HB Studios Next-Gen golf game: The Golf Club

[webdanzer]

I haven't played more than 6 or so holes of the game total so far, but I'd be up for PS4 tour play.

[J_Cauthen]

Going forward, if you decide to setup tournaments and tours in the future can you also set them up for the guys on Xbox1?

Sure, I'll do that with this trial and see how it works out. I'm genuinely stoked for the XB1 patch since it's going to be more comprehensive than they originally hinted it would be. I would love to have a more playable XB1 version of TGC, especially for time when I don't want to go through the hassle of setting up all the cables, adapters, controllers, and laptop needed to make my XB1 controller work on the PS4

[J_Cauthen]

Okay guys, I've got a three, 72 hole tournament event tour setup now. You'll find it under "Play Tour" as "Digital Sports Page Trial Tour (pre-patch). I've done the same for both the PS4 and XB1 versions of The Golf Club.

The first tournament is at an Autumn theme course which has been my sleeper course so far on the PS4 called "Vermont CC". It was created on the PS4 and plays beautifully on the PS4. I just played the first round of the Tour at Vermont CC on the XB1 because I wanted to make sure it was playable on the XB1 (really should have done that before I published the Tour). Anyway, Vermont CC chugs just a little bit more than I'd hoped it would, but not to the point that I found it unplayable. I enjoyed my round there and shot 68, which was better than the 74 I shot on the PS4 version my first time out.

The second stop is at Swindon Downs, a Links theme course. It was created on the PC and played smoothly on the PS4. I haven't tested it on the XB1, but it's got an 8.0 rating so far from 25 plays on the XB1 so it must be working for most XB1 gamers.

The final stop is at Red Diamond GC, my favorite desert theme golf course to date. It was created on the PC also and plays smoothly and fairly on the PS4. I think the XB1 will be able to manage it, but it will probably have moments where it chugs.

I've got both tours set to run for 16 days because I'm pretty sure both versions are going to have tournament and tour play quality changes that will make a lot of players want to start again with a fresh slate.

[J_Cauthen]

I played my first round in the PS4 DSP Tour Trial and even though I shot a 76, I think I had the most fun I've had playing a round the The Golf Club to date. Vermont CC can quietly kick your a$$. Early in the back 9, I was +1 and was looking at a 10 foot putt for par on a par 5... I walked away with a triple bogey 8, after running my putt well by the hole and off the green, chipped back up to the other side of the green, chipped back down and had to sink a nerve racking 4 footer for the triple bogey!

There's a par 4 on the front side which is a sharp dogleg left. You can shoot straight at the pin from the tee. It's a 259 yard distance to the pin from the tee, but it's about 12', or so downhill. There's a swamp all around most of the green so if you err long, you're going to be in the water also. I put two balls in the water, one short and one long at this hole today and wound up double bogeying it. I was lucky to get away with a 76, but I had a few great holes along the way... Vermont CC is a fantastic course, IMO!

[Leadfoot5]

Thanks for setting this up John. Will try and pull myself away from Destiny for a couple hours when my trigger finger needs a rest.

[MERACE]

Going forward, if you decide to setup tournaments and tours in the future can you also set them up for the guys on Xbox1?

I would love to have a more playable XB1 version of TGC, especially for time when I don't want to go through the hassle of setting up all the cables, adapters, controllers, and laptop needed to make my XB1 controller work on the PS4

But surely it's worth it to be able to play against me live or against my ghost ball on PS4.


-MERACE

[Diablo25]

Has the Ps4 version been stable today? I had my first ever disconnect last night. Looking forward to playing the tourney.

[J_Cauthen]

I've been disconnected briefly twice today, but was able to reconnect instantly. I am concerned about the scores being tallied, at least on the PS4 side of this trial Tour. I've played two rounds in it now and nothing is showing on the leaderboard... for anyone including me. When I go in to play my next round though, it takes me to round 3, so at least it knows I've already played my first two rounds.

