According to this tweet of course

Probably just a release date and preorder bonus announcement, we usually don't get anything substantial until SummerSlam (mid August) or after. Really hope they put the extra work in on it this year as the last two games have been disappointments in terms of its overall package.

I used to be okay with the itterative nature of these games but the last 3 have been steadily getting worse and worse

I was just playing some 2k18. I’m an apologist for these games.

I’d really like them to clean-up load times, take the in-your-face branding down a notch, and maybe make a decent career mode, since whatever they added last year was a trainwreck.

That and at least make unlocking stuff more interesting. I swear, you earn so few unlock points and use them for so much that I end up buying their stupid unlock DLC every year.

Oh, and the ability to at least roughly import characters, move sets, etc. would be cool.

I really dig the core gameplay. It’s just all the stuff around it (aside from the bananas creation/sharing tools).

@shiftygism: Completely agree. I was so disappointed with what 2K18 ended up being, I didn't even buy it, and I'm the top contributor of the GB Wiki page for it lol

@yesiamaduck: totally, it's been straight up embarrasing. I feel 2K16 had some redeeming factors to it, 2K17 was a super weird disappointment, and 2K18 was just giant "wtf were you thinking with this"

@nutter: me too, I tend to be quite the apologist (despite my true feelings and knowings) and I just hope and pray that the next one turns out even marginally better. They have a metric ton of excellent ideas, but the execution is almost always a disaster. "Make my own promos! Neat! ... oh.. it's... it's just this.. and it's a confusing mess.. and now everyone is just a voiceless puppet..." "oh cool actual Rivalries! wait, i've been beating the tar out of my rival and he "won" the rivalry? the fuck is even going on??" "Make my own titantron videos? ASBNDI(UASBD YAS! YA-.. it's still loading.... it's still loading... *falls asleep*"

A press conference to announce "hey, our game is still every bit as mediocre as the last one" is an odd choice, but WWE fans seem to lap it up so why bother fixing it when people still buy it?

Wait E3 isn't over yet send everyone back to LA.

My only interest now with the WWE games is seeing the guys at NewLegacy hilariously break these games in fun and disturbing ways. Besides we got a proper Fire Pro Wrestling now. I will comeback the second they reintroduce the story editor no matter how janky the game is because that was so much fun to mess around with and to watch other people's insane creations.

@forkboy: See, I’m a real sucker as I’m NOT a WWE fan. I got into it when they made 2k16 a Games with Gold game.

I thought I’d goof off with it when I heard how bad the games were, but I found myself digging the core combat.

@redactedprofile: I think fighting in and around the ring is fun.

Most bells and whistles are just bad, though. Backstage, promos, career mode, etc. Table matches seem pretty arbitrary (I don’t know if a button mash or wheel to angle and power your opponent just right would be better?).

I’d love the universe mode to be a little more laisez-faire. Just throw me into wrestle-world and let my actions dictate my rivalries. The Sims with wrestlers (and wrestling).

I actually think there’s a lot of replayability in a decent universe mode as an endless campaign. You’d think something could be done in the fighting game space as well, with most fighting games having some sort of tournament premise. Spammy, close, or blowout matches could lead to different sorts of rivalries that carry over from one tournament to the next.

Who are they gonna fire for Ric Flair getting drunk this time?

This thing was probably one of the most frustrating things I've seen.

AJ Styles is the cover athlete? Cool.

But this million dollar challenge shit is the most disconnected thing I have seen come out of the WWE 2K team - and it's pretty much my last straw with the series.

The pattern for the past few years has been pretty consistent. Even ignoring the whole 'adding in features that used to be there and acting like it's groundbreaking' and taking the whole 'pre-order this character' stuff you still have a game that consistently comes out broken, and then you only have until the end of the DLC rolling out to get any of that fixed. A lot of it never gets fixed or things get more broken in the meantime, ruining any want that a person would want to have to keep playing the game up until that point anyways.

But hey sure - create some superfluous competition in order to push online in this series that has never, never, never been a great candidate for online play. Should've seen it going in that direction from everything they did last year, but have you ever played an online match of a WWE game where people aren't just spamming moves and taking advantage of animations and anything else that'll let you get ahead? I mean of course they are going to, I don't blame them but there's nothing fun or competitive about it. And it's going to be hilarious to watch whoever faces off against AJ Styles just spamming unblockable moves to get to the money.

I know there's always the argument of 'that money wasn't going to go towards the games development anyways' but when you're releasing a broken game every. single. year. and clearly moving in a direction of mircotransactions... fucking try to make it look like you're putting every resource possible into the game.

I don't even have the want to bring up the terrible Switch port, performance and loading issues on the consoles regardless and just.. gah.

At least with Fire Pro this year we have an option.

Yeah, the Smackdown legacy games have always been too cheap for actual competitive play, unlike All Stars which was almost perfectly balanced outside of a few gliched dlc moves that were never patched, along with the get out of Dodge escapes and multi-kill advantages those with aerial finishes had.

God, I need a sequel to that game, and WWE using those character models in that shitty mobile game is some straight up trolling.

I hope this tournament just ends up with a dude glitch the crap out of this game. Just like the For Honor Tournament where a dude won by using a glitch where you kept blocking everything.

I've been dying for that for a few years now. The closer and closer that the 2K series pushes towards "realism" the more I want an alternative, because they really aren't all that great with the realism stuff.. at least until the engine changes entirely. It has to be so terribly bloated at this point.

All Stars was amazing and I didn't realize it at the time - it was at the time before EVERYTHING was digital too, so I could never find a copy around here.