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Rumor: EA has the WWE license [Up: Or Take-Two?]
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
HarryDemeanor
Member
Well I'm glad to see you still care.
It's probably real. The WWE games look awful, they seem to have got worse graphically.
whatevermort
Member
EA Made Def Jam: Fight For NY, don't forget. They could hire Aki, or what's left of them (Syn?) to make a new WWE game. (They won't, but they could.) I actually think they're the best option. As others have said, it will mean no Yukes; and their UFC game was pretty good.
Triple Da G.O.D!
Member
I'd love to see SynSophia get back into it.
Kinnikuman Muscle Gran Prix 2 was the last wrestling game they did and that game is just too damn good.
But if Yuke's are still going to be doing the games then this is a perfect time to start from scratch and build something new. Don't drop a WWE '14 and come back with something great next year. In the meanwhile we're due for a All-Stars 2 so that could be a great fill in if they wanted to go that way.
Kinnikuman Muscle Gran Prix 2 was the last wrestling game they did and that game is just too damn good.
But if Yuke's are still going to be doing the games then this is a perfect time to start from scratch and build something new. Don't drop a WWE '14 and come back with something great next year. In the meanwhile we're due for a All-Stars 2 so that could be a great fill in if they wanted to go that way.
The Elite
BOSS
This could give Yukes the opportunity to update Day of Reckoning 2.
gutter_trash
Banned
Smackdown games need an overhaul, seriously.
Know Your Role was probably the last fun Smackdown game
Know Your Role was probably the last fun Smackdown game
Mechanized
Member
A good wrestling game with a good create mode would be cool. So hopefully EA can make a good engine with lots of customization options. Don't let Yukes keep making the games, or at least put someone in charge of the project who will make sure the game is actually good.
shaowebb
Member
First TWO things they need to do before wrestling games get good again.
I am not even joking when I say that I have a notepad document that is over 30 pages of game design for how to make a good wrestling game happen. No Mercy was my game back in 2000 and rather than it evolving the genre devolved into garbage. I've been tweaking this write-up for over a decade in hopes that I can someday work on it somewhere. If the industry wont evolve the genre then by God I'll try to see if I cant pitch this to someone once I can get into a studio somewhere so that I can try to myself.
I miss fun wrestling games.
- MAKE ROSTER STAT DIFFERENCES SMALLER!
If I've waited 5 years for a dude to enter the WWE and I'm a fan why should I be punished for playing them in the game? Why are only Cena or Lesner or whoever is the go to champ for that game the only viable options in order to win? Make it so the roster have reasonably similar stats with a few differences to augment their style, but none of this "play as our main dudes or suffer" bull crap.
Stats can go up via a multiplier that increases during season mode based on your Win/Loss ratio or based off of how much "hype" you generate in your matches if such a meter comes back. That should be how top tier and bottom tier of the league should play out...based on performance/excitement levels of their matches. During matches you should also receive multipliers based off of performance moments like counters, hype, and signatures so that good players can take it to the established guys in the league if the player is good enough to earn it. They shouldn't be able to pull it off for running and striking or outside the ring weapons abuse because the crowd would boo the shit out of them on the show so just like in a real stage show you either play exciting enough to earn the crowds love and belief in you or you shouldn't look believable versus the more established guy. Anything else is broken and punishes you for liking anyone but the title holders. Earn your hype, get your multipliers, take them on. Screw around, get boo-ed, see your stats in season and matches turn to shit. This rewards playing and playing well. I've yet to see any hype system worth a damn get how to do this right sadly.
- MAKE GRAPPLE TIE UPS FASTER/WITH PRIORITY OVER STRIKES!
Its not that damned hard to figure out. Fighting games like Street Fighter are a testament to the fact that the move that comes out faster will generally beat the slower animated move you attempt. Wrestling titles never got this. How many matches outside of No Mercy were just punch kick fests mainly peppered with you doing running moves or going outside the ring to beat up your opponent until you could wear them down enough to actually attempt to grab them for something? Usually all of them!
Increase the tie up animation speed into a lunge and increase the startup selling animations for strikes so that you cant hit them as easy. Also increase recovery time on whiffed strikes to make them riskier. Strike spamming is rampant in wrestling games. Hell I'm all for making strikes only usable as a means to induce stun with no permanent damage unless they are listed as a special or assigned to a "quick grapple" slot as a signature. Use stun to decrease counter likelihood of moves maybe. Basic strikes are setups for wrestlers and NOT their main offensive so stun is all they are used for anyway. That and to build momentum with the crowd during hope and comeback spots.
