EA Sports PGA TOUR Impressions (Console)

[zagsaddict]

I have been reading that 7 to 8 levels of the putting tree matches the grid width from pre-patch. I only have 3 levels for putting and the grid width is definitely wider than before. My putting has never been a strength so I am not really noticing a real difference in results even with the change. Outside of playing online, this change does not impact me since I do not use the grids.

One change I do like is the arc on Tour settings not accounting for wind and lie. It made the online matches a lot more fun since there is more uncertainty on where the ball is going. It didn't impact me much since I have it turned off in career, but others were certainly struggling.

Now for the bad. On two separate occasions when playing match play online, I was lining up to putt and all of a sudden it just went to the next hole automatically losing the hole. I still had time remaining to play so I have no idea what happened. The second time I was up 2 after playing 8 holes and the match didn't end. After playing 10 holes in a 9 hole match, I eventually just quit.

One last thing - has anyone seen any change in their tempo? I was hitting everything fast all of a sudden.

[Dawgfan1]

Quote: Originally Posted by MrArlingtonBeach

Of course your perspective is valuable, and appreciated! One thing I'm interested...do you putt with the grid beads on? I have 7 sections of my putting skill filled out, and use only the grid with no beads. I have noticed zero difference in the size of the grid squares, and I compared it to the grid in screenshots I took pre-patch. They are the same for me.

I use the Tournaments mode, so I play the Tour (grid with beads) and Sim (w/o beads) difficulty settings somewhat often and have a good amount of experience using greens with and without beads. I think you happen to be at the exact putting skill level where the grid size that was there before is now set to be at, with the size changing based on Putting skill level. I had it at 5 and it changed, feel free to test changing your putting down to that, or 0 (I tested that too and they were gigantic) and you'll notice a clear difference. The size shouldn't change between beads and no beads settings, just whether there are beads there or not.

Quote: Originally Posted by MrArlingtonBeach

At the end of the day, I am glad they are updating the game as frequently as they have. But this patch really seems like a whole lot of nothing to me. I played a full 18-hole round in career mode at the PGA Championship and, other than the scoreboard working again, it was the same as it ever was. No changes to the grid...shots felt the same...I don't use the arc, so no biggie there...if I'd gone in blind and was asked what was changed about the game after the patch, I'd not be able to offer much.

To be fair, the changes to shot dispersion size are hard to notice if you only play Sim difficulty where you can't zoom in most of the time and see the dispersion size for yourself. I checked the shot dispersion of the types changed before and after the patch and noticed clear differences. They probably won't make a huge difference in gameplay (except the blast, they shrunk its dispersion so much), but I think they will have an impact at the competitive level which I appreciate because this game has been labeled as casual-focused so much yet they're making balancing changes with compeitive players in mind.

The change to the Tour arc is a nice one I didn't mention, I think they saw the crazy high scores in the eSports tournaments and wanted to make Tour mode harder as a result. It does make the gap between Pro and Tour difficulty even larger than it already was, but that's another discussion. Anyway I can see how it'd feel like not much was changed, I think the changes were mainly made for higher levels of play, but they will change how some people play the game. Ultimately it's hard to make changes in patches that will affect everyone.

Quote: Originally Posted by MrArlingtonBeach

Problem is...there's still much to fix/correct/add. The store is a waste, with only 3 new items added this time (arguably, none of them are any good). There's no Pro Pass this season. Lie ranges are the same and don't have any real effect. Cup physics stink. There's some questionable stuff going on with online/tournaments that golfnut67 mentioned above, related to the random holes used in events (I can't confirm if that's true, but wouldn't be surprised). And with the knowledge that new content - in terms of courses - is basically done (per the ApexHound video when he played the Ryder Cup with the devs), I am not expecting much to be added or changed that will give this game the shot in the arm that would change that.

I think I've mentioned this before, but at this point I don't want new content, I want the game to be fixed. I have plenty of clothing items to switch between and the game has 35 courses which feels at least enough to me. I took a 2 week break from the game recently, partially cause some of the bugs and glitches did wear down my enjoyment of the game.

