Mana Games

[Spallo]

Hi Manu and TE-Community,

I took a break for a longer time in playin this great game (around Version .50) and now got back. I have to say I rly like the direction and development since then. It feels way better now than TE2013 and way more realistic in the gameplay. But I noticed some things negative and positive:

negative:
1. Lobs are still far to powerful - it might be, that I am playing Junior tour, but even against Giants (explanation comes later) they work very very effctive without having great skill (pointwise) in it.
2. I get weird glitches sometimes, when a player is dribbeling the ball before the serve. The arm is somewhat unnaturally extended then - I would guess, this is a known graphic-bug.
3. Slices are sometimes crazy. I am not a good slice-player and use them pretty much never, except when I feel I have to. But the CPU does some crazy things with them, which are'nt feel right. You adressed this in your dev-blog I think, but I wanted to mention it.
4. Almost all oppenents I had so far in my new career are making to much unforced errors I think - but I dont know the real ratios and it might be related to my later question.

positive:
1. The game feels way more intuitive than TE2013 when to make what shots, be agressive/defensive etc.
2. The new Stadiums looking great!
3. Animations are mostly very good now and almost never feel off - it happens, but its not very noticable.
4. I tried the basic commentary system for like a set and never heard a commentary twice - despite being very basic at the moment, this makes me very excited of things to come in this regard

Now the question:

Got the game easier since I stopped? Because it feels a lot like it - let me elaborate:

My way of starting in a career and figure out my preferred difficulty-lvl is starting at pro 1 usually and going up to like pro 4 or 5 in a few matches. After 2 or 3 tournaments that gets maybe to 6. Now I had to raise it crazy fast - I won a grade D Tournament against opponents that are in my range pointswise - got to 6 and won with a wildcard 2rounds in a grad C Tournament against way better opponents pointswise. At the moment I am sitting at pro 8 and got to the last qualification round of Wimbledon. Played against good players, but it felt ok. Now I play against a 18 year old 197cm Giant, that is literally half a meter taller than me and I am winning - that doesnt feel right, and the unforced error stuff (see above) plays a huge role in this. I think I play very good for my skilllvl and been at the top of my game the last matches, but I never played pro 10 in TE2013 (highest was 8), because it was a bit to hard for me.

Is pro 10 still considered the realistic standard like in TE2013 or has smth changed there? And last time I played I was at pro 4 or 5 I think and not in a million years able to win against such opponents.

So how exactly is the playerrating working - its clear, that the skillpoints are one thing, but other (hidden?) stats effect them or the composition of stats are in a manner, that a weaker player is better. I would like some clarification here, because in TE2013 it was basically the same, but not with such huge differences I think. But it might be the Juniorpart of it, that is the problem ...

So thanks in advance and as always - you are the best manu

[manutoo]

Hello,

n1) It depends on many parameters ; if the opponent is slow, they might be quite effective indeed, even if he's tall

n2) What version are you playing with ? This is likely the bug that has been introduced around the SubBuild 2022.7.31 and has been fixed around the SubBuild 2022.8.3

n3) Ditto. Introduced in the SubBuild 2022.7.31 and fixed in the SubBuild 2022.8.10-1 (although there might still be some too efficient slices, but not as much as with that fixed bug ; I'll look into them when I'll be working on the gameplay)

p3) Good news ; I did a lot of fixes to reach that state !

q1) The difficulty didn't change. However, TE4 is harder at 1st than TE2013, but once you have learned the new stuff, it gets easier. This is because the defense was overpowered in TE2013, while the attack was a bit lacking, which lead to always having a hard time doing winners. Plus there were very few errors from the CPU, so playing defense yourself was a very long & tedious tactic.

TE4 fixed all that, but it means once you have learned to position yourself correctly and attack at the right time, you'll do a lot of winners, while the CPU has now a realistic error rate and thus give you free points regularly. If you were playing TE2013 on Pro-4, you can expect to play TE4 on Master-4 (rough estimate, I didn't get enough feedback to be sure of the approximation ).

Moreover, the Junior Tour is mostly an uncharted area, where I'm really not sure how the difficulty fluctuates...

For the CPU skills, you can see them all in the Match Opponent presentation screen, there's nothing hidden.

Pro-10 is still the most realistic setup (for CPU vs CPU), but up to Master-10, the CPU is still very realistic.

[Spallo]

That confirmed a lot of the things I already suspected - thx for that comprehensive answer

And I am been obviously playin with an older build - 0.67 that is. We have a lot of issues with our internet-connection and I am pretty much always offline but thought I updated it. Already downloaded the updates with a mobile hotspot

So I guess the difiiculty raising game can continue

And I always felt the off/def unbalance in TE2013 but now I see, how unbalanced it rly was. Great work to correct that and make an even more realstic game.

As always best wishes to you and your family