From the Developer Hi Grist - I'm sorry you're not enjoying our game. We made a game that we want to play and obviously that won't be to everyone's tastes. As the game gets faster, you can definitely hit the ball off of the table, but it's not going to happen every time. When we started development it was incredibly easy to hit the ball off of the table. The challenge was then to keep the ball on, not necessarily to beat the opponent - I agree, this would better reflect real life. But we spent a lot of time making the game faster and we decided that our main goal was to make the fastest game we could whilst remaining as faithful as we could to real life. Once the game speed increased we couldn't concentrate on hitting the ball, beating the opponent AND keeping the ball on the table. It was no longer fun and something had to give - so we decided to make it easy to keep the ball on the table. We don't regret this. If you keep slogging it out against your opponent hitting long cross court shots it can be a grind until one of you misses - that's if you can't hit a fast shot past him/her. But if you play to your opponent's weaknesses and draw them into the net, for example, then cleverly sneak the ball past them it becomes more of a thinking game. Hi BTG-XCELL - I'm glad you like the game! The pull tabs for notification/control center are a real pain. As the developer I can't do anything about them, sadly. As the phone owner you can disable the control center pull tab in your phone's settings. As for the edge of the screen - again, it's a pain. Once the finger leaves the touch-sensitive screen we don't get sent the right messages to bring the bat back - it's up to the user sadly. I'd like to improve this and will look into it for an update. I play the same way you do. I try to keep my fingers in the main playing area and away from the edges to avoid the pull tabs etc. As for Western vs Penhold - absolutely no difference at all. It's just an aesthetic for any players who prefer to use penhold. We're so pleased you like it. It makes the last 2 years worth it! Hi Mist17 - I'll check it out. Thanks for reporting it.
From the Developer Hi worldcitizen1919 - I've just replied to Grist who described it as a grind. Please take a look at my comments there. I'm sorry you're not enjoying it. Excellent! That's exactly the way to play. It's like boxing - don't just stand there exchanging blows, move around, confuse your opponent then knock him the hell out. I love this guy! Hi GaZ - I'm very sorry about that. It clearly sounds like a bug. I have the same iPad and will look into it. I've played literally hundreds of hours (no exaggeration) and it hasn't happened for me, but that's the beauty of programming. Any idea what you were doing prior to the bat disappearing?
From the Developer Hi guys - I'll get back to answer anymore questions over the weekend. If any of you lovely people fancy leaving us some App Store reviews (good or bad) I'd really appreciate it (obviously good is preferred )
Hi guys, I was just about to serve. The ball was dead and before I served the bat vanished. I could still toss the ball and serve with no bat lol I have since replayed the whole first tournament and never had the problem again so far Maybe something to see if you get more reports of the same Thanks GaZ
What do you mean by 'I'm sorry you're not enjoying it'?? Its 3am again and I'm LOVING IT. Getting slowly better - yes this IS an art. Better not make it easy instead make us work harder!! Leave it as it is. Two questions. 1) I would like to take a break. Or my finger needs some time out so if I'm in the middle of a tournament can I go back to it in the morning? Or do I have to start all over again? This is super, super fun. Please don't ever tell me I'm not enjoying it or I'll report you to Apple and if Touch Arcade don't give this 10/5 then I'll have to report them too!! This is just so, so, so good to play. Mesmerising. Addictive. Fascinating. Superb. You could add a boxing ring so I can belt up my opponent when he defeats me by 1 point in the championship. Please make more games. Thank you for a great game.
Just letting you know, I restarted by quitting the game (I mean using the in game button) and it has been OK since. If it helps any, even when I closed the app from memory and loaded again, it picked up my game in progress and the screen was still blank so must be something saved in the actual 'current game progress' state, not just a ram issue. If that helps lol
This statement just made me decide to buy this game.... when a game dev says this, he / she / they are A - OK in my book! I still need to make room, but I will.
I have been having so much fun playing this game. If you're on the fence, just pick it up especially if you even remotely like ping pong. The game takes some skill to master but I never feel like I can't win a match and even though I lose many times I'm always left with the feeling of " Damn that was a good game ". One strange thing I discovered about how I play is in the beginning I did not know that if you kept your finger on the screen that you could constantly see the bat, I had been waiting till my opponent would hit the ball back and it would bounce then I would swipe to hit, then take my finger off the screen till the next hit. Anyone else use this technique? For myself, I find it easier to play that way, it works so you might try playing that way if your having trouble. One more question for the pros, is " Bat " the official terminology ? I always called them paddles.
