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Rocking Rackets Strategy and Tips Thread
Brian Swartz has an excellent dynasty going in the game Rocking Rackets, an online tennis simulation. If you haven't taken a look at that, you definitely should.
I think largely through that thread, several others have started playing the game, including me. Rather than hijacking Brian's thread (or britrock's as we did at one time), I thought it might make sense to have a separate thread for hints and tips and strategy questions. I'm happy to use my guys as a base to get the discussion going. After some fits and starts, I've found a home in World 11 (you can choose different game worlds, which vary in speed of simulation). My players are 19 year old American Ronald Ashman and 21 year old Croat Teodor Cajkanovic. Ashman turned pro this season (Year 182 in the Game World) after a good junior career where he finished in the top five of the junior rankings. He's seem some success in his first year with two futures tournament wins so far and a ranking in the high 500s. Cajkanovic was not as successful a junior player, topping out in the mid teens. He's recently broken into the top 100 in the world rankings and is playing at the CH1 level. (There are varying levels of tournaments, amateur, junior, futures, championship and masters/majors/grand slams.) Here are a few questions I have, and I'm hoping Brian or britrock or others may chime in...if there are other newbs who would benefit from more background, ask away. The intent here is to really be a knowledge repository rather than a pure dynasty thread. -How do you decide when a player is ready to move up to the next level of tournaments? -Do you train for skill or serve first? -How do you best control Form? -What do you look for when you hire a player? |
I'm probably better suited to this than a pure dynasty thread, anyway, so thanks for getting this going!
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I'll take an opening crack at your questions...
-How do you decide when a player is ready to move up to the next level of tournaments? Generally, I peek at the next level up whenever a player wins a title at his current level. Another thing I will occasionally do is peek at the registrations for next week's tournaments, and see if my player's ranking would lead him to be a seeded player at a certain level. A seeded player translates to an expectation of a couple wins and strikes a nice balance in scoring points and retaining form. -Do you train for skill or serve first? My rule of thumb is to have the marginal skill cost be at least twice as high as the marginal service cost. That infers that skill is twice as valuable as service--conversely, that service is half as valuable as skill. That's a minimum, I would think. -How do you best control Form? This varies based on the stage of a player's career. Until they are playing at a peak level (major/challenger-level singles or doubles), the experience you gain in practice is just as important, in my book. So I will enter players into tournaments until their form approaches 30 (the max without penalty to ability and experience), then keep them out of tournaments until their form drops to just about 15 (the min). At a top level, Brian's best qualified to answer--I've only had a couple seasons' worth of practice with major-level players (doubles) that were successful enough that they couldn't afford the form to play in every major-level tournament week. In that case, you just look ahead and make sure to maximize your potential to play in GSLs, MSTs, and 500s. -What do you look for when you hire a player? Brian's done great work explaining this. My personal biases are for players with low aging factors (to extend their potential career length) and players in lower-tier nations (for a better chance at JTC/WTC opportunities). There's definitely a balance to strike between talent and endurance. Strength and skill are sneakily important. Don't worry about court preferences at all with young players--you can easily reshape those with any thoughtful tourney/practice registration scheme. |
Now you've gone and done it. One of the most dangerous things you can do is invite me to unload a massive wall of text by asking for strategy on this game. You asked for it. I am not responsible for the consequences :P.
In all seriousness, I'm glad that people other than me are still enjoying this game. I love the fact that it doesn't have the 'micro-transaction' concept so common to many online games, forcing you to actually manage your players well to succeed. So, here we go. Quote:
This is exactly what I do: skill until it's at least double the service cost. The logic here is that skill is used on all points, service on only half. Most managers train service more than I do but I'm not sure that's a good idea. The reason for that is higher service will help in terms of 'free points'; that is, more aces(and fewer double faults, but that's less of an issue at the top level). Other side of the 'free points' coin is having slightly better odds on each point by going the skill route. I think being close to the line where skill is double the service cost is best, but maybe one could argue for having service at 60% of skill cost. I wouldn't go more than that though. Quote:
I disagree somewhat here, but that may be partly due to playing in a slow world. Optimally for development you want to stay as close to the 15 minimum for maximum experience(without going below). That means not playing any tournaments in the following week if you are above about 16.4. For faster worlds I might do something more like britrock just to make sure you don't drop below or miss weeks, but when a daily check is enough to keep players active every week it's not necessary. Some of this, from a practical point of view, depends on how often you can check in on your players. At the top level it's different. By top level, I mean this: ranked in the Top 32 by the above method. Before that, and this is important, you 98% don't care what your ranking is. Moving up in ranking doesn't make it a good year; getting enough experience to train a lot of skill/service makes it a good year. Wins and losses are comparatively irrelevant. But once you get there, you have to play other top players to advance anyway. The way it works out is, if you are good enough to consistently win big Challenger events, you will soon reach the Top 32 even with a limited schedule(the point at which you are seeded in Slams). If you aren't good enough to win the big Challengers, development is more important. There really isn't any in-between. Once at the elite stage, competition for ranking points becomes the priority. And it's more or less enforced really, since you are penalized for skipping Masters if you were Top 30 the previous year. So your schedule then becomes Slams + Masters + the occasional 500/250 where it fits. Everything is then about maximizing your results in the Slams and secondarily the Masters. You want to be in the 'optimal zone' of 20-25 form at the end of the Slams, which means starting them in the 19-20 range. Sometimes(Madrid/Rome, or Canada/Cincy) you'll have to be below the optimal range for the preceding Masters in order to make that happen; at other points you can prepare for maximum results in the Masters. After a couple years you get a good hang for it. Anything else just serves to set you up with the number of matches you need to get form ready for those big events, and whatever points you get are just icing on the cake. Quote:
The comment about being seeded at the next level up is right on the money I think. There are some cases that are different. For example, breaking into the futures you can only go up to making the Top 1000 in amateurs, then you have to qualify in futures; there's a similar point when making the futures/challenger jump. But in general, it's the right way to go. If you aren't seeded, it's too soon because you can get stuck playing a powerful top seed in the first round and then having a nearly wasted week. Quote:
Here we get to the wall of text part rather severely. I did a long post on this before that I'll just reproduce here. Quote:
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This is all great stuff.
