Mana Games

[wjdygert]

I'm not sure if the issues I'm asking about are affected by Sam's Patch (which I'm using), so apologies if I should have posted this in that sub-forum. Also, I've read through the documentation and don't think I saw explanations for these questions.

First, I was hoping for some clarification on training. Is there any way to play two tournaments consecutively (and go deep in the first) and not have your skill levels go down due to lack of time to train? This is an issue during the South American clay swing into Indian Wells/Miami, the Euro clay masters, Roland Garros into Queens/Halle and Basel/Valencia into Paris/London. It just doesn't seem right to me that you could win, say, the French Open and then have your level of play drop for the first grass event. I ended up doing no grass warmups for Wimbledon after winning the French because I wanted to be as strong as possible for Wimbledon. That's not (normally) how it's done in the real game, and I was wondering if I'm doing something wrong?

My next question is related to my first. I've justified the point loss from lack of training as a sim for match play fatigue. What doesn't make sense to me is that there doesn't seem to be any penalty for playing lots of long matches rather than playing lots of tournaments, and the effect seems to be on your skill levels, not your fatigue level. I could see being exhausted after winning the French and having to pull out of Queen's if I'd played several full-distance matches during the Euro clay season, but in my last season I had to skip Queen's even though my Euro clay season had been pretty comfortable. Can someone explain how fatigue works from match to match and tournament to tournament?

Btw, I'm not playing on the higher difficulty levels (yet!), so sorry if these factors only come into play at the higher levels.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

[manutoo]

Hello,

training is not about fatigue, it's about... training !

Your skill points will always go down between 2 tournaments (except if you tweak the settings in your Tennis.ini ).

There's no fatigue counted outside of the matches.

[wjdygert]

Thanks for the reply. Are you the creator of Tennis Elbow? If so, you did a fantastic job. This is one of the most realistic and deepest sports games I've ever played.

I was pretty sure the training/fatigue stuff worked the way you you've explained. I just wanted clarification. If you are the creator, I would humbly suggest a tweaking of the training aspect for future versions. I love that I have to earn a better player through consistent better play, but I think there should be training 'windows' rather than have it occur after every tournament. There are certain times of year that seem to have the most downtime for the pros (immediately after Australia, between Wimbledon and Canada, between US and East Asia and after the World Tour Finals). These seem like the times to 'level up' (or down) a player. Perhaps this could be triggered when you enter the top 100; playing all the top events obviously isn't as critical when you're just starting out.

You could still incentivize proper scheduling by having fatigue roll over from match to match and tournament to tournament. Look at Federer's career vs Nadal's career to see the long term effects of overplaying, or any number of tournaments where someone plays a grueling five setter to see what happens match to match. Obviously having a high stamina rating will help with this, and I think it would really add to the sim-quality of the game.

[manutoo]

1. Check my description under my avatar on the left !

2. Most top players play around 20 tournaments per year, that gives them 30 weeks of training (less a few holidays).

3. I don't want bad luck apply twice : ie harder 1st rounds leading to defeat in later rounds due to accumulated fatigue... TeManager does this though.

[wjdygert]

1. Yeah, I saw that. I'm very cautious about committing to things.

2. I have no issue with the need for training. I think it's a great idea actually; I've always thought a tennis player should be able to develop certain parts of his game as his career progressed (like Ferrer's serve, Nadal's net game, Murray's aggression). The built-in tendency for abilities to degrade is something I hadn't considered, but it also absolutely makes sense. My only concern is that since training points ALWAYS degrade without training, a player is frequently left with the choice of not playing back to back weeks (which happens frequently on the ATP calendar) or seeing their skill level decrease for the second week of play due to lack of training. Players frequently get on a roll during regional/surface swings during the year (Nadal always on clay, Murray in East Asia in 2011, Djokovic in East Asia this past year, Federer in indoor Europe at the end of 2011). The current training system invariably leaves a player relatively weaker during the middle of these seasons, rather than as the tournament favorites they are in real life. Training points don't degrade in the middle of Grand Slams, right? Perhaps training could always work on a two week cycle (or simply be postponed until after two weeks of tournaments have been played).

3. That's understandable, and fatigue between matches would have to be designed so that it mattered but it didn't routinely cripple players. It would be necessary as a disincentive to overplay if the training aspect were reformed however. And it would also allow for ability to degrade WITHIN tournaments if you get pushed too hard in early rounds. I wouldn't necessarily call it bad luck when you're playing as a power-baseliner or serve and volleyer and a player with great defensive skills wears you down. That's real tennis, and it's why good defensive skills and stamina are so crucial in the modern game. Perhaps it could be an optional setting or only kick in on higher difficulty levels.

[manutoo]

2. Having the skills begin to drop after 2 weeks of tournament isn't an uninteresting idea, but actually in real life, it's pretty rare to see a player winning 2 tournaments back to back like that, so the skill drop in-between giving a little handicap might be realistic enough

[wjdygert]

2. Having the skills begin to drop after 2 weeks of tournament isn't an uninteresting idea, but actually in real life, it's pretty rare to see a player winning 2 tournaments back to back like that, so the skill drop in-between giving a little handicap might be realistic enough

It's true that most players have difficulty winning events two weeks in a row, especially if they had to expend a lot of energy getting through the tournaments. But when a player cruises for the first week (which is common if the event is an ATP 250 or 500), they're usually pretty fresh (or even in peak form) for the next tournament. This is where the element of fatigue between matches/tournaments comes in. However, I do understand that this would be difficult to implement and that the current training system works very well in most regards as is.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.