Talking of boost in a previous post and the very fair advice from the devs I will never use boost because I want the proper challenge, I actually wished it was NOT visible while your playing. Not because I'm tempted to use it because there is no need for it to actually be there for players who will never use it GaZ
Paddle/racket/bat all work. I think bat is more common in Europe though, which (coincidentally?) is where the devs are based.
Where's multiplayer? I'm hoping this will come soon. It would be great to have a Toucharcade team vs other teams. Compete for a championship. Win and defend a trophy. Earn rematches for challenges.
Bought it last night and enjoyed it, but like someone said earlier on, its nearly impossible to make a mistake, I tried very hard to hit the net but couldn't, I tried to shoot too hard and see if the ball was gonna go out, but again its nearly impossible (happened to me once only in 5 or 6 matchs). So yes the game is beautiful, yes its very fun, but unfortunately the game is too arcade, just like Virtual Tennis a few years ago, points can take forever (until the computer makes a mistake). I really hope this will be changed in a future update, because I dont think I will play it for long as it is right now, I like simulation but not arcade style.
I think there's a bug in the Squares Minigame event in the National binder of career mode. Normally when I hit the ball into the white striped part on the SIDE of the table, it will usually bounce in all sorts of directions, but three times so far, the ball just becomes glued to the spot. Around 5 seconds will pass then the game I guess recognizes something isn't quite right and the ball disappears. The AI then begins to serve a new ball, but just as that is happening, "My bad" pops up in the middle of the screen in the same style as what appears when you get a fault and a farting noise to go along with that (lolwut?). Then that ball disappears and the AI begins to serve another ball and the game continues on as normal. It's very weird... BTW, you guys made it really difficult to complete the event with no faults with the AI putting some pretty ridiculous spin on the ball seemingly at random, but I persisted and accomplished it.
To the developer: When I bought your game I was expecting it to be a simulation, not an arcade style game, which is why I was put off by the unrealistic nature of the hitting mechanics (e.g., none of my shots ever land off the table or in the net). If you decide not to tweak the hitting mechanic to address this concern, I recommend that you change your product description so that buyers don't expect a simulation. Now that I know you made a conscious design choice about the hitting mechanic, I've changed my mindset (no longer expecting to have a simulation experience) and am enjoying the game more. I think this issue may explain why some of your reviews posted in the App Store are unfavorable; it all depends on the expectation -- simulation vs. arcade -- that people have when they begin playing.
I have to agree it's more arcade than simulation which is a shame, still good but not what I really hoped for GaZ
Re: simulation vs arcade. I've been playing some more and can't imagine how hard / frustrating it would be if you had to get every swipe perfect to get it over the net AND on the other side of the table AND the right direction. Agreed there could be a bit more chance of "missing" but a true simulation doesn't sound like touch-screen fun to me!
From the Developer Sorry worldcitizen1919! I think I got confused somewhere. If you're in a tournament you can lock your device or go back to the iOS Home Screen. The tournament will either resume where you left off or (if iOS has booted us from memory, which happens a lot) it will resume at the start of the point. BUT this will not happen for mini-games. If iOS boots us from memory mini-games will start from the beginning (but they're 90s long so it's not the end of the world). I don't think we've got a review score from Touch Arcade yet. And sadly, the screencast they did of upcoming releases skipped us, then returned to only give us 5 minutes or so. We were gutted. Thanks Baracus, every little detail helps when tracking down a bug. We're investigating it. Hi Duckster - I use that technique too. But with the (literally) hundreds of hours I've been playing the game I've developed a pro-tip. With shortish finger nails you can turn your finger slightly so the nail leads but your finger still makes contact behind it. This way you reduce the friction your finger has against the screen and I find I can hit the ball faster. I know it's nerdy, but that's what I do and it works for me.
From the Developer We're working on it but we have some significant technical challenges to overcome to make it work well. I'll let you know when it's ready but it's going to be some weeks yet. We want it too. @djstout and @Grist - fair point on managing expectation. I think our own expectation of what the community thought a simulation is was off the mark. I appologise if you feel misled - it wasn't our intention at all! Good work on completing it fault free! The spin is a bit crazy, but in the mini-games anything goes. But as for the bug, good find. I've never seen it (clearly, or I'd have fixed it) but I wonder why it happened repeatedly for you. I'll investigate but as ever, finding bugs can be tricky. I agree (and it wasn't fun when we tried it). Also, it became near impossible to increase the speed of the game to the levels we reach in the International folder and the higher difficulty Quick Games - there was no way I could return the ball from Kao and keep it on the table. As Gist says, we should recategorise the game in the App Store for the next update.
No I don't think so necessarily. Sports and Simulation is cool really. It's simulating real life to work on touch screens. You might get more visibility and players in Sports and Arcade tho!
