Mana Games

[Cenc]

After not having played this game for over a year, I decided to give it another go now with 1.0g version and since I've played this game from its early days, I believe I could say a couple of words.
My first thoughts were like: "WOW, this really looks nice". But having tried to play the game, I found a series of mistakes that I would like to point out since unfortunately, every time the game is updated, I feel it gets worse.
(In early versions I would easily make careers with 15-20 slams and 5+ years at world n1. Right now it seems impossible but for wrong reasons...)
I tried to make a player similar to Agassi. Since I wasn't exactly sure which style would fit better: power baseliner or puncher I decided to start 2 games simultaneously. (2 stars at injury resistance both times and a few stars at "luck")
1. While I do get easy first round matches most of the time, what about second rounds? 5 consecutive tournaments my 2nd round was against a top 10 player while my player was not that strong yet... never went past the 2nd round => lost self esteem and ranking
2. In real tennis NOBODY loses self confidence after losing a tough 3-setter against players like Sampras and Agassi.
3. Career one: middle of season 3, ranking around 30: Indian Wells: 2nd round retirement: ankle sprain, missed Miami, came back in Monte Carlo 1st round retirement: ankle sprain... WTF?! Having played tennis for a long time myself I am very familiar with ankle injuries (since I've had an ankle surgery myself after a tennis injury) and I am not sure I've EVER heard of anyone spraining ankle in 2 consecutive matches...
4. Career two: season 3, ranking around 25: Toronto 1st round retirement: gastric problem, came back in Cincinnati: 1st round retirement gastric problem... Since when do professional players miss half of the hard court season because of bad diet?!
=> after that self confidence goes down => I have to spend ages working on it in order to prevent the player from losing against no-name-players but then his playing skills suddenly go really down while i train "self confidence" and he still loses and loses the confidence again and so on.............................................................................
5. This may sound sarcastic but... spending so much on "Cold blood training"... how exactly does that work?! I mean I've played plenty of junior tournaments myself but I don't recall my coach ever telling me: lets train cold blood for a few hours... How does that work? Putting a player into the freezer? This is more like something you either have or don't have plus its really really linked to self confidence.
6. Top Spin is technical thing... it cannot be changed dramatically in a week once someone learns the basic technique. Even though playing with little top spin does improve one's performance on carpet courts I don't see Nadal hitting Sampras-like flat forehands on regular basis as well as I don't see Sampras hitting those huge Nadal-like top spins on clay... It may be changed slightly but not that dramatically
7. Year 1998, Roland Garros 2nd round: easy 3 set victory against Moya, 4th round loss to Sampras
Queens Club: Victory in finals over Sampras
Wimbledon: 3rd round loss to Moya
... REALLY?!
8. Tie Breaks... TIE BREAKS... while basically no games end after 40-0 in this game, Tie Breaks regularly go without a mini-break until 6-5 and then they end when server suddenly gets so crazily stressed that he probably pees into his underwear... It does NOT work that way... you see top players serve aces on those points instead of having a stress-related heart attack prior to those points...
9. Why exactly does my player with 90+ Cold Blood skill enter Los Angeles tournament 1st round against "Whoever" and his stress level is medium to high in the beginning of the match till the end of the 1st set? His dog died right before the match?
10. em... Why does my player have 0-6 record with JM Gambill even when he is like 60 places below my ranking?!(8-1 with Agassi)
11. Why does Ivanisevic enter almost every match with like 80% energy?

There is more but these are some things I really think you should consider improving.
Just my 10 cents. Hope you take them into consideration.
Good luck!

[manutoo]

Hello,

>> I feel it gets worse

considering the list you did, I cannot find anything that got worse in these points since the game release... Maybe you're growing more exigent with the time passing...

1 & 2- I just lowered self esteem loss against better ranking opponents, and totally removed it against very better ranked opponents

3 & 4 - There's already a topic around about injury and the limits to its current gameplay mechanisms

5- you could see that as meditation, introspection, spending time thinking & feeling about your past matches ; the idea is to spend your XP points earned in matches, it's not 100% realistic but it's a nice gameplay mechanism

6- I just lowered topspin training speed by a bit more than 50% ; it's still quite unrealistic, but it should give a big enough handicap to players wanting to change their topspin all the time

7- French Open 1996 : Pioline beats Berasategui, a clay specialist, and falls to Stich, a fast surface player => http://www.atpworldtour.com/Share/Event ... 520&y=1996 ... Really !

8- Just found out Tie Breaks had a major flaw ; I tuned a bit, and it should now have more mini-breaks during TB

9- not sure on this, you should send me your saved games if you want me to check more in details

10- Gambill game is bad for your player

11- Partying too much ? Or maybe already a bit too old...

All changes listed above will be in the next update...

