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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 16:09:19 GMT 1
TEW2020 Announcement & Developer's Journal #1: Playing as child companies
A new addition to the game is the ability for the user to play as the owner or booker of another promotion's child company. This mode works in the same way as running a normal company, except that the player must deal with several extra challenges - primarily that the parent can send workers there for development, call workers up, fire workers, and has the final say on all matters which means that they can, for example, block certain actions that the child company wishes to take. They do, however, have the advantage of not having to worry too much about finances (as any profit or loss is absorbed by the parent and so it's impossible to go bankrupt), although the parent is not going to be happy if the financial performance is overly poor.
The child company has the option of whether to proactively sign talent or just utilise the workers they are provided with by the parent. However, they have no power to fire workers who have been sent there on developmental contracts and so must be very careful about roster management, especially when it comes to negative influences.
This mode is unrestricted in that the player can run a child company regardless of whether the parent is human or AI controlled. If the parent is AI controlled, they will always give the child a warning ahead of time if they are planning to call someone up, giving the user time to switch any titles, do a farewell match, etc. If the parent is human-controlled then it is entirely up to that player - they are free to do things without warning if they so wish. #2: Quality of life changes
In this entry, rather than looking at a new feature I'll instead be discussing some of the small changes that have a big improvement on the user's quality of life.
As we've confirmed before, TEW2020 is going to be at a 1366x768 resolution which means that it's physically wider than previous games. One of the things you'll notice when playing the game is that the extra space has been used to combine many screens into one. To give just one example, the Brands screen, which used to consist of many separate windows, is now housed entirely on one screen. This means less clicking for the user and is more intuitive as you'll have access to more information in one place.
TEW2020 will also feature the same sort of interface as WMMA5 given that that was so popular with people (if you haven't played WMMA5 you can see an example in screen shot #3 here). This means that there'll be a customisable control bar at the bottom of the screen where you can have quick links to various sections, jump to worker or company summaries, etc. This makes life a lot easier for the player as you can set it up, for example, so that you can go straight to your roster or past results without ever leaving the main web site screen. Again, this potentially saves you lots of clicking and is more intuitive.
A very small change that will have an enormous benefit is the new "flash message" system. In the horizontal taskbar at the top of the game is an area that tells you what version you are currently playing. This doubles as a message display too. For example, suppose you hit the Save button. Normally you'd get a pop-up confirmation window which would require you to pause and click OK to shut it. In TEW2020 this confirmation window is entirely removed. Instead, the version text disappears and the word "Saved" will flash up (in a different colour to get your attention) for two seconds before fading out and going back to showing the version. This system replaces all the confirmation windows in the game, thus potentially saving you hundreds, if not thousands, of pauses and clicks.
The final small change I'll be discussing today is the new look for windows. Each window in the game now has three icons in its taskbar (as in the bar at the top of the window you use to drag it around): Notepad, Handbook, and Close. Firstly this means that the notepad is always available, no matter where you are. Secondly, it means that you can always get to the Player's Handbook with a single click. The Handbook is extremely detailed in TEW2020 and also has the added advantage that it will automatically jump to the correct section - so if you're in the Finance section and hit the Handbook icon, you'll not only open the Handbook window but also immediately be looking at the section related to finances. Finally, the Close button is now in the top right hand corner rather than it's traditional place in the bottom right. This will take you a few days to get used to when you play, but is ultimately more user friendly as it means the windows make better use of the available space.
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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 16:10:25 GMT 1
#3: On-the-fly bookingThis will be a very short journal entry for a very large change! TEW2020 will feature on-the-fly booking for the first time. This means that when you're running a show you can "drop out" of the live event and back to the booking screen whenever you like. Obviously you won't be able to alter segments that have already taken place, but you can edit the rest of the show. This allows for both proactive and reactive changes. In the former camp, you might feel you're losing the crowd and so move one of your more exciting matches forward in order to wake them back up. You might want to change someone's character details so that they can work multiple matches on the same show under different identities. As far as reacting goes, injuries or audibles might force you to rebook parts of the show, or you may just be so impressed or horrified by someone's performance that you want to rebook a later segment to add them in or write them out. All in all, this just gives you a lot of extra flexibility and makes the shows feel more like a real live experience.
