Gameplay review and experience recommendations

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Gameplay review and experience recommendations

Postby David » 13 Jan 2023, 00:11

Hi, I recently bought TE4 via Steam to play it on my Steam Deck which I own for a couple of weeks now.
Since I mostly enjoy the game and would like to see it improve in some areas I thought I give it a shot and share my thoughts and experience.

About me: I am 37, living in Germany, played Tennis since I was 8yo and work as a professional UX designer. I always avoided Tennis games because for years they were complete garbage since it is very hard to create a game which puts emphasis on the most important aspects of a real Tennis match. So, I know about other Tennis games out there, looked at them, and bought TE4 but never played any other Tennis game on the Level of AO2 and co.

My gameplay:
  • First time, I tried to play as a Junior but noticed this was very frustrating as I was just starting to learn the mechanics.
  • I started a new career as a Pro.
  • Club-level difficulty, Simulation controls with visual indicators, max or second-to-max speed boost
  • I played for 18.8h, collected 26 of 57 achievements, am No 1 and just won the Olympics.
  • My players stats average probably around ~60 or less.

1) Positive:
  • TE4 puts a lot of emphasis on what I believe are important aspects during real Tennis matches: positioning/movement, shot selection, patience, identifying the opponent's strengths and weaknesses and adjusting the own play style accordingly.
  • The Tennis match gameplay itself is fun and challenging. You can feel the different qualities when playing against opponents.
  • The gameplay experience on the Steam Deck was mostly smooth, no crashes, everything works and can be configured although TE4 is not optimised for the Deck.
  • The detail of the player customisation is great: I was able to use my favourite grip band (at least by changing the colour) and a style I typically wear on the court. Absolute fantastic is the ability to select animation styles and even have already now a pretty large variety of well-known swing styles.
  • The detail of the player statistics are great.
  • The Tutorial is simple enough to get started and learn from there.
  • There is audio commenting on plays.
  • Customisability of settings to adjust the game to my preferred play style is great. I can play more arcady or more simulation-like. I can even simulation games and play it more as a manager.

2) My "bad" experiences:
  • a) User interface: Large portions of the user interface to navigate through, adjust settings, manipulate stats, select tournaments, review players, review matches are cumbersome to read and control. The structure of pages seems often unintuitive. Some pieces which should be settings on a separate view are part of a content layout.
  • b) Experience and training hours: This may sound funny – It took me probably 8h until I realised I wasn't able to spent more of my experience points due to missing free/training time. There is no clear relation between those 2 currencies
  • c) Audio quality: The quality of the movement, player grunts, and crowd do not feel like they are happening in the same space/room/place. This breaks the immersion in a quite subtle way, but the impact is very large. Even to that extend that I started to play with very low volume.
  • d) Repetitive feeling: I played for ~18h on the same difficulty level, and the game starts to feel very repetitive. Why? Because besides grinding tournaments to get more XP to level up stats, there is literally nothing to do. No overarching story, no achievements, no unlocks.
  • e) Approaching the net: Approaching the net seems to be a non-viable strategy. This could be due to the relatively low speed stat (50) but throughout all the matches I think I only went 2-3 times to the net and won a point. Other strategies seem significantly more effective and therefore more rewarding.
  • f) Shot variety: Similar to the previous point, I mostly only play the normal shot or the strong shot and win all rallies via player movement and target selection. This might be due to my specific difficulty settings, but it already feels on this difficulty level wrong. I simply to not get taught to select other shots depending on the situation. Lobs and aggressive lobs are the exceptions here which I regularly use when the opponent approaches the net.
  • g) The Steam Deck often struggles when starting a new point to get the frame rate sort of stable at 60 fps. I notice the problem to be less significant when turning the far crowd setting lower. Typically what happens is, when I am serving and a new point starts, the fps drops to 10-20 and then ramps up again to sixty within 1-3s. Sometimes this can impact the serve quality because the timing is off.

3) The "Why isn't this a thing?" moments
  • a) Challenging calls: I think, the ability to challenge shots is must have feature. I do believe it is not trivial not make it work properly but I can imagine it being a very immersive game mechanic. For shots which a certain cm range close to the net there could a probability that the made call is wrong. And players can challenge each call at any time in the game.
  • b) Make use of the money: I earned prize money, I steer the career of my player, but beyond stats, there is nothing to achieve. Who are my trainers, what is my gear, what about brand deals or sponsoring.
  • c) Career and the public: Right now, the created player feels emotionless and – well – faceless. There is no relationship to fans, no rivalry, no player brand, in that sense, there is no career. Just matches and stats.
  • d) Player emotes: They exist, but are not configurable? (Maybe I just didn't find this one.)

