My findings/bugs/tweaks etc so far/wishlist

[Capriatifan]

Having finally received the game last week and after playing a LOT of hours I think this is probably the best/most emjoyable game I have in my collection. However it could be even better if 2K could do something with the following (now this is from my own experience, so everybody is free to disagree):

Gameplay experiences:

* Serving is too big, especially if you have high stats on serve and power combined with extra serve abilities, there's way too many aces if you play against someone who knows how to place a ball. Even if you can still win these matches, they are NO fun to play. I would like it if 2K got rid of the extra serve skills or if they would just make it WAY harder to exactly place a serve on the lines, make it so that even the best servers can only get to about 65/70% if they go for the big serves on the line, also second serves hit with this much "risk" should even be harder to make.

* Too much power; if you play someone with 90+ power, there's not a whole lot you can do about that. I think that it should be a bit toned down and also make people miss way more shot if they go for a power shot from difficult positions on the cout. Now if you can just get to the ball it's always possible to go full power and almost never miss a shot. Make this harder for difficult to reach shots please.

* Lobs too easy; lobs get almost never missed, even if you try to hit it from an almost impossible position, which is too unrealistic. Please make the timing harder on this.

* Angles are too sharp; I do like the idea of being able to hit angles to move your opponent out of court, but hitting balls that arrive very hard to you with you standing behind the baseline, it should not be possible to hit shots that are almost floating parallel to the net, this just can't be done in real tennis and though this is a game, please a bit more realistic.

* Fatigue should play a bigger part; now there is too much recovery, especially in 3 and 5 set matches the player should get more tired if they have low stats on stamina. Now recovery is too big and you don't get punished enough for having low stats on that part. Also, especially if you play the CPU, even though they don't have any more gas in the tank they still get to almost impossible to get to balls. Just make it so that you CAN reagain fitness, but only by tanking or making the rallies shorter.

* adding the lob volley, not in the game yet and would be a nice addition

* More errors; with bad timing you should miss more balls. Now I realise this will scare away the more arcade/ Virtua Tennis players, so maybe add a SIM option or something

* Footwork glitch (already being worked on so no further explanation needed)

To sum it up, just want a more balanced gameplay; when 2 players of the same quality play against each other 10 times with both having players with different styles/strengths, both should win about 5 matches. Any style should be able to beat any other style.

Other aspects (maybe for Top Spin 5)
* much better Move implementation
* animated ballboys
* linesmen ducking away when balls get fired at them
* Challenge system
* true to life service motions from pro players
* Save replay option
* More stats (fastest serve/ average 1st and 2ns serve, slowest serve etc)
* breaking strings (if you play a lot of top spin shots for example they should break more easily), with you being forced to move up to the net to end the point
* Ability to turn off the auto swing/auto movement
* add Wimbledon and other real tournaments


Tell me how you guys think about this or add your own remarks/ideas!

[MJordan23]

Good list, agree on most points. Also the approach shot seems too effective (regardless of the skill "approach shot expert). The power and accuracy of this shoot seems to be trough a roof.

[stoutman111]

Good list. I certianly agree with stamina. I mean if you are a 90 stamina and playing a guy with 50 stamina. They should be making tons of errors or significantly slow down later in games and in long rallys. It is a very under rated almost sadly insignificant stat in this game and as a defensive baseliner puts you at a slight disadvantage.

[KDZaster]

You guys are creating lists for your ideal "game", but 2k is trying to acheive a balance between realism and fun.

*If someone has high power and excellent placement and modifiers to help them, that means you're going to get aced. Real life tennis man, not even the players with the best reaction times in the sport can fully neutralize this, much less gamers like us. Thats like players complaining that Roddick / Karlovic / Isner / Federer put up too many aces against them. It's kinda ridiculous, get over the previous games that had unrealisticly weak service. Service in this game (ace-wise and difficulty returning) is as realistic as possible. Serve is probably the single most important shot in tennis.

*Too much power is on shots? Thats only a problem if their forehand / backhand stats are also pretty high. I can tell you that it's a non-issue for Andy Roddick in the game, the only way he's getting a hard shot out is on badly placed shots. Unless it's a well timed + well positioned + easier ball, any shot that ARod hits I can hit much faster with Federer, or Agassi, or Joker. The solution COULD be to not use custom characters and play with the characters the game gives you.

*Lobs are the easiest shot to hit in tennis. Please go play tennis before you say they're hard. There's a reason why the "defensive lob" exists when someone has no hope of hitting the ball another way.

*Angles are too sharp? Unrealistic? Nope, with custom characters, every character can become Nadal / Agassi / Federer-like in their angles. These angles are possible and are hit on a regular basis by a lot of players. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2pUQw7hT50. Or how about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7UnuX2GBrA.

*Fatigue does kinda play a big part. Maybe it could be bigger. If you use Fast Reposition you drain stamina fast than without it, so smart positioning and point construction can allow you to keep your stamina while the other person starts to falter. In this game if someone with high stamina like Nadal vs someone with low stamina like Roddick, you can make Roddick really struggle to get shots if you do controlled angles while he's tired. It definitely plays a large part, but IRL pros nowadays are pretty good at NOT randomly flubbing shots due to fatigue.

* Lob volley would be cool. More options are always good.

* More errors would be cool too. Low stamina + Bad Timing does cause errors in people who dont have 85 Forehand and 83 Backhand.

* Footwork glitch needs to be fixed.

