Mana Games

[isaldor]

kingdjokovic,
I guess that like your idol, you like big joke...
And in case you don't : TS4 gameplay may be fun, but it's very loosely related to real tennis, while TE is a tennis simulation. And it won't change anytime soon !

If TE is a tennis simulation, i guess real players can move backward faster than light, and can defend in circle. This game is too advanced i guess, you can already play the tennis we'll see in 2100.

[manutoo]

isaldor,
it's significantly slower to accelerate totally backward than totally forward. The max backward speed is same than forward, because the game doesn't know if you want to turn around or not, so if you keep going backward it lets you reach the max speed like if you had turned around at start of your run. (and if you start to run backward from around the baseline, you'll never reach the max speed anyway, as the run won't be long enough)

[isaldor]

During the off season you released a build where you slower a lot the speed backward then you changed it few days later because of some complains. This build was realistic and finally enjoyable. Now, when you play at high level, you have to play 6+ shots on line to win the point because the opponent can defend like a crazy, this is completely unrealistic.If you add to this the crazy counter you can hit when you frame a ball, it's almost impossible to attack when the guy is backboarding. Why did you change your mind about backward speed ? I think it was the 8th december build but not sure though.

[manutoo]

You can read the detail of events here : topic15-14075.php#p162403 .
In Build 104 I lowered by only 30% the forward bonus & backward handicap, so it's not that big of a change.
But what I changed & really bothered your kind of people is that I made the backward handicap actually match the back of the player instead of the back of the court, which is way more realistic. But some people don't care about realism and just wanted to see the players run slower to the back of the court, even if it was not a backward run...

[isaldor]

So you're saying that my kind of people (don't know what that mean), don't care about realism ? So if we want to game to be more friendly winner is because we don't care about realism ? 10+ average rally on grass is realism for you ? Being able to defend in circle is realism for you ? being able to hit deep counter when you frame the ball is realism for you ?
In real tennis, you'll never see a player run backward even half fast as it is possible here, except when they're running to catch a lob. We just want the game to be more winner friendly, cause we're bored by infinite rallies and by random counter. If our kind of people like you said want those changes, it's because of realism and because it would be more enjoyable for everybody.

[MarkChan]

So you're saying that my kind of people (don't know what that mean), don't care about realism ? So if we want to game to be more friendly winner is because we don't care about realism ? 10+ average rally on grass is realism for you ? Being able to defend in circle is realism for you ? being able to hit deep counter when you frame the ball is realism for you ?
In real tennis, you'll never see a player run backward even half fast as it is possible here, except when they're running to catch a lob. We just want the game to be more winner friendly, cause we're bored by infinite rallies and by random counter. If our kind of people like you said want those changes, it's because of realism and because it would be more enjoyable for everybody.

I concur. Unrealistic backward speed in this game. People move backwards quickly and then still have sufficient power to hit a b1 shot that catches the baseline the next shot, solving attack easily.

[djarvik]

I agree with Isaldor here. The frustration that sets in after I am attacking and well placed inside the court and have to hit NUMEROUS line shots to get a winner is enormous. Opening up a court and hitting to open court for a winner is a Tennis 101 and I feel TE at current state fails at that. And with that goes the realism of the game. This is coming from someone who plays tennis for over 23 years and once professionally.

The "feel" of realism is going away quick once you realize that about the game.

I hope Manu can find a solution for this.

[jroug]

I agree with isaldor as well, too much credits to defense in the game, rally lenght are too high whereas in real life it's short

[freehand]

For the never-ending rallies, i already posted a thread about that (it's all in french, sorry):
topic21-14017.php

With decreasing the speed of the cpu's player in the tennis.ini's file, it's a bit more realistic, but the problem is still here (with a lot more errors from the cpu).
I immediately noticed this problem when i started playing TE two years ago, and even stopped playing it for 6 months because that.

