d) The example that comes most quickly to mind is one I included in a post in another thread, and it also concerns trying to change partners. Check the last two posts in 'Documentation (and other questions)'. In that case the issue was not being able to change partners after a player had made an early exit from a tournament. It might be that all of my issues with this involve changing doubles partners. Anyway, this is something that could certainly wait until 2.0 (or forever, if I could wrap my mind around this whole doubles partner thing
).
Here are some other ideas for additions and changes, and they could also wait for 2.0. Almost certainly some of them would have to.
e) This might be a bug, or it might be a feature I do not fully understand. During game setup I have the option of changing Emily's birthdate. I set it to December 10, thinking that it would take her a few extra months before adding a year, but instead she aged almost immediately. I had thought that week 52 coresponded to roughly December 25-31, but either it does not, or December 10 does not mean what I think it does.
Either way, if the option to change birthdays is going to be there, any date should be selectable. Right now you can choose any month, but only the 1st through the 10th of each month. After cycling the numbers up to 10 they start over again at 1 instead of advancing to 11.
f) At the forum for the other sports management game I play (Out of the Park Baseball) the posters often write about how to make the game more 'immersive'. (i will assume you understand that term.) Some of the people there write stories about their teams.
A simple thing that would make TEM more immersive would be to keep track of the date. Using 'Week 7' to keep track of time works perfectly well. It is simple, easy to use in calculation and easy to translate into other languages. If in parentheses after Week 7 it said (February 20-26), this would now give us a little more grounding in the real world.
If you chose to do this, you could use real calendars OR you could use an arbitrary repeating calendar. If you choose the latter (which is basically what you are doing now with the numbered weeks), My advice would be to ignore Leap Years (years when February has 29 days), and to start each year on January 2. January 1 will be the day when end-of-year events take place, such as adjusting the skill numbers of the computer players. This way Week 1 will always be January 2-8, Week 7 is February 20-26 and Week 52 is December 25-31.
g) If you do add dates, it opens up more immersion possibilities. Right now the screen will say 'Next Week' or 'Next Match' just before you click in the upper left. {Sometimes it says 'Next Match' even though it is about to change to the next week. I have not tracked closely when this happens. It may only happen when a player is competing in a two week tournament.}
It could say 'Advance to Week 7 (February 20-26)' instead.
Then perhaps in the news section it might say 'Olivia Crouchant turns 19 on February 25. Happy birthday, Olivia!' You might think this is ridiculous, but many players of your game would love it. I certainly think it should be restricted to only the players you have under contract, and perhaps yourself if you include a birth date option for the coach.
h) Right now every time a match ends I have to cycle through my players to see if any of them have training hours available before I advance to the next match. Often they do not, and this puts wear on my poor mouse, not to mention taking time. I know that somewhere there is a mention of which is the current day of the week, but I can never find it when I look. (I should just write down which screen the next time I notice it.
)
Instead of just 'Next Week' and 'Next Match' you could add 'Next Day', and if you are using dates, it would then say 'Advance to February 25'. {This would be a bad place to mention the birthday, because many dates are not played out, so it could easily be passed over. Putting it in News would be better, and the people who choose the option not to read the news would not be bothered by it.}
I would then know that if it says 'Advance to next match' that I do not need to check my players for free training hours. I would only have to check them if it said 'Advance to next day' or 'Advance to next week'. I know that the program will prompt me to check for free hours when the week is about to change, but I am quite certain that it does not when the day changes, and I have sometimes lost hours that way.
Keeping track of what the date was when you lost in the final at Wimbledon could help improve immersion.
{We are finally done with the date suggestions. Good thing, since I am again approaching novel length.
}
This other group of suggestions has to do with the ways in which computer players are searched for and displayed.
i) The way to scroll up and down the players on the ratings list works pretty well when there are only two or three hundred of them, but once there gets to be 700 or 900 of them, it becomes very difficult to click in such a way as to only move the list by twenty places. Much more often it will jump by one hundred, and then require inching back toward who you wanted.
I would like to see arrows pointing up and down. Clicking on an arrow would move the list by twenty each time. This could be either in addition to the current scroll bar, or instead of it. My Mac browser is set up to have an up arrow at the top of most scroll bars and a down arrow at the bottom of them, but some have both arrows together at either the top or bottom. Any way would work.
j) On the screen for searching for players to contract with, I would like to see a new item to sort with and a filter. I would like to be able to sort the players by age, probably from oldest to youngest. This would have to be a new column added on the right.
Since this list is much shorter than the ranking lists, you would not need the up and down arrows. In that place I would put a filter similar to the one on the page for trainers. It would have (—), meaning no filter, and the six styles of play (puncher, counter, etc.). No column would be needed for this.
k) On the screen for doubles partners, I would like to see the same filter, but age isn't important there. Instead I would like to be able to sort by Doubles Spirit, from highest to lowest.
l) This last one I do not expect you to accept, but I will put it forward anyway. I think that the current method of forming doubles teams gives players under contract an enormous advantage over computer players.
It is very easy to form a team with a partner who is much, much better than you are. This results in nearly automatic wins in doubles at the same tournaments where you go out in the first round in singles. This enables the contract player to accumulate many more experience points than they 'should' (two or three times as many), which allows them to either very rapidly increase their mental skills or 'purchase' a round or two (or three) in singles, which in turn artificially inflates their ranking.
I know that you aren't going to change the basic system, and on rare occassion computer players will also pair up with vastly better partners, but I would like to make it a little more difficult for the contract players to take avantage of this.
My suggestion is that the information available from the doubles partner screen be limited. There should be no option to rank them by their singles ranking, and when you click through to each player's personal screen, the ranking shown there should be for doubles, not singles (which is the present default). If a coach was determined, she could leave the doubles screen and find the information elsewhere, but when looking for a doubles partner, all she should be concerned with is their doubles information (which is why I suggested adding a sort by Doubles Spirit).
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Thank you for providing this forum. I hope your game is selling well enough to keep you developing.
by Curtis » 27 May 2008, 01:55 
(And she was not able to play in the full tournament the following week.)
)
