Mana Games

[Madferit]

The serve update has basically taken out a good serve out of the equation. As is now the effect doesnt cause any damage at all, plus it slows down a lot after bouncing. After playing couple matches and testing now on service practice, I honestly can't see a way in which this could be effective in any way. In the past, the way it's always been, it was a serve that could be effective. It's rendered useless now.
Plus I dont see the point in changing it? Seems like a change for change sake that nobody really asked for.

[Dani21]

Yeah, while I don't think it is useless but now it is considerably easier to deal with. What i do not understand is that this goes specifically against the goal of the autopos reduction update which was to make second serves more viable and damaging. So we're making autopos slow in order to have a more normal 2nd serve win percentage but immediately after one of the most useful second serves gets nerfed. I understand the redone trajectory but in its current state the twist needs an improvement because currently there is absolutely no reason to hit a twist second serve anymore

[Madferit]

Yes. Naturally now the most effective place to hit it would be wide on advantage side, but even then, in the best case scenario, it legit doesnt look damaging whatsoever. Basically useless. While with the way its always been, I think we all can agree it presented a reasonable challenge in honestly all wings, wide and to the T on both sides of the court.

[Ruze]

I don't have much more to add than what's already been said, just wanted to show my support and that I agree with this thread so far.

[manutoo]

1) The bounce is now much more realistic than before.

2) The speed after bounce didn't change.

3) With a right-handed player, after the bounce, it goes more to the right than before, and less to the left, so it gives more opportunities to the right and less to the left. The sliced serve is the opposite. So basically, you got more total range than before.
So I'm going to need a clear and understandable explanation of what is wrong exactly...

[Rambobear]

I actually like the change, i have always wanted a way to kick the serve up and out or in to the opponents body so i was positively surprised when i noticed the change as i didnt know it had been changed. Though as it it now, the kick is too weak. Perhaps if you pick the twist serve talent, the effect can be greatly increased?

[Jirafalox]

Manu I saw some discussion on discord about this topic and I went out to test myself and this is my personal insight into the matter.
1. Yes the bounce behaves more realistically than before in the way that it moves laterally after it happens and it looks way better too so the complain is not in that regard at all.
2. Speed itself isn't an issue either.
3. Yes and here is the issue, before the twist serve had a continuous curve through the air and that was maintained after the bounce so with the pace of the serve this could be misread as a slice serve that could come into your body or a serve that kicks high and into your body, now that's completely out of the equation, and the biggest issue is that while the serve behaves this new way it makes it super easy to hit in your perfect strike zone horizontal wise, because now you only need to follow the ball without any thought proccess because the movement of the ball through the air gives away the twist effect way more clearly (which isn't bad by itself) but that being the case if you follow the ball path and stand in front of where it will bounce, the bounce itself will make the ball go to the right directly to the sweetspot of the returner or just a little tad off that auto-positioning can correct to perfection in a split second.

I played 3 full sets yesterday and I didn't miss a single second serve return when the opponent used the twist to my backhand (my player has a 1 hander and is 1,84 cm tall so in theory should struggle with that serve to the backhand but I was able to hit it off while standing on the literal baseline every time while hitting a lot of return winners because I only needed to stand in front of the bounce, no lateral adjustment required from my side at all so it was basically a free hard return without much skill required other than just standing right infront of the bounce not caring if it will come into my body at all)
Before at least the height and lateral spin of the bounce was more consistent and you could actually aim it into the body of someone forcing a weak return sometimes or even missed returns if you knew how to aim it and now that's basically out of the equation for the reasons after-mentioned thus making the twist serve weaker overall even if the numbers themselves didn't change much regarding speed and spin.

