Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 14 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions (PS3, 360)

[Love13]

Just one more week until early release. I'm kind of looking forward to getting in a game of skins online on sim difficulty. It was fun last year, but this time around there should be a bit more drama during putting.

What do you mean "until early release"?

[Pappy Knuckles]

Re: Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 14 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions (PS3, 360)

What do you mean "until early release"?

I'm talking about the EA Sports season ticket program. If you're enrolled you get to download the game early a few days before it comes out and get 20% off DLC. Last year they also included some pretty nice clubs.

[OnlookerDelay]

Re: Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 14 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions (PS3, 360)

What do you mean "until early release"?

He means the EA Sports "Season Ticket" release that runs March 22 - 25, if I read your question correctly... well he beat me to it

[Love13]

Gotcha. You learn something new every day right haha

[HANDSWARD_EA]

Re: Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 14 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions (PS3, 360)

UPDATE: I am told that they are working hard to get my blog posted by this afternoon. I will post a link to it as soon as I know it is up.

Another UPDATE: It will going live first thing Monday morning. Couldn't get all the approvals in time to where it wasn't going to get posted until 7 or 8 tonight. They would rather go with a fresh story for first thing in the morning Monday. Sorry for any confusion I may have brought on.

[CallCenterZombie]

Re: Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 14 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions (PS3, 360)

Gotcha. You learn something new every day right haha

If you don't then you're not really living.

[chi_hawks]

Re: Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 14 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions (PS3, 360)

We'll just agree to disagree. We have different visions for what a Simulation mode should be like. Having played the most challenging levels only in all TW games, I welcome the challenge of this Simulation mode as it is quite a bit more challenging than Tournament mode from '13. I am sorry you feel differently. If enough folks feel like you do, then EA will likely take notice and consider changes in TW15. At the end of the day, this is their true "simulation" effort and it will likely evolve as the game evolves.

Yeah - I agree that its good that they are trying to find a way to make the game more challenging for those that want it. Like you said - I'm sure its one of those things they will refine in next years game. I really enjoy the game on tour pro regardless...may have to pick up this years version.

[globalbeats7]

Re: Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 14 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions (PS3, 360)

whenever they introduce something new, its never flawless the first year. just like true aim was in '11. however, they never refined true aim just left it as is. so i hope for future years they will refine sim difficulty. right now on demo, its so hard because your playing blind and the swing stick is hyper sensitive.

[CallCenterZombie]

Re: Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 14 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions (PS3, 360)

whenever they introduce something new, its never flawless the first year. just like true aim was in '11. however, they never refined true aim just left it as is. so i hope for future years they will refine sim difficulty. right now on demo, its so hard because your playing blind and the swing stick is hyper sensitive.

rather have them refine sim than true aim. Just my opinion. Sim mode is as addicting than playing TW04 imo.

[Love13]

whenever they introduce something new, its never flawless the first year. just like true aim was in '11. however, they never refined true aim just left it as is. so i hope for future years they will refine sim difficulty. right now on demo, its so hard because your playing blind and the swing stick is hyper sensitive.

I think most of us are in agreance that there needs to be something added for yards. But I think the swing stick is perfect, as far as realism goes. The reason I say this is because in real life hitting 70% of fairways is excellent. Just to give an example, last year the leader in diving accuracy hit 73% of the fairways. Only a handful even hit 70 or better. And the average on PGA tour was around 60-65% fairways hit from the tee. And these are stats from the best players in the world. So if you are an average tour player which is about the top 150 golfers in the world, you will hit the fairway 55-65% of the time you step up on the tee. So I would say ea nailed it with the swing stick for simulation mode.

http://www.cbssports.com/golf/stats/stats_leaders/PGA/2012/drivingAccuracy

There is the link I used to get this information if anyone wants to review it.

[Love13]

I think most of us are in agreance that there needs to be something added for yards. But I think the swing stick is perfect, as far as realism goes. The reason I say this is because in real life hitting 70% of fairways is excellent. Just to give an example, last year the leader in diving accuracy hit 73% of the fairways. Only a handful even hit 70 or better. And the average on PGA tour was around 60-65% fairways hit from the tee. And these are stats from the best players in the world. So if you are an average tour player which is about the top 150 golfers in the world, you will hit the fairway 55-65% of the time you step up on the tee. So I would say ea nailed it with the swing stick for simulation mode.

http://www.cbssports.com/golf/stats/stats_leaders/PGA/2012/drivingAccuracy

There is the link I used to get this information if anyone wants to review it.

To add to that, rory mcllroy #1 ranked golfer in the world hit 56% of fairways and Luke Donald former #1 (still top 5 I believe) hit 65% of fairways off the tee. And the name of the game Tiger Woods hit a whopping 63%.

