Re: As feared the game has gotten too easy too soon.

I agree with the rough and bunkers...I actually took my stats down on recovery to 1 ..Still too easy to get out of lol 

Absolutely.. never seen the scenario in this game yet when you hit a ball into the heavy rough and you can only hack it out about 40 or 50 yards. The game either just plonks the ball out of the heavy rough and gives you a nice lie or hits you with an out of bounds message without any warning that there was an out of bounds border there anyway.

On one of the Bandon Dunes weekly tournament rounds I did finally manage to end up far enough in a bit of rough that the lie was bad enough I had to lay up (I don't have a hack shot which I know may have helped). I had mixed feelings as I was obviously annoyed I'd messed up but it was at least a bit more realistic.

@jambomakaveliEnjoyed your response and it pretty much mirrors mine.

I also have both games but really will only play one. I haven't decided which, but I am really hoping EA will get their game to where it needs to be.

I play masters or legend in 2K23, because like you I make my share of errant shots in real golf and want to do the same in a sim. To me the challenge is working your way through a round. Fairways and greens are as boring as it can get, if it is not earned the reward is low.

I want to feel nervous hitting into a green when there is water in play. I get this in 2K23, for whatever reason there is no fear in EA. I think it is because in 2K23 timing has so much impact on the shot. With EA I know my swing path is pretty straight and off line shots will seldom be an issue.

In 2K23 I can turn off just about everything, and it in my opinion makes the game more realistic and challenging.

The only thing I see on the screen in 2K23 is the hole number and scorecard. Everything else is disabled...

EA I feel has a way to go to satisfy the sim player, but it is not unattainable. I am just hoping that they choose to go this route opposed to servicing the casual gamer. Because the casual gamer is only in it for the short term.

But you are right about the novelty wearing off, it is not the lack of courses or challenges that causing the lack of luster. It is the lack of challenge in the gameplay, and to a point the unfair results for well executed shotmaking.

I regularly will hit a pefectly timed shot with a perfectly straight swing path that will pull left or block out to the right. Yet I can ram the stick to the top of my controller, have a large overswing, very fast timed shot with a crooked swing path and more often than not have it result in a perfect drive.

In 2K23 I know I have made a bad swing the minute I complete my swing, you can get attuned to it if you have played long enough.

With EA there are a lot of surprises... many of which feel unfair. The game shows a lot of promise... I was hoping for a lot more, I had high hopes for this project.

I think the ball physics of EA PGA Tour are far better than 2K . Have you ever played real golf ?

@jambomakaveliI will only play/concentrate on one game at a time currently that would be EA PGA Tour.

But it appears SPYGLASS was released today on 2K23... could be my favorite course. So it seems I will be playing 2K23 tonight.

I still have high hopes for EA that they will improve the gameplay to the point it is challenging and emulates a golf simulation rather than a game.

@jambomakaveliI would love to see Spyglass on EA.

I am 45 and it seems alot of older people are playing this.   I know personally i have thousands of hours into golf games so people have a ton of experience.  One thing that is lacking that games like links and shot online had is the effect of uphill / downhill lies.  If you were on a hill in those games you had to drastically adjust your shot.  In shot online some lies you were adding like 100+ yrds to your shot if you hit a full shot.  Also if you were on a downslope and hit a wood or low iron you were lucky if your ball got off the ground.  Links was similar in this way and there were no real maths to calculate it was by feel, experience, hitting half did shots, and just not landing in lumpy spots.  It was much better to have a 150yrd flat shot than a nasty 50yrd uphill shot.  In Links the the higher the difficulty the more lies effected the ball.   No other games have really incorporated this well. 