Pure strikers like Tajiri have go to signature kicks and such and those should be quick grapple slots only or something. Or better yet just give grabs priority over strikes. At least make it so that if a strike hits you dont get a selling animation that lasts so long! Complete bullshit overselling of every strike made the hit stun ridiculous on those things. Why would you over power strike benefits like this in a wrestling game? YOU ARE PUNISHING PLAYERS FOR TRYING TO WRESTLE IN A WRESTLING GAME!
I am not even joking when I say that I have a notepad document that is over 30 pages of game design for how to make a good wrestling game happen. No Mercy was my game back in 2000 and rather than it evolving the genre devolved into garbage. I've been tweaking this write-up for over a decade in hopes that I can someday work on it somewhere. If the industry wont evolve the genre then by God I'll try to see if I cant pitch this to someone once I can get into a studio somewhere so that I can try to myself.
I miss fun wrestling games.
Ken Masters
Banned
because it's a million+ seller every year, was THQs biggest franchise by far
Saint's Row wasn't owned by THQ?
I guess WWE is still big. Haven't really followed it, but thought UFC would have taken a chunk out of McMahon's business.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTpc6NN8J8Y
The animations were limited, but worked really well together.
Ken Masters
Banned
Rated-Rsuperstar
Member
Watching those TNA videos pisses me off that Southpeak owns the license. What a waste.
The Elite
BOSS
Gameplay and graphics were great but the game was dreadfully boring. Movesets were copy and pasted, save finishers, for all the wrestlers. Very little in the way of customization features either.
Muscle Grand Prix 2 is not a wrestling game, no pins or subs. It's just a fighting game dude.
*handshake*
Rated-Rsuperstar
Member
Oh I know full well how barebones that game is. I'm more mad that a crappy publisher like Southpeak will never actually make a TNA wrestling game.
It's simmered down to the point where the audience that would ditch one for the other is now low.
dskillzhtown
keep your strippers out of my American football
Also with them working on the UFC games, it would be a good way to leverage that game engine for more than one title that will sell well.
Which begs the question: why did TNA sell the licence to a company that won't actually make games? Or even, why did they not specify that at least one game had to be made or a similar condition? Really strange.
shaowebb
Member
Another thing I should bring up is that create a wrestler is SHIT these days and never got streamlined to benefit the player. Main problems I have with create a wrestler.
I got nothing against the outfits and faces and all that. Design your entrance and look have all been done well several times. However, thats creating a look and intro. Creating a WRESTLER is about the moveset.
You want to know how the fuck to setup a more streamlined create a movelist of moves without cutting content for the players? Heres how...
This is how you do it game companies. Listen to my gospel.
- It takes easily 1 to 3 hours start to finish to go through, make your look, and setup EVERY move for your wrestler if you go into detail.
- There has NEVER been a create a move. Bubububu I did 3 powerbombs, my taunt and a Death Valley Driver ! Thats called a "SPOT" not a "MOVE". We've had "CREATE A WRESTLING SPOT" not "Create a NEW MOVE" in these games.
I got nothing against the outfits and faces and all that. Design your entrance and look have all been done well several times. However, thats creating a look and intro. Creating a WRESTLER is about the moveset.
You want to know how the fuck to setup a more streamlined create a movelist of moves without cutting content for the players? Heres how...
- STOP USING CANNED SELLING FOR MOVES.
There are like 15 ddt animations to choose from, more than that for power bombs and the list goes on and on. Most of this crap is the same exact move with just a different sort of sell for it and not even a different landing or tieup pose for delivering it...just crap to change how you or your opponent put over the same 50 moves that clutter that move list up. This is how you do it people. Your "wrestling style" and "Personality" should load a list of various startup and selling animations for your moves. Big guys loom and stare on startup, flashy dudes taunt and flail, luchas snap into them and out of them all hyper. Which Startup or Sell you get is determined off of the list based on the hype level of the match and the level of health you each had at the time it was pulled off. Just set the percentage chance on each animation higher or lower based on these factors. Friggin' simple and it makes every match look and flow in its visuals the way it looks in a real match. None of this repetitious canned reselling everytime bullshit. Real flow is added this way and it trims the fat from move lists TREMENDOUSLY.
But what if I wanted to pin from my move or go into a submission from it? Then have it setup to hold a button during the move to go into one of those. Like, oh I dunno, the pin or grapple button :|
It wont cut out all the positions for moves and thats because you DONT want to cut moves out, but it cuts out a TON of useless filler that clutters up the process. You could even enjoy a randomize moveset feature in this manner but honestly I'd only enjoy that if I could choose what style of wrestling I wanted a random list of moves made for per tieup position. Turnbuckle=lucha style random move list, but standing grapples= power style. Congrats...you are Samoa Joe. Could get some weird stuff, but it'd be quick and easy for folks wanting a very general sort of thing on a character quickly. It'd be better than random all or clone movesets for folks wanting to play their character and thats a good thing.
