151 replies to this topic

[Greensboronclion]

Well I don't know about any news but after my first round at Motion Swing at Shinnocock Hills in the PGLS Classic my caddie Leonard was spotted drinking heavily at The Ole 19th hole.  Wow it was quite an adventure and one time we had send a search party for him as I hit it so far right he got lost.  I think he is thinking retirement as its no longer a nice walk in the grass but more like a maze and getting lost.  By the way sorry about those few spectators that showed up I didn't mean to hit you with those errant shots.  Wow that was exhausting and I better go to the range before I tee it up again.  

[DoGgs]

Kinda wish i was setup for mouse play, but my PC is basically a console, that only leaves me with 3C, and while i don't mind the odd round here and there i def have no interest in taking it on tour.  never say never, but for now i will gracefully step away from tours and most likely PG in general considering i don't play much solo or MP.  Summer is here in the UK so its the perfect time to put the virtual clubs away.

I would also like to say that i thought long and hard about revealing this exploit, i knew it was going to effect my tour participation along with every other controller player, but i have always yearned for across the board fairness in golf games, i played with a great bunch of fair minded people at the copyright club back in the PGA 2000 days, i also played with the same and similar people in TW08 /10  I have yet to recapture that feel of fair competition since then, and this exploit just had to be made common knowledge.  As much as i love the controller swing with PG it is just too open to manipulation, better detection is required to move the method forward, alas i cannot see PG being the game to do it.

[Wirenut48]

I don't think Andrew is correct with his statement that it will output zero when reducing the sensitivity. What it will do is output a lower value than normal in line with what 3rd party controllers will do. I haven't tested it, but looks like it could be adjusted down to nearly zero. But I did notice just above the advanced options in the video there is an option to turn off the individual axis, now that would output zero.

 

Like I said above this is very similar to using more forgiving 3rd party controllers (a little more extreme depending on settings). That has always been a concern but never resulted in a ban until now. I don't see how this could not be managed on personal basis and not ban all users.

 

I also think part of the problem for all this controller criticism lately is the lack of knowledge of the swing type. I don't really know how to put this without making it sound like I'm saying hitting it straight with a controller is easy, which it is not with a quality brand name controller (Microsoft, Sony). But it is not the most challenging aspect of the controller swing. Yes it will help in positioning off the tee and lead to more accurate approaches. I still would give it less than a 25% edge over all, whether it be software or 3rd party. In turn may help get you out of the middle of the pack in tournaments. Any controller player near the top of the leader board are good at it, the same with the other swing types up there.

 

The biggest challenge with the controller is distance control. Without mastering that and making the proper adjustment for conditions you won't be scoring very well. Distance control with the controller is harder than any of the other swing types. Reasons, the short throw of the stick, and the small window of error. This makes using a 3^rd party controller with less sensitivity harder and giving a slight advantage to the more granular DS4 and Xbox. 3click you got a large scale power meter, and with the mouse a adjustable amount of throw and sensitivity settings.

 

I love the challenge the controller brings to this game it has been done better than any other Golf game to date. You really need the utmost concentration down to how you’re gripping the controller as you would with a golf club. The analog swing gives you great immersion with the swing the Animation is making. So you won’t find me playing with any other swing method, and believe me, I’m old enough to have put plenty of time in with all the others (playing Golf games since 1990).

 

I too will most likely buy an XB1X so will not have to deal with all this that swing type bull.

[DoGgs]

being straight is def not the be all and end all, my short game stats are up there with the best, without that aspect i would be nowhere.  It took a long time to master the putting, which prob became my best area of play with controller, many have quit the method complaining that putting is too hard, you really need to work at it to get gud.

[MimicPS]

Wirenut is correct in his assessment. I lowered it in testing to 20% of normal and it showed no message... at this point, a Tour Pro play like me who absolutely stinks at play with a controller, was blazing the flag with next to no offline hits. The 'forgiving controller' message was only triggered below this point, which was dead-straight every time.

 

If I had to quantify the effect this had, then at 20% (0.100) it was playing somewhere between how Hacker level reacts, if not actually a little less sensitive and closer to beginner dispersion, when a novice such as I was playing an unpracticed swing at an in-game level of Tour Pro.

 

The reason the departure for controller play has been deemed necessary is because we can't have a 120+ tourney event, with a carefully curated player base who are all assessed at playing levels and who earn a sliding scale of points based on their level, when one swing-type potentially does not have the transparency or same level of challenge as the rest. To not take action would mean that we would see players no longer interested in the tour which we have worked hard to try to provide as a fair and challenging environment for all.

 

I would ask again for any future version of the game to include a form of calibration wholly within the game for all movement swings. Lock off any external inputs if at all possible.

