EA Server Disconnects Should NOT Interrupt Single-Player Career Mode
I am writing this after an extremely frustrating experience with EA SPORTS PGA TOUR, but the problem goes considerably deeper than a temporary server outage. I paid roughly $90 CAD for this game. I enjoy the actual golf gameplay, which is precisely why the decisions surrounding Career Mode, online connectivity, progression, and monetization are so frustrating. During the final round of THE PLAYERS Championship in Career Mode, I repeatedly lost connection specifically to EA's servers. This is a single-player Career event. When the connection failed, I was removed from the mode and lost gameplay progress, including completed holes that I then had to replay. Importantly, my Xbox did not lose its internet connection during these interruptions. Other devices on the same home network also continued operating normally and maintained their internet connections without interruption verified at router level as well. Streaming and other internet-connected services performed normally while EA SPORTS PGA TOUR reported that it was unable to connect to EA's servers. In other words, this was not a general loss of internet connectivity in my home. The interruption was specific to the game's connection to EA's online services. At one point, after hitting an excellent approach to approximately three feet, the game disconnected from EA's servers. When I eventually got back into Career Mode, I discovered that my progress had rolled back by two holes. After replaying them, the game disconnected again. There is no reasonable justification for a single-player round being this dependent on a persistent connection to EA's servers. Career rounds should save locally. If online progression, XP, quests, rewards, or other services need to be synchronized with EA's servers, those systems should cache their data locally and synchronize when a connection becomes available again. A temporary interruption between the game and EA's services should never prevent someone from playing a single-player Career event or cause completed gameplay to be lost. What makes this particularly difficult to justify is the content that appears to necessitate this connectivity. While I was playing THE PLAYERS at TPC Sawgrass, the game was tracking weekly objectives at Marco Simone — a course I was not playing and had not recently played. My objectives remained at 0/30 fairways in regulation, 0/20 birdies, and 0/36 holes completed at Marco Simone. Why should infrastructure associated with online challenges and progression have any authority over whether I can continue playing an unrelated single-player tournament? This design actively made the core product worse. The progression and monetization systems are another source of frustration. The Pro Pass ends at only 90 levels, and after completing all 90 levels there is no continuing progression of meaningful value. Meanwhile, some of the most desirable rewards remain locked behind additional real-money purchases. This is in a game that already costs approximately $90 CAD. There is also an excessive amount of generic EA SPORTS-branded equipment in the standard progression. One of the appeals of purchasing an officially licensed PGA TOUR game is using authentic golf equipment, apparel, clubs, bags, and other items from real golf brands. Generic EA SPORTS equipment does not provide the same value or sense of progression. I understand that optional paid cosmetic content is now common in games. My larger objection is that the live-service infrastructure surrounding those systems appears to have been integrated so deeply into PGA TOUR that failure of an online service can interfere with the basic single-player experience I already paid for. That is backwards. Online tournaments should require an online connection. Multiplayer should require an online connection. Server-verified competitive features should require an online connection. A single-player Career round should not become unplayable because EA's servers temporarily lose connection. At minimum, I would strongly recommend: 1. Allow Career Mode rounds to continue offline. 2. Save Career progress locally after every hole. 3. Cache XP, quests, challenges, and other progression locally and synchronize them when connectivity returns. 4. Never roll back completed holes because of an EA server interruption. 5. Provide meaningful repeatable progression after completing level 90 of the Pro Pass. 6. Include more authentic licensed equipment in the base-game progression rather than relying so heavily on generic EA SPORTS items and additional paid content. The frustrating part is that EA SPORTS PGA TOUR has genuinely enjoyable golf gameplay underneath these systems. I am criticizing these decisions because I enjoy playing the game and want the product surrounding that gameplay to be better. A server interruption should not be capable of ruining the flow of a single-player tournament. Please pass this feedback to the team responsible for Career Mode, progression, online services, and product design rather than treating it solely as a connectivity support issue. The connection failure exposed the problem, but the underlying problem is the design decision that allows a connection failure to affect single-player Career Mode in the first place. And to be clear once again: my Xbox and the other devices on my network remained connected and functioning normally throughout these incidents. Please do not reduce this report to generic home-network troubleshooting. The issue being raised here is the game's dependency on EA's servers for a single-player Career experience and the loss of gameplay progress when that connection fails."New: EA Golf" Using Same Game
Not knowing anything about the industry (HUGE DISCLAIMER in case this makes no sense financially or businesswise) but I believe EA should take the opportunity right now to corner the market on the golf gaming industry. It seems people may be trending towards sports games that are almost more like simulators than games (and this is where my ignorance may show). I believe the current EA Sports platform, redone, can be extremely popular. People without the game: $149.00. Those who already own it get a 50% discount. Imagine this game with the following improvements (with input from the whole community, developers can take the best ideas and combine them): Rework the characters. They are horrible and everyone seems to know this. There is quite a bit of technology that I believe photographs can be used to make the likenesses much closer and less…they’re just bad right now. Can you add a few new players as well? Women and men. Aren’t there new “engines” that can run this game with much better graphics and more efficiently? (See? I’m ignorant.) Create 3-4 times the amount of random spectators and have their reactions make more sense. The announcing is quite good SOMETIMES. Oftentimes though, it makes little to no sense. o Announcing something the AI golfer does, as if I did it (scores, etc.) o The shot is short right and I hear, “A little left and a little long but…” o Within one game you can hear the same thing at least 4-5 times. Announcer improvements: o Announcements based on past experience with each particular course. o (This is where the big $$$ may come in) Use 4-5 different announcers and even use someone “following” the golfer. Consider the current cast of announcers on TV. o Create at least 4-5 times the number of different sayings that may come up. o Make the sayings more appropriate to what is actually happening. Personally created golfers could look more like the person creating them. o Again, use photos. For people to create their own golfer, have them input 4-5 photos of themselves at different angles. Use these photos to create a much more realistic golfer that players can “believe” are actually themselves playing with PGA golfers. The better the realism, the more immersion. The better the immersion, the more fun. o It seems you can input your face onto cheap phone apps and get a caricature made in seconds. I can’t imagine a gaming company can’t do this fairly cheaply. I know it was done with the old Xbox 360 and the “Kinect.” I would imagine you could use the USB port and a thumb drive or something now?? Fix the bugs!!! o Playoffs don’t work. o New seasons? No way to advance anymore. o (Look online and pick the biggest problems first and work your way down.) Start a “What Would You Want to See” forum and let fans decide what should be implemented. Find the best whatever number of ideas, pull those out, and have people rate them 1-10 on importance to them. (I’m sure there are better ways but this just popped into my head.) These are just a few ideas but hopefully the picture can be seen. The courses could look almost as if you are there. The crowd can look and sound much more realistic. The announcers can sound like you are watching on TV. I believe the basis and technology used in the first place in this game are phenomenal. And since you already have the base game, only improvements need to be made, keeping costs down (is my guess). No need to reinvent the wheel. But it is time, I think, to step up to the plate with all of the new technology before someone else chooses to. Or maybe no one else is competing and you can sit and continue making money on this as-is since the “other” golf game is so terrible. I don’t know. I just know there is some serious potential to create a golf game that is used as the basis throughout the world that this company can monetize easier and quicker, especially since the fanbase is already here, and continue to update through the years. Think of MSFS2024: It had/has tons of bugs (many of which have been fixed), but it’s a great platform to grow on. Only with golf. Very interested in hearing others’ thoughts! Would you pay for the upgrade? Would you buy this at this price point if you didn’t have this game already? I believe you can charge a premium when you have a premium game. “If you build it, …”