Problem is we're 2 patches in to this "fixes over content" era and while some nice changes have been made (AI, balancing, etc.) it feels like only a dent has been made in fixing the game. Lie %s still mostly suck, sidehill lies still barely do anything, the cup physics aren't fixed, the commentary still references the wrong player/team in career mode/match play all the time, are some challenges still not giving stars?, the career mode AI is still overly simplistic and prone to play stupid shots (hitting a wood straight into the water at Augusta's 15th for example), the list goes on. And the list of changes for this patch felt smaller than other patches?

I still don't envy this dev team trying to fix the game, like said before this game clearly came out way early, and either their bug testing process is woefully inadequate or the code they've been forced to use has issues since almost every patch comes with additional bugs. It still just sucks though.

Don't count out new content coming next year around the majors though, the devs didn't say anything when they played the Ryder Cup with Apex but that's probably because nothing was final. That could still go either way imo.

[Dawgfan1]

Quote: Originally Posted by MrArlingtonBeach

One other thing to add... The fact they're changing how putting skills affect the grid is a bit wild at this stage. I am almost at level 60 and will only be getting one more skill point before I'm done. And yet, they extended the level cap last patch when it really didn't make sense? And now they say you can re-train skills for 50 coins...but the last I checked, that was only for certain attributes? To re-train power, it was 400 coins for just one point...1800 to redo all 7 I have in power. They hand out coins so slowly, that this would put a significant dent in my funds...although there isn't anything worth spending them on, anyway, I suppose. IDK...seems like a lot of shuffling to say they're doing something. Fundamentally changing what putting skill points do after more than 7 months after release seems like taking things a bit too far simply for the sake of "change". Personally, I think that they should have allowed a full skill tree reset or something if they were going to be changing how skill points affect gameplay at this stage. And even then, if you don't use grids or arcs at all to start with, there's nothing that the patch really does for you. Meanwhile, other vital stuff that's been discussed ad nauseum sits unfixed or unaddressed, and there may be other things that this patch broke. It's all just a bit tiring and frustrating to deal with, any time these companies put out a patch.

The 50 coins thing might be 50 coins per skill point you're getting back. If you get 8 skill points from lowering power by 1, that'd cost 400 coins. I have over 500k coins from tournaments so it's not a bother to me, but I can see some frustration with that although doing some challenges and daily quests (if they work, I've been getting 500 coins from them post-patch) should give enough coins to make changes. Maybe they should've waived the retrain fee entirely for a few weeks instead of just reduce it.

Personally I don't like the logic of "well the game's been out several months so we can't make a fundamental change", if they want to do it then I'm all for biting the bullet. I'd rather get a putting grid change like that now instead of 2 years down the line if a new game comes out (which is still an "if" at this stage). If they made the lie %s properly realistic I would call that a fundamental change because it'd require people to put more value in their recovery attributes.

[MrArlingtonBeach]

Yeah, it sounds like I am smack dab at the right spot where the grids are identical to what they were pre-patch. And the fact I only have one more skill point coming, it seems the grid won't change much for me, since I don't see myself doing a huge reshuffling of skills just to get smaller grid squares.

And it makes sense that the dispersion circle is more visible if you can zoom in. It's just a lot of changes like these are ones that many won't see/notice because they don't use aiming arcs, green grids, etc.

You absolutely make a great point about them switching to the "fixes" phase of the life cycle...these last two patches have done some things to help with a few issues. But all the remaining problems you've mentioned are more impactful, IMO. I keep getting terrible "lip-outs" where the ball runs totally over the cup and it looks awful and makes me wanna quit at that stage.

I have no idea how large their team is that's working on these on-going updates, but with the two lead EA devs making the transition over to 2K in the last year, I wonder who is captaining this ship and making these decisions. I mean, I can't recall anyone calling for changes to putting skills/green grids in the lead up to Patch 9.0, especially after they already raised the max level in a previous patch where skills weren't at all being changed.

As you said, it's the ongoing cycle of every patch fixing a few minor issues, then changing things that no one really wanted/leaving other issues unfixed, and then unfortunately breaking other things in the process.

[MrArlingtonBeach]

Quote: Originally Posted by Dawgfan1

Personally I don't like the logic of "well the game's been out several months so we can't make a fundamental change", if they want to do it then I'm all for biting the bullet. I'd rather get a putting grid change like that now instead of 2 years down the line if a new game comes out (which is still an "if" at this stage). If they made the lie %s properly realistic I would call that a fundamental change because it'd require people to put more value in their recovery attributes.

