Te Top ranked players - Questions

[eliomelma]

That's because the shots down the line are far less efficient than they were. But it's also due to the clay, we played a set with Croato on grass yesterday, it was extremely fun with lot of winners from everywhere.

But I don't see why you don't like short accel, it's something that require skill to be played well. One must learn how to play them to reach a good level !

Want my opinion? Top spin 4 you know become a bad game due to abuse of control shots, better management of control chots = best players , so you saw matches with only control shots rallies. The same is happening in Tennis Elbow, best players hits always short acc, it is a battle of short accelleration rallies, look the best matches (you tube ) of florian, alex, richie and you can see a short acc battle in every rallies. In real tennis this shots exist? maybe 2-3 times at match but not only rallies 5-6 short acc a side. A tennis elbow top match has more and more of short angles shots (short acc), is realistic ?maybe a tennis player can hit that angle shot one time or two in a macth! One time inseedious told me that this shot detroy the game and i agree with him. my opinion is : Top Spin 4 = control shot master=bad game (and you told this in many ts4 posts) / Tennis Elbow =abuse of short acc =bad matches

[Florian]

I agree with you elio but what can we do since there are no differences in terms of shot pace you're limited except for shoulder accels, so gotta find some solution with angles...

[C4iLL]

Yeah you're definitely right about how TS4 became boring. I think it depends on the stats of the roster, but I may be wrong

[djarvik]

Same here, this shot doesn't exists in real life. This "type" of shot should be produced with spin, not accel and should be rather hard to do unless the angle is already there.

I also mentioned that TE placing the ball pace control in the feet concept is inaccurate and wrong. I should be able to control the pace depth etc with my hands - not feet. Meaning regardless of my positioning, a control for how hard or how soft I hit and how much spin I impart needs to be on demand available to me at the time of my choosing.

It is not easy in current TE configuration to replicate that. I would say near impossible.

The decision of which shot to make (fast, slow, spinny) should be made based on game situation and not based on your positioning, and one should be able to make that decision the last second before hitting the ball. GST2 with two analog sticks had the right concept (disastrous execution though) - one stick for moving - the other for hitting. Separate feet and Legs (Insert Vmoe's comment about GST1 and motion control here - which I agree with btw).

For example: Accel. Can I control just how hard I hit in TE? Can I intentionally hit it deep? Top Spin: can I decide to hit a short cross top spin on the run? ...or a dipping top spin passing shot on the run?

There are many things that are wrong with TE, as with any other game. Sadly, a perfect game is nearly impossible to achieve. TE masks its shortcomings the best out of the recent bunch, but don't be fooled, this is still quite a long way away from reality. But the important factor in gaming is not only reality, but fun as well.

[inseedious]

Yeah, tennis is the hardest sport to reproduce in a game, though among the funniest to play. The problem with normai accelerations is about deepness, a full charged acceleration can land on the wide line, but it will never land deeper than 3/4 of the court, being almost always reachable. Also, some real tennis winners come from anticipation, we can't do it in the game as we have to charge to hit a good shot.

But we still need a charge system, as otherwise the ball would have some "standard" landing zones, like TS4 control shots, where an aiming skill isn't involved in the game. On the other hand, there are some shots like cross passing shots on the run, that should not require a charging time to be well executed. How to create a gameplay where you can "actively" decide the direction of the shot, without having to charge it? We just have two hands...

We need a smarter solution, or a new controller. Wiimote and Wiimotion+ are already great solutions, but their technologies are just not good enough yet to give us a realistic tennis experience. I honestly enjoyed Wii Sports tennis, its aiming system and power choice are good enough to guarantee realistic and balanced fights! Maybe tennis requires a separate hardware, a sort of simulator, like the ones about F1 racing cars, to even come a bit closer to realism. I think a "software game" can just give us a tactical realism, but it will never reach a good level of it.

[pidzi]

Agree with all complains mentioned here as i can also compare it to a real tennis simulation which i found recently, its FULL ACE TENNIS SIMULATION, this game has everything you would like to control and master in tennis simulation means ball trajectory, collision, friction, angles and since i play a demo for a while (with 2 characters only) i can say that no match was the same, just because of the variables i mentioned above( actually theres much more of em) where for example you can hit perfect short angle only when you are at the angle and the ball is high enough and you have enough of top spin.

When i come back to play TE ITST tournament matches it really gets me to the boredom when i remember how flexible and variable is the FATS. Only disadvantage of the game are REALLY AWFUL animations which are not currently modifiable if then even ever be .

