33 replies to this topic

[Greensboronclion]

In the end we have ask ourselves why we play this game. In Links this Tuesday will start the final event in the Harbour Club Tribute Tour as I am ending the event for good as I am quite tired of running a three round event where it takes -50 or better to win. To me it has never been about winning but about realizim and no game has come as close as this. The other day in my local play at Southhampton I was -1 on 18 fairway and playing one of my best rounds when I promptly hit the next 2 balls o.B. And took a nine and shot 75. Now that is real golf. I play for a challenge and to be quite frank the comeroderie of all that are here on these boards. I would rather finish next to last shooting a 75 than finishing at the top with four rounds in the mid 50's. Every player should play the level they are comfortable with and move up as they feel they are ready and my point on Max settings was simply that it's for the beginner or the player that just wants to go out and have a nice round of golf but it does get boring after a while. Again to me Mod and Min are about same and much mor difficult. Now as for the so called cheating that can take place well that's up to the player and if that's what they want to do so be it as none of us can control that. As for getting a high end mouse or adjusting setting and all that I am not much into that and am quite happy to beat the ball around like I am now and hope in the future to be able to get to the Pro level and maintain a handicap of no more than 5. In the end to its all good.

[zmax - sim]

I suspect that if one has a high-end gaming mouse, it can be tweaked to at least minimize the variations in either of the swing methods.

How would tweaking the mouse DPI help a 3 clicker?


If somebody was using edging or DPI tweaking on MS, wouldn't the game eventually become super boring? In my tournaments, we use handicaps, which I hope will help deter cheating.

[sideshowbob]

sideshowbob, you can see what level your opponents are playing? It tells you next to their name.

Thanks TRC but my top line was a quote from somebody else, I then went on to say that you could see players levels.

[TheOtherRick]

If you are playing the game purely for recreation and not as part of an organized tour or ladder, the point is basically moot. You are playing against the course. The object is for you to shoot the lowest score you can. What the other player shoots is irrelevant. I say let him cheat all he wants. It does not affect my game at all. Does this affect the outcome of a match play MOP round? Certainly. But it's not like getting beat by a cheater has any long lasting in-game consequences, so in the end it's really not that big a deal. I am still trying to shoot the best I can, by beating the course, not the opponent.

 

Organized play is another story. The sad fact is that as long as there is a way to cheat, some people will find that way and exploit it. PG had a good idea in using tempo to create a straight shot to help weed out edging. But if there is a way around that as well, it is going to be exploited. It is up to the ladder and tour organizers to find a way to police this, but personally, I think such policing is next to impossible.

 

As to low scores, someone posted earlier that 10-14 under par was God-like. I can tell you that I have had a half dozen or so rounds in that score range, playing max/max, and I am certainly not God-like or using any cheat methods at all. I tried a round on mod/mod the other day and found that the drop in forgiveness is very significant, leading to a +2 round on a course where I routinely shoot -4 to -8. This strays off topic a bit, but I wanted to address the scoring point.

[robbiet71]

I would have thought the timing of MS was the biggest factor in hitting bad shots. The DPI settings don't affect timing, just the offset. When I was learning MS I used the snap feature of my mouse to ensure that my offset was 0 while I worked on my timing. That way I could move the pointer up and down in a perfectly straight line. I saw MJ doing the same in a video he posted and the pointer showed zero movement in the horizontal plane. Snap function of a gaming mouse achieves that...BUT...I don't play with that on because you lose the ability to fade and draw So now I play with a reduced DPI only and I find I am shooting realistic scores around par and it is challenging as it should be.

[Crusher]

When I was learning MS I used the snap feature of my mouse to ensure that my offset was 0 while I worked on my timing. That way I could move the pointer up and down in a perfectly straight line. I saw MJ doing the same in a video he posted and the pointer showed zero movement in the horizontal plane.

 

Okay. Now I understand how that person hit the straight shot every time. I am now a believer that Edging is not a factor in what I experienced that round. After reading what the MS users' have said about DPI, I understand.

 

So. That person most likely set his axis to zero and this means that any MS user could get a mouse capable of the same adjustment. There is no mouse adjustment that would benefit a 3C user. There is no gizmo  or software that would benefit a 3clicker.

 

So fairness of play and scores based on skill (alone) are not on an equal footing when players use the DPI setting to hit a straight shot. (thank you for your honesty)

 

To be clear. I searched the Internet after I saw the questions about 3clicker Gizmos or software. There is nothing on the web that would benefit a 3clicker.

