are returning to the game. These are non-wrestling shows. They can either be one-offs (like the Super Bowl) or serial (i.e. running on a regular basis) and have controls that allow them to be set to run only in specific times (both in terms of years and what days / weeks / months they are on air). This is intended to be used for big shows that actually impact the wrestling world, not an exhaustive selection of what is on TV. These shows also tie-in to the "rating disruption" feature described above, so you can simulate things like getting killed in the ratings if you try and run opposite a ratings behemoth or major cultural event.

When viewing ratings, TEW2020 is returning to the old style of showing them split up by broadcaster. So if a show is on multiple broadcasters you will see an overall total and then how that is broken down. In addition, as well as PPV buyrates and TV ratings, you'll also now see viewership - this allows subscription networks to be better covered.

The broadcasting section also now has a Ratings Centre, which can also be accessed via the player's information bar at the bottom of the screen. This, by default, shows all the previous night's ratings so that the player can see what shows attracted the most viewers. It can also be used as a fact sheet of sort, giving highest buyrates / ratings / viewership for that night, that year, or all-time.

Broadcasting week continues tomorrow.

Adam Ryland · March 8, 2019

#31: Even more about broadcasting

We will end broadcasting week by going through the remainder of the loose ends that haven't been covered yet.

Parent-child broadcasting has been altered to be more intuitive and easier to use: a parent now has access to a special child version of the broadcasting screen and so can negotiate deals on the child's behalf; children automatically qualify to be on their parent's own broadcaster; and if the user is playing as a child company then they can negotiate deals with the parent's own broadcaster without the need to wait for the parent to proactively do anything.

Continuing with self-owned broadcasters, companies are no longer limited to having just one; they can have as many as they like. The cost of creating small broadcasters has also been redone so that smaller companies can potentially make their own VoD services (like Chikara in real life) without needing massive amounts of cash.

Following on from the above, Subscription broadcasters no longer have a set break-even point that is the same for everybody, it is instead based on the coverage level. This means that smaller companies can run their own low-level subscription services without losing tons of money each month because they don't need 70+ popularity in each region. Again, this makes things like Chikara's real life Chikaratopia service viable.

Previous entries have already covered how ratings / viewership will be very important in TEW2020, and one of the new features that gels with that is the ability for companies to 'block tape' TV shows. A company can now tape up to four episodes at once. The advantage of this is that it slashes the cost of producing the show (because everything is already in place so there's no need to transport of set-up multiple times), but the disadvantage is that the further ahead a show is taped, the more its ratings are going to get reduced, therefore the company will potentially be losing out on valuable broadcast revenue.

In addition to the above, tapings have been slightly reworked so that any broadcast-related revenue does not come in until the show airs. This just makes things a little more realistic.

Although a lot of new stuff has been added to broadcasting, the actual process of negotiating / dealing with broadcasters has been streamlined to be more intuitive and quicker than previous games. One of the main factors involved in this is that negotiations now have "live" feedback; that is, when you change one of the drop-down menus to pick, for example, a new time slot, you'll get immediate on-screen feedback about how this impacts the broadcaster's happiness, costs, etc, rather than needing to actually hit the Make Offer button to find out.

Finally, when booking shows there is now an Auto Selection button that automatically calculates the best choices for you; you can of course choose to overwrite the selection afterwards, but for the most part this saves a bunch of clicking, especially if you happen to have a lot of different broadcasting deals. Part of this is the broadcasting deals can be given Purposes and the AI can use that information to work out what you would want.

Adam Ryland · March 12, 2019

#32: Independent wrestling

Those of you who have played WMMA5 (I highly recommend you do if you have any interest in MMA!) will know that the local shows, WMMA's equivalent of the independent wrestling scene, are divided up into different size categories so that fighters can work their way up as they gain experience. We're taking that same concept and applying that to TEW.

Instead of one level of independent show, TEW2020 will instead have three. They break down as follows.

Small-time indy shows are pretty much what you're familiar with already: little shows featuring unemployed, not-particularly-popular wrestlers who either reside in the same region as the show, or live within travelling distance.

Mid-level indy shows expand that slightly further. Now, contracted workers are allowed to appear, providing they're not under an exclusive deal anywhere. Also, the maximum popularity is raised slightly to allow some bigger names to come in. The shows feature more matches and get a bigger attendance.