The real problem of TE is that when you master the game it becomes too predictable and monotonous

[C4iLL]

Well, for me, when you have mastered the game, the funny thing is to beat other guys that mastered the game as well. These people give you tactical issues to solve, and it's a funky challenge especially on 5 sets matches !

[VMoe86]

I think there is nothing more to add here (regarding realism and possible solutions), except maybe that even Short Accelerations are not THE shot you need to hit winners in TE.

In TE it is pretty simple: If your character has lower Spin, you use Short Accelerations to move the opponent around, opening up the court and then use Normal Accelerations to win points or approach the net. If your character has higher Spin you use the Spin to push the opponent further back and then you can use the better angles due to more Spin to hit nice Short Acceleration winners or finish then at the net. I also add that Short Accelerations are easier to read/anticipate, so one can also defend against them (if close enough to the baseline).

We need a smarter solution, or a new controller. Wiimote and Wiimotion+ are already great solutions, but their technologies are just not good enough yet to give us a realistic tennis experience. I honestly enjoyed Wii Sports tennis, its aiming system and power choice are good enough to guarantee realistic and balanced fights! Maybe tennis requires a separate hardware, a sort of simulator, like the ones about F1 racing cars, to even come a bit closer to realism. I think a "software game" can just give us a tactical realism, but it will never reach a good level of it.

There is maybe only one genre that can be more or less simulated with games: Racing games. You have wheels with pedals and a clutch. A specific tennis controller would be even cheaper I guess, but the market for tennis games is smaller, so no one even bothers to go in that direction.

For me, GST1 on Wii with WM+ and Nunchuk was a good first try: Spin and Slice were incorporated nicely, flat shots were difficult to master, one could hit down the line on the run with great timing, flick of the wrist cross court passing shots. Things could have been more risky there, the serving was not great (GST 2 with Move had nice serve controls), but these things could have been improved on (unfortunately there won't be a WiiU version of GST anytime soon ). Some things cannot be simulated well with WM+, either, for example hitting lobs/drop shots requires to hold a button, because it is too difficult to differentiate between motions for lob or top spin shot respectively drop shot and slice (with a more specific controller this could work, though).

In the end, this part here remains:

Sadly, a perfect game is nearly impossible to achieve. TE masks its shortcomings the best out of the recent bunch, but don't be fooled, this is still quite a long way away from reality. But the important factor in gaming is not only reality, but fun as well.

I've had fun with GST1 on Wii and I'm having fun with TE -- otherwise we wouldn't even spend so much time playing it, at least I don't play games which I don't enjoy.

[eliomelma]

I agree with you elio but what can we do since there are no differences in terms of shot pace you're limited except for shoulder accels, so gotta find some solution with angles...

Yes i understand , it is another solutions to win the point, i know, but now more and more short acc in every rally i noticed. Vmoe, c4ill uga, you know how beautiful were the rallies in first months , look at 7'54'' minutes of this video that i made last year, kyuuji and otlichno played the best final in ITST tennis elbow tour ever with maybe no short acc and the match was incredible! look the video of final at 7:54, you can see that they played with short acc abuse? maybe kyuuji in his 5 years experience didn't know this shot? why he didn't use this shot in the final when he was unbeaten? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU93Bi24Leg&hd=1
There isn't a way to make this shot harder, decrease spin to make harder this shot? or something as this?

C4ill you write ts4 become boring, depends of stats, you would say TE become boring?

[C4iLL]

If you want my real opinion, which is quite polemic (but I assume !) this is 90% due to the stats of the roster. Since this glorious period you mentionned Elio, the spirit of the staff was always to lower the stats, update after update, to reach an objective : more UE, longer rallies, less winners, less aces etc.

I'm personally against this "negative" trend since beginning for a reason : the exchanges often go to 40 shots between top players and it's absolutely boring (for me at least).

From what I heard a few weeks ago, this negative trend will continue in 1.14 with a new decrease, in speed that time. The game will become even more slower (so potentially more winners ?) but it will be once again a bit less possible to go to the net quickly...
For me, the shots should become more powerful, more precise, and the speed stay as it is, and even increased a bit. We'd see who is really a great defender then in these conditions.

Because today, due to this lack of power, everyone defend well, and the offensive guys must be extremely good and trained to hit winners.

And unlike what the Tennis specialists say in real life, the current trend in Tennis isn't the defensive style ! Janowycz, Dimitrov, Paire, Nishikori, Raonic : all this new generation is offensive, there will be no defender in top20 in 2020.

Unfortunately, I think I'm alone to express this desire of a true offensive game, less defensive, characterized by a noticeable increase in stats.

ps : except the Nadal issue, I still think the 1.11 was a great version (the one before the Australian Open) and the idea to give every characters -6 in power precision etc was somehow a failure.