 

In the old days some MSGolf 3.0 and  Links 386 players would download a program called Slow Gear (something like that name). This would allow 3clickers to hit the snap easily every time. You could tell right away that a person was cheating with this software because the time it took for them to swing on their end was 10 times longer than anyone else you would play - their meters were running in super-slow motion and aligning the snap-markers was a cinch.  Those players were reported quickly in the first two years after that software appeared on the scene. They were banned from clubs, server tournaments etc.

 

The question asked, "why would anyone cheat?" is very rhetorical.  Some people cheat their whole lives or feel entitled to do whatever they want at the expense of ruining experiences for other people.  It's part of human nature - the darker side of human nature. Can cheating ever be eliminated in cyper-space?  No it cannot be eliminated.

 

The DPI is now the bane that honest MS users will have to live with because the goal of many competitive, albeit some dishonest players, will want to be the best at No-Aid tournaments so they can look down at Max and Mod users to feel superior.  ( I can still see the chants in Tiger Woods 2008 chat rooms) "novice players are chicken" made by the some Advanced TS players. Trust me. The fights in those chat rooms instigated by diluted  Advanced TS players was constant and vulgar. What a waste of time. New players would enter the main lobby, setup a novice game and at any given hour of the day an Advanced TS player would start hounding them rather than welcoming them to the game and help spread a feeling of community. That sense of being part of a modern, very cool and new golfing community was lost very quickly for newcomers. I sure hope that doesn't happen in PG.  I can hope...

 

Conclusion: Again, the 3C user (often the only choice for disabled persons) will get relegated to Max or Mod because no 3C player on earth could compete with an MS zero-axis user with No-Aids settings. And so it goes since moving the mouse became an option. Sad really: Look at Paul Willey who won the 2000 and 2001 online Links tournaments when only 3C was allowed.  Yeah, those were the days...

[Bgood]

Simple analysis:  making it "apples-to-apples"...

Using an edge, or decreasing dpi on a mouse to hit straight simply evens the playing field between a clicker and a motion swinger.  As is, a clicker has only 1 variable to deal with...master the meter and hit the snap.  A motion swinger has 2 variables to deal with...swing tempo and swing plane.  Using an edge or something else merely eliminates the 1 variable...swing plane.  The MS player must still master the tempo to hit a consistent shot.  This evens things out with the single-variable clicker.  Without an edge or decreased dpi or whatever, would be the equivilent of a clicker having to use a meter that randomly changed speed during the swing, adding another variable.  I think we can all agree that would be next to impossible to master.

Is edging a "cheat"?  I guess that is an individual question to answer.

As far as welcoming another player...without naming names...some people have openly said they won't play a MS player that is better than them.  So instead of "novice players are chicken", some must deal with "anyone better than me cheats"...

Someone said the learning curve of this game will be different for everyone, and that is exactly correct.  A few players are capable of shooting really low scores at this point, having a shorter learning curve for whatever reason.  Others will take longer.  The fact is that a year from now there will be a dozen or more players shooting the scores being shot by a few now...

[Crusher]

Simple analysis:  making it "apples-to-apples"...

Using an edge, or decreasing dpi on a mouse to hit straight simply evens the playing field between a clicker and a motion swinger.  As is, a clicker has only 1 variable to deal with...master the meter and hit the snap.  A motion swinger has 2 variables to deal with...swing tempo and swing plane.  Using an edge or something else merely eliminates the 1 variable...swing plane.  The MS player must still master the tempo to hit a consistent shot.  This evens things out with the single-variable clicker.  Without an edge or decreased dpi or whatever, would be the equivilent of a clicker having to use a meter that randomly changed speed during the swing, adding another variable.  I think we can all agree that would be next to impossible to master.

Is edging a "cheat"?  I guess that is an individual question to answer.

As far as welcoming another player...without naming names...some people have openly said they won't play a MS player that is better than them.  So instead of "novice players are chicken", some must deal with "anyone better than me cheats"...

Someone said the learning curve of this game will be different for everyone, and that is exactly correct.  A few players are capable of shooting really low scores at this point, having a shorter learning curve for whatever reason.  Others will take longer.  The fact is that a year from now there will be a dozen or more players shooting the scores being shot by a few now...

 

I don't think you have ever tried 3C.  If you think mastering a snap to align a needle thin arrow point with a marker at the bottom of the meter (the size of a human hair) is something one can master with No-Aids, then you have never used the 3-click meter. I tried MS, TS and RTS and PS. I don't like those methods.  I like clicking the mouse and have since 1997. Simply a personal choice.

