ITST Mod 1.18 - What do you need to get started!

[L Sanchez MD]

I'm also skeptic about the new forehand slice but I feel I still need time to process it more.Looks good on the FH drop shot but I get the overall feeling it's too club player-like...

It's more training session shot like...indeed, that's where I've copied it from, a Federer forehand slice in a training session against Gasquet; I thought it looked good...very elegant shot from Roger...afterwards I saw that was looking good also for the drop-shots

It's not looking that good for a defensive slice forehand...it's difficult though to make it look good here; we definitely need a separate animation here. It can be done but it will look bad after for a forehand slice approach shot

Could I see that training session video, please? (If it's on Youtube).
Just curious!

[Elias]

@C4iLL

Calm down mate, and don't start calling anyone amateur cause it won't help things to get better.

I've read pretty interesting things in this thread from everyone, though i don't have much time currently to play or answer as i'm not at home (in vacations).

-3% speed wasn't intended to be a specific nerf to llodra, but to several chars : the fastest ones, the heavyest ones, and eventually characters wich may represent an issue because we have to revamp them (conceive, build them differently : yes we didn't had enough free time for it, lately). So the current situation is not definitive. As it's been said, 1.12 should'nt be released in a long time.

About Llodra. The main issue is in my opinion the way he's currently conceived, or should i say misconceived, technically/stat wise.
Being a volleyer style along with 92 net presence brings a huge, i mean huge net jump, wich firstly, shouldn't exist in my opinion in our roster. It promotes suicidal net rushing, just stand there, hold button to jump. We have to promote more tactical net approaches, promote skill, more than a gameplay that relies mostly on a *huge*, overhelming automated jump. I 'd rather see, in short, a more reasonable/realistic net jump, along with better baseline abilities.

Fact is for now, we cannot give 82 speed to Llodra considering this huge jump and net abilities. Why would you give such a char, that defensive reach baseline ability, eg : more than Fish & Lopez (Varied counterparts) , who have a way lower net jump, (it's not only tied to net presence, but style+netpresence). Llodra has weak baseline abilities (i ment speed as a baseline ability, reach, though it's tied to net rushing ability as well, and i agree this can be an issue), because this style + net presence lead to such a huge jump. And this leads overall to a stereotyped char, wich ends not being very interesting, i agree, in the current situation.

We will re-think / revamp him another way, so this is just a temporary situation, sit down, and wait for the goods in the meantime have fun playing some other char for some time maybe, it shouldn't be that long.

The main idea is to get rid of an unreal jump, wich anyway isn't interesting gameplay wise. We'd rather like to see players building a bit their net points than rushing the center desperately relying mostly on a godly jump. That's just wrong, gameplay and competition wise, we dont want a gold button jumping frog at the net, that's not really the right concept of a volleyer, especially if the jump is automated, we want reflexes and anticipation to enter in play here, and if we can't obtain it in a good proportion enough, then we want more point construction and good approaches, that is, with the baseline abilities wich allows it, obviously.

What will be more interesting, is creating Llodra, with a more reasonable net jump, still larger than Fish and Lopez one, but considerably lower than the current one. AND to bring him then, a more decent baseline game, better wings. He can't have both of the goods. To achieve this, we may rework him as a Varied with a higher net presence than Fish & Lopez, or still as a volleyer with a lower net presence, to reach this objective.

About stamina, we'll see how it goes, i kindly agree that with the new -5%, the lower chars in the roster, llodra, lopez etc, may have it a bit short, if so we may compress the stamina's boundaries over the roster (increaseing the lower boundaries mostly).

About the serve, well, Llodra doesnt have a crappy serve, 75 power & 65 consistency is not especially crappy, though it makes a noticeable difference compared to the old times when our consistencies were higher, true, but it does for all chars. Serve is an important area for Llodra playstyle (especially the way he''s currently built), so i wouldn't mind reducing a bit the consistency/power gap to -8%, like T1 chars., but honestly that, doesnt make a big difference. We may also allow him serve stats wich are closer or equal to Fish, Lopez, Murray, even if it's not reflecting exactly reality (i mean about 80 power / 70/72 cons.), if it balances better the character general gameplay, usability. We'll discuss it as well.

I hope you get the idea C4iLL. I think this char, the way he was built for now, was leading to a dead end wich leads to such unbalanced set up , between movement/wings, and net abilities. Llodra needs a more balanced gameplay, overall, an acceptable jump, and better baseline skills (that is , slightly higher net skills compared to the best varied, jump included, and slightly lower baseline skills, than those varieds, slightly )

I'll try to answer later about Nadal, spin, speed etc. out for diner for a while right now.

