Easy Way To Raise Scores

[fondername0]

IMO, the courses are not the problem with the scores... I think the courses are totally awesome.....its the game engine on TGC that is too easy.  Hitting 9/10 fairways is no problem,   players are putting lights out on a regular basis.   You can get up and down from most anywhere inside 100 yards without too much difficulty.   This is not the courses problem.  Lots of these courses that guys are going mid 50s on would be hard as hell if they really existed in real life.   Water down one side of the hole is nothing in this game, just point and fire.  

All that being said....what if designers put some serious break on the greens?   Maybe not an easy way, but just a thought.  

You could raise scores by making the fairways and greens 10 feet wide, but then visually it won't look or feel like golf.

[bentfivewood]

It is a rare course that is both difficult and fair. I've seen many designs that are difficult but only because of ridiculous undulations, object obstructions, and unfair hole layout (eg long carries over water). I've also seen many courses that are made difficult only by sliding the firmness and green speeds to the max.

A few of the courses selected for qschool were both difficult and fair but those are few and far between. Magnolia is a very difficult course but without a ridiculous layout or tricks.

I think that having a greater degree of control over the speed of greens and fairways would make a difference because then people would need to adjust their putting more. At present, so far as I understand, there are really only three settings; slow, medium, and fast.

[Matt10]

I don't' think it will be the courses. It's simply the aides, man. I'm not saying take them all off. Take off 2: Scout Cam, and auto club selection.

Scout Cam is the biggest culprit to these super low scores. You are basically teleporting to where your ball is going to land. This removes the chance of any blind shots possibilities (how some courses are designed), essentially removing the difficulty factor that the course designer had intended.

[Pubknight]

Don't push the panic button yet.
Give it some time to see if HB comes up with a tournament wind solution that would force people to play in varying winds, and different winds, round by round.
My prediction is you will see a drastic change in scoring when that happens.

[mellowswe]

Feb 17, 2015 11:36:41 GMT -5 bentfivewood said:

I've also seen many courses that are made difficult only by sliding the firmness and green speeds to the max.

I don't necessarily think it's the firm/fast combo per se, the problem is designers making a 190 yard carry over water/bunker and 10 ft of green to stop the ball on...works ok with soft greens and then to make it difficult they bump the firmness resulting in an impossible approach.
I think that there is another dimension to making long tough holes with 180-190 yd approach shots into firm/fast greens where the green is large enough to let you land that shot on the green. The long rollout will be difficult for even the good players to judge, especially if you put some decent breaks in the green. My hope would be to leave players with more 20 ft putts instead of 5 ft putts...but still allowing a perfect shot to nestle close.
Obviously shorter approaches can be tucked in behind bunkers, just as long as the intended club on approach can carry the green and stop.

Oh well, now all I need is someone to design it for me because in about a month I've only made one hole on that course.

[Matt10]

Feb 17, 2015 13:19:12 GMT -5 Pubknight said:

Don't push the panic button yet.
Give it some time to see if HB comes up with a tournament wind solution that would force people to play in varying winds, and different winds, round by round.
My prediction is you will see a drastic change in scoring when that happens.

The problem is the game is not a sim with all aides on. Sim meaning simulating real life golf. The issue with that approach of course is that all users are not made alike, and most would not prefer to have certain aides off. I think we can find a happy medium if it was seriously considered though. It's just tough watching some awesome courses getting dominated...makes it feel cheap and I can't imagine what the course designers think. Spends a month building a course, and gets a 5.0 - only to have guys shoot in the 50's for 3 out of 4 rounds...just sayin.

[Mitchblue]

I think removing scout cam and auto club selection is a fun way to play..

[Deleted]

Just played "The Challenge Club" in 13-21mph winds. Most of those winds were around 15-19mph. I managed to shoot E for the round and not at one point did i get angry which is brilliant.

I love this kind of golf.

[Pubknight]

Feb 17, 2015 14:12:28 GMT -5 Matt10 said:

The problem is the game is not a sim with all aides on. Sim meaning simulating real life golf. The issue with that approach of course is that all users are not made alike, and most would not prefer to have certain aides off. I think we can find a happy medium if it was seriously considered though. It's just tough watching some awesome courses getting dominated...makes it feel cheap and I can't imagine what the course designers think. Spends a month building a course, and gets a 5.0 - only to have guys shoot in the 50's for 3 out of 4 rounds...just sayin.

Well, it's not a sim.
It's a game.
And trying to make it more sim-like won't change that it's a game... and gives people options.
Any option you turn off in tournament play, can be turned on in non-tournament play on the same courses.
That is an easy to exploit mechanic.

There are so many things that HB have talked about that could change scoring: round by round tournament wind conditions, making the flop shot tougher, reducing the accuracy cone on lofted shots more dramatically.
The game is evolving.
Let it evolve.

