Mana Games

[Jirafalox]

I agree with barboza, but dont agree with anrox335. If you increase the depth and bounce for topspin is gonna be utterly impossible to hit a winner on clay, since the opponent can push you so far back is gonna be a loopy deep topspin battle. Slice is bad on clay in the game in general, but if you are really really good at it is good, like Dani21 on online for example. Accelerating is not an issue by itself in my experience, since when you hit a good acceleration at a good height is almost always a winner, but (and important but) the thing is for you to hit at perfect height you need to be at like 3 meters or 4 behind the baseline sometimes, so even if you hit a incredible well placed accel, good players standing far back will get it and restart the point (and sometimes hitting on the run topspin shot pushing you even deeper). For it to be fixed, and not breaking every other surface in the process, I think you should be able to hit an accel on the rise with decent precision and consistency, like for example if my shoulderheight is at 170 cm height, then I would like to be able to hit the powerful accel at that height when is cooming up and also after it came down from the highest point of the bounce/apex point. Also, if you try to play agressive, standing closer to the line, even with normal or topspin shots, is imposible to keep up since the opponent can just stand back and hit super strong and deep with an insane amount of spin, forcing you to hit weak at the first deep ball the hit and then they can rip a winner when you hit short. I think iof you could rip the ball at shoulderheight on the rise consistenly, you could be able to punish players that stand 4 meters behind baseline and defending with spin all the time. I dont think boosting the short accel precision is a good idea, because irl players dont hit that shot often and consistenly as we can do in TE4. I've seen short cross accel battle in online matches that have 0 logic and realism (but isnt that bad because at least takes skill to do and only against top top players I've seen it, in clay almost all decent players can keep up rallies forever with pushing, it really is a nightmare). Also boosting short accel would most probably break faster surfaces. The only thing i would change about short accel is the same principle I commented before about the normal accel at shoulderheight while on the rise. (Important to notice that myb for it to be balanced, the shoulderheight boost of power in the FH when hitting on the rise could be halved but with the same precision, idk, since you could do a shoulderheight on the rise with a bit less speed or on the end of the danger zone more far back but full power, would be great to have the option to choose, because irl players can take early spinny balls that land around the service box line quite comfortably and rip winners)

[anrox335]

I agree with barboza, but dont agree with anrox335. If you increase the depth and bounce for topspin is gonna be utterly impossible to hit a winner on clay, since the opponent can push you so far back is gonna be a loopy deep topspin battle.

If the opponent is pushed back hits a lobby topspin, the player should be able to hit a deep acceleration or an angled short acceleration which should finish the rally.

[Jirafalox]

If the opponent is pushed back hits a lobby topspin, the player should be able to hit a deep acceleration or an angled short acceleration which should finish the rally.[/quote]

That would only be possible if you could hit it on the rise tho, if the opponent lands a deep top spin, you need to go back to hit a strong accel (even if the topspin of the opponent is loopy or weak, the bounce is just too agressive and impossible to take early if they have high spin), and if you hit a strong accel from 3 meters behind the baseline, even if its like 150 km/h in my experience, good defenders can get it back, so imo the only real solution without breaking the game is being able to accelerate at shoulderheight while on the rise without missing every time and hitting weak (right now if you try this you'll miss half of the time and when it goes in the shot is weak if the opponents has anything over 60 topspin, which most of players online play super heavy spin on clay and is very very hard to do anything apart from pushing and pushing until someone misses, right now the meta build is playing with low power and high consistency and precision and just rally rally rally)

[anrox335]

Many top players on the tour are able to hit top spins on the rise. Maybe there can be a stat added for this specifically for so that weak top spins that are deep can be easily countered. Overall, the following changes will probably fix the game:
1. Larger variance in depth for not so well prepared acceleration and top spin
2. New shot for deep top spin. This shot should only work in situations in which the player is extremely well prepared.
3. New stat which measures our ability to be able to hit a weak top spin on the rise.

[manutoo]

Everybody,
I did a couple of sets to test that (against Pro-10 Nadal, which was hard enough for me ), and indeed, it seems a bit too hard to attack ; after this short test, I think these are the main things to look at :
- the most important => last instant top spin strike never ends in the net and can end very long but not out, almost 50% of the time, making defending super OP ; some should end in the net, and some too long. This one is hard to tune without having side effects on other parts of the ball physics, so I'll try to tackle it when I have a clearer mind
- the normal acceleration is too inaccurate, especially when played within the danger zone ; I'd like to change the rule without unbalancing the gameplay on other surfaces, so I'll check if raising the precision only when the ball is difficult but high makes sense (ie: like Jirafalox suggested)
- ditto for the short acceleration, but in a much lower proportion, because it's already very effective and making it noticeably more accurate will make it OP pretty fast


Thomas,
right now, there's no pure unforced error when the strike is prepared early enough, but I won't change that. So it's expected to have bigger rally lengths than in real life.
Where do you find the rally length stats ? It disappeared years ago from most of the official stats.
Also, career average or tournament average isn't that helpful in the present case. The most important is the RL for tight matches. IIRC, it's around 7, maybe 8 something at max on clay.

[KINGBARBOZA]

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.

