[DLC] Entrance Crafting - Releasing October 30!

Just bit the bullet and downloaded it to check this out. Thoughts:

Not technically part of the DLC, but I do love the new moves. One crazy move, a bunch of basic stuff, just the ratio I like. I like that the forearm shiver is a short and basic as possible, although I wish the animation had a bit more "body" in it. It's still a 100% better forearm shiver than the body punch to the back. Also, I'm immensely glad we got a single kick along with the YES kicks; the usefulness of that move, especially in the face-down slot, cannot be overstated.

Entrance gear options are...okay. There are a few new basic variations of pieces you can use with jackets, as well as the belt pieces, which admittedly look great. I wish you could "flag" them somehow to only appear when the wrestler was champion, but I'm not really surprised, as KOC had this problem too. The new back logos all look cool, but I really wish they were available as chest parts, too. They'll go well on robes/jackets, and might help add some variety to back tattoos, but they won't up your T-shirt options a whole lot.

The way the entrance attire is implemented is basically the almost-worst-case scenario: you pick one entire slot to use, and that's your entrance gear. So if you make Bret Hart in pink tights as your entrance gear base (and add the jacket, glasses and whatnot) you're fine if you use his pink wrestling gear. If you use his black gear, he'll be coming out in pink tights and a jacket and changing for the match. Pretty disappointing way to implement it. I really wish they had just set it up so you'd have an entrance attire for each set of normal attire - wrestler data takes up an insanely small amount of space, so it wouldn't have caused any issues, I don't think. The one-step-better option would be for you to at least pick only one attire to USE the entrance gear on, but that's not what they did. The two upsides are that 1) you can pick which gear is your entrance gear, and 2) it doesn't automatically force you to have entrance attire, even if you use all the other features. Small saving graces, but there they are.

The actual entrance animation crafting is much better, but not perfect. You can set animations for various parts of their ringwalk, or leave any part out entirely, at which point they'll just keep walking. The one exception is that at the very top of the ramp, they WILL wait for a second or two (like they do now anyway) which might be jarring if you want them to just sprint. Well, technically, I guess the other exception is once in the ring, they'll always do the entrance taunt they've always had, although you pick one of three spots to do it - middle of ring, top rope, or right after they climb through the ropes (I see this one being useful for less-showboaty Lou Thesz types.) The other animations you can pick are from your existing taunts, which largely makes sense, but could be limiting in some cases.

You can pick the speed they walk, up to and including a full dead run, so there's that. You can also define (in actual seconds, looking at YOU, Smackdown) how long they wait to come out, up to 99 seconds. (Holding E to jump by 10 is your friend here.) You can also set what zoom the camera goes to at every single point, how early in that point it starts, and how quickly it zooms. Rainmaker zoom-out taunt PROPHECY FULFILLED. You can also set the lighting/pyro effects to some degree, although as pointed out, the effects are subtle. You're not gonna get Undertaker-style full darkness, but if you make all the lights one color, it's definitely noticeable, so you can do like your Bret Hart pink lights and shit.

You can also preview all of your settings right from the menu, which is convenient. For me, it is previewing with the default theme if you have a custom one (which I get in the edit menu as well), but it plays the right one in an actual match.

The biggest downside in this section is that ALL of this is set separately per venue. While that does make sense for the effects (different ones are available) and offers some interesting possibilities for animation/character (like dancing with the dancers in Mexico, having cockier guys take longer but having straightforward guys walk faster in bigger arenas, or setting a guy up to act different if he's "invading" another company), it REALLY needs the option to copy/paste at least the animations and camera parts.

Is it gonna be worth picking up? It's not critical as far as parts (there are few, and none game-changing) and moves (they come free), and all the new features seem to be in one separate menu; my impression is they get saved separately from the wrestler itself, so I strongly doubt you'll be locked out of tons and tons of workshop content. I'm not mad I picked it up; I find the new features intriguing, and some of its drawbacks may be mod-enhanceable. Also, at the end of the day, I don't mind supporting and continuing to get new "free" stuff like moves. If you suspect you're gonna be mad you picked this up, you probably will be. If you're excited by the new prospects, you might dig it. Despite its drawbacks, it's deeper in some ways than I expected, other than the entrance attire itself.

Anyway, that's my two cents' (or 19.99) worth on it.