Total Extreme Wrestling IX

Company Awards

A much-requested addition, companies now have their own individual end of year awards to compliment the familiar 'global' version. These work in exactly the same way as their global cousin in that they're decided by the AI dependent on the stats from the previous twelve months. Additionally, these awards have been folded into the criteria for getting into a company-specific hall of fame (e.g. winning some of them helps you qualify for induction). Previous years' company awards can be added via the editor to add flavour.

Title Records

Taking advantage of the new calendar system, every title now has a Title Records button which gives a host of (hopefully) interesting stats. The include top tens for workers with the most title reigns, the longest single title reign (i.e. in days), the longest combined title reigns, the most defences within a single reign, and the most defences across all reigns. For tag titles, these are additionally broken down into both individual and team versions. While it's mostly cosmetic, we've found during testing that this is actually quite a fun thing to look at, especially if you're into stats.

Touring Contracts

Touring contracts return to the game with a more intuitive and robust design that takes advantage of the new calendar system. Workers will get signed in the lead up to tours, head over to the country in question when the tour begins, then stick around until the tour is over. The decision-making AI has also been overhauled so that the wrestlers are better at understanding the unique situation of being on tour. There's also now some background AI that means workers won't be quite so promiscuous when it comes to working for anyone and everybody - they'll tend to be linked to a specific company, at least while they're actively being booked. This simulates a degree of loyalty and is also better for gameplay as it means more wrestlers get to go on tour rather than having it hogged by the same few people.

Global Skill Comparison

A new feature in the skill comparison screen allows the user to see an analysis of how the workers' skill level compares to that of the rest of the world. For example, if you look at Aaron Knight's Psychology in the default database you would see a report that "Of the 2,440 other workers who are eligible for comparison on their psychology, 60 are considered better and 10 are considered equal; Aaron Knight is therefore considered to be in the top 5%." You can do this for any of the different skills and it's a useful way to evaluate potential signings or those who are already on your roster. For those newer to the game, it's also a handy way of getting to grips with what constitutes a good level.

Hiatus Warnings

By request, workers going on hiatus now give a one month warning period before they depart. This allows the player (and AI) time to book them appropriately, like getting titles off them.

Owner Specialisms / Booker Specialisms

By request, potential owners and head bookers can now be set to specialise in men's or women's wrestling, affecting what companies they'll try to take over / apply for jobs with. This allows database makers to add a bit more realism.

Narrative Title Belt Status

New narrative effects have been added that allow title belts to be activated or retired. This has been requested by a few database makers so that historical scenarios where a company's roster of titles changes over time can be simulated.

Cutting Child Companies Loose

The user can now choose to 'cut loose' any of their child companies; this means that they become independent. This is something quite a few players have asked for over the years as it means you can get rid of a child company you no longer want / need without having to actually kill them off and lose all their history.

Customisable Opening Website

The automatically generated "day one" content for the website (i.e. what you see when you first start a brand new save game) now only appears if there is no narrative-driven content to display. The reason for this is that it means that database makers can (optionally) entirely customise the opening website with relevant stories if they want. Like the intro screens, this is just an extra way to put a unique stamp on a database and to immerse the player in that particular game world from the get-go. As stated, this is totally optional - by not putting any narrative content in, the game will revert to the familiar stories.

Romantic Checks

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.

Angle Overhaul

The old angle system was fine but it was really starting to show its age and so the entire angle system has been overhauled for the new game.

Firstly, pre-written angles have been removed entirely as they were too fiddly, un-intuitive and limiting. In their place, each angle is created at the time of booking, with the process being streamlined to be as user-friendly as possible. The first big change is that each angle can now consist of anywhere from one to five parts. Each part has the following settings: a name, a length (in minutes, with the sum of all the lengths giving the angle its overall running time), a location (in the ring, backstage or outside broadcast), a type (angle, interview or video), a status (live or pre-taped) and a content type (from a range of options that includes things like Hype, Serious, Comedy, Storyline Development and Surprise). Obviously some of these have inherent limitations, so a video is always pre-taped, for example.

Within each part, you can assign workers and give them specific roles (from a large range of options that include things like Cutting A Promo, Fighting, Attacker, Victim, Segment Host, and Selling An Injury) - the role you assign them allows the game to understand what they're meant to be doing and work out how they should be rated. Unlike the old system where you could only use a small number of workers, there is now no limit at all on how many workers can be assigned to each part, and you can have people appear, disappear and change roles between the various parts.

Next, there are road agent notes that you can apply; this is what you're familiar with from TEW2020, albeit with some new ones debuting.

