The quality of this game gets me excited about what the future of the game or series could look like. There are many things that could make this game even better but I think these are my top ten. Some of these can be implemented in the current game for sure but some we’ll be unlikely to see until future iterations of the game. Anything I’ve missed?
- Better contextual crowd reactions. At the moment, the reaction of the crowd is often not consistent with what’s happening in the match and this ruins the immersion and drama. Sometimes they over react to points that aren’t significant and often don’t react at all to set deciding points. Making these reactions more consistent would help in this regard but you can take it even further. It would add so much to the drama of the matches if the crowd reactions were heightened when rallies go on long, or the ball hits the net and goes over but the player is still able to reach it and play a winning shot, or one player hits a sure winner and the opponent is still able to return it, or a player hits some sort of defensive trick shot etc etc. At the moment it feels like you get one of 5 different crowd sounds for any given reaction and they become over familiar and often don’t quite fit the context.
Tennis by it’s very nature is quite repetitive so by making crowd reactions more dynamic, varied and accurate, can really help make each match, set, point etc feel unique. Perhaps further down the line, adding player specific reactions and cut scenes could be implemented to further help in this sense. Ie players arguing with the umpire, contesting points, interacting with crowd etc. I really feel anything that can be done to help give the matches a unique identity or experience would be greatly beneficial.
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Add slams to tournament mode. More often than not, I find myself wanting to play something more immersive than just single matches but I don’t want to play a career. I’m not so interested in the current tournament offerings but I would love to be able to choose to just play a whole Wimbledon tournament for example. I appreciate the slams are not licensed parts of the game but with better customisation possibilities of the ‘in game’ slam arenas, we could create something really close.
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Better slam customisation (as above). I feel this is the best tennis game currently available but if there’s one thing that I envy of other tennis games such as Top Spin and Tennis Elbow (modded) it is the slam venues. I would give anything to be able to better recreate the slam arenas faithfully. These are what/where I’m playing all of my matches and they just don’t feel as authentic as they are in rival games or in relation to the ATP and WTA venues in this game. More varied tools and logo positions, better scoreboards, better HUD/broadcast packages, more on court line judges and officials, inflatable court covers etc. Ideally though, further down the line, obtaining slam licenses would be epic!
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Commentary. Tennis by nature is a quiet game and so often there are moments of complete silence and very little sound design while playing, which makes it less immersive than it could be. It would be great if some of this dead space could be filled with professional commentary. If it was developed to the point where it was rich and detailed enough, this could also help make matches feel different and more dramatic, especially if comments reacted accurately and emotionally to what contextually happens in the match. Would also love to see beefier/more powerful shot sounds to further enhance the sound design.
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All whites. Every player in the game should have a white uniform for playing at Wimbledon. Playing matches in this tournament where one player is wearing pink shorts and a blue tank top just kills the immersion and authenticity. The crowd at Wimbledon should also wear slightly more muted colours.
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Doubles needs patching. The doubles gameplay is full of bugs and glitches which make it unplayable. My partner never usually plays games with me but we tried it together and it was almost a lot of fun. She was loving playing on a team with me and we could both see great potential for us playing together until we started see the cracks. Fixing this ASAP would be great.
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Ability to customise real player stats for offline play. There are a number of players I’d love to play as but I choose not to because some of their stats make them less effective or satisfying to play with in the game. For some players, I feel their stats/attributes do not fairly reflect their real world performance but regardless of this, I think we should be able to adjust as we see fit. This would mean you can play as a young player but at the peak of their (future potential) powers or just as one of your favourite players on their very best day!
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Sliders. If there’s one thing I’ve noticed from engaging on this forum is that people have different priorities in terms of how they want the game to play and feel. Implementing sliders would allow players to adjust to their preference. The freedom to do this would enable everyone to make the game satisfying to their taste.
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Game face? I’d love this to be a more prominent feature in the game. It seems that it may well be present already but I can’t find any information online about how it works or how to implement it? I think if you could accurately put your virtual self in the game, this would be an amazing feature.
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Legends. Others have mentioned this already but it would be great to play as players from other eras like Sampras, Agassi etc. The roster on this game is incredible but the addition of players from different eras would be great.
I think these are my top ten things I’d like to see in the game. Does anyone have any further thoughts or broader improvements/additions they’d like to see in this game of future iterations?
… so after each career-year you have to start again from zero, because player 2 has practically zero points 
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