We are learning a lot from the Early Access stats that we are finally able to start trawling through. The biggest thing we are learning is how muddied the whole Telemetry side of things is. For the console builds it is very straightforward for us to create a consistent experience for the players. The Xbox One uses an Xbox controller, the PlayStation 4 uses a Dualshock 4 and everyone on both consoles will have exactly the same frame rate meaning that the swing mechanics will be identical for all console gamers. Meanwhile, on PC, we have a myriad of gamepads all with different mechanics plus keyboard and mouse. There is also a terrifying amount of different PC specs leading to differing performance statistics. It is hard to know if even two PC gamers are having the same golf experience let alone the vast majority. Add to that people ‘bending the rules’ in a variety of ways – locking the x-axis on their controller, using a ruler and mouse, hacking the game to turn off wind and so on – and interpreting the data and feedback becomes extremely difficult.
One thing to remind people taking part in Early Access, the only truly honed controller experience is with the Xbox controller. Dualshock 4 is a close second but we still need to tweak it further. All other mainstream PC controllers are to be tested and polished as we progress through compatibility testing once the console builds have been submitted to first party. Something that would be very useful for the dev team is if all of you out there playing Early Access that want to help make the game fantastic for everyone could call out the controller you use and your Steam user name in your forum signature on both the HB TGC forum and the Steam TGC forum. This would be extremely valuable for us in looking at any concerns or bugs because we will be able to grab your telemetry and see how your controller is responding and the resultant impact on the data.
So far, the overall scoring excellent. There are no ridiculous scores. The best round that even a ‘rule bender’ has achieved was a 58! We can see the swing accuracy for every shot played and no one using any controller in a usual manner could get a dead straight swing 100% of the time. When we get a moment we will automate the process of invalidating scorecards that have been achieved in an ‘unusual’ manner but right now we are looking manually. This only catches the obvious scores but very soon we will automatically detect things. It is beyond us as to why people do this but then we like to play fair.
On the three official courses that aren’t beginner courses, counting all rounds played since fixing the telemetry gathering issue including suspicious rounds:
Crystal Lake Resort 80 sub-par rounds out of 705 full rounds played
Knoll Down Golf Club 70 sub-par rounds out of 960 full rounds played
Pinehurst River 56 sub-par rounds out of 683 full rounds played
When you dig into the general stats it starts to get murky due to all the issues mentioned above. However, for interest’s sake..here are the overall stats for these courses with the rounds mentioned above:
Overall Stats for the Official Courses
COURSE
AVG SCORE
FIR %
GIR %
PUTTS / HOLE
TOTAL
88.20
69.28
44.98
2.01
Crystal Lake Resort
88.96
62.89
41.11
1.91
Knoll Down
86.79
72.45
43.63
1.95
Pinehurst River
89.29
71.69
50.74
2.18
We also thought it would also be interesting to look at a few individual players. Here are three that we selected from the telemetry. These are all their rounds played on the three official courses that aren’t beginner courses:
PLAYER – Democritus_Mav
Here we can see how they steadily improved as they got to know the game and eventually posted a 66 on Knoll Down which was in the top 20 best scores on that course.
DATE
COURSE
SCORE
FIR%
GIR%
PUTTS
TOTALS
75.29
79.40
62.08
1.73
Fri Apr 25 2014
Crystal Lake
70
85.71
44.44
1.33
Fri Apr 25 2014
Crystal Lake
79
42.85
27.77
1.5
Wed Apr 23 2014
Knoll Down
85
85.71
44.44
1.944
Fri Apr 25 2014
Knoll Down
75
71.42
72.22
1.77
Fri Apr 25 2014
Knoll Down
82
78.57
61.11
2.00
Sat Apr 26 2014
Knoll Down
73
85.71
61.11
1.66
Mon Apr 28 2014
Knoll Down
73
100.00
83.33
1.77
Tue Apr 29 2014
Knoll Down
69
100.00
66.66
1.5
Wed Apr 30 2014
Knoll Down
66
92.85
83.33
1.38
Wed Apr 23 2014
Pinehurst River
84
71.42
55.55
2.05
Fri Apr 25 2014
Pinehurst River
76
57.14
61.11
1.77
Sat Apr 26 2014
Pinehurst River
74
71.42
77.77
1.83
Sat Apr 26 2014
Pinehurst River
76
85.71
55.55
1.77
Sat Apr 26 2014
Pinehurst River
76
71.42
61.11
1.83
Sat Apr 26 2014
Pinehurst River
80
78.57
55.55
2.00
Sun Apr 27 2014
Pinehurst River
69
78.57
66.66
1.44
Sun May 04 2014
Pinehurst River
73
92.85
77.77
1.88
PLAYER – alanbernado
These are the only scorecards for this user and, as you can see, they struggled and then seemed to give up.
DATE
COURSE
SCORE
FIR%
GIR%
PPH
TOTAL
87.25
66.07
43.05
1.99
Mon Apr 28 2014
Crystal Lake Resort
81
71.42
61.11
1.888
Mon Apr 28 2014
Knoll Down Golf Club
79
92.85
44.44
1.833
Sun Apr 27 2014
Knoll Down Golf Club
93
42.85
27.77
2.055
Sat Apr 26 2014
Pinehurst River
96
57.14
38.88
2.222
PLAYER – woody72
This is an example of a player achieving perfect accuracy on almost every shot. This means that the swing line in the bottom right of the screen was absolutely dead straight. These rounds would be caught by our automatic detection system that is being implemented and thus eliminated from the leaderboards and telemetry.
DATE
COURSE
SCORE
FIR%
GIR%
PUTTS
TOTAL
68.21
89.28
79.36
28.49
Tue Apr 22 2014
Crystal Lake
84
85.71
50.00
22
Sat May 03 2014
Crystal Lake
68
85.71
77.77
25
Wed May 07 2014
Crystal Lake
61
92.85
72.22
27
Wed May 07 2014
Crystal Lake
64
92.85
88.88
38
Fri May 02 2014
Knoll Down
73
92.85
61.11
26
Mon May 05 2014
Knoll Down
65
100
83.33
29
Sun May 04 2014
Pinehurst River
66
85.71
94.44
29
Sun May 04 2014
Pinehurst River
73
78.57
72.22
29
Mon May 05 2014
Pinehurst River
68
92.85
88.88
27
Wed May 07 2014
Pinehurst River
67
100.00
88.88
27
Wed May 07 2014
Pinehurst River
66
78.57
83.33
28
Fri May 09 2014
Pinehurst River
66
92.85
83.33
30
Fri May 09 2014
Pinehurst River
65
92.85
88.88
29
Fri May 09 2014
Pinehurst River
69
78.57
77.77
33
We are working hard to make sure the game is a fantastic experience for all as well as trying to finish it so that the console gamers can have a go. The more you all help by contributing accurate information and not bending the rules the easier it will be for us to achieve our goals. Use the HB TGC forum and Steam TGC forum as much as you can and, as mentioned above, display your steam names so that we can take a look at the data. It will really help us interpret what message players are conveying when commenting on TGC. Thanks for all your help so far, we are loving making this game.
Cheers
The Golf Club Development Team
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