Big-time indy shows then expand that further. The maximum popularity is raised again, and now workers from anywhere in that game area can take part, not just those who are relatively local. The shows are, again, slightly longer and get slightly better attendance.

The split is roughly 25% small-time, 25% big-time, 50% mid-level for each game area. As in TEW2016, indy shows can either be regular (mostly male wrestlers but with occasional women's matches) or entirely dedicated to women's wrestling.

To add to this, the frequency of indy shows is now linked directly to the free agent pool in that area. The more free agents there are, the more indy shows are going to happen. With a huge pool, it's possible to get 8 shows (4 normal, 4 women's) per month at maximum with this new system.

Finally, rather than use "American Independent Wrestling", "British Independent Wrestling", etc, as the names for the shows, you'll now see them listed as "Independent Wrestling From Brooklyn", "Independent Wrestling From Glasgow", etc, etc. This is purely cosmetic, but in my opinion it's just a little nicer to look at and adds slightly to the immersion.

So, overall, this makes the independent aspect of the game a lot more dynamic and lively, means that wrestlers who are outside the big leagues will have more opportunities to work over the course of a year, and generally adds more realism to the package.

Adam Ryland · March 15, 2019

Just a short one today.

#33: Match booking

As with the previously announced angle booking changes (see entry #24), match booking in TEW2020 also has a more streamlined approach. The two main screens (picking the match and actually booking it) are now integrated into the same screen to save time and clicking, and, just like angles, the user can now easily change the match type without needing to delete and rebook the segment. So, for example, if you book a singles bout and want to change it to a triple threat match instead, you can just add in a new competitor without needing to re-do the existing wrestlers and road agent notes.

As with angles, road agent notes can now be pre-booked for matches too to save time.

Finally, as a general change, when booking any segment it now gets added to the 'bottom' of the show (i.e. the latest possible position). This means that people can naturally book their main events first and work downwards, which is how most people seem to organise themselves, and it also means that when you do on-the-fly booking during a show the stuff you add gets added to its most logical place. This reduces the amount of clicking and shuffling of segments that you need to do.

Adam Ryland · March 19, 2019

#34: Experience

A new part of a worker's skill selection is Experience. As the name suggests, this is a measure of their career's in-ring time so far. The value increases every time they wrestle, with the longer the match, the bigger the jump.

Unlike most of the other skills, there is no cap on Experience; if they wrestle for long enough, everyone will eventually reach 100. Experience cannot go down.

Experience affects a worker's in-ring performance; the more experienced a worker is, the better he is able to cope with problems and mistakes when they happen. This also allows workers to mitigate poor booking. For example, a highly experienced worker is better able to cover the fact that he has been gassed by being put into too long of a match. These "covers" take the form of reducing or removing the penalties that you'd normally see.

Rookies on the other hand are more likely to be flustered and make things worse as a result of how green they are.

If something out of the ordinary happens, like a botch, as long as there is at least one experienced workers in the match they will be able to help everyone else through it. This makes keeping the old guard around quite useful at times.

Also, high experience makes a worker better at passing on their knowledge during matches. Therefore working with experienced veterans leads to quicker learning for rookies.

The other significant use of Experience is with road agents, as this is one of the two major stats (alongside Psychology) that affect how good they are at their job (Respect being the third, lesser aspect).

Overall, this addition adds to the realism and means that veteran wrestlers become more valuable members of the roster because of their teaching potential and the fact that their experience can be crucial in helping keep matches on track at times. Simply kicking workers out the door when they start declining therefore becomes a far worse move than it has in the past and can have serious repercussions over time if a roster gets too green overall.

Adam Ryland · March 21, 2019

Two small ones today, both of which are based on ideas that were recently posted in the Suggestions forum. As a reminder, if you have ideas you want to share, I'd suggest you post them there in the near future as we're starting to get into the territory where parts of the game are being finalised and suggestions will start to be too late to be considered.

#35: User reputation, free pictures

There's been a few changes to the user's reputation in the new game. It is now more dynamic, being far more sensitive to your booking performance and also now being affected by rises and falls in size. In line with this, your reputation will now be a standard 0-100 number, not just a handful of text categories, so this will allow you to see the changes more clearly. Also, if you choose to leave the game then the character you were using as your avatar will change their booking reputation to match your user reputation, meaning they can carry on (under AI control) with the rep you built for them.