To sum it up, the gameplay is balanced. People just dont want to boost the stats in their characters necessary to fight these players. If two players of the same quality play against each other 10 with both players having different styles / strengths, BOTH SHOULD NOT WIN 5 MATCHES. Styles. Make. Matches.

Court type, ATP tournament level, and style matchup all are really important winning against another player. The leading example is Federer vs Nadal, Nadal leading 14–8. Nadal is not BETTER than Federer, they're practically equal. For years Federer was definitely the best in the world, but could beat EVERYONE but Nadal on a workmanlike, consistant basis. Because their styles clashed, and Nadal's style gave Federer's fits.

I know that this is a game and you want to have "fun", but it's also a competition between two players with different tools at their disposal. In the fighting game community, there's something called "Tiers" which ranks how well one character does on an individual basis against another character if both players play perfectly, and attack every weakness of the other character.

Styles make matchups. This game is too young to be broken. Custom characters seem to the the basis of all these problems. Why not try to run the league with the HUGE character roster 2K has given us?

[stoutman111]

^ GOOD POST. i like what your saying.... this game is very good. However some minor tweaking is all most are asking for. A lot of people complain on the monster servers out there. I will agree its not fun playing them but i also agree it is realistic in a sense that if you play Karlovic in real life you will be guessing on the serve and getting out in a tiebreak is what a lot of the top players do against the big servers.

My only minor gripes are stamina... make stamina more meaningful and bring down power only a tad. I also think people with lower speed 50's get to a lot of balls and that maybe tarnishs the speed catergory somewhat

I hate that playing a player with 98 power and serve will put me at a slight disadvantage if they are skilled.

[KDZaster]

50 is not a small amount of speed. Remember that this game is about TENNIS PLAYERS. Their entire job, their entire livelihood, what they practice for day in and out is to get to that ball and hit it back.

Even the slowest top-pro can get to the ball and hit it with some authority. They can even get to some of the fastest shots as long as they're not ridiculously out of position AND if they anticipate the shot and run full-out to it.

Maybe try more angled control shots and power slices against a 50 speed player. He'll get to them but it wont be a good shot because it'll be a reach shot.

[MJordan23]

You guys are creating lists for your ideal "game", but 2k is trying to acheive a balance between realism and fun.

True, but how about gamplay-sliders or a SIM-option for offline/online? That way people could choose what type of game they want to play.

[JJ_DUBZ_87]

50 is not a small amount of speed. Remember that this game is about TENNIS PLAYERS. Their entire job, their entire livelihood, what they practice for day in and out is to get to that ball and hit it back.

Even the slowest top-pro can get to the ball and hit it with some authority. They can even get to some of the fastest shots as long as they're not ridiculously out of position AND if they anticipate the shot and run full-out to it.

Maybe try more angled control shots and power slices against a 50 speed player. He'll get to them but it wont be a good shot because it'll be a reach shot.

There should be more of a difference between a player with 50 speed and a player with 80 speed. It's not clear enough. If a player runs full-out to get to that shot they anticipate, the follow up shot should be an easy put away unless they hit a defensive lob to recover.

[Elias]

* More errors; with bad timing you should miss more balls. Now I realise this will scare away the more arcade/ Virtua Tennis players, so maybe add a SIM option or something

Indeed , i would like to hear about some selectable SIM mode. it's an important aspect of a tennis simulation seeing the ball getting out on bad positionning and/or timing imo.

Just a simple question, if you try to hit the ball OUT on every shot, how much do you have success on this ? can someone try this and report about it ? I mean if it's not possible to intentionnaly produce a miss, then there is definitely something wrong, sim wise.

[KDZaster]

If we're choosing a sim option then you guys would complain about serving even more. If the opponent got a 135+ serve into the box, your chance of a good return against in at all would be null.

There would also need to be slight visual cues that signify where their serve is going / what type, based on ball toss position, meaning the serve stick wouldn't work, since you have to decide on what serve you're gonna hit before the toss. This should the case for everyone but Sampras, Federer, and Joker... maybe Becker.

You'd barely be able to get it back in at all. At 138+mph even if you get to the ball, anything but a perfect or good timing should result in you missing the shot 80% of the time. First Serve should fail 30-40% of the time on principal. The more important the point is, the harder it should be to get the first serve in, and the slower your second serves should get... with of course the exception of certain players who'll have a *clutch* modifier as one of their attributes.

Intentionally miss a shot out? This is a sport where you can just not swing at the ball to lose the point. There's never been a player who tries to flub a shot on purpose. SIM Mode would mean if the shot was early or late you whiff. You want to miss a shot? Do a late power drop shot, should miss every time.

You guys don't really want what you're asking for.

[djarvik]

Yes we do!

[Elias]

Intentionally miss a shot out? This is a sport where you can just not swing at the ball to lose the point. There's never been a player who tries to flub a shot on purpose.

Yeah yeah i would never do it intentionnaly in a match for sure. It's just an experiment, to check if it's possible to hit out in this game, because it should be, if your shot is off-timed or your placement really bad, even unforced.

[djarvik]

Intentionally miss a shot out? This is a sport where you can just not swing at the ball to lose the point. There's never been a player who tries to flub a shot on purpose.

Just noticed that. You really think we know nothing about tennis?

[TomBs]

Well, I have to agree that even IRL it is difficult to hit a shot out.
I mean, look at this rally for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LAVrnQ9tOY

[Elias]

Well, I have to agree that even IRL it is difficult to hit a shot out.

When you play a double do you really think it's difficult to hit a shot in the double alleys ? lol. It's not more difficult to do it in a single. The engine just should allow it, to add gameplay depht and asking for precise timings.