Total Extreme Wrestling IX

Celebrities

In previous games, celebrities were limited to being unnamed optional extras for events; for TEW IX, by popular request, they are now named characters who can interact fully with the game world. They are added to the Workers section, meaning they can be modeled in the same way as any other character, and are identified by a Celebrity field - which can be A-List, B-List, C-List, D-List, Z-List or Fad - to show how big of a star they are. (Fad would be a low-level celebrity who is only active for a short period of time - a "flash in the pan" if you will.)

If a worker is set as being a celebrity, they gain certain special rules. The main one is that having them on a show automatically boosts the attendance, with the size of the boost relating to their celebrity level - e.g. an A-List celebrity will bring in a lot more people. Their level also affects how often they'll sign deals and what their demands would be, the minimum size of company they'll deal with, how long they'll remain actively available to accept bookings, etc. Additionally, celebrities have some special restrictions on their usage and interactions (for example, their popularity doesn't get affected by how they're booked, they don't become involved in backstage incidents, they will only sign one deal at a time, etc, etc) to keep things realistic and stop them being exploited. A full list of the celebrity rules is included in the game's handbook.

Because they are part of the Workers section, and therefore have access to the same stats, attributes, etc, as normal characters, there's scope for database makers to simulate all sorts of different celebrities. For example, you can make celebrities who are able to take part in matches (you could even make celebs who will be willing to take part in deathmatches via the attribute system), who are purely there as personalities, who can be used as colour commentators, etc. This should allow pretty much every example where a real world celebrity has been in wrestling - whether that's Raw guest hosts, singers doing the national anthem at WrestleMania, or stars actually getting into the ring - to be simulated.

Celebrities can be created in-game (and can regenerate, just like any other worker) and there are options provided to toggle this off if people don't want them in their game worlds.

It is very important to note that the celebrity feature is specifically designed to simulate people from outside the wrestling business and NOT workers who have transcended the business. To take a real world example, you probably wouldn't want to be setting The Rock as a celebrity - if you did, he'd be subject to all the special bonuses and restrictions and you'd end up with behaviours that you probably don't want.

Adding this feature opens up some new gameplay avenues, allows real world situations to be simulated that previously weren't possible, and adds to the general realism of the game world.

Minis

By request, 'mini' competitors are now integrated into the game world. A worker counts as a mini if they're a male competitor of five foot or below, or, a female competitor of four foot ten and below. There are special attributes that can be assigned to workers to alter their categorisation (i.e. either making them a mini when they don't qualify or removing the mini status if they do) for cases where the predefined limits don't work. If a worker is considered a mini then they'll generally be kept separate from non-mini workers for booking purposes.

Each company can optionally have a male and / or female minis division, which can be assigned a size category to tell the game how many workers should be part of it (similar to how women's divisions used to work). Additionally, titles can be set as being exclusive to mini divisions. If a company does have a division, it'll be booked as being separate to the main roster. Of course, the player is free to mix and match, so there's nothing stopping you from booking a mixed match where a non-mini teams with minis; workers are aware of the difference, however, so a non-mini may complain if asked to lose to a mini.

As with celebrities, this adds to the realism of the game world and allows real world scenarios to be simulated that previously couldn't be.

Specifying Amount Of Falls

By popular request, new road agent notes have been added for multi-fall matches to allow the user to book specific amounts of falls for the winner and loser. So, you could specify that a two out of three falls match ends 2-1, for example.

Removing Companies

When starting a new game the user is now given the option of removing companies beforehand (including those that have already gone out of business or are yet to debut); this can be useful for speeding up loading times or if the player is only interested in a small selection of companies, and removes the need to edit the database itself.

Graduation Editing

Adding or modifying graduates in the editor is now a much quicker process, with a mass add feature and the automatic filling in of appropriate dates by referencing the worker in question. This is just a quality of life change to help database makers.

AI Talent Hunters

By request, the AI hiring has been upgraded to make them significantly better at identifying and actively going after young talent with excellent potential rather than primarily sticking to going after established workers. This makes the AI more competitive and helps keep the game world fresh as young stars are much less likely to get stuck working the independents.