[Lucian86]

Could I see that training session video, please? (If it's on Youtube).
Just curious!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uClN7c79ZbQ

The shot I made is at 0:22

[AlexJasmins]

Since when you see Djokovic hit 150 km/h FH/BH? You just really don't like Nadal's style cause disrupt your game. And Nadal is slower now and less Power than before.And Federer winning 6-3 6-0 ok how many times he lost to Nadal aswell? And shamefull losses? You can't have the penny and the bun Floriann, u want a "SUPER DJOKOVIC" which would be invincible and Unstopabble.

[Ugadalou]

By the way to Lucian,Elias,m4n4c0r and everyone else contributing for the creation of these patches,making a superb game even better, I want to say a BIG thank you!

Your quality work is much appreciated and not taken for granted.

[Florian]

Since when you see Djokovic hit 150 km/h FH/BH? You just really don't like Nadal's style cause disrupt your game. And Nadal is slower now and less Power than before.And Federer winning 6-3 6-0 ok how many times he lost to Nadal aswell? And shamefull losses? You can't have the penny and the bun Floriann, u want a "SUPER DJOKOVIC" which would be invincible and Unstopabble.

Djokovic is able to hit way over 134Km/h on Nadal's spin (don't force me to put the link of all their 2011 finals, especially at the USO), but in TE the height of the ball doesn't affect the way you can hit unless it's a defensive slow ball (like a bad serve return), even when you play Nadal and have to hit most of your shots at the shoulder height.

Nadal is a pain in the ass for any player in real tennis since he makes you play one more shot because he runs like a dog, not because his spin prevents you to hit hard... (at least you could agree with that ), and btw most of nole vs rafa rallies end with a winner because one player or the other is able to catch some time off the opponent, and because this way he can step inside the court to finish him off. In TE Nadal is able to do that, but Nole can't since Nadal's spin won't get shorter no matter what, and that's the thing i'm pointing out there.

And oh sure, Fed lost many times to Rafa especially on high bounce surfaces, but not a single one on IH.

[Elias]

About Nadal. Well, he's a very special beast to balance. Indeed the spin is high as its emphasizing well his shots in reality, at least those wich are very spinny, we couldn't decently give him the same spin as Ferrer, for example, and visually, Ferrer's spin pretty much looks like the real one, maybe a bit more than the real one. That's cosmectic considerations though.

Florian has good points about it, and some issues are indeed tied to TE mechanics. It would be a great feat if we could assign a different spin stat for each wing, as this would allow us to keep up with a great spinny FH, and balancing his wings better with a lower 40-50 spin on the BH wing, wich would be a weaker and more attackable side. Though this feature is not available for now, so we have to deal with.

The consistency is another way to tweak him, but it's far from a perfect one, because in TE, if lowering consistency influences shots depth, it also lowers the danger zone positionning tolerance, thus, impairs the defensive ball recovery abilities when hitting a shot on the edge, just in reach, wich is not nice regarding Nadal traits. Here again we're limited by the fact we can't shorten his shot depth too much without hampering also his defensive reach potential. Though we have to explore a bit more lowering also his counter stat (not sure it influences top spin b1's depth enough though, knowing that defenders have a depth bonus on those shots as Vmoe pointed out).

About the spin. Well, i agree high spin is difficult to deal with/attack in TE, especially when those top spins can be very deep.
But i'd say also that spin doesn't win all by itself. It's more a combination of things wich made Nadal that strong in 1.10 (but especially since 1.0f came out, 1.10 Nadal with 1.0e was'nt *that much* overhelming), 1.0f introduced an auto-step back feature, wich helps changing direction, thus countering noticeably the inertia factor, and globally inducing an overall higher reach, that's why we are in the process to reduce speeds, because this hampered the balance we had in 1.0e. A char with -3% speed in 1.11/1.0f shouldn't be slower (max speed will be lower, but overall reach shouldn't be , that's the main objective) than he was in 1.10/1.0e. We could have lowered all chars speed, but we took benefit of this occasion to close the gap a bit between T1's and T2's.

