I think this ignores one of the facets of golf, which is recognizing your strengths and weaknesses and playing to them. A golfer that can consistently hit farther than will attack a hole in a different manner because he can lay up in areas I might not be able to reach. That forces me to find other ways to compensate. It's not taking skill out of the equation, it's actually adding a layer of difficulty that adds to the strategy in evolved in playing.
It also recognizes that as you play more golf and get better, your distances and accuracy do change. Sometimes that is good, but it can be bad if you have not learned to take into account your changing skill set.
I do think EA should get dinged for not having a simple mode in which we can add or subtract skill points in order to create balanced or unbalanced golfer in regard to skill. They make up for this by shipping the game with an array of golfers with all manner of various skill sets.
In fact, in one Country Club, we began allowing users to use Pro golfers in tourneys to eliminate any grinding needed to build up a golfer, or worse, have some players use guys that had become too good. I think we could have taken this one more step and eliminated some golfers, like Tiger, or even restricted it to just a few.
Looking through the available golfers in TW14, it also makes me think there would be a lot of value to playing with only female golfers. There are many ways that you can do this that allows players to find golfer that match their style, or even challenge their style of play.
But there is something to having one golfer with one set of skills. Everyone would be competing on an even playing field, no one with advantages. You would learn to master a course in the same way you lean to master a track in a racing sim.
For me, the problem becomes, what then? For many, that is more than enough. But I crave more puzzles to solve. And thats how I view building up my golfer, buying new clubs and balls for little boosts (No, you seriously do not get boosts for dressing in a space suit or like a bunny anymore. That was awful and they finally got rid of it.). It's really cool to build up your golfer through play, and then come back to a course and find new ways to approach the holes.
I do think it is cool that someone put out a game that matches what many people want in a golf game. And the timing couldn't have been better, with EA Golf on hiatus, TGC got a lot of gamers to try it that may not have.
And in the end, I think static vs variable skill sets is essentially what separates the two games.
Comment