#4: Switching Player Order
In previous games you've always had to play in turn order but that's now been thrown out the window. During AM mode, there's now a Switch Player button on the left hand menu. You can switch back and forth to your heart's content, even multiple times per turn. So, player A can do his thing, player B can then come in and do some stuff, player A can come back and do things, etc, etc. The turn only ends when all the players have set themselves as being done. Obviously this has no impact if you only play single player games, but I think this is a real bonus if you're doing a multi player game or like to control multiple companies at once.
(This next bit is super minor, but I'm going to throw it in as it's so closely related to the above.)
In PM mode, in the past it was always split so that all the players ran their shows, then the AI. There's nothing particularly bad about this method, but it did mean there was one annoying niggle in that the AI would have to "guess" who would have been used on the big AI-controlled shows and this was not always 100% accurate - it meant that occasionally smaller companies did not have access to talent that technically they should have.
What happens in the new game is that the shows happen in size order, regardless of whether the company is controlled by a human or the AI. This means that the guesswork is removed, so if a bigger company does not utilise one of their roster then that worker is potentially available to work for a smaller company that night. As I said above, this is a really minor change and, honestly, I doubt if most people would have even noticed, but it does get rid of a small irritation and I wanted to flag it up so that people didn't mistakenly think that they could switch player order in PM mode too.
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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 16:11:30 GMT 1
#5: Event IntentEach event in TEW2020 can be given an intent; this tells the game how it is being promoted to the fans and what its aim is. The four levels are Normal, Lesser, Tour, and Throwaway. Normal is the default and is what you're used to from previous games. Lesser shows get a slightly reduced attendance level and are less powerful with regards to altering the company's popularity - a show needs to be much better or worse to trigger gains or losses. This type of show is for events that have a relatively weak line-up or aren't being treated overly seriously. Tour shows are specifically meant to be part of Japanese-style tours (more on them in a later entry) and are not designed for use outside of a company that is running that sort of schedule. These shows are automatically not broadcast (but can be taped for highlights) and the attendance levels are much lower than normal. The fans are more lenient however, so a show has to be particularly awful to lose popularity. It's very hard to gain popularity from these type of shows due to their nature. Throwaway shows are specifically designed to be used for charity shows, one-off tributes, etc, where there is no pretense that the card is going to be a serious spectacle (or even fit continuity). Attendances will be very low and a show would have to be absolutely amazing or dire to have any affect on popularity. These intent levels therefore give the user a little more creative leeway and allow for some real life situations to be covered. #6: TEW2020 save game to database converter
I think this is one of the more requested features over the years, so I'm glad to finally be able to include this one.
TEW2020 contains a new feature which turns a save game directly into a new database. It's located in the Options menu (right above the existing button to make an MDB file). The resulting database then works like any other mod - you can edit it via the main editor, use it to launch new games, etc.
(I know some people only skim read these posts, so I'm just going to highlight that this is converting a TEW2020 save game into a database. It does not mean you can continue TEW2016 saves in the new game.)
This could potentially be useful in a number of ways. If you're playing and end up with a particularly interesting game world, this would be a great way to turn it into a mod and share it with people. I'd imagine it's going to be incredibly useful for those of you who like playing organic mods. It's also has a lot of potential for ageing scenarios - for example, you might take the default data, run ten years, and then use this to create a "CornellVerse 2030" mod. It's also going to be good for creating "what if?" scenarios.
As the resulting database is made directly from the save game there shouldn't ever be any need to do any subsequent work to make the mod playable, although as I'm guessing most people strip out the unused avatars at the start of each game you might want to do a quick import to add some back in.
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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 16:12:38 GMT 1
#7: Venues and locationsThis is more of a structural / conceptual change rather than a playable feature, but I think it will have a very positive impact overall. The Locations that you're familiar with from previous games are now categorised into two groups, Locations and Venues. (They're still within the same file within the editor, so there's no extra clicking involved.) Venues are specific buildings (like "Madison Square Garden"). These have all the detail you're used to, like a capacity and open and closing dates. They also have a new field, "Limited to one company per night", which you can use if you don't like seeing multiple companies occupying the same place at the same time. Locations on the other hand are geographical (as in "Brooklyn" or "Melbourne"). These have less detail, being limited to a maximum capacity (to stop situations where you might have 100,000 people turning up to some small rural town) and an importance rating. The big advantage to this is that a singe Location can give a region all the destinations it needs to serve any number of companies of different sizes, so database makers are potentially saved a ton of work. For example, if you take the Southern England region, in previous games you'd need to realistically provide at least eight different places to work - one to hold a few hundred people, one to hold a thousand or so, one to hold several thousand, and so on. Under the new system, you could make a single Location, "London", with a high maximum capacity and that provides for everyone. Whether a company is drawing 30 or 30,000 fans, they're covered. Or you could make "East London", "West London", etc, if you want to just give a little more variation. So database makers who are happy with that level of detail (or just want to have placeholders for a short time) can fill their game world extremely quickly and when you're reading the results you're going to see "Promotion drew 150 people to London", "Promotion drew 20,000 people to London", and it'll all make sense and look correct. Of course, the database makers who want to go super detailed and have nothing but real venues can also do it their way, they just use multiple Venues rather than Locations. Or you can mix and match, so you might have nothing but real life Venues filling somewhere like Tri State but give Hawaii just a single Location.