what's my proposal: to be totally honest this would be a perfect scenario to retune a bit either how high spin shots bounce or to tune a little bit the court physics bounce height overall. From my testing the only surface that has a realistic ball bounce in terms of height is clay.
I can hit 190-200 km/h serves on hard courts that barely hit the back wall after an ace even if I add a bit of topspin to them (game shows about 35-50 rps while mantaining a somewhat decent speed) and don't let me get started on baseline shots.
In real life we see pro players exchanging powerful shots in rallies 3-4 meters behind the baseline while hitting at their waist or even chest height most of the time and in the game we all have to play like prime federer standing 1 meter or even ON the baseline to hit the ball above the knee height even if the shots land deep. I think this is because the game really doesn't penalize consistency on shots actually landing in if you have low spin and maybe this was true for the 90s and early 2000s game but the current sport would be a nightmare for low spin players.
from what I have seen in the only scenario where the ball can bounce somewhat realistically in terms on height is when I'm playing against someone with 70+ topspin stat and is using a long prepared topspin strike, that's the only time a short could land at around the service line and still I'd be able to hit it 2 steps behind the baseline at a good height where you could feel free to aim it wherever in a real tennis scenario (i think it's way too easy to change direction on low spin skidding balls right now too but that's just me I haven't seen this complain anywhere)
So naturally the twist or topspin serves and also the normal acceleration serves don't bounce high enough because all shots don't bounce high enough apart from clay, this making returning from deeper way less efficient because you hit a falling ball.
We really can't encourage people struggling to return to just go deeper like in real life because the ball will be incredibly low when they make contact with it, so they will have to hit the ball "up" instead of through so the ball will more likely than not be always a free sitter for the opponent to hit the serve +1 almost every single time because of the lack of height on the serves, specially "flatter" ones. Dani21 commented on this issue in the autopositioning removal thread. So really a lot of the little nuances of the game balance that still need fixing, including the power balance of return vs serve are heavily tied to the ball bounce height and maybe we haven't really discussed it.
I created a small mod that added an extra CoR1 (or CoF1, can't remember which was the one that could be added but you know what I mean) to a XKT hard court and also 0,01 of deltaE to it and the bounce height improved a bit but idk if the true solution would be to just standarize those changes into all the modded xkt courts, and also this will make the courts play slower ofc and I think the speed of the courts is fine


I know this latter part is a big headache but I think the game needs it in the future because even myself I can play with as low as 10-20% topspin and never miss a shot into the net if I really try hard to be consistent and not force anything and that shouldn't be the case at all specially against an opponent hitting more spinny shots, and also as I mentioned before you can hit normal shots off low balls that barely get spin (under 30 rps) and those land in and very deep everytime and also don't bounce hight at all ofc so it's like a faster slice that skids almost, there's no point on using high topspin because the ball doesn't bounce high enough to actually be a problem to handle and having low spin doesn't make you miss more into the net or long and it gives you an actual weapon with low skidding shots that you can't defend more than 2 steps behind the baseline. Also net clearance of the shots doesn't mimic irl tennis but that could be related to everyone using too low of a topspin stat (which should be ok at the expense of missing a lot more into the net and long but that doesn't happen)

Sorry for the long rant but I always want to give insights to my opinions so you can actually see the logic behind what I'm trying to say/propose

[Dani21]

1) The bounce is now much more realistic than before.

100% that I can agree with.

2) The speed after bounce didn't change.

That's also true. However the advantage of the twist serve before hand was not the speed but how unpredictable the bounce was leading to shanked returns.

3) With a right-handed player, after the bounce, it goes more to the right than before, and less to the left, so it gives more opportunities to the right and less to the left. The sliced serve is the opposite. So basically, you got more total range than before.
So I'm going to need a clear and understandable explanation of what is wrong exactly...

The issue is the fact that now that after the bounce to the right the ball does not alter trajectory almost at all. Therefore when you see the direction in which the serve is hit it is almost impossible to miss the return. On the old serve, even when you saw the initial direction, you still had to adapt after the bounce leading to potential shanks or short returns. Now the ball bounces straight into the strike zone and the positioning is perfect, making the twist serve basically useless by all intents and purposes.

The idea of the autopos fix was that returning becomes more difficult especially on second serves which IRL are way less punishing then modeled in the game (you pick a great second server like alcaraz or sinner and the point starts from neutral every time or maybe even slight server advantage. In the game attacking the second as a returner is very easy. The autopos was meant to help fix that. But now maybe the best second serve choice was completely nerfed. So to make up for this the serve itself needs to be buffed. Not from a speed perspective but from a bounce perspective. IRL especially one handers have to return twist second serves from very far back because of how high the ball bounces. In the game the ball bounce is pretty low so no matter the server it just jumps straight into the strike zone ready to be attacked. As Jira mentioned, for the autopos update i already mentioned that we need to make deep returns more feasible while making the ball bounce higher on serves, because right now not only is everyone having to return close to the baseline like Federer, but actually you have to do it in order to be able to return properly.

With all due respect, it feels like the updates do not have any sort of logic and continuity and for one step forward we take one step sideways and then one step back and at the end of the day there are just 10 changes every 2 months which completely alter the gameplay and lead to a lot of confusion among the community. Marco provided in his post a couple of logical steps that could be taken for next year. Now i understand there was no time for that but what i do not comprehend is how there was time to implement a twist serve update immediately after it being mentioned in the discord server, but there isn't for a calendar which has already been proposed publicly in the forum and backed by several of the more experienced online players out there.

