Looking for a bit of advice.

[NameNumber]

Hello, ITST. Despite knowing about you guys for a considerable time, I just recently signed up. I'm predominantly a (mediocre) TS4 player, and I'm really not good enough to seriously compete here. Still, I respect the system of fair play and whatnot and you definitely seem to be the best group of people for tennis games, so I finally signed up.

I downloaded Tennis Elbow 2011 about a week ago and have spent a lot of time playing it this past week. I really like some aspects of it. Namely the ball physics and control system, but I'm having a really hard time with a whole bunch of different aspects of the game and am looking for any advice to help me improve a bit. Because despite playing it for only a week, I feel like I've already hit a wall and don't seem to be improving.

First thing is the return. I know this is a problem for a lot of people and I've read about the auto-position trick, but I really don't find it helping me at all. Returning first serve is like 50-50 guessing game to me. If I don't pick a side and just go I usually end up aced. I find that trying the auto-positioning trick makes this even worse because I still find myself having to guess, except if I guess wrong I get jammed up worse. I'm totally clueless here.

Another thing is just being able to hit a winner off the ground. I've been playing against the computer. Club 10 is too easy, so I bumped it up to Junior 10, but now I can barely win a game. From what I understand, Pro 10 is a pretty average difficultly level so I'm feeling pretty lousy here. I've been trying to compete at Junior 10 for a week now and I'm not getting any more successful. Now I know my movement is garbage, but I still feel completely lost in rallies. Almost powerless.

My groundstrokes just don't seem to do anything. I've been playing with the ITST patch and unless I pick one of the guys with huge groundstrokes like del Potro, I just can't hit any winners at all. I can serve out wide and accelerate from the baseline onto the opposite sideline and the CPU still gets there. I can accelerate from corner to corner multiple times and the computer always seems to get there. I just feel weak. Am I doing something wrong, or is the computer just super hard to hit winners against?

I constantly have balls blasted past me partially because my own movement sucks and partially because I'm reluctant to play from behind the baseline. I know that's my own fault. But I don't understand why I can't seem to do any damage to the CPU, even when I abandon all tactics and put all of my effort into it.

I also have other weird issues I'm trying to fix like dealing with slices. They barely bounce in this game, so when I see the CPU slice from a defensive position, I have to move forward to catch it, but because it's so hard to read the trajectory of the ball, sometimes I move too far in and I end up making an error. If I don't move forward, though it bounces twice so fast that I can't play it at all. I'm sure that's tied to my movement woes, but it's still annoying that every slice is so perfect.

I know it takes time to improve, but I feel like I haven't improved at all from the first day of playing. So basically, any return tips would be nice and also if anyone else has found this inability to hit winners against the computer, any advice for that? Thank you.

[C4iLL]

Hello dude, nice you want to be part of the wonderful TE community here

I'll try to give you my advice about your situation and your post.

- First, pro 10 is not an average difficulty, it's really hard for a newcomer, even for the good players. It's totally normal you can't compete with it.

- Secondly, I recommend everyone who starts this game to play with all the "helps" (or assistance, I don't know how it's called in english). The preview of the ball, the auto-positioning thing etc.

Why ? Because it helps you to understand how the game works, when your position allows you to hit a great shot, etc.
At the beginning I was like you : hitting poor shots, many errors, always being aced, and I tried to train with that and I suddenly understand everything !
It's like when you begin bicycle, you starts with 4 wheels to get used to the sensations. It's the same thing in TE.

So train a lot with these previews and when you'll desactivate them, you will see you became a better player because you have naturally understood each mechanisms of the gameplay.

- Third : I personally have better sensations with keyboard rather than with a pad (I've the feeling everything is more precise). So try playing with keys, maybe you gonna see a change too.

- Fourth : for the slice, I recommend to do a slice yourself, when the opponent plays a slice. Don't hesitate to also play top spin shots.

- Fifth : don't forget to hit b1+b2 shots to have powerful shots, maybe you just hit "b1" shots, it's why you don't have a lot of speed.

- Six : read the "readme.txt" file in the TE folder, you will learn a lot about some specific details of the gameplay.

[polca456321]

Yeah, C4iLL is right, you got to play to an easy mode before you can play a difficult one. Especially in this game. If you check the first topics of the tour, you'll see the best players began playing in Junior or even Club. It's kind of a warm-up I think, as C4iLL wrote, to get sensations.

And Pro 10 isn't an average level, or I'm totally lousy too. I can't manage to beat CPU in Pro 3 (Well, I did it once, but I suppose CPU was drunk )

And don't worry, you'll progress soon or later. It just depends of your rhythm of training. Good luck then mate

[C4iLL]

Lol your signature Polca, let's all retire from that useless TS4 tour !

[polca456321]

Yeah, yesterday I played a match and it was just not fun at all, unrealistic and slow. So I decided this to be my last match
When you play TE, you can't play TS4 anymore

[Elias]

Fact is, ITST mod is really designed toward online, human vs. human play. Recently in TE 1.09 update the TE movement scheme has changed a bit introducing an increased left/right (upward/backward as well) speed conversion (eg. more player inertia) wich leaded to much more wrongfooting, especially considering the character overall power we used before. So the rosters stats have been revamped to reach a better gameplay balance (mostly decreasing power). But humans are way more wrongfooted then CPU AI obviously.

Also the serve power have been revised to avoid too much acing in our online matches and avoiding putting off newcomers too much, and promote realistic end match stats. Though if our playerbase in the future improves a lot their returning skills, we may review serves again and get some power back if needed.

Again, the AI has globally a much higher ball recovery/reach ability than human players, better "reflexes", and those lower power serves also results in much more agressive return winners from the AI, wich is a bit frustrating.

I'm just considering the AI matches as playing vs a wall and working out my positionning and shots, but you should'nt consider too much your results agains AI as a reference marker wich tells you if you are or aren't ready to play tournaments. The best training you can get is playing online matches / friendlies vs other ITST folks. Join the TE chat from time to time, and you will probably find some people around to play.

[NameNumber]

Thank you all for the advice. I'll take into consideration what I can and keep practicing. The main thing holding me back is general movement anyway. TS4's poisoned me with the lock-on goofiness. Just gotta keep at it.

[Marco_Theo_81]

Ciao Name Number

You are not alone in not being able to read the serves.
This is also so hard for me as well. Often I am so frustated, that I just choose to step to one side, 50-50 chance, like you wrote.
I know, how to use the auto-position trick, I recognize, that my player moves to the correct side. But also with this one step on the right side, done from my player, executed from the cpu, I have so much trouble. Maybe my reactions are to bad...

I started with Junior 5, and now I play against pro 5. Lost in over 3 hours against Söderling in a five games match, Australian Open. 3:6 6:3 6:7 7:6 5:7
But HEI, that was amazing. This game gives you so much more than TS or another Tennis simulation. Great!!

Maybe we can play sometime and with practice, we can cause more troubles to the TOP TEN here in ITST.

good week everyone