Okay, it's not fair that Teddy should do all the heavy lifting in this thread and stick his neck out all the time just for others to snipe at his ideas. So, without wishing to take over Teddy's home ground, allow me to present an idea of mine and then to get pummeled and clobbered by the opionoated pack...
This has nothing to do with swing modes or avatar control. This old idea, graphically spruced up just today but nevertheless incubated quite some time ago would come into play right at the start when players create a new profile. It's something I always wanted my golf game to ask of me and it would allow players to express their individual preferences a bit more. It's quite self explanatory, so here it is:
Again, slowly: There is a maximum of 200 possible points in this example, but the player will always only have 100 to distribute. And no +5 gloves or magic underwear or +10 spin wedges, nu-uh! Devs have already commited themselves to rule this out. It's a maximum of 100 for everybody - and that's that.
Players would have to try things out, compromise, see what works best for them. They also can select, further above, a natural shot shape, fade, draw or straight, either high, low or regular. The high fade is my own natural shape, but perhaps I might want to find out what it feels to play with a low draw.
It's important that the values are quite widely spread. A 0 power drive would reach, say 210 yds, a 50 power drive 310 yds. And in the middle, around the mark of 25 (260yds, 2 yds per tick), the performance would be distinctly solid but uninspiring. So, a value from 0 to 5 or 10 should be set to give a disastrously bad result, an average of 20 to 30 would lead to some sort of "meh!" golf and anything from 40 to 50 would be quite fantastic.
If some wise guy tried to go for a 50 power/50 accuracy setting, that would mean that yes, he would hit his shots very long and very straight, but a sweet spot of 0 would be crazy hard to figure out, let alone hit, andwith 0 spin his ball would not get any grip or bite on the ground, whizzing around like crazy. No chance for romance: Such a lopsided setting must be impossible to play.
With power and sweet spot at 50 and accuracy and spin at 0, he would hit long shots reliably, but never ever get a straight shot flying at the target. And no spin for reliable distance control.
Whichever way you cut it: Some sort of middling setup works best, and if you feel like playing risky, you will get few rewards and quite a lot of punishment. My own settings try to be clever: By setting a high fade, truly my own natural shot path, I should need less spin than a natural low fader since my shots land more steeply/softly. So maybe I can forfeit on the spin and invest more into distance and accuracy?...
Just a few buttons and selections - but quite a lot of possible permutations...
Such a profile with skill points could also be nucleus of a possible carreer mode. Beginners start out at, say, as Amateurs with 50 points and play from the short tees to slowly work their ways up the ranks and gain 50 additional skill points by facing a series of challenges, tourneys, matches etc, reaching Pro Status at 100.
Or at 120 or 150... of course, this are rough ideas and made up numbers. Perhaps we need to up the skills maximum from 100/200 to 120/200 and generally we would need to find a decent balance. I'm not at all saying this must be pursued at all, I just wish that some thought went into such a proposition to add a little bit of oomph, that's all.
And Billy Dunk, just about every course I'd play had Billy Dunk holding the course record.
