There's also a noticeable delay on the pressing of the button and the slider actually stopping - to someone just picking up the game, it means a pin is an insta-loss. This, especially to casuals who aren't used to the mini-games and the timings, goes against both the pinning and the default submission mini-game (though the other one isn't perfect either). In most situations, the first instinct someone has when they're being pinned or submitted is to freak out. A few days ago we had someone here ask if the only way to get up was to reverse a move, because they just didn't get up once they were knocked down. That's just stupid, and forcing that on players is equally as stupid. I mean, go into a Last Man Standing match and do one basic move to the AI - until the end of the match or when finishers are used, the earliest they'll get up is 8. It should scale harder with the damage you've taken, instead of this nonsense where an irish whip at the start of the game can put you down the same amount of time that a powerbomb through a table near the end of the match does. You also take way too long to get up at the start of a match - my friends playing it with me for the first time thought something was wrong when I gave one of them a suplex and they just lied there for ages.
You can be irish whipped and stay down for long enough that the AI can run up the ladder and do 6/10 of the briefcase removal mini-game. You can be put through a table, a ladder, get hit in the head with a chair and get up before the opponent finishes clearing an announcer's table. Time taken to get up is insanely inconsistent. I feel like this whole system is fucked, because it makes the challenge not lead to anything fun, and the fun part not being challenging, which turns all of it into a dull affair. And you can't re-reverse them unlike the older games, which would be a natural way of doing chain wrestling if the animations and set up for it were proper. It all ends up being either way too easy in normal matches, and thus it feels like you're ragdolling someone, or you get fucked when you want to do cool spots because dragging an opponent lasts for 3 seconds and irish whips constantly get reversed. I've been playing around with the sliders but it's all useless.
Speaking of which, they also take way too long to clear out. Can't even dive onto the announcer's table anymore from a ladder, only in the pre-established "OMG Moments". You can't run with items, items fall super easily, half-open items aren't breakable anymore, you can't drag items around. A ton of the item options from games like WWE2K14/15 were also removed, for reasons that I just can't get. Speaking of which, unless you hit the exact right spot of a table at a right angle, the opponent won't be "leaning on it" enabling you to use a finisher or put him on the table. There is no "comfortable" way of setting up a table and ladder next to each other in a way that makes it possible to put the opponent on the table easily. Speaking of objects, what the hell is with placing ladders and tables in the ring? They constantly rubber band to very inconvenient places. It also never does any cool spots over winning, constantly takes down the objects the players set up just to do nothing with them or throw them outside the ring. It constantly tries to win by count-out, it runs away in last man standing matches to the ring when you fall down (which causes lag and fucks up your count) it constantly irish whips you out of the ring or into something as a reversal and then immediately goes for the win in gimmick matches (ladder, tlc or steel cage). I usually cut this game a lot of slack (I have 300 hours on the Switch edition, how could I not)Ī few glaring issues, and this is only referring to gameplay in and on itself, not specific game modes or editing tools (which also have their stupid issues, like not allowing hair under masks): It also lets you do way less cool shit than previous games. There is no way of doing cool shit in this game without ruining it for you.