Interesting idea: stats tuning depending on surface

[inseedious]

This evening I was talking with MaGav and Richie about the overall slight advantage defense seems to have after we switched back to hard courts. I also saw that several guys, from all levels, improved their results switching to a more defensive playstyle (the two most important examples are VMoe, from what I heard, and Sorauze, from what I saw in our last two official matches), and I think that overall almost all players are slightly adjusting to a more defensive playstyle. This is unrealistic, as usually playing on hard should mean being more aggressive than on clay, but it also depends on the base mechanics of the game, almost impossible to fix at the moment. In fact, the last mod build was created mostly for clay season, and indeed it worked greatly there, but on hard it's working differently, because of less shoulder acceleration and other things I won't write because this is not a complain thread.

So, the idea I had while chatting with Richie were stats that changes depending on the surface. So, for each player, we have 3 different fixed setups, Clay, Grass, Cement/Plexi, with slightly different stats. Ofc, a player isn't able to choose them, as they're automaticly set. For example, Cement setup has more power and/or more shoulder accel, or just less speed because on Cement there's less wrong-foot than on Clay, while Clay setup can have more spin, maybe less counter too. I know it would be a complex thing to implement, especially because it would require a lot more stats tests, but I think it's the most realistic idea at the moment, and it would, on the one hand, add a lot of more balance and realism, as players has slighty different playstyles on different surfaces, while on the other hand it can open a wide door to a lot more variety, as we would have way more setups and choice between the different players. And, after some time, we'll maybe discover that some empyrical rules may apply, thus saving a lot of time (like a +2% power boost on Cement, or a -2% spin on Grass, and so on).

I'd really like to know what do you think about it, I'm really thinking that this is one of the few working ideas, also because there are some periods with several surfaces played at the same time, so working for a mod version aimed to a certain surface won't work as intended, because it would penalize the other ones, neither it's possible to have a mod version that is balanced on all surfaces, because of the technical differences between them.

[C4iLL]

I agree with that, t he game iof course funnier when exchanges last less, we all know that. ITST 1.16 was the best update for a long time because it allows to improve the game speed and decrease the rally lenght.

[pidzi]

Its almost impossible to make this idea a reality due to simple and obvious reasons. First this would require often updates of the mod and because Elias does not have currently much time and in last 12 months there was only 1 update i cant see how he would do updates on monthly basis, sothat is the first obstacle. Second and more important is that even when there is a clay season( European clay swing ) and hardcourt season (USO series) as you are mentioning, there are alongside of these tournaments also other tournaments played on different surfaces, most obvious is USO series and Post Australian Open where are even tournaments played on 3 different surfaces, so this would mean that people end up with playing different versions of mod which corresponds with the surface they are playing on and thus impossible for these people to play with players with the mod created for different surface, so because of different versions for every surface would cause endless synchs between the players and the result would be that half of the players could not play the practice matches simply because they have different version, and im not even mentioning challengers and futures which usually are played on different surfaces as well.

[inseedious]

Its almost impossible to make this idea a reality due to simple and obvious reasons. First this would require often updates of the mod and because Elias does not have currently much time and in last 12 months there was only 1 update i cant see how he would do updates on monthly basis, sothat is the first obstacle. Second and more important is that even when there is a clay season( European clay swing ) and hardcourt season (USO series) as you are mentioning, there are alongside of these tournaments also other tournaments played on different surfaces, most obvious is USO series and Post Australian Open where are even tournaments played on 3 different surfaces, so this would mean that people end up with playing different versions of mod which corresponds with the surface they are playing on and thus impossible for these people to play with players with the mod created for different surface, so because of different versions for every surface would cause endless synchs between the players and the result would be that half of the players could not play the practice matches simply because they have different version, and im not even mentioning challengers and futures which usually are played on different surfaces as well.

You misunderstood what I actually mean. My idea is not to use different mods for different surfaces, but to make the game automatically tuning the stats, choosing between the 3 presets. In fact, I also said it would be a good solution also when there are several tourneys on different surfaces in the same week. As I said, I know this would add something that currently the game doesn't support, but I think it's still more realistic and doable than trying to modify the game core mechanics, that are locked. And I know that it will require far more testing, but I don't see why it should require monthly mod updates. I think that even keeping the current rythm of about 2 mod builds per year would be enough.

[pidzi]

So you are basically saying it would work the way that you choose a court (surface) in-game and then stats will change accordingly ? Well, i hardly doubt this is capable of doing within TE engine as i believe we would have already seen a use of that and as i said above only chance how to do this to have multiple mods version. And still it would indeed require monthly basis updates at least for first year as we would not know the perfect stats for this or that surface.

[djarvik]

This always means 64x3 players to be balanced

[inseedious]

I know, but maybe some fix rules, like, as i said, a power boost on cement and a spin boost on clay, can work well even without lots of testing, and it would still be better than using a mod balanced for clay also for Wimbledon and USO series. Additionally, I think that a sort of "+2% power and -2% tonicity on cement" rule can be implemented in a relatively easy way, because it doesn't modify the game core mechanics, it's like the recent hotfix setting the "tiebreak in the last set" option depending on the number of sets. It's not like modifying the ball trajectory or other locked mechanics.

[Elias]

Well, a simple fact is there is no core feature in TE to make stats dependant to surface physics, and i highly doubt it's doeable via modding. TE home made scripting featured is pretty abstruse and foggy as soon as you're not aiming for very simple things, even for a seasoned programmer (you feel like it's built for the creator exclusive use as much as it's funny how it's difficult to indentify variabe structures availability depending context, delclaration range etc). Really not built for doing much more than cosmetics UI changes, most core gameplay variables or mechanics being not available there. No way for example to change how trigger a shoulder height acceleration, these variables are just not available, so only Manutoo can modify/control such things. Overall gameplay is almost not moddable at all, except via stats and helpers (fixed amount again).

Well it's no secret that defense, moreover baseline reach, aggressive/defensive play balance is the biggest TE flaw since a long time. Jeez, we're playing with a setup showing around 82-84 power FH'es vs vs around 70 speed (and lower RA), and defense is still problematic (at least not as much as it was in 1.15, hopefully), this is a bit ridiculous

Being able to tweak should height accels trigger window (depending surface for instance) could be interesting, like lots of other features would be, tweaking autopos amount, having the auto-back crap being *optionnal* (ffs). It's not like we didn't wished such things since ages, to build a custom setup. It's still not there, so it's obviously not Manutoo intention to make TE more flexible in this area, despite obvious gameplay benefits and test grounds this would provide.

I would add that in DMT there was a core mechanic wich gave some sort of automatic powered shoulder height shot, everytime you got some floating, slow misshit defense shot incoming, that was a situational trigger, and such mechanic would be an very good addition in TE, having the shoulder height (power) accel triggering, not only depending of the bounce height, but also relying on some shot trajectory/pace analysis. Because so much often you dominate a rally, get a whole bunch of these freaking slow/deep, or weird trajectory defensive slices or framed shots, and you can't even finish a point with a stronger accel, wich is annoying as hell in the end.

Besides this, that was an interesting idea, ofc.

[Fez]

I like what you said Elias about a "situational trigger". I see a need to employ such a trigger in more than one situation in TE.