 

You try 3C with No-Aids and come back with an honest, subjective assessment.

 

But as I said in a previous post, I understand now how MS users hit a straight shot with No-Aids.  We 3C users will never be able to accomplish that with the Snap aka 6 setup on the meter as it is now.  And that's fine with me. I like a major challenge now and then.

 

As another poster has already indicated, something else needs to be done and I believe that will happen. I truly believe that MJ, AJ and Eric do not want this game to be in the same category in terms of fairness as was Links and Tiger Woods.

[Bgood]

Never did I say any method was easier than another...don't put words in my mouth.  I merely said edging evened out the number of variables to be mastered.

I have no desire to click in any golf game and I truly respect the crap out of those that can do it well...and I've played against the best clickers in many cybergolg games over the years.  I prefer to swing and don't really care what my opponent, or partner, does...

[Tigers Agent]

message to self.. do not play Bgood...

[robbiet71]

Crusher, even if an MS player has their snap function on it still does not enable them to hit perfect shots every time because of the need to time the shot with the 0.25 speed ratio. There is no way to cheat that and if they time their shot badly the shot can veer left or right (in a straight line like a push or pull) and can end up 40 yards or so either side of their target.

The speed affects the shot far more than a little off-set. A little off set and the ball will drift a little off line. The direction a player sets the ball out at is directly determined by the speed ratio. Which to my mind is an uncheatable system. Which is what we want.

That said, there are some pretty unlikely scores being consistenly achieved in certain tournaments and I personally find scores under 60 to be pretty damned ugly! I like realism.

Until PG integrates its scoring data with tournament sites there can always be the possibility of cheats (even with screen shots).

I look at it as playing myself and the course. Having my data stored on a site like Zmax's OnLineGolfTour is a plus for me. What others do is up to them.

 

[sirputterman]

I am a bit surprised it took this long for this subject to raise its ugly head. As Crusher mentioned in both Links and TW08 it was always a hot and often nasty fued. My opinion using an edge or anything that allows for a straight shot is cheating. While yes tempo does effect a ms players length or loft still being able to hit it dead straight every time takes the worry of having the ball go sailing off into the trees or water. Get the tempo down and its like throwing darts. Its true a clicker doesn't have to worry about tempo just power and hitting the 6 but killing a ball 300 yards off  the tee but into deep woods or worse ob isn't going to do your score any good.

The sad fact is some play this as a video game and lose the spirit of what the game is suppose to represent and that is golf. A game where using an advantage to play better and win is shunned by true golfers. Oh yes there are players of the game that like to use hot balls or perhaps not a legal putter often these characters are hustlers trying to get a few bucks before moving on to another town to try their hustle again.They are quickly recognized even at your local golf course and they ususally don't stick around long as other golfers avoid them like the plague. On the tour of course anyone trying these stunts would be booted off so quickly they wouldn't make it pass the first tee.

I don't know what the solution is other then a handicap system. If those that want to edge or use speed gear or whatever have a handicap that reflects they are doing so then I guess thats about as good as we can hope for. The only solution that may work for online casual play is if the game could also accumulate a players score and designate a handicap  and that would be displayed so when you go to join a game and you see a person is a - 14 handicap and you have a 5 handicap then at least you would know what to expect.

I only play with a very few friends online and its more about shooting the bull and having fun and trying to play well rather then worring about who wins or loses. I use to play a fair bit online in TW08 but frankly the garbage that went on too often just gets old real quick. At this time in my life I don't want to waste time with trolls or boneheads that can't play a game without it turning into a stream of extreme vulgar or hateful things.  I play a game for fun and to try and play well. If it's not that then it's not worth my time.   

[clubcaptain]

It's true that at this time there is no aid for 3C players to artificially hit straight. However, when gamepads are able to be used there is an easy way to lock the X axis so there is no sideways deviation. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, the devs might do to combat that.

Introducing a handicap system will go a long way to even the playing field.

[Mike Jones]

Personally I find it quite easy to get within 0-2% of the correct line using motion swing and I have never used an edge why would I? The tempo in the motion swing makes edging virtually pointless anyway. Crusher I am sorry to say but your post is misinformed as you probably don't realise how the motion swing works ie tempo based or the biased effect that the tempo has versus the swing path. Hopefully on reading this you will start to understand that people can play well and yes they can beat you and also yes they can hit all the fairways and all the greens. It's not even that unlikely for a really good player.

 

 

Things will be constantly tweaked if it becomes clear that one swing type of other is getting an advantage. This is completely different than cheating of course and I'm pretty happy with our anti edge mechanism that we use.