I think I am in line on a lot of these things. I have trained serve more frequently, especially when the players are young because it gives you such a relative advantage in matches (looking at stats, it is not rare to see opponents with 0 Aces and 20+ double faults). If I can avoid double faults, I'm picking up 20-30 points a match. I've found that to be big in early rounds of tournaments (thus making sure you get more matches for the week). I'm sure more questions or comments will follow. |
This is pretty helpful. I'm already trying to get my service in line with skill.
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Impossible to know for sure how high they were in form a few months ago, but some of the weeks they are losing early. If you lose in the first couple rounds you can actually drop in form while playing, but it's a bad way to go since you won't get much benefit for the week(experience or points).
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Right, you pick up form at a rate of 1 point per competitive match played, and lose it at a rate of 8% per week.
(Just FYI, I can't peek into your world if I haven't joined it, which annoys me, but alas. Don't know if that's true for Brian, too.) |
It is true for me also, it just doesn't matter. I'm only really active in rr1, so I can move my two 'free' slots around at my whim to look at stuff like this.
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So a few questions:
1) how do you determine a young player's developed stats? 2) at the journeyman levels, I assume the intention is to keep form and fatigue optimal before taking part in tournaments? However, I find fatigue tends to potentially rise a lot faster. How important is fatigue from that perspective? 3) does it make sense to take a complete week off, ie not even a practice tournament and just do friendlies in order to get form and fatigue optimal? |
1) how do you determine a young player's developed stats?
On a player's profile page, next to his age will be displayed a percentage. This indicates how physically developed the player is relative to his eventual prime. Using that percentage, you can work out the math with the tennis balls on the player card for strength and speed. For endurance, however, the effect of age is doubled. I believe the formula you use to determine peak endurance is End/Age^2. 2) at the journeyman levels, I assume the intention is to keep form and fatigue optimal before taking part in tournaments? However, I find fatigue tends to potentially rise a lot faster. How important is fatigue from that perspective? Fatigue is the backboard for the development of your young players. Players shed 50 fatigue per day, and to optimize their development, you do not want to waste any of that opportunity to shed fatigue. Of course, fatigue will rise more quickly when young players have less endurance--and that's okay. You're right that a player who enters a tournament with higher fatigue will likely suffer in later rounds, as fatigue >500 leads to penalties on their ability. But I find that to be less of a concern when the primary focus is on providing the players with experience, which is most reliably done through practice. 3) does it make sense to take a complete week off, ie not even a practice tournament and just do friendlies in order to get form and fatigue optimal? I suppose it could, in the right circumstances. Brian had done a little experimentation to find that friendlies are only about 75% as effective as practice in providing experience relative to causing fatigue. But if you enter what would be a practice week with high fatigue, you could take this approach. The game is supposed to hold your players out of practice matches when their fatigue is >300, but I have seen this rule broken before. |
Only thing I'd add is that the only reason I'd skip a week completely(on purpose that is, as opposed to the lovely schedule screw-ups) is if a player has enough fatigue to not play at all the whole week. I'd never intentionally play friendlies instead. Practice tournaments don't contribute to form, so that's not an issue.
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Thanks both!
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Yet more questions!
Is VIP worth it? And what happens if you let your VIP lapse, since you might have more than 2 players at that time. |
Worth it or not really depends on the person, budget, how committed you are to the game, all that stuff. For me, I can't do my dynasty without it because I need more than two players. Varies based on the person.
If it lapses, you have to either fire players to get down to the limit or you can't do anything with any of them. So basically, it's a bad idea to let it lapse :). |
I tried the free week of VIP, and really liked a lot of the historical features and things like that. I haven't re-upped for cash yet, but am definitely considering it.
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Thanks for the input
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I knew nothing about this. Need to look now!
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Is patience the key to pushing a 70ish ranked player into the top 30?
I have a 22 year old who has been lingering in the 60's and 70's. Still not maxed out skill wise, but getting close. I have a 20 year old who has had a quicker rise to around 110 in the world. We have a little time with him and he gets some ratings boosts because he has a huge home court advantage and I play to that. |
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Yes, you do! Quote:
Well, two points here: ** Generally, yes. I can give you a more intelligent opinion if you want to post a link to the player(and tell me what world so I can pop in there). But usually it will be a couple of years after you reach the top 100 to get to the top 30 in my experience. Having said that, if they are 22 then they shouldn't be all that close to getting maxed out. Peak for players is in the 26-27 age range. |
Any tips on how to improve my player's performance in the challengers? Brian wasn't kidding when he said this was a hard time for a young player because my guy can't progress far in them but isn't allowed to play futures because of his sub-200 ranking.
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If your player is good enough he will reach a point where he will eventually 'break through'. My best advice is focus not on the results, but on the process of getting good enough. It sounds like you want to be playing CH3s or CH2s at the biggest, on favorable surfaces, even in your home country if possible, taking as many off weeks as possible for practice tournaments to train up.
