Alrighty, here goes an analogy. You go to a car dealership and take out a car for a test drive. Fantastic car until you notice at various times during the test drive the engine sputters and even stalls a couple times. The rest of the time you love pretty much everything about the car. When you return to the dealership, you call out for the sales manager who ignores you then finally tells you that it is a problem with your driving...the car runs fine, you just need to change the way you drive and that it is a result of how this particular engine operates so you need to alter yourself to fit the car. You tell them that you have driven many other cars and that you are a fair mechanic and have driven a few million miles in your life but they still insist you don't know what you are talking about.
Would you buy this car from this dealer? Not me.
Is anyone from the WGT staff reading this? NOT ME, I will not buy this car.
I will go to another dealership to find a different car that doesn't run poorly, even if it only does stall 'sometimes'.
And that is what I am doing. I have been test driving Tiger Woods PGA tour online. To continue the analogy, that car isn't nearly as pretty nor as enjoyable to drive all the time, but the engine doesn't miss sporadically. Granted it has been less than a week of playing but I have only had two instances of the swing function pausing in approximately 1000 swings. I want to use, play and BUY this car (WGT), but until I test drive it (isn't that what a Beta is?) and it works the way it should and the dealer stops ignoring and nearly insulting a sizable portion of their customers, I will be forced to look elsewhere.
Consumers vote with their $$. I have had my credit car out to put down my money to buy clubs to improve my ability, but each time this infuriating issue arises yet again and I say 'screw it, I am done with this game'. Only to return a few days or weeks later to give it another shot. You (WGT) have developed a wonderful game. Easy to play initially but tough to play well and difficult to master. It has very decent flexibility and variety. If this issue would be addressed, or even just let us know you are working hard to fix it, those of us who like it WILL stick around. I think the patience of users has been shown.
And for all those who don't have this problem, I am very happy for you. But I know, not just have read on here, but personally know several people who I play with that ALL have the swing bar problem on every computer they use that can handle any other application they run. And about half of them have completely quit playing the game because of it.
We have run it in IE, Maxthon, Firefox, and Chrome with the same results. On systems running from 2GB DDR to 8 GB DDR3 ECC RAM. Processors from single core 2GHz to dual Xeon 3.4GHz. Laptops, desktops and high end workstations. Daily software and OS updates or systems that haven't been updated in months. XP Home and Professional, Vista Home Premium, Enterprise and Ultimate and Windows 7 Home, Premium and Ultimate. That's right, no Macs. So call me a whiner or whatever, but don't try to whitewash what is blatantly a software anomaly just because it doesn't affect everyone, every time.
Finally a bit of self-aggrandizing/ I maintain and train others how to maintain integrated networked military weapon systems with literally hundreds and hundreds of processors of every type you can imagine and many you might not that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and it's not just nice if they work, but they MUST work. So when operators (customers) advise me of a problem I may begin looking at operator error, but when it is happening to lots of them all over the place, I have to admit my system has a problem. I can't just ignore them or tell them they are idiots. And pointing to those who are not having trouble DOES NOT FIX THE PROBLEM.
Argh, it is obvious I really care about this game or I wouldn't get so worked up about it. But patience is not infinite. As many others have said, I can live with the inconsistencies of shots, the vagaries of wind, and absolutely shots that go bad cuz I did something wrong. But I can not accept an anomaly that can and should be addressed that does it to me seemingly on a whim. I am off to develop my player on TWO. I am sure I will be back to see how things go here and have my fingers crossed. Good luck and good game to all of you who could stand to read this.
/rant over/
Ron