4) Recommendations: UI overhaul
  • a) Overhaul most of the UI, page layouts, and navigation structure with the goal to make it as easy as possible and not become a challenge on its own.
  • b) I have quite a couple of years of interface design and navigation architecture experience for quite complex systems and I was wondering whether is the potential interest in getting support. I am not talking about any compensation request here, I would just have an interest in exploring some options together with you and figure out how the visual language on the UI can add to the immersive story of building a career.
  • c) I looked more in-depth into AO2, its UI structure and how certain functional pages are solved which are very similar in nature.

5) Recommendations: Career as core experience
  • a) Imho, the career mode is the core experience which should not feel like a repetition of matches.
  • b) Planning weeks and training should play a role.
  • c) Hiring a manager, trainers, coaches should play a role.
  • d) Basically, large portions of the Tennis Elbow Manager should actually be phases or aspects of the TE4 career mode.
  • e) Besides that, the pure Tennis match gameplay needs to feel fun and challenging, as if it accomplishes something besides just another win or some stats. This could be building a reputation with the fans – Are you the "good guy" like Federer or the "bad guy" like Kyrgios? What coaches/trainers are willing/interested to work with you? What brands are interested in sponsoring deals? When starting is a junior, how does your flight ticket and hotel (or maybe even trailer) influence your game? Actions, clean wins, complaints to the umpire or bad technique should have consequences on your career.
  • f) Of course, if the main gameplay, the match, does not feel like fun all the rest does not really matter. So, whatever ideas there might be to make the gameplay smoother, feel more precise, more tactical, make the player feel more in control and the general experience to be more immersive, pursue those ideas.

Overall, congrats to a very nice game. I see lots of potential here and based on what I see in reviews on the Gameplay of Tennis games with significantly larger teams, I like the pure Tennis match Gameplay mechanics of TE4 more. Would love to get some response of you especially on the UI topics or just in general.

All the best!
– David
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Re: Gameplay review and experience recommendations

Postby Fed1 » 13 Jan 2023, 01:24

Great post!! Really detailed and explanotory.

Regarding the depth of the gameplay and shots, I advise you to increase the cpu level, that will force you to use more shots, otherwise with only normal and acceleration you won't get far. Also, that will force you to close points in the net if needed. I don't recall at the moment the ammount of shots the game has, but I do think TE4 is the game with more shots selections in the market right now. I play with a controller and have one buttom for each stroke, no arrows, so I do think the shot variety is covered well.

I agree with you that the UX and UI of the game needs some work, hopefully manu can take advantage of your experience and improve on that in the future!! Would really like that!

About the depth of the career I subscribe to all your ideas/suggestions, I just doubt they can be implemented (at least all of them) given that this is a solo man operation. Of course, if more people with talent/experience can help, it would be great. For example I'd like the game to have custom clothes brands so you can have sponsors and also more animations (specailly animations) but that requieres talent and time.

I play tennis myself as well (amateur, very amateur) and what I love the most of this game is the actual gameplay, none of the other games capture the feeling of playing quite like this one, so I hope it gets better, I'm sure it will and thanks to posts like this one that give so many details about the experience.

Btw, thanks for the feedback on the steam deck, planning on getting one someday!
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Re: Gameplay review and experience recommendations

Postby manutoo » 13 Jan 2023, 10:10

David,

0) Overall
So as pointed out by Fed1 (who is right on everything he said :P ), I'd strongly recommend ramping up the difficulty level, with the goal to beat the Junior-10 CPU having similar skills to yours. This should raise not only the challenge, but also the variety of the matches, and reward you more when varying your strikes & style (but you still can be a one-dimensional player, the game doesn't unnaturally force you into anything).

2)
b) This is a common issue ; maybe adding a tooltip would help. At this point, the game expects you to read the documentation if you don't understand something. eg: https://www.managames.com/tennis/doc/Te ... l#training

c) I want to improve the sounds, but that particular issue will likely not be fixed ; this kind of quality is out of my reach

e) I didn't play TE4 that much so I cannot guarantee that in all cases, but I think the net game is globally alright, or at least realistic : in modern tennis, it's hard to be efficient at the net and most players stay on the baseline except if drawn to the net. However, if at Club-10 it's still too hard for you, I'd strongly recommend to train yourself at the net in the Training Club -> Warm Up till you're comfortable with the volleying. Also, train yourself to rush the net. It shouldn't be that impossible. Learn to exploit the shorter balls.

f) At higher difficulty levels, the topspin, the slice, the short strike & the short accelerations are hard to live without ; but one-dimensional players exist in real life, so it's possible to do the same in TE4, so it also depends on what's in your mind and I can't control that... :blackeye:

g) Yes, this is due to the crowd animation ; it might be optimizable, but this is a huge task so I likely won't do it, and I'm even not sure it'd be enough to run smoothly on the Steamdeck. So the solution is indeed to turn off the far crowd.