[Matt10]

Feb 17, 2015 14:41:42 GMT -5 Pubknight said:

Feb 17, 2015 14:12:28 GMT -5 Matt10 said:

The problem is the game is not a sim with all aides on. Sim meaning simulating real life golf. The issue with that approach of course is that all users are not made alike, and most would not prefer to have certain aides off. I think we can find a happy medium if it was seriously considered though. It's just tough watching some awesome courses getting dominated...makes it feel cheap and I can't imagine what the course designers think. Spends a month building a course, and gets a 5.0 - only to have guys shoot in the 50's for 3 out of 4 rounds...just sayin.

Well, it's not a sim.
It's a game.
And trying to make it more sim-like won't change that it's a game... and gives people options.
Any option you turn off in tournament play, can be turned on in non-tournament play on the same courses.
That is an easy to exploit mechanic.

There are so many things that HB have talked about that could change scoring: round by round tournament wind conditions, making the flop shot tougher, reducing the accuracy cone on lofted shots more dramatically.
The game is evolving.
Let it evolve.

I'm not talking about HB's direction. That is more masking of what the core issues towards difficulty are.

Yes, it is a game. A game that represents the game we play. I mean...we're on a tour here, right? A fantastic tour that has everything as close to real life that I can find. You've got a great website, full leaderboard, a weekly wrap up review show, 1,000's of submitted courses, and a great community. The only thing is, and I know there are plenty of others that feels the same way, when you see that leaderboard has guys shooting -45 on what is considered medium to difficult courses, and you see the "once in a lifetime" shooting of the 50's become a regular occurrence. 

All I'm saying that removing 1 or 2 aides doesn't feel like it's removing "options", instead it's presenting more opportunities for one of the best experiences in not just the virtual golf world, but even possibly, the virtual sports world. Anything HB decides to do after that will only enhance what the tour can achieve.

[Pubknight]

And that's fine, I get your point.
My point is that particular path is extremely easy to exploit... that's what I mean when I say 'options'.
Just throwing an example out there... I play on PS4... I'm in the tournament with aids off.
I could have my laptop with me, beside me.
I could play the same course via 'play round' with the aids on.
That's an exploit.
and that's just off the top of my head.
Vid clips of tee shots scanning landing areas with shot cams, screen caps of the same, etc., etc.
If they exist in the game, turning them off doesn't mean they aren't there to be used nefariously.

And lets say you turn those aids off and the scores don't materially change... what then?
If the -45 goes to -40, is that good enough?  What about -35 or -30?  How about -20?
How low is 'acceptable'?
Because it's not going from -45 to -4, I can promise you that.

As it is a video game, and ultimately patterns can be memorized, and motions duplicated almost exactly, the scoring will never, ever, be like real golf.
It will always be unrealistically lower than real golf, because it's not real golf.

[Kodiak_OS]

Until HB finally decides to quit being stubborn and thin the cone with the driver, low scores will continue to be an issue. I've said it before and I'll say it again, PGA players don't hit the fairway with driver at the rate this game allows. For all the good they have done with tuning and enhancing, this is a glaring issue that they need to address, with the ease of flopping closely behind.

[djdavefl]

Wow, if someone was playing a tourney on PS4 with aides off, and plopped a laptop next to them just to be able to use the scout cam, then he/she has even less of a life than I do, and obviously needs the self-esteem boost of seeing their name on the top of the leaderboard.

As I have mentioned before, and Mitchblue concurred, without Scout Cam to see the landing area, especially the contour of the green on approach shots and without the club select option, which forces you to actually use the aiming marker, rather than just a fine adjustment, you would see a lot more skill come into play.

Will we ever see 4 round totals of -20 or worse, no we won't. But 4 round totals of -36 or worse yeah with some modifications.

When I shoot a round of 60 or 61, I feel I have accomplished something, only to find that I am 5 or 6 shots off the lead.

Would I still shoot a round of 60 or 61 without the aides, probably not. Would we still see rounds of 55, probably not.

The good players will always be 5 to 6 shots per round better than I, but the scores may look more lifelike.

One last point about relative scoring....

Rather than moan and complain, here is a little mental trick.....

Scoring on TGC is a bit like the metric system.

Real Golf is measured in miles...
TGC is measured in kilometers

i.e. 10 under par in TGC = 6 under par in real life

[wendy]

a way to make this game harder imo is to get rid of lofting clubs, just have draw/fade no more lofting and use feel instead of lofting to a certain distance

[Kodiak_OS]

Feb 17, 2015 15:45:58 GMT -5 wendy said:

a way to make this game harder imo is to get rid of lofting clubs, just have draw/fade no more lofting and use feel instead of lofting to a certain distance

I agree but if they do that, they would have to enable a way to move ball further up or back in the stance.