The Players.

[eliomelma]

The idea of 2 e 3 tier chars for less important tournament as 250 and 500 is good for me

[C4iLL]

I think the Polca's idea would be a very nice addition. It would indirectly motivates people to variate more their characters and avoid the Federer mania on the tour.

[Algo4]

Federer's mania is about competiveness. People recognize he's better than the rest and as they want to win, they're picking him.
Make the rest better or Federer a little less overpowered comparing him to other players and you wouldn't have to cut people's right to choose freely who they want to play with.

Although I'm not totally against Tiers I'd rather have the option to play with a Gasquet or Kohlschreiber in a GS even if they're not that good an option to win.

SlicerITST's idea is the way to go I think, real players skills should only be a measurement, again, to encourage people to pick freely.

I still don't feel right about suggesting things as I'm new in here, but whatever, my 2 cents.

Editing:
- I think Murray should be a counter, switching his drop skills (95% now) with his counter skill (77%) would make him usable if this is done
- Kohlschreiber's forehand looks more like 11/24 instead of the current 5/24

[Elias]

Interesting matter.

The notion of tiers is not a new idea and if set up well might be a good addition to the tour.

Well, not sure i'm understanding this properly ("an addition") , because Tiers actually already exists in our roster. Did you ment a rule about Tier1 use would be a good addition then ?

The Tiers concept was introduced when Djarvik created the first roster version, the top 4 being overtly overall superior stat wise. When i tweaked the stats in 1.07, i didn't aimed to remove the Tiers from the roster, but moreover to balance the general gameplay, to have more realistic rallies, balancing power/movement properly after the last TE build changes. Still the speed gaps differences and power have been smoothed, so then several "Tier2" chars are now more competitive than before but still not on par with Tier1 chars.

I also think that most of the tour players want to see more variety in the draws and being able to pick chars more freely, therefore i think both suggestions are good ones and we may decide wich one is the right one to go with, create a rule for limited Tier1 use, or go further with stats balancing (wich we will do anyway in any case but maybe not in the same proportion depending the objective we are aiming for). Personaly i agree with both of these directions and i wouldn't mind one or the other being adopted.

As for the second choice, i'm pretty confident we are able to do a good job going further with stats balancing, smoothing more the differences and have, say, a top 12 for a start. But this would indeed need to take real players skills as a measurement, and deviate from reality. I won't take this responsability without having the manager's go-ahead. Just give us the green light for it, and with Vmoe we'll go further with it.

If the further balance direction is not choosed then i also think that a T1 limited use rule should to be defined. This would enforce variety in a straightforward way. But then it may have some drawbacks :

- Firstly there is different type of gamers around, those who play mostly for fun and like to change chars, even if they get worse results. There is also players who like to change often but still want to be competitive with every char they use if possible, and the last ones are gamers who will rather prefer to stick with one char considering they will reach a prefect control/timing easyer this way and then grind the rankings.
This last category of players may probably suffer from a T1 limited use rule because this may prevent them to use one char (if they choosed a T1), but still those players are not a majority among us, and they may learn how it can be nice to change and play for fun the hard way then, because, yes, it can also be some fun trying to win with a handicap, having to adapt different situations

- Secondly, T1 chars are icons and playing them has a lot of appeal for newcomers, therefore if we limit their use too much, this may put off some potential newcomers wich are dreaming to play Nole for instance.

- Another drawback i can imagine is , as an example if we allow T1 use only in ATP500 and more, would be to see almost only T1 chars in those tournaments draws then, wich would be a bit sad also, variety wise.

Federer's mania is about competiveness. People recognize he's better than the rest and as they want to win, they're picking him.
Make the rest better or Federer a little less overpowered comparing him to other players and you wouldn't have to cut people's right to choose freely who they want to play with.

Although I'm not totally against Tiers I'd rather have the option to play with a Gasquet or Kohlschreiber in a GS even if they're not that good an option to win.

SlicerITST's idea is the way to go I think, real players skills should only be a measurement, again, to encourage people to pick freely.

I still don't feel right about suggesting things as I'm new in here, but whatever, my 2 cents.

Editing:
- I think Murray should be a counter, switching his drop skills (95% now) with his counter skill (77%) would make him usable if this is done
- Kohlschreiber's forehand looks more like 11/24 instead of the current 5/24

Be cumfortable sharing your opinions mate, this is needed for the tour to grow better, players doesn't post enough their thinkings about those things. In my opinion this is an interesting discussion wich was needed and we may take either direction about it.


About Murray as a counter, to be honest i'm scared I'm not that a TE specialist regarding playstyles, and i'm not very cumfortable with counters, wich are commonly considered as an overpowered style among TE community. We have only one in the Roster , Simon, wich was clearly overpowered in the previous roster. Still i'm not sure it was only caused by the playstyle, but maybe also came from the combination of very short/fast swing motions he has on both wings (somewhat arcade feeling to play him), movement speed, low spin resulting in high ball pace and incredible rythm, and high consistency, he had it all.

