FT evo

Well in the last days i happened to watch some tennis matches on tv (Indian Wells and Miami) and it was long time i wasnt doing it (i got Sky just recently ^^).
Boy, it's been really hard to stay there until the matches end... Always the same plot repeated point after point: cannoning from the backcourt until one shot was enough deep to score, or to force the opponent to a weak reply and successive easy closing shot... Forever!
And what i disliked more was that no matter who were the players, the plot was more or less the same. Nadal-Roddick was the same of Robredo-Whoever (the only difference was the ball speed). Im not saying Nadal is the same of Robredo, but the gamethread was the same i said above.
In the 80s tennis was a total different sport than today. If u got the chance to see some old game involving 2 random among McEnroe, Borg, Lendl, Connors, Becker, Edberg, Noah, Leconte, and even more recent players like Agassi and Sampras, u'll easily understand what im saying.
In brief, for these guys, what counted for more wasnt the equipment (rackets were mainly made of wood) or the body scuplture (see McEnroe's and Borg's body for an example). What counted was technique, period. You could see points scored by a good wrist movement, or a soft touch at net, or a well played drop shot, etc.

Well i dont wanna go on cuz u already understood the concept: this has a lot to do with FT.
FT1 was like real tennis in the 80s/early 90s, the technique counted for more than equipment. I have experienced this by myself with my main niki. I have stats like 3000/1000 (or something like that) and the wide majority of that points i made with gold clothes and ap-non-str clothes. And stats counted a bit but not in a fundamental way like today: my niki wasnt full-str, was balanced in all stats (something impossible to even think today, today if u are not full-str or full-wil +r full-sta, depending on what mode u gotta play, u're a "nobody").
Today FT2 is like nowadays tennis: if you dont have the right equipment and the right body (read, stats) u cannot compete with the "big dogs".

So whats the point in all this (u may ask ^^)? The point is that maybe FT didnt change just cuz of Alaplaya's (or N-Pic's if u like) need for money, FT -also- changed for a natural evolution of things, from a romantic phase to a "i-want-it-all-and-i-want-it-now" phase that, if u notice, is a regular rule in everyday's life.

Dont worry, Ala didnt hire me as counselor. ^^
I'm a romantic person i love Borg, McEnroe and Lendl, and i dont like Roddick and Nadal, and i'd rather the old FT for sure, but sometimes i like to have an alternative point of view about things.

this opinion isn't idiot. FT changed for natural thing. true ! but sure they want more money =).

( btw, they have only nub event ! )

I'm not that much into tennis. In germany (I think it's also a french or general european tv channel) we have Eurosport. It's hardly to watch recent tournaments like French Open, Wimbledon, Australian Open,... but fortunately you can watch a lot of old classics. Becker vs McEnroe 87, about 6 hours, was just amazing. I got well entertained for 6 hours ^^ Nowadays I can't watch the recent matches longer than some minutes.
I was born in 1991, so I just can compare old classics (picked out ones! there were also bad games) with very recent games. But, in the few games I watched I felt exactly the same and I can really share your opinion.

The same happened with football, isn't it? The sweeper is gone, a german example would be Beckenbauer.
Instead of sweeper we are playin - Thanks to Squadra Azzurra - with 2 defensive midfielder.
Comparing this to FT, the boring player often win against the teams/player which try to play the game in a nice way.
For example a player called Synomi/Oss, kinda bad stats but a great offensive player.

Well, I don't know if FT's evolution is doing in paralel to real tennis (RT). I ignore how devs' team is into RT.
Current days RT is not so skill based because things like physic strength and tchnologies have advanced a lot. Rackets allow higher string tension, which allows you to do higher spin effect, rackets are also balanced and composed in a way to give the ball more speed+control. And for sure, players are trained to be more athletic and strong than the old players that you mentioned.
If there is one issue that differenciates Ft from RT is, imo, the accuracy. Seldom to see the ball going OUT in FT. Lobs are almost everytime IN, while in RT lobs are a weak resource, very defensive and almost everytime countered with smash. And in RT a good placed smash=90% point.
In FT smash and lobs are very usual, but no so critical shot. The most unreal shot at FT would be the charged crossed lobs. Hard to imagine those kind of lobs at RT. And everytime those lobs happens are great points, but rare.
That's why at RT 2v2 is so usual to see double front and so hilarious to do that at FT. Unreal accuracy.
Another important difference is service. Here service is almost a problem, even if you use to do charged services. At 1v1 service = advantage for the receiver. Here is no chance to fail service, no 2nd service enabled. Everybody should know how important is the serve at RT, for the server. Aces are usual.
Another issue would be the surface, so important at RT for bounce, movements and ballspeed, this doesn't exist at FT, where the only difference is a visual handicap.

Imo, the chargeshot increasing takes closer FT to RT at normal shots (S button) but it's unreal for lobs because the accuracy. Anyway, to complete the chargeshot increase, it would have been senseful to increase, or to do able to increase, in a noticeable way the movement speed. A notorious thing like speed hasn't almost any difference in FT, with +5 ms shoes almost everybody moves at the same lvl. That's not like this at RT.

I guess this won't change.

About to watch tennis nowadays, I still enjoy it, maybe not so funny like old times, but you can still appreciate things like mind-strength (50% of tennis) and there are still super-class players like Roger Federer. I am pretty sure that he'd have been also a number 1 at old times with wooden Slazenger/Dunlop/Donnay/Pro kennex rackets.

Spoiler:

Well, I agree totally with Atom's post, but guys, don't try to compare our game with real tennis, remeber a thing, this game is called... Fantasy Tennis ^^

AtomSmasher wrote:

Spoiler:

OMG xD do you know them nowadays?

wrote:
For example a player called Synomi/Oss, kinda bad stats but a great offensive player.

My partner and favourite player to play with . He's a good defensive player aswell. Feel really comfident when he's backing while I'm front. Löl, my stats are as bad as his . Dull ftw.

Yeah, I really can't sit through a whole tennis match. They last so long + it tends to be the same points etc through-out the match. I haven't really seen many "old-school" matches but the some I've seen were really much more fun to watch. Once in a dock cafe, waiting for a boat, an old 80s game was on and I was blown away how different it was back then. The players weren't, shall we say, "so limited" as they are now and really there were some lol moments when it was just ridiculous how one of them scored a point. FT compared to RT is nothing. Basically I feel sad that I haven't seen as many old matches and I was born in a different "era".
FT isn't really beginner-friendly with all of the "nub-flamer" environment so that's sad. It's rare for a new good player to come up as there's no way for new-comers to get better and 80% people will just catch the "flamer-virus" making them call others nubs etc aswell.

Well this post didn't make any sense and was full of some... thingy.

Btw... Point-backs are so 2009.

Poseidon wrote:Well this post didn't make any sense and was full of some... thingy.

Nah, imo u got things right: today FT hasnt an affordable entry-level anymore. I mean, in the past u could start a new account/char and play many matches as a normal gold player (Tempoo and Flox are 2 examples). Today if u dont *start* with a str set or a charge set u're a nobody. And in real tennis it's the same: in the 80s u could work something out even if u hadnt the Lendl forehand or the McEnroe volee, but today if u are not a "Big Jim" with the ultimate racket it's better u dont show up on a court.

Poseidon wrote:Btw... Point-backs are so 2009.

It was about time!! Finally i can confess that i never could stand the pb-criers!
^_^