My understanding around this is that the feature only works on shared VMs from the same host. Please see VMware Knowledge Base I believe this info is available in the related section field.

I found a way to suspend ALL VMs not just shared ones.  In Windows 10 and Workstation Pro 14 the following works for me.  The VMrun command appears to be part of the player as well, so this might work for you to suspend all you player images on system shutdown.

Create a script to run during system Shutdown - i named mine SuspendVMs.bat

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cd C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation

for /f  %%G in ('vmrun list') DO vmrun suspend %%G"

exit

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The above file creates one error command but does not slow down the suspend - and postpones the sustem restart or shutdown until ALL VMs are suspended

Please the file in C:\Windows\System32\GroupPolicy\Machine\Scripts\Shutdown

then Edit Group policies to run it - reference

https://lifehacker.com/use-group-policy-editor-to-run-scripts-when-shutting-do-980849001

basically run gpedit.msc

then

Computer configuration

Windows Settings

Scripts(Startup/Shutdown)

on right side double click shutdown

the ADD the script to the list

I know this is an old thread, but I'd like to add some information in case someone is facing the same issue. I have a slight tweak on wx1966's script. The following works well for me.

cd C:"\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation"

for /f  "skip=1 delims=" %%G in ('vmrun list') DO vmrun suspend "%%G"

exit

Without "skip=1", the first value in %%G is "Total running VMs: X". vmrun suspend on this value obviously generates the error that wx1966 refers to. Without the "delim=", spaces in the path to the VMs create problems. Also, wx1966's script is missing a double quote before the last %%G.

VMware Workstation documentation states that you can configure the running VMs to suspend before Windows shutdown as long as they are shared VM's. I am unable to configure shared VM's. It always tells me that it could not reach the VM server. The server process is running but Workstation can't see it. Regardless, the above script works well for my non-shared VMs. It may also work for shared VMs but I can't test that.

Hope this helps.

This script is a little bit more elaborate, and tries to handle some long running tasks, etc. Should the smaller version above give you any issues, you are free to try it out.