I'll check the XB1 version here in a few and see what it looks like. It hadn't shown my round from this morning late this afternoon. This is why I thought it was a good idea to have a trial tour

[J_Cauthen]

But surely it's worth it to be able to play against me live or against my ghost ball on PS4.

Oh yeah, when I'm playing human competition, I want to have on my dress blues... I'll go through the muss & fuss with my XBox One controller to take on sharks like you

[DivotMaker]

I played my first round in the PS4 DSP Tour Trial and even though I shot a 76, I think I had the most fun I've had playing a round the The Golf Club to date. Vermont CC can quietly kick your a$$. Early in the back 9, I was +1 and was looking at a 10 foot putt for par on a par 5... I walked away with a triple bogey 8, after running my putt well by the hole and off the green, chipped back up to the other side of the green, chipped back down and had to sink a nerve racking 4 footer for the triple bogey!

There's a par 4 on the front side which is a sharp dogleg left. You can shoot straight at the pin from the tee. It's a 259 yard distance to the pin from the tee, but it's about 12', or so downhill. There's a swamp all around most of the green so if you err long, you're going to be in the water also. I put two balls in the water, one short and one long at this hole today and wound up double bogeying it. I was lucky to get away with a 76, but I had a few great holes along the way... Vermont CC is a fantastic course, IMO!

Good course...made some dumb shot choices which cost me several strokes. Ended up with -4, but could easily have been 7 or 8 under. Thanks for setting these up....

Played Red Diamond last night and it is a pretty good layout....liking the 4 rounds at each course.....

[Gangrel]

Played round one on the xbox. Ouch. I haven't played in a while, and suck.

Ended up in too many bunkers trying to be cute with tee shots. I also cost myself four strokes with a weird situation you can see on my feed as i saved a clip. it looks like i shoot from underwater?

And something else weird was the aiming marker when putting was always 2 or 3 feet past the hole. I didn't notice until the 16th hole or so. I'm sure it cost me a few strokes, or at least I plan on using it as my excuse!

At least Diablo did worse than me.

Round 2 will be better. It can't get any worse!

[Leadfoot5]

I played my first round in the PS4 DSP Tour Trial and even though I shot a 76, I think I had the most fun I've had playing a round the The Golf Club to date. Vermont CC can quietly kick your a$$. Early in the back 9, I was +1 and was looking at a 10 foot putt for par on a par 5... I walked away with a triple bogey 8, after running my putt well by the hole and off the green, chipped back up to the other side of the green, chipped back down and had to sink a nerve racking 4 footer for the triple bogey!

There's a par 4 on the front side which is a sharp dogleg left. You can shoot straight at the pin from the tee. It's a 259 yard distance to the pin from the tee, but it's about 12', or so downhill. There's a swamp all around most of the green so if you err long, you're going to be in the water also. I put two balls in the water, one short and one long at this hole today and wound up double bogeying it. I was lucky to get away with a 76, but I had a few great holes along the way... Vermont CC is a fantastic course, IMO!

Agreed. Best time I've ever had shooting over par! It was also great being able to play with 3 ghosts, put some extra pressure on!! Thanks again for setting this up!

[10spro]

Are you guys still shooting straight down the target? Because I am surely not and it's not as easy as everyone was talking about when the game just came out. Played Vermont with Merace on the trial tour and the wind was only about +5 sideways and I just kept hooking the ball or not reaching 100% on my swings.
I don't think it's the DS4 either so whatever memory leak is happening I hope they patch it up soon, along getting rid of the big scoreboard card showing while you're trying to watch your friend finish a hole.