- STOP ANIMATING WRESTLING MOVES START TO FINISH AS ONE FILE!
In 2000 I was in an indie fed and trained to wrestle and I can tell you I never learned a wrestling move all as one single motion. There is a tie up, a hold position, a lift, a drop, and a landing to EVERY move. Submissions of course or drag moves cut out parts of this, but the point is dont make every hold one big animation because the landing and selling for every move looks the same. THIS IS HOW YOU GET CREATE A MOVE IN THE GAME.
Setup every move in segments. Each move you select is actually a nested list of animation instructions and each animation has its own nested list of possible counter animations to it (many of which are specific counters based off player styles like "Lucha", "power", or "Shooter" and exclusive to them). This way if you have a "shooter" style for your character they will have different sorts of counters for a move than a "power" style guy would. Hell I'd make it so different styles would only have counters during different parts of a move's animation. Shooters tend to counter at the tie up along with power guys while lucha guys tend to counter during the lift or drop sections of a move for the suspense.
In any event the best part about this is that you dont can the selling animation for the move. You can literally use the in game physics to determine how the players land based on what they hit. Do a powerbomb in the middle of the ring you land clean. Do it near the turnbuckle they land like shit. Do it on a stack of chairs and watch the brutality. EVERY move would be different every time you did it and coupled with my list idea for how to make the selling of delivering the move and taking the move change for players based off of hype/ damage levels in the match EVERY MATCH WOULD BE DIFFERENT.
The best part? You can literally make a "create a move" for real using this setup. Hell you could even tap taunt during ANY portion of the move to insert a taunt between animations. Players enter the tie up they want, the hold position, the lift animation they want from it, the drop animation they want and how they want their players body to try to lay on the landing animation and where they want the opponent to land on their body as they go down.
For example I choose:
Tieup setup= Boot to the stomach
Hold position= Pumphandle
Lift = straight up for a pumphandle drop...nah lets choose something cooler...flip them stomach down onto your shoulder from this lift style.
Drop style= I choose to fall in a legs together sitout style
Landing style= I choose to land on my side so that my body wait goes into the move and not onto my tail bone and I choose for my opponent to land on his back meaning that he will flip forward in a roll coming down off my shoulder.
Result= Congrats...this is a pumphandle bodyslam with a sitout style drop. Even if I did it onto chairs or off the ring apron it'd be this move, but the landing would be different EVERY TIME including how we both sell the move. The game physics handle the drop and how cleanly we land after we go down in our respective landing poses and the list of animations based on our hyper and health determine how we sell it. Im on fire and healthy means I spring up yelling and excited and I press pin to see him run over and hook the leg quickly and with confidence. Im beat to shit and so are you and we both collapse afterwards and going for the pin is slower to do as I mash pin and watch his pin animation replaced with a crawling to lay an arm on you animation instead. EVERY TIME I DO IT THE MOVE IS SOLD DIFFERENTLY.
This is how you do it game companies. Listen to my gospel.
gutter_trash
Banned
I always customized my main CAW with a mix of Randy Savage and DDP style moves using the RKO variations as finishers.
I hope they evolve into NEXT GEN because the Smackdown series's age feels 3 generations past
I hope they evolve into NEXT GEN because the Smackdown series's age feels 3 generations past
shaowebb
Member
Read my above posts and pray I find a studio who'll take my pitch.
Let's not get silly. HIAC and SvR 2006 were both excellent.
brokenbeans
Banned
Wow a combination made for eachother.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
You mean HCTP?
What does everyone dislike about the gameplay in WWE 13? Other than bugs and glitches I suppose. I still find it a lot of fun and I honestly am having the most fun I've had with a wrestling game since No Mercy. Granted, I stopped playing wrestling games around the time Raw vs Smackdown came around.
The Faceless Master
Member
Take 2, get Spike on the phone.
two words: spiritual successor.
man, that boxart is so fucking good.
*tears*
two words: spiritual successor.
man, that boxart is so fucking good.
