Many good suggestions for upgrades. And if I was the project manager for WGT.com, then I would certainly add other payment options. Because if WGT doesn't get paid, this game goes away. :-)
- Does WGT pay any royalties to the courses it digitizes? Does WGT pay an up-front fee to take all the pictures?
How does WT get those aerial shots which appear to be about 50-100 feet in the air?
- I guess the WGT people go to a course and take a several hundred pictures of the course. In HD. I wonder why they can't digitally manipulate the pictures of greens to move the pins around. Maybe because it won't be as accurate? Seeing how each photograph's hole has to be repositioned perfectly?
A few suggestions:
- I think the pitching and chipping is sufficiently erratic and unreliable that it's hard to hit a relatively predictable shot. e.g. I might be 3 yards off the green on the fringe/fairway. In real golf this could certainly be a chip or a pitch, your choice. However many times I'll try to "chip" and for some reason the ball doesn't land on the green, or it doesn't "go" if it hits the fringe first. It gets frustrating when you are trying to chip, say, 7 yards, and if you hit a chip 6 yards on the meter it may not even make it off the fringe.
Basically I think those controls are too sensitive and need to be tweaked to be a little more reliable.
- I would love a button on the UI that allows one to see the topology map on the green no matter where you are, tee box, fairway, 20 yards out, 100 yards out, whatever. I think that is KEY.
- The game needs some sort of "Tap In" button if your put is within a short distance from the hole, like 12 - 18 inches. You can just tap it in and not use the meter. In my opinion it is more likely that someone will miss the putt because of game user error than if they were actually on the green. It will greatly speed up the game - especially group play. Some puts are so short that they are gimmies to any golfer no matter how inexperienced.
At the very least allow golfers to "putt out" if their put is within a few feet of the hole, so we don't keep on rotating between players who are all within 2-4 feet of the cup.
- People want a practice green and driving range. That's fine...but it would be much easier to allow people to "redo shots" if they are playing a practice round. It would be a simple menu item near "replay shot." You obviously can't do this during a ranked round. Sounds good, doesn't it?
- I think it would be great to hit a ball from different angles...you still obviously have to have a meter but I would often like to hit a shot while I'm looking down on a fairway or a green. Yea Yea it's not realistic but in the end this is game and there are some liberties we can take that doesn't actually give a golfer an unfair advantage over a realistic game.
There are other little quirkiness things here or there. So far I've resisted purchasing upgrades because I fear all I'll do is play a little better, and then want to upgrade even more. :-(
Overall a good game. If I ever play Kiawah in the future, I'll know that course like the back of my hand. :-)