Mana Games

[Debuffy]

Hello, after the recent slicing update, normal groundstroke slices are completely broken on online. They have way too much backspin when they bounce (ball moves up instead of forward) almost giving an instant winner every time to the person who hits the ball. It's been a common complaint in the online community since this new update. Thank you

[Oserkos]

Just to say, this stands much more for offline (vs CPU or ball thrower) than online. It is weird and I don't really understand, but online bounce after sliced shots is much more interesting, the ball stopping as it does IRL, and the dropshots being much shorter. That's bizarre but anyways, online it is nice. Sent a bug report against ball thrower. Maybe it's just feeling and it isn't real, but playing online it felt that sliced strikes were totally different.

[manutoo]

About the slice,
thanks to everybody's reports, I checked more closely the bounce with heavy backspin, and I had based the new formula on the wrong parameter, making the ball slow down too much kinda randomly.

It should be fixed in the next update, although in my tests before & after the fix, I felt it was as easy in both cases to do an acceleration out of the slice, so maybe it'll still need some more tuning, depending on your feedback.


Oserkos,
don't hesitate to voice your concerns, as long as it's done respectfully, it's good for the game, and thus for everybody..!

Someone on Steam had reported the same issue about the high drop shot ; after investigation, it was happening only when standing a bit far from the baseline ; it'll be fixed in the next update.

Overall, the drop shot shouldn't be effective except if you have your feet on the baseline (or better, inside) ; like this, I think it's now significantly harder to catch a drop shot than before, both for the human & the CPU.

For the slice curve, it's alright for high backspin, but not much for medium ; I'll see if I can tune that for the next update, but it's tricky...

Note : you sent me a Bug Report but didn't write in it what I should check/see.

[guest233]

Hi, any time frame on the next update? Game is pretty unplayable currently.

[manutoo]

guest233,
hopefully tomorrow, if not Wednesday.

[JulitoU]

Hi Manu.

I dont know if someone already mention this but the gameplay of te4 is kinda weird right know.Almost unplayable.

Clay is the weirdest.When a player counterpunchs the ball dies a few meters beyond the net.It happens each time.

The slice continues to be useless in my opinion.The harmness of the stroke is not there anymore.

I feel that the game was better before this last updates.

Greetings!

[noys390]

Sad to find that there is no new talent given to dropshot. There is a talent for everything except this.

[manutoo]

JulitoU,
if it still happens with today's update, please send me a Bug Report the next time you see it. (HowTo => topic5-31732.php )

noys390,
there's already a skill for the drop shot...

[jenks10s]

Not gonna lie, I do not like the sliding talent thing. I loved seeing my player slide, but since I didn't do juniors I have no talents and now my player is not sliding on clay anymore. Maybe have that talent mean sliding on surfaces other than clay? Pretty much every player slides on clay whether they are great at it or not.

[KINGBARBOZA]

Hi Manutoo,

Coming from a purely online player's point of view, I don't think these talents are good at all and think they make the gameplay worse.
Specifically with the serve talents, what these talents do is add more randomness and luck to an already very random and luck-based system.

Boom Boom Talent seems to me like a cop-out of being able to control your serve to consistently serve faster, where from "time to time" you can serve 10% faster. It's not good for online play and especially adding something like this to break points. Every point should have the same algorithm or formula you use to decide the serve speed. You shouldn't get a stat buff or an advantage just because you are down a break point, I understand you are trying to simulate realism, but this should be done through a player-controlled mechanic and not on a random "time to time" chance from a talent.

On-time Server is just completely ridiculous for online gameplay and I'm pretty surprised you haven't disabled it like the early ball hit or clay move talents. a 25% or 50% increase to make 1st serves on break points simply by having this talent and not actually being more difficult to hit the shot is ridiculous. It's not skillful or competitive at all and is terrible for the player who created the break opportunity, as they are not only fighting against the other player's skill but this ridiculous specific stat boost on that point.

In my opinion, serving is the one element of TE that is lacking compared to other tennis games. I think maybe you revamping the serve mechanic to include player-controllable variables such as more specific serve speeds and possibly add another mechanical element such as timing so that you can make the faults more user error based rather than chance based.

Overall I don't think a talent system is good for online play, but I understand that most of your players are offline, and maybe offline these talents make a positive impact on gameplay.

[manutoo]

jenks10s,
turn on the DevMode to be able to give your player the Slider talent. (HowTo => topic19-32161.php )

Most players with Speed at 80% or more should slide on clay, but not often if they don't have the sliding talent. If it's really not often enough, I can tune the rate only for the clay surface. I'll wait to see if there's other feedback about that.


KINGBARBOZA,
the important point about the talents is that they are somewhat balanced so not everybody picks the same ones and the fight is still fair enough.

For the On-time Server, the 1st serve, if in, won't be better than without the Talent. It should be possible to break the server even when facing a 1st serve, although obviously, it'll be harder.

I'll wait to see what the consensus is for this talent and maybe I'll forbid it for online play as well if people feel it's overpowered.

For the Boom Boom talent, I think you should wait to see it in action before deciding if it's a problem or not. The very fast services replace the fast serves, so without the talent, the 1st serve would have been already quite effective, so the bonus from that Talent isn't that big...

Side note : for the WTET Mod, it'll be up to the Mod creators to see if they use these talents or not.

[noname1988]

Hi
I'm playing the latest updates and I feel the 0.80 ver. was "something", and it has changed after that, but I can't describe it... fluency? dynamics?
Idea: Would it be possible to add mistake sliding? I mean when char slides in but has bad timing and doesn't reach the ball.

[knich]

I think the .80 version is playing great...much more realistic IMO.

Did some CPU players get the new stars like Boom Boom...I couldn't find in ATPPlayer.ini or do we need to restart career for the stars to show?

[manutoo]

noname1988 & knich,
the only significant change since the v0.80 is the decrease of the sliding frequency (when untalented). Would it be the cause of your concerns ?

noname1988,
for the human players, it's impossible (ie: it'll force to miss the ball, or at least feel like that) ; for the CPU, ditto. The only place where it'd make sense is when sliding to the net, where it's forced to stop, and maybe it can happen already in some extreme cases (I saw it on the super backward & low drop shots, but these are not possible to do anymore, I think, so I'm not sure if something else could trigger the missing sliding).

knich,
I gave it to Rusedski, it's in the latest Modding SDK. You can add it like this :
BoomServe 100
For the CPU players, it doesn't require starting a new career.

[jenks10s]

jenks10s,
turn on the DevMode to be able to give your player the Slider talent. (HowTo => topic19-32161.php )

Most players with Speed at 80% or more should slide on clay, but not often if they don't have the sliding talent. If it's really not often enough, I can tune the rate only for the clay surface. I'll wait to see if there's other feedback about that.

I'm not really understanding those instructions. I followed them but what do I do after opening the game back up? It wasn't allowing me to add talents to my player.