As for swing I could not stand the swing in 2k.  My issue was it did not seem consistent.  I could not figure out what i was doing wrong so I could not even work on correcting it.   I would goto the range and stripe the ball, but once i got in a game it seemed like a whole different swing.   On the range i could kinda feel if a shot was fast or slow.   In an actual game my shots were all over the place and it felt like a crap shoot.  I was playing on PC and tried many different settings.   I did not try it on console so it maybe better.  I don't mind things being difficult, but i just felt there was no rhyme or reason to the shots and any amount of practice did not help.  The 3-Click swing was not bad in 2K, but it was very very punishing on the upper levels.  I think the easier swing is fine in PGA i do think they need to add more difficulty in shot setup and the rough / bunkers.    

As someone who is not a top level player I can certainly believe that the game is not demanding enough for the best as even I can play on the hard swing difficulty and not totally suck! I suspect that what the game could benefit from is an additional swing difficulty coupled with far more of a penalty for ending up in the rough or bunkers.

One thing that annoyed me with 2k21 and ultimately lead to me giving up on it was that they kept changing the swing timing/plane effects etc so I wouldn't like to see EA PGA Tour go down the same route, which is my I suggest an additional difficulty rather than changing the current 'hard' setting.

This won't affect the players on SIM but I do think that the Tour mode should have the ball arc disabled as right now it still doesn't actually require anyone to try to work out what to do in terns of compensating for cross-winds or angled lies, or judging how much draw or fade to use. 

Nobody has commented yet on my post about the arcade Riviera 4 hole tournament the other day where the leaders were 8 under for 4 holes. That would mean an ace on the par 3, a 2 on both par fours and a 3 on the par 5. Also of note is that the three click seems much easier than the stick swing yet players wanted it.  

I have not seen one player play this game forcing themselves to advance shot shape all shots. Everyone goes the straight swing route & calls the game out for being too easy.

Try the shaping tee to green & come back with an opinion on if it’s to your liking.

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@gasman1 wrote:

I have not seen one player play this game forcing themselves to advance shot shape all shots. Everyone goes the straight swing route & calls the game out for being too easy.

Try the shaping tee to green & come back with an opinion on if it’s to your liking.

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You make a good point, although for what it's worth I do use the angled swing plane for shot shaping and like what it adds to the game. I'm guessing you may too?

Definitely to one more swing difficulty 

What I think would be a good idea is another higher level of swing difficulty (Sim+ maybe it could be called), in which the controller stick movement required mimics a swing arc rather than the straight back and forward movement that is currently required. A golf swing is an arc, and the controller movement required (right-handed swing as an example) should be: center position (address) to bottom left corner (top of backswing), back to center (impact) then to top left corner (finish). This should be sufficiently more challenging to consistently hit the perfect swing plane to hit a perfectly straight shot, just like IRL.

Why golf games continue to require a straight path for controller movement on anything other than putting (which should remain as is) continues to puzzle me. It's just too easy to master a straight path for controller movement.

2K makes things more difficult by making swing tempo (overly) sensitive. What a golf game should be doing is requiring both a tempo component and arc to the controller movement, and that could be made plenty challenging on the hardest difficulty settings.  

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@DrProtista wrote:

What I think would be a good idea is another higher level of swing difficulty (Sim+ maybe it could be called), in which the controller stick movement required mimics a swing arc rather than the straight back and forward movement that is currently required. A golf swing is an arc, and the controller movement required (right-handed swing as an example) should be: center position (address) to bottom left corner (top of backswing), back to center (impact) then to top left corner (finish). This should be sufficiently more challenging to consistently hit the perfect swing plane to hit a perfectly straight shot, just like IRL.

Why golf games continue to require a straight path for controller movement on anything other than putting (which should remain as is) continues to puzzle me. It's just too easy to master a straight path for controller movement.

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For any draw or fade shots this game already requires an angled swing plane for those that have this option on though?

Can I just check, on the weekly tour difficulty tournaments and the seasonal tour and sim tournaments, is everyone forced to have the angled swing plane option on? I know it defaults to this on the weekly tour tournaments and this is how I play it but I've never looked to see if it can be disabled. I'd assumed it couldn't be (and in my opinion is definitely shouldn't be possible) but @gasman1 's comment from yesterday has just made me wonder...