Thank you ,
Dani21

[Nicky Gi.]

It also feels now that you have to really try to get a fault when you add slice to the serve, even if it is a strong serve.

[manutoo]

Dani21 & Jirafalox,
I'm still having a hard time understanding your explanation, because the ball trajectory before the bounce hasn't changed at all, and the AutoPos already predicts the trajectory after the bounce to position the returner correctly, both before and after the update.

So I don't see why the old twist would have been harder to read, or why the new one would automatically lead to better returns. Are you starting to press a strike button after the bounce ?

I actually tested the old and new bounces side by side, alternating between them on every serve, and my observations are quite different from yours.

For example, on the backhand side, the old twist behaved more like a sliced serve, with the ball coming towards the returner's body. Now, the ball moves away from the body after the bounce, so the returner has to position himself differently from what the initial curve might suggest.

And a wide twist serve from the advantage court, with a right-handed server against a right-handed returner, pushes him outside even more !

Of course, some serve placements have become less effective, while others have become more effective. That's the logical consequence of changing the bounce direction, and it doesn't mean the twist has been nerfed overall.

As for the bounce height, it didn't change. The maximum height is the same; only its location on the court has shifted slightly.

Dani21
BTW, I checked the first 2 games of the Bug Report you sent me yesterday, and the only twisted 2nd serve I saw was actually a service winner against a ~2300 Elo player. Of course, that's just one example, but it doesn't exactly support the idea that the twist has become "basically useless".

So I'm really struggling to understand what you're experiencing. Maybe you're still using your usual serve placements, which no longer produce exactly the same results ?

Regarding the updates, there's no single overarching goal of improving the online experience (reminder : online players are a tiny minority of the player base). My goal is to improve the game bit by bit, as I've been doing for many years now.

Jirafalox,
Your explanation of the twist becoming easier to read is also difficult for me to follow, since the trajectory before the bounce is exactly the same as before. In fact, the new bounce can make the ball move in a direction that is less consistent with its initial curve, not more.

And please, let's keep the discussion focused on the twist serve. If you want to discuss baseline rallies, their speed or their balance, feel free to open a separate topic. Mixing several unrelated gameplay issues into the same discussion makes it much harder to analyze them properly. 🙂

Dani21 & Jirafalox,
That said, I'm considering making twist serves a bit more difficult to return by increasing the aiming imprecision caused by their spin : this would make returning a twist more demanding without changing the bounce physics or preventing aggressive returns.

However, I'm not convinced this is necessarily a good idea yet. It could make the twist by far the best 2nd serve, especially compared with the flat serve (the sliced serve already combines lateral displacement with an aiming penalty).

[Dani21]

BTW, I checked the first 2 games of the Bug Report you sent me yesterday, and the only twisted 2nd serve I saw was actually a service winner against a ~2300 Elo player. Of course, that's just one example, but it doesn't exactly support the idea that the twist has become "basically useless".

However, I'm not convinced this is necessarily a good idea yet. It could make the twist by far the best 2nd serve, especially compared with the flat serve (the sliced serve already combines lateral displacement with an aiming penalty).

We can do a side by side comparison between pre-update and post update impact of the twist serve if you want. Of course you can throw in the odd curveball serve and get a good reply, but as me, Jira, Madferit have said it is a considerably weaker serve now.
Let's put it to the test in the realistic mode on the main tour. We can check exactly how well a twist serve does nowadays compared to before.

Regarding the updates, there's no single overarching goal of improving the online experience (reminder : online players are a tiny minority of the player base). My goal is to improve the game bit by bit, as I've been doing for many years now.

Then why did you slow the autopos? What was the goal there? What was the goal of the 772 update? Why would this twist serve update improve the game but Marco's suggestion to reduce speed which is surprisingly rapid at the moment would not?
Also why can we not have both goals? Taking care of the spirited online community which is doing a great job at promoting the game with mods (the main mods of the game have been created by players whose play was exclusively online in the game) while also attempting to improve the game. Yes i agree that the twist serve is more realistic now but this sort of lack of continuity is hurting exactly the players who have invested the most effort into the game with mods and other helpful stuff. It is unfair to us to continuously have to adapt and readapt and change and comment and debate and so on and so forth.
Again, nobody asked for a change of the twist serve until a week ago. The community has asked for some other changes with regard to online for quite some time and the reply was it takes too much effort. It does feel disheartening at the very least that one random mention is considered for immediate update whereas feedback proposed by multiple people is not considered.