In a related change, the block whereby you could only start your own company if you had High or above reputation has been removed; you can now start your own company whenever you like, as long as you're unemployed. However, your reputation is used to decide how successful you are at attracting investors / backers, and so your starting money is affected by both your reputation and the challenge level you select. So, for example, if you choose Rock Hard you're going to not get much money to start with, but you're going to get significantly less if you also have very little reputation too. As a final related change, your reputation no longer goes to zero when you start your own company as this game-y block is no longer necessary.

These aren't huge changes, but they do add a little more realism and make the user experience a little nicer as you have more freedom.

The second change I'll be talking about today is to do with the Free Pictures section of the editor, and this is for database makers rather than an "everyday use" feature. When you choose to Add a new record to this section the game will now automatically select the first unused picture in the file for you (unused meaning that it's a picture that isn't already a free picture and isn't attached to a worker or alter ego already). Likewise, when you hit Save And Continue it will jump to the next unused picture in the file after the one you just saved.

This potentially save an enormous amount of clicking and scrolling for database makers as you can bash through large amounts of pictures very quickly, particularly if you've got the files named so that they are already organised in some sort of order.

Adam Ryland · March 26, 2019

#36: Stables

This entry will cover how stables have been upgraded for TEW2020.

Starting with the editor, here is how stables are broken down.

Firstly, there are the basics: their name, the company they are assigned to, their status (active / inactive), and their biography-style description.

Secondly, there are the following in the details / settings section.

Type: This can either be Faction, Brotherhood, Cult, Gang or Alliance; this controls how they act and are rated.

Formed: This is text to show when they were created.

Important: Yes or No. This simply says whether they get made inactive or get removed entirely when they are closed.

Min / Max Members: This controls the number of people in the stable.

Must Involve: This can link the stable to a specific worker; the stable can only operate as long as that worker is a member, otherwise it is shut down.

Disposition: This controls whether the stable is Babyface, Heel, or can be either.

Genders: This controls whether the stable is Male Only, Female Only, or Mixed.

No New Members: This says whether the stable is "closed" or not, i.e. whether new members can be added after the stable is established.

Thirdly, there is the members section, which lists who is in the stable. This has been reduced from 20 members to 18 in TEW2020 because when viewing stables you no longer see a list but get the entire stable pictured, but I could only fit 18 people on screen. As I think most people would prefer the much nicer visual presentation, and that hardly anyone actually ever used slots 19 and 20 anyway, I think this is a minor drawback. Each of the members has the following potential roles (replacing Major / Minor):

Leader: As it sounds.

Deputy: The worker (or workers) who are second in command and will likely take over if the leader leaves.

Heir: A (usually younger) worker who is being groomed to eventually take leadership.

Member: This is the generic role that just means a worker is part of the stable.

Muscle: This is for workers who are members to act as enforcers or bruisers.

Lackey: This is for members who play a minor, servile role.

Fodder: This is for the bottom-rung members who exists basically to get beaten up and do run-ins.

Support: This is for non-wrestlers, such as managers, valets, etc.

These roles inform the game how that worker's performance, status, etc, affects the stable's rating.

On top of this, there is now a Stable Names section of the editor. This workers just like Team Names, TV names, etc, in that it lists a bunch of potential names that can be applied to stables. These are subdivided by gender, disposition, stale type, stable size, and company location.

As you can probably tell from some of the features I've just announced, the really big change in stables is that they are now fully integrated for AI use. That means that the AI can open its own stables, add new members, remove members, change stable roles, close stables, and incorporate all of this into its booking. That means that stable members will team with each other, not outsiders, they'll band together in tournaments, avoid fighting each other, etc. In conjunction with this, there's a new Stables section (located next to Tag Teams) when viewing AI companies so that you can see what their current groups are, who is in them, and what their roles are.

As a minor addition, stable names are now also fully incorporated into match reports, both human and AI. So you'll see things like "The Infernal Horde (Snap Dragon, El Rey, and Soul Taker) beat ....." when viewing results, which looks nicer and means that you can better see why people are teaming together.

