Thank you for your great work, i hope you have a great holidays !
We saw real improvements with last updates, but there are still a lot of issues to make this game close to really good.
I played this game a lot on the last patch, i’m good enough to beat legendary IA, i did several games online, i can kick a** of the top ranked players, so i think all i will say has to be taken seriously.
Serve/Return has to be tuned again, it has been improved, but imo this is still one of the biggest issue of the game.
The only things that is good is the ace ratio, fair enough.
But this is so easy to make a good 1st serve with a little practice, while in reality, the best players in the world has around 65% first serve in, and for the best of the best in a good day they can sometimes reach 80%. So no one will make use of the 2nd serve button, because you can almost never miss your 1st serve!
In relation with that, successful timed 1st serve has no impact on the opponent return. I mean, if you don’t Ace, you can be sure that the opponent return will be deep and perfect if he can touch the ball, that’s non sense. All players can return each serve like prime Djokovic…
In fact, the return mechanic is so broken, that some players online put their players close to the first line to return… and that’s really broken.
According to real tennis game, the closer you are from the net, the harder it will be to return the serve, because you have less time to react, this is pure logic. So if you have “bad” reflex, the best way to return a servebot is to be far from the baseline. In this game, this is another logic, that’s easier to ace a player too far from the baseline !
To resume, a 1st serve has to be more “high risk/high reward”.
I guess a slider for that can profit all the players.
EDIT: On Tiebreak, you can’t return the ball down the line (uncrossed? sorry my english), so if you try to do it, you may lose the point if your opponent is good. You should be able to return down the line, of course with higher risk, right now you can only return diagonally or on the player.
Look the return angle Djokovic can found when he “uncross” the ball, i think Tiebreak should allow a little bit more “angle” for the return, you just have to watch real tennis match, so you can’t do bad things.
Obviously he mostly return “second serve” like that, because this is really hard to do these returns on a first serve but he can. It depends of the serve quality, and if you can anticipate or see fast enough where the ball of the serve is going.
Make flat shot heavier. Currently, when you hit a flat shot on a high “short” ball, if you want to make power, the ball goes all the time out, if you aim with the stick closer to the net, the ball use to hit the net, so the only way to succeed a flat shot in this condition is to hit powerless… so i prefer using lift shot because it won’t miss. https://youtu.be/vzw96_dWtwE?si=bdbw2JMCHIuCeXcY&t=584
Watch this point between prime Nadal and Djokovic at French Open, you can’t hit like that on Tiebreak !
Lobs physics are broken too. If you are in the court, you will miss the shot, especially if you are closer to the net… that’s dumb, ofc you don’t have to succeed all your lobs, but currently, the ball goes totally out ! (That’s close to impossible to lob IA…)
Shots will loop effect needs to be fixed too. I really love to see we can do this shot, but if you are in the court, the ball will always go out… that’s dumb again.
Ball physics close to the net, sometimes a little shot make the ball really high, i think this is a bug, this is less pronounced than before, but this bug is still there.
On another forum, some players wanted to know if different surfaces had different influence on balls bounce. I mean you can know change the ball speed for example, but you can’t change the ball bounce with sliders.
There are surfaces that apply more effect because the ball has longer contact with the surface, like clay, that’s why the lift effect is much more important on clay and one of the reason Nadal is so hard to play on clay, that’s the reason on why the ball is slower after hitting the ground, because the contact with the ground is longer. That means other effect like drop shot are a bit stronger on clay. (Humidity or altitude of the court has also influence on the ball speed or effect but we don’t ask that much for a game lol).
Players reaction is currently totally wrong.
In real tennis matchs, each time a player wins a point with a ball touching the net, he is apologizing, showing his hand. This animation exists in Tiebreak, so you just need to use it correctly.
French translation issue since the EA.
After the coinflip, when we have to chose between serve and receive, if we chose the serve, it’s written: “a choisi de service”
That’s a big mistake, the real translation is “a choisi de servir”, i’m surprised that no one asked you to correct this mistake.
There are other translation mistake… im sure french community could help you.
When you create a player with custom clothes, you can’t mix real branded clothes with custom clothes. For example if i want custom shirts and shorts, i can’t have branded shoes. This is really sad.
Currently, in career mode, the reputation has no effect and seems broken, this has some potential, it has to be fixed.
I think there are plenty things to fix on the career mode, but other players know it better than me.
