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Post by turkmcgill on Jan 26, 2022 6:05:18 GMT -5
I mainly bought PGA2K21 because of the course designer. Designing my own courses sounded like a ton of fun, and as expected I love it. (But MAN is it a lot of work. I had no idea.)
Anyway, my question is about setting hole/course difficulty when you are not that great at playing the game. I've watched a lot of streams and I know that there are some folks who are almost always getting perfects on their swing. How do I set the difficulty of my course for THOSE players? I generally play/test the game on Pro difficulty (with the gauges on) and that allows me to play most approved courses between +5 and -5. Is changing to Pro-Am or easier a good way to "simulate" a better player? Do the difficulty settings affect distance at all?
Any other tips or tricks on creating a course that will challenge the better players, while still feeling fair to them?
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stubby3596
Amateur Golfer
Posts: 263
TGCT Name: stubby3596
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Post by stubby3596 on Jan 26, 2022 9:16:10 GMT -5
If you are not that good, I would suggest play testing with swing tempo off so that you can simulate perfect and full distance swings on every shot. This will give you a good estimate. That said if you are just starting out, I honestly wouldn't worry too much about making courses that are too hard or too easy. Just build what you think is fun and enjoyable and the rest will come. At the end of the day most everyone's initial courses are not that good for the masses anyway but they are a great learning experience. I thought the first course I built was a masterpiece but was so far off the mark I had no clue. Over time I've come to realize why and my later designs have been better for it.
So in short, trust the process.
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Post by ErixonStone on Jan 26, 2022 20:02:26 GMT -5
I mainly bought PGA2K21 because of the course designer. Designing my own courses sounded like a ton of fun, and as expected I love it. (But MAN is it a lot of work. I had no idea.) Anyway, my question is about setting hole/course difficulty when you are not that great at playing the game. I've watched a lot of streams and I know that there are some folks who are almost always getting perfects on their swing. How do I set the difficulty of my course for THOSE players? I generally play/test the game on Pro difficulty (with the gauges on) and that allows me to play most of them between +5 and -5. Is changing to Pro-Am or easier a good way to "simulate" a better player? Do the difficulty settings affect distance at all? Any other tips or tricks on creating a course that will challenge the better players, while still feeling fair to them? The difficulty settings do not affect club distances. You can play on the most difficult settings and use clubs that offer high tempo forgiveness and sacrifice distance. You can play the game on Beginner difficulty and still choose to give up forgiveness for maximum distance. It's a good idea to turn down the difficulty setting for playtesting so it's easier to test how a hole plays when players hit perfect tempo, but do not overlook playability when players miss. If you're looking to create course difficulty to challenge better players, what you're really trying to do is to increase the amount of risk - both in terms of likelihood to miss and the penalty for missing. You still want to follow good course design fundamentals and offer strategic ways of playing the course. Shrink the landing areas on the greens a bit, and penalize aggressive misses more. Give the greens a bit more slope to prioritize keeping approaches below the hole. Try not to overdo things; the best players are still going to post very low scores, no matter what. It's a tough task to challenge those players while still building a course that is enjoyable. Much of the time, trying to create difficulty can feel artificial.
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Post by turkmcgill on Jan 27, 2022 5:07:46 GMT -5
Thanks for the replies.
<<Much of the time, trying to create difficulty can feel artificial.>> This is a great comment. I have absolutely noticed this myself. I try to make a hole challenging and strategic, then play it again a few days later and it just feels so... gimmicky. I'm trying hard to avoid that.
I'd also like to avoid making yet another course with lots of bunkers in the fairways, and tons of split fairways offering multiple vantage points to different hole positions. I think courses like Whiskey Run are awesome... but it feels like there are a LOT of them. I played Ben's newest course last night (Barton something, I think) and I liked that it seemed sort of old-school. Didn't look that difficult, but it kicked my behind pretty good. It felt borderline unfair at times, but he definitely managed to increase difficulty without getting too much into tricks or gimmicks. I liked that.
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Post by photokevie on Jan 31, 2022 17:48:19 GMT -5
Yeah start with just getting familiar with the designer and building solid concepts with your hole design. I mean technically, there are no wrong answers when you design, since you can literally make whatever you want, but if you're looking to make something for getting TGC approved or even Tour Worthy then there are definitely some things to follow as far as what you design. There are things you can take from golf in real life and translate it to how the video game is played. Watching Canuck's videos and B101 and you'll start to realize they don't seek out to make super hard golf courses. I've noticed the courses I like, I tend to replay, which is something I hope people do when they play my courses. Just be fair in your designs, if a player hits a perfect shot in the "middle" of the fairway don't punish that (sort of like risk/reward). It's great when you can give golfers options on how to approach your golf hole. It's fun to watch others play your course and see if your design influences their decisions as golfers(gamers).
One of the biggest things I've learned is to make a golf course you like to play and build courses from that enjoyment. I tried to design something I thought people would like and I realized that's probably not the best way to go about moving forward with this game. I try to go in with a general "theme" that I want to realize in an entire build, like, "I want to make a relatively flat course", or "I want to make a desert resort course", or my latest fave was, "I want to make a marshy wetlands near a river type of course". I've also tried making courses that are near where I'm from and grew up playing.
For the tour stuff, those players are competing against each other so it's less about how difficult your course is because they will ultimately all shoot around the same score. The challenges should simply come down to club selection and which direction do I hit. Good luck and have fun with it.
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