As this is a long post i just wanted to bullet point a few things.
Things That Don’t Need To be Changed
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I believe the core gameplay is basically perfect at the moment. It is very very
good. If people are having issues and it is deemed adjustments need to be made,
please limit these to the lower difficulty levels -
I think the ball speed and player movement speed is actually perfect now and shouldn’t be changed. Please don’t change the current movement model which uses the triggers to set up for backhand and forehand shots and both for scramble. This is perfect and very intuitive once you get used to it. For those that have issues, the game really opens up once you get used to using a combination of scramble and the left and right triggers. You really get a feel for how the scramble should be used when playing hard and expert difficulty and observing how the CPU character moves around the court. Maybe a tutorial needs to be added that really hammers home the importance of the scramble to the core movement. It not just a move to be used for emergency situations where the opponent hits an amazing shot, use the scramble as your general run button so you have enough time or as much time as you can give yourself to enable you to set up for your shots.
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While it is true that it feels like AI difficulty on hard and expert can get to almost every ball, I actually wouldn’t change this too much. I am now having no real issues winning matches or hitting out right winners on these difficulties. Don’t get me wrong, its not easy. Every point feels extremely tense and is a battle and my matches on these difficulties are lasting almost as long as real tennis matches, but this is exactly what real tennis is like and is extremely rewarding when the game starts clicking for you and you can compete on hard and expert difficulty.
Things To Further Improve
- Further tweaking of slice and volley animations related to the animation of actually
hitting the ball but has been greatly improved with EA5 and I am pretty happy with
them at the moment… - Possibly increase service ball speed ever so slightly but not really an issue
- Replay camera improvements in terms of available camera positions (such as
broadcast
camera etc.) Both in the manual replay mode and end of match highlights mode. - Continued animation improvements if possible but already very good.
- Grand Slams
- Commentary would be a great addition. Tennis Elbow has options for this and
really adds to the experience. - Fix clipping of players through barriers in starting cinematic (ATP Finals Court)
- A final winning grunt / scream would be cool in rare occasions where a rally goes
on for a certain length of time and you hit an overpower winner ( But should be
a rare occurrence as may get annoying) - Possibly reduce AI drop shots slightly but this is subjective
- Reduce occurrences of ball hitting top of net and trickling over. I suppose also
subjective… - Challenge system / Hawk-eye (I believe this has already been discussed by the
devs as well as ball kids and linesman?) - Sliding animations on clay
- The scoreboard sometimes errors at the start of a new set and gives one of the
players a 1 or 2 game lead before the set has started. Then corrects itself after the
first game is completed. - Please make camera zoom on serve a toggle in options menu.
- Please have the games default setting with ball trail set to off, and an option like
Tennis Elbow has to draw a very faint black line around the ball to allow it to be
more visible on certain courts. Again, this should be a toggle in options. - In career mode where you can simulate matches, I would like the option to be
able to view / spectate the simulated matches and watch both CPU’s go at it on
hard and expert difficulty. Preferably also having the option to view the match from
a variety of gameplay cameras and maybe even a player box or fan cam as if you
are sitting in the stands? Would also be cool if you could spectate online matches
in this way also.
As I commented on the previous update with my thoughts regarding improvements, I felt it only fair that I gave my feedback once again now that the new update has arrived.
I have spent a great deal of time with it and can say without a doubt that in terms of the base gameplay and feel of gameplay it is definitely the best tennis game I have played since Top Spin 1.
Pretty much every suggestion that I and many others had with respect to baseline play, player movement, ball speed and slice and volley improvements have been improved with this update.
I would actually say at this point, the developers need to be very careful in terms of any further updates that change things too drastically because i genuinely think they have captured lightning in a bottle with gameplay at the moment.
I very much like the fact that the risk/abilities have been removed as they were not needed.
In terms of things that can be further improved. I would only be nitpicking really but the ball speed on serve could be sped up ever so slightly as hitting 130mph serves doesn’t really feel as fast it should.
The animations are already in a very good state but any further improvements that can continue to make the player movement look as life like as possible would be very much appreciated.
The feel of slices and volleys and the ball speed and angle of both volley and slice shots have improved but I still feel as though the player animations for some of those shots could be further tweaked.
I very much appreciate the replay mode and the ability to move the camera around but feel that it could definitely be improved. I would like further default camera options to be available in the replay mode so you can view your replay like watching a real match. Such as some sort of broadcast camera and the camera options available during gameplay such as the “far” camera etc. Currently in replay mode you cant move the camera far enough behind the players back and it is very difficult to get both players in the frame when trying to watch the replay from the perspective behind your player character.
I like that you can watch highlights at the end of a match but most of the camera positions for each highlight are not very good at all and often you cant even see the ball or players.
I would again prefer if the highlights used some type of broadcast camera position.
I am not sure if this affects other courts but on the ATP Finals Court the players are clipping through the barrier in the starting cinematic.
I think the game is shaping up to be something really special and think that it would be a massively missed opportunity to not include the grand slams. I am not sure if the devs have come out and made a statement in this regard?
I feel that the AI maybe does go for too many drops shots but in my experience this does feel AI player dependant. And I think that balls hit the top of the net and trickle over far too often. It should still absolutely be a feature of the game but it does happen a little bit too much.
All in all I am feeling extremely positive about the current state of the game and thank you to the devs for continuing to improve the game and listening to feedback.
lol