AO Tennis

[Jason]

Another update released today to adjust game and ball speed. I haven't adjusted either as I'm happy with the gameplay as is. This has been the only game able to pull me away from Super Mega Baseball 2 and I've only been playing simple play now games. Looking forward to entering some tournaments once I get a little better.

[Jason]

Patch notes for AO Tennis going live in the next 12 hours

   
• NEW Venue Creator â€" Create and play on multiple courts in one venue.
• NEW Indoor court creation â€" Create enclosed courts. (Usable in game after next patch.)
• NEW ball swerve â€" Improved physics including greater sideways movement.
• Ball and Game speed sliders now available for individual surfaces.
• Quick Match courts are now randomly selected.
• Improved general stability.

[Jason]

The new ball physics are awesome. I love how the ball curves on certain shots now. This game should be reviewed again by all the major websites.

[Jason]

Best.Tennis.Game.Ever

Two more updates released this past weekend (they regularly come out on Friday) and the game is playing better than ever. Just one my first match in the Women's Australian Open.

[Jason]

Another big update today:

   
• Improvements to ball trajectories.
• Improvements to skill differentiation.
• Improvements to stamina drain.
• Improvements to Net Aggressiveness based on court surface.
• Improvements to AI fault and double fault percentages and improved situational awareness.
• Improvements to doubles, tactics applied by AI.
• Improvements to clay court texture and foot print marks.
• Added preferred and least preferred court type to identity, appropriately decreasing or boosting skills and attributes.
• Added ability to change net aggression and preferred court type at the end of year in career.
• Added AI Stamina Indicator option to settings.
• Added option to enable or disable Stamina in gameplay modifiers.
• Added new clay and grass court colours to venue creator.
• Added ability global stadium colours setting to stadiums in venue creator.
• Added toggleable stadium labels to venue creator.
• Added additional filters to venue list menu.
• Added ability to search by country for venues in community.
• Added ability to search for PlayFace only players in community.
• Added ability to search by Gender in community.
• Added regionally generated player names in career.
• Added daytime to career matches.
• Added minimum stamina drop of 10% per set based on player rating.
• Location of Big Ant Championship career tournament set to London, England.
• Improved loading screens.

[Ted]

Will probably pick it up when it gets cheap.

[Jason]

The game keeps on getting better. Another patch was released this past Thursday and Big Ant seems committed to making the game as good as possible.

[Jason]

A new update 6 months after the last one, and quite a big one:

   
• General stability improvements
• Added Margaret Court and Pat Rafter arenas
• Added official 2019 Aussie Open stadium sponsors
• Improvements to player movement, AI match logic and AI drop shot behavior
• Retuned AI aggressiveness;
• Added ball physics to umpire chair

Rectified the following issues:

   
• PlayFace download
• Erroneous umpire calls
• Doubles selection playing singles matches
• Net collision
• Cut scene camera in crowd
• Reverse shot
• Career playing ranking
• Career night matches
• Viewing history of a match in career

[BDSooner72]

Just found this thread. Had no idea they made so many updates.  It was a horrid launch game but I might have to give this another go. 

[Jason]

This game is great. I've never played Top Spin so I can't compare the two, but AO improved so much with all the updates released for it.

Sent from my LM-Q610(FGN) using Tapatalk

[BDSooner72]

Went ahead and bought it. There was so much wrong at launch (just look at the review scores) that it has to be much better after all those patches. 

[BDSooner72]

It's a much better game now with the patches but gameplay and lack of little touches keep it from bring a solid tennis game.  Serviceable gameplay and tons of user creation will make it worthwhile. When I first played it at launch, the game would not register a bunch of shots and that has been eliminated so far.   Also the movement of the player is a gillion times better. The added game options to edit animation assist, ball speed on different surfaces, etc are all very useful.  Just need to get the timing down and mess with the sensitivity of the directional shot speed. Far too many unforced errors hitting the ball out. I play w/o the aim target on because it's really kinda silly to have that and having a player trying to time their shot at the same time. To their credit there seems to be more shot variety in where the ball lands. At launch it felt like every shot was on the line because they wanted to show off how cool the player challenge feature was.

Little touches they miss out on and really should be in the game will grate on my nerves. Players should be sliding on clay and clay courts should degrade over a match. Why on earth are there no players bouncing the ball before a serve? That one boggles my mind. Such a simple thing. Numerous time of day options and they all look the same. Have some clouds pop in on occasion if you are not going to progress shadows and lighting during a match (have not played a long enough match to verify but I doubt they added it).  It's all these little things and the great gameplay that separates Top Spin 4 from the other console tennis games.

[BDSooner72]

No clue how I missed all the news but AO Tennis 2 comes out in January. Some videos of gameplay below at the link.

https://www.ign.com/games/ao-tennis-2

[Jason]

Definitely on my radar. I loved the first one.

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[Jason]

Reviews are starting to come in:

IGN: https://www.ign.com/articles/2020/01/09/ao-tennis-2-review
Thumb Culture: https://www.thumbculture.co.uk/ao-tennis-2-review-ace-or-fault