Ivories78: I do read the forum posts
You must have just started reading forum posts today :)
Go back and read posts for the last several months ...how many people have been pissing & moaning because the same handful of people were consistently winning tournaments. What did a lot of these same " unimpressed players" want to avoid that? .. MORE TIERS ... we have them now. When WGT added the pro & master tiers last year, an awful lot of people got bumped up into a tier that they probably weren't ready for. It sucks, but the only way to avoid that would be to start everybody over from scratch ...no credits, starter equipment, etc.
Ivories78: t's a simple formula - if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Again, read the forums ! ....in the last 2 months alone, there have probably been a couple hundred posts about quitters & sandbaggers.
Adding levels will work to cut down on both of those, in my mind. In order to unlock better equipment, one is going to have to PLAY .. and finished mutli-player rounds will add to your level more so than single-player rounds .... should, and i repeat, SHOULD cut down on the number of people that bail on matches.
I don't know what affect the changes will really have on the sandbagging issue ... I think we will always have that .... and i really could care less. And I think that people's fears of lower tiered players having superior equipment isn't going to be much different than it is now.
An example of that was shown to me a week or so ago. I played a MPC with some amateur ( 88ish avg.) This guy had played a grand total of 3 ranked rounds ... in early May..enough to gain the amateur status and, as such, he had purchased the Rapture pro set. ..255 yrd driver from the ladies tees is more than a little advantage over any pro/master. At least with the new system of levels, that same player is going to really have to put in some serious playing time before he/she can unlock the better equipment( and more than likely will advance tiers as well).
WGT just released the new tiers/levels today and let's face it .. change hurts, sometimes. Complaining about it, or threatening to leave the game just seems a little premature to me.
Sorry for being so long-winded ... I'm not normally. I just think people should actually give the new system a chance before condemning it.
Jeff