TEW IX Developer's Journal Discussion Thread

[jakaryus]

Honestly, I will start my message with this: all the changes so far are great, and thank you Adam & the team for this.

if I want to be greedy, I hope the next step in this dev journal is to make the game "harder", I may be in the minority here (not sure, I don't come to GDS very often haha) but while fantasy booking is great, I get bored of my saves quite quickly if that's all I have, TEW is my favourite game of the genre because it's hard, but I hope it's taken to the next level.

Let me explain myself: What I love the most about TEW save is when you're a top 3 company in the world and you compete with the top 2, there are workers at the end of their contract etc. Right now, I feel like the AI isn't punitive enough, and you make so much money that you can just sign the biggest star in the #1 company even if you're the #3 and smaller than them/make less money.

We should have more emphasis on finance, i'm not saying we should play finance simulator, but there is a good middle ground that TEW haven't reached (yet): At some point in a save, you wont care about money anymore, you make so much of it that you can sign whoever for whatever money, imo it should be nerfed and harder to make a lot of money so that you can't sign the whole planet when competing against some companies. We should also nerf the fact that it's much easier to sign a worker by adding years on his contract even if you don't pay him more.

I also wish that companies were overall more agressive, if i'm WCW competing against WWF, I want WWF to try to sign every top worker I have when their contract end and REALLY compete. When you're at war with a company and your rating are more or less the same, the AI should be more agressive, if you're trying to overtake another company, try a bold move (for example TNA in 2010 changing Impact's day to match RAW, sure it ended up being a flop but they tried).

Bit of a messy post i'm sorry, but basically I'm hoping that the AI becomes more competitive, way more agressive and that the game is more focussed on company war when it happen

Edited July 5 by jakaryus

[moststay]

31 minutes ago, EdJames said:

I was thinking about this the other day in respect of Lucy Stone-McFly. She debuts with only 32 overness in Canada and single digits everywhere else. Just based on who she is and her family lineage, she would have a VAST amount of immediate overness on her debut, as least to the wrestling community, if not the mainstream media as you suggest here.

"Overness" is probably something that needs a slight rework in that sense.

Absolutely that's another thing we can't really do we can't have a Kane like or Okada like debut just immediately take a pretty much unknown guy to near major star status for a bigger company with just a debut angle or win or at most a few big angles.

[Self]

6 minutes ago, moststay said:

Absolutely that's another thing we can't really do we can't have a Kane like or Okada like debut just immediately take a pretty much unknown guy to near major star status for a bigger company with just a debut angle or win or at most a few big angles.

You can totally do this now. Take any unknown guy and have him take on your main event talent from Day 1. There will be some penalties (not scary) and it will take some time for fans to accept him as a main event guy, but if you want someone to be a top guy you can do it. Eventually it will pay off. Eventually. And I think that's accurate. Often WWE will bring someone in, treat them like a big deal, then two years later when they've flopped and are back on the indies no one is talking about them. So their overness never was particularly high. It was just the booking. 

 

Maybe Momentum could be refined and iterated on. A big splashy first appearance creating a big wave of bonuses to counter-act the penalties from someone being unknown... and then slowly as the novelty wears off the bonuses get fewer and you need to hope beyond hope the guy has the talent to earn his position. I love the idea of Momentum being a big factor in fan perception, but I'm not sure it quite works perfectly to be given that responsibility yet.

 

[EdJames]

36 minutes ago, moststay said:

Absolutely that's another thing we can't really do we can't have a Kane like or Okada like debut just immediately take a pretty much unknown guy to near major star status for a bigger company with just a debut angle or win or at most a few big angles.

Yes, that notion of debuting a relative unknown with a huge win and establishing them as an instant upper midcarder.

Think Cena's debut, Kevin Owens, Brock. If they debut with 6 Overness and beat a top guy, the rub they get should be HUGE.

[SanX]

7 minutes ago, EdJames said:

Yes, that notion of debuting a relative unknown with a huge win and establishing them as an instant upper midcarder.

Think Cena's debut, Kevin Owens, Brock. If they debut with 6 Overness and beat a top guy, the rub they get should be HUGE.

I won't even mind if it has a binary effect aka you either destroy momentum and pop of both guys or the new guy gets the rub and gets a huge momentum bonus like self has said.

