Powerful strikes that allow you to punish opponents if they throw defensive lobs at you (often nicknamed "penalty" strikes).
Quick counters to add hard-hitting options when receiving a fast ball.
Hundreds of animations have been adjusted to feel more dynamic. The inertia of many animations has been reduced to allow quick come backs in the rally.
Added a new "3D View" to official players' profiles that allows you to have a close look at their 3D models, outfits and animations.
Players will automatically let the ball go out instead of volleying it when they are close enough to the bounce.
New texture added for the clay courts' grounds.
Added clay FX on slides and cutscenes on clay courts.
New cutscene animations at the start of points, some dedicated to clay courts.
Improved graphics (lighting and shading has been reworked for all venues).
Added new animations to further reduce unwanted effects and added new smash possibilities.
Balancing (gameplay)
Greatly increased the overall pace of the game. All shots have been reviewed and tweaked to provide higher ball speeds, and speeds that are better suited to stroke motion.
Serves are more powerful and will pass the net at high speeds more often.
Smashes & volleys are much more agile and easy to use, and smashes are much more powerful.
Increased the sprint speed in all directions.
Reworked the lateral slice: it will now be applied to inside-out sliced forehand shots.
Reworked Madison Keys stats and skills to make her more of a hard-hitting baseline attacker.
Improved the accuracy on easy shots.
Slightly slowing down the ball speed during rallies and the speed of the most extreme movements.
Reducing the angles that can be obtained with cross-court strokes.
Reducing the power and angle of half-volley strokes from the baseline.
Balancing (career mode)
ATP/WTA players ranking and performance has been tuned to match their current real world ranking in the Career Mode.
Tuned the ranking points earned each tournament to better reflect the real rewards and give more points for the bigger ones.
Opened 3-stars tournaments to players up to rank 20, making them more challenging.
Reduced the amount of Rest given by events, to balance the fact that you can choose 2 events per month.
Better seeding for the top players in big tournaments. Up to 16 players will benefit from top-seed positions.
AI improvements
New serve strategies for AI.
Tweaked AI's response to serves, effectively enabling the player to serve Aces, especially on easy difficulties.
Improved AI positioning.
Tweaked the AI's use of lobs (depending on difficulty).
Improved the AI's behavior when a ball seems out of reach.
The AI will react more aggressively when taken out of position or running to a dropshot.
The longer the rally lasts, the more aggressive the AI will become.
The AI will more consistently break the diagonal rally, especially with harder difficulties.
SFX
Reworked most stroke and rebound SFX to make them sound more powerful.
Fixed a bug with backhand hit SFX, making them sound like they were played twice.
Reworked the crowd ambience and reactions.
Added new SFX to cutscenes, serve rituals, the training ball machine, and more.
Reworked groans types available (4 male / 4 female).
Improved the variety of audio commentaries.
Bug fixes
Fixed sidestep teleportation and sudden opponent sprints during online matches.
Fixed a bug where the player would be rotating during a strike, when they're not supposed to.
Fixed a bug where the point could end as soon as a let occurs, instead of giving the players the opportunity to catch the ball.
Fixed the end of match cameras for left-handed players.
Reworked the transition between the rally and the end of point.
Fixed a bug that was penalizing accuracy in training mode, making all trainings harder to complete than they should be.
Fixed a bug that was generating unforced errors on charged slices.
Fixed a bug where two-handed topspin volleys could be used by one-handed backhand players.
Fixed a graphical glitch with Agassi's 2018 outfit.
Fixed a minor bug on the display of community objective thresholds.
Fixed the shadows in the Mexico venue.
Fixed a texture on the Paris Major's ads.
Fixed some small inaccuracies with London's court lines.
Fixed the issue with reversed Yonex bags on the court.
Fixed unwanted player groans during sprints.
Fixed a case where players were forced to abandon while there was still a chance to catch the ball.
Fixed a bug with most of the official players' passive bonuses. They have now all been applied correctly.
Fixed some rare crashes in the equipment menu.
Fixed some rare crashes during clay matches.
Fixed a bug where the animation of end points could be played twice.
Fixed a curved effect ("banana shot") which could be applied mistakenly to some slices.
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.
Sped up the rally and serve pace (about +5%).
Improved the global accuracy on difficult ball, because Attackers were causing too many unforced errors on difficult shots or difficult positions.
Lowered the height threshold for the "low-arc" malus on shots, from 60cm down to 40cm.
Increased the regeneration of stamina between points and 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.
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.
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 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.
Added a help interface during service that gives feedback on the risk taken. This option can be disabled in the option menu.
The "replay" button is now accessible even if the cutscenes are disabled in the options 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
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".
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
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.
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.
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 serve & volleyer.
Tweaking AI faults depending on AI difficulty.
Bug fixes
Fixing a crash in some camera traveling.
Fixing Sophie Walker's XP bonus in displayed XP points.
Fixing Maxime Teixeira's unlock as a playable character when Academy School is 100% complete.
Fixing the « Round » displayed in « My performance » in the Tournament result screen when forfeiting before a match. It was off by one round in this case.
Misc
Controller vibrations added on strokes (this can be disabled in the Options menu).
There is now a help for serve, activated at default. This will help you understand when to release pressure on your controller to perform the best serve.