TEW IX Developer's Journal Discussion Thread

[what7]

35 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. 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. 

I'm not disputing his pop should be in the 50's in the US. That's why I was saying that the penalty you get for the lower pop in the place the show was held should, in some way, be reduced due to his status in another country.

 

It grinds my gears that if I'm WCW/WWF in the early 00's and I try to run a supershow with NJPW (via talent loans), and I run a match like Sting/Steve Austin vs Keiji Mutoh/Kawada, Sting would most likely get a pop penalty in Japan or Mutoh would get one in the US, when they are two of the biggest names/legends in their respective countries (just not global superstars in the sense they do not have that huge popularity level everywhere), which would by definition make it a dream match anywhere it took place. This is not a discussion about initial popularity levels from mods, but more considering usual in-game experience with popularity growth.

[Wrestling Machine]

Pardon continuing the off topic, but in TEW terms AEW is a Medium size company and inside the promotion Okada is Recognisable, The Bucks are Well Known, Billy Gunn is Well Known, Ospreay is Well Known closer to become a Star. Not sure about the POP numerically but that's how it would be imho.

Edited July 5 by Wrestling Machine

[MiykaelP]

16 minutes ago, Wrestling Machine said:

Pardon continuing the off topic, but in TEW terms AEW is a Medium size company and inside the promotion Okada is Recognisable, The Bucks are Well Known, Billy Gunn is Well Known, Ospreay is Well Known closer to become a Star. Not sure about the POP numerically but that's how it would be imho.

I think Okada would be definitely Well Known at least being Continental Champ and getting a strong reception with the crowd. Ospreay is really over and I think he might be a Star within AEW in TEW terms already with all the people he has already defeated as well as remaining strong in lone defeat vs the World Champ Swerve Strickland. MJF would be a Major Star who Will is likely to face at ALL IN. IMO 

Edited July 5 by MiykaelP
typo

[Yuzu Adagio]

1 hour ago, what7 said:

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.

That's on my wishlist, although it hurts my head thinking about the logistics.  But a way to distinguish gimmicks that are not acknowledged as the same guy (Kane v. Yankem), or gimmicks that are over independently of the person(s) behind them (Doink, Black Scorpion, The Anonymous Raw GM, Tiger Mask) would be pretty flippin cool.

Kinda ties into my earlier wish of better ways to build up mystery people, too.  Let me build up "whoever's been sending the champ those letters" without ticking the guy off from underuse, then maybe let me reveal that later to transfer the boost to him.

Edited July 5 by Yuzu Adagio
expanding thought

[GoldenBrady]

I think product already helps with the issue a little in that for a promotion like AEW, they should be using a product that better balances popularity with in ring ability when calculating match ratings, helping with the fact that Okada shouldn't exactly be getting horrendous ratings because he's not known in the US and should be able to gain pop fairly quickly. 

Maybe it's something that could be expanded further with the product where having a product that caters to more "smarks" would see a wrestlers popularity in the promotions area(s) be amplified closer to their popularity in any other area with the balance being that that popularity is only calculated internally to the company and having a smarky product restricts your mainstream appeal/sponsorships/merch sales etc.

For example Okada has 90 pop in Japan, so for AEW his 50 USA pop is amplified x 0.5 to be 75 (For a smaller promotion the amplifier would be smaller like 0.25) for purposes of match rating calculation and merch sales, but with the product as it is, company popularity growth is tougher beyond Medium size and merch sales are capped so that really Okada is just representing a stronger proportion of the company's sales, rather than adding to them. 

[Dawn]

24 minutes ago, Wrestling Machine said:

Pardon continuing the off topic, but in TEW terms AEW is a Medium size company and inside the promotion Okada is Recognisable, The Bucks are Well Known, Billy Gunn is Well Known, Ospreay is Well Known closer to become a Star. Not sure about the POP numerically but that's how it would be imho.

Off topic but why did POP in all caps make me laugh 💀

Good entries to finish the first week! Glad touring contracts are BACK

[Dawn]

1 hour ago, D.W. said:

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

PLEASE give me letter grades again. It's never bad giving us options to choose from and with my first few TEWs I got so used to them I now don't care for the numbers at all...

[DJAPoster]

With the edition of tittle stats, is it a feasible mechanic to be able to view the records holders for new stats that have been added this year? 

 

(ex: Tallest/Shortest Champ, Lightest/Heaviest Champ)

[kon56la]

18 minutes ago, Dawn said:

PLEASE give me letter grades again. It's never bad giving us options to choose from and with my first few TEWs I got so used to them I now don't care for the numbers at all...

I got so used to playing with letter grades and that was the sole reason for not buying 2020. I tried the trial and just couldn't get use to playing with the number grades.

[Markw]

12 minutes ago, DJAPoster said:

With the edition of tittle stats, is it a feasible mechanic to be able to view the records holders for new stats that have been added this year? 

 

(ex: Tallest/Shortest Champ, Lightest/Heaviest Champ)

I would assume that’s not really workable because the game would either have to store everyone’s heights/weights etc. during their reign which isn’t really feasible, or it’d only give their current height/weight which wouldn’t be much use.