[maxie]

Fair play dogs , you play well i must admit but that comment get gud is something i expect from a call of duty kid

[Greensboronclion]

The controller no doubt was easier off the tee than the other swings but I will tell you it took me a long time to figure out the putting and I had some of the best guiding me on that aspect of the game and still struggle at times with it as its all about feel and no meter to help.  Also the distance control was and is very difficult to judge and just tough to get right most of the time but really fun to use.  One player in another thread said that the Controller was easy and we the controller players had it to easy and he bought a controller and distance and putting were pretty easy to him but when challenged to prove it with a video we never heard another word from him.  I will miss the controller play and will play it in solo rounds and without exploits and learn another swing again and hope that someday it can be used again and it cant be exploited.

[Wirenut48]

Wirenut is correct in his assessment. I lowered it in testing to 20% of normal and it showed no message... at this point, a Tour Pro play like me who absolutely stinks at play with a controller, was blazing the flag with next to no offline hits. The 'forgiving controller' message was only triggered below this point, which was dead-straight every time.

 

If I had to quantify the effect this had, then at 20% (0.100) it was playing somewhere between how Hacker level reacts, if not actually a little less sensitive and closer to beginner dispersion, when a novice such as I was playing an unpracticed swing at an in-game level of Tour Pro.

 

The reason the departure for controller play has been deemed necessary is because we can't have a 120+ tourney event, with a carefully curated player base who are all assessed at playing levels and who earn a sliding scale of points based on their level, when one swing-type potentially does not have the transparency or same level of challenge as the rest. To not take action would mean that we would see players no longer interested in the tour which we have worked hard to try to provide as a fair and challenging environment for all.

 

I would ask again for any future version of the game to include a form of calibration wholly within the game for all movement swings. Lock off any external inputs if at all possible.

So you were hitting it straight like a 3rd party controller would. How well did you score and nail the distance? This is what I was getting at, things like this have been around from the beginning of time, but is not the most important part of scoring well. Yes, it does create an advantage, and shame on them for using it, but to ban a entire swing method at this point is a bit too much. Too be good at playing with the controller takes much more that hitting it straight. I would love to see anyone use this exploit and score better than their preferred method of play, not going to happen how good you get. Or even if your method of play is the controller, it's not going to make that much of a difference in your abilities to play better. 

 

It's really sad that one of the best implementations of a controller swing method in a Golf game get such a bad rep with nothing to back it up except speculation. Let's see how many controller player's make their way to to top of the leader boards using this exploit. And of course the one's now at the top with the other swing methods have no skill as they are just using exploits. Who know's and really what does it matter, this is suppose to be a fun pastime with stats being reset  periodically becoming forgotten history.

[DoGgs]

Fair play dogs , you play well i must admit but that comment get gud is something i expect from a call of duty kid

I once was that kid... i think they call it flashbacks     when i was in nam....BirmingNAM

[JoeBradley]

Well, this is bummer for controller players. I don't play RTC, but know of a simple emulator program that allows you play with a joystick/pad using mouse input. Haven't tried with a pad but know for a fact you can use a joystick on RTSM in PG. Unfortunately, the program allows axis sensitivity to dialled down or eliminated, but surely this would then trigger the 'forgiving device' message? If so, maybe this is a way for controller players to continue in PGLS events. From the download blurb:

"Joy To Mouse allows you to use a joystick or joypad as if it were a normal mouse by transferring the operating system movements and clicks. In the first draft of the program is already in the "Options" window accessible through the icon in the system tray. From here you can customize the buttons on the joystick and the velocity of movement of the pointer, enable the automatic acceleration and eventual execution of the program startup."

EDIT: Mean to say 'Joy to Key': (also works with analog sticks of Xbox controller - just tried it) "JoyToKey enables you to control many softwares (like web games, browsers, office applications or even Windows itself) by using your favorite windows joystick. Whenever you press joystick buttons and sticks, JoyToKey will emulate keyboard strokes or mouse inputs based on joystick input so that the target application works as if you used a real keyboard or mouse. You can create multiple configuration files to switch across different key/mouse assignments. It also supports the automatic association with target applications so that the config file will switch automatically when the target application changes."

[MimicPS]

It may well be back to the drawing board for the developers to make a match of swings which have the same level of challenge.

 

So far as the above possibility goes, it would have to be assessed just how much it de-sensitized before a message appears. Using the recently publicized method of trimming axis, it lowered it to a point where a player without experience or skills could hit straighter in RTS-C at Tour Pro level than he could when using a swing method well below his skill-set, playing Amateur level of the swing he has played has played for 20 years. Unfortunately, as well as finding this out, it also never triggered a message in-game. It only did that when deadened to zero-axis.

 

We have exactly the opposite problem in Motionswing Vertical, which triggers the message in normal play with standard gaming mice, and then doesn't using the same model in the Horizontal.

