The game as been improving nicely, but it’s still quite a ways away from being able to have a solid launch. I’ve put in a good amount of hours into EA5 and these are my biggest concerns.
Inertia is still really bad. The lack of a running shot is what’s really killing the game’s “smoothness”. Players are jutting around on the court in an extremely fake manner. If a player is running at full speed to hit a shot, their weight needs to carry beyond the shot. It’s really goofy to have a player sprint towards a ball just to make an instant stop to hit the ball. BigAnt needs to look at what running shots are and add them to the game. This is probably the biggest issue with animation smoothness right now. Fix this and pretty much all animations issues will be minor.
CPU balancing. CPU (on expert) are way overtuned at baseline and way undertuned at the net. The main issue with CPU at baseline is because of the above inertia feedback. They can get to a ball and stop in an ungodly manner, which means they’ll be able reach the next shot with zero effort. Fixing inertia would help balance them at baseline as they’d have to run further off court to hit some shots. This along with slowing their reaction town just a tad would make them more balanced. At net however, they’re severely lacking any threat. They hit into the net or hit out constantly. I’m assuming they just don’t register the net as they still hit the ball fast with a low trajectory.
Defensive shots are still horrible. Defensive shots ARE NOT SLOW shots. Lobs are slow shots. Defensive shots, especially slices, still have good pace and often have good depth. Someone on the dev needs to really take a look at slices and defensive shots and rework that entire aspect of the game. They just feel really bad compared to pretty much every other tennis, including older BigAnt ones. I think this may be the most frustrating thing about the game right now.
The “lock in” mechanic has gotten much better, but could still use a bit of work. This is referring to the mechanic when the game realizes you’re hitting a ball and will “lock” you into a stroke. Sometimes, I’ll be extremely close to where the ball is landing but I’ll start aiming and instead of locking me into the aim, the game will just read my aim as a move instead, since both aiming and moving use the same joystick. In short, the games needs to realize that if I’m within 5 feet of where the ball is landing, I am indeed trying to hit the ball and NOT trying to run away from the ball.
Serves still lack any real tactics. Add more risk vs reward. That’s essentially all that’s needed. Serving for the lines should be risky, not the go to default choice. Just like in real tennis, you should not always be aiming for the lines. Placing a safe shot towards the center is often the better choice due to the risky nature of serving so close to the lines. But with that risk, give us more aces and more lofty returns. In addition, after faulting a first serve, make the next flat serve very risky, to encourage more kick/slice serves.
Balancing power and control. The “charge” of a shot should relate more towards control and not power. Power is not generated the longer you charge your shot. Tennis players at a professional level are able to generate tremendous pace with minimal wind up time. This is true even at a recreational level. A low charge time should result in loss of control (hitting outs, nets, center, etc) as opposed to losing so much power.
There are still some more minor things that need to be fixed as well.
Some models are still iffy. Iga, Medvedev, Zverev, etc.
Idle animations are still pretty lacking, though this is not gameplay related and should not be a priority. I’d like to see more idle animations, especially when a point ends. Players just need more variety, such as walking back to their towel box, lining up to serve/return, calling for additional balls, etc. Just something more than the awkward pacing that players constantly do now. Again, this is more of a presentation thing.
Those are pretty much all I have for the moment. As the game gets more EA updates, these feedback will get more and more nitpicky, but that’s good thing I suppose. For the moment though, I think I’ve seen all there is to see with EA5. I’m hoping EA6 will tackle some of the major issues so that the game can launch in an enjoyable state.