How to return better in TE13 for rookies

[Uchiha Muss]

I see a lot of people have a basic rallying skills. Once the rally is neutral it can go either way. What they suck at is return of serve. I see they make simple mistakes. Wrongfooting a lot, picking weird positions and trying to predict. It obviously doesn't work as well as they want it to be.

I'm here to inform some of them if they read forums. People call it trick. It's like a clown show. You have to be accurate and time it well.

The trick is called "Auto-pos return" (you can google it if you want). Auto-pos is used in the game engine all the time. When you're volleying, when you're hitting ground strokes basically from 1st second to the last moment.

In a simple way when you press any of the 3 strike buttons, b1, b2, b1+b2 your player gets closer to the ball like a magnet. You can see it after the point is over. If you hold the strike button your player will move to where the ball is.

And finally how to you use it. The most important one: here it goes in steps:

1. Your opponent is serving. Prepare to press slice button. b2 or fire 2 in the game.
2. Opponent tosses/throws the ball up in the air, press and hold slice button, don't release, don't let go
3. When opponent's racket hits the ball now you release it. NOW!!!
4. if you did it right, your player will move 2 steps where the ball is going. I'm sure you can run the rest of the distance after that yourself.

Note: it's better to use slice button all the time. If the ball is too fast you'll slice it back. if it's slow you can use some other offensive strike.

Source: http://www.intertopspintour.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16862

Ninja Edit 1: like richie said, you run after you release the slice button. If there's a moment where both buttons are pressed you'll freeze on spot.

[Richie1308]

The tuto is great, just for the release moment I'd rather say "release when you're going to move" because it's the fact that you keep pushing on it that makes you go to the ball automatically and not the fact that you release your button, which is important to understand. Otherwise some may release the button too soon and may not see any effect while it's actually a very great tool to use.

[Tantsutallinn]

very nice move to explain it, i think it should be seen in some general topic in forum for all players. now i return better thanks to you, but i couldnt figure it out myself, why i freezed so often with pressing arrow key to soon

same is with the frame rates, as it has a massive effect on your reaction times.
and also if you have a controller, try to find a software, where you can put button threshold to 0,
as it improves your button reaction similar to the keyboard (i use motioninjoy for ps3 controller).

"Guide to improve your game" topic with all important contents?

[JasonBourne]

Great tactic but I wouldn't use the slice, because it becomes fake slice which is unrealistic.

[Uchiha Muss]

Great tactic but I wouldn't use the slice, because it becomes fake slice which is unrealistic.

What fake? It just slices back with curvy trajectory. If you don't use slice, you'll dump the ball to the net if opponent
picks their spot accurately.

[inseedious]

very nice move to explain it, i think it should be seen in some general topic in forum for all players. now i return better thanks to you, but i couldnt figure it out myself, why i freezed so often with pressing arrow key to soon

same is with the frame rates, as it has a massive effect on your reaction times.
and also if you have a controller, try to find a software, where you can put button threshold to 0,
as it improves your button reaction similar to the keyboard (i use motioninjoy for ps3 controller).

"Guide to improve your game" topic with all important contents?

Great tip, I didn't know about it. Threshold is necessary where there a chance to accidentally hit two buttons instead of one, so if the press time of the wrong button is lower than the threshold, the input will be ignored. This can be useful, for example, while serving, cause with a dualshock 3 is very difficult to hit a really flat serve, as up/low arrow are often accidentally pushed during aiming. Though, I think that the improvements in the reaction time, especially when returning, are totally worth that. Especially in a tennis game, it's worth.
P.S. What does the threshold value exactly mean? Of course it is a delay, but is it in milliseconds? Cause my default value were 64.
Curiosity: my default values were 64 for all keys, except for square, that I use to slice (b2). So I've been lucky till now, cause I mostly defend with slice, cause lots of times the slice is the only other way than no-shot when reaching difficult balls.