Mana Games

[dongtaipo]

Hello again Manu,

During hundreds of hours of playing the World Tour, always on Pro-10, these two have bothered me the most.

1. Doubles is way too easy. If I remember correctly, I have never lost a single doubles match yet. My players have won every doubles tournament and one of them has a record of 302 wins and no losses. Even Incredible-10 wasn't any different. It's the AI. You just focus on returning the ball safely and the CPUs miss too many times. Sending the ball in the middle wins most of the time, especially when close to the net. You can even try crazy long volleys like Wii Tennis but usually the CPU will miss before long. Actually I reluctantly play doubles for the extra experience points. Otherwise my players would really have a hard time keeping up. So it feels like a drag sometimes since I know for sure that I'll win the match and have to spend much more time in doubles than singles, the reason I'm playing the World Tour. Doubles should be much more challenging and it would be wonderful.

2. Skills still drop fast even after Build 69. Actually I don't see any changes. My No. 1 ranked player still barely maintains his better skills close to 80 while there are a lot of CPU players, most of whose skills are close to 100. So he almost always has to be the underdog in the big tournaments. I had a test run using "mtkil", singles only and aiming for the big ones with 2 or 3 weeks of rest between. Even if you win every single match, your average skills fluctuate around 80. I know I can set DimPro to 0.9987 or something but I'd just like your opinion on this. I'm inclined to stick to the vanilla because I know you carefully designed it for realistic gameplay. I myself think it's okay that the average skills stay around 90 or more if the player is on a crazy, undefeated run.

Thank you very much!

[manutoo]

Hello,

1) I didn't touch the doubles for years. When the gameplay is settle and I'll have no other things to do, I'll have a look to see if I can improve it, but for now it'll stay at it is...

2) I think before the skills were ending closer to 70% at Master level ; what difficulty are you playing on ?
The idea is to lower the skills when the difficulty raise, to be sure to reach a state where the game is hard enough.

[dongtaipo]

I always play on Pro-10 and I'll keep it that way since that's the one you chose as the most realistic experience. My players have about 80 to 90% winning percentages for singles and of course, 100% for doubles... Singles is perfect and even getting better and better while doubles always a piece of cake regardless of difficulty (like I mentioned, I've tried Incredible-10 several times). I do hope you'll look into it and could make some improvements perhaps. If you wish, I could make short videos of doubles gameplay where the issues occur.

And yes, my players' best skills barely make 80% on Pro-10. The other skills are all like 30% or 50% and I don't think they'll get a chance to improve them. If they had played only singles as I had wished, that would have been disastrous I think. I just felt it was kind of unfair. So many other players have almost perfect skills which my players could never dream of. Tried Club-10 once before but still my player was nowhere near that kind of perfection. That said, I perfectly understand if those are for the sake of challenging gameplay.

[manutoo]

1) You could send me Bug Report showing the doubles issues, but not now, only when I'll be ready to work on that.

2) You didn't change the skill decay rate or something like that, right ? (as shown here : topic1-472.php )

[dongtaipo]

1) I played a couple of doubles matches today to make some shorts. Hopefully these could be of help when you work on doubles:

A. Keep sending the ball in the middle safely with slice vollies and the CPU gives up eventually. This kind of volley rallies can go much longer. https://youtu.be/oifJlGcaG-k
B. Even my CPU partner does this too. He didn't stick to the middle though. https://youtu.be/IIO3LGIdc5g
C. This happens often when you return the service down the middle. Never in a singles match. https://youtu.be/-jWb-2AYrOI
D. This always works. It becomes quite frustrating when the CPU exploits this against my CPU partner. https://youtu.be/ELLbCOkIdJw
E. Sometimes the CPU can't deal with the ball coming right into him. Also there are occasions, not very often, when my CPU partner is just standing frozen and the ball just goes right through him. https://youtu.be/wV9MC7xgsSk

I think it could be a good start to make volley rallies more difficult, espeically if your volley skills are not good enough.
By the way, the new volley animations are really amazing. Another fantastic work, Manu!

2) I haven't touched Tennis.ini for a long time. Last time I checked, they were in reverse, like DimClub was 0.9983 and DimIncredible 0.9980. DimPro, the one that I've always played the World Tour with, stays at 0.9982 though so that's why I haven't noticed.
I just had a quick "mtkil" run with DimPro 0.9992 and here my player's skills could keep up with those top players'. 90 or more on average. Of course you have to win every singles and doubles match in the big tournaments for that.
Come to think of it, how about adding a skill decay option in the World Tour Settings if it's not much trouble? Like "Slower", "Normal", "Faster" and even "Off". I have a feeling that many newcomers will ask about it when the game officially launches. Well, that's just an idea.

[manutoo]

1) Yes, these are issues that should be fixed. Hopefully, you can wait a few more months...
And I'm glad to know you enjoy the new volleys !

2) You have the old values ; the official values are now :

Code: Select all

[WT_Training]      // every day, Skill = Skill * Dim
DimClub      =   0.9980
DimJunior   =   0.9981
DimPro      =   0.9982
DimMaster   =   0.9982
DimIncredible   =   0.9983

The decay option could be good, especially for the future console versions, as it's a recurring request.

[dongtaipo]

1) Glad to hear that you'll work on them. Please don't rush.

2)

Code: Select all

[WT_Training]      // every day, Skill = Skill * Dim
DimClub      =   0.9980
DimJunior   =   0.9981
DimPro      =   0.9982
DimMaster   =   0.9982
DimIncredible   =   0.9983

Oh yes, these are the values in my Tennis.Ini at the moment. Sorry I couldn't make it clear. Anyway, I believe the decay option would be a welcome addition. Thank you for your consideration, Manu.