Adam Ryland · March 28, 2019

Two smallish changes to the loan system(s) today.

#37: Loans

In previous games the amount a worker was paid per appearance when traded or loaned was based on their existing contract's wage. This had a flaw in that it could result in unfairly high amounts being charged, especially with written deals. To counter this, traded or loaned workers will now always use their genuine pay-per-show worth (i.e. the amount that you'd be quoted when starting negotiations with them). This means that the value is always a fair reflection of their true worth.

In previous games there was a cap on how many loans in total an alliance member could make within a six month period. This limitation has been removed from the game to allow for more flexibility and to open up the option of doing more "invasion" style actions.

Adam Ryland · April 2, 2019

#38: Stars and attendance levels

Unlike in previous games, attendance levels are now directly impacted by the star names on a show (previously this was limited to figureheads).

One realistic effect from this is that smaller companies who bring in workers with name value will be able to see a noticeable bump in their attendances, making it worth shelling out the extra cash.

This also means that regional stars have more of a place in the game world, especially when it comes to companies vying for position. This opens up new strategic options. For example, stealing a regional draw from a rival can help you break into a new market while hurting them at the same time, or you could make clever use of loans and trades to help you do one-off shows in new markets and still draw.

This will also affect companies who fail to build or protect their own stars - if they end up with a roster short of name value then they're going to see their attendances start to dwindle as the fans have no reason to turn up.

Overall this adds more realism to the game and several new strategic elements.

Adam Ryland · April 4, 2019

A small entry today with a quick burst of four changes...

#39:Tag team types, worldwide tag search, numbered TV shows, new match types

The tag team types have been changed slightly with the addition of Permanent Units (meaning that you now have Permanent Units, Units, and Individuals; as before, there are active and inactive versions of each).

Permanent Units are for teams who are strongly identified as always being together. They will share the effects of tag wins and losses equally regardless of who was involved in the finish. This also has strong ties to the AI, who will never break the team up, will never use them with other partners, and will rarely use them outside of the tag team division.

Units are as they were in the previous game; they're basically Permanent Units but the AI can break them up if there is a good reason (if one of them becomes a much bigger star, for example) and can use them occasionally in singles situations.

Individuals are as they were before; they're for when it's two singles wrestlers tagging, or temporarily alliances. They don't share effects equally, and the AI will treat them as singles workers, which means it can break them up and is free to give them solo runs.

The new addition won't really affect the player very much, but it makes the AI significantly better at handling the tag team booking and usage parts of the game.

In a separate change related to tag teams, from the tag team screen there is now a section that allows you to search through all tag teams across the game world, as this had been requested a number of times to make seeking out established duos earlier. As I know this will trigger people asking: I realise that people also want the ability to be able to negotiate with tag teams rather than having to do it individually, but this will not be in the game as I cannot get it working well enough.

As it has been requested a few times, numbered TV shows will be in TEW2020. This is optional. If turned on, it means that a counter will keep track of which episode it is and you will see "SWF Uprising #141", etc, in the results and histories.

Finally for today, four new multi-man match types have been added as possible choices: seven, eight, nine, and ten way singles matches.

--

As I'm away next week and then have end-of-year University assignments to deal with the week after, I'm now going to put the journal on hiatus for two weeks. So, we'll be restarting in the week beginning 22nd April. There's several big entries to come as we head into the summer and then it'll be the start of phase II, the "live" version of this journal, where I'll be going into more depth about where we are, what we're currently working on, etc.

Adam Ryland · April 23, 2019

#40: Worker styles

With the game being rebuilt, it seemed like a good opportunity to redo the worker style classifications, so today we will go through the new selection.

The eleven styles that were in TEW2016 have been replaced with the following sixteen:

Regular

Entertainer

Comedy

Powerhouse

Impactful

Striker

Brawler

Hardcore

Psychopath

Luchador

High Flyer

Technician

Technician Flyer

Technician Striker

Daredevil

MMA Crossover

I think they are pretty self explanatory, but for those who are not sure: Impactful refers to the more modern hard-hitting style of mixing strikes, suplexes and submissions - Samoa Joe being one real world example; Striker and Brawler differs in that the former involves more finesse; Luchador refers to the stereotypical fast-paced mix of technique and high flying that is best exemplified in Mexican wrestling; a Technician Striker would be someone who mixes technical wrestling with a lot of (probably MMA influenced) striking.