The combination of things that made him too strong is speed (reach), power, and spin (along with depth).
But as an example, in 1.08, Nadal had the same speed stat, a higher spin (85), the same power stats (even a bit more @ BH), but he wans't considered as a good char, or not enough. With the same power stats, the 2% more spin was enough to hamper his shot pace enough to make people reluctant to use him. And in our personnal tests with VMoe,, we could still win a Federer vs Nadal matchup by those times. Nadal still felt to weak and that's why in 1.10 we tried to lower his spin to 83, and lowered a bit his BH power. Lowereing his pin made him much more powerful. That's just something i wanted to point out, because what's important is also the power/spin couple, not spin only.

At the same time we didn't had the same overall level of play among the tour by those times, but still decent/good players around. Players like Robbin can deliver a pretty solid level, and Spencercarlos defeated him 6-3 7-6 in Beijing, after US Open, thus, with 1.10 stats (and 1.0f). Also as pointed out Vmoe, Spencercarlos using Federer could take a set from Voja @ Paris Masters, that was still using a good shotmaker, on a pretty fast surface, yes. And more problems will araise on slower surfaces, that's why we reduced the speeds a first time in 1.11, and we may go a bit further with 1.12.

For now Nadal wings are noticeably weakened, power wise, though his FH is still a petty decent weapon. I think the top roster speeds are still a bit too high, we'll run more testing in the next weeks, and we can also play a bit with surface physics along with stats, to find a better balance.

If we can't find in the end an acceptable formula, we may also definitely explore another way, decreasing the high spinners spin range (68,70,74,84 currently) to some lower range, like something in between 55 and 75 for a start, step by step lower if needed, to find a better formula.

One thing that would be appreciated and definitely help, besides suggestions and / or complaints, would be also sometimes providing .dmo's, we'll not watch the whole thing every time, but that can help us along with our testings (it's very time consuming). It would also help if a player like Voja could sometimes play some Federer(or else)/Nadal match-ups, vs some solid Nadal, and provide a .dmo (i mean even as friendly matches, not especially tour matches, but you can find a good sparring partner, do some testings, mirroring your match-up, and provide a dmo and your feelings/opinion about it), because a char efficieny also depends on who is using it, and i guess Voja, even if Nadal probably fits his playstyle, may probably win also a lot of matches with different chars (though possibly not as easily than it was possible with 1.10 Nadal ) , like Vmoe did with Harrison and Wawrinka in different tournaments.

For now as you saw we're going for modifying/lowering his wings, along with the reach, if it's not enough we'll explore different ways, we're totally open to it and pretty aware of some issues. Balancing we'll never be perfect in any game, though we can always tweak it better. For now we had a better balance with 1.10/1.0e. Some core TE changes and you have to re-work it and deal with some obvious imbalances.

But the only factor : Voja is unbeatable with Nadal, though interesting, is not enough by itself to go for a gimp though, of course, knowing his level. Though it's always intersting to observe how a great mover can exploit such a char pushing it to the limits. If it leads to an impossible no match against a wall, on a reasonably fast surface, there is definitely an issue. Though also keep in mind we can't either tweak the roster only for the best players around, we'll have sometimes to find a compromise to please the majority.

We don't want either having only heavy hitters being able to hit thru Nadal, obviously, because what will happen to the poor average powered then. Though we don't want either the average powered T2 hitting thru nadal , and thus the heavy Delpo or Berdych *destroying* him So, we may play with, speed, and possibly power stats (slightly increasing it for some T2's), and also surface physics, as an example, adding a bit more slipperiness (wich means more inertia) on clay can allow us to increase the winners potential / wrongfooting if needed.

There is definitely different actions and formulas possible to achieve different results, some of wich may end acceptable, almost "perfect", or flawed. And scaling down the high spins is one of the tools we may consider.

[Florian]

Thanks Elias for the big post in which i agree for most parts.

The only few things i want to add is that having a super reaching Nadal is something that shouldn't change (even if wrong-footing him should still be possible, which isn't the case with Voja because running far back is a good enough option to get the ball back in play with a decent amount of spin^^), since the players who are great movers in the game should get some reward for that.

There is just in my opinion definitely something to work out concerning the ability to hit harder on almost all shoulder-height balls, but only when you have enough time to press the button long enough in advance and when you're very well positionned (otherwise that would be another flaw).

For the rest i can certainly provide many examples on .dmo (the spank i received at the Paris Masters Final vs Voja on a fast surface surely was full of good ones...)

[Elias]

There is just in my opinion definitely something to work out concerning the ability to hit harder on almost all shoulder-height balls, but only when you have enough time to press the button long enough in advance and when you're very well positionned (otherwise that would be another flaw).