3)
a) It's on the roadmap : topic15-33253.php ; but I'm really not sure I'll do it or not

b) c) see below

d) The gestures are not configurable because I don't have enough of them for all cases ; so they depend on your forehand choice.

4)
Globally, I'm happy enough with the current menus, but I'm open to suggestions, especially for the usability with a controller (the menus were designed for the mouse).
It's unlikely I'll do any deep changes, as it's time-consuming.
I designed them to be fast to use (with the mouse), as I'm the n°1 to use them and I really don't want to lose any time when I'm developing the game... :)
I strongly disliked the AO2 menus and found them confusing, slow, & quite inefficient overall. (in general, I hate menus designed for consoles)
So if you have ideas for improvements, let me know, either here or by email : https://www.managames.com/mail_en/ . I can promise to read them all, but I can't promise you I'd do them all... :P

5)
Hum, at this point, I guess you should play TEM2 instead of TE4. However, I'm planning to give the possibility to play TEM2 within TE4, for people who will have bought both games.
But I won't do any new stuff as you have described : it's very time-consuming, plus it's boring as hell, and as I'm a solo dev, I really prefer to focus on what matters the most, like you outlined : the match.
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Re: Gameplay review and experience recommendations

Postby knich » 14 Jan 2023, 03:01

manutoo wrote:
5)
Hum, at this point, I guess you should play TEM2 instead of TE4. However, I'm planning to give the possibility to play TEM2 within TE4, for people who will have bought both games.
But I won't do any new stuff as you have described : it's very time-consuming, plus it's boring as hell, and as I'm a solo dev, I really prefer to focus on what matters the most, like you outlined : the match.


Merging TEM2 within TE4 would be awesome.

I understood TEM2 is a stand alone manager. Are you saying you can play a full tour on TEM2 with HUM playing the matches and real tour?
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Re: Gameplay review and experience recommendations

Postby manutoo » 14 Jan 2023, 07:15

knich,
yes, in TEM2 you can take the control of your player for any match you want. The gameplay is the same as TE4 except for no sliding or reaching animations.
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Re: Gameplay review and experience recommendations

Postby knich » 16 Jan 2023, 16:06

Thanks...definitely feel the merger of the TEM2 with TE4 would greatly enhance TE4.
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Re: Gameplay review and experience recommendations

Postby horndawg » 05 Feb 2023, 14:53

Great review. I completely agree that the career mode needs more features from TEM2, feels like there is a great game there between the two of them. At the moment the game does get stale fast as there is no tangible sense of progress in career mode.
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Re: Gameplay review and experience recommendations

Postby enes16 » 05 Feb 2023, 20:08

manutoo wrote:5)
Hum, at this point, I guess you should play TEM2 instead of TE4. However, I'm planning to give the possibility to play TEM2 within TE4, for people who will have bought both games.
But I won't do any new stuff as you have described : it's very time-consuming, plus it's boring as hell, and as I'm a solo dev, I really prefer to focus on what matters the most, like you outlined : the match.


5) Yes, I am waiting for this option, I have all versions of your games, but if I have one on steam<TEM2>, TE4 from the original site, will there be a problem? If this option ever comes out! :annoyed:

And when it comes to gameplay from update to update, it looks better and better, but I am of the opinion that there are too many winners, I play from pro-10 to master-10, there are even more of them on simulation, that's why I play on elite where I have less of them<but it still doesn't solve the problem, there are still too many of them>, In my opinion, it applies to AI as well as the user. I've written about this before, but it's the most problematic thing for me at the moment, animations of running, hitting, I know it will come with time, that's why I don't write it anymore, because I wrote it too, but overall the game is wonderful, what can I say more! Greetings :applause: :jap:
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Re: Gameplay review and experience recommendations

Postby manutoo » 06 Feb 2023, 11:58

enes16,
you'll likely have to get your free Steam Key for TE4 to activate it on Steam (I have to check 1st how it'll be doable to active TEM2 within TE4 on Steam, though :fear: )
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Re: Gameplay review and experience recommendations

Postby enes16 » 06 Feb 2023, 14:19

manutoo wrote:enes16,
you'll likely have to get your free Steam Key for TE4 to activate it on Steam (I have to check 1st how it'll be doable to active TEM2 within TE4 on Steam, though :fear: )

:annoyed: :dance: :bounce:
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