[Cenc]

Yeah, maybe I am expecting too much... bad memory i guess
1,2 - Great, can't wait for the next version 1.0h right?
3,4 - But still, top players missing 2 masters series tournaments because of stomachache? What did he do? Ate tennis balls?
5 - Ok, fair enough.
6 - Still far too easy to change top spin, I believe you should make it the way that player chooses it in the beginning of the game and then max change should be 10% + or -
7 - Yeah, but that FO '96 was kinda weird itself but like every 4th or 5th slam is like that in TEM (Sampras won 2 FOs ?! )
8 - It should be dramatically changed... Plus it just doesn't happen with top players that they lose basically every time they serve to stay in the set...
9 - Never mind Deleted the game already
10 - Ok... fair enough
11 - Even though he is old he is not in a wheelchair... other old players did not show that tendency as much as him

Great, can't wait for the next update

[manutoo]

Next Update will be a Build (1.0h will be for next year, I guess).

6- It'll need about 6 weeks to go from 0% to 100% Topspin ; while you do that, you don't train other skills, so it's big penalty... But that gives you the opportunity to completely change it once or twice during your career if you want to, or to change it by 10~20% around the clay season.

7- IRL, Sampras had big problem on clay coz of his backhand that absolutely didn't work on this surface (it's a bit similar to Fed when he plays against Nadal, although the scale of the problem is much lower for Fed) ; he won Rome once, though... But the TEM engine doesn't have anything to simulate that BH weakness, so Sampras has a shot at FO (actually in RL, he may have won, with a bit of extra luck ). I think it's ok, but maybe it's coz I'm a big fan of Sampras and I wish he could have won a FO cup once...

8- how often is "every time" (especially between 2 players of close strength) ..? 25% ..?

11- He might have lower stamina than other players

[Cenc]

6 - Well, sounds good!
7 - Yeah, well personally I have never been much of his fan (given the fact that Ivanisevic played in his era) but to me he is the best player of all times but still - a little bit of handicap on clay would be ok just like a bit of extra power on grass.
8 - More like 75% of times they lose that point lol... every time player faces a set point his stress goes really high and when players are leveled almost 50% of tie breaks end 7-5 or 8-6 with only that one mini break on the set point
11 - Could be, but I dont think he lacked so much stamina... he won many tough matches in his career and the ones he lost he lost due to lack of "Cold blood" skill, not due to lack of stamina

[manutoo]

8- I thought you jumped from TieBreak topic to normal games topic...
Ok, so with next update, the TB should have more chance to end earlier anyway coz of more chance of mini-breaks, so it should better...

[Cenc]

Great
Plus I wanted to ask you: why do players lose their shot skills while playing tournaments - every match is sort of practice and I don't think its reasonable that they lose so much after a tournament (forehand,backhand,serve skills); maybe there should be more of an impact on physical skills (for instance after a tough match or tough tournament it gets more likely that the player enters the next match with 10-20% less energy)

[manutoo]

Matches are not practice. You don't try new things, work out your weak points, practice scales, etc...
And if you don't lose skills during your tournament weeks, then very soon, you won't have anything to do in the game...

[Cenc]

Yeah but you still hit many many serves, volleys, forehands, backhands, returns and players do try a lot of things... But yeah I get your point.
Last thing: about energy loss after tough matches; does the previous match even affect one's energy level in the following match?

[manutoo]

Yup, it's all linked to Short & Long term forms...

[Cenc]

Ok thx, hope you take in consideration what I said and I can't wait for the next update

[petrone_maxi]

Something I was thinking about the game.
It becomes really easy to enter in the Top 100. Futures and Challengers are played by really low ranking players. In Real Life there´s players who spent a few years playing in those Challengers, while in every game I´ve played my main player is playing ATP by the end of the first year/Start of the second year as the most!Players ranked in the Top 100 plays Challenger sometimes.
In the other way, in TEM a lot of High ranked players plays in the ATP250. There´s a way for you to modify that in the next version?
Thanks a lot!

[Cenc]

Something I was thinking about the game.
It becomes really easy to enter in the Top 100. Futures and Challengers are played by really low ranking players. In Real Life there´s players who spent a few years playing in those Challengers, while in every game I´ve played my main player is playing ATP by the end of the first year/Start of the second year as the most!Players ranked in the Top 100 plays Challenger sometimes.
In the other way, in TEM a lot of High ranked players plays in the ATP250. There´s a way for you to modify that in the next version?
Thanks a lot!

I agree on this one, I just kind of forgot to say it myself

[manutoo]

Most of Top 5 players didn't play Challengers for more than 1 year, and most #1 players almost didn't play Challengers at all (except during their junior years).

I just checked a few TET250, and I didn't see much high ranked players in them ; quick extract sample: 1st seed = #6, 2nd = #14 ...

[Curtis]

My experience has been that it takes a long time to get your personal character ranked highly enough to escape Futures. I've never yet been able to do it in the first year. Once you hit Challengers, though, she rockets up through all three levels of those and into WTA very quickly. Frequently she'll get a wild card into the French Open her second year, then place well enough in that to start playing class IV tournaments immediately after.