#8: Areas and regions
I've been asked to provide a breakdown of the areas and regions of the game world, so that will be today's entry. USA: Great Lakes, Mid Atlantic, Mid South, Mid West, New England, North West, South East, South West, Tri State, Puerto Rico, Hawaii Canada: The Maritimes, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, British Columbia Mexico: Occidente, Centro, Sur, Sureste, Noroccidente, Noreste British Isles: Wales, Ireland, Southern England, Scotland, Northern England, Midlands Japan: Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku, Chugoku, Kansai, Chubu, Kanto, Tohoku Europe: Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Central Europe, Southern Europe, Southern Mediterranean, Iberia, Northern Europe, Russia Oceania: New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand India: North India, Central India, South India So, you have an expanded Mexico, Wales coming in, Europe getting reorganised, and India debuting. The game world screen has also been totally redesigned so that's it's a single screen, no pop ups, and each area and region has a proper bio and stats screen giving you text descriptions of exactly what each region covers (i.e. what states are in each US region, what countries are in each Euro region, etc), the spillover, etc, so that should be much more intuitive and user friendly.
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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 16:14:07 GMT 1
#9: Attributes
Coming into the game from the WMMA series, Attributes will be making their debut in 2020.
Attributes are essentially tags that can be assigned to workers to give them specific quirks or abilities. These range from personality changers (like "Party Animal" and "Troublemaker") to lifestyle effects (like "Former Hard Drug User" or "Straight Edge") to ones that change what a worker is willing to do (like "Daredevil" which means they are always willing to do crazy and stunt bumps). A worker with no attributes simply uses the default behaviour.
As you can guess from the above examples, this replaces the old personality system and the old lifestyle system. It also incorporates what used to be represented by the acting / musician / etc tick boxes.
Attributes can be assigned via the editor and will also be gained, lost, and developed over the course of gameplay.
Each attribute can also be set as Permanent (meaning that it can never be lost, obviously) and Hidden (meaning that it will be invisible during gameplay; otherwise it will be freely seen when viewing a worker). Hidden attributes lose that designation if they become known (such as if a worker fails a drugs test).
There are several advantages to this system. From a player's perspective, it's now far more intuitive; rather than having to try and figure out what a worker's personality settings might mean, you can see immediately whether they are going to be someone who'll be up for taking crazy bumps, etc. Their personality and outside interests are also going to be clear in one look rather than having to search through sub-menus. You're also getting more unique workers who can have all sorts of different quirks to make them feel more alive.
For people writing or editing databases, this marks a significant cut in workload when creating workers. It also removes a lot of guesswork when it comes to behaviour as you don't need to try and fiddle with the various personality settings to try and create specific effects - you just pick the effect you want from the Attribute list and apply it. This also opens up options that weren't previously available; for example, if you really want a wrestler who is quite conservative in terms of personality but will happily engage in hardcore matches you can do this very easily.
Another advantage of this system is that it's very easy to add in new attributes when and if they're needed, so if there are any real life (or fantasy) situations where a specific quirk is needed to model a specific person, it's very easy to patch in the necessary Attribute.
I won't be giving a list of the Attributes at this point simply because we're nowhere near finished with them - at the moment only the basics and a few specific quirks have been added - and I expect there to be at least a hundred or so more added by the time we get to the testing phase.
As a side note, the TEW2016->TEW2020 converter automatically fills in Attributes for you, so that will also remove a lot of work for database makers.
#10: Company sizes
The way that company sizes work has been totally redone for TEW2020.
First of all, the names of the seven categories have changed. They are now Insignificant, Tiny, Small, Medium, Big, Large, and Titanic. This is primarily a cosmetic change as I didn't like Cult (as it has some pejorative associations and also has a different meaning in regards to products) and the old National and International names don't necessarily fit anymore.