*tears*
shaowebb
Member
- Top tier roster or nothing roster balance means its hard to enjoy the full cast if you want to
- Its still 90% striking, running strikes, and illegal outside the ring beatdowns over actual WRESTLING in a wrestling game since grapples dont take priority over strikes and strikes get ridiculous amounts of knockdown, priority, and stun animations to them with very little startup or recovery between throwing them making them spammable
- Animations are ALWAYS canned and repetitive. You never sell a move different based on momentum and it feels out of place with match flow and makes the characters act unrealistic to things compared to during a real match on tv.
- Create a move is STILL just Create a wrestling spot where you can only do several sequences of pre made moves and not piece meal together new ones from tie up positions and drop styles. By God if I want to do a "Crucifix Kneeling Piledriver" and name it "Spinemageddon" then I should be able to make it. Keep your triple power bomb into other moves out of this dream.
- Announcers are repetitive. Small gripe, but rather than have an announcer why dont we just get the crowd chants going like old school ECW and just have announcers off. They dont sell the action, they make it become repetitive and dull by saying the same shit constantly and end up doint the opposite of their role. Sim babble with varying levels of excitement would be more useful than the current announcers :/
- Glitchy as hell
- load times
Need I go on?
You raise really good points definitely, but I still think the game is a good game despite these faults. I know I always have fun playing a TLC match with my buddies. I do wish they could clean up their physics and generally polish some of that stuff. If I tip the ladder over, I want the guy to fall outside the ring.
Dick Justice
Banned
Or pay extra for attribute DLC, lol.
slightconfuse
Banned
Someone made really good package pile drive for the Kevin steen CAW I downloaded. So the create a finger stuff is not that bad.
GameplayWhore
Member
At this point, the only way I'd be excited about buying a wrasslin' game is if EA or T2 bought the Chikara license. Oh, man, it'd be like playing NES Pro Wrestling again, but modernized! 
edit: also, shaowebb's post is quite nice. One of the things I like about early- to mid-noughties WWF games on the GameCube is that grapple-based moves were considered multi-stage and therefore could be interrupted at any time. As soon as I started playing the "Smackdown" games, the fact that each move was functionally atomic was a massive turnoff. sha was talking more about the graphics side of this, of course, but treating the move as a series of actions benefits massively both in terms of animations and gameplay mechanics.
edit: also, shaowebb's post is quite nice. One of the things I like about early- to mid-noughties WWF games on the GameCube is that grapple-based moves were considered multi-stage and therefore could be interrupted at any time. As soon as I started playing the "Smackdown" games, the fact that each move was functionally atomic was a massive turnoff. sha was talking more about the graphics side of this, of course, but treating the move as a series of actions benefits massively both in terms of animations and gameplay mechanics.
dsmoke1986
Member
I disagree, I love WWE 13...I think it's awesome...I'm a huge wrestling fan, but love this game, and am playing the shit out of it.
It AKI gets resurrected by 2K that would be amazing, we'll see what happens.
gutter_trash
Banned
Here Comes The Pain was good but I did not like the localisation damage from 2006.
Localisation damage forced the game more into sport stratagy than sport entertainment
Have the Figure 4 as a Finish would force the play to perform boring as leg grapples over and over and over during a whole match to point where you realise that body or head localised Finishers would prevail more because of continuous shots to the head and chest.
what does the real life product have to do with the game? I was playing wrestling games even when I wasn't watching wrestling in the 00's.
I liked Dragonball Z but wouldn't touch those games with a 10 foot pole.
Rebel Leader
THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
FallingEdge
Member
Take 2, get Spike on the phone.
two words: spiritual successor.
man, that boxart is so fucking good.
*tears*
so good.
Game is just fantastic. If 2K teamed up with Spike, that would be amazing.
ChosenPredator
Banned
if the fans flood the publishers maybe something can happen but i doubt it lol (flood them about not wanting yukes)
Host Samurai
Member
I would mark out like a mad man if they got SPIKE to work on the games. Can you imagine getting 2 games.
1 downloadable 2D series like Fire Pro and 1 big budget KoC like WWE game all published under EA or Take Two, you know they will beef up the roster with Legends based on their sport series.
Speaking of SPIKE, what the hell happened to Japanese wrestling games this gen? They didn't even show up on portable consoles. When the PS3 was first announced I planned on importing tons of Japanese wrestling games like KoC. Too bad.
1 downloadable 2D series like Fire Pro and 1 big budget KoC like WWE game all published under EA or Take Two, you know they will beef up the roster with Legends based on their sport series.
Speaking of SPIKE, what the hell happened to Japanese wrestling games this gen? They didn't even show up on portable consoles. When the PS3 was first announced I planned on importing tons of Japanese wrestling games like KoC. Too bad.
FallingEdge
Member
Yup. Wrestle Kingdom and that is it.