[manutoo]

isaldor,
your kind of people = the other people who complained about the Build 104 (and happened to mostly play the ITST Mod)
I didn't talk about winner, I talked about the handicap on the backward run and you complaining about me making it more realistic.
You play with a Mod that greatly twists TE settings and bring a lot of problems that are not happening with the recommended settings (ie: Realistic + Elite controls), or are there but to a significantly smaller extent.

djarvik,
so 1st reason, it's same than isaldor as you play with ITST.
2nd reason is that you need to step on the baseline or slightly inside & be perfectly positioned to do a clear winner ; when everything is like this, your 101 works ; the real TE issue is that actually the average ball length is a bit too deep which makes it slightly harder than in real life to step in. This was a deliberate choice when I first built TE2009 as I considered it was hard to move and to know where to position ourselves up/down, so I made in sort that the ball length is a bit more constant & deeper than in real life (especially with high consistency skills) ; this was before I came up with the Danger Zone, so now I think it might be possible to get a more realistic ball depth distribution without impairing the gameplay.
I'll do some tests in TEM2 in that direction (it's required for my TEM2 goal anyway), and if it's conclusive and I feel I can get the gameplay where I want with it (ie: I don't want TE to require too much skills, everybody should be able to feel like he's Federer or Nadal, and I don't want the game to be too much based on luck so the online is still interesting), then it'll make its way into TE4.

freehand,
if you play against a high CPU difficulty (ie: Incredible, or maybe Master), you may want to lower it, and then lower your own skills to get more realism while still having an interesting difficulty.

[freehand]

Manu, i play the original game and without any patches (in pro 7), but i feel the same problems that Isaldor and Djarvik.

[isaldor]

2nd reason is that you need to step on the baseline or slightly inside & be perfectly positioned to do a clear winner ; when everything is like this, your 101 works

You are completely wrong about that, when you're inside the court and perfectly positioned, it doesn't work as well, we have to do multiple of perfects shots to hit a clean winner. I'm playing against CPU incredible 6 so i know how to be perfectly positioned. And on ITST we're not playing with elite settings, so it would impossible to hit a winner with elite settings.

the real TE issue is that actually the average ball length is a bit too deep which makes it slightly harder than in real life to step in.

The average ball length is too deep but mainly, too random. You can hit a deep shot but you don't know how and why. For example the defense slice. But also when you frame a ball, it can goes deeper than if you haven't, and it's imo not realistic.

[testo]

The average ball length is too deep but mainly, too random. You can hit a deep shot but you don't know how and why. For example the defense slice. But also when you frame a ball, it can goes deeper than if you haven't, and it's imo not realistic.

=> totally totally agree ... i really don't understand the deeper of the shot ( With good position and lot of time to prepare)

[freehand]

Incredible is an unrealistic level of difficulty, manu wrote something about that. CPU has super power !
But i'm agree with isaldor and djarvik, and i play only at pro level.

[Rob92]

I have been playing TE online mostly using the ITST mod in random matches for probably about a year now, and I just find it infuriating when I play skilled defenders.

I'll be taking the initiative in the point, but the opponent will reach almost everything with ease, and eventually one of these shots is likely to end up going really deep and landing on or just inside the baseline, putting me on the back foot out of nowhere and making me lose the point. These shots are not deliberate, they are pure luck. Fair enough, reading the play and/or reacting quickly to position your player takes skill, but it feels really cheap to lose points from these lucky deep shots.

I like to play attacking tennis, but the only way I can have any success doing this in the ITST mod is to use a player like Berdych and just bash everything within an inch of the lines, pretty much exclusively using acceleration shots and running around the backhand as much as possible. I definitely think Elite controls produces a better, more cerebral/realistic game by making the acceleration a more risky option (on ITST the acceleration is very safe) and it means that more of these running defensive shots end up in the net than on the baseline... However, the ability to play online using high quality modded courts and real players means the ITST mod is my preferred way of playing TE.