The criteria for each level has been totally redone, with two particularly important changes.
The first change is that there's no longer both Importance and Popularity - now you just have the latter. This makes the system easier to understand as there's only one set of values and absolutely no maths involved, and it means you can't drop in size "out of the blue" because a region's importance level changed. Regions can still be more or less important though, as we'll cover in a moment.
The second change is that the criteria for each size is unique to your company's home base. That means that playing a company in the Tri State region will involve different challenges and strategies than playing in the North West, which will be different to Puerto Rico, which will be different to Scotland, etc, etc.
We'll now look at this in more detail.
Taking a Puerto Rican company for example, the criteria are as follows:
Tiny: "Laying The Foundation" - Achieve 17 popularity in your home region. Small: "Building a Fanbase" - Achieve 35 popularity in your home region. Medium: "Establishing A Stronghold" - Achieve 65 popularity in your home region. Big: "Seat Of Power" - Achieve 89 popularity in your home region, plus 77 in Mid Atlantic, Mid South, and South East regions. Large: "International Expansion" - Achieve Big size and also 71 throughout the regions of either Canada or Mexico. Titanic: "American Domination": Achieve Large size and also 77 in every region of the game world.
The "Laying The Foundation" and "Building A Fanbase" are the same for every company in the game world, for reference, as they simulate building your company up.
By contrast, a Great Lakes based company would have:
Medium: "Expanding East" - Achieve 59 popularity in your home region, plus 35 in either Mid Atlantic or Tri State. Big: "Taking The East" - Achieve 77 popularity across eastern America (Great Lakes, Mid Atlantic, New England, South East, Tri State). Large: "International Expansion" - Achieve Big size and also 71 throughout the regions of either Canada or Mexico. Titanic: "American Domination": Achieve Large size and also 77 in every region of the game world.
As you can see, with a Puerto Rican company you're going to be concentrating hard on your home base and will be very insular until eventually making a move into mainland America only when you're already firmly established, whereas the Great Lakes company is going to be spreading outward pretty quickly. The same thing applies throughout the world, so a Scottish promotion is going to want to be looking to Ireland and the north of England before eventually spreading down towards London, whereas Mexican companies are always going to be drawn towards Mexico City. The expansions are always logically based on geography, but you'll still have a lot of freedom as to where you want to go: for example, if you start with a company slap bang in the middle of America you're going to be able to have a lot of freedom over which direction you want to expand toward.
The criteria are shown on the Size screen in-game so that you'll always know what is expected of you to go up (or down) in size. They take exactly the same form as I've written them out above, where you have a "title" and then an exact description of what popularity you need in which regions.
The nice thing about this system is that key markets become strategically very important, more so even than in TEW2016. For example, if you're playing as a Mexican company then you know that to be a player on the national stage you're going to have to go into Mexico City at some point because that's the most important place in the country - without making a splash there, you're not going to be able to rise to the bigger sizes. However, everyone else knows that too: whether the other companies are AI or human controlled, they're also going to be eyeing up Mexico City. So, as a consequence, regional battles are going to naturally flare up and become very important. This makes the game world feel more alive, more competitive, and will make you feel more apart of it rather than operating in isolation, as well as making real life key markets feel much more important than they ever have before.
The criteria are designed to be pretty similar in terms of difficulty, so there won't be huge advantages or disadvantages just by virtue of where you are based (other than the natural pros - obviously if you're in Tri State you've got access to a lot more people than a company in Hawaii). For American companies in particular, it's a little easier to get to the bigger sizes than in previous games. As you can see from the Great Lakes example, getting to Big (what used to be "National") doesn't require you to take the whole country, just to be a powerhouse on one coast. This allows situations like WCW in real life, where a company can be a player on a national scale but have the majority of their popularity be in only one half of the States.
Overall, these changes not only make it more intuitive for the player, but it also allows the AI to be smarter about being able to build their companies up over time too so the game should be more competitive from that standpoint. It also makes writing databases slightly easier as you no longer have to play around with regional importance to get the sizes right.
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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 16:15:08 GMT 1
#11: Indy Wrestler Of The Year, injury effects, day one narratives
The criteria for the Independent Wrestler Of The Year has been changed so that it is no longer limited only to workers on independent (i.e. not attached to a specific company) shows; instead, matches from companies below Medium size are also eligible. This gives a wider pool of potential winners and makes the award more realistic.
