Robert1893:
Regardless of all of that, the game is not "fixed" as he claims, and the following statement he made (in another thread) is simply not true: "spend $100 on WGT and suddenly you shoot 52s instead of 67s."
Actually two years on from this (and the other post I posted on that you were ever so good to point out), I have spent money, moved much higher up the rankings and I still firmly believe that you are penalised for not spending money.
The statement that you dismissed so easily actually feels more true now than it did two years ago. I know how to play the game now, and I rarely have a bad round (unless it's head-to-head which I believe is a law unto itself in this strangely money-oriented game). The thing is I moved from tour pro to master with rented Mavrik clubs; my game improved vastly over the space of two days, so much so that my average score dropped more in those two days than it had in the previous two years.
I toiled away on videos and doing surveys - because for the last two years money has been anything but disposable - and bought myself a half reasonable set of irons, 3 wood and hybrid - and within three months I'd gone from master to tour master and over the first couple of months I continued to improve, my average coming down from 150 to the mid 60s.
But since Christmas, suddenly my adequate clubs are no longer adequate. The same shots do not have the same effect. Now, I understand that the huge amount of variables - wind, greens etc - mean that playing the same shot exactly the same way is almost impossible to quantify as the only place you'll ever get the chance to repeat the shot is when you practice and practice rounds ALWAYS are much easier, more forgiving and confidence installing. However, when my irons no longer do what is expected of them regardless of how I hit the ball - usually very consistently - and my driving varies in length wildly in a single round, I again started to look at whether or not the game was now weighted towards me needing to upgrade my clubs to maintain the same level or better.
Also, when you play someone who is level 50, a tour pro with absolute top quality clubs, using expensive balls, off of easier tees and you get your *** handed to you on a plate to the point where you're almost shouting at the screen because the shot or putt you just made somehow mysteriously doesn't go in or where you want it, very much the same way it used to do that when I had a starter set, you have to either draw the conclusion that the tour pro you're playing has either got another account (has more experience than his level 50 suggests) or has worked out the basics of the game and realised that with $300 worth of equipment he can be a world beater, for a while.
You can say that my statement isn't true, but that doesn't make either of us right, but what it does do is put the game into perspective; if you spend money on better clubs you get more forgiveness and control. I have considerably more anecdotal evidence to suggest low ranked players with good clubs win more often than low ranked players with starter clubs. There have been some good arguments put across a number of threads about this and it's got the stage where, IMHO, the people vehemently denying the game is fixed/loaded towards money spenders are either employed by WGT or have had an exponential rise through their ability to spend money on the game. Most of the people I've seen dismiss this accusation have fabulous clubs, have won tournaments, play with expensive balls. Oddly enough I don't see that many masters or tour masters who haven't got some premium clubs and even more odd I don't see any of them standing tall and saying This Game Isn't Fixed.
When people claim this game isn't fixed or loaded towards people who spend money, you need to ask yourself a number of questions: why does EVERYTHING from out of free time sponsorship to clubs to entering certain competitions cost gold coins, which cost money unless you're prepared to spend a lot of time toiling over surveys - many of which waste your time for an inordinate amount of time before telling you you're not suitable. Why does anything that's free seem prone to crashing or pausing while it reconnects, but doesn't do that whenever you spend money?
I've spent a lot of time over the last two years of the pandemic playing WGT a lot - having to isolate and being stuck in doors has meant I have loads of free time and no money and as a result I've been making copious notes to back up my and others assertion that the game is most decidedly fixed in a way that makes heroin dealers look like good guys. You and others can dismiss our claims and accusations in flippant, sarcastic and [not so] clever ways, but it's all ridicule and dismissal; like the original poster might have been a troll, but he actually asks a good question - all the people who don't think it's fixed, you don't ever say why you don't think it's fixed. Is this because you can't? Is this because you're financially solvent enough to have never really experienced anything but the usual learning curve? Or are you maybe like the guy at Level 50 who beat me by 6 shots with an awesome set of clubs; as long as you're playing okay you don't want to think it's about the money you've spent and more about how brilliant you are?