At this time Simon speed is reasonable (85) and his wings power has been lowered considerably. Nobody picks him, but still we did some tests with Vmoe, and even in this state he can be a very good char, still we only tested Murray / Simon match up, and it felt pretty balanced. though now Simon can't generate very fast balls by himself, he needs his opponent ball velocity for it, but that also means you really don't want to give him free accels, better to choose wisely the right moment for it

As for Murray, not sure what would result making him a counter, along with his current stats. Sure he has a way higher spin and his wings are slower than Simon, so it may be less dangerous (?), to be tested.

Though the real Murray would really be taken as a measurement then, cause i can't really consider him as a counter in reality, he's generally more a pusher (still showing nice power at times, also true) so i guess the defender style fits him pretty well. Though in the end i'm just worrying that among the Tier1, the best defender choice will probably be Nadal, obviously ( we'll introduce a bit more tweaking on Nadal spin in the next update and he should be a good T1 by then ), even if Murray has probably the best serve among the top 4.

We still can also deviate a bit from reality and tweak slightly his wings power up, keeping him as a defender to even the T1 field, if needed (his power is actually just a bit under djokovic one, not a big difference, just that as a defender he can't accelerate as much often without penality).


About Kohlschreiber FH, i don't mind changing the motion. All suggestions are welcome, cause it's sometimes difficult to choose the better motion fit, when there is no dedicated one created for a character. n°11 is Soderling one i guess, slower swing i guess than Kholie current FH. If any other people can comment about such choice it would be great.

About anim's i think i'm not much satisfied with Youzhny choices i made in 1.07. i Don't know what you may think about it, but if you feel the same, then don"t hesitate to try out several FH/BH combinations with him and to communicate here wich ones would be better, that would help

[eliomelma]

- Secondly, T1 chars are icons and playing them has a lot of appeal for newcomers, therefore if we limit their use too much, this may put off some potential newcomers wich are dreaming to play Nole for instance.

- Another drawback i can imagine is , as an example if we allow T1 use only in ATP500 and more, would be to see almost only T1 chars in those tournaments draws then, wich would be a bit sad also, variety wise.

right, newcomer like to use fed , djoko and best chars.
For the Atp500 and more, it will be with allow t1 but every players could pick a t2 o t3 too, if he wants

[Elias]

I'm also thinking of another rule feature for the tour, not a big one.

I feel a bit sad having only one s&v (volleyer) char in the roster, i think s&v fans should have a bit more choice (like 2-3 chars should be nice). Still there is not much real s&v players around anymore, but i think that in our roster some characters should be allowed to switch into volleyer style.

I'm not meaning fixing them to volleyer only. But more allowing 2 different possible styles for such chars. Good examples would be Mardy Fish, or Feliciano Lopez (wich i think i'll try to balance further in next update) : those chars would be allowed to play, either as varied style, or volleyer style, as a choice. Meaning we would have two versions of those chars (not 2 versions saved in the profile, but we may manually change their style at will). This would lead to have two possiible #CRC's for this chars.

Mardy Fish valid #CRC's would be then : 8429575 (varied) or 8429447 (volleyer).

This would just need to add in ITST site character selection feature, two char versions selectable, when signing up the tournaments, like :

- M.Fish (varied)
- M.Fish (volleyer)

What do you think about this idea ?

I mean this especially for volleyer style wich is not represented enough. I don't mean generalizing this to all chars obviously though.

[C4iLL]

Personally i'm against your ideas of 2 styles by character. It will complicate a lot the thing.

Anyway, I think Fish should be created as a SV, even if it's not a 100% SV guy in real life.

[Elias]

Personally i'm against your ideas of 2 styles by character. It will complicate a lot the thing.

Anyway, I think Fish should be created as a SV, even if it's not a 100% SV guy in real life.

Right, it's probably better to keep it more simple, i guess having a second volleyer in the roster should do the trick indeed.

[SlicerITST]

Well, not sure i'm understanding this properly ("an addition") , because Tiers actually already exists in our roster. Did you ment a rule about Tier1 use would be a good addition then ?

I meant to say that if further balancing proofs unsuccesfull a rule about tier 1 use, if properly implemented, could be a good idea. But like i said in my previous post, for now i would prefer to keep balancing the roster where needed instead of adding tier based rules.

I agree with what you said in your post. I know we have similar ideas in regards of how to use the roster on the tour.