Point 1 is a terrible idea because all top players will have rallies over 5-10 shots anyway, so all you are doing is making the green errors even more random when it's already awful for anyone not playing like a complete pusher spamming central topspin.
Point 2 I don't like either, there should not be stat buffs/debuffs mid rally/during gameplay. It should be mechanics based but this is not possible as TE's controls are too simple and there is no timing mechanic.

I honestly think there is no great way to fix it. It's just how clay and the gameplay mechanics work that endless rallies and pushing is the way to be successful on clay.

[Mystery]

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.

Game should be based on skill not random number generator (i.e. penalty applied after 5-10 shots, significant bump/reward in first part of rally). And we already have enough RNG in this game at the current state to achieve this balance.

[Mystery]

I agree with barboza, but dont agree with anrox335. If you increase the depth and bounce for topspin is gonna be utterly impossible to hit a winner on clay, since the opponent can push you so far back is gonna be a loopy deep topspin battle. Slice is bad on clay in the game in general, but if you are really really good at it is good, like Dani21 on online for example. Accelerating is not an issue by itself in my experience, since when you hit a good acceleration at a good height is almost always a winner, but (and important but) the thing is for you to hit at perfect height you need to be at like 3 meters or 4 behind the baseline sometimes, so even if you hit a incredible well placed accel, good players standing far back will get it and restart the point (and sometimes hitting on the run topspin shot pushing you even deeper). For it to be fixed, and not breaking every other surface in the process, I think you should be able to hit an accel on the rise with decent precision and consistency, like for example if my shoulderheight is at 170 cm height, then I would like to be able to hit the powerful accel at that height when is cooming up and also after it came down from the highest point of the bounce/apex point. Also, if you try to play agressive, standing closer to the line, even with normal or topspin shots, is imposible to keep up since the opponent can just stand back and hit super strong and deep with an insane amount of spin, forcing you to hit weak at the first deep ball the hit and then they can rip a winner when you hit short. I think iof you could rip the ball at shoulderheight on the rise consistenly, you could be able to punish players that stand 4 meters behind baseline and defending with spin all the time. I dont think boosting the short accel precision is a good idea, because irl players dont hit that shot often and consistenly as we can do in TE4. I've seen short cross accel battle in online matches that have 0 logic and realism (but isnt that bad because at least takes skill to do and only against top top players I've seen it, in clay almost all decent players can keep up rallies forever with pushing, it really is a nightmare). Also boosting short accel would most probably break faster surfaces. The only thing i would change about short accel is the same principle I commented before about the normal accel at shoulderheight while on the rise. (Important to notice that myb for it to be balanced, the shoulderheight boost of power in the FH when hitting on the rise could be halved but with the same precision, idk, since you could do a shoulderheight on the rise with a bit less speed or on the end of the danger zone more far back but full power, would be great to have the option to choose, because irl players can take early spinny balls that land around the service box line quite comfortably and rip winners)

Yes, should not boost short acceleration at all. It is already quite strong. We want to avoid making TE a battle of short accelerations. Those struggling to hit consistent short accelerations should practice more.

[KINGBARBOZA]

Hey Manu,

This is what clay is like online: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2480880980

15 avg rally, 2 hours for a straight set match.

27 short rallies
35 medium rallies
142 long rallies

Sinner vs Alcaraz RG Final was 4 average rally...

This is just absolutely unplayable to be honest.

[KINGBARBOZA]

It's the same rally length issue for WTSL as well, here is the RG Final

Having the same or higher return points won than 1st serve points won seems a bit ridiculous even on clay...

[dimcoe]

Rather bad player here (struggling at Master-1), so take these ideas with a grain of salt. I wonder whether the game should be more punishing when one hits a ball that is too low, including with a topspin or slice. I also don't quite feel the 'weight' of a good topspin shot, making topspins a bit too easy to respond to, especially in clay. Finally, I guess that net play is still too difficult and unrewarding, and even on clay players go quite a bit to the net to end points.

[Jirafalox]

Rather bad player here (struggling at Master-1), so take these ideas with a grain of salt. I wonder whether the game should be more punishing when one hits a ball that is too low, including with a topspin or slice. I also don't quite feel the 'weight' of a good topspin shot, making topspins a bit too easy to respond to, especially in clay. Finally, I guess that net play is still too difficult and unrewarding, and even on clay players go quite a bit to the net to end points.

in my opinion is quite the opposite, at the high level topspin even on the run is quite hard to attack on clay, specially if it lands deep, manu tested it and agrees. Low balls are not a problem in any surface as you can just accelerate cross and it will go in most of the time if not always (specially against slice) if you get there in time. Net play is indeed a bit hard and since there was a 2 in 1 bug, a lot of the time the player would get passed when he shouldn't be, but it's fixed for the next update.

[dimcoe]

I agree it's hard to attack, my point was more that it could be a bit more difficult to defend against, so that a good deep top spin would invite a weak short response while pushing the player far back, making it easier to end the point. On the low balls, that's what I meant, I think, more of those balls taken too low should not go in or should go in but be very weak and easy to attack.

[dimcoe]

To clarify: above I'm talking about topspins with lots of spin and good pace, and not about defensive, slow topspins.