There's intentionally quite a blurring of the lines between the categories to allow for leeway; for example, Luchador, High Flyer, and Technical Flyer are all closely related and there isn't going to be a huge amount of difference between them, although obviously lucha libre companies are going to have a mild preference for the former, whilst companies with a high degree of emphasis on technical expertise are likely to favour Technical Flyers over High Flyers. Similarly, Striker, Brawler, and Technical Striker aren't radically different but offer a degree of subtlety that the game can use.

As before, styles don't affect in-ring work, they're simply a handy "tag" that the game can use to make sure that it's making the best / most realistic use of someone and to allow for a more intuitive game play experience. Styles can still organically change during game play.

As you'd expect, all the features of the game that involve styles - such as owner goals - have been updated to reflect the new groupings.

Overall, these new styles not only give more choices and cover the real world better, but they can better tie in to the way products work, which is what we'll be covering next Tuesday.

Adam Ryland · April 25, 2019

#41: New road agent notes

As you'd expect, there are new road agent notes in TEW2020. The following are some of them:

Double Pinfall: This allows a match to end with a double pin, such as a german suplex where both workers' shoulders are down.

Dusty Finish(es): This allows a finish whereby one worker wins only to then have the previously-bumped referee recover and reverse the decision because of something that happened before. There are two flavours of this note, count out or DQ, which reflect what the reversed decision becomes.

Partner Miscommunication: This allows a finish whereby a worker gets beaten because his or her partner screwed up accidentally.

At Ringside: This simply allows the booker to have a worker specifically appear at ringside. This is a multi-purpose note as it allows you to have extra valets, ringside enforcers, workers scouting future opponents, to specify lumberjacks, etc, etc.

In addition, the Interference finish has been changed so that you select the interferer as part of the note rather than having to do it separately, to save time.

As a related change, by request, two out of three falls matches are now allowed to end in a time limit draw, and so that road agent note is now available in that match type.

Adam Ryland · April 30, 2019

#42: Products

Although I like the product set up from TEW2016, it does have several big issues. Most notably, a lot of people don't seem to really understand it, it's extremely fiddly for database makers and players to use, and, having looked through most of the major databases currently available, it's very rare for people to actually use it for anything other than a handful of 'standard' product definitions.

With that in mind, for TEW2020 we'll not be continuing with that set up and instead taking the previous method and upgrading that instead. This entry of the journal will cover how it now looks.

Rather than having each product broken down into parts - Mainstream, Comedy, Risque, etc - TEW2020 instead has numerous pre-written products. So, if you're in the product screen, you'll see a list which includes things like Classic Sports Entertainment, LuchaResu, Wrestling As A Sport, Extreme Hardcore, Deathmatch, etc.

Each company will pick one from this list for their Current Product (how they are currently presented) and one from this list for their Core Product (what the company is about at its most fundamental) - you can select the same for both, incidentally. The Core Product is used by the game to make sure that companies don't stray too far from what they're really about (so you won't see Ring of Honor evolve into a death match company, for example) and basically replaces the old Minimum / Maximum product settings. To be clear, you can still give the product a custom name, just like in TEW2016, you're not limited to the name the game uses.

When making these selection you get both a text description of what the product means and also a full list of how this impacts the game (unlike TEW2016, this is all on the same screen so you don't need to keep loading sub-windows to check this). So, one big advantage of this is user friendliness - what took 36 drop-down menu selections and multiple clicks in TEW2016 now takes 2 drop-down menus in TEW2020 while actually giving a greater level of depth.

The upgrade to this is that each of the products has been custom made. So whereas TEW2016 gave you a list of pros, cons, and effects that were fairly generic, the new system makes sure that each product has been hand crafted to be as accurate as possible, and is therefore much deeper.

Once you're in-game, you can still change your product but the system now works by comparing your old and new product and working out the level of change. So, for example, going from PG Rated Sports Entertainment to Classic Sports Entertainment is obviously a very small change as they're very closely related - therefore the change takes less time to complete and there's minimal disruption. Going from Attitude Entertainment to Comic Book Lucha Libre is a much more severe change in direction and so will take much longer to complete and involve more disruption.