Overall, hitting the fairway off the tee consistently as a very hard feet for anyone to accomplish. What makes the great players is how they recover after they get into trouble. Also one thing to remember that hands said earlier; every golfer on the demo is a "power hitter" which have a much smaller window of error. Once the game drops, grab Luke Donald or one of the other control players and see how much different the game is before creating your golfer. Plus, with practice, either way you go, I think the good and great players that wanted the sim type play in the first place will be back to shooting mid 60's again.

[JustAnotherDoug]

Re: Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 14 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions (PS3, 360)

Also one thing to remember that hands said earlier; every golfer on the demo is a "power hitter" which have a much smaller window of error. Once the game drops, grab Luke Donald or one of the other control players and see how much different the game is before creating your golfer.

In the demo if I want more control I just move the aiming target back so that there is no added power.

[ctulb]

Re: Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 14 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions (PS3, 360)

In the demo if I want more control I just move the aiming target back so that there is no added power.

Definitely makes a big difference accuracy wise.

I assume control golfers are going to work the opposite way from power golfers - the shorter the shot compared to their max distance, the greater their accuracy boost?

[OnlookerDelay]

Re: Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 14 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions (PS3, 360)

whenever they introduce something new, its never flawless the first year. just like true aim was in '11. however, they never refined true aim just left it as is. so i hope for future years they will refine sim difficulty. right now on demo, its so hard because your playing blind and the swing stick is hyper sensitive.

I saw what I considered improvement in True-Aim from 11, to 12, and the most in '13 (unless you were trying to play Live Tournaments - it was disabled there). I thought it tracked the ball better in 12, and not only could you use it in Live Tournaments, you could switch on-the-fly between Follow, Presentation, and True-Aim cameras in mid-round, during a Live Tournament. True-Aim in Tiger 13 even featured a 'cut to the finish' camera. Even though it was a static shot, it was at least real time. Oddly, the finishing static shot angles and zoom levels were wonderful in online multiplayer, yet overly zoomed and presented from such low angles that it was tough to tell at times where your ball actually rested. It was still better than nothing, IMO.

I've heard a lot of talk in the official forum about how True-Aim was used less than 1% of the time according to EA Sports telemetry. Well heck, I couldn't use True-Aim in Live Tournament play in Tiger 13, which constituted about 90% of my play time and my 5% career mode was mostly offline on a 360 that's not connected to the internet most of the time (I keep my profile and game data on a flash drive).

I'm not a huge True-Aim advocate, but I found it better than any of the other presentation options. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10's presentation option comes the closest to delivering what I'd like to see in a presentation package, but even it cuts away from the swing camera view earlier than I'd prefer, 60 to 70% of the time.

On the subject of the new advanced shot shaping, I'd say I'm hitting the fairway less than 30% of the time when using it. Worse yet, I'm probably putting tee shots O.B. about 10% of those misses! Yes, it's tougher and will probably produce more realistic numbers eventually. I know I'd do better with a control golfer, but I guess the biggest problem I'm having right now is making the sensual analogy between the severe swing path angles you have to take with the stick to disproportionally scaled back results they produce. It just makes the process feel a little bit "contrived" for the lack of a better term.

Advanced Shot Shaping is something I could eventually become comfortable with and the missing link with the scale analogy will blend into the background with time. I'm not sure I could ever come to grips with the Analog Fade Meter though. I totally can't find the analog between it and a golf shot setup. I can't think of a time I've ever played a shot where I couldn't see and align my club with the spot I wanted to target *prior* to taking my swing!?

I've enjoyed playing Tournament difficulty in the demo the most because of the lack of a fading analog meter, no-bead grids, and a slightly less punitive Advanced Shot Shaping mechanism, so I can take the analog fade strike meter off the plate with it. My FIRs improve about 10% in Tournament versus Simulation, and the no-bead grids aren't nearly as revealing as the beaded ones. I like the challenge they present compared to the 'pot luck' feeling I get with gridless greens.

I think the room for improvement with this new interface is to build a rhythm component into it. Full swings still feel like they reward the quickest twitches with the best "tempo". The element of human governed accleration doesn't seem to be taken into consideration on full swings. I get some sense of it with the pitching, chipping, and putting games, but they're only about half of what the game of golf is all about. I know I feel acceleration and torsion physics in real life, and by gosh, if Links 2004 could model that 10 years ago in full swings, why not Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14?

[TheTruth]

Re: Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 14 Demo Available Now, Post Your Impressions (PS3, 360)

I'd say I'm hitting the fairway less than 30% of the time when using it. Worse yet, I'm probably putting tee shots O.B. about 10% of those misses!

JC - have you tried slowing down your backswing yet? This helped me tremendously once I figured that out.