Mana Games

[xman]

Hi @manutoo One year ago I created this thread - topic15-36629.php

And nothing has changed! Online playing is exhausting, with pushing and lots of rallies. Playing 15-25 long shots rallies is totally unacceptable. There is literally no point in attacking and making winners, because its impossible (you mostly make an error) and the winner is going to hit the one, who will stay in the rally longest and push the hardest with huge top spin. Thank god the clay season is almost over.

[Jirafalox]

We've found no real solution to this issue sadly, we tried to adjust the surfaces on xkt mod but it didn't change the clay dynamics. In my opinion it has to do with the topspin strike functionality when people use high topspin strikes, the ball can land incredibly deep every single time with a curve so steep the bounce it's impossible to hit the ball in any way attackable. Manuto introduced some changes that make accelerating the ball possible but only when the ball is super spinny shot, and since most people use high counter + topspin stat, the ball lands so incredibly deep and with such spin from almost any position of the court, you're left only to just keep rallying forever waiting for a miss hit from the opponent. Specially on the slower clay courts. Rally averages under 11-12 is impossible to achieve in similar level matches.

[xman]

"the ball lands so incredibly deep and with such spin from almost any position of the court, you're left only to just keep rallying forever waiting for a miss hit from the opponent" This is a huge problem for me. The ball lands so deep and bounces so high, you have positiion yourself and to set your feet perfectly to hit it hard. But, no mostly you hit just a normal shot that is pushed for another 10 rallies. There is no way out of it. Also, the changing motion of groundstroke hitting the tall spin ball is awkward.

As a attacker and power player I end up with less winners than the pusher. Are you supposed to put 100% in power? I want my precision higher than power. Why not attacking the balls right after the bounce off the court? Why we had to wait for shouler height for extra power? I dont want to play with 100% top spin to stay in the rallies on clay.

[Jirafalox]

There’s no way to out hit someone on clay if both players are of similar level. It’s just how it is, no matter what stats you use.
I’m one of the most offensive players on tour and 2800 elo but I just can’t attack through players who maybe are 600-700 elo lower than me and in any other surface I just can permanently attack and win super comfortably. It takes another skill set to be successful on clay and it’s not the attacking skill set for sure

[xman]

Thank God this clay season is ending.

By the way, just played a pusher that literally got everything back (elo 2500) He won with 5 winners. I had 5 winners as well, but more errors because as much as I tried, I couldnt hit a winner! As an offensive baseline player I had to play as a pusher and hit back and right. What a nonsense.

[manutoo]

xman,
if you still have the replay of that match, you can launch it, then send me a Bug Report, and I'll have a look. (HowTo => topic5-31732.php )

[Xnatee]

Sadly, yes, it is exhausting but this is the metagame of clay...

Pretty much all games on clay ends up playing like that after 1800-2000 elo if you want to check any Manu. The meta is litterally find depth and high rebounds with the safe shot (topspin) untill one makes a mistake (sometimes just hitting off centered), ball gets attackable and you gotta hit a shoulder acceleration at 150+ kmh to be able to hit a winner.

I thought 772 builds would help. It helped, but not enough.

[Jirafalox]

Yeah there's little to do with this topic sadly, even the boost to accels on the rise didn't make it much better, as you can't hit hard enough even when stepping up the court to actually hit winners (the fastest accel I've hit on the rise on clay perfectly positioned and long prep has been around 135 km/h compared to the usual 144-147 km/h forehands I do when I hit them more back, and the 155 km/h++ shoulder height ones) so imo only other option could be to just remove the speed penalty at shoulder height inside danger zone but with less say 20-30% bigger aiming reticle to compensate for the extra risk and also a long preparation needed (a whole second standing still for example). Also I find that the shoulder height boost only happens in a range of like 5 cm at most, it has to be pixel perfect, whereas pro players irl can rip the ball incredibly fast from like 10 cm below the top off the shoulder and almost to their head height too. Not saying shoulder height bonus should be from chest to head but could be a bit bigger zone as long as the preparation time for the shot is long enough maybe. I don't know, just giving food for thought because as all top players have discussed, now the only viable strategy is to push and push until you get a free safe shot or super weak shot to do a shoulder height shot off a short and slow ball, you can't even do it on defensive very slow and high bouncing shot, not even when the ball has little spin and is very slow, if you hit it shoulder height on the rise in that situation you get a 130 km/h shot that's not very accurate.

[manutoo]

Jira,
there are 2 things :
1) the lowering of the Danger Zone's penalties when hitting the ball at shoulder height, which depends only on the ball height ; the perfect range was 10 cm (ie: +/-5cm), and I raised it to 15 cm for the next update.

2) the extra speed when doing an acceleration at shoulder height, where many parameters come into play ; after careful checking, I found out that the raising speed of a big top spin ball was cancelling too much of that extra speed, so I tuned that down for the next update. There, observing match .dmo's could help me figure out if all cases are covered correctly or not. This extra speed also requires preparing your strike for at least 0.6 seconds to come into full effect.

3) A perfect Shoulder Height Accel can bring 28 km/h of extra speed, so if all the correct conditions are met on the base acceleration, it can reach ~180 km/h (with 100% Power skill). On rising topspin balls, it shouldn't happen, and being able to hit 140 km/h acceleration out of them seems to be already a decently realistic result.

[manutoo]

Everybody,
today I just found out that the maximum topspin applicable to relatively slow topspin strikes (ie: 110 km/h or less) was too high (ie: it's likely not physically possible for a tennis player to put that much spin without hitting the ball faster). For the next update, I'll lower it a bit ; for players with more than 80% power in their forehand, that won't change much, but sometimes, when a ball is hit a bit less well and thus goes slower, then it won't have a too parabolic trajectory, pushing the opponent very far from his baseline, so when facing a high topspiner, you'll have a few more occasions to seize.

Right now, I have limited that topspin max depending on the Topspin skill, which means that a Defender with a very low Topspin skill might noticeably feel the change (as it'll reach that limit more often that the other kind of players)... Hopefully, it'll be fair & balanced enough, including on clay (other surfaces should be alright)...