[J_Cauthen]

I'm just learning that the scores will not start appearing on the leaderboard until someone has finished all four rounds of the current event. That takes a lot of the immediacy of tournament play out of the picture! I hope this is a deficiency in the software and not a conscious design decision. I'm trying to get clarification on that now. It's odd that I don't even see my own score on the leaderboard

James, I've been going back and forth between XB1 and XBox 360 controllers on the PS4 version of the game and I think that's causing me to have more issues with straying, but I also think I'm seeing more drift in shots that are still inside the red cone. I know I'm not complaining about hitting the ball too straight anymore, but I'd say I have more trouble hitting 100% than I do hitting the ball straight.

Vermont CC continues to humiliate me... I had two 7's on my card there last night, mostly because I don't have enough sense to realize when it's time to play it safe. I put waaaaay too many balls in the water on this course; but I love every minute of it I had to shoot a 32 on the back 9 of round 3 to shoot a 71, including a 181 yard holeout for an eagle on one hole. One of the sevens was a four putt green from 13 feet, where I didn't look ahead to see that three feet past the hole, the green dropped off and anything past the hole was going to be in trouble. My second putt was from the fringe, 31 feet away

Oh, and if you find some of my balls in the swamp around the 6th green, could you e-mail them to me? That hole has made me its biatch!

[DivotMaker]

Oh, and if you find some of my balls in the swamp around the 6th green, could you e-mail them to me? That hole has made me its biatch!

Played round 2 at Vermont and hole #6 is borderline stupid. Played a safe 5W to the fairway with a 10 MPH trailing wind, hit it pure and still ended up in the rough under a tree well left. Put 2 in the water trying to get from under the tree and finally pitched out for a fantastic NINE. Ruined my entire round. I also have to say the wind physics are anything but realistic during this round. A 10 MPH crossing wind should not put you in a fairway bunker if you are aiming at the well right of the heavy rough on the opposite side of the fairway AND hit your tee shot pure.....ended up with a 78 after opening with a 68, so I am +4 because of hole number 6. Vermont is a very nice course, but that one hole really mars the entire experience as shot results are inconsistent with the shot input from my experience. I am now +8 on that one hole in two rounds.....I will rate this course a 7 or 8 at the end of this tournament based on what I have seen so far with hole #6.....shame....the rest of the course plays well.

[J_Cauthen]

Are you guys still shooting straight down the target? Because I am surely not and it's not as easy as everyone was talking about when the game just came out. Played Vermont with Merace on the trial tour and the wind was only about +5 sideways and I just kept hooking the ball or not reaching 100% on my swings.
I don't think it's the DS4 either so whatever memory leak is happening I hope they patch it up soon, along getting rid of the big scoreboard card showing while you're trying to watch your friend finish a hole.

James, were you and Mark seeing each other's scores on the leaderboard, in between holes, as you played last night, or only on the in-game score panel on the upper left? Was my round offered as a ghost round? Did you see anyone's name on the leaderboard in between holes?

[10spro]

Are you guys still shooting straight down the target? Because I am surely not and it's not as easy as everyone was talking about when the game just came out. Played Vermont with Merace on the trial tour and the wind was only about +5 sideways and I just kept hooking the ball or not reaching 100% on my swings.
I don't think it's the DS4 either so whatever memory leak is happening I hope they patch it up soon, along getting rid of the big scoreboard card showing while you're trying to watch your friend finish a hole.

James, were you and Mark seeing each other's scores on the leaderboard, in between holes, as you played last night, or only on the in-game score panel on the upper left? Was my round offered as a ghost round? Did you see anyone's name on the leaderboard in between holes?

The scoreboard is a NOT 100% accurate. On my screen you kept showing as 'Away' and stuck on hole #1 even. So I kept asking Mark what was showing on his scoreboard because earlier when we were trying to hook up, I could see you, Divot and Leadfoot's scores as ghosts. But that scoreboard was not the same once we restarted Vermont as he was a bit ahead of me.

However, apparently on his screen your were still showing as a ghost scorer while on mine you were away. But Divot and Lead's name were gone on my screen. I think I could only see Merace's score on the scoreboard after each hole or we were just telling each other with a play by play.

