Elias wrote:In short : do it, give the gameplay options to the players, don't enforce automated helpers if possible. Being a slider in gameplay options, or via modding, whatever. This aspect is what did personnaly put me off from Tennis Elbow in the long run, and moreover enforcing on us mechanics we don't like, when we were simply asking to have the *choice* the way we want to play the game. Of course ITST environment is specific, and always thriving for more control freedom (thus the inquiry of Jason asking you to let him strike 3m out of the court if he *wants to*, or just if the opponent puts him under pressure enough to suffer enough tension in his fingers to enforce him to make this error
Ok it's about tennis, but above all, it's a videogame), and overall, because in a competitive environment you always want more control depht to let player skills express as much as possible, less control options and enforced helpers would smooth the field skill wise. I perfectly understand the need to also have a game easy to pick up enough to avoid scaring new/casual players, but it's also important to consider the needs of more dedicated/hardcore communities.
Would we enforce a certain setting ? Not sure what you mean about it. Would we enforce a setting the way the competitive matches have to be played on ITST ? Yes probably, i think it always has been the case on every tennis game hosted over here, some settings rules, fixed stats, depending the game and the mechanics/options offered.
As for the game itself, you can make it simple by having the host setting the options for the match (maybe these options could be displayed in the game browser in some way). You could also decide FA offering deeper gameplay settings/options via modding only, although in this case, some sort of mod ID/checksum would be necessary to enforce a modded game client to be only able to play with another client using the same mod (like TE does by the way).
Thanks for the input Elias. This is going to be a long answer, I apologize about that
. But I really feel like I need to be precise so as not to be seen as dismissive and/or stubborn.
First of all, I am firm believer in customization. Before being a developer, I am a user of software, and I love when they offer a great level of customization, because I very rarely use the default settings. I have developed many pieces of software, games or not, and whenever I can conceive of any way something can be, without too much work, customized to be more agreeable to someone's (even unconventional) taste, or more convenient in a given situation (even a very rare one), I offer that possibility. So you can count on me on being receptive in that regard.
Now, when it comes to gameplay, I think the game designer needs to provide a framework and a set of principles.
When a player comes to me and asks for a change in gameplay that goes against one of those principles, I figure it can be one of those 2 reasons :
* The principle fails to address the player's concern, and therefore the gameplay is flawed in regard to that concern.
* There is a misunderstanding about the principle.
And I think it is worth it to explore the issue in order to find out which it is, but that needs an in-depth discussion about why the player wants a change, why I made it that way in the first place, and why those 2 things collide.
I'll take an example before addressing the latest issues :
Manual/automatic preparation :I made Full Ace with the principle that I wanted the player to be able to wilfully play inside out forehands, without the game deciding for it. I also thought that preparing your shot is important enough in real tennis that it could be afforded controls in a tennis simulation game, and I thought trigger buttons would be very handy for that.
However, I later introduced auto-preparation because I realized some players don't want to bother with that. The trade-off is that they can't play inside-out forehands. This doesn't go against the principle as the player wilfully renounces the possibility I was trying to provide him with.
Auto-positioning :FA gameplay uses the same directional controls for movement and aiming. Since you sometimes need to hit 'on the run', there has to be times where you'll be aiming while your character needs to continue moving in respect to the ball. The answer to that is auto-positioning. If the player wants auto-positioning to kick off later, and therefore get less assistance in exchange for more control, this doesn't go against the principle, so I'm open to customization in relation to that.
Aiming :FA gameplay for aiming is based on the fact that every shot comes with a margin of error, impacted by many parameters such as character stats, positioning, ball impact height, incoming speed, outgoing speed, etc...
This is, it seems, a novel idea in tennis games and I think players who are accustomed to other games struggle to come to terms with it. It is however the case, for instance, in soccer games, and it has been for a long time.
As a result, the player should never expect 100 % accuracy on the spot he's aimed at, and therefore it should
never be seen as a reasonable thing to aim on the line. Instead, you should meticulously place your aiming spot
inside the lines in accordance to the accuracy you expect from hitting in your current situation.
This means that the gameplay should provide
maximum precision for choosing a specific spot inside the court lines.
Of course, tennis players sometimes take unreasonable risks and accordingly, in certain situations, the player might go for a Hail Mary and aim at the line. Similarly, if you have tension in your fingers and inadvertently aim for the line, you are putting yourself in unwarranted trouble.
Plus, as I tried to explain in a previous post, intending to aim somewhere isn't a problem in real life. As a low-level amateur player, I can spend an hour aiming at a specific spot (say, the size of a ball) on the court. Sure, I'll probably struggle to achieve as low as 10% accuracy to that exact spot, but every single time the goal I would have visualized in my mind was that exact spot. I would even argue that aiming for the lines is easier, as you have a clear visual goal. The only exception I can think of is if during a rally, you become disoriented in respect to the court, but I expect pro players don't experience that much.
In that context, since I want to provide maximum precision inside the court lines, why would I open the possibility of aiming further than that ? Especially in the case of analogue controls, I see it only as losing a good fraction of the precision to allow something you should always refrain from doing anyway.
Because that's how I see things, when Jason told me that Full Ace couldn't be a simulation if the player couldn't aim outside the lines, I felt compelled to answer along those lines.
That doesn't mean I disregard his request, it means I don't agree with his statement. I'm trying to let him know how I see things, so he can then go on arguing with the full context.
More than that, when someone asks me to allow aiming outside the lines, I have the feeling that what they're asking for is a completely different gameplay, where the shot outcome is exactly accurate to the aim, and therefore entirely skill-based. If that is really what it is about, and many players want that same thing, I'd rather offer a separate gameplay mode that works accordingly, than modifying the current gameplay that, I can assure you, many players already agree with.
Anyhow, my mind isn't made either way, and I'd like more input before reaching a definitive conclusion. Also, if you take issues with, or want more precisions about the principles of FA gameplay, I'm open to discussion, here, or as I said earlier, in a chat, as an immediate back-and-forth may be more productive.
