WWE 2K14's Universe Mode & Creation Suite Revealed

By Mike Lang /

WWE 2K14 officially announced the newest improvements to their Universe Mode last Monday (Sept. 30th). Among the changes are a new Rivalry Manager, new PPV themes, new belts and a variety of other tweaks to the mode to make it even more fun to play. Designer Cristo Kyriazis and Aubrey Sitterson sat down to walk us through each and every change. Continue reading for the details, and if you want to watch the livestream yourself, (highly recommended) you can do so here.

Rivalry Manager

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The 2K team (which has mostly transferred over from the THQ team) has listened to the fans in regard to the randomness involved with WWE 13's Universe Mode, where it would pick and choose its own feuds with respect to the actions you did as a user. I did not play much Universe last year based on how frustrating it was for the game to correctly pick up on the feuds that I wanted to happen. Well, 2K14 took the feud concept and made it much more streamlined in the form of the all-new Rivalry Manager.

The basic concept of the Rivalry Manager is for the player to decide the following:

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who is feuding (singles or tag team feud) how long are they feuding (4,8 or 12 weeks) what they are feuding for (what championship, if any) Of course, Universe can book rivalries for you, if you so choose---but it is to my understanding that you can have it so only you are in charge of all rivalries as well. The total number of rivalries you can have per show is three (3). 2K also revamped the WWE.com feature, which now combines rivalry news, stats and rankings. There was some confusion after watching the live stream, where it looked like Randy Orton and Daniel Bryan were having matches every single week when involved in a rivalry with each other---however, this is not exactly the case. Aubrey Sitterson later posted in the 2K forums the following message:
"Hey guys, So, since yesterday I've been seeing some confusion about how the rivalry manager works. Some folks have assumed that setting a rivalry between two Superstars will cause them to have a match every single week on their respective show. That is absolutely not the case, and I'm not even sure where that rumor came from.Now, it is possible - especially with a shortened rivalry - that two Superstars might have a match every week of the rivalry. But that's something that happens on WWE television as well sometimes with shorter rivalries.In most cases, when storylines are allowed to play out, you'll see...other stuff happen in addition to just regular matches: Cutscenes, matches with other opponents, etc.Getting ahead of some of the "But-but-buts!" I've seen some places...In the livestream, we simulated a full month to get ahead to a pay-per-view, so you don't actually get to see what happened during that entire month. Apparently some confusion arises from the fact that when we looked at the rivalry history, it showed a bunch of matches and outcomes. But, if you look again, you'll see that not all of those matches are tagged as involving BOTH Bryan and Orton.I hope this clears things up for folks, as I was a little concerned when I saw people taking potshots at Rivalry Manager. Frankly, it's the biggest step forward Universe Mode has ever made, and if you want to get involved with it, will completely change the way your Universe operate, for the better.If you don't believe me, ask some of the folks who were at our playtests, forum regulars like RAWFShowtime, Miketheratguy and CyberOcelot.Got a lot going on right now (as you can probably imagine), so I won't be commenting in this thread too much, but just wanted to get some clarification out there for you guys."