Rotating "themes" ruined the gain they made with the new timed lobbies. When it started, with Random, 9 holes, you got 12-16 player lobbies almost every time, all day. Once they added the themes, it dropped to 10-12 with the occasional 16. Once everyone realized they were stuck with high winds, limited courses for a full day, they moved on to a different game. At first, they'd come back to check the daily change but more and more just lost interest. I had 2 main parties I would play with (4-8 people) but now most of the people are just playing something else...and these are/were hard core golf gamers. Now you're lucky to get past the 8 barrier. 4-8 is the norm with the occasional 12 and rare 16.
They need to go back to the 9 holes, random or create 20 or more themes and rotate them twice a day.
I realize the online games not counting on the leaderboard chased away a LOT of customers, but they have done nothing to bring them back.
On Xbox, the 4-5 person lobbies were the norm prior to the lobby update. After the update, the lobbies were mostly full with the occasional bailers, but fewer and fewer as most were willing to stay for crap conditions in a full lobby knowing that the next one might be better. The full lobbies are what gets you up or down the leaderboard and that's what people want in ranked play. What they've done is taken away the chance for conditions to your liking when it's 1-2 winds, soft greens or 10-15 Tournament greens ALL DAY LONG. People have given up and moved on as evidenced by the rare full lobby. This time of day at the start of the updated lobby there'd be no delay to jump in one, now - 3 or 4 tries and then it's 3 other people. If I keep hitting join and back out, eventually I'll catch a group just getting back and have a 12-14 game. I'm not spending 20 minutes for .05 points by beating 3 other people. That's what EA has turned this into.
