EA PGA Tour 23 Searching for difficulty

[mudtiger]

Just sharing some findings for anyone in a similar situation to me - loving the game but increasingly finding it becoming too easy as I skilled up my character in the first season and added better club unlocks.

I'm playing on something of a modified SIM setting with a decent number of
skill points assigned and most shot types unlocked. I was finding I had to increase the score slider to 100 to help the AI compete. I didn't like that the scores then became in my opinion on the unrealistic side. I play all 4 rounds and I wasn't winning them all, but after 15 events, I had the most wins by 1 and the most top 10 finishes and was 1st in fedex ranking. So I went to the drawing board to up the difficulty.

Goals - have to deal with missing the fairways some times. Be forced to get creative and attempt difficult shots. Make the rough actually mean something, ie I'm tired of being in the sand or heavy rough and having a 90+% ball lie with a hybrid. Still be able to compete, but not dominate.


Now the two conclusions I've come to.

Do not use equipment upgrades. No ball upgrade, no driver/iron/hybrid/etc upgrades. None. You do not need them.

Next, limit your use of skill points. Yes, the majority of your skill points will go unused.

For Power and driving, you can only assign 4 total points to the group as a whole. So for example, 1 to power and then 2 to accuracy and 1 to control for 4 total between power and driving.

For Approach, you can only assign 5 total between the 3 skills.

For Short game and Putting you can only assign 8 skill points to the group. This one is higher mainly because I feel like the texas wedge in putting shouldn't be locked behind an upgrade skill. So there are enough points there to get T wedge and still have some short game.

What does this do to you? Your accuracy in driving is low so you will miss the fairways now. You are going to be forced to be creative from outside the fairway. Sometimes you are going to have to lay up or make the safe shot instead of attacking the green 100% of the time. Your recovery skill is low so bad lies actually mean something. I hit the bunker and if I try to use a hybrid I see lies of 30% or less now. I have to go to a wedge or possibly iron if I want a controllable shot out of bad lies. Bye bye distance out of the bunker.

BUT WHAT ABOUT MY SPINNER SHOT????!!! or whatever your favorite shot is? You will be fine without it. Get your texas wedge and finesse shot as you'll have enough points for those and those are almost essential, but the rest you don't really need.

3 bits of advice are

learn to pitch consistently - full loft and aim about 4 to 6 yards short and hit the shot at about 75%... depending on elevation, lie, etc.

Learn to chip - full loft and aim about half the distance to the cup and backswing to 35-50% depending on elevation.

For a short blast out of the sand, aim around 4-5 yards short at full height and aim for 100% power. Adjust for height, ball lie, and green contours.

I might lower or raise a few of the max allowable skills per group once I get through a full season if something ends up being too easy or hard, but so far I'm happy. I also might decrease the allowable skill points for the 1st year on the tour to allow for another 1 or 2 points in each group in between seasons so you can increase a little bit and feel like you've gotten better.

Last, some basic info on settings I use if that helps any....
Swing stick - hard

Putting stick - normal or hard depending on how good you are at putting. I struggle finding the read so I go with normal. I don't need to fight a bad read and missing on the stick putting....yet.

Zoom cam - off. Just do it, you'll get used to it and it adds an element of realism and the unknown. Check the hole layout often and change the angle on your tee shot up more to see a little more.

Wind - only direction. Pay attention to the wind speed range given going into the round.

Elevation - either full or just direction only depending on how good you are putting. I find it too hard to determine elevation in putting so I use full info for elevation. The elevation putting grid in the lower right doesn't seem to have a set scale, so I need that info still.

Putt grids on, beads on, no caddy line. If I can get better at reading elevation on the greens (EA Give us a putting cam lower to the ground PLEASE), I'll turn off the beads and set elevation to direction only....but that may never happen.

[DarthRambo]

Sadly I kind of figured this was going to happen. Hopefully they patch the game to make it way more difficult. The lies in the rough and sand at 95% or more is broken. Just has to be.

I'm not that great at the game, but already sense I will be winning about everything once M y character is leveled up. Especially after playing 18 holes with DJ and how easy it was to control spin with little effort.

I hate having to handicap myself though so idk if I want to. I think the big thing not to do is use specs. Those just look like arcade game stuff in the store and really silly. 2k balances your stats way better by using clubs, shafts, etc. To buy some bogus spec that magically increases your stats is very cheap and feels like the easy way out for EA. It's like they felt they had to be different than 2k here. But if it works why not copy it?? Definitely the worst part of the game IMO

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[DarthRambo]

Hopefully they patch the game to make lies in the rough and sand not always 90% or higher. I've been in heavy rough and it shows 95-97% which is crazy. No penalty for missing the fairways or greens.

Definitely no need to use skill points in approach recovery at this time. Short game recovery yes because those shot types are one you do need and are good.

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[mrsaito]

What's odd about rough lies is that it seems to vary by course. At Bay Hill (Korn Ferry Tour Q School) the rough lies can be as low as 20% for a three wood, although they get better as you progress through the higher lofted clubs as they should.

I would say that for this particular course the rough lies play exactly as they should.

[voodoo_magic]

For the heavy rough shots that the game is allowing me to use a 3 wood or 3 iron and nearly no penalty I'm thinking I need to override it and play the more realistic lay up or punch shot. At least until there's a patch we don't HAVE TO play a shot we know is wrong.

Shots from the light rough or even from the sand we could limit our use of loft and any of the special shot types to make the shot more difficult, or even just limit their use to a couple times a round to add strategy for when to use it.
Or you could use 1 club longer than you need from the light rough and force yourself to hit a partial shot and a much tougher shot than at default.

[DarthRambo]

Quote: Originally Posted by voodoo_magic

For the heavy rough shots that the game is allowing me to use a 3 wood or 3 iron and nearly no penalty I'm thinking I need to override it and play the more realistic lay up or punch shot. At least until there's a patch we don't HAVE TO play a shot we know is wrong. Shots from the light rough or even from the sand we could limit our use of loft and any of the special shot types to make the shot more difficult, or even just limit their use to a couple times a round to add strategy for when to use it. Or you could use 1 club longer than you need from the light rough and force yourself to hit a partial shot and a much tougher shot than at default.

So would you limit or not use the pick shot and always use the blast, which is way harder?

I'm not a real life golf guru so in the rough, what clubs would be realistic to have to use? What shot type on the game and clubs would be realistic? I assume this will be patch soon though. Honestly it better be, because it takes away a huge part of the strategy of playing simulation golf.

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[woody2goody]

I've stopped using the Pick and Hack altogether. Game is a lot more fun without them. Never use the spinner anyway so that's not an issue.

[mudtiger]

I lowered the skills by another 1 in approach group and 1 in short game for a new character, I still feel like I do a little too well. I'm only 3 tournaments in on the PGA tour after dominating my amateur event and getting cut at the masters though, so hopefully too early to draw any conclusions.

It is closer to what I want though. Almost too many drives off the fairway where I'm somewhere in the low 70%s for FIR so far. Recovery from bad lies has been too easy though. So I might add 1 to drive accuracy and reduce recovery in approach and short game.

AI at 50 still seems to be the way to get results at courses that match the last few years. It could probably go up a little over 50, but when you really push it to 90 or more, it gets out of hand. Which I can see why they need that though. If you spec out your equipment and add max skills, you unstoppable.