You also have the option whether to let the game create output text based on what you've booked or write your own, with the latter being useful for immersion purposes and for those who make diaries / YouTube videos and who want custom text. If you write custom text, this replaces any generated content and is what you'll see when the angle runs.

The booking system is super flexible, so you can move parts around, copy them, delete them, copy workers from one part to another, etc, with single clicks. Additionally, there's a "quick add" mode that allows you very quickly make the basic angles that almost all companies tend to use (like brawls and hype videos), thus saving you a lot of time.

With this new system in place, it gives the user a ton of flexibility and scope for being creative and avoids the rigidity that the old system had. By separating them out into parts, it also means that you can "flow" angles much better and don't need to resort to booking multiple different segments to achieve real world effects. For example, you could quite easily have an angle start with one wrestler cutting a promo in part 1, have him become the victim of an attack by a rival in part 2, have their respective partners hit the ring to kick off a brawl for part 3, then have an authority figure appear on the big screen and make an impromptu tag match in part 4, all of which can be done very quickly. As the game can "understand" what you're trying to achieve from the part's details and the roles you've assigned, it can then figure out appropriate ratings, giving you a very intuitive system that can be used to simulate just about anything you can think of.

External Editing

To aid database makers, a new external editing system has been introduced for almost all the sections of the editor. The way this works is that it takes your current data and creates a database file which isn't password-protected, where all the various columns have easily identifiable names (rather than the sometimes non-intuitive ones used internally by the game), and where the data is displayed in an understandable format (e.g. there are no codes being used, you'll be seeing text; so, for example, you don't have to know / work out that the internal code for 6'0" in height is 37, you'll just see it written in feet and inches). There's no ID numbers to remember or keep track of, instead it works by name matching - so if you're adding in a new relationship between two people, you just have to type in their names rather than going and finding out what their internal ID number is. You can then take that database and do editing using your preferred software, such as Microsoft Access. Once you've made the changes you want, you can then import the data back into the game - TEW will automatically run all the necessary error checking and make sure that you're not introducing any problems or incorrect settings, flagging up where any problems occur so that it's easy to go and fix them.

The game comes with a separate document, a "master list" of sorts, that lists all the different options for each piece of data. Database makers can therefore also have this open as a quick reference guide and just copy and paste text in to ensure accuracy.

All of this means that you can make use of the tools that external software provides, such as being able to edit multiple records at once, sort columns of data into specific orders, make comparisons, etc. It also makes group project work a lot easier, as you can divide up the work - for example, one person could handle relationships, another handle events, etc, and because you're working with names rather than ID numbers, you won't run into trouble with having to keep track of what state the database is currently in, nor do you need to worry about overwriting someone else's work. For example, whoever is in charge could just take the relationship data from whoever worked on that and solely import that, ignoring anything else.

Overall, this should take away a lot of the effort in making databases, particularly in the "grunt work" that takes up the majority of the time.

Enhanced Mass Editing

The in-game mass editor has been beefed up with a lot more available options; every aspect where it is viable to allow mass editing is now covered. This can also be of great benefit to database makers to speed up the process of making and editing databases.

User-Defined Title Names

The potential new title names that the AI can generate, which were previously in-built, is now an editable section. This allows database makers greater control over their scenarios.

Single Use Injuries

By request, injuries can now be set as being single use, meaning that each worker can only sustain them once. This allows things like appendicitis to be simulated.

Older Relative Mentors

Older family members can now act as psuedo-mentors to their younger relatives without needing to be explicitly set as mentors. This saves a little bit of work for database makers and adds a nice touch of realism.

New Owner Goals

Several new potential owner goals have been added to increase the potential pool size. (NB I'm not going to list what the new features are as I'd like people to find out about them on their own during gameplay.)

Owner Goal Specifics

When viewing owner goals, the text now gives specifics on how you are doing (where that's appropriate information). This makes it much easier to understand what you have to do to achieve the goal and removes any of the guesswork or mental calculations that you had to do previously.

Canvas Opinions

When signing workers, the user now has access to a Canvas Opinions button that allows them to poll the locker room to see if there are any notable reactions to the proposed contract offer before they go ahead with it. This can be useful for avoiding surprises and just adds some extra realism.

Sex Scandals

By request, the sex tape scandal has been reworked to become simply a generic sex scandal, thus allowing it to be used to cover a wider variety of real world situations and no longer be limited to a small range of possible years.

Automated Merchandise Cut

When editing contracts, an 'Automatic' value can be given to the Merchandise Cut section. This means that the game will calculate an appropriate value at the start of the game, saving the database maker from having to figure out the best setting to use.

Request Call Up

When playing as the booker of a child company, the player can now choose to contact the parent company (whether the parent is controlled by the player or AI) and request that they consider calling up a worker. This is something that's been requested quite a lot. It adds some extra realism and also allows those who want to play with an eye on producing talent a little more control.

