Tennis World Tour news & patch notes

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Features

• Slide animations have been added on clay courts.
• A new style of forehand has been added to the character creator: the “whip” forehand, with a whole new set of animations.
• New serve preparations and serve styles have been added to the character creator.
• The Season mode can now be accessed when a cup is being played. You can go play ranked matches in-between your Cup matches.
• Added an introduction to the Training stadium.

Balancing

• Updated the order in which players are displayed in the Character selection screen, to better reflect current ATP rankings.
• Updated Agassi and McEnroe’s skills set.
• Speeding up the rally and serve pace (about +5%).
• Improving the global accuracy on difficult ball, because Attackers were making too many unforced errors on difficult shots or difficult positions.
• Lowering the height threshold for the “low-arc” malus on shots, from 60cm down to 40cm.
• Increasing the regeneration of stamina between points and between sets

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug that could make players teleport during shot preparation.
• Fixed a bug that was causing the players to hit the ball without making any contact with it.
• Improvements to the shot selection engine to remove most of the instances of unwanted slice effects. In practice, this should improve the chance of getting the effect asked for during the preparation of the shot.
• Fixed a bug that was penalizing serve returns on the forehand side, resulting in an unnaturally higher number of Aces.
• Fixed a bug regarding the orientation of the players after a shot. They are now correctly facing the court after each shot, making the whole rally look more smooth.
• Fixed a bug with AI movement. The AI will now accurately run towards the ball, notably on dropshots.
• Fixed a bug in the AI that was preventing them from using lobs.
• Improved the choreography when interrupting the serve preparation animation.
• Fixed the missing racket shadow at Quito’s venue.
• Fixed an unwanted halo effect around players during cutscenes.
• Fixed new equipment pictures that were displayed upside down in the reward screen.
• Fixed some Octogon and Tooltech dampener textures.
• Fixed a bug where Season Cups were sometimes played at the wrong venue.
• Fixed a bug where player outfits were not saved correctly during Season Cups.
• Fixed a bug that could sometimes prevent the Surgery event from appearing in the Career mode in December.
• Fixed some minor interface issues.

Technical

• Improved the behavior of different sized resolutions and window modes in the graphical options, notably the Windowed Fullscreen mode.

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• New Online Mode Added: Online Tournaments.This mode allows the creation of online tournaments by players.
• Added more character customization options in an updated version of the player creator.
• Event added to Career Mode in December, that allows the further customization of existing characters.
• Added animations at end of a point where a lucky win is achieved with the help of the net.
• Added animations to avoid the ball if it goes out and the player is on its trajectory. The AI will no longer volley those balls (both opponent and player AI).
• Added more animations to the inside out forehand preparations.
• The “replay” button is now accessible even if the cutscenes are disabled in the options menu.

Balancing

• Added a substantial bonus to power and accuracy of inside out forehands. The feedback “GREAT” is also displayed if using the “Display shot quality” option.
• Animations during cutscenes have been improved.
• Tuned the AI’s chance of unforced errors according to player archetypes.
• Added a “BALANCED” threshold to the Serve help feedback between “SAFE” and “OPTIMAL”.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a rare bug that could force the charge gauge to remain empty during a shot.
• Fixed a rare case of the interface shrinking at the end of a match.
• Fixed a rare case of online games being stalled, where conditions involved the underhand serve.
• Fixed a rare bug that could display half of the London venue’s court in white.
• Fixed some swing animations and minor bugs in the shot selection.
• Fixed the First Bound indicator missing on London Supreme Stadium.
• Fixed an issue where the racket bag was switching sides when players changed side, and was not displayed in online matches.

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Patch Highlights

• Large improvements to the overall stability of the online service; including issues with the random disconnections during a match, the ball not being in the same place for each player and a number of other tweaks that can be found under “bug fixes”
• Added a help interface during service that gives feedback on the risk taken. This option can be disabled in the option menu.
• Added a permanent display of break points, set points and match points under the scoreboard.
• Added new official outfits for players, and new equipment to the shop.
  • Le Coq Sportif Gasquet - Wimbledon 2018
  • Roland Garros 2018 Tennis polo shirt
  • Wilson Blade 98 racket
  • And more

Balance

• Lateral slice rotation decreased.
• Added a bonus / penalty to Stamina based on player height (to compensate for the fact that tall players can find more angles with their serve).
• Added a ball speed bonus to indoor courts.
• Increased shot selection possible to return a serve.
• The ball speed of the slice shots has been slowed during a rally.
• Monfils’ and Edmund’s stats have been adjusted.
• Official player win ratios have been updated in career mode for parity with their current performance in the real world.
• Once in Bronze league, players can no longer fall to the league below.
• Minor changes to ranked points gain/loss calculation.
• Player emotion will now escalate more quickly in cutscenes.

Bug fixes

• Improved game stability and online stability. In particular, the main bug that was frequently causing the disconnection of both players during an online match.
• Fixed the “off-the-frame shot” bug, that was unintentionally ending the point by throwing the ball high in the air.
• Fixed a rare crash during the loading of a match
• Fixed a bug that could make the League leaderboard appear empty.
• Fixed the League leaderboard when displaying the wrong league after a promotion or relegation.
• Fixed the display of Japanese characters on the leaderboard.
• Improved ball collision detection around the court.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when resetting game data with an exhibition tournament in progress, then creating a tournament again.
• Fixed a bug regarding ball trajectory synchronization in online matches, which was causing trajectories to diverge on the receiving end of slice and topspin strokes.
• Minor interface and texts changes.

