Some people here are tired of my threads here, but I can't stop my quest towards more balanced and realistic builds in TS4. Hope that you can forget my previous posting and review this more open minded. To all new and previous readers, please refrain from commenting with statements without explanations. I want to discuss, not throw shit back and forth. Therefore, I will only answer people that explain their statements.
I have included a poll where people should vote if they have read the whole post and does not have anything to ask for or point out,but wants to agree or disagree. That way we'll see if people likes this idea or not. Please don't vote if you just hate everything I post, just because it's me who's posting. This is not my idea, I'm just explaining what it would do.
I will start this post by quoting Baghdad OrgaSIM's post in the thread about the rule of Monster Defense and Topspin invasion/poisoned slices:
As a wise man once said to me...
"Sometimes you have to get rid of the extra weight if you want to build lean muscle"
Getting rid therefore of overpowered coach setups is absolutely all about getting rid of excess weight and gaining lean muscle in other coach setups.
For the community reading this take it from someone who knows. My story is I came in TS3 some 2 years ago and I had the same philosophy as any other gamer. I wanted to win and I didn't understand the restrictions. The moment I had a few weeks of ITST under my belt I knew what all the fuss was about - quite simply I got it. Due to the restrictions it made me a better player and as a result it forced me to discover the full depth to the topspin series and as a result of not only patience but also ITST's Managements sound judgement calls on rules, the SIM tour then landed and I climbed to Number 1 in the World SIM (TS3)
The rule changes will encourage members to use the dozens of other coach setups available - now members can trial with all sorts of coach skills and stats and not have to worry about playing an overpowered setup or using one themselves to counter it. Don't get me wrong, there are other strong setups but ITST, myself and many others have invested a lot of time in experimenting with all setups and it there are clearly a bunch that dominate. ITST values all members and their opinions and all opinions have absolutely been taken into account over the last 2 months.
These are golden words in my opinion and I wanted people to read it before reading the main part of my post, because it is so true to my opinions about getting some major changes to ITST TS4 Regular Tour.
From now on in this post I will explain a suggestion made by LokiSharpShootr. All credits to him for bringing up this idea and even more credits to his friend who first told him. I have sent a message to LokiSharpShootr and asked for permission on explaining his idea and present it in a more understandable way. I'm explaining it because I think a lot of players here on itst havent really thought about how this rule would work when put in use. Also I don't think his post got the attention it deserved, therefore I'm hoping more people see how good this suggestion actually is when put a little thought into it.
Behold, this is quite a long post, but I hope that as many as possible take your time and read the whole thing. It's really not hard, difficult reading. I have tried to keep it as simple as possible, while at the same time injecting my thoughts about the different aspects of the limits.
Now, quite simply, the idea is to restrict all custom build attributes to the highest pro players attributes.
This way, there will be very few coaches excluded(if any), whilst many OP builds will disappear from the tour completely and the custom players will be more balanced like the developers have chosen to balance the pro players.
Please use this coach calculator to check out this idea and my statements in this post:
Link to thread: http://www.intertopspintour.net/forum/v ... hp?t=14169
Link to download: http://www.multiupload.com/8F2WRGOTWK
Here's what LokiSharpShootr first wrote about this idea here on itst:
Highest serve: 90(Roddick)
Highest volley: 90(Sampras)
Highest power: 91(Roddick)
Highest speed: 92(Chang)
Highest reflexes: 83(Murray)
Highest wings FH+BH: 172(Agassi)
I want to add:
Highest stamina: 92 (Nadal)
Highest single wing: 93 (Federer)
I'll start with explaining LokiSharpShootr's idea, then explain my ideas on stamina and single wing.
Forehand and backhand attributes must not exceed 172. Which means you won't be able to have more than 86/86 wings at max. In the game this will mean that Welsh's best builds will not be possible to use, still he won't be completely excluded. Though I would like to even put this limit down to 170, which means max 85/85 wings as I think that would make Welsh even more balanced to the rest.
With a serve limit of 90, most of insane serve builds will be excluded, still not excluding any coaches at all. Also it will remove all 0-20-0 builds and many 1-19-0 and 0-19-1 builds.
With a volley limit of 90, all overpowered SV players are excluded. The best volley attribute build would have 89 volley and 90 serve. And together with the serve limit the all SV would not have higher serve skill than 90, which again means volley skill would never get over 89 in accordance to the coach calculator. Also the reflex limit will mean many other overpowered SV builds are excluded.
With a power limit of 91, it sort of speaks for itself. All complaining about power players should be gone. There will be 10 power builds excluded from the tour just based on power. Now the actual number will be higher because of the serve limit. However, how many power players are really good servers? I think it will be much more realistic that most of the power players don't have insane serves.
With a speed limit of 92, there will be 22 builds excluded purely based on the speed limit. I don't think that is a major loss to DFB, because the last 8 attributes on speed don't really count much. I don't feel that much difference when using Slavina(100 speed) and Welsh(85 speed). It's mostly about not getting played out wide what matters. Therefore I think that 92 speed is enough for a DFB.
With a reflex limit on 83, there won't be so many more builds excluded that is not already excluded by some of the other limits. Most of the builds which exceeds 83, exceeds either the serve limit or the volley limit. There is a but here though. Claire Roberts would be completely excluded, so there might be need for some discussion on this limit, as I think we should try to exclude as few coaches as possible, while trying to keep attributes at a reasonable level(around 90 max imo). Any suggestions on how to decide the limit on reflexes?
With a stamina limit of 92, it sort of explains itself. No real life player never get tired. Humans get tired eventually, no matter how well trained they are(except Forrest Gump). Therefore it will increase realism to the game by limiting it at 92 like the developers limited Nadal at 92 instead of 100.
With a single wing limit of 93, there won't be any insane forehands or backhands (that can hit balls closer to the net than you can get a drop shot). Also imo there's more than enough to have 93 as a max for one wing. Above(and included) 93 you can hit quite the amazing angles with a perfect timed control shot. There's no reason, if thinking about adding realism, to have a higher skill on one wing than 93. This will also not exclude any setups at all. It will only restrict some setups from giving all four bonuses to one wing.
That's the explanations I want to bring up for now. Now I want to say somethings about my opinions about TS4 and its balancing of player builds. This can be a bit tougher to digest than the earlier texts, so be patient so you get what I'm saying.
The game was developed with a reasonably balanced pro player roster. Where most of the players don't stand out, with an exception of the top 8 players. (Nadal, Federer, Djokovic, Roddick, Agassi, Becker, the two next you can choose for yourself as people have different opinions.) With these top 8 out of 26 pro players, mathematically we have a much higher percentage of players that are better than others pro players, than the percentage of players that are better amongst custom players/builds. Custom players have maybe 30 out of 300 builds(possibly more builds, just guessed numbers) that are noticeably better than the rest. This means that 30% of pro players are better then the rest, while just 10 % of custom player builds are better. By removing these 10%, we will open up for a lot of new builds being better then the rest. Also it will remove most of 20-0-0, 0-20-0, 0-0-20 builds which have extremes of the different playstyles offered in the game. When these go away, players will be more equal to each other, as there would be less difference between the builds(less extremes), while this in reality will mean more variety because of all the coaches that would be a part of the better percentage of builds. Remove the 10% of better custom builds to make room for the 30% beneath the 10%.
"Sometimes you have to get rid of the extra weight if you want to build lean muscle"
Hope this makes any sense to you, as it makes completely sense to me. If you've read it all, I'm flattered and honored to say: Thanks for reading
Looking forward to discussing this with all itst members and players.