There are also a couple of other changes to the product screen to discuss.

Firstly, the Women's Wrestling selection has been expanded so that if you give a company a division, you can now select the size of it: small, medium, or large. This allows you to better reflect reality, especially with how the WWE has greatly enlarged the size and importance of their women's division over the past few years.

Secondly, you can now set a Match Focus and Angle Focus. What this does is allow you to tinker with the way show grades are calculated. As most of you will know, currently your matches affect the final rating by taking a certain percentage of the main event, a certain percentage of the best match, and a certain percentage of the remainder of the show. With these new settings, you have the option of altering these ratios. For example, one option is Main Event Spotlight focus: with this, the ratio is 90% of the main event's rating and 10% of the average of the remainder of the matches, which is ideal if you're modelling a company for whom the undercard is pretty much an afterthought. By twinning this with the selection of products you're increasing the depth of what you're able to model.

So, overall, the advantages to this change are that it is significantly easier to understand, it makes life much easier for database makers as their workload is massively reduced and they no longer have to fiddle around to try and get the results they want, it's far more intuitive to use (whether in the editor or main game), and you're opening up products that you couldn't accurately model previously. There is the disadvantage that you're losing some flexibility in that you can no longer make up crazy thinking-outside-the-box products, but as already discussed, virtually nobody was actually ever doing this in TEW2016 anyway, so I think that's a fairly minor drawback.

Of course, there is one potential pitfall in that the system slightly falls apart if the selection of pre-written products is too shallow or doesn't cover certain real world products. This should be addressed in two ways.

Firstly, I've set it up so that adding new products is pretty easy, so if there is anything missing then it's really easy for me to patch it in after release.

Secondly, we're going to be opening up a new thread in the coming months where we're going to be listing all the existing products that have already been done and inviting users, whether they're database makers or just regular players, to submit their suggestions for products that they feel aren't already covered and need to be added. That way we can make sure that the game will release with a selection that meets everybody's needs.

Adam Ryland · May 2, 2019

As usual, Thursday's are where we'll cover some of the more minor additions and changes.

#43: Five small changes

1 - Match times for user-booked matches are now stored and are visible when reviewing old bouts.

2 - Events can now be fixed to a specific venue, in addition to the previously announced ability to fix them to a specific area or region. This allows events that reference a specific place in their name, for example, to be held in the correct place.

3 - [NB: This was an announcement about workers being able to 'come out'; this feature has since been removed. The original announcement was badly worded on my part and made it sound like workers were changing their sexuality, resulting in several users getting the wrong impression and starting a fight. As a result of the bad feeling, I have removed the feature.]

4 - When negotiating a 'first refusal contract with a recent graduate, 'blocking' style owner goals no longer apply. This makes it easier to bring your own development talent through the ranks. For example, the owner may say that you can't hire anyone with Basics less than a certain figure, but that wouldn't apply to graduates because they're unlikely to have the skills to ever get around that goal.

5 - Stables can now have logos.

Adam Ryland · May 7, 2019

#44: AI Booking

In the past you'll have been used to seeing a handful of sliders in the product screen that set the percentage of singles matches, tag matches, etc, that the AI will use. I've been wanting to get rid of this system for a while as it's got some major flaws (namely that it's very rigid, doesn't take context into account at all, and makes creating realistic AI very difficult) so, as the AI booking system has been totally rewritten from scratch, I've removed these from TEW2020. In today's entry we'll be looking at what replaces them, and how the system as a whole works.

In the product screen you'll now see an AI Booking Style menu. This contains a series of options:

Old School Western: This is primarily singles and tag matches, with trios and battle royals appearing as special attractions.

Old School Puro: This is primarily singles, tag, and trios matches. Touring shows in particular are heavily tag and trios oriented so as not to overtax the workers.

Old School Lucha: This is again based on singles, tag, and trios, but with tag and trios being much more prominent than you'd get elsewhere.

Modern Western: Singles and tag form the core, but then you've got multi-man matches coming in to add spice to the card.

Modern Puro: Singles, tag, and six man form the core, with occasional multi-man matches appearing.

Modern Lucha: This uses the basic lucha format of singles, tag, and trios, but then with multi-man matches coming in to the equation too.