Injuries now contain an extra piece of information that informs the game how much of an effect they have on a worker's in-ring performance if they wrestle while carrying that injury. Previously this was decided by the injury's level, and so the new way allows a little more accuracy.
Narratives are now allowed to take place on the day the game starts, meaning that mod makers can populate the opening website with welcome messages, special events, etc.
#12: Scheduling
The scheduling of shows has been totally redone for the new game. Here's how it works.
Firstly, each company has a Schedule Strategy. These are the options:
Monthly - The AI creates a schedule with a minimum of one event per month. Almost Weekly - The AI creates a schedule of around one event per week; occasional weeks will be left free. Weekly - A minimum of one event per week, every week. Constant - The AI creates a schedule with regular events throughout the year so that the company never goes more than a few days without a show. TV Or Monthly / TV Or Weekly / TV Or Constant - The AI creates a schedule using the Monthly, Weekly, or Constant strategies that have already been discussed. At the start of each month the company is checked for whether they have an active TV deal; if they do, the events are made dormant, if they don't then the events are made active. Preset Tours - The AI creates a Japanese-style touring schedule based on the parameters it is given (see below). Created Tours - The AI creates a Japanese-style touring schedule from scratch. Preset Seasons - The AI creates a Chikara-style seasonal schedule based on the parameters it is given (see below). Created Seasons - The AI creates a Chikara-style seasonal schedule from scratch.
In all cases, any preset events that have been added via the editor beforehand are incorporated into the schedule.
For Preset Tours and Preset Seasons, the user can give any number of start and end dates and the AI will work within them. Unlike previous games, there are no limits on these, so tours can start mid-month and can be as long or as short as you like. This also ties into the aforementioned Intent feature, as tours will feature lots of smaller shows leading to big tour-ending major events. The difference between Tours and Seasons is relatively minor, it's just that Seasons will consist of normal events (i.e. no touring shows) and they tend to be longer and have bigger "off seasons" than tours do.
When a new game is initialised the AI will create a schedule for every company (whether they're active or not) based on the settings given. This is different from the past where the AI would check every promotion at the start of each month and react according to what it found. This means the initialisation of a new game is several seconds longer, but it cuts down your daily loading times by half a second or more and so overall you're saving a lot of waiting.
The advantage of this new method is not only speed, but also that the player will always have a fully set up schedule when they take over a company - particularly important if you're running a touring company, as it means you don't have to spend ages putting together smaller shows.
There is also one final Schedule Strategy that I didn't include in the above list, and that's Fixed. This means that the AI will stick rigidly to whatever the database maker has preset for them in the editor. This is quite powerful as it gives total control. For example, if you want a company that has an irregular schedule - say two or three big events some months, some months where it's just one event, and sometimes big stretches without any events - that's entirely viable. This allows the database makers to simulate any schedule they want quite easily.
There is one potential drawback with this new scheduling system and that's that because the schedules get set-up at the very start and aren't then checked each month it means that AI companies don't have the ability to alter their events over time (with the exception of the TV Or schedule that I outlined above). That's where a second new feature comes in, Wake and Sleep settings. For every event, database makers can add in a specific date for when the event should "wake" and when it should "go to sleep" (these are optional). When the "wake" date is hit, the event will go from dormant to active (nothing happens if it is already active), and vice versa for the "sleep" date.
What this means is that database makers can create evolving schedules. For example, if you were making a real world historical database you could have the WWF start with the "Big Four" PPVs, with the other eight months having no events at all. Then you could "wake" the In Your House events in the 1990s, then have them go inactive ("sleep") after a few years to be replaced with newer events, then have the schedule change to its modern irregular style of having big events every few weeks.
Of course, player-controlled companies always have complete control over their schedule as they always have, so the player can do what they want, when they want.
So, overall, these new features mean you can effectively model any schedule you like, no matter how crazy; it gives you realistic Japanese tours; it allows, for the first time, you to get away from the "one event a month" model that TEW has been based on since its inception; and it gives database makers extremely powerful tools to create evolving, real-world scenarios. It makes for a much more active, realistic, and lively game world as a result too, as you're likely going to see independent companies in particular running shows far more often. This gives TEW a totally different feel.