Beyond that, it's just a matter of time and whether you have a player talented enough to eventually break through the wall. I went back and looked at my most recent player to navigate this level, Girish Girsh(at the moment 5th in the world but he paid his dues like everyone else). Last junior title -- 18y 16w Futures titles(3) -- First at 19y 12w, last at 19y 36w Spent less than a year getting through futures which I think is quite typical from what I've seen. But as noted, once you reach the Top 200 ... Challenger titles(10) -- First at 20y 21w, last at 21y 46w. Took several months after leaving futures to get his first challenger title of any kind, then basically another year and a half to 'graduate' the level, over two years all together and we are talking about a guy who has been proven to be world-class, a player I've predicted to reach #1 eventually and I'm more and more confident about that all the time(weak era and all that, but still). For a less talented player, maybe they can't do it at all; maybe it takes even longer, but even for a prodigy it takes a while and feels like beating your head against a wall for a time. So my best advice is, don't push it. Don't try to rush it. Focus on improvement, not results. If you're not ranked high enough to be seeded at the bigger challengers, don't even play 'em. .02 |
That's exactly the type of advice I was looking for ��
Thanks! |
You're welcome :).
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Ok, you got me in. Registered today in "Wolrd 11" and I got two 14yr New Zealanders
Rastislav Lakic and Robbie Commons Played some friendly games until fatigue hit 300. Then registered for a "Junior" tournament where I got smashed. Now, I am not sure what type of tournament I should register for ? Amateur Junior Future Practice tournaments are all full of ranked players where I guess I have no chance to win a single set. Hints welcomed. |
you should register for:
JG5 until you are ranked high enough to be seeded in JG4. Only play these when you need to in order to maintain form of at least 15. That is because you will not gain as much experience from all of your activities when it dips below that. So, any week you are below about 16.3, you should play a junior event the next week(singles and doubles to maximize). Any other week, play practice tournaments. Quote:
Up to a point this is good for you. You get more experience(and therefore improve more) when you lose than you do when you win. Since you have a pair of young players, your goal is to get experience and train up and improve. Winning is irrelevant, though you do want competitive matches when you can get them, because losing badly won't teach you much. Edit: Finally, I advise you fire both of your players and start over. Lakic will peak at about 1.5 endurance, meaning he has a better chance at becoming a Las Vegas showgirl than a world-class tennis player. Commons is better, but you can get better players than either of them. The best way to start is with one player who is young and another who is experienced(mid-20s, to earn some points so you can buy a vet to turn into a trainer). For the youngster, you correctly picked players with high talent but endurance is even more important. Anybody below 1.3 endurance(preferably higher) you should basically ignore. A combo of good endurance + talent and at least decent athleticism is what you are aiming for optimally. Good luck, and I hope you enjoy the game. |
Thanks. Developping skill is my main target, yes. That's whyI took 14yr old guys.
Sometimes JG5 is not an option, should I instead keep "practicing" or enter "JG4" anyway ? Edit : just read your edit, I'll fire the guys and look for more "adequate" guys. One young, one a tad older. |
If you can't play a JG5, a 4 is the next best thing. I would try to plan out so you can play a 5 though, even if you have to play a week 'early', so to speak.
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Ok, I reset my account so I can start fresh. here are the two youngsters I am looking at (1.6+ endurance, 4+ talent)
Bao-qing Lu and Louis Fremont Care to give your advice ? |
Fremont is a little better(higher mentality, a bit higher peak endurance). Both are just a hair above average athletically. One thing to keep in mind is what kind of player you want, these will have roughly average career arcs(decent juniors, decent longevity in the pros) based on their aging(99 and 101%).
If it was me I'd hire Fremont and a mid-20s player, and work towards getting a trainer. I'd also keep looking for better young players, just because you have someone decent doesn't mean you don't want to keep trying for someone better. In most worlds the best players aren't easy to find, so it may take a while to get a top talent. |
Gotcha. I'll get Fremont and a 25ish player. I'll see what all this gives and if I am into that game.
Thanks for the early tips. |
First JG5 Fremont gets in and he wins the Doubles title :)
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Always nice to have a good start!
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So I've generally been ignoring doubles and using the entries simply as a way to get more experience for my players. I enter both singles and doubles in practice and tournaments. I haven't trained for doubles at all.
But...I just noticed that my 21 year old player is about to enter the top 100 in the doubles rankings. I know britrock has had some success in doubles. Curious for any thoughts or discussion on that side of things. Ron Ashman in World 11 is the guy. |
I'm not a VIP, so I can't peek into GW11 while I have guys going in GW1 and 2. But maybe Bryan can do that and I can give you a general rundown on approaching doubles...
1. Don't go into doubles without a partner. You don't have to be the Bryan brothers and play your whole career with the same guy. At the same time, waiting on the RR website to auto-match you with a random doubles entrant is not going to get the best out of your doubles player. If you're not content with someone else in your stable, there's good value to be had in the 27+ category, as players' costs aren't perfectly correlative to their cumulative ratings--especially their doubles ratings. 2. The utility of the doubles rating re: training. Forty percent of the doubles rating is added to your player's skill rating to determine his overall skill. Meanwhile, doubles rating points are only valued at 1/3 when calculating a player's potential trainer rating. This compares unfavorably to service, which has a potential impact of 50 percent (all service points), but is valued at 3/4 in the trainer rating calculation. I don't mean for this to dissuade anyone from going into doubles; it's just a thought to keep in mind based on the likelihood of you using a player as a trainer in the future. 3. Your player's career arc. If your player's 21, he likely has a few years left to have some fun in singles. Singles frees him from depending on a partner and, if he's competitive enough, provides him the opportunity to score more XP to put into all of his ratings, including doubles when the time comes. 4. If you start spending XP on doubles, there's no point in turning back. Given that the other two ratings (skill/service) improve both singles and doubles play, and that the doubles rating only impacts doubles, wait to start pouring XP into your doubles rating until you're satisfied with the singles career you've had for your player. 5. Rankings logistics. The most important things to note for high-level doubles play are: a) MSTs are never mandatory and b) the Olympics count for nothing. As a result, you can have fun with your schedule compared to the requirements of top-flight singles players. I even enjoyed entering my players into CHs and FTs singles tournaments as warmups and getting surprise titles. There are more facets to this side of the game (like when one, but not both of your pair plays in WTCs), but I hope the above is a good starting point. The only real takeaways are to go into doubles, whenever you do, full-on and with a good partner! |
Damn you Britrock, my guy just lost to yours in a challenger+.