Evolving Western, Evolving Puro, Evolving Lucha: These are special versions which are time-dependent: they'll start at the Old School version until they reach a certain preset date, after which they'll start evolving towards their Modern equivalent.

Basic Singles: This is for companies who only use singles bouts.

Basic Singles and Tag: This is for companies who only use singles and tag team bouts.

Basic Tag And Trios: Again, for companies who only use tag team and trios matches.

Multi Man Singles: For companies using only three and four way singles matches.

Multi Man Overall: For companies using only three and four way matches for singles and tag teams.

Variety: This is for companies who use all the different match types and have very eclectic cards.

(NB: This is not necessarily the final list; I wouldn't be surprised if at least one or two more options get added once we've got to the testing phase.)

These get used when building the card, taking into account what type of show is being used, how long it is, etc. There are five levels of show: basic TV show, regular event, end-of-year / "season finale" event, tour show, and basic show (used for indy shows, for example). Each of these are slightly different to give better results. For example, tour shows naturally make much heavier use of tag team and trios matches to protect the workers' health than the other types, especially if you're using one of the specifically Puro styles. This ability to take context into account is a real boon, and makes it a massive upgrade on the old slider method.

So, in short, these settings tell the AI the basics of what a show should look like. If you think of creating an AI card as being like building a house, the AI Booking Style is making the foundation and frame.

When creating a card, the AI Booking Style then gets modified by the Product, which we looked at last week. The Product allows the AI to work out what matches to use, what ratio of matches to angles there should be, what sort of finishes are appropriate, whether certain matches are more appropriate than others in certain situations, etc - basically, it's taking the generic structure and making it unique to that product. To take the house analogy further, this is like putting in the brick work, connecting up the electrics and plumbing, etc.

I don't normally cover things that are yet to be done in this journal, but I will add a side note here that there is planned to be a third layer in this system. The idea is that the head booker's style and stats will come into play to add a further level of modification. To really stretch the house analogy to breaking point, this would be adding in the furniture and painting the walls. This is something that we'll likely be returning to in the next phase of the journal when we go "live".

The final phase is then to apply the bits and pieces of AI-improving features that we've already mentioned in the journal: things like the new tag team settings and stables, for example, which are designed to do a better job of teams than we've managed in the past. There's also some stuff that we'll be covering in the future: for example, the way that title reigns work has been changed to be more realistic. All these little things just boost the AI's realism a little more.

Now, with all that being said, I realise that most people don't actually care about what system is being used or anything I've just written, what they care about is one question: does this result in good output? This is again something that we'll be covering more in the "live" journal that'll be coming, but I can say that the results we've been seeing in testing are very, very promising even at this early stage. In particular, the booking of tag teams, trios, eight man teams, etc, are working ridiculously well, far better than I'd anticipated. Tour shows are also a real highlight, as they're looking like real New Japan tour shows.

Obviously, with this being core to the entire game, this is something that's going to continue to be tweaked all the way through the development of TEW2020, and there'll likely be other features that get added that continue to modify some aspects of this. What I'm hoping to do in a few months, during the "live" journal, will be to post some show results from various companies and eras so that you can get a better sense of what you'll be seeing when the game comes out.

Adam Ryland · May 9, 2019

#45: E-mail settings

To bring the TEW series in line with WMMA, the new game will feature the ability for the user to set exactly what types of e-mail he or she wishes to receive, as well as how important each type is.

This is quite a dense section (currently it's 9 pages of options), but you will only realistically be needing to set your preference once, so it's not too bad.

For each option you will be able to set it as either Ignore, Receive, or Important. Ignore means that the mail never reaches your inbox, getting deleted automatically. Receive means that you do get it. Important means that you get the mail and it's considered important enough to stop any fast advance that is in progress.

I'm not going to list all the categories as there's so many of them, but to give people who don't play WMMA an idea, they are things like "Company Falls In Size", "Worker Negotiations End", "PPV Buy Rate Report", "House Show Held", and "Worker Relocates".

As with WMMA, this gives you a greater degree of control and is more user friendly as you can both turn off mails you don't care about and stop the fast advance from being interrupted by things you don't really care about.

Adam Ryland · May 14, 2019

#46: Momentum

The momentum system has changed in the following ways.

