Sharing a few insights about Career Mode I learned from the support team and from other forums . The game isn’t very good with explaining some things so I wanted to write them all out together. If I missed anything that isn’t well known please write it in a comment here to help more people.
Reputation
The team is aware Reputation isn’t working (the scale doesn’t move) and are looking into addressing it. I did a press conference yesterday following the 3rd October Patch. It happened after beating Zverev in Hamburg SF but it didn’t change the Reputation Scale.
As for the Reputation bar icons, the trophy represents “head in the game” and the camera represents “image focused” with the scales in the middle showing ‘balance’. A player who is leaning towards “head in the game” will receive an energy bonus, a player in the middle will receive an XP bonus, and a player leaning towards “image focused” will receive a sponsorship bonus.
Newly Added Players
If you have an active Career Mode player, and Big Ant adds a new player - they will not appear in your career. You will have to start a new career. They are also aware of this and are looking into for consideration of how new players could be included in older careers in the future.
This kinda sucks especially since Top Spin 2K were able to do this with Jannik Sinner addition - he appeared instantly in existing rankings, tournaments.
Star Players in Career Mode
If you chose to play a Star Player as your Career Mode - their training is intentionally locked. The star players have set statistics that are not meant to change. In my opinion this is wrong, in other sports games I’ve played (Madden lol) your existing star players get better and then decrease in skill as they age.
Star Players in Career Mode have Press Conferences (I got one after losing as Katie Boulter to an unseeded player 1st Round of Australia Open) but not sure about Sponsorships. Both Star and MyPlayer Careers can advance above a year, and everyone ages 1 year when the calendar flips. I’ve seen people say Djokovic retires after 1 year of Career. Not sure if it’s true and how this works - does it get posted in “My Activity” feed?
Trainings
You don’t need to max out 3/3 slots for training per week. If you do less (1 or 2 slots) it’s more forgiving. Below are examples of 3/3 Precision Training and 1/3 Precision Training.
Some of them are still pretty hard and I hope they remove the lives or make the boxes even bigger.
Additionally, there is a way to “cheat” the training . If you are running low on lives and cannot mathematically complete it - you can exit the game. On PC just click your Start Menu button and X the game (close it from the task bar or task manager). On PS someone said they went back to PS Home and closed it there. When you re-open the game you’ll be able to trigger the training from the beginning.