I can quote one of them:
I just lost at the semi-final of Australian Open and I only won 500€ and 250 ATP point. That seems crazy to me.
Thank you again for your great work, i took a lot of time to make this detailed review, if you need video, i can do it later.
I can also add to fix the online, and ban cheaters.
I was winning hard against the top 1 ranked, he just left before the end, so i had to quite and lose.
I agree with is feedback. I would however also point out that the animations, and effect of slice needs to be adjusted and improved as well. This makes a difference for how the game is played and how volleys operate in the game.
Besides for returns (which seem to be broken), the slice and volley physics remain unrealistic. While it is correct that the ball has to be picked up (hit with topspin) by the player who receives a low slice shot, the player on the game hitting the slice has no viable continuation to the net from a good slice shot.
In real tennis, slice shots are used to neutralize power or as approach shots. The player who hits the slice shot should be able to move to the net. As the game currently plays, it is very out of rhythm and does not allow the player to effortlessly approach the net.
It would be great if BigAnt could make a realistic animation for slice shots. 2 types of shots would be necessary: an aggressive shot where the player turns to a neutral stance and hits a slice shot (similar to the animation on Topspin 4) and a defensive shot where the player hits from an open stance on the run. These two shots would make the game much more enjoyable and create a way for players performing the neutral slice shot could move into the court.
This is a game that really could set the standard. I enjoy it much more than Topspin 4, but there is a lack of playability from some positions.
Also the animation to get to balls is also not clean. Sometimes a ball will just fly by the player or the player will stop playing a ball for no reason.
Some great points for priorities here. Just to echo and expand on some of these…
The serve timing I think works very well for getting the right power and its really satisfying when you make a good connection and hit a perfect/powerful serve. However, in real life making a strong connection with the ball is not the most difficult thing about serving. It is making that powerful connection whilst also being able to place the ball where you want/within the lines on the court. The current power dynamic should therefore not be the only factor. The serve needs a placement component as well that is controlled with the analogue stick. Be great to start hitting some powerful first serves out so that I want to use the other serves types for a second serve to reduce the risk of losing the point. At the moment almost all of my first serves go in. Also need to be able to ace out wide but currently this is almost impossible.
CPU slice/drop shot glitch is so frustrating. Just won’t allow me to engage a return. My player just runs away. I don’t even try to return them any more, just accept that I’ve lost the point and it’s so frustrating.
CPU running bug/glitch. Sometimes but not always the CPU opponent runs away from my serve? Definitely a bug there that needs addressing.
Licensed slams. It’s unfortunately just anti climactic in career when you reach a slam and it feels so much less authentic and immersive than even the lowest level tournaments. BigANT - I would literally give you all my money for a licensed Wimbledon DLC!! PLEASE make it happen. And make available in tournament mode also.
Either provide an all white outfit for each player or allow us to create and customise an additional outfit for each player. If there is a licensing issue around this then could you just make items of clothing available for each player that match their current sponsors?
Tweak player reactions. Sometimes my player reacts super happy to going 15-0 up? That just feels odd. Would be more logical to cut to a shot of them doing nothing or getting in position for next return and save these reactions for more meaningful points. Obviously the apology animation needs to replace a celebration in certain contexts as mentioned by others.
Continued work on shot animations to add greater variety, particularly slice and volley animations, which don’t always look right.
Just to add. LOVING the game. Played it loads over the holidays. Sliders have made such a difference. Really enjoyed finding a balance and understanding how small changes in specific areas impact others etc. Being able to tune it to my style and ability has transformed the experience. Please keep improving further! Great stuff.
Its really disappointing not to see enough effort from the devs to license the slams! Come on, we will pay 5 or 10 $ for the DLC, you cant be considered the best tennis game with Wimbledon having Blue empire chairs!
The Slice and Drop shot issue has to be solved, why they need to wait for us to complain, it takes 5 mins to notice it, the slice shot sucks it requires new animations its very slow
This account brings together several people. Here are the improvements we would like to see in future Tiebreak updates.
1 Fix ball physics: Float is still present.
2 In the slides give the possibility of modifying the height of the bounce depending on the surface.
3 Have the ability to change the weather (sunny, overcast or rainy)
4 Creation mode:
More creation options for complexes (stadium shapes, backgrounds: forest, seaside for example)
More signature shots, notably those of the champions of the 90s and 80s like Sampras, Agassi, Courier, Edberg, Becker, Kuerten, Borg etc.