Indeed some improvement in this area of the game should be interesting, but only Manutoo can consider it though, as those things are core coded in TE, not moddable.

dmo's are always welcome. There is a media seciton for public ones, but if you don't feel like posting them, you can still join them in a private pm with comments

[inseedious]

I share Elias's ideas.
I think that the big problem when trying to balance Nadal is the deepness of top spin shots (for Nadal the definition of "top spin shot" is extended to all of his shots). In real life almost all Nadal's shots land near the half of the court, not deeper. If in real life top spin shots can be as deep and powerful as flat shots, there's no more reason to use flat shots or we can't explain why players like Serena, Masha and a lot of men are so successful.
At the moment, Tennis Elbow physics don't let us have a Nadal balanced and realistic at the same time. If we want a realistic Nadal, we'll have an overpowered one, with very deep top spin offensive/defensive shots, almost uncounterable. If we want a balanced Nadal, we'll have a non-realistic one, with a lower top spin. I'd like to know what do you think about this point of view.

P.S.: I know that in real tennis very deep top spin shots exist and are very used especially in the last years, but they are almost defensive (look at Schiavone and Errani, or Ferrer, for example), without so much power. I play and watch a lot of tennis and I can say without doubt that, even if our potential wrist speed can be impressive, we just can't make a powerful and deep top spin shot at the same time: we have to choose between powerful and deep. At the moment, in Tennis Elbow, Nadal's top spin powerful shots are more like tennis table shots, where the court is way smaller and the ball is way lighter. And even in table tennis is quite difficult to make a powerful and deep top spin shot. The force of gravity is just not enough to let this kind of shots exist in real life.

[VMoe86]

I've said in the Paris tournament thread: The game should be changed in such a way, that if you put in a lot of spin on your ball (i.e. hold b1+down long enough), that your shots get shorter, but have more spin. As it is now, holding b1+down longer gives you more spin, but does not affect depth. Then it all comes down to whether the other player is able to take it early, because with such huge spin the ball will get up quickly on shoulder height and you are pushed back.

[djarvik]

I believe I have discussed this with Vmoe a while back, in the chat That is quite a problem to solve for Manu.


Manu, curious about your take on this?

[inseedious]

This is just a casual HD video of the last AO (Nadal vs Lopez). Just look at all Nadals shots: the more power he uses, the shorter his shot is. All his deep winners were just well placed top spin shots, without so much power.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcbxWOJgD4k
This is a video proof for anyone who won't trust me about what i wrote in my previous post.
I think that Vmoe's idea would be the best solution for this problem. Manuto has to think a lot about this, cause this can be a great improvement also for vanilla TE version.

[VMoe86]

A game in which Spin has been handled very well is GST on Wii (also in GST 2, but that game has other issues...): Powerful top spin shots land around service area, but you can still hit some deeper top spin shots with considerably less power.

Here is what manutoo had to say back then:

Another thing djarvik once suggested is a gameplay change: The longer you charge the top spin shot, the more spin you will create. So, if you don't have much time to prepare your top spin shot, it won't have that much spin (for example on the run) on it and will be easier to attack.

It's already the case, but defender with high topspin skill starts higher & charge faster than other styles with low topspin skill.

The more spin you put on it, the shorter the ball should be, but also harder to attack.

It's already what's doing the short strike.

For manutoo, short acceleration is putting spin on the ball. These are reasonably short. What everyone here is talking about is b1+down Top Spin shot, which lands deep consistently and is difficult to attack.

[Florian]

Well many people might not agree with what i'm going to say but there is a shot which many ppl use to finish points, it's the short accel (b1+2+up) and in my opinion this shot simply doesn't exist in real life except if you put a lot of spin on your ball (Nole's a great example) but this isn't a fast ball then, it's just used to open the angles. The 2nd case where i've seen that shot is when you're way on the left or the right of the court, trying to get a rather short ball from your opponent crosscourt, and you send it back to the opposite serve box corner (it's a very difficult shot which generally closes the rally, either being a winner or an ue, and once again Nole Rafa and even Federer use this regularly). Those are the only cases where i ve seen that shot in real tennis, but in this game you can manage to use that shot at a fairly fast speed and from wherever on the court, and in my opinion this is quite wrong. TE players should still be able to make great passing shots with b1+up though, by using the spin this combination should normally provide.

Any comments from you guys, or even better Manutoo ...?