Owner Imbalances

The game can now recognise when there are too few potential owners in an area and can address this by generating new entrepreneurs. This is designed to prevent the situation that can occur where some databases don't come with enough valid owners to actually found any new companies, leading to stagnation.

Tag Team Name Ages

By request, potential tag team names can now be given minimum and maximum ages to give more accurate results. For example, you could set "Youth Energy" to require both members to be under 25.

In-Game Edit Schedule

Company schedules can now be redone via the in-game editor; this can be useful if the user has already made some progress only to find that a company was mistakenly not given any events by the database maker, as previously this scenario would either mean scrapping the save game and starting again or going through the time-consuming process of taking over the company and doing it manually.

Daytime Timeslot

By request, the Afternoon timeslot has been renamed as Daytime to allow for morning TV shows to be covered.

General Tinkering / Improvements

Finally, just a general note that over the course of the extensive play-testing we've done there has been a lot of tinkering, editing, and improving done 'under the hood'; so that's the underlying mechanics of the game, the numbers that are used behind-the-scenes, as well as the functionality of some buttons and screens. Some of these changes may be very subtle and might not even be noticed (for example, some screens have just been reorganised to reduce the number of clicks needed to do common tasks), while some are more overt and will obviously impact gameplay (like the increased speed that young workers learn skills), but you should generally find that a lot of the rough edges from 2020 have been smoothed off. None of these changes are really worth individual journal entries, but as the cumulative effect is to make the game feel far more polished, and because it means that some strategies from 2020 may be more or less effective, I just wanted to finish by highlighting it.

That now concludes the developer's journal. Hopefully most people found something they're excited about and are looking forward to tomorrow's release! We'll finish by going through some final clarifications and announcements.

Public Beta Release & How It Works

- The public beta will be released tomorrow, 27th July. We will not be announcing a specific time for the release. However, as Grey Dog Software will be handling the release, note that it will be on American time, not British.

- The public beta will follow the same format as previous years; the game will be fully-featured but you are restricted to playing the months of January to March. You can play as many save games as you want and those save games can be continued past March with the retail version. The full editor is available with the public beta if people want to work on databases.

- For those not familiar, the point of the public beta is primarily to give you an opportunity to "try before you buy" but also to fix any installation problems and other bugs that may have gotten past the testing team. If you do have issues, please go to the Technical Support forum (slightly further down the board) to make a post so that we can address your issue.

- As with previous editions, I'm happy to try and patch in (reasonable!) suggestions that people have, whether that's in-time for the retail release or after. If you have something you'd like to see changed, please use the Suggestions forum, which is slightly further down the board.

- As a closing note on the release day, we'd ask that everyone tries to stay polite and respectful on the forums. It's been great to see how the majority of people have been so positive and tolerant of other people's views during the past four weeks of the journal and we'd like to see that continue. Inevitably a release day raises the temperature slightly with people getting excited, and equally inevitably there will be some people who turn up intentionally looking to cause mischief and arguments - if this does happen, please try not to get dragged into flame wars and nasty arguments, just allow our large moderating team to handle things. There's a Report button at the top of every post that you can use to draw our attention to things.

Retail Release & Price Announcement

As previously announced, the retail release of the game will be the following week on Saturday 3rd August. This will follow the same procedure as the public beta in that we will not be announcing a specific time and it will be Grey Dog Software handling it so it'll be on American time.

We can confirm that there will be no price increase and that the game will retail for $34.95. (As normal, previous games in the series will drop in price a few days after release.) As previously mentioned, this will be released under the QLM / FastSpring licensing system that we've been using for the past couple of years, which is much more user friendly than the old Elicense system. It works in broadly the same fashion in that you'll receive a license code upon purchase and just have to type it in to active your game. Licensing and unlicensing takes seconds and you can now do it manually via their website (e.g. you don't need access to a machine to deactivate your license, so if you're unlucky enough to suffer a hardware failure or lose your laptop, you no longer need to send us e-mails or wait around, as long as you have your code you can do everything yourself). If you do have any issues or questions about the licensing system, there will be a FAQ pinned to the top of the Technical Support forum to help you out.

And that's where we'll end this journal series. Thank you for all the interest and support you've shown over the past four weeks, it's been fantastic to see the community coming together so much, I hope everyone enjoys the new game!