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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 16:16:03 GMT 1
#13: AI event instructions, "sticky" searches
The possible instructions for AI events have been expanded, including new match types and the ability to set specific main events as well as 'whole show' booking styles. The possible choices are:
Defend all valid titles (i.e. for "Night of Champions" style shows) All 1 vs 1 All 2 vs 2 All 3 vs 3 All 4 vs 4 All 5 vs 5 All three way singles All four way singles Main event is 1 vs 1 Main event is 2 vs 2 Main event is 3 vs 3 Main event is 4 vs 4 Main event is 5 vs 5 Main event is three way singles Main event is four way singles
These new options allow for a wider variety of shows to be simulated.
Search criteria are now "sticky", meaning that they remain in place unless the player explicitly resets or alters them. Furthermore, they are unique to each player, so the same screen can have different criteria saved for each user. This makes searching more user friendly as you can leave a screen, come back, and not have to re-enter your parameters.
#14: Dojo revamp
The dojo system has been overhauled and expanded to cover wrestling schools, dojos, and performance centres. The new name for this part of the game is "Training Facilities". The three types of facility are as follows.
Wrestling schools are usually owned by a specific worker although they can be privately owned (which simply means they are not attached to anyone in particular). Schools exist purely to pump out new graduates at a regular rate and these workers go directly into the free agent pool. Some graduates will gain a positive relationship with their trainer.
Dojos differ from wrestling schools in that they are linked directly to a specific company who get "first refusal" on graduates. A graduate who gets hired this way is considered a "true born" and will be very loyal to that company.
Performance Centres are effectively super dojos; they do everything a dojo does but have extra benefits. The first benefit is that they have a much higher chance of generating graduates who are former stars from other sports, and unlike dojos and schools, can also produce non-wrestlers like announcers and managers. The second benefit is that the company who owns the PC can send existing workers there to sharpen their skills.
Each facility has two ratings, Training and Facilities. The training level indicates the quality of instruction; the higher the level, the more likely the graduates are to have good skills and potential. The facility level is the size of the premises and how many classes it can support; this impacts how many graduates will be produced per year, and also how many workers can be sent to a PC to sharpen their skills.
Both these ratings can be raised over the course of the game through investment. Increasing the training level is cheaper but leads to higher running costs to pay the staff, whereas increasing the facility is more expensive as a one-off cost but does not raise the running costs as much.
The type of graduation can be set for each training facility. It can either be fluid, which means that graduates will appear throughout the year, or it can be fixed to a specific month when an entire class will graduate at one time. There's no real advantage of disadvantage to this, it's purely for the player's preference.
This new system both better simulates reality and increases the strategic element of the game as choosing if and when to invest, and what to concentrate on, becomes more important. This also makes training facilities less of an afterthought, as under the new system they play a much deeper role in providing the talent pipeline that keeps the game world running.
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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 16:17:09 GMT 1
#15: Area and regional battles
Area battles are reverting to their pre-2016 method whereby they are judged on show quality rather than roster star power due to the feedback from players. Area battles will take place if two companies of Big or greater size hold at least one show in an area during the month. The winner avoids any penalty, second place takes one point of popularity loss in each region of that area, third place loses two points, and so on, with a maximum of five points lost.
Regional battles happen the same way as in previous games, but the pros and cons have changed. The winning company gets a 5% boost to their attendance in that region for the following month. Every other position takes a 5% penalty to their attendances in that region for the following month, except for last place who take a 10% penalty.
Area battles therefore directly hit popularity whereas at a regional level the damage will be primarily financial, reflecting the different priorities of companies at each size range.
As a related change, the options menu now allows the user to toggle area and regional battles as two separate items rather than treating them both as one thing; this means that you can, for example, have area battles turned off while regional battles are turned on (and vice versa).
#16: Company relationships, excursions
The new-look company relationships are as follows.
Each relationship consists of two sections; their respective opinions and the current status.
The opinions show what each company thinks about the other, ranging from Extremely Negative to Extremely Positive, with Neutral in the middle. These will change over the course of the game depending on their actions, and impact how they will react to the other company. Opinions are saved even if two companies have no other visible relationship, meaning that the game can "remember" previous acts of friendship or hostility.
The status consists of multiple statements that can either be true of false. They are:
A Owns B B Owns A They Are Sister Companies A Is Friendly Toward B B Is Friendly Toward A A Has Declared War B Has Declared War A Is Hostile B Is Hostile They Have Agreed To Talent Trade A Agrees Not To Steal From B B Agrees Not To Steal From A A Agrees Not To Sign Workers From B B Agrees Not To Sign Workers From A A Will Accept Excursions From B B Will Accept Excursions From A A Will Accept Developmental Workers From B B Will Accept Developmental Workers From A
(Obviously some combinations are blocked, so a company cannot both have a hostile and friendly attitude at the same time.)
