Wide serve followed by cross-court shot.

[pablito15]

OP.
Also latest patch return of serve seems tricker.

[BiRaitBec]

The Main Balancing Issue: Outer Serves

Hello there, I have played extensively online with each player, and I concluded that there are 2 meta tactics that really bother the balancing of the game.

Outer Serves
First is something that every player can do, thus is the one I expect 2k to fix first, it is Outer Serves. The problem with Outer Serves is that everyone can throw you off the screen just easy, even Alcaraz with the outer sliced serve leaves such an empty space no matter what.
If ever, it is the sliced serve to the outside stronger than just power.
I know you can sliced it or top spin it to the player side to have more chances, but you can't really control the animation your player does to return the serve because you don't have time to position yourself at such levels in the return phase. On earth grounds your player will slide eventually, sometimes they will do animations that limit your return power options, you have to hope the return animations pulled in are decent for you to execute a return that let you come back in the field.
I won matches where in our serve phase we did the outer serves, and I won at the final tie break to say.
There were matches where we both knew of this issue and willingly made only Inner Serves from the start to the end. I always use the inner serve for everyone until they extensively use the outer serve only, because it's the actual rally part that is fun about this game, the stamina managing, the mind game, the different tactics to use to not get known.

It is the primary issue of the game this, nothing else beats it in terms of competitive frustration, it's not fair cause it is not realistic either. I really like the speed of the ball, i don't want it to be slower, but the aiming can't be always in the same spots every time, because too much of an area in the outer portion of the serve leads to the same weak return, while in the inner serve if you don't go for the line, often the player can return it normally and already being positioned properly. Plus there's also an hidden invisible wall
way before the line refs that doesn't let you stretch further to the outside to better pull static animations that could lead to a better return to make you reposition faster.

Volley Players
Apart the Outer Serve main issue, the other issue I have with competitive matches is the volley players at high levels. Sampra but ESPECIALLY McEnroe are the real meta players, if you can reach the point where you perfect every timing, you are golden, volleys are your meta end. Doing Perfect timing at volleys with anyone else leads to some bad animations and bad shots anyway sometimes. With McEnroe instead, doing Good or Perfect timings even in bad animations leads to extremely tedious possibilities to handle them, it makes you run left and right non stop, you won't have a way to shoot the ball past if not with a perfect lob, the problem is that lob actually is really perfect if also the animation pulled by the game allows it, else they will just smash it on you. You can make a perfect lob that in real life could negate the volley presence just fine, but the game decides after you start your shots the animation to use and most often against a volley player it is never a good one. And again, you can't really run them out of stamina aswell, because they don't lose any, they never max out a shot there and they don't need to, they never run left and right, so you can't really handle them if they don't make timing mistakes. And McEnroe from the bottom will use his ability to make a strong moving forward shot that really compares to great bottom players aswell, so he can just spam that shot from the bottom even if he doesn't go forward, but he will and will dominate the rally on the volley side.


If there was a nerf for these 2 issues for me the balancing is pretty much excellent, sharapova is manageable as long as you make her stamina consumed even if she takes the first games in her favour by spamming max shots. Many just forfeit again sharapova or williams, but if you consume her stamina while they max shot and you use only precise shots and try to rally as much, from the second set onwards the match is yours, and if you are a great player you can also take away first and second sets aswell, but of course you can't easily make it loseless at first.

The highest tier players if you exclude the outer serves are as follows for me:
McEnroe (volley tactic is extremely convenient stamina wise and to force the opponent into bad animations)
Federer (the king of precise shots, doesn't matter if the backhand is weak, he can shoot short both left and right and make you run all the way with simplicity, and he also has counter abilities)
Agassi (very good stamina, very balanced and with a backhand that really hurts, he also has some faster executing animations for the backhand)
Williams (No real weakness, however she is not that fast in general, she is not a real threat if you use precise shots or drop shots so that she makes last moment shots, it's very easy to run her around but I see that not having a weak side can be more problematic than sharapova weak backheand)
Sharapova (great forehand, and scary with max power shots, you need to win against her only with stamina management, she especially weakens shots with less stamina and at one point she will not be able to reach precise shots anymore, use drop shots often when you want to run her, she is also weak at volleys)


This is very extensive, i have studied the rallies a lot and this lead to this final conclusions as to what i fell lacking in the competitive balancing of the game towards higher levels. I hope that if devs decide to tackle these issues, you would also notice how much improved the competitive aspect of the game becomes just by tackling outer serves and eventually volley players aswell.