But the next question I Guess: what's the general plan once you hit the TOP 100? Continue playing in challengers until the top 32 with some opportunistic majors thrown in? Participating in grand slams: yea or nay? Any other suggestions? |
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I can add little to what you've said. You've got a lot more experience than I do in doubles, I haven't had a serious doubles player yet(though Mehul is going to eventually make that transition, but probably not for three or more years). At that time I'll probably be asking you for advice! :) One thing I've noticed as a pattern with almost all the players I've seen is this -- I'm not talking to anyone specifically, if you are doing this, you know who you are :) STOP OVERPLAYING!. This is the #1 difference between me and 95+% of the managers on Rocking Rackets. Even many of the high-ranking ones. I constantly see challenger-level developing players in the 30s with their form and I want to throw something at them every single time. 'But I want to get my ranking up!' ** No, you don't want to get your ranking up. You want to get your skills up. Stop putting the cart before the horse. Ranking is not an achievement in and of itself so much as it is a reflection of your player's abilities. It will always 'lag behind' your improvement and this is just fine. Don't lose sight of the goal. Prioritize. 'But it's soooo hard to be pat ... ' ** You wanna be a lounge musician or a tennis great? STOP OVERPLAYING! 'But I need to ..' ** No, you really don't need to. STOP OVERPLAYING! Really, I mean it. If your form isn't 16.5 or above, you need to be in a practice event next week. Seriously, you do, unless you are building up for the off-season(mid-40s weeks to new year) and are a challenger player or better, or are an elite player peaking for a big event. If you are regularly having your form in the upper 20s, no matter what your level is, YOU AREN'T DOING IT RIGHT. Waste your potential if you insist, but know that's what you are doing. Seriously. Just stop doing it. *ahem* *cough* *endrant* Quote:
The approach I've evolved into over the years is a little counter-intuitive, and sort of flies in the face of what I seems like 'should' be effective. The controlling concept is this, which has been mentioned before: ** Play events you will be seeded in. I think the why is very important here, because it sheds light on the original question. If you are playing events you aren't ranked highly enough to be seeded in, you run the risk of hitting a powerful top-seeded player early in the tournament. Not only will you almost certainly lose badly, but then you have to figure out what to do with the rest of the week. It's not just the ranking points you don't get -- now you have to play extra friendly matches(or training sessions if you have a trainer) which are suboptimal in terms of gaining experience. It's just not worth the risk. So when should you play majors? I actually think you should do this when a low-level challenger player, but once you reach about 150th or so you should STOP. Again this is counterintuitive, but at a lower ranking you get the qualifying matches even if you go nowhere(likely) in the main draw. If you are, say, 90th, you are going to be a direct acceptance(no qualifying) and then have a 50% chance of playing a seed. If not in the first round, you almost certainly will in the second. And this means a very low probability of getting in many matches. Slams give great xp, but if you only get a single one-sided loss, it's not getting you anything. And again, you've not had a good week training wise which -- if you aren't an elite Top 32 player -- is the ONLY thing that matters IMO. So back to the question of what the Top 100 player should do. Keep playing challengers is my advice until you get to about 50th. At that point you are still playing mostly challengers but there is a brief period where 250-level events become useful in certain weeks. If there are three 250s in a week as there are a number of times in the year, a top 50 player can usually be seeded and these are good opportunities. There's another scenario you need to watch for which is really a pretty advanced concept but I just can't shut up when people ask for opinions about this game, so here it is. If there is a Masters or Slam going on and you are a Top 100 player, most of the players who are good enough to be good practice tournament competition are at the bigger event -- which means you can end up with a crappy practice week anyway because you are just beating up on inferior competition, and that doesn't help you much. There are general two kinds of scenarios here, and it basically depends on whether there are challengers the same week. Usually, there are. One example where that is not the case is the Australian Open. Often you'll want to play it anyway, because it's either take the chance of an early exit, or take a crappy practice week. It's the last of a three-week stretch of no challengers at all near the beginning of the year. On the other hand, there are some good CH2s during the first week of Indian Wells(week 11) and Miami(week 13), where you can pick up some 'cheap' ranking points because a lot of players who probably shouldn't be are playing in the Masters events, losing early, and wasting a lot of their energy for the week. Then you get a number of matches, some points, your form goes up, and you take the next week for a good practice tournament -- you win, they lose :). Then of course when you reach the Top 32 -- play all the Slams. Play IW and Miami too as a minimum, because you'll be seeded there. And so on. Any intelligent questions, class? :P |
Thanks. I definitely agree in relation to seeding and it's made me micro-manage more now by checking the entrants for the challengers each week to decide which ones I would consider taking part in.
Didn't think about letting my guy play in qualifiers for masters to get experience though! Great tip. |
I will add that the ability to adhere to Bryan's principle of not overplaying can depends on your game world's speed. Unfortunately, it's kind of unworkable to hit that ideal low-yellow form consistently in a place like GW2, when the world covers 6 weeks per day (and you're asleep for 2 of them). In this case, I just get tournaments in during the day and practices in at night so that I can best manage my players' fatigue--that is, make sure they're not wasting any potential matches.