He wasn't happy about his slices and I kept hooking the ball while both had issues not swinging at 100%. And yes, I know full well about the challenges on #6 as you experienced but to go for a swim in other holes because your club couldn't hit at 100% is annoying.

So I know you are quite active with HB studios regarding issues that need to be addressed so tell them that the way the scoreboard is being shown is quite on a 'Beta' stage if you will and again if I am watching you finish a particular hole while trying to see if you can sink a 12' putt, that big scoreboard should not intrude my viewing.

Will try to squeeze a couple of more rounds today as I hit the road until the weekend.

[J_Cauthen]

Played round 2 at Vermont and hole #6 is borderline stupid. Played a safe 5W to the fairway with a 10 MPH trailing wind, hit it pure and still ended up in the rough under a tree well left. Put 2 in the water trying to get from under the tree and finally pitched out for a fantastic NINE. Ruined my entire round. I also have to say the wind physics are anything but realistic during this round. A 10 MPH crossing wind should not put you in a fairway bunker if you are aiming at the well right of the heavy rough on the opposite side of the fairway AND hit your tee shot pure.....ended up with a 78 after opening with a 68, so I am +4 because of hole number 6. Vermont is a very nice course, but that one hole really mars the entire experience as shot results are inconsistent with the shot input from my experience. I am now +8 on that one hole in two rounds.....I will rate this course a 7 or 8 at the end of this tournament based on what I have seen so far with hole #6.....shame....the rest of the course plays well.

I've only played #6 safe, one time, and that was with my XB1 version round. I hooked a 3-wood around the dogleg a bit and managed to leave it in the fairway. I hit a sandwedge into the green and made a 15 foot birdie putt. That's the only time I tried to play it safe, but even playing it safe requires a shot that isn't quite clear what's required. If the wind hadn't been helping me, I would have gone through the dogleg there.

Once you get into double digit winds in this game, I think they get overstated to a degree. If I see 14 mph+ winds, I'm more likely to back away from the round. I played one round with 24 mph winds and it was circus like at one of the links theme courses... I didn't enjoy it, but wanted to post a score and rate the course.

[J_Cauthen]

The scoreboard is a NOT 100% accurate. On my screen you kept showing as 'Away' and stuck on hole #1 even. So I kept asking Mark what was showing on his scoreboard because earlier when we were trying to hook up, I could see you, Divot and Leadfoot's scores as ghosts. But that scoreboard was not the same once we restarted Vermont as he was a bit ahead of me.

However, apparently on his screen your were still showing as a ghost scorer while on mine you were away. But Divot and Lead's name were gone on my screen. I think I could only see Merace's score on the scoreboard after each hole or we were just telling each other with a play by play.

He wasn't happy about his slices and I kept hooking the ball while both had issues not swinging at 100%. And yes, I know full well about the challenges on #6 as you experienced but to go for a swim in other holes because your club couldn't hit at 100% is annoying.

So I know you are quite active with HB studios regarding issues that need to be addressed so tell them that the way the scoreboard is being shown is quite on a 'Beta' stage if you will and again if I am watching you finish a particular hole while trying to see if you can sink a 12' putt, that big scoreboard should not intrude my viewing.

Will try to squeeze a couple of more rounds today as I hit the road until the weekend.

I appreciate this report James. At least you guys are seeing something else on the leaderboard. I guess no one is showing up on my ghost list because I'm through 3 rounds already, but I would think that I should be able to see you guys scores for where you're at in the tournament. I've played in other tournaments where I could see other player's scores in progress on the leaderboard.

Hopefully, the forthcoming patch will do something to help with these inconsistencies many are seeing in the swing interface. Memory leaks have affected the XB1 version in this area and I'm thinking we'll see something about this being treated in the PS4 version in the patch notes. I think they're trying to get the patch released to Sony by Thursday at the latest.

