Enough is enough, the putting is broken in this game!

[Koolie G]

Re: Enough is enough, the putting is broken in this game!

Rule #3:


An area two to three feet in radius around the hole should be as nearly level as possible and of uniform grade. In no case should holes be located in tricky places, or on sharp slopes where a ball can gather speed. A player above the hole should be able to stop the ball at the hole.

Obviously those are only guidelines because the PGA does not follow #3 all of the time. There are many holes, especially at majors, that you cannot stop the ball at the hole when you are above it. The Masters & US OPEN are great demonstrations of this. If you are above certain holes, you could putt it off the green if you don't make it. You certainly can't keep it within a few feet of some of those holes if you are above it and putting downhill at the hole. Doesn't make those pin placements unfair, but you better know where on the green you hit your approach shots.

This is not defending the pin placements on Tiger, just saying the PGA doesn't follow those guidelines to a "T".

[JustinJones]

Re: Enough is enough, the putting is broken in this game!

Crazy Thought, why wouldn't EA take into account the pin locations of all of these courses. It's not hard to see where the hole locations are and where they are expected to be in each round(or atleast a couple variations/generalities). And secondly how hard would it be to make pin locations where there's extreme slope a couple feet away from the hole kinda like the tiered greens that Tiger has his famous chip in 2005 Masters. I just don't see how EA could overlook correct pin locations. If you want the game to play ridiculous on expert they should make the greens super fast, rough impossible to get anything over a 75% contact, and make players pay for not being within 10feet of the pin.

[Seymour Scagnetti]

Re: Enough is enough, the putting is broken in this game!

The TW series has historically had arcade roots and for the life of me I don't why. Golf is one of the more serious tradition laden sports yet the devs feel a need to "circus" things up.

The pin placements and lack of playoff holes are just the latest in a line of questionable things that are still present after all these years. They finally turfed the bunny suits, 400 yard drives and goofy AI scoring but it took years to do. And then when they really put in a good sim feature like TW11 's true aim they turf it after one year because of some questionable polling that no one uses it.. What harm is it to keep it in there anyways?

The Links series on the PC was a very serious sim for years. There always some excuse that they want extra sales but by that logic then why doesn't Madden or The Show or NBA2K series do the same to "circus" things up and get extra sales from the 10 year olds. If they feel the need to capture the Mario Golf demographic then why doesn't NBA2K do that to capture the NBA Jam demographic.

The EA NHL series is very sim and they have much lower sales than the other big 3 sports so they don't feel a need to do it either to increase sales. The latest Top Spin game has much less sales then the TW series and they feel no need to mess with the sim setting. Set it at a sim level and keep it that way in every respect. Don't bring in caddies and carnival pins and do it half assed by forcing it upon all the difficulty settings out of sheer laziness.

If the Devs did this they may be suprised at how many sales they might get. The devs make this game like their back is against the wall and will be in big trouble from EA if the 12 year olds don't buy it.

There is no AI (just scores) like the other sports games to get right and much less animations to deal with. Stat tracking is much less cumbersome. It is much easier to make a sim golf game then to do that for baseball, basketball or hockey and it's not really debateable. There is really no excuse after all these years for EA not to make a complete sim at the highest level for us guys who enjoyed the PC golf games of yesteryear.

[JustinJones]

Re: Enough is enough, the putting is broken in this game!

If the Devs did this they may be suprised at how many sales they might get. The devs make this game like their back is against the wall and will be in big trouble from EA if the 12 year olds don't buy it.

& TW12 Still posted it's best first week sales in Franchise's History this year. Just think how many more ppl would jump on the bandwagon

[Seymour Scagnetti]

Re: Enough is enough, the putting is broken in this game!

& TW12 Still posted it's best first week sales in Franchise's History this year. Just think how many more ppl would jump on the bandwagon

Exactly and that's mainly because of Augusta which would appeal to more adult sim minded gamers and not the teenagers who probably don't know the difference between Augusta and Pebble Beach. And what they did with Augusta is use all the proper pin placements and not allowing post shot spin and power boosts and all those other goofy arcade elements thay have on the other courses.

NBA2k is a shining example of how making it more sim like dramatically increased sales and has trounced EA's NBA game which has always been the arcadier version. And even then the demographic for NBA2K is traditionally younger than other sports games and it didn't hurt them to make it more realistic.

[JustinJones]

Re: Enough is enough, the putting is broken in this game!

In my mind it makes since to take power and spin off in the Tournament Difficulty. Let all the kids and casual gamers keep everything that they're used to, but give us an option to have a stressfull difficulty rating and not pin locations out of a carnival game. EA needs to have arcade features to keep an audience happy, not everyone is a hardcore gamer. Keep that option in there, but for Tourn. difficulty fix the pin locations, make the rough impossible to aim & get any power on your shots from, and make the greens fast. I honestly think that this would help A LOT!

[bigp51]

Re: Enough is enough, the putting is broken in this game!

Obviously those are only guidelines because the PGA does not follow #3 all of the time. There are many holes, especially at majors, that you cannot stop the ball at the hole when you are above it. The Masters & US OPEN are great demonstrations of this. If you are above certain holes, you could putt it off the green if you don't make it. You certainly can't keep it within a few feet of some of those holes if you are above it and putting downhill at the hole. Doesn't make those pin placements unfair, but you better know where on the green you hit your approach shots.

This is not defending the pin placements on Tiger, just saying the PGA doesn't follow those guidelines to a "T".

I hear you 100%. I assume that those problems come from the fact that the USGA makes the greens lightning fast for the US Open, and Augusta is kinda the same way.

[sooner66]

Re: Enough is enough, the putting is broken in this game!