I am OK with the idea of considering changes to things like putting skills affecting grids...but their implementation is strange and the outstanding problems are just left out there lingering.

I have only had the game for a few months and am right at the cusp of max level, even after they raised it. Most here have had the game for over 7 months, and I have to think a lot of people who still play this game have their character fairly well skilled up and near the last levels of their character.

I guess in my mind, the question is, do people really want to have to spend VC to re-shuffle skill points at this stage, especially if getting putting to level 7 only gets you to what the grids were pre-patch?

IDK...the putting grid thing keeps coming off to me as change for change's sake at this point and makes it seems as though they can't/aren't keying in on the major issues that are still out there in this game.

Sorry for all the rants...I think this game has the potential to become great. But sometimes it seems EA themselves are the ones holding it back and it's frustrating.

[golfnut67]

Quote: Originally Posted by zagsaddict

Now for the bad. On two separate occasions when playing match play online, I was lining up to putt and all of a sudden it just went to the next hole automatically losing the hole. I still had time remaining to play so I have no idea what happened. The second time I was up 2 after playing 8 holes and the match didn't end. After playing 10 holes in a 9 hole match, I eventually just quit.

I have definitely experienced this. I basically only play online Match and Foursomes now. I've seen this happen multiple times, and each time it was very consequential to the outcome of the match.

[jbd345]

One thing I wished they’d fix is the menu lag. It’s brutal.

[golfnut67]

Quote: Originally Posted by Dawgfan1

I use the Tournaments mode, so I play the Tour (grid with beads) and Sim (w/o beads) difficulty settings somewhat often and have a good amount of experience using greens with and without beads. I think you happen to be at the exact putting skill level where the grid size that was there before is now set to be at, with the size changing based on Putting skill level. I had it at 5 and it changed, feel free to test changing your putting down to that, or 0 (I tested that too and they were gigantic) and you'll notice a clear difference. The size shouldn't change between beads and no beads settings, just whether there are beads there or not. To be fair, the changes to shot dispersion size are hard to notice if you only play Sim difficulty where you can't zoom in most of the time and see the dispersion size for yourself. I checked the shot dispersion of the types changed before and after the patch and noticed clear differences. They probably won't make a huge difference in gameplay (except the blast, they shrunk its dispersion so much), but I think they will have an impact at the competitive level which I appreciate because this game has been labeled as casual-focused so much yet they're making balancing changes with compeitive players in mind. The change to the Tour arc is a nice one I didn't mention, I think they saw the crazy high scores in the eSports tournaments and wanted to make Tour mode harder as a result. It does make the gap between Pro and Tour difficulty even larger than it already was, but that's another discussion. Anyway I can see how it'd feel like not much was changed, I think the changes were mainly made for higher levels of play, but they will change how some people play the game. Ultimately it's hard to make changes in patches that will affect everyone. I think I've mentioned this before, but at this point I don't want new content, I want the game to be fixed. I have plenty of clothing items to switch between and the game has 35 courses which feels at least enough to me. I took a 2 week break from the game recently, partially cause some of the bugs and glitches did wear down my enjoyment of the game. Problem is we're 2 patches in to this "fixes over content" era and while some nice changes have been made (AI, balancing, etc.) it feels like only a dent has been made in fixing the game. Lie %s still mostly suck, sidehill lies still barely do anything, the cup physics aren't fixed, the commentary still references the wrong player/team in career mode/match play all the time, are some challenges still not giving stars?, the career mode AI is still overly simplistic and prone to play stupid shots (hitting a wood straight into the water at Augusta's 15th for example), the list goes on. And the list of changes for this patch felt smaller than other patches? I still don't envy this dev team trying to fix the game, like said before this game clearly came out way early, and either their bug testing process is woefully inadequate or the code they've been forced to use has issues since almost every patch comes with additional bugs. It still just sucks though. Don't count out new content coming next year around the majors though, the devs didn't say anything when they played the Ryder Cup with Apex but that's probably because nothing was final. That could still go either way imo.

Great post, every word is what I'm experiencing. Go Buckeyes, by the way (Life long Dayton Ohio boy here) :-)