Back Scene Management

[Yazmos]

Hello let me first say what a great game this is. It has had me hooked for almost every waking hour for a week, I’ve had to force myself out of the house and leave it alone for a few hours, the tennis playing side of this game is fantastic, but this is discussion and you are asking for ideas to make the game better yes?
I have a few ideas, all of them all away from the tennis court, and in the back-scene management, let me explain.
The first one with the rankings wouldn’t it be nice to have a country ranking as well as a world ranking? I.e if I’m a UK player I might be ranked 99 in the world but that might be good enough for me to be UK ranked 1 or 2? That also Lets me see how likely I’m going to be picked for The Emerson Cup Team!
Now let’s deal with the finances, at the moment it seems your players can get deeper and deeper in dept and fly here and there all over the world and the only downside is they have to fly cheapest and stay in the cheapest hotels, but apart from that they can run up as much debt as they like with no consequence!
So I propose a change to the finance management that would mean that managers will have to take into account the players financial state before booking them into a future in Australia when your based in the UK and so on. First I suggest that players have to have a current account which must always be in positive and they will pay all bills from this account, second they will have a loan account which they will have to arrange loans from the banks to fund their glob trotting I.E. they arrange a 20k loan to be paid back £100 a week for 5 years, so your player now has 20k in his current account (also this gives them the choice of buying dearer plane tickets or better hotels as they have the monies to hand and managers choice on how its spent). Now what happens if he burns through all that?? Can he go back to the bank? well no, at some point the bank will say no more! I suggest 20k limit maybe less depending on character traits, past financial history etc. Also, every player you sign at the moment seems to start with around 5k, maybe if I sign a 25 year old player rank 1000+ he might start in quite a bit in debt?
What happens if he can’t make his monthly payments to the bank? …cant pay his rent? … or shock horror afford to pay his coach? .. That's, YOU isn't it? As the manager will have to think very hard as to where to send the player and how to spend his precious money, so he stays within his credit limit.
At some point a player may have to retire from tennis because he can’t afford it. If he’s a poor player and eventually unable to manage his finances and pay his bills, he may have to give up and get a job, not every player will make it, and what would that do to your manager reputation?
In the junior tour I’m quite sure 14-year-old little Johnny’s parents will be on your case if you want to spend all his monies on foreign travel especially if you keep going with him and he pays.
Now this leads us to hidden traits of the characters and their personal well being, for instance where do they live? On their friend’s sofa? Living with parents, or own their own mansion, and all points in between, are they married if so does the partner travel with them and count as a helper? do they own a car, motorbike? What’s their standard of living basic needs only, or extravagant, and again all in between.
A characters back scene living will affect his moral(and some cases his stats) in a big way either plus or minus, also the standard of their living, they might desire a good standard of living but are only able to afford basic minus moral modifier. Plus moral when their needs are affordable the same with housing, if there married and living in squats you can bet there moral will be hit hard.
If they own their own vehicle they could use that in their own country, so they don’t have to buy plane tickets? (Also when I’m on that if I’m UK based I’m not really going to book a plane to Cardiff or Nottingham why not add a take the train option £100 for own country travel?)
Ok back to those hidden traits, what’s the player really like off the court? Is he a good guy who pays his bills and saves his moneys for the next tour, dose he manage his affairs for the future… or dose the first time he wins any money at all (winnings would go straight into his current account) does he go out buy a Harley Davidson and then go on a bender for three days? Dose an 18-year-old with Harley rap if around a tree and break his leg?
After all, if you find a player ranked 1200+ and train him up to be a superstar, why didn’t other trainers do that? Were you just lucky and you got to him first, or is he just useless when the pressures is on, keeps getting drunk unable to manage his finances disappears for days when he’s in the money only comes back when he’s broke ect ect..
Think about what it would have been like to manage John McEnroe, a great player but behind the scenes can you imagine what he would have been like to manage?

'I had to sack my coach - we ended up hating each other,' Andy Murray October 2008

I’m sure there are coaches who have had to sack players. Again, your manager choice which are the good players? who are the wasters, and which are good kids who just can’t do sums? You as the coach must decide who to give your attention too, and who is a waste of time and needs sacking!
What do you do when your 18-year-old broke superstar says “I can’t afford to go on the tour, can I borrow the money off you? I’ll pay you back out of the winnings you know I’m good for it!” oh decisions, decisions, is he really just hard up on a run of bad luck, or will you never see that money again? what a choice!
Just ideas for the background of the characters and not every character will have a crazy back story, certainly not your first character, but you can bet that some will, just the same as real people. And not everyone is cut out to be a star.

[ManuTOO]

Hello,

1) For the rankings per country, it's a good idea, I noted it down, although it's almost already there : just click on the "Country" button in the rankings, then enter the wanted country name in the filter and you'll get a good idea if you're near the top or not. :-)

2) For the money management, it already matters : as long as you're in debt, you can't hire trainers, which means you can't win Grand Slams or other big tournaments, so the more you mismanage your money, the less historical your player will be.
And on the other side, a more complex money management might deter some users ; one of the most recurring fears I've seen from people playing the game was to see the game over because of too much debt.

3) Character traits & train & other stuff are all interesting, but the efforts needed to create all this are too big compared to the gameplay interest it'd create : ie: I have tons of little QOL improvements & features to implement before getting to this kind of thing ; although I'd like to add at least some life events at some point (I have a "girlfriend" trainer since TEM1 that I never implemented >_< ).

PS: if you have the time & the mood, please write a positive review for the game in its Steam store page ; it's always helpful for the game & encouraging for me..! :-)

[Yazmos]

I can do that.
Thank you for the replay and reading my thoughts, its good to know the Devs are working and responding to the users

[ManuTOO]

Thanks for your nice review !

A couple of little things though :
- it's "dev", not "devs", as I'm alone on the game :-)
- the game is still flagged as Early Access, but since the v1.0b, it really can be seen a normal game (ie: there's nothing important missing & it shouldn't have too flaggrant balancing issue, although it still may need some tuning, depending on user feedback) ; so I mostly let it as Early Access because I want to gather feedback like yours above, so I can plan what to do for the future free updates that will come over the next couple of years
- now I'm mostly working on Tennis Elbow 4 (ie: to play tennis, not manage), so most little new stuff coming in the next months will be from it