I hear you 100%. I assume that those problems come from the fact that the USGA makes the greens lightning fast for the US Open, and Augusta is kinda the same way.

I can't remember too many crazy hole locations, it is always a result of conditions.

[Seymour Scagnetti]

Re: Enough is enough, the putting is broken in this game!

I found a workaround for these crazy pins although it's a pretty pathetic one and rather ironic because it's a case of one of the game's other problems fixing another. If you are having trouble with the 4th round pins and really not looking forward to playing it because it will inflate your score then if you can wait for it to rain then you're set.

I went to play Costa at expert in Play Now to see if I could improve my score at all and with live weather it was drizzling and I ended up shooting -1. As everyone knows as soon as it rains the greens become like you're putting in glue (that really needs to be fixed as well) and putting became much easier with the crazy slopes because the ball would stop on a dime and wouldn't roll down any hills if you missed by a foot. It literally improved my round by 8-10 strokes.

Only other problem is with any rain you can't hit a putt any more than 40 feet if you are facing any type of uphill putt. Even if it's level you can't usually get any more than 50 feet of travel. In this sense the putting model is flawed because whenever I have played in the rain in real life I have never had a problem putting a ball 50 feet in the rain.

They should have followed the Links model of putting where the strength is the same for any type of putt and not rely on tempo so much. I never had a problem hitting a 80 foot putt in Links on the Xbox but in TW you're not getting close with an 80 footer on a uphill slope even with normal greens. Any slope bigger than 6 inches and you'll get halfway there with a 90% swing.

[DivotMaker]

Re: Enough is enough, the putting is broken in this game!

They should have followed the Links model of putting where the strength is the same for any type of putt and not rely on tempo so much. I never had a problem hitting a 80 foot putt in Links on the Xbox but in TW you're not getting close with an 80 footer on a uphill slope even with normal greens. Any slope bigger than 6 inches and you'll get halfway there with a 90% swing.

Sorry, but putting is all about tempo and I am having no problems with long putts as long as you know the green conditions and how to set your cursor. And putting in the rain is far more realistic than Links ever was because it never had such a setting.

[Seymour Scagnetti]

Re: Enough is enough, the putting is broken in this game!

Played Celtic Manor and no problems whatsoever. Pins were all in good locations all 4 rounds.

Played The Els Club and everything was going great up to the 2nd round and then the 17th par 3 comes up and I was looking for a windmill because it was so bad. On a severe slope and nearly impossible to get it within 40 feet of the pin and I quit 5 times and all 3 locations were pretty much all ridiculous. Played it like 6 or 7 times and managed to double bogey once and the rest were all triple bogey or worse and this was on medium pins. I'm afraid to see what the 3rd and 4th round are gonna look like. I just don't get why they need to do this.

[Cover 3D]

Re: Enough is enough, the putting is broken in this game!

Looking for some newbie help.

I'm bad at this game, so I'm starting off on pro difficulty with all the unrealistic helps that you get so I can learn the game. Haven't played since maybe Tiger 2004?

The putting circle is always correct, right? I know it'll have a wide range if your putting ratings aren't that good, but today I felt like the circle was completely off from where it should have been. I had a downhill 3 inch put, but the circle was still a good foot above the hole. My putt ended up going 20 feet too far.

[SlimKibbles]

Re: Enough is enough, the putting is broken in this game!

Looking for some newbie help.

I'm bad at this game, so I'm starting off on pro difficulty with all the unrealistic helps that you get so I can learn the game. Haven't played since maybe Tiger 2004?

The putting circle is always correct, right? I know it'll have a wide range if your putting ratings aren't that good, but today I felt like the circle was completely off from where it should have been. I had a downhill 3 inch put, but the circle was still a good foot above the hole. My putt ended up going 20 feet too far.

Honestly I'd take the difficulty down to amateur until you get more comfortable with things and build experience. I had to do that. Hadn't played a TW game since 2007. The putting takes some patience. Like people have mentioned in here, it's all about tempo. Take your moving of the putter kind of slow like you would in real life.

[Seymour Scagnetti]

Re: Enough is enough, the putting is broken in this game!

Well you can add The Els Club to the list of circus courses. Most of the par 3's in BOTH the 3rd and 4th round are nearly impossible to par. They are usually on a downhill slope and if you try and hit it below the hole it's not gonna happen because not only is it close to a foot drop but you only have about 10-15 feet of green to work with below the hole before it ends up off the green and then you're left with a uphill 1 or 2 foot slope off the fringe that you need to use about 80% putting and pray that it doesn't roll back down. There is no safe place to land the ball just to make par.

I actually chipped from off the green from 20 feet away on I think it was the 4th or 5th hole which is a par 3 and got within a foot of the hole and it rolled right back down to me. Tried putting and it took 3 or 4 tries before it finally stayed on the green and I got a nice little 4 over par for my efforts. There are a couple of other par 4's that are the same so I would say half the holes are cartooney in both the 3rd and 4th round so even hard pins are a problem now too.

This is almost seems like it's a practical joke on the part of the devs just to piss the sim guys off. There are way too many holes on both hard and expert that need to be fixed so there is no way they are doing that much work to fix it and they sure won't do it on DLC courses like the Els Club.

This is going permanently back in the case for a month to see what patch comes out because I don't even need to play another course to see that's it's a huge problem and the majority of courses are affected this way. The only patch that can save the circus pins at this point is allowing complete customization of choosing pin difficulty in career and online tourneys.

[fishepa]

Re: Enough is enough, the putting is broken in this game!

Can someone explain how putting in the rain is supposed to work? I played for the first time in some rain the other day and any putt over 35 feet I couldn't even get to the hole on full power. There was one putt I had that was about 70 feet and it took me 3 tries to even get to the hole.