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Rookie
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Re: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14 Wishlist
I apologize in advance for the length of my post but I am very passionate about this game and golf in general. I only play NCAA, Madden, NBA 2k and Tiger Woods and this game would be at the top of the rotation if it had a better career mode. Keep all the arcade stuff for those that want it (a lot more than we think), this isn't a "I JUST WANT SIM" post but when it comes to the Career Mode, that is where my main gripes are.
Happy Reading.
Available Tours:
1. PGA Tour
a. Includes all majors, WGCs, as many PGA events as possible, playoffs. Playoffs included, 25 total events would be great. PGA 13 we had 35 courses available (Augusta Par 3 excluded) so 25 would easily be doable.
2. European Tour
a. Includes all majors (4), WGCs (need to get 3-4) and other European events played on every course not in the US. With the 7-8 above plus annual events at the 7-10 non-us courses we have each year the Euro tour could have about 15 events and players could vie for dual money titles. European Tour is not a necessity and with licensing issues they would probably have to name it something else but it is an option for down the road.
3. Web.com Tour
a. The new proving grounds for the PGA. For the first year you can assign a player to which tour they are playing on to get the Web.com setup correctly. For the following years we will use the new Q School format where Q School is strictly for the Web.com Tour. Q School participants will come from those 126+ on the PGA Tour, 51+ on Web.com (top 50 on web.com earn their PGA cards as we still don’t completely know the new format for the PGA and this would be the easiest outlet for the game even if not a 100% replica of real life) and players from the Amateur Tour.
4. Champions Tour
a. For players 50-65 (automatically retire at 65). This mode would be great if you want to play the remainder of Tiger’s PGA Career and then blend over to the Champions. Also a way for players who have lifetime exemptions into tournaments (IE Couples, Watson, etc. in the Masters) to still make appearances in those fields in the game. How great would it be to start a career as a 20 year old rookie and 10 years in Phil is playing on the Champions Tour and the Masters each year?
b. Look to have 10-12 events per year and a champion.
5. Amateur Tour
a. This is where we generate new players. This will essentially be players ages 18-22 who are in college. Players from all nationalities will play on the same tour and there will be about 5-6 events per year which will determine exemptions into majors. At the end of the year all graduating players and top players can attempt to go to q school to get on the nationwide tour.
b. To make things easier you could have a tournament in March before the Masters where the top 8 finishers are exempt to the masters (accounts for US champ, Euro Champ, Asia Champ, etc. to make things easier) a tourney in May for US Open, June for British, etc. Other scattered tournaments throughout the year will determine who the “top” players are and if they leave to become pro.
c. Think of starting a career as a top amateur player and then 10 years later watching as the next Tiger wins all 5 amateur events and wins his first major before 21, etc. Adds extreme replay-ability.
Player Database:
1. Personal Info
a. Obviously EA will never have the ability to create each and everyone player according to their likeness. That shouldn’t prevent them from allowing us to either edit a database with all the players names but generic likenesses, or from giving us just a blank database that we as a community create players for (think NCAA but even without player numbers, heights, weights).
b. Edit Name, Height, Weight, College, Nationality, Career Stats (wins, years on tour, starts made, majors – differentiate between which majors have been one, etc.), sponsors, etc.
c. This would be awesome for so many reasons. Nationality would be great for Ryder Cup/Presidents Cup rosters, career stats as a base that will be added upon as you advance through the years, etc.
2. Ratings
a. Ability to edit ratings (these would be editable during career mode at anytime)
b. Categories include: Power, Driver, Woods and Hybrids, Irons, Wedges, Pitching (100 yards and in), Chipping (around greens), Bunkers, Putting (broken down into: Under 5 feet, 5-15 feet, 15 feet +)
c. Confidence and Experience
i. All golfers that make it to the PGA Tour have game. The difference between those that make it or not is often due to their confidence or experience. Experience rating changes on its own the more starts a player makes, the more majors he competes in, the more times he holds a lead on the weekend, the more top 10s, wins, etc. The confidence ratings adjusts according to how the player is playing in his most recent tourneys.
ii. IE. Two players have identical ratings across the board but one is a 40 year old veteran with 10 career wins including a major who has 3 top 10s in his last 5 starts. The other player is a 23 year old rookie with 5 career starts with 5 missed cuts. Obviously the veteran’s ratings in Experience and Confidence would be much higher and allow him to play to or beyond his skills while the rookie wouldn’t yet have the confidence/experience to play to his skills. Power is not affected by this or at the most very slightly. Accuracy would be the main issue and putting would be affected more than full shots.
iii. A potential rating would lead to player growth and would mainly effect accuracy, short game, putting and confidence ratings as those are the main aspects of a players game potential would effect. Added into this you could have a rough decline age, not where a players abilities completely drop off the mat but when they start to lose just a little bit of distance as well as their putting strokes etc. For some players its late 30s, some mid 40s, some late 40s, some mid 50s. Each player could have a rough time line for where there skills begin to dip. For stars like Couples, Vijay, Phil, Tiger they will be playing on the PGA Tour until they decide to move to the Champions but for others they drop off earlier and have a few years of waiting until they can truly be competitive again on the Champions Tour.