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Wow. Rask looks like he'll be really, REALLY good. 4.6 endurance! One question: is the court preference he has something you've done consciously? My current tack is to have guys max out in hard and clay courts, as the lion's share of GSLs and MSTs take place on those surfaces. Maybe you're onto something, though--winning Wimbledon and Paris? |
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Definitely not conscious, haven't even thought that far to be honest. Re the endurance, I'm not sure it's really necessary to be so high. I still have a lot of unused fatigue most weeks because it takes a lot of micromanagement to get enough friendly games in and, like you pointed out, the gameworld moves too fast to really do that effectively. |
If you're in a working situation where you can click over to a tab once every 10 minutes to get a training session in, though... :thumbsup:
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This is a really good point and, as britrock mentioned, fast gameworlds are much different. It might well be better to focus more on athleticism and talent in picking players for those worlds, and you do have to schedule differently also. It's really almost a different game from the little I've experimented with it -- I don't see myself jumping back into any of the fast ones but for those that are, they will need to adjust in some way. |
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Heh, I'm blocked at work! I check my phone fairly frequently though. I have a player up to 41st in the Singles rankings. Exciting times. |
Anyone had a guy's Fatigue spiral out of control? For some reason, my player played practice matches above both a 300 and a 500 stamina level and ended the week above 600. I forgot to go back and take him out of the next week's tournament, so he ended up in Doubles qualifiers on Sunday and then strolled out to his first singles match at 772! You can guess how that went.
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I've only ever had a junior player hit that kind of fatigue, largely because he was playing multiple 3 setters in a tournament. Pretty much means the week after is a waste because the game forces the player to rest until fatigue drops below 500 I believe.
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I've had it happen on a few occasions. Anil Manohar actually has it spike quite often just because he's old enough to have about a 1.0 endurance right now(it wasn't that great even at his peak, maybe 3.0) so in tournament weeks if he qualifies in singles it spikes very quickly.
It's not supposed to do practice matches above 300, but it does occasionally. I don't know why. You can still keep playing regular tournaments, but as noted that goes very poorly very quickly. Nothing to be done but what's already been said, pull them out of everything and get a week of full rest. |
Anyone thought about hard constraints on Talent when hiring a new youngster?
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Fremont has been fired and I hired a younger promising Belarus guy. Nikolay Piontkowsky
Given his aging factor, I am hoping for a solid Junior career. He has already won 3 JG5 singles tournament and 2 JG5 doubles tournament. He is also selected in Belarus U15 Junior team Cup (good idea ?). Any comment appreciated |
Okay trying this out by hiring Aussie Jonathan Kemp
Practice rounds are training? |
Yes, you should sign up for both singles and doubles practice. So long as your fatigue is in line, you'll get 5 singles matches and 5 doubles matches, and depending on the competition, you can generate several hundred Experience points for the week.
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oh wait...i did a friendly match.
I just signed up for a tournament too. it seems i can't unsignup. ah well still learning. |
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Yeah I went through a lot of silly mistakes at the start too. Great thing is that you can just reset your career in the world once you get the hang of things and start over. In a fast world, things move quickly enough that you don't feel like you've wasted took much time. |
You can un-sign up for practice or other tournaments(just uncheck the box and click Sign Up again). Friendlies start immediately though so you are stuck with those.
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I'd say at least 4.0 but it really depends on what's available(i.e., the more competition in a world the tougher it is to find quality so you have to change your standards). I always took the approach of finding the best overall young player I could find, then regularly looking for someone better. |
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Brian, how accurate roughly do you think your talent evaluation calculation works? I've been fiddling around with it and, assuming a player is able to develop to 5 skill and 4 serve, it seems mentality is a huge part of it. I've done some calculations on some of the 15/16 year olds in world 2 and they come in potentially at 9.79-9.8+ and I'm wondering whether to try developing them instead.
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Well I think the formula works well for a player's strength, but it's definitely not perfect. Generally speaking, surface strengths being equal(they play a significant role), I'll usually win against players who are more than 0.3 weaker, and lose if they are 0.3 stronger. Within that +/- 0.3 things are a lot more iffy, but I've also seen losses against players with a gap as high as 0.6 or 0.7 on occasion. There seems to be a hidden 'hot/cold' thing going on. Take a look at Cestmir Marcek in my dynasty, he just has no business being the world no.4 but he is and had a heck of a year, better than when he actually had higher ratings as a younger player. So it's a 'baseline', and works good as a general guideline, but players are humans and stuff happens :).
The other thing is, a player with high mentality and low athleticism/technical skill does seem to underperform a bit. I think this is basically because they aren't good enough to get into enough 'key points' with a player who is somewhat better in skill but lower mentality; i.e., their clutchness or whatever doesn't come into play. So I'd definitely suggest that it's better to have a player with good athleticism and mentality then it is to have one with average athleticism and great mentality. Balance is best I think. The final point; you may be incorrect in assuming you can get a 15 or 16-year-old player to 5.0 skill, 4.0 serve. If they've been misused for a year or two a lot of the potential is wasted. If you have a couple examples of these kinds of players I can take a look at them, but usually I might consider a particularly good 15-year-old, at 16 or more I think it would be rare to find one that was very worthwhile. .02. |
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Good bump, I missed it. First of all, you always want to play things like the JTC if you can for a developing player. They have much better xp than anything else you can do. So absolutely let him play them. ** Athleticism -- peaks at 3.2 str, 2.7 spd. That's solid, not great but not terrible either. ** Mentality and talent are good, endurance will peak at 3.3 which is passable. Definitely should be a good juniors player, with obviously a relatively short professional career. I wouldn't throw him back, you can do some fun things with a player like this. |
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Thanks, very helpful as always! |
I've reached a bit of an inflection point in World 12, as my boy Tommy Simms finally reached the top 32... now I'm wondering if it's worth tanking to stay out of the year end top 30 for one more year (and avoid all the required Masters tournaments indoor/on clay.)