[Ugadalou]

PS: This match made me think about one thing for the upcoming ITST patch. I would ask to bring legends such as mcenroe, edberg, sampras and more. I think it could bring more choice and variety in the game. Further more, i think C4iLL could pick a player who can hold his baseline better than Llodra. Just a suggestion ^^ but i think some would enjoy playing with Legends juste like in TS Sim Tour

We were recently talking about this in "the players" thread. About the volleyer style not represented enough in the roster (like in reality unfortunately). So we suggested we may change another char style ( some varied one for instance) to volleyer, Fish was mentionned for this. It would be better if S&V players had some more choices in the roster than the only llodra indeed.

Well I don't think Fish fits the S&V player profile.He usually prefers to attack the net after approach shots, not his serves.Plus he does not do it often enough.

If I had to chose one more player to list as S&V then it would definitely be Stepanek instead.The only guy along with Llodra who still uses a lot of s&v.

Anyway since our tour roster consists of 2012 top ranked players then it's only fair to have only 1-2 volleyers out of 32.

In addition,players clasified as Varied style (Youzhny,Fish,Dimitrov,Lopez) always have the option to attack the net successfully in faster courts.These guys can perform amazing volleys and with their big net ''jump'' they can be lethal on the right hands.Perhaps we could add Kohlschreiber to the Varied list too for even more variety.

[Elias]

@ Manutoo

Previously we dealt with the serves, only about power and consistency, to get realistic speeds and first serve %. Though we let untouched the precision stats wich were pretty average/high, and now that the serve power among the roster is decreased, as precision is relative to power like the consistency is, i think the overall serve precision is too high among the roster (eg. too easy to paint the lines with several chars and our matches are still a bit too much serve driven).

So i would like to fix the precision stats better.

i'm running some tests but i can't rely only on my own aiming skills cause it takes a long time and i can't be sure i'm aiming properly everytime, so, it would be more straightforward if you can give us the numbers, to make it simple.

i know the precision <> power difference makes for defining the ball landing zone area size (inside the "green zone" right ? not making it out like the consistency does ?). I would like some measurements of this landing zone.

that is if precision is :

+20%
+10%
0 :
-10%
-20%

how large is the landing zone in, say, centimeters, pixels, whatever ?

thank you

[manutoo]

Elias,
so for B1+B2, B1, B2, the half width of the aiming zone is, in cm :
+20% : 18, 14, 10
0% : 26, 18, 11
-20% : 36, 26, 15

18cm means it can go +/-18 cm on the left/right axis from the exact point you aimed to.

[Elias]

Thx for the info Manutoo


Another concern i want to communicate to ITST members is the Federer forehand animation. I discussed a bit with Lucian (animation modder) recently and he was surprised that we used the old one.

i'll quote him :

Neah, I'm just good to copy thanks anyway ...BTW, why don't you use M4n4c0r Federer's Forehand animation...it's much better in my opinion; one of my favourite animations....the one you have in the video is Neeky McDeez's Dimitrov forehand which is great but I think it's not that practical since was done before Manutoo told us how to manage the sweetspots (where the racquet hits the ball) so to have a better control of the stroke.

it's been already suggested here by some members that we may use the new one, and i think it's a good move, especially knowing that the sweetspot management is better with the new one. Also after testing it on my side, i also tested it with Fox, and it's clear that this motion is tactically more spot on / interesting than the old one. the swing is faster and it feels easyer to hit clean shots/attacks.

The faster preparation/swing also allows Federer to hit a bit earlyer and makes shines his FH strength more, especially to outpace the opponent on fast surfaces.

Both anims are in the game, the new one is the n°17 and already assigned to Dimitrov, and Cilic. In my opinion the swing anim is perfect, the only drawback is that the anim feels a bit too "jumpy" regarding Federer (but still it was designed as a Federer forehand). But considering the benefits it brings gameplay wise, i think it's neccessary to switch to this one. So i'm aiming for this change in 1.08, but if any of you is against the marriage, please talk now

Its also a possibility that we can use 2 differents anims for each wings in a future TE version (one anim for standard shot, another one for acceleration), so then we'll be able to use both anims

btw, big news for the next version of the game...I hope Manutoo's going to succeed implementing different animatios for "b1" and "b1+b2" buttons...in this way you could use both Federer's forehand animations

Still i didn't saw any confirmation for this.

[PerfectAce]

I don´t see any problem changing Fed´s FH animation. IMO, when you play against Federer with this FH reminds me more the real one.

One more thing Elias. Djokovic sounds like a girl screaming. Don´t forget to change it, please???

Thanks mate.

[Elias]

One more thing Elias. Djokovic sounds like a girl screaming. Don´t forget to change it, please???

Thanks mate.

Well Djokovic grunts didnt bothered me that much i thought they was pretty spot on, there is three different grunts, wich one do you find so girly ? the high pitched one ?

though i'm not making the grunt sampling myself, just using those available from other modders, not sure there is other Djokovic grunts available, but i'll check.