[Bobby Brown]

"By request (admittedly from a grand total of one person, but at least he'll be pleased to read this), the data check has been upgraded to flag up contradictory romantic relationships that may have slipped through."

thank you! you're the best, adam! 🙃

[Almaida]

10 minutes ago, Bobby Brown said:

"By request (admittedly from a grand total of one person, but at least he'll be pleased to read this), the data check has been upgraded to flag up contradictory romantic relationships that may have slipped through."

thank you! you're the best, adam! 🙃

Happy for you lol

[Chikbot]

So glad touring contracts are back. They fit the immersion better than just giving foreign guys regular contracts 

[raspymorten]

53 minutes ago, Bobby Brown said:

"By request (admittedly from a grand total of one person, but at least he'll be pleased to read this), the data check has been upgraded to flag up contradictory romantic relationships that may have slipped through."

thank you! you're the best, adam! 🙃

Let's gooooooo! Happy for ya Bob.

[Bobby Brown]

4 minutes ago, raspymorten said:

Let's gooooooo! Happy for ya Bob.

haha! 
have a nice day, raspy! 🙃

[Zero]

Love everything about today’s update. As someone who plays long term saves, love when extra stats are available 

[beatingstuff88]

7 hours ago, Self said:

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.

 

I completely disagree with this, in real life this might work, but this doesn't in TEW, if you tried this all your main event talent would be throwing fits and be furious that they have to lose to an unknown, unless you threw money at them to offset their anger youd have your main event talent walking out in 2 months

[d12345]

6 minutes ago, beatingstuff88 said:

I completely disagree with this, in real life this might work, but this doesn't in TEW, if you tried this all your main event talent would be throwing fits and be furious that they have to lose to an unknown, unless you threw money at them to offset their anger youd have your main event talent walking out in 2 months

What you described as the issue in TEW is how it works in real life too. Imagine if Goldberg's first 5 matches in WCW were him going over Kevin Nash, Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Ric Flair, and Sting in clean decisive squashes. Those guys would be furious, and bonuses would have to be insanely high to counteract that anger. You can do it if there's no creative ctrl, but just like irl it WOULD throw your locker room into chaos...

Edited July 5 by d12345

[Self]

51 minutes ago, beatingstuff88 said:

I completely disagree with this, in real life this might work, but this doesn't in TEW, if you tried this all your main event talent would be throwing fits and be furious that they have to lose to an unknown, unless you threw money at them to offset their anger youd have your main event talent walking out in 2 months

I do agree that the morale impact is a little harsh at the moment. Established stars should certainly be annoyed at being asked to lose to the younger, fresher wrestlers who are coming in to replace them, but it seems a bit too much, too fast, with grudges held too long. One loss shouldn't be a massive deal, depending on the personality. More tools to make them forget about it would be appreciated. I thought this is what the Promises system would be for, but it hasn't appeared to be in my games. 

Midcarders on the other hand should be annoyed. All of them, all of the time, grumbling about not getting that push. Thinking they'd be The Rock is they only got the chance. 

[Questlove]

5 hours ago, Self said:

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.

This is true in real world terms but this all becomes a problem in TEW where the current implementation of the "perception" system is it's literally just interpreting popularity as a description without taking anything else into context, except for momentum which really isn't enough of a boost for something like a guy coming in and debuting by taking out a host of major stars but still being perceived as unimportant - too many examples to even mention here over the decades but consider Jacob Fatu or Kevin Owens as recent examples I guess

Overness, perception and arguably name value should all be totally different things with not a lot of crossover in terms of their effects 

[Paxlux]

9 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.

Yes please. My biggest pet peeve in 2020 is that companies almost never go out of business. The only time I've seen a company go out of business is if the AI tricks itself into upgrading it's production value higher than it can afford (this feature should be fixed btw, because it makes no sense for small companies with very little income to do this. I think capping production values based on size would be an easy fix).

But yeah, because it's so easy in TEW to make money, long-term saves end up a broken mess. Small companies make enough money to afford anyone they want, their production values skyrocket, and it just takes away any semblance of realism. Smaller companies should be a struggle to keep up and running, it shouldn't take screwing up severely just to run the risk of going out of business.

[JrSquared]

49 minutes ago, Paxlux said:

Yes please. My biggest pet peeve in 2020 is that companies almost never go out of business. The only time I've seen a company go out of business is if the AI tricks itself into upgrading it's production value higher than it can afford (this feature should be fixed btw, because it makes no sense for small companies with very little income to do this. I think capping production values based on size would be an easy fix).

But yeah, because it's so easy in TEW to make money, long-term saves end up a broken mess. Small companies make enough money to afford anyone they want, their production values skyrocket, and it just takes away any semblance of realism. Smaller companies should be a struggle to keep up and running, it shouldn't take screwing up severely just to run the risk of going out of business.

ECW, ROH, WCW, and TNA all have confirmed to operate at a loss for significant periods of their tenure. AEW is supposed to be profitable. WWE was barely afloat before Wrestlemania and during the 83 weeks WCW was winning. Historically, wrestling companies have hard time being financially stable. I’m not looking for mission impossible but def think we should see a harsher economy. 

[Searley95]

8 hours 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.

Cena was nearly fired before he started rapping to Rey Mysterio at the back of a bus if I recall?

With regards to Owens being over from the indies, it'd be good to have a system in place in-game to recognise this. Realistically before NXT Owens' popularity wouldn't be too high, but him joining NXT and the turn on Sami would've generated hype and momentum online wouldn't it? idk, just seems like it doesn't matter much when you sign a top indie guy and debut them. 

[Jaysin]

I typically have a medium sized touring developmental promotion when I play as a WCW or WWE level promotion. Will developmental promotions have touring contracts or will they have regular contracts? Not sure if I'm overthinking this or not lol

Also, in regards to hiatus notice, does that apply for every way someone can leave for awhile? Like musicians, actors, MMA fighters etc?

[Peria]

Love all the things stat lovers are getting, this was a great entry for me personally.