Mana Games

[xman]

Playing this game for a whole year now and playing clay currently with online players and sorry, but this is so unrealistic. You play as Puncher or Power Baseliner with 100% yet you cannot hit a winner because everyone runs and defend every ball. It is so unrealistic. What is the pont of having different playing style when there is no strength? Literally every one is playing like pusher on clay and the one who stay in the rally wins.

[KINGBARBOZA]

I don't think much can be done. Clay is just going to always be awful online, hard and grass are much more balanced.

[manutoo]

xman,
since 1 year, there have been several changes both in TE4 gameplay, and in XKT Mod for the clay physics. You didn't feel anything change ?
What rally length do you usually get on clay ? And on hard ? (you can check Settings -> Training Club -> Match Log, if you're on PC)

[KINGBARBOZA]

Hey Manu,
On clay matches with evenly skilled players we are typically getting 7-15 average rally. One match had a 23 average rally. Frequently over 60 shot rallies too.

[manutoo]

KINGBARBOZA,
up to 12 is acceptable, even if not that much realistic. More than 12 is really problematic. Is it approximately the same with WTSL & XKT ?

[KINGBARBOZA]

I'm speaking more from WTSL POV,

I don't play much XKT but from what i've heard from the players who play both like Yale and Dani21 it's a lot worse on XKT than WTSL. I guess due to some players making full topspin + 100 speed builds with the playstyle to prolong rallies and effectively draw out errors when both players are at no stamina.

[KINGBARBOZA]

Just to add to that, doesn't help when the player trying to end the point is punished with a bunch of green errors, and the guy just running down everything hitting topspin only never gets green errors.

[xman]

Sorry, I just found your answers.

I play only XKT and have a lots of 15-20 shot rallies. Puncher or Power Baseliner literally do not exist because you have to play like defender and pusher.

[johnmachete]

Sorry, I just found your answers.

I play only XKT and have a lots of 15-20 shot rallies. Puncher or Power Baseliner literally do not exist because you have to play like defender and pusher.

Game style doesn't affect as you think. Most of them are only affecting to how your stamina bar goes down when you do an acceleration, how many shoulder height acceleration bonus you have and bonus in net jumps. Maybe defender or counter has some skills for defending, but it's just how the game penalize when you shot a ball rising or coming down. You can find all this information in the manual.

Anyway, playing in clay in XKT is completely desesperating as you all said here. Some people stick to the end of the court and its complicated to end points meanwhile as KINGBARBOZA said, the game is punishing youu oftenly with green-green(inside) misses.

[manutoo]

Would you have any suggestions for improving the situation ?

I'm really not in the mood nor have the energy to play the game enough to get a sense of what should be tuned (more info : viewtopic.php?p=296824#p296824 ), especially as I changed several little things since 1 year and it seems their effects have been quite low.

[KINGBARBOZA]

It's tough to say, honestly without breaking other surfaces. Overall I think that it's too easy to run down balls and return them with a deep topspin or effective shots on clay, returning 1st serves on clay is also too easy. Maybe it should be a little easier to attack topspin shots (allow us to take the ball slightly earlier maybe?), I think the green errors can be reduced too which are really punishing players trying to hit winners on clay. Wish you all the best as well with your foot recovery Manu. Clay season is almost over, so don't feel pressure to do something about it quickly. It's just an observation from us that it's a bit unbalanced right now in online play.

[johnmachete]

Would you have any suggestions for improving the situation ?

I'm really not in the mood nor have the energy to play the game enough to get a sense of what should be tuned (more info : viewtopic.php?p=296824#p296824 ), especially as I changed several little things since 1 year and it seems their effects have been quite low.

One of few things can help is reducing the difficulty of the short accelerations. Right now the risk of hitting the net (even with high top spin values) or missing it is quite high. I'd set it like the normal acceleration which is in my experience way more easy to hit it inside.

[Thomas]

I agree with Johnmachette. Short accelerations and down-the-line shots are too random and risky. As a result, players tend to hit almost everything crosscourt with a high margin of safety.

Also if you watch tennis closely, the UE to Winners ratio is often negative, especially on the backhand side. UE usually happen when a player takes risks... But in TE, you end up avoiding risk altogether, because whenever you try to hit a risky shot on the run or hit DTL to paint the line, the ball just goes straight into the net! So players don't take risks to win.

To address this:
1) there could be a penalty/malus applied after 5–10 shots to discourage overly safe, endless rallies. Even on normal shots the sweetspot or rally tolerance (consistency stat?) should drastically reduce over time.
2) At the same time, in the first part of the rally: there should be a significant bump/reward for taking risks, like hitting a short acceleration, an on-the-run acceleration, or a down-the-line shot.. to balance everything.

This is the path to reach the 5-6 rally lenght that ATP matches have.

[Thomas]

Just for the record: certainly the biggest pusher in history Wilander had an average rally of 6 in his career.
Djokovic, Chang, Murray are at 4.7.
Federer & Agassi are at 3.8.
Sampras 3

For the last 10 years in Grand slam
AO = 4.1
French Open = 4.5
Wimbledon = 3.5
US Open = 4

So an average rally around 12 is totally unrealistic even on clay

[anrox335]

Would you have any suggestions for improving the situation ?

I'm really not in the mood nor have the energy to play the game enough to get a sense of what should be tuned (more info : viewtopic.php?p=296824#p296824 ), especially as I changed several little things since 1 year and it seems their effects have been quite low.

I'll suggest incentivizing people to use high risk shots over standard and top spin shots. Just increasing short acceleration efficiency will not be sufficient for this. Winners and errors all across the spectrum need to be increased.

Just make sure:
1. People are easily able to hit winners over standard shots
2. Acceleration and short acceleration are more difficult to counter but are slightly more error prone. In case of acceleration, increase the average shot depth for well prepared shots. Also make sure that variance in depth is higher for okayish prepared shots so as to have more winners and errors from this.
3. Increase the depth and bounce for well prepared top spin. Do the same for okayish prepared one with larger variance in depth to get more winners and errors.
4. Make topspin into two shots with one being standard/high depth and the other being short with high bounce
5. Increase the backspin and decrease the bounce for well prepared slice.