Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 14 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions (PS3, 360)

[Gerg04]

Quote: Originally Posted by Hurricain

Anyone else find a draw wayyy easier to hit then a fade?

Wayyy easier.


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[kerosene31]

Quote: Originally Posted by Jet Sufferer

When you have a wedge in your you ARE trying to hit a straight shot, I was kind of surprised in the demo when coming in with wedges to still see the extreme fade path. It's HARD to draw or fade a wedge, lol, if I draw a sand wedge it's not on purpose. So I was a little disappointed to see that, just like in real golf when you're in that scoring zone you're going right at the flag, not shaping a wedge in there. I was having a tough time hitting fairways then when I had a wedge in I was expecting to see the game give me the 6-12 o'clock shot. Even with the shorter irons the ball will move less. In real life I hit a draw automatically, don't even have to think about it and my draw will draw a few more yards the longer the club. I think the game should reflect those small variations instead of 6-12 or 5-7, some variations in between. Sometimes I would just spin the controller a bit so my thumb can just go 6-12 and hit the 5-7, but it feels like cheating, lol so I suck it up for the most part.

As soon as I saw that, I instantly gave up on "sim" difficulty. After shanking my first drive into the trees, I wanted to hit a 5 iron punch out. It forced me to draw or fade the shot no matter what.

I'm not a scratch golfer, far from it, but I didn't even think you could put a lot of spin on a ball coming out of the rough.

I'm just trying to understand why things work a certain way. Are we going for realism or just trying to make it harder and harder on the freaks online who shoot -30 every tournament? Seems like the latter to me. I just want to find a balanced difficulty for an online country club. Hopefully with practice, tournament might work.

[gbx34]

there is way to much spin around the greens you hardly see balls stop and roll that much with backspin

[Love13]

Quote: Originally Posted by gbx34

there is way to much spin around the greens you hardly see balls stop and roll that much with backspin

What do you mean? Like when your pitching or chipping on the game, your ball has too much back spin and does not roll far enough after landing?

[Love13]

Quote: Originally Posted by kerosene31

As soon as I saw that, I instantly gave up on "sim" difficulty. After shanking my first drive into the trees, I wanted to hit a 5 iron punch out. It forced me to draw or fade the shot no matter what. I'm not a scratch golfer, far from it, but I didn't even think you could put a lot of spin on a ball coming out of the rough. I'm just trying to understand why things work a certain way. Are we going for realism or just trying to make it harder and harder on the freaks online who shoot -30 every tournament? Seems like the latter to me. I just want to find a balanced difficulty for an online country club. Hopefully with practice, tournament might work.

To answer a couple of your questions. First off you are partially right on spin out of the rough. But there are a lot of different spins to put on a ball. It is very hard to put back spin out of the rough. It is also hard to shape a shot out of the rough, especially a specialty shot like a punch shot with a fade or draw to get around a tree and under the branches and run up the fairway, but it is possible. That is actually one of my favorite shots in real life. Don't get me wrong I don't like being put in that position, but I tell you when your out with some friends playing golf and you end up in the trees and you've got a tree in front of you, no way to hit the green and you club up, then hit a nice fading punch that curves around the tree and runs up the fairway right next to the green, there is almost nothing more rewarding or anything more that will impress your group then making a Brodie or saving par from that tee shot.

As for is it realism or hard for sake of hard. It's definitely a step towards realism. The fact is, when a skilled pro or even top competitive amateurs have spent so much time refining their swing to where they can shape shots on command to get advantages like extra roll, better control and simple course management, it is actually harder for them to hit a ball dead straight than to hit their "go to" shot of fade or draw off the tee. That's why even on a perfectly straight par 4 with the flag in the middle of the green you will still see every one of them hit a fade or draw off the tee.

As stated by jet earlier though, they still have a ways to go. They are missing key elements that need some work over the next couple editions. First and foremost, when in scoring range (essentially 150 yds and in) there should be an option for a straight shot. Because no pro, if they have a straight approach option at the flag, is going to try and shape a wedge into the green. Right now the only club you don't have to shape is your lob wedge I believe from what I've noticed. This should be an option for pretty much 8 or even 7 iron down. What's unknown by many is that one of the biggest advantages to shaping a shot is the fact that you increase distance over a straight shot. This also goes back to why a pro will shape a shot off the tee on a straight hole, to increase their roll after the ball lands, giving them an extra 10-20 yds off the tee. But short irons and wedges the pros are not concerned about power (this is one major difference between the average golfer and a pro) a pro does not care how far they can hit a short iron or wedge, they use those clubs simply for their accuracy. They will take the easiest approach possible to the green with a short iron or wedge. So this is something that I'm sure will be addressed in the future.