3. Tour/Tournament Preference
a. If it gets to the point where there are 4 Tours (PGA, European, Web.com and Champions) you could list the preference of tour the player has. IE. 1. PGA 2. Web.com 3. European 4. Champions or 1. European 2. PGA 3. Web.com 4. Champions etc.
i. Without European tour this preference would be set to PGA – Web.com so that obviously every pro is trying to play on the PGA Tour first but if they don’t make it they play the Web.com Tour until 50 where they jump over to the Champions Tour.
b. Give every tournament a star rating similar to what the game has now. Obviously every player is going to play in the 5 Star tourneys (Majors, WGCs, Players, Tour Playoffs). You can set that certain players won’t play below a certain level or tournament while tour rookies and journeyman will play any tour available. This is to eliminate players from playing in each and every tournament which isn’t realistic in real life. If we can get a 25-30 week schedule in the game than the top players should be playing in 15-20 tourneys. Also benefits lower tier players as the can play the less prestigious events and have greater chances to win.
Tournaments:
1. More WGCS, even if they are generic
a. Essential is a WGC – Match Play. Has to be added.
2. Discussed above but a smarter way to use the star process for a tourney (prestige ratings).
3. Limited Fields – better use of limited fields. They do a good job so far but just tweak this and take it to the next level IE Masters isn’t just top 100. Its Top 50 plus past champions, plus winners of any PGA event in the last year, plus 8 amateurs from the amateur tourney, plus top 30 in fed ex cups previous year, etc.
4. Ability to change course for ANY tourney. In 13 you couldn’t change the tourney for US Open which was frustrating and the ones I could change were the ones I wouldn’t want to change IE Farmers Insurance, Waste Management, the real tourneys.
Gameplay:
1. Abiltiy to watch partners shots
a. We can already do this in other modes. Add it to season mode! 80% of the time I wouldn’t use it but the 20% of the time that I would (final pairing, 3 holes left, tied for lead with playing partner) would be so incredible.
2. Playoff holes – no analysis needed
3. Online Career
a. If they can’t do it online at least allow me to do a multiplayer offline career mode and we can send the file back and forth. I LOVED doing this in the PS2 days. An online career mode a la NCAA would be the greatest thing to happen to the game for me personally.
4. Choose Any Player for Career Mode
a. Start a career with any player from the Player Database discussed above. Use a created player? Go ahead. Tiger? Sure. Phil? Yes you can because you created him in the database. Cameron Tringale? Bud Cauley? Finish off Rocco Mediate’s career? OF COURSE. Choose anyone just like any other sports game. With the custom database option it doesn’t matter if EA can’t sure an agreement with them because we can create them ourselves.
5. Ryder Cup/President’s Cup
a. Add this to the career mode with a simple selection process that uses OWGR as well as the player’s nationality (which we set in the database) to determine the teams each year. Think of how rewarding it would be when after 3 years of playing on tour you finally get selected for the Ryder Cup team with your created player? It would also be amazing for 15 years down the road when the old-timers are gone and the young guns, as well as players coming out of the amateur database, are taking over the teams.
6. Simulate tourneys
a. Ability to enter a tournament and simulate all four rounds if wanted. This would be great to speed up getting through a season where you want to be rewarded with starts but only want to play in the big tourneys.
7. Better AI Scoring Difficulty
a. Too big of a gap between difficulties. Should be a gap more like this: winners at +5, winners at E, winners at -5, winners at -10, winners at -15, etc. Have about a 5 stroke gap between each instead of making a huge 10-12 stoke jump between normal and hard (can’t remember offhand which difficulties has the jump but it was frustrating because I wanted it right in between the two!)
8. Sliders
a. Add sliders! If my drive is too accurate let me adjust only driving accuracy, not everything at once! This would be such a game changer.
9. Exemptions
a. Mentioned briefly above but add exemptions (win and 2 year exemption on tour, exemption into masters, etc.)
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10-05-2012, 04:43 AM