I also think this is the last time I take an American (or a big country player). Simms was a created guy with physical stats too good to pass up when he popped up on the waiver wire, but missing out on all those sweet, juicy, JTC/WTC points will probably prevent him from really being a threat for #1. |
I personally wouldn't recommend tanking. You need to cross over to playing all the Masters eventually -- your ranking is going to go up, Simms is still getting better. Plus you get better xp for Masters matches than run-of-the-mill ones, and can always play doubles to make the week worthwhile if you expect to lose early. Strong player, better athlete than I've ever had, I'm pretty jealous! I also wouldn't worry so much about the WTC. If you are good enough to compete for #1, you'll be good enough to be on the US team -- it's only 600 points maximum and that's if you win every singles tie you can play. Relatively speaking that's chump change for a Top 5 guy.
Once again, just my .02. |
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I'm not talking about the ranking points, I'm talking about training/experience points. I feel like especially as a junior with low endurance, being able to get experience at 1.5/2x fatigue in a JTC is a big advantage (that you've used to the extreme in your Sri Lankan dynasty!) |
Brian,
I'd love to see what you think about my American in World 11, Ron Ashman. I also have a Croat, Teodor Cajkanovic, who is knocking on the door of the top 32, but I think he is not going to get much better than that, due to low endurance and high aging factor. He's been fun though. |
Rather bland in appearance, looks like he had some sort of bizarre mouth-shrinking surgery. Smells quite funny also.
Oh, that's not what you meant? Good, talented athlete. Endurance isn't enough to be great, but it's enough to be successful. Probably because of this, his current technical attributes are good but not elite for his age. I'll just pop one small bit of unsolicited advice: he's playing too many tournaments. Aside from that though, definitely a quality challenger player and should become more than that. A few months past his 22nd birthday and he's at 8.86, a rough guess is that he reaches 9.4-9.5 and is a solid Top 10 to Top 5 player at his apex depending of course on what other competition is out there. Good example of a guy who has some of everything, esp. athleticism. Not quite enough to really distinguish himself or be an all-time great, but still a very good player. |
N. Piontkowsky has just had his 15th birthday and is winning JG5s now. I mistakenly enlisted him for JG2 where he lost, but I alm trying JG4 now and he is winning again.
In terms of development, playing and wining JG4/JG3 is better than practice or not ? Still not sure what schedule to give him in terms of tournament vs practice . And when entering tournaments, what JG should I aim for now at his stage ? Thanks for the help. |
Until you get good enough for JGS & JGA events, practice will give much better XP. As a junior, it's best to only do enough tournaments to avoid getting a form penalty.
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Thanks |
Agreed. IMO that continues to be best until you reach the Top 32 as a pro.
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You only gain ranking points by playing in tournaments, so to get into top32, you (at some point) need to win some ranking points by playing tournaments. Correct ?
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Sure, but you don't need to play a ton of tournaments in order to do that. Even if you only play enough to keep your form above 15, you are still going to play 10-11 approximately a year. You can only count 18 at maximum in your ranking.
In my experience so far, the way it happens is basically that if you are good enough to be a consistent threat to win the big challengers(CH1 and CH+) then you will get yourself into the Top 32 even if you only play a dozen events a year or whatever. Playing more at that point will get you there a bit faster ... but not that much faster, and playing more also hurts your development overall since in regular tournaments you are winning most of your matches if you are entering the right events, and the loser gets the most experience. At the same level, in practice tournaments you will get a mix of wins and losses, and also have a much better guaranteed number of matches, allowing you to develop faster. Everyone should do what they think is best, and I'm open to counter-arguments, but that's the way I approach it. |
Makes sense. I didn't know about the 18 tournaments counting only.
Next question regarding my other player in regards to the objective to get a trainer : Jasen Džodanović : the guy is 25, he is winning FT3 tournaments, I like him (he is a grass specialist). but I encounterd that other guy Claudio Albertrani : the guy is 27yr and 44wk, but is still a top 50 player. I am about to fire Jasen Dzodanovic to get Claudio (it would cost me 505 hiring points). Is that a "sound" move ? He looks like a potential great trainer. |
If you want to get a trainer, and I totally agree that you should want to, I would go for someone who is old enough to get there a lot more quickly. Even a great player will need to be well into their 30s by the time they are skilled enough to be a 5.0 trainer. Albertrani would be about a 4.0 at best right now(estimating, but I'm sure it's not very far off). You can do a lot better. For example, Dimos Sanroma is 35 and about a 4.5 right now, and there are others much closer such as Shinzue Kentaro who by my calculations is probably over 4.9 already. I have yet to see a world that doesn't have great trainer candidates available, most of them will be in their mid-30s or so and already at 4.7-4.8 or so. These players require a relatively minimal amount of work to convert into a strong trainer. Albertrani will need years of work that in this case isn't necessary.
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Gotcha.