As for the scorecard overlay while your opponents are still playing, I don't think they'll have a chance to do anything with that until what they're calling an "update" is released, later in October. I'll hit them up with that again though, as it really does take you out of the view you should have at that point.

[MERACE]

Like James said, we both had brutal practice rounds on Vermont CC last night.

HB Studios really needs to get the scoreboards and leaderboards working correctly or it will eventually kill off this otherwise great golf game.

I'm really struggling to get consistent 100% power shots. Almost every other shot is 90-93% which has caused many approach shots to end up in a hazard and kills my scores. In trying to compensate for not getting 100% power by slamming the stick forward which results in anything but a straight shot (mostly severe slices). I even purchased a new controller but it did not help.

I never had a problem hitting 100% and mostly straight shots using my PS4 controller on the PC version of TGC. I'll continue to try to find a solution to this problem, but if I can't it will be fruitless for me to play in competitive tournaments.


-MERACE

[J_Cauthen]

Like James said, we both had brutal practice rounds on Vermont CC last night.

HB Studios really needs to get the scoreboards and leaderboards working correctly or it will eventually kill off this otherwise great golf game.

The XB1 patch should be upon us by this time next week and I think it will tell us a lot about how they're able to cope with these problems.

I'm really struggling to get consistent 100% power shots. Almost every other shot is 90-93% which has caused many approach shots to end up in a hazard and kills my scores. In trying to compensate for not getting 100% power by slamming the stick forward which results in anything but a straight shot (mostly severe slices). I even purchased a new controller but it did not help.

I'm finding that I'll fall off to 92% (it's always 92 or 93% in my case) about three shots per round, on average. The rest of the time it's 100%. I find it odd that I never see anything in between? And keep in mind, I'm getting this with both the XB1 and XBox 360 controllers, so I guess this goes to show that the Cronus Max is doing a good job of emulating the DS4 Really though, I think this points to a problem in the game's interface, even though the frequency of the 92% effect varies from gamer to gamer.

[Leadfoot5]

I'm not having problems hitting 100% at all, very consistent. However, I was hooking and slicing WAY more than usual last night. Don't know what to attribute it to, but I'm not complaining since I thought it was too easy the first few times I played.

As for the scoreboard, the first round I had 3 ghosts to play with, (John, Divot, and some guy I don't know), but then in the second round it was just Divot, as John showed AWAY on Hole #1.

[DivotMaker]

Are you guys still shooting straight down the target? Because I am surely not and it's not as easy as everyone was talking about when the game just came out. Played Vermont with Merace on the trial tour and the wind was only about +5 sideways and I just kept hooking the ball or not reaching 100% on my swings.
I don't think it's the DS4 either so whatever memory leak is happening I hope they patch it up soon, along getting rid of the big scoreboard card showing while you're trying to watch your friend finish a hole.

James, were you and Mark seeing each other's scores on the leaderboard, in between holes, as you played last night, or only on the in-game score panel on the upper left? Was my round offered as a ghost round? Did you see anyone's name on the leaderboard in between holes?

I am seeing others's scores for each round (mine and ghost players) during the round and also seeing the scores in the left hand panel while in game. I do get a final scorecard and leaderboard after the round.

[DivotMaker]

I'm not having problems hitting 100% at all, very consistent. However, I was hooking and slicing WAY more than usual last night. Don't know what to attribute it to, but I'm not complaining since I thought it was too easy the first few times I played.

Same for me this AM....way more off target shots than usual. I think I found every single fairway bunker which left me scratching my head.....

[Leadfoot5]

I'm not having problems hitting 100% at all, very consistent. However, I was hooking and slicing WAY more than usual last night. Don't know what to attribute it to, but I'm not complaining since I thought it was too easy the first few times I played.

Same for me this AM....way more off target shots than usual. I think I found every single fairway bunker which left me scratching my head.....

Interesting... So is it just us, or are they tuning the game in the background? Seems like that's information they should share with their users right?