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

[HANDSWARD_EA]

Quote: Originally Posted by kerosene31

Personally I don't think a top down view of the hole with some basic yardages is a "cheat" or something unrealistic that a real pro wouldn't have with a caddy. Just my opinion though. Also, including the shot shaping in tour pro is a little weird too. I can either hit my easy straight shot, or go into hard mode to put a few yards of draw on the ball? I may as well just bump up to tournament and force myself to learn the harder swing in the first place.

I agree that a top down with yardages wouldn't be a cheat. Like I said, we debated a yardage book/notebook/hole map feature but came to the conclusion that it was too much of an undertaking and didn't fit into our scope.

Our current top down hole maps are not set up in any way to add to this data to them. They are merely static images. There is no size scale to them, making each one of them a unique image. To go into each and add yardages by hand to all of them would be a huge amount of work. Especially when you consider that there are 4 tee locations and 12 pin locations on each hole. We would have to have 48 versions of each hole map instead of the 1 version we use now cause of this.

We did investigate what it would take to make a dynamic hole map, but it was an expensive feature. And like I mentioned before, the fact that it would only be used when 1 setting was off, definitely not worth the investment.

A simpler solution that I wanted to do was provide a simple notebook that users could write into. So you could go into a course with zoom on, and scout it out. You could write down any things you felt were important about the hole and save it out in your caddie book to refer to later. (eg. 250 yards to right bunker. Expert pin has 2 yards of green to work with.) This was on the list of features early on, but complications with higher priority features slid it down to the cut list.

There is nothing stopping you from taking my notebook design an doing it yourself on paper. Many users have created course guides with all sorts of notes in them through the years. I know you say you are a more casual player, so I am not sure it would be worth the time investment for you.

I know the angled swing can seem difficult, but it is likely that it is more of a foreign mechanic when compared to what you are used to. With practice, it becomes much easier. If you give it enough time, I think you will get used to it and learn to enjoy the added challenge it delivers.

Also, I know you are probably sick of hearing the custom settings talk. But a thing that hasn't been said much in this thread is how the Swing Style feature can help you with the difficulty of the harder modes. All of the golfers in the demo are Power Golfers. It is extremely difficult to keep the ball on target with this style. I wish we had a Control Golfer in the demo. (Hindsight is 20:20, I also had nothing to do with the demo. I would have put one in there.) A accuracy advantage you get with a Control Golfer is night and day when compared to a Power Golfer. If Tournament difficulty is a little too hard for you using Power, it might be perfect for you using Control.

[simgameonly]

Maybe handsward or someone else with an inner working knowledge can chime in on this question. In the retail build in a head to head game, or any sort of simulation tournament online can someone confirm for me that the practice swing is in fact there. In tiger 13 at tournament level with no swing meter there was no way to do a practice swing, i found that odd and it ruined the experience for me, especially with the shot clock feature enabled why not allow a practice swing option.

Hopefully this has been corrected for online play in tiger 14 i can only imagine no practice swing with advanced shot shaping in simulation difficulty, we should be able to practice our swing online it cant be a time issue with the shot clock feature. Can anyone confirm

[cccgolfer08]

Quote: Originally Posted by simgameonly

Maybe handsward or someone else with an inner working knowledge can chime in on this question. In the retail build in a head to head game, or any sort of simulation tournament online can someone confirm for me that the practice swing is in fact there. In tiger 13 at tournament level with no swing meter there was no way to do a practice swing, i found that odd and it ruined the experience for me, especially with the shot clock feature enabled why not allow a practice swing option. Hopefully this has been corrected for online play in tiger 14 i can only imagine no practice swing with advanced shot shaping in simulation difficulty, we should be able to practice our swing online it cant be a time issue with the shot clock feature. Can anyone confirm

Based off previous versions of the game, I would assume that we would not be able to take Practice swings... however I am not sure on this.

[simgameonly]

renders that mode unplayable online in my opinion if you are correct and its not sim at all, pros take practice swings before every shot , and with the shot clock feature it sure would be interesting to hear a plausible explanation as to why this is not an option, hope it makes it in, if its not already included

[DivotMaker]

Quote: Originally Posted by simgameonly

renders that mode unplayable online in my opinion if you are correct and its not sim at all, pros take practice swings before every shot , and with the shot clock feature it sure would be interesting to hear a plausible explanation as to why this is not an option, hope it makes it in, if its not already included

Opinions vary....personally I do not find a need to have a practice swing in any mode, but understand if you feel differently. It is like anything else, if you practice long and hard enough, you might feel differently soon after the game is made available....

[simgameonly]

so divot do you have a working knowledge that it is unavailable, or were you just commenting? and yeah i guess i will have to say i strongly disagree with it not being available when it is seen anytime golf is broadcast and is an integral part of the game , i just really hope its different this year

additionally pga pros practice pretty long and hard at their craft, hopefully alot harder than people practice tiger woods, but they still take practice swings all the time on virtually every shot regardless of their tireless efforts on the range , so i dont see why we cant duplicate that in the game

Putting augusta in tournament conditions in the final round without a practice swing, lol sorry thats just stupid, playing 12 at august without a practice swing after all the wind calculations just to stand there and hit it, sorry never going to happen in real life, i could go on and on

[HANDSWARD_EA]

The practice swing is not available in H2H. It is a tech limitation of how the practice swing works. That feature would need a rewrite to make it work in online H2H and it just didn't fit into the plan this year. It is something that was brought up during the cycle, but we looked at telemetry and saw that it was used on 0.00014% of shots (I just looked that number up again cause I knew saying less than 1% wasn't going to do it justice). I realize that these new mechanics make the argument that it will be used more this year. But that argument is valid last year as well, where we implemented a whole new swing mechanic, and several of the early tip videos stressed using the practice swing to get used to them.

It does work all modes outside of H2H, so at least we have that going for us.

PS. I had a lengthy reply a few hours ago to an earlier post but I don't see it at all. Shame, it was a good post. I really don't feel like typing all that again.

[simgameonly]

Severely saddened by that news, that's just not the least bit realistic especially with new difficulty level and the swing mechanic you referenced. I appreciate the strides the game made with the changes this year, but I for one just find this an inexcusable omission. Hopefully next year I guess