The scale in TEW2020 is different to what you're used to in TEW2016. Instead of simply being Major / Medium / Minor Positive or Negative, the new scale goes from White Hot at one end to Ice Cold at the other. This is just a cosmetic change to make things a little less clinical.

The things that affect momentum have also changed. In the previous games momentum was entirely about kayfabe success. In the new game, momentum covers both kayfabe and general performance. This simulates the fans being able to appreciate someone killing it in the ring or on the microphone even if they're not necessarily getting a lot of victories.

The biggest change is that TEW2020 now uses a two-tier system for momentum, with it being split into Short Term and Long Term.

Short Term momentum is a behind-the-scenes stat (i.e. it's not visible anywhere) and is what gets affected by matches, angles, and some external events. This is very volatile and goes up or down a lot. Its only effect is on Long Term momentum, which will be covered in a moment.

Long Term momentum is the stat you can see (via roster screens) and is what is used in any momentum-based calculations. It is rarely directly impacted by what you do in your booking (although there are some special instances where it can be) and is much more stable than Short Term.

The way these interact is that Long Term will slowly move towards the Short Term value each day, basically forming an average. For example, you could have a worker having lots of wins and lots of losses over the course of a month, meaning Short Term is moving a lot, but as Long Term is only moving slowly it will end up being a reflection of the booking over that period as a whole. This therefore gives a more subtle, nuanced simulation of a worker's current momentum and cannot rely on "quick fixes" - long-term strategy is much more effective.

As mentioned before, there are some circumstances where Long Term can be sharply changed. These tend to be bigger one-off things - for example, a worker getting busted in a scandal could kill their momentum off almost immediately, while a worker appearing in a movie could give them a quick boost.

This isn't a change that's going to hugely impact your game play - and indeed, you don't even need to be consciously aware of it - but it does add a little big extra oomph to the simulation aspect of the game and lets things unfold more naturally, so it's a noticeable step up from TEW2016.

Adam Ryland · May 16, 2019

#47: Relocation and luchas de apuestas

A new addition to the TEW series is the ability to relocate a company from one region to another. You can do this on your own company or a child. You are limited to doing this at most once every five years.

To help better simulate lucha libre, luchas de apuestas can now be specified via the road agent notes system. This 'betting match' means that the loser(s) is supposed to lose either their mask or hair (I know that they sometimes also include careers and titles as being wagers in reality, but this feature is only for masks or hair). This adds drama to a match, but if you do not book someone to either be shaved bald or get unmasked then the fans will be seriously annoyed.

Adam Ryland · May 21, 2019

#48: Editor changes, quick fill addition

The main editor has been revamped in TEW2020 to make life easier for people who want to create their own custom content.

In the first change, the major screens have all been consolidated into one. That is, the main screen (the one with Create Database, Clear Database, etc), the hub (the one that lists all the different parts of the database and how many items are in each), mass edit screen, and mass delete screen are all now a single screen. By putting them all together it takes away a lot of clicking for the user.

In the second change, mass editing has been upgraded significantly. It is now available for just about every part of the database and covers every piece of data where mass editing makes sense. This is a big quality of life thing for people who are converting databases or planning to make wholesale changes to them, as well as being a nice addition even for those who only dabble in editing.

The editor now also includes a name search feature - this works like the one you're used to from in-game, where you can type in a word or partial piece of text and you'll get back all the results that match it (i.e. you can type in "John" and get every record that contains that within it). This is again another quality of life thing as it can help find records when you may not remember the first name or can't remember how to spell something.

These three upgrades won't directly impact a lot of players as they're specifically designed to help database makers, but as it should allow mods to be created with less effort it should benefit everyone overall.

Finally, taken from WMMA5, a Quick Fill feature is available. This allows you to quickly add workers, companies, or broadcasters to your game. The way this works is that you fill in some basic data and the number of records you want to create and the game will auto-generate the content for you. For example, you may decide there's a lack of female talent in the British Isles area, so with a few clicks you can pop 25 new rookie female wrestlers there. This feature is available both in the main editor and in the in-game options menu, so you can use it either to build up your database or to freshen up an ongoing save game too. Therefore this benefits everyone, even players who don't care about the editing process.

Sign In

TEW2020 Announcement & Developer's Journal

Recommended Posts

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Join the conversation