Sidenote: I got into tennis elbow from TEM2 so i used to be an exclusively offline player for years until 2021 or 2022. An offline player will keep playing no matter how the twist serve looks or feels. Online players though may just give up completely due to frustration. There have already been players who have considered no longer playing due to basically having to "relearn" the online meta every 2 months. I'm not asking for much, just a bit of consideration to us as well. We want the best for the game just as much as you do, but changes like the twist making the serve considerably less impactful and changing all patterns all over again (without even maintaining an overarching plan or path to balance) are just very difficult to deal with.

[Jirafalox]

“So I don't see why the old twist would have been harder to read, or why the new one would automatically lead to better returns. Are you starting to press a strike button after the bounce ?”

Before yes I was pressing it after because I had to make sure it was a body twist serve or sliced one because as you mentioned further in you reply (which I appreciate being so detailed) the twist serve was to be confused with the slice one so in both scenarios I would move to where the ball was going until I realized it was coming to the body with sidespin, then after that I would check the bounce to decide to actually attack it with normal shot down the line or middle or just slice it back or use topspin cross if it was a twisted serve.

This is because the sliced serve even if it was coming to the body I knew i could hit it strongly with normal shot because the bounce height wouldn’t be an issue or factor to take in mind as the autopositioning could move me enough to hit the ball properly anyways

But with the twist coming to the body I couldn’t manage to do the same because the height would make it problematic and would lead to weak or even missed returns and that’s why it was actually effective before
It had that confusion factor that just doesnt have now that could lead to over hitting the return because you could get it confused with a body sliced serve instead

Now I can default to use the normal shot to both serves because if its actually is a slice serve to body the height won’t make it problematic enough so I can hit it with freedom using normal shot and if its a twist serve then even if the height will be a little problematic (not enough imo) the bounce going into the right will make it go straight into my perfect strike zone laterally wise so that just counter acts hitting in a somewhat uncomfortable height or an aggresive raising bounce and also added that since now I know this is the case, I just press the shot button as early as getting literally in front of where the bounce will be so if it continues to my body with slice or kicks out to my left it won’t matter much because of the mentioned reasons and ALSO because I already gained some extra preparation time because I know I won’t have to make little adjustments after the bounce

Hope that makes the difference clear enough even tho I can elaborate more if needed

And yes sorry to mix things up, I’ll create a separate thread on that topic later after this thing is solved. i dont want to be asking for so many things at the same time because i know it gets exhausting for you and everyone

[Madferit]

Dani and Jira both do a great job explaining more in detail my issues with the serve itself.

As far as the comparison between offline and online players, I do have to point out the fact that gameplay changes affect online players way more. In offline you can always "dance around" updates by tweaking difficulty or even stats to each person preference. To the point if you literally dont like an update, you can modify your own game to make it quite literally void. So changes that may seem minor for offline, actually do make a huge difference online where there is no dancing around it.

Then again, autopos update got done cause a couple online players suggested it. This very change of twist serve happened... cause one person pointed it out? Cause here on this thread alone we already have 5 people agreeing with their dislikement of it, and we've talked with many more as well in private. So I just don't understand what is the criteria for which suggestions are taken into account and which aren't.

[TheTinkerman_]

Just my two cents, i think the others have explained it well so I will keep is short:

I don’t think the new twist serve works as well as the old one, and here’s why.

Although the new version is more realistic it doesn’t account for how people actually play: almost everyone holds auto pos. Since the ball now twists towards the returner, I can keep holding the shot button and return it without moving. Before, a twist serve forced you to let go of auto pos and chase the ball, otherwise you’d struggle to get to it.

I do see the upside. The new mechanics open up a twist serve “out wide” to a right-hander’s backhand (right-hander to right-hander), which wasn’t possible before. Previously the only way to go wide there was a straight serve, but that doesn’t spin enough to pull the opponent far out of position.

In simple terms, it’s now easier to return a lot more serves.

I get the idea behind making the twist serve behave differently so you have two directions to choose from (slice or twist). But in practice the slice serve stays low, whereas the old twist serve kicked up and was much harder to handle.

One possible fix: let the server choose which way the ball kicks up (left or right). I’m not sure how realistic that is in real tennis though, haha.

[polakis]

Sorry but what is the twist serve and how to do it?