it has its peaks & valleys...but its still "developmental" so theres gonna be dips in quality. i can live with it.
I wish it was more developmental actually. Signing all those indie/TNA names might be good for drawing crowds but it sucks for booking because they really can't mix the two up as they're forced to protect the indie darlings. That's why guys like Tyler Breeze and now Tye Dillinger end up in a dead zone booking-wise, because they will never let them go over the indie guys and they gain absolutely nothing from going over other developmental talent anymore.
Just look at when the last time was that a developmental talent was actually in the running for the NXT championship (even as a #1 contender). A title run would do a lot more for a guy like Dillinger than it ever will for Samoa Joe or Nakamura or Aries, but they book all their homegrown talent into such a corner that nobody would buy him going over those guys ever, let alone accept it.
That's why the women's division is struggling right now too because outside of Nia Jax' random ass push they're so goddamn afraid to book one of their new talents like Liv Morgan or Peyton Royce on the same level of Bayley or Asuka that it feels like there's zero competition in the division.
All of which comes down to something I've said before, they need to take bigger risks and start putting more developmental talent out there on tv. Most of them might sink but it really is the quickest way to get them to learn how to swim. All this slugging around forever doing dark matches, jobbing out most of their first tv matches until they get that "approved" push, it's killing them before they ever even get the chance to show out.