Any of these terms can be proposed / imposed or withdrawn over the course of the game. When a user is dealing with an AI company the response is instant, with players there are Decisions generated instead. With the AI, the opinions come into play - for example, if you've annoyed another company by rejecting all their proposed developmental deals, they may become hostile to you or at least be less likely to accept any further deals. The respective sizes, owner preferences, and relationships between the power players can also come into play.
On top of that, company relationships can have knock-on effects. For example, if you declare war on company A and they have a positive relationship with B, both A and B may declare war on you in response.
Sister companies are a new term introduced in TEW2020. This is an unbreakable bond and means the two companies are always on positive terms, always allies, and will be more willing than normal to interact positively with each other. This is a relatively rare relationship type which does not get generated organically during gameplay - it's designed to simulate real-life companies where they're so closely related that they share a lot of the same workers, staff, and even backstory / canon, such as Chikara and WiF.
This new system offers more flexibility than before as it allows many different combinations. You could, for example, have an agreement to send developmental workers to a company without actually owning them. You could have a one-sided war relationship. Or you could own someone but not have any relationship beyond that (although if you are the parent you can of course always impose a change to the relationship whenever you want). The introduction of the opinion mechanic also means that things are far less black and white than in previous games, and relationships can slowly (or sometimes quickly!) strengthen or weaken over time.
As can be seen from the status list, this also brings about another change from TEW2016 which is that excursions are now controlled and initiated by the companies, not the workers. The mechanic remains mostly the same - a worker is sent out to a foreign company for an extended period of time in order to mature - but it's now for the company to proactively make it happen.
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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 16:18:01 GMT 1
#17:Various title belt changes
The length of AI title reigns has been overhauled to make them more realistic and less likely to always fall within a narrow band of possible number of defences. This better takes into account the time frame and product of the company too.
Titles can now be set as Achievements; this means that the game knows that they're not a physical title and so will not append the word "title" when talking about them. This is useful for real world situations like the Royal Rumble or Money In The Bank where a physical belt is not present as it avoids having immersion-breaking text like "X has won the Royal Rumble title" - instead it'd be simply "X has won the Royal Rumble".
Titles can be set to be an Annual Competition. If this is ticked, the title can be specified as taking place at a specific event (this is optional) and given a format - this tells the game whether it should be competed for in a tournament, a battle royal, or a specific match type. The title can also then be set to either be retained or not; if retained, the champion(s) remain with the titles like normal (useful for things like Money In The Bank where it's an ongoing thing), otherwise they are simply added to the title lineage and the belt goes vacant until the next year (like tournaments in TEW2016). This new system allows better targeting of annual titles (i.e. a tournament no longer always needs to be the first event that a company holds that month) and allows better simulation of real world events like the Royal Rumble or King Of The Ring. It also means you can have more than one annual title per show, so you could have both the Andre The Giant Battle Royal and Money In The Bank set for WrestleMania if you were designing yourself a real world database.
Title belts can now be set to only ever be defended in a specific match type; for example, you could create a singles title that is only ever defended in three-way bouts, or a tag team title that is only ever defended in straight two-on-two action. This is useful particularly if you have titles that you specifically want for multi-wrestler bouts, but also is useful if you have a really prestigious title that you would prefer to only ever be defended head-to-head. These restrictions are for the AI of course, the player can choose to ignore them if he wants.
#18: Talk To Worker
Taken from WMMA5, a new feature to appear in TEW is the ability to 'talk' to workers.
The user can choose to talk to anybody (except other users) in the game world. They are then given a list of possible questions / suggestions / comments that are context-dependent that they can select from. The worker will then give an appropriate response. There's no limit to how many questions you can ask or how often.
A key part of this is 'influence', which is a measure of the user's position within the game world. For example, a user who runs the largest company in the world is going to have a lot of influence and his suggestions will carry considerably more weight than another user who runs a backyard company in the middle of nowhere.
This feature is still being added to as we go along to take into account new and modified features, but at the moment the questions can be subdivided into four categories: Career, In-Ring, Physical, and Lifestyle.
Career includes things like asking someone to consider becoming available to work in a new area, asking them to move their base, to reconsider retirement plans, consider retiring, or consider taking on new roles (like becoming a road agent, for example).
