Total Extreme Wrestling IX

TEW IX developer's journal Day 1
Booking Team / Creative Energy And Ideas

Each company can now optionally have a booking team of up to five people. This team is there to assist the head booker in carrying out their duties.

At the start of the night of a show, the booking team meets (even if it's just the head booker working alone). Each member is rated on their Booking Skill and generates a new concept to the game, Creative Energy (CE). The higher the skill levels and better the team work together, the greater the levels of CE they will be able to generate. Some CE is automatically spent on the show to fulfil the basic creativity requirement of putting on a wrestling event (the longer the show is, the more CE is required), with a penalty incurred to your final show rating if you don't have enough. Whatever CE is left over is "banked" and can either be saved to be used on future shows or spent on Creative Ideas, which we'll cover in a moment.

The booking team is a high-pressure environment and will act as a "hot house"; that is, relationships will tend to act as if they're on steroids, with people who would normally be mildly friendly really bonding and people who'd normally be slightly antagonistic becoming enemies. This means that while you can stuff your booking team with lots of members in order to try and generate more CE, you run the risk of creating more drama; having a chaotic booking team full of people playing politics, particularly if splits develop, can really harm how well it functions. Additionally, people will be always take quite a large morale hit if you kick them off the team, so you have to be careful about who you select - keeping a close eye on the personalities involved and existing relationships is key. Smaller teams have the disadvantage that they don't have as many people contributing CE, but they can be slightly easier to manage and get bonuses (particularly for someone working alone) to simulate greater levels of focus. Overall, finding a balanced, well-adjusted booking team can be a great boon for a company, whereas a dysfunctional one can cause a lot of issues. This makes for a fun game-within-a-game and adds a new dimension to TEW.

Oh, and did I mention that people can also request / demand to join the team, get annoyed if their political rivals are on the team, etc, so that you potentially have to navigate tricky backstage politics that have lasting consequences? It's one of the ways that the backstage environment will feel more alive than in previous games.

Going back to the Creative Ideas, these are essentially purchasable "booking aids" that can be deployed to give certain effects. The available choices are Creative Finishes, Angle Ideas, Gimmick Ideas, Storylines Ideas and Character Ideas. Each costs a certain amount of CE and then can be used in-game. For example, you might deploy a Creative Finish (via a road agent note) to a big match to try and boost its rating a little more, or use a Gimmick Idea to increase the chance of someone's new gimmick being more successful. Each idea comes with a success rating that tells you how much of a gamble it is (if the gamble doesn't pay off you may actually experience a penalty from using it), an expiry date which you have to use it by, and can also have a random restriction applied to it, such as only being able to be used on a specific worker in a specific situation. When you purchase an idea you can name it so that it's easy to keep track of what you have available to you at any point in time.

Overall, these features work together to better simulate the backstage politics of wrestling, make the locker room environment more vibrant, and give some fun extra mini games to help you feel more like you're actually sitting in the booker's chair.
Worker Ideas

Tying in to the Creative Ideas feature described above, creatively-minded workers on your roster can now come up with their own ideas that automatically get added to your arsenal of stored ideas. You don't have to purchase these, they come for free, but (naturally) are restricted to being used on that worker alone. Of course, if a worker comes to you with a Creative Finish that just happens to be restricted to only being used when he wins, that does mean you might have to change your booking plans....

New attributes have also been added to the game so that more (and less) creative workers can be simulated.
Locking Child Production Values

By popular request, you can now set whether your child company is autonomous or not when it comes to changing their own production values or relying on you to do it for them. This gives you greater control and allows you to stop situations where they're behaving in a way you don't want them to.
Backdrops / Stable Backdrops / Alliance Backdrops / Brand Logos And Backdrops

Many people like the GIF picture packs that allow custom backdrops to appear behind a worker's picture in game. Previously this was limited to just being the company logo, but this has now been expanded to allow custom backdrops that are specific to the company, stables, alliances and brands. (These have separate subfolders within the Pictures folder to allow them to be easily distributed.) This allow a greater degree of control over how the game looks for each company.
Product Narratives

By request, several new narratives have been added to allow a company's product to be updated / evolved over time to match reality. This is particularly useful for those making historical databases.
Random Broadcasting Slot Length

By request, database makers can now set broadcasting contracts to have random lengths rather than needing to pick a specific expiry setting.

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Elimination Order

Road agent notes can now be used to give precise instructions for the order of elimination in matches. This includes battle royal style matches like the Royal Rumble. You can either fill in every single elimination (e.g. getting compete control over exactly who the eliminations unfold) or just fill in a few and let the game fill in the rest. This has been heavily requested in the suggestions forum and gives those who are detailed-oriented the extra control that they want.
Increased Name Sizes

By request from several database makers, the maximum name size for companies and alliances has been raised from 40 to 50 to allow some real world situations to be correctly handled.
Generic Venue Capacity

Generic venues now have an in-built capacity figure based on the region that they're located in. This was by request from several people, and means that venues in smaller regions, such as Hawaii, can no longer get unrealistically huge attendance levels. Note that this applies to generic venues; you're still able to create your own custom venues that break these capacities if you want them to.
Enhanced Promises

Workers can now promise to put other people over in angles as well as in matches, giving more flexibility to the system and adding some extra detail to the booking section of the game.
Team Bonding

A new team bonding option has been added when addressing the locker room prior to an event. This brings together the key members of the roster (you, the major stars, the stars, and the locker room leaders) to try and build team spirit. This can build strong friendships and loyalty in a good environment with the right personalities, but if there are any cracks in any of the relationships then this can expose them and make things worse.
Independent Show Frequency

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Vocal Fans And Company Size

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Owner / Booker Narratives

New narrative requirements have been added that allow a narrative to only be triggered if a certain worker is owner or head booker of a company. This allows things like company name changes linked to who is in charge at that point in time.
Extended Bankruptcy Grace Period

New companies now get a grace period of three years from their founding, not one, before their financial performance becomes relevant to any bankruptcy calculations. This makes it fairer for newly-generated companies as they have more time to become established and start to turn a profit, and is better for the gameplay as I don't think anyone particularly likes seeing new companies come and go so quickly.

I thought the TEW series was finished and no new games were being made. Think i'll pass on this one, i'd rather spend my money on a game where it's creator listens to suggestions and criticism from the fanbase.