 

The whole thing probably needs looking at in open testing with the whole of PG's userbase, rather than being cooked up within a developer setting and not re-visited since release. Unfortunately again, that does not look like a prospect which would happen soon as developer focus is elsewhere at present.

[MimicPS]

So you were hitting it straight like a 3rd party controller would. How well did you score and nail the distance? This is what I was getting at, things like this have been around from the beginning of time, but is not the most important part of scoring well. Yes, it does create an advantage, and shame on them for using it, but to ban a entire swing method at this point is a bit too much. Too be good at playing with the controller takes much more that hitting it straight. I would love to see anyone use this exploit and score better than their preferred method of play, not going to happen how good you get. Or even if your method of play is the controller, it's not going to make that much of a difference in your abilities to play better. 

 

It's really sad that one of the best implementations of a controller swing method in a Golf game get such a bad rep with nothing to back it up except speculation. Let's see how many controller player's make their way to to top of the leader boards using this exploit. And of course the one's now at the top with the other swing methods have no skill as they are just using exploits. Who know's and really what does it matter, this is suppose to be a fun pastime with stats being reset  periodically becoming forgotten history.

 

The above points are well made. The reason we have announced plans to take the swing out of our competitions in just over a month's time is because the doubts over the veracity of any score posted, either legitimately or not, would mean that any score posted would be doubted by players of other swings. It is much the same as if the World Athletics bodies said it was open house on doping, and then you had no idea of 8 sprinters on the line in the 100 meters of who had run clean and who had not.

 

We hated the decision to have to take such a wide-ranging stance on it, as we have always wanted to keep the community together. It may well be that controller players will split into providing their own tour, and the unfortunate thing is I doubt this is the last we will hear of exploits and the user-base will fracture even deeper.

 

I will make this point as much as I can. Future versions of the game should find a way of making the only inputs available within the game environment those which are calibrated within the game environment.

[Ted_Ball]

My fantasy game had a dedicated controller.

[JoeBradley]

Just to be clear, the joystick/pad-mouse emulator mentioned above (Joy to Key), as well as allowing controller players a means of using a gamepad via RTSM mode, also allows them (and RTSM players for that matter) a means of dialling in axis sensitivity and even swing ratios that may or may not not trigger the warning and void the score. In other words, it may be unfair to bar controllers as an input method for PGLS events when a potential exploit also exists for RTSM players. I don't have an agenda here, just pointing that out.  

[Wirenut48]

Just to be clear, the joystick/pad-mouse emulator mentioned above (Joy to Key), as well as allowing controller players a means of using a gamepad via RTSM mode, also allows them (and RTSM players for that matter) a means of dialling in axis sensitivity and even swing ratios that may or may not not trigger the warning and void the score. In other words, it may be unfair to bar controllers as an input method for PGLS events when a potential exploit also exists for RTSM players. I don't have an agenda here, just pointing that out.  

I've done that with this game before they added controller support. But the native controller swing does such a good job of emulating a golf swing that I'm not going to give that up just to play on a virtual tour.

[Greensboronclion]

I really like all the dialog that is going on right now about this and for me the most important thing is keeping the community that we have left together and the same with the tours we play on.  We have issues with the game but we all admit that we love the game and how it plays just that there are some ways to cheat that some are taking advantage of.  The bottom line is that a few are doing this to harm the whole of the community for their own personal satisfaction and that is the sad part.  Almost all who play this game do it legit and don't deserve to have to deal with the few who are trying to boost their ego.  I came up in links and for years we played and yes we had the few who either used an edge or some other means and we always found a way to foil them.  The majority here just want to play video golf and have fun and the truth is I myself just try to compare my score with those who I view as on my level or above and not look at the top of the leaderboard anymore.  I enjoy playing the events and want to keep playing those events and again its just a game.

[DoGgs]

I have an idea for a controller tour that may also tempt non controller users to get on board too if they already own any type of controller, i will be working with the guys at PGLS to get it off the ground.  the following promo is just an idea at this point and will be subject to change depending on what they can do at PGLS...check it out!

[FreeBolt]

Tours have already banned controller players from official tournaments, a mistake in my opinion. Trying to toss them a bone after the fact, is just rubbing salt into the wound.

[samterrence]

count me in DOGS I really like the idea of a controller tour and it puts back my faith in PGLS who have done a fantastic job up to now.

Thought my virtual golf career was over until now LOL

[DoGgs]

Tours have already banned controller players from official tournaments, a mistake in my opinion. Trying to toss them a bone after the fact, is just rubbing salt into the wound.

Well i'm one of those controller players myself and i still want a reason to play PG, you can't take it personal as its the method that got banned, not the player.  It's just way too easy to exploit as it is now.  That is not the fault of PGLS, just the way it is.