[MiykaelP]

I hope the game makes it much more difficult to say sign workers to a 5 to 10 year contract. It is way to easy to spam cheap 10 year contracts on young workers, when in reality almost no one in their right mind with a good agent would ever do it unless it is like some sort of crazy high priced Undertaker deal.  

[229tman]

I am so excited to see the return of touring contracts!

[Almaida]

Yeah I love the return of touring contracts, and am intrigued by workers being more selective in who they sign with (if I understood that part correctly). Always thought it was a bit clunky that international workers could jump back and forth across the Pacific on consecutive days for touring shows, so I'm hopeful that works a little more naturally this time around.

Everything else from today looks great to me too, especially title records, global comparisons and cutting child companies loose - I've been hoping for that for a long time now. I'm getting more excited by the day at this point.  

[JrSquared]

I’d love a way for a child company to politic its way out from under a company. Could lead to interesting “what ifs.” Like what if NXT succeeded from WWE during the Triple H NXT era. 
 

The title tracking and on this day (I see clearly) are great additions. The comparison thing is interesting.

Does it accurately reflect the scouting or in adding? like looking at a prospect does it refine the more scouted they become? 

[PaperMachete]

Totally missed this. Very exciting! Will be a day one buy.

[Astil]

1 hour ago, EdJames said:

Yes, that notion of debuting a relative unknown with a huge win and establishing them as an instant upper midcarder.

Think Cena's debut, Kevin Owens, Brock. If they debut with 6 Overness and beat a top guy, the rub they get should be HUGE.

All of the rw examples here were not instant success. Cena was a midcarder, Owens was over from the indies and Brock was a memace build which is still possible in game, Kane was Issac Yankem for his midcard run and just got a momentum reset for debuting and Okada was an international superstar in the social media age. 

I cannot think of an unknown who jumped the line but I am sure one exists.

[Yuzu Adagio]

Super hyped for the stats, awards, and especially the global stat comparison.  I'm hoping stat comparison shows up in the editor too, I'm not very good at scaling!

[Almaida]

2 hours ago, Self said:

Maybe Momentum could be refined and iterated on. A big splashy first appearance creating a big wave of bonuses to counter-act the penalties from someone being unknown... and then slowly as the novelty wears off the bonuses get fewer and you need to hope beyond hope the guy has the talent to earn his position. I love the idea of Momentum being a big factor in fan perception, but I'm not sure it quite works perfectly to be given that responsibility yet.

 

Yeah I agree with this; I also think momentum could be a little more dynamic overall. On the one end, I think it should be possible for a really spectacular debut (angle or match) to result in more than just Warm, and maybe a string of strong performances right out the gate could heat someone up quicker than normal. And on the other end, I think it's too easy to maintain White Hot once it's finally been reached. It'd be cool if lackluster matches/angles could cool someone off more easily, to replicate how fleeting momentum can be in real life.

[what7]

11 minutes ago, Astil said:

All of the rw examples here were not instant success. Cena was a midcarder, Owens was over from the indies and Brock was a memace build which is still possible in game, Kane was Issac Yankem for his midcard run and just got a momentum reset for debuting and Okada was an international superstar in the social media age. 

I cannot think of an unknown who jumped the line but I am sure one exists.

Isaac Yankem's popularity (or even fake Nash) did not translate to Kane's popularity. Like at all. I doubt even 5% of the audience knew they were the same people at that time. But that would raise another issue I have, and that's a workers popularity vs a gimmicks popularity, which is not something that exists in the TEW series.

But Okada is an interesting case, which I feel would not be easily replicable in the game. Okada is/was huge in Japan, but he barely worked in the US, and NJPW doesn't have that large of a distribution/broadcast in the USA. But due to social media and his own status in Japan, he was easily accepted by fans and this huge star from elsewhere. Now, the game does have spillover, but it would not raise his pop in the US to the extent in which he would be a viable challenger for the AEW World Championship (or the WWE Championship if he had decided to go there instead). In the game, his segments/matches rating in shows held in the US would probably get a big dent in these companies (especially WWE) due to a lack of popularity in the US. I feel like it should be possible for the game to reduce the penalty if the worker has a very big popularity rating in some other region to simulate these kind of legends/superstars coming into another region.