Misc

• Added the gender information when receiving an outfit as a gift

Please note: in the previous patch notes, we listed that new rackets were available for custom characters. This change was not correctly applied last patch, and the missing items have been reintroduced this patch.

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New Features

Weekly community challenges have been added!

• Each week, a challenge will be displayed in the online menu. The efforts of each and every player will be tallied toward the community objective.
• 2 individual timed objectives will also be available until completion or until they expire.

Individual and community objectives are a new way to unlock items.

Career Mode

Career mode has been updated with new screens and improvements:

• A month now consists of 2 event choices instead of one.
• A «Details» button has been added to tournaments, which will display the gains for every round (XP, ranking points, money).The points earned in the previous season for this tournament are also displayed with a marker (since ranking points are tallied throughout a rolling year).
• A new screen will appear at the end of a season, displaying an overview of the season results and a comparison with the previous year. (You need to play at least two seasons with the patch, or create a new player to see this screen).

Stats

• Results from past tournaments seasons can be reviewed in the form of Tournament brackets. (Go to the Calendar tab in the Career mode and navigate to the tournament you want to review and press «See results». This includes tournaments you didn’t participate in).
• Various statistics such as winners, aces, 1st serve ratio etc. are recorded across all modes and can be displayed in the character’s page. (For a custom character, navigate to the portrait, left to the archetype points, and enter the menu).
• The «Career» tab can be reached to display your track records in tournaments: best round reached and number of titles won for each one.
• You can switch between records with any character and your global records. For official players, press the «View stats» button to see their page, then press again «View stats» to access your personal records with this player.
• In Season mode, a new screen will give you the detail of the points earned and lost by you and your opponents, with a detailed information about your respective leagues and win/loss records.

Graphics

• Clay courts have been improved graphically
• Crowd animations and choreography has been improved.

Customization

• New outfits have been added for star players:
• Nike Madison Keys - Spring 2018, and her racket is now accessible for custom characters
• Bouchard – 2018 Outfit
• Goffin - Australia outfit 2018 + Wilson racket (also accessible for custom characters)
• Monfils - Australia 2018

AI

• AI will stick to its baseline more, if it’s not a preparing a serve & volley.
• Tweaked the occurrence of AI faults depending on difficulty.

Bug fixes

• Fixed the «All that glitters» trophy that could not be unlocked.
• Fixed a crash in some camera traveling.
• Fixed Sophie Walker’s XP bonus in displayed XP points.

Misc

• Controller vibrations added on strokes (this can be disabled in the Options menu).

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Features

Added Online modes:

• Quickmatch 1 vs 1
• Season mode: ranked matches 1 vs 1 with global leaderboards (split into 6 leagues) using ELO rankings.
• Play with friends: create your own private 1 vs 1 game and invite an online friend.

Career

• Increasing XP gains for winning tournaments in Career mode.

AI

• Improved and diversified AI “move to net” strategies.

Data protection

• Added a dedicated option for changing private data protection settings without having to erase other game save data.

Bug fixes

• Fixed the bug affecting the coach and agent menu, that sometimes prevent from scrolling properly.
• Fixed the rebound indicator which did not appear on a few venues.
• Fixed a case where the player (or AI) would stop running to a drop shot even though there was enough time to catch it.
• Fixed a case where the player (or AI) would miss a ball that even though there existed a (complex) way to run and hit that shot.
• Fixed a case where the player (or AI) would not run to the best spot to hit the ball, running instead at a quite opposite direction.
• Fixed a case where the player (or AI) would start running automatically to a corner of the court when returning a serve.
• Fixed a crash when exiting an Exhibition match with Agassi or McEnroe.
• Fixed the manual Inside out button that did not work.
• Fixed set, match and tournament duration displayed in the interfaces.
• Most frequently encountered crashes fixed.
• Fixed a crash occurring when playing with a friend and with 2 custom characters.
• Fixed a crash occurring when switching rapidly through custom characters in « Play with friends » mode.
• Fixed the XP gained in online matches which was not correctly retained.
• Fixed the description of unlocking requirements for skills that are linked to a particular event: the unlock condition was displaying the wrong events.
• Fixed the display of spaces inside first names and last names.
• Fixed the missing display of drop shot and sprint buttons in the Tennis School lessons.
• Fixed a bug that would affect lobs by applying the same charge as the previous shot instead of taking into account the new charge.
• Fixed Dubai’s court limits which were slightly off, causing balls to be called out when they were, in fact, touching the lines.
• Changed a text in the Volley training to better describe the way to use the “Volley preference” button.
• Fixed a graphical glitch in the Skill menu on locked skill slots.
• Stamina gauges have been hidden at the end of the match during cutscenes.
• Fixed a bug that was allowing players to move during the fade out screen after a fault on the first serve, thus sticking the game in an undefined state.
• Fixed the displayed match duration when forfeiting in a tournament and when pausing the game.
• Fixed First serve and Unforced errors stats displayed.
• Crowd no longer applauds during serves.
• Fixed the keyboard input displayed in the Tennis school for drop shots (user must be holding « Space » and not « Ctrl »).

Gameplay

• Reduced the gap between the racket and the ball.
• Improved consistency between hit animations and the ball speed.
• The preparation of serve can now be interrupted after 2sec.
• Added a crowd reaction when players hit trick shots (shots between the legs, etc.)

Graphics

• Crowd models have been improved graphically.
• Added more venue-specific outfits for staff members around the court.
• Toned down the green of grass surfaces, making the ball more visible.
• Increased the shadow of the ball in London’s stadium.
• Added FX on clay courts on the ball’s rebound.

Audio

• Reduced the frequency of some audio commentaries.
• “Fault” spoken by the line judges instead of the umpire.