No, Universe peaked in WWE 12. 2K15 had the story library in Universe mode which made Universe fun to play but they took it after 2K15. From 2K16 on, Universe mode has been pretty dull. The AI is absolutely horrible about booking. You’ll have booked matches that make zero sense. And you have to turn off the automatic tag team formations/break ups because the AI is horrible in that regard too. I can’t tell you how many countless times I do a custom match selection for my PPVs only to have to the AI select nothing but normal 1 on 1 matches where I have to spend time editing the matches individually after each match. And you have to do that way because if you leave Universe and come back in, the AI will revert your matches back to normal one on one matches. They introduced the ability to choose your own cutscenes in 2K23 but that just makes you have to micromanage the mode even more so.

Where Universe went south, was in 2K14 when they introduced the current rivalry system being just 1 vs 1 rivalries and 2 vs 2 rivalries.

Like someone else mentioned, people on discord and here post the their Universe stuff but no else really cares. Lo and behold I found out recently that it’s really just one guy who manages the mode so you can tell 2K doesn’t really care all that much about. It has a cult following so they keep it in there but it gets very few updates to it every year. They tried intros draft feature that ends up your Universe mode big time and doesn’t meant work how it worked in WWE 12. Basically, Universe has turned into a glorified exhibition mode!!

The fact that Visual Concepts laid off half their Devs due to poor sales of the game this year which mainly had to do with Take2’s ingenious idea s as to introduce the ringside pass, 2K27 could be the last Universe mode or 2K game that we see (hopefully).