[Chaos Zarak]

I'm not going to lie... Global stat comparison is not something that I thought I needed until now... Love the idea of been able to see how my workers match up against others around the world.

The return of touring contracts is interesting however I was not a huge fan of them back in the earlier editions (might be because I rarely did touring company's back then so was only ever on the losing end of those contracts for my workers). Will see when the release comes and hopefully the new way in which this has been implemented will win me over.

Exited to see what other new features will be revealed on Monday. 

[D.W.]

This trend of bringing back old abandoned features is giving me some hope. Hopefully custom products and letter grades are next...

[piccamo]

These are all really cool changes but I have a question regarding touring contracts. When you say that the worker moves to the location for the duration of the tour, does that mean that they only work that region temporarily (like an American on tour in Japan will now only be available in Japan), that they move there for travel cost purposes (Japanese touring company doesn't need to cover travel costs but if they go back to work in MAW and have Travel Covered in their contract, MAW has to pony up), or something else?

Also, while I agree that there are many workers who are associated primarily with one company, there are also workers who tend to work for multiple at the same time. Could there be an attribute that allows some subset of workers to be more likely to work multiple companies at once?

[Teh_Showtime]

41 minutes ago, Astil said:

All of the rw examples here were not instant success. Cena was a midcarder, Owens was over from the indies and Brock was a memace build which is still possible in game, Kane was Issac Yankem for his midcard run and just got a momentum reset for debuting and Okada was an international superstar in the social media age. 

I cannot think of an unknown who jumped the line but I am sure one exists.

I agree with all these except Okada, he wasn’t close to an international superstar. He lost almost every match he had in TNA so much so that he literally got laughed out the building when he returned and challenged Tanahashi (after a mediocre showing that same night)

 

I think in his case he just had a super strong gimmick, and was paired with people like Shinsuke plus managed by Gedo

[Self]

11 minutes ago, what7 said:

But Okada is an interesting case, which I feel would not be easily replicable in the game. Okada is/was huge in Japan, but he barely worked in the US, and NJPW doesn't have that large of a distribution/broadcast in the USA. But due to social media and his own status in Japan, he was easily accepted by fans and this huge star from elsewhere. Now, the game does have spillover, but it would not raise his pop in the US to the extent in which he would be a viable challenger for the AEW World Championship (or the WWE Championship if he had decided to go there instead). In the game, his segments/matches rating in shows held in the US would probably get a big dent in these companies (especially WWE) due to a lack of popularity in the US. I feel like it should be possible for the game to reduce the penalty if the worker has a very big popularity rating in some other region to simulate these kind of legends/superstars coming into another region.

Honestly, I'd say Okada would be around 40-50 popularity in the US. The fans who know him, really know him... but a lot of fans in that market don't. Or mostly know him as the Young Bucks' friend who was a big deal in a foreign company. Overness has to take into account non-internet fans. Is 50 enough to challenge for the AEW World Title? Absolutely. You can book whatever you want. Even if you want to argue the champion is around 70 pop, that should still be a cracking match, especially given the worker's skills.

There's a battle between perception and reality. In the context of the show, newcomers like Okada or Kane or early Braun Strowman may be put on the same level as the main event talent from day one... but that isn't overness. That's just writing. Overness develops over time, if that writing continues.

I do think spillover should be much stronger in the modern era. Internet exists. These days I'm as likely to hear about an indy upstart in Australia as I am to hear about one the next town over. 

[Astil]

2 minutes ago, Teh_Showtime said:

I agree with all these except Okada, he wasn’t close to an international superstar. He lost almost every match he had in TNA so much so that he literally got laughed out the building when he returned and challenged Tanahashi (after a mediocre showing that same night)

 

I think in his case he just had a super strong gimmick, and was paired with people like Shinsuke plus managed by Gedo

I meant when joined aew not when he returned from excursion.

[Astil]

A way to filter the stat comparison by game region would be awesome as well.

[Acey]

3 hours ago, jakaryus said:

Honestly, I will start my message with this: all the changes so far are great, and thank you Adam & the team for this.

if I want to be greedy, I hope the next step in this dev journal is to make the game "harder", I may be in the minority here (not sure, I don't come to GDS very often haha) but while fantasy booking is great, I get bored of my saves quite quickly if that's all I have, TEW is my favourite game of the genre because it's hard, but I hope it's taken to the next level.

