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Post by FranzNotHans on Jan 27, 2021 10:28:01 GMT -5
I’m looking for some advice regarding course difficulty ratings. I’ve published two courses so far but I’m not sure what parameters affect this rating. My full course is rated as “Easiest” and my mini golf course is rated “Hard”. It appears that this difficulty rating is applied to the course as soon as it’s published and is not linked to the handicap rating that is applied after 300 plays.
Can anyone tell me what needs to be done during design to influence the difficulty rating?
I thought it might have something to do with parameters like green speed, but the speed is set the same on. It’s if my courses.
Any help would be appreciated as I’m working on my next course and would love to have some control over this.
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Post by charliehustle on Jan 27, 2021 10:40:26 GMT -5
Unless we can limit what difficulty settings are allowed to be used for the course, there is nothing from stopping the entire community from playing your course on beginner difficulty.
It seems that the best way to influence difficulty is to work hard to produce a course that would be played in societies that play on more realistic settings that challenge a player "in the right way."
TGC Tours approval seems to be the best vehicle to get courses driven to their more "natural" difficulty ratings. But that's just my opinion.
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Post by sroel908 on Jan 27, 2021 10:46:00 GMT -5
Unless we can limit what difficulty settings are allowed to be used for the course, there is nothing from stopping the entire community from playing your course on beginner difficulty. There are others who will likely play your course from the forward tees as well, with no wind, slow and soft greens and fairways, etc. So you'll see scores on your course leaderboard that are insanely low no matter what settings you set as default.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 27, 2021 10:49:19 GMT -5
I’m looking for some advice regarding course difficulty ratings. I’ve published two courses so far but I’m not sure what parameters affect this rating. My full course is rated as “Easiest” and my mini golf course is rated “Hard”. It appears that this difficulty rating is applied to the course as soon as it’s published and is not linked to the handicap rating that is applied after 300 plays. Can anyone tell me what needs to be done during design to influence the difficulty rating? I thought it might have something to do with parameters like green speed, but the speed is set the same on. It’s if my courses. Any help would be appreciated as I’m working on my next course and would love to have some control over this. Best advice is to ignore this. You can also safely ignore HCP rating and the hcp system in game which is not good at all.
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Post by FranzNotHans on Jan 27, 2021 10:52:59 GMT -5
I guess the thing I’m struggling with is that this difficulty rating is applied to the course as soon as it’s published and before ever being played by the public, so it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with custom settings that people choose before playing. My guess is that there’s some sort of algorithm that determines the difficulty rating based on some design factors that I’m trying to identify.
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Post by charliehustle on Jan 27, 2021 11:00:25 GMT -5
I guess the thing I’m struggling with is that this difficulty rating is applied to the course as soon as it’s published and before ever being played by the public, so it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with custom settings that people choose before playing. My guess is that there’s some sort of algorithm that determines the difficulty rating based on some design factors that I’m trying to identify. I don't think it's worth trying to identify what determines the rating and just try to make each hole play like you intend them to play. Don't get in your own head and think you need to change something because that extra foot of elevation is going to register as being more difficult.
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Post by FranzNotHans on Jan 27, 2021 13:23:29 GMT -5
I completely agree, and I don’t think it would really have a big impact on my sculpting and designing in general, but I’m asking purely out of curiosity if anyone knows for sure what are the factors that affect this rating.
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Post by b101 on Jan 27, 2021 14:05:22 GMT -5
I’m looking for some advice regarding course difficulty ratings. I’ve published two courses so far but I’m not sure what parameters affect this rating. My full course is rated as “Easiest” and my mini golf course is rated “Hard”. It appears that this difficulty rating is applied to the course as soon as it’s published and is not linked to the handicap rating that is applied after 300 plays. Can anyone tell me what needs to be done during design to influence the difficulty rating? I thought it might have something to do with parameters like green speed, but the speed is set the same on. It’s if my courses. Any help would be appreciated as I’m working on my next course and would love to have some control over this. Best advice is to ignore this. You can also safely ignore HCP rating and the hcp system in game which is not good at all. 100% this. Also ignore the course rating and the number of plays. It's all meaningless
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Post by cd06 on Jan 27, 2021 14:10:26 GMT -5
Echoing Ben above. When (if) I (ever) publish my first course, I would prefer to know I'd made something good/worth a single play rather than it having 1000 plays in five days.
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Post by ErixonStone on Jan 29, 2021 8:32:22 GMT -5
I completely agree, and I don’t think it would really have a big impact on my sculpting and designing in general, but I’m asking purely out of curiosity if anyone knows for sure what are the factors that affect this rating. In earlier editions of the game, the difficulty rating of a course was determined by the average score attained on the course by all players. What this meant was that, if your course was played by any serious society, it would get a difficulty rating of "Easiest" just because you had a bunch of expert players shooting -10 each round. Get your course on one of those public societies and watch the difficulty rating soar towards "Hardest" because a bunch of novices are shooting 90. I can't imagine that it's been changed anywhere along the way. HB did not put any thought into the difficulty rating of a course, so you shouldn't either. It's utterly meaningless.
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Post by mctrees02 on Feb 1, 2021 14:21:51 GMT -5
If your course gets a high difficulty rating, it’s probably because it’s loaded with gimmicks.
For example, I “made” an autogen course recently as a joke with a few friends and, when nobody could break par with all of the assists on, it receive a “hardest” rating.
Meanwhile my other courses are graded as easiest.
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