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So this isn't entirely rambling, let's talk about Court Preferences. These can play a significant role, certainly during the initial years, but even at the highest level they play a big role each week. My goal right now is to get as close to a 60/40/0/0 split as I can on my players, making sure that one of Hard/Clay is built up, and then tailoring his secondary one based off his current percentages when I pick him up or maybe what courts seem most prominent in his country. (I know that's dumb, but when it's not a big difference I also try signing up for tournaments geographically close to his home country... unnecessary sure, but helps a little with my immersion!) I'm not sure if they are solely based off what percentage of your past matches have been on each surface or there is a little bit of hard coding built in for individual players, but they're definitely fairly set in stone by age 21/22. One other thing to note is that by that top level I've arrived at (Tommy Simms just turned 23, 4.9/3.6, ranked #23), practice sessions on grass (his secondary preference at 35%) are much less useful than practice sessions on hard/clay, partly because he's one of the best players in the world on grass but mostly because very few top players end up in those, and even being placed in Tier 1 I'd only get 2 decent practice matches at best in a week. So if you do try specializing in grass/indoor it might be worth baking a couple extra points in during those 18-22 year old years, because you'll likely be losing them once you're in the top 30 and playing such a varied schedule/dominating most practice opponents below the top 50. |
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You're not wrong, which would make you correct here. It's all about patience for that time period. I'm going through it for the third time starting very soon and within a game year I expect to be thoroughly annoyed but you just have to wait for things to take their course. With the rest of your comments I need to be much less dogmatic than usual though. There are still some things about the game I don't know. You are right in that better serving does lead to closer matches, just need to look at what happens on grass to see that. What I think would happen is that you would see closer matches but also more losses, how big the effect would be depends of course on how much extra you put into the serve. My approach has always been to try and 'stay in my lane' and not play events where I'm going to get killed by world-class players: in challengers you don't run into many unless it's the end of the tournament, and at that point sort of who cares? I've always approached tournaments in the philosophy that the goal is boosting form and not worried too much about the quality of matches I get -- that's what practice weeks are for. I think this is the best way, but I can't prove it by any stretch. I'm even less certain about the court preferences thing, which is related. I've used friendly matches to 'correct' to where I want to be in these, but that's because I need friendlies and don't have a trainer. I'll get my first at the end of the current game year, though that's still several weeks away in real-life time. How to properly adapt to using a trainer, since their sessions don't correct preferences among other differences, is something I need to play around with and don't completely have a handle on. I figure I probably know about 80-90% of what I can learn about strategy for the game, but this is the biggest missing piece that I'll need to get into. I do almost all my practice weeks on hardcourt right now for my top players so they can get good competition, but no doubt I'll have to approach it differently to some degree once I am able to get better xp, but lose the surface correction aspect of friendlies. I'll need to experiment before I have a good handle on what's best. Really good post though, I think your mind is in the right direction. |
Question: are trainers actually force-retired at age 60? My 5.0 trainer in GW2 is 56, so it's time to think about this...
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I'm 90% sure they are. I don't know if they raised the retirement age from 60 to 65 when they upped the trainer age from 40 to 45, but I think it's still at 60 -- I don't think I've seen any older than that. I do not know for sure though.
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Wrong again! Must be 65 now.
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When would be the best time to stop playing doubles? Reaching top 100? 50?
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It's a YMMV situation. For instance, right now I'm ruing the fact that Mendez/Lebedyenko have done well enough in their few doubles entries (the GSLs plus a couple others for form purposes) that they reached the top 200 and can't play in futures-level doubles tourneys during the year-end dead period.
I would say quit fairly early--once you're playing challengers and maintaining form. After that point, doubles becomes a tool to keep up players' form during the peaks and troughs of the tournament schedule. |
That's actually a really good point re year end doubles!
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With my mid-20's ranked player and top 10 Junior player in rr11, I jump in the occasional doubles field for Masters/JGA's, or more frequently Grand Slam's, especially on bad surfaces for me to try and ensure I get some decent training for the week. (It is worth noting that qualifiers for even Grand Slams do not give extra XP, but count equally as 1 match for form.)
So yes, I completely agree that Doubles should be used only as a tool for controlling form, usually either where you fear an early exit or if there are no majors coming up and you want to jack up that form in an FT/CH so you can get a few weeks of practice in in a row. |
I approach it a little different it seems. I always play singles and doubles until I reach elite status(Top 32) as a singles player. Then I mostly stop playing, only as a tool to control form as mentioned in an event I'm already playing. I.e., I'll add in a doubles entry in a Slam or Masters if I'm a bit low on form but not enough to justify another tournament ahead of time. I play extra tournaments in the post-Shanghai(week 42) period in order to boost form so I don't need to worry about the year-end period.
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The Master's Wheel
Thought it might be useful in terms of recent discussions and developments to go into a little more detail on how I view and approach reaching the top of the sport. There's a couple of people with elite players now and more on the way(well done, ya'll!). For this exercise my example is Teo Rask from law90026(not to be confused with law90027)'s World 2 dynasty thread: A Rocking Rackets Dynasty (World 2) - Front Office Football Central The name 'Master's Wheel' is just basically an illustration; being as I am a massive geek/nerd, it's a reference to the Mask of Zorro and the 'training' scene with Hopkins and Banderas: The Mask of Zorro (1/8) Movie CLIP - Master and Pupil (1998) HD - YouTube. As one advances up the rankings, as the man says, 'with each new circle your world contracts'. In this case, each circle inward is half the size of the one preceding it, because math, as follows: ** Challenger Wannabes -- The great unwashed masses from 33rd down through pretty much the rest of the Top 100. A cesspool of overplayed journeymen combined with declining former stars and rising talents. Most will never amount to a thing, but there are a few diamonds who will find their way through the morass. ** Outer Circle(Top 32) -- Emerging from said morass is Teo Rask this recently-begun season, having ranked 28th in the previous year. This is the most significant transition point from a scheduling point of view that a player will ever encounter. Prior to this, through juniors, amateurs if chosen, futures, and challengers, you can for the most part choose how often you play as befits your strategy. Now the game is different though; Slams + Mandatory Masters will make up 12 of the 18 events in the ranking pool going forward, and challengers are