Let me explain myself: What I love the most about TEW save is when you're a top 3 company in the world and you compete with the top 2, there are workers at the end of their contract etc. Right now, I feel like the AI isn't punitive enough, and you make so much money that you can just sign the biggest star in the #1 company even if you're the #3 and smaller than them/make less money.

We should have more emphasis on finance, i'm not saying we should play finance simulator, but there is a good middle ground that TEW haven't reached (yet): At some point in a save, you wont care about money anymore, you make so much of it that you can sign whoever for whatever money, imo it should be nerfed and harder to make a lot of money so that you can't sign the whole planet when competing against some companies. We should also nerf the fact that it's much easier to sign a worker by adding years on his contract even if you don't pay him more.

I also wish that companies were overall more agressive, if i'm WCW competing against WWF, I want WWF to try to sign every top worker I have when their contract end and REALLY compete. When you're at war with a company and your rating are more or less the same, the AI should be more agressive, if you're trying to overtake another company, try a bold move (for example TNA in 2010 changing Impact's day to match RAW, sure it ended up being a flop but they tried).

Bit of a messy post i'm sorry, but basically I'm hoping that the AI becomes more competitive, way more agressive and that the game is more focussed on company war when it happen

The core point here is absolutely spot on, but I think a lot of it will simply be solved by a better financial ecosystem for bigger companies.

The reason, for example, TCW can outbid SWF and USPW on every top free agent is because all three are making such incredible amounts of money from the busted system, that it ultimately comes down to the AI companies eventually just quitting the bidding war, and TCW ending up paying $500k to Nicky Champion or something.

In the real world, paying the biggest salary in all of wrestling to a top star would put a third-biggest company at risk of imminent bankruptcy - think Hogan-Era TNA. But with the current financial system TCW will probably still be profitable even after signing Champion, Golden, and Remo.

If the financial system actually holds medium and higher companies to financial account, I think it will fix most of the brokenness you speak of.

You can still fork out $500k for Nicky Champion as TCW (just as TNA made genuine attempts to sign Ospreay, Mercedes, etc recently), but if you get him, you'll have to maximise his popularity to grow your company's income, or risk going bankrupt.

[Mattywood]

4 hours ago, SolidDavidGold said:

Global skill comparison is, for me anyway, the best feature in my history of dev journals here, and I've been around since TEW08.

Why did I read this in Tony Schiavone's voice? 😁

In all seriousness, I am looking forward to looking at global skill comparisons & title stats. And I'm so glad that Touring contracts are back, & beyond stoked we're getting multi-day events.

[Acey]

8 minutes ago, Self said:

Honestly, I'd say Okada would be around 40-50 popularity in the US. The fans who know him, really know him... but a lot of fans in that market don't. Or mostly know him as the Young Bucks' friend who was a big deal in a foreign company.

Not really the point of this thread, but I'd contend that almost everyone who watches AEW would have good knowledge of Okada, given the "smart" nature of the audience. 

That said, I think the Okada situation points to the fact that "popularity" is difficult to truly quantify in its current form. To "smart" US wrestling fans, Okada is far bigger a deal than, say, Gangrel. Yet if you did a random poll of people on the street, I imagine more people in the US would have heard of Gangrel. Who should have more pop? [Maybe Gangrel is too niche and a bad example. Insert lower-card WWE wrestler from the 90s/00s instead if it fits better].

[jamarcus]

28 minutes ago, Acey said:

Not really the point of this thread, but I'd contend that almost everyone who watches AEW would have good knowledge of Okada, given the "smart" nature of the audience. 

That said, I think the Okada situation points to the fact that "popularity" is difficult to truly quantify in its current form. To "smart" US wrestling fans, Okada is far bigger a deal than, say, Gangrel. Yet if you did a random poll of people on the street, I imagine more people in the US would have heard of Gangrel. Who should have more pop? [Maybe Gangrel is too niche and a bad example. Insert lower-card WWE wrestler from the 90s/00s instead if it fits better].

But that would happen to much of the current stars of AEW and WWE, not just Okada.

Billy Gunn is probably more well know than Drew McIntyre, for example