Another key element that is missing is a yardage book. I love that they took away the aim feature because you don't get binoculars on the PGA tour, but you do have a yardage book that tells you distances from the tee to every hazard on the course, as well as front of green, back of green, how far to carry both fairway and green side bunkers, as well as pin positions. Pin positions are given in feet. It will tell you the pin for Sunday is 15 ft deep (meaning 15 ft from the front edge) and 13 ft from the right or left side of the green. This allows for pros to have a good understand of how to play their shot. Not only on their approach but also from the tee. If they know the flag is back left tucked behind a green side bunker on a hole, they will ideally play their shot to the right side of the fairway so they can hit a high draw to the left side of the green to put it close and keep the green side bunker out of play.

Sorry about my long winded info over load, I just figured some explanation of things like yardage books and advantages to shot shaping might helps those that aren't knowledgable about these things that might be be reading since these areas have been brought up a lot in conversation.

For those that have read this whole thing, thanks for listening lol. I hope this was informative to at least one person, that way it was all worth it haha.

[kerosene31]

The yardage book is huge too. I don't know if you ever played TW11, but I thought it nailed it. You could go to a top down view of the hole with relevant yardages listed, but you had no aiming arrow until you went back to "true aim" which was basically the view you get from the tee only. Even though a golfer can't fly up in the air and see the hole, that seemed like a reasonable compromise, considering that's the kind of think a real caddie is going to have.

If only TW11 had online country clubs...

[Jet Sufferer]

Agree that some of the things for simulation aren't really simulation.

Wind, I should have full access to wind information just like I do on the golf course, can it change when I swing? yes, happens all the time.

Yardage, that should not be hidden in any manner, any good player knows how far they hit their clubs and any player of any skill level has access to yardage to hazards, carry distances, etc.

Also Love13 mentioned flag positions, always need to know this, you'll always know this in a tournament and many courses even give you quadrants on the card. Even a static view of the pin is good, although I do miss the fly-bys (think they were on Sega Genesis too!) and you can access the fly-by's in the pause menu, but who has an extra 1.3 seconds to access that!

Greens, give me the info grids until next gen, I don't want to spend forever reading putts in a game. If I can get the same read with the grids in a much quicker manner than without than I'll go gridless next gen. (To be fair I haven't spent time trying to putt gridless in 14, in 13 there was too much randomness, not enough graphical quality and I can't imagine that has changed)

I think you should have access to all information and just make the results more severe in the execution of the swing on higher difficulties.

The information and equipment is not the challenge in golf, executing what you want to do with that equipment and information is. So give us all the info we need to speed up the game and make the execution more difficult on the higher skill levels, and not by making a short shot an extreme swing path. Perhaps they're trying to compensate for the video game savants, but they're the extreme minority and they'll master whatever quirk you give them in a week anyway. Make it more logical for us video game mortals.

[DivotMaker]

Quote: Originally Posted by kerosene31

I'm just trying to understand why things work a certain way. Are we going for realism or just trying to make it harder and harder on the freaks online who shoot -30 every tournament? Seems like the latter to me. I just want to find a balanced difficulty for an online country club. Hopefully with practice, tournament might work.

There is not a single PGA TOUR Pro who hits straight shots with any regularity. They play to their strengths which is either a Power Fade/Draw or a Control Fade/Draw. Another reason that the Simulation mode has Adv Shot Shaping is because it is easy to hit 6 to 12 o'clock on most 360 and PS3 controllers (more so the 360 is what I am hearing) taking away mis-hit potential on all shots. Sean Wilson (Tiger Executive Producer) posted the full reasons for this in the EA Tiger forums. When it was explained to those of us who attended TW Community Day, it made perfect sense and it IS intended to make scoring more realistic because the swing is not "on rails" by swinging 6 to 12 o'clock.....