no longer permitted. The schedule is mostly chosen for you, and only consistent success in these big events will allow further progress. Therefore great care must be taken to peak at the right time; the point at which you will face higher-ranked opponents in the big tournaments. This point changes a bit depending on what circle you find yourself in, but the basic approach does not. ** Seeded Everywhere(Top 16) -- At this point a player is seeded at even the smaller Masters. The Round of 16 is now the focal point for peak performance. ** World Tour Qualifiers(Top 8) -- Elite enough that you get your own 'bonus tournament' at the end of the year. Most who make it here have aspirations to be Slam champions and/or world #1s at some stage. ** True Contenders(Top 4) -- For those who have reached the mountaintop, and expect to be active at the business end of almost any tournament they enter. An Unsettling Transition Getting back to our hero, Teo Rask; he's taken a step or two into the Outer Circle once or twice only to fall back out in a very competitive game world, but now he appears to be there to stay. There's a real 'fight or flight' reality to this, as in the last year 10 of his top 13 tournament results were challengers, and events at that now-forbidden level accounted for over 57% of his points total to start the new year. Most of them were in the second half of the season; it seemed that beginning with the Nottingham Challenger in week 25, right in the middle of the so-called 'Channel Slams' of the late spring and early summer, he really started stepping forward in his consistency of results. That ultimately led him to reaching elite status in the tour. As I mentioned in the run-down above, the biggest thing is peaking for the right point of the big events in terms of form. For someone in the Outer Circle(Top 32), that is still a bit tricky. For Slams and the big Masters(Indian Wells and Miami), the goal is to reach peak form(low 20s) by the third round or just beforehand. This way, if an opportunity presents itself through a good draw, unprepared opponent, unexpected upset, etc., you are poised to break through and make a deep run to propel yourself up the rankings. For the smaller Masters, it's really the beginning of the tournament since you can meet anyone from 17th on down from the start; only the Top 16 are seeded. The other point I would mention is that 250s and 500s are now 'fill-in' events. Their primary purpose is not to get more points though of course they help there, and you should choose the events you can be most successful at. The main thing is to get your form to where you want it to be ahead of the next big tournament on the calendar. Everything else should be secondary to that, since even if you load up on 500/250 points, the players who rise to the top will be those consistently doing well in the more lucrative Masters and Slams. Better to lose a battle(less points in the smaller events) than to lose the war. When you move from challengers to the elite-based schedule, there's always a lot of big-points weeks you can't replace right away, certainly not by defending them directly. The ranking will bounce around quite a bit. I find it's useful to focus on what matters; consistently getting to the round of 32 or beyond in the big tournaments is quite sufficient to make progress and in fact the only real way to do it. All the ups and downs and yo-yoing will sort itself out eventually. |
Great insights as always. As I play more of this game, I realise that a lot of what you've said is incredibly accurate, especially things like not overplaying. It's not worth chasing points because your player needs to be ready for the next stage otherwise he gets knocked out early anyways.
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Excellent. There is an issue you(and many others I'm sure) could potentially help me out on. In about a month real-life time, at the end of the current game year and we've just reached Roland Garros, I will be getting my first trainer. For those that already use them, some stuff will be different I'm sure due to faster/slower game worlds and whatnot, but I'm curious what you've learned about trainers through the process? Specifically anything that might not have been obvious at first? I'm curious if there are any insights, have some thoughts of my own that I'm working on and I'll do a longer post on it when the time comes, but I'm looking forward to going trainer more and more, partly because it's been a relatively crappy year on the courts for my players this year.
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How do you actually use those trainers ?
Is it while not entering tournaments nor practice ? Or is in in parallel of tournaments and practice ? |
My thoughts below.
For Trainers, they don't necessarily synergise well with practice weeks. Reason being that a player can sometimes be held out of matches if their fatigue is too high, and that can sometimes be anything in excess of 200, rather than the 300 theoretical cut-off. What I've found is that I can only confidently use my trainer from Friday onwards after the last practice matches are done. Trainers tend to be useful during tournament weeks where it is possible to maintain the 300 fatigue cap. In theory, I suspect a good trainer might actually get you more xp than a practice week. Using Iker Gauba as an example, he gets Teo Rask about 19-21 xp each session and the fatigue cost is about 23-32 each time. If you start from 0 fatigue, that should theroretically allow me to get in between 22 to 24 sessions in a week, which would be about 428 to 456 xp. This is higher than what I normally get for a practice week unless it was a very good week in terms of number of matches and the quality of matches. The issue I face is the micro-management aspect of it in a faster world plus the fact you seldom start from such a Low fatigue level. Bear in mind as well that Iker is only a 4.4 trainer so a 5.0 trainer would be even more effective I suspect. |
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Primarily this. The obvious scenario is when you have more fatigue than you use during the week. This can happen for practice weeks especially for particularly high-endurance players; it can also happen if you unexpectedly lose early in a tournament. One example that can be common at a certain career stage is for example losing in the quarterfinals of a Slam or one of the two-week masters events. Then you only get one match, and have to fill the rest of the week through friendlies. Trainers are better than friendlies. What law said about training possibly being better than practice weeks in some cases is interesting to me though. That's the kind of thing I'll need to experiment with. |
Oh man. Why did I click on the Dynasty Thread? Now I'm going to get sucked in.
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Read this thread a couple of time and still a little foggy in one thing. When your player is not in a tournament, that will lower their form to an acceptable level. But during these weeks are friendlies or practice tournaments the right strategy or are these players simply taking the week off
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As far as having form too high, you want to play practice tournaments. Friendlies are a last resort if you have no other way to use your available fatigue(they're better than nothing).
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Only competitive tournaments contribute to form. But any play contributes to fatigue. The trick is keeping your form in the 15-30 range while consistently using your fatigue allotment to earn XP to improve your players' abilities.
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Got it. Now it all makes sense |
How often do "new players" show up in the for hire section? Is their a weekly, quarterly, etc influx?
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My understanding is that it's either every Monday in the gameworld or Everyday (based on some posts in the game forums).
Which world are you playing in? |
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Two players in World 3 and two players in World 4 |
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