Hello everybody,
it has been a glorious journey with all of you at this lovely virtual golf page. I want to thank everyone of the friends and former friends that I made here, especially all fellow Elite CC members and former WGT Ryder Cup players that I had many great talks and games with. The game itself has been the greatest online golf game for the past years in my eyes, but the following problems should have been worked on:
1) The whole game will reach a stagnation point where many players play at a very similar top level with the best possible equipment. The way the courses are mapped, the tees can't be placed much further back than the current "champion" tees, so the inevitably improving clubs will even lower the scores more. The remaining game factors also can't really be used to increase the difficulty of the game much more, as wind and green speed have their natural limitations (faster green speed than "champ" would lead to a "minigolf-effect" on many holes). Uneven lies would be a great way to increase the difficulty and reduce the calculability of the game. They sadly don't seem to be close to the nessecary point of realism yet though. To sum it up, future leaderboards will look like 52-53-53-53-53-53-53-54-54-54-54-54-54-54-54.... you got it. That simply can not be the goal for a golf game, even if it is virtual.
2) As long as this game remains flash based, it is determined to be hacked and cheated. Timebased and optically triggered mouseclicks combined with flash speed manipulation could definitely guarantee a ding 99% of the time. Flash is not really protectable against this, the only way to get cheaters to stop is changing the whole surrounding of this game. Of course I am aware, that this will take a long time, but trust me, better start with it now. Otherwise, you will have to increase deviations even more to force these players to putt from outside 8ft again. But that is not the way to go as it punishes the honest players as well... The way it is right now, cheating players approach the 95% GIR and 8ft average as you can see by spending some days checking out many many player stats. Create the possibility to watch other players during their games. Soon!
This is the short-term possibility to decrease cheating without quitting
flash. A live-play-tournament could be planned with all mouse-movements
streamed to watch for every player.
3) Missing incentives. There is no real need to explain this, but I will do it anyway. This game misses the following things:
- Yearly tour with weekly smaller and bigger events, including more than one major. At the end of the year, there would be a virtual Order of Merit / FedexCup standing and the top 10 players should win nice real prizes. This would keep the interest on a stable high level. Based on these tournaments, a world ranking could also be included on the front page instead of highlighting "addicted" players (no offense to anyone, definitely highly skilled people!) who manage to play all the boring ready gos each day. But even without an overall ranking, this sort of a tour is mandatory for a virtual golf game.
- Alternate shot tournaments. Allow players to try and beat other players as a team. Would be a great thing.
- Better Elite collection items. The way it is right now, the black market seems to increase with players selling their credits to others. If this continues, it will cost WGT way more than offering real life prizes. Give good players incentives to play for!
- Create official cc vs. cc strokeplay tournaments. Single play, stroke play, every player from every club can participate. Top 10 of each club after round 1 play 3 more rounds to place in the overall standing. Highlight the country club winner of each month at the front page. Would be awesome for everybody to compete against the best on a monthly basis and give everybody the chance to participate.
As there sadly seems to be very little enthusiasm at WGT to improve any of the named things and their general plan for the future of this game is not discussed with the players, I sadly got to quit the game for now. Will definitely check back every few months to see whether the forum communication and the will to improve this game in the long time based on player feedback increases. If the WGT management finally wakes up with motivated ideas for the future and the game gets a good anti-cheating protection I might definitely come back one day, but only in that case.
I will check and answer private messages for about 1-2 weeks from now as some of my friends might be in shock to read this. I am definitely willing to debate with fellow players in this thread for some days as well.
Goodbye everybody, it has been a great time. Remember that this is only an online game, stay critical and ask for improvements whenever you feel that they should be offered. This is not your life, it is just a small part of it as long as you stay here. MisterWGT, please read these ideas carefully and send me a private message or an e-mail if you are interested in any further thoughts on improving this game, it would be a shame to let it slowly fade out like it seems to be right now.
Cheers, your Hans