by BallBasher » 11 Jul 2012, 15:41
The CPU return of serve is still incredibly unrealistic. Serve and Volley is extremely difficult to pull off against the CPU and I find that it is in fact easier to approach the net on a second serve kicker than a flat first serve. I'm not complaining that I get beaten, I play on Master-10 and I don't have any problem when playing from the baseline. However, the current CPU promotes a more defensive style of play on serve because their returns are so incredibly powerful and accurate, even on lower difficulties like Pro-10. Their needs to be a serious precision and consistency malus on returning 130+ mph serves for the CPU, because not even Djokovic, who's easily the best returner in real life, manages this consistently. It isn't the stats of the CPU in question either, I played Gulbis (who had mediocre stats) and Narayanaswamy (who had awesome stats) in succession and both had ridiculous returns. Could you look at this for the next build Manutoo? The CPU is for the most part excellent, better than all of the big commercial tennis games I've played ( Top Spin 3&4, Smash Court Tennis e.t.c) but this is a real bugbear for me with this game.
This is slightly OT, but the only other niggle I have with the CPU is the number of mishits they seem to make, most of which trickle over the net into a surprise winner or a difficult volley. This adds to the volleying problem because for some reason you can't put away mishit floaters like RL and there's no half-volley in the game either. Mishits should be more often errors or easy putaways, at the moment they are actually advantageous for the CPU.