In-Ring includes things like asking them to change their style or change things relating to their in-ring related attributes.
Physical includes things like asking them to get bigger or smaller or proposing that they change body shape (like getting fitter or putting on more muscle mass).
Lifestyle allows you to suggest changes to their behind-the-scenes attributes, like trying to persuade them to stop drinking, drugs, etc
As well as giving a more naturalistic feel to the game, this also makes things more user friendly as a lot of different options are now in a single easily-accessible space rather than being spread across multiple sections of the game. It also adds in things which previously you couldn't directly impact; for example, if you're running the biggest American company and you spot a British talent that you like the look of, you could dangle the carrot of a spot on your roster to get them to become available in the US or even to move house to live near your development territory.
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Post by Big Boss Man on Mar 16, 2020 16:18:59 GMT 1
#19: House Shows
House shows have changed from TEW2016 in the following ways.
Firstly, the user now has control over exactly what days house shows fall on, and can edit that schedule in just a few clicks whenever they want.
Secondly, the house show loop (the regions to be visited and in what order) can be set and modified with just a few clicks too. The user can also move the "next place to visit" whenever they want, so if you want to skip places or reset the loop it's very easy to do in just one or two clicks.
A Smart Booking feature has been added, which can be toggled on or off, that means that the AI will automatically take fatigued or tired workers off the house show schedule temporarily until they recover.
House shows themselves also now have a bigger impact on workers; they can get fatigued over time if they're constantly working and injuries can now occur too (although both at a lesser rate than regular events).
Finally, the finances of house shows have been redone to make the ticket and merchandise sales more realistic and to make running house shows more of an important part of running a larger company due to the revenue they bring in.
#20: Merchandising
Your company's merchandising operation works as follows in TEW2020.
Firstly, you have an overall level between 1 ("Ramshackle") and 10 ("World Class") which tells the game how good your current operation is. The higher it is, the more money you're going to be generating.
There are two revenue streams that fall under merchandising, "live event" and "mail order".
With "live event", this is selling directly to the fans at shows. Based on your overall level you will see a value of revenue per fan; for example, at level 5 you may be told you're getting $3 per fan - so if you then draw 100 people to a show then you can expect to be making $300 that night.
With "mail order", this is selling to your wider fan base on an ongoing basis. This is based on your popularity points in each region. For example, at overall level 5 you may get $10 per popularity point, so if you have 30 popularity points in Quebec then you're going to be getting $300 each month from general sales in that specific region (regardless of whether you hold shows there or not). The wider your popularity, the more money you're going to start to rake in (which makes getting your product onto people's screens even more important than ever before).
You will always be able to see the exact "$ per fan" and "$ per pop point" via your merchandising screen - I've done them in that format because its very easy to understand for everyone. They are estimates however, and can be affected (for good or bad) by things like the economy and whether you have big merch sellers on your roster.
The advantage of this system is that as you grow in popularity and draw more fans you're going to see a direct and measurable impact on merchandising, as you would in reality.
From level 4 onwards, your merchandising operation involves running costs due to its size. These are clearly stated on screen in the merchandising section so that you know exactly what you're paying. It's a single "X per month" figure.
Moving from one overall level to the next requires you to invest in an upgrade. You have three choices: Normal, Conservative, and Rapid. The choice you make affects two factors: how much the upgrade costs per week and how many percentage points of progress it will give you. For example, if you're at the very bottom level then a Normal upgrade costs $50 a week and gives you 12.5% progress per week, whereas Rapid costs $125 per week but gives you 25% - so, as you'd expect, Rapid is going to get you up a level much quicker but you're paying a premium for that benefit. You can change which system you use (or temporarily stop it) whenever you like so that you can take into account your financial situation. This system means that the financial behemoths can flex their financial muscle to power through the process whereas those with tighter purse strings will have to be a little more canny, as in reality.
Upgrading at low levels is quite quick but at high levels it's very slow and expensive. However, getting to the high levels, especially level 10, can result in enormous levels of profits. The idea behind this is to simulate the way the WWE, with its well-established and world class merch operation, has a natural advantage over any potential rival because they've been able to build it up over a long period of time. If you create a new company in game then you're going to have take a lot of time to build up your own operation, and eat the associated costs, whereas a rival with a high level merchandising operation will be sitting pretty making lots of money and not having to worry about further upgrades.
As usual, you can preset all this via the editor.
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