[Elias]

The winner ability is about the relation between power and speed. You can increase the power, or lower the speed, the objective is the same : shorten the rallies. But the main issue isn't really the max speed, as you can see even a Del Potro with 72 speed can run down a lot of shots, the real issues currently in my opinion are the character movement acceleration factor wich is too high, and also of course the stamina loss wich is a critical issue, cause as soon as you play with low stamina, it lowers power, and speed, but the relation power<>speed changes and the rallies become endless and boring, low stamina states doesn't allow control skills to express much and usually the points ends with a random ue/misshit, we'd have better time actually to play with fatigue off, cause low stamina kills the skill factor, and the fun (and when it's happening even before the end of a first set, it's a real bummer..). Still hope to find a way to keep this dimension of the game though, but only if it brings something really positive to the gameplay.

So there is no negative trend at all (at least not since the two last mod releases, and don't forget some aspects of TE gameplay changed in later builds as well). We have two objectives, render the gameplay more winner friendly (still preserving enough tactical components), using a new stat, tonicity, allowing to lower char movement acceleration, keeping power as is or increasing it a bit, and probably increasing precision over strong wings. The stamina is another problem wich is more difficult to handle, even with very high stamina stats (because as soon as two very good movers can neutralize each other, they can do it indefinitely anyways, so the low stam state will be reached and thus an endless loop of slow paced poor rallies).

As for short accels.. back in 2012 the overall skill level was really low compared to what it is now. We could hit winners without using much cross accels because we weren't good movers enough. Remove it from the game now and every average/good players will play endless rallies, wich is already the case even with short crosses, so it would be even worse without them, this shot is needed for TE gameplay balance, the way it's conceived currently.

About character movement acceleration we'll explore two possibilities, keeping max speed high (~80's) with a low tonicity (~50) , to lower char movement acceleration, or, using a low max speed (~60/65), along with ~100 tonicity, to maintain a good acceleration and character responsiveness to controls, but limiting overall reach. The later option seems nice gameplay wise out of my last tests, but we thought about it a bit late so we are currently going for the first solution (wich feels not bad either) for 1.14.
But low max speed with high acceleration has an advantage : it brings some larger margin available for Speed vs. Stamina difference, thus would probably allow to handle better the stamina loss thru long matches, and also the higher responsiveness promotes fast/precise positionning.

At least i can say those last tests are promising, so i'm pretty confident we're heading toward something better, even if it probably won't be perfect by the first shot.

[Florian]

Sorry elio but in that particular video from RG 2012 final, it just seems that rallies could last forever, it's just the lack of stamina that is inducing weaker shots and ues. We have to use the short accels, especially on clay, otherwise two well trained players who can defend pretty well won't ever have trouble handling those cross court shots. To me basically it's the dtl shot which is too easy to make, and not that efficient. I would definitely go for a harder shot to produce there, but more efficient.

[eliomelma]

To me basically it's the dtl shot which is too easy to make, and not that efficient. I would definitely go for a harder shot to produce there, but more efficient.

Dlt shot? What is?
Agree for a harder shot and more efficient! What do you think about last C4ill answer, you opinion is important for your great experience

[inseedious]

In addition to these issues caused by stats mentioned by C4ill, we must also care about deep counters. For example, yesterday I played Floriann who was using Murray, and I can surely say that 95% of his defensive shots landed at least 20-30 cm from the baseline. Nothing against Floriann, who's a great defender and agrees with my opinion about deep counters and mishits, but I think we played quite at the same level yesterday, even if losing 6-1 6-4 because of lots of errors from the baseline and too long rallies. To me was just impossible to play offensively since every ball came back very deep. This is a big issue, for both positioning and shot efficiency. In real tennis, attacking also means making more than a step in the court after a good acceleration, but this is impossible in the game. Currently, everyone can just wait to hit a defensive deep counter (it will happen at least once a point, choosing some characters) and turn the point on his side. I think this is the winning tactic of the moment, but honestly it's a shame. Again, no complaint about Floriann, who would be a defender even if there would be an attack overpower.

[Florian]

Dlt shot? What is?
Agree for a harder shot and more efficient! What do you think about last C4ill answer, you opinion is important for your great experience

I'm talking about the shots down the line. TE is the only place where you see rallies with lots of DTL shots in a row ^^
Concerning C4ill's comment, i think the roaster is pretty well balanced right now, it's just that the lack of different returns and different length of shots while defending make the whole game far from winner friendly, even on faster surfaces. So unfortunately the only thing we can do about it is to try to counter that flaw until manutoo decides to change the core of the game concerning that particular thing.