I feel with the latest update there have been some positive changes, especially to certain areas of gameplay that maybe weren’t quite as challenging as they should have been. My observations on some of the changes below. These are my general observations based on hard and expert difficulty. Interestingly some of the changes I am picking up are not changes that have been noted on the patch notes.
Auto lock/animation lock seems to have been reduced and in some cases is no longer possible at all.
The animation lock (pull to the ball) seems to still be in effect for many top spin shots but reduced for flat shots.
In some cases I notice that, especially when running sideways in defense on the backhand side, either scramble speed has been reduced, more inertia is being applied or because of the auto lock distance being tweaked in many cases it is no longer possible to get any assisted pull to the ball and any shots that are out of your reach will simply sail past you instead of your player doing a defensive slide lunge from a few feet away. In this regard it feels a little like Tennis Elbow where you have to actually run to the balls and be very close for animations to kick in.
There generally seems to be more weight to your players movement, even if scramble is in use. Possibly related to an increase in inertia or tweaking scramble sensitivty to not have it be so snappy.
Its now a lot harder to direct balls to the lines, or paint lines with either top spin or flat shots when using shot prep triggers. It seems its much harder to do this with flat shots making it extremely difficult to hit winners with flat shots that are very close to lines or painting lines. I believe flat shots in general should be slightly more consistent to pull off as they were a few patches ago. Its currently extremely difficult to hit a flat shot down the line and have it even go over when attempting a shot over the higher part of the net. This may in part be due to the reduced effect of shot prep triggers as they assisted in balls going over the net as well as ball speed and precision.
In previous updates you had full control at basically any moment where you wanted to place your ball. If you wanted to do a down the line winner painting the lines you could do providing your timing and court position were okay. I would like to see some improvement in this area to allow us a little more control again. I feel this is only fair if the CPU can still do it and makes a big difference to the enjoyment of gameplay.
The CPU is still able to paint lines with all shot types very easily and in some cases from unrealistic positions.
Shot prep triggers and the fine control that we had over ball placement several patches ago are still in effect on return of serve and the next hit of the ball but get heavily reduced thereafter. I am not sure why this is?
On occasion when in perfect position for a flat shot and an opportunity to take control of the rally the game will not allow you to hit one, even when holding prep triggers. Instead it will force you into a defensive type shot where your player will just pat the ball over the net. I cant figure out why this is happening at the moment, possibly a bug?
On occasion but quite regularly there is now an animation bug, usually when in a baseline rally where after htting a shot back to the CPU the game will move your player several feet and reset their position on the court.
It may now be a little too easy to serve well and get aces which is apparently having a big impact in the online mode.
The CPU now has much more variety but i believe they are playing too aggressively with the flat shot specifically. Because of this it is giving the impression that gameplay speed has increased because of the consistent very fast balls that are coming to you. Once you get used to some of the new patterns (which is still very difficult) you can have a situation where the CPU is hitting extremely fast non stop flat shots to you and you are pinging them back with top spin. Rallys can end up looking unrealistic and far too eratic. I think a better and more natural balance needs to be applied here with the CPU throwing in a mix of aggressive flat shots and more top spin shots. The way the CPU plays on medium currently looks more realistic. The measure of how difficult the CPU is should be more nuanced than just having them hit loads more flat shots.
It appears that the running forehand introduced in EA7 on both forehand and backhand wings has now either been removed or because of animation lock distance being tweaked no longer really happens. I am guessing the lock distance was a requirement for the shot animation to trigger? That being said it may still happen sometimes for forehand topspin shots but not any others. Need to do more testing.
I would just like to say that I am not necessarily criticising the above or think all of the changes are negative. They are just my observations. Some of the things I am noticing are changes thst i have asked for myself previously so they are welcome. I think the patch is generally positive but believe a few areas could be further tweaked.
One of the bigger issues for me is that many of the changes are not being communicated to the player base in patch notes. This is creating needless arguments and divisions amongst people because some people see the changes and some people dont. So when people praise or critique certain things its causing arguments.
Another reason to have more detailed patch notes is that if people know exactly what has changed they at least know where they stand in terms of having to approach gameplay differently. Instead its giving people reason to complain because no one knows if the changes are deiberate or may be bugs.