Import Job History

From within the editor, the user can now import job histories (either individually or in batches) from one worker to another. This was requested by a couple of database makers as a way of speeding things up. It's particularly useful for tag teams who have moved around together, as it means that once you've completed one partner you can just then choose to import all of their job histories in one go to their partner.

Increased Diversity

In order to better simulate the real world, a range of new diversity-related settings have been added to workers. These include:

Gender ID: This has the choices of Cisgender Male, Transgender Male, Non-Binary Male, Other Male, Cisgender Female, Transgender Female, Non-Binary Female, Other Female. Note that the male and female versions of Non-Binary are purely for behind-the-scenes purposes (as the game needs to know which of the two "paths" they take for things like physical development and retirement ages); whenever this text tag would be seen during gameplay it would simply be shown as Non-Binary without further elaboration. The "Other" terminology is designed as a catch-all for any definition that doesn't fit into any of the other categories - if anyone would like to suggest a better name for this, you're welcome to make suggestions in the discussions thread and this may be incorporated pre-release. Overall, the new Gender ID settings are mostly used to add a little more realism, for searching, and for the handful of calculations where gender is important (like what awards they qualify for). In almost all cases, all that really matters from an in-game perspective is whether they fall into the male or female "paths" that the game has. A worker's Gender ID setting does not change during gameplay and there are era settings that can be used to control the percentage chance of what Gender ID newly generated characters can have.

Pronouns: The choices are He-Him, She-Her, They-Them, He-Them, She-Them. This is purely a cosmetic touch and affects how text relating to that person is shown. Note that I've specifically made this section easy to alter, so if there are further categories that people particularly want, this is something that can easily be patched in post-release.

Sexuality: Either Heterosexual, Homosexual, Bisexual, Asexual, Pansexual. These settings are primarily for relationship calculating purposes, but some products may use this data (in conjunction with the gender ID) - for example, LGBTQ+ friendly products may explicitly look at it when choosing who to hire.

The converter will automatically assign the Cisgender Male / He-Him and Cisgender Female / She-Her settings based on the gender the worker had in TEW2020, so in the vast majority of cases database makers will not have to do any extra work to incorporate these changes.

Men's And Women's Divisions

The way women's divisions used to work has been expanded, providing the same set of options but for the inverse - i.e. women's wrestling companies that have men's divisions within them. Additionally, there is now a Tiny size that can be applied. This was something that was requested a few times.

Gender Competition

Each worker now has a "Competes Vs" setting that can either be Any, Men's Division Only, Women's Division Only, Primarily Men's Division or Primarily Women's Division. Additionally, each contract now has a "Competes In" setting that is either Unassigned, Men's Division, Women's Division, or Unrestricted. The contract setting can't contradict the worker's overall setting, but doesn't have to permanently be on a single choice - for example, you might set a female wrestler to Primarily Women's Division and have her contract set to be in the women's division, but move her to the men's division for one-off matches or a specific storyline.

These two settings work in conjunction with a company's men's and women's division settings so that the game knows who to hire, who they're competing against, etc. This means that you can simulate pretty much any real world scenario and have quite a lot of flexibility to move people around based on the situation. By adding this, this covers some of the real world scenarios that were previously not able to be simulated properly.

Note that the converter will automatically set male competitors to the men's division and female competitors to the women's division; as such, other than a handful of edge cases, database makers will not have to do any work at all with regarding to setting this up.

Expanded Awards

The end-of-year awards - both the overall and company-specific versions - have been expanded to have male and female versions of each (including the non-wrestling awards like Manager, Referee, etc). The converter automatically takes this into account when moving awards from 2020 to the new game.

Gender-Specific Hiring Rules

When assigning hiring rules to a company, they can now be set as to whether they apply only to male competitors, only female competitors, or both. This gives database makers a finer degree of control and means that limits on things like weight make more sense.

Same-Sex Marriages

For realism purposes, same-sex marriages cannot happen during gameplay prior to the data that they became legal (based on the area in question). This doesn't affect preset relationships via the editor.

Gender And Divisional Searches

By request, tag teams and title belts can now be searched by gender and men's / women's division limits.

Road Agent Experience

Road agents can now continue to build their experience rating just from doing their job. Previously, once they'd retired from active competition they couldn't build up experience, which meant that some people - especially those that retired early - were very limited in how good they could become.

More Precise End Dates

When setting the end dates for things like excursions, scandals, starting injuries and starting absences in the editor, there is now a much wider range of options to choose from, including being able to pick a specific date. This gives database makers a finer degree of control.