412 replies to this topic

[HeavySwinger]

@K11 - I never said that I wanted to build a course exclusive to me, my brother and my mate. I have always given far more than most to the communities I have been involved with. Unfortunately, with this system there are three people involved in my situation and I can't decide for them, short of paying for three passes. I have no interest in playing online golf without them, or designing courses that they, under this system would be excluded from playing. We can carry on playing the base game and that is fine, but course design on PG is now not an option for me at present - just when I had convinced myself that it would be. That was the point that I was making. Fortunately, I can still go back to TGC if I want to continue designing courses that we can all play.

My suggestion is that course designer's get a season pass which is transferable for every quality course that they contribute to the community.

[slouis]

One licensed course has been announced, Bethesda,  and Mike indicates that are 30 or so courses that users have created that are ready to go.  I suspect that there will always be more user created courses available then licensed ones.

If we buy a licensed course we can play it without purchasing a season's pass.  If we want to play a user created course we have to buy a season's pass.  I would prefer paying one time for a user created course exactly the same as we will be doing for a licensed course.  Playing new courses interests me a lot more than country clubs or tournaments.

I don't know about the legalities of charging for user created courses  but if the money stays with PP and the designer is compensated by a temporary free pass for each course that is accepted by PP then maybe this could be an option.   From what I've read here on the forum there is a site that charges for user created courses for Links and they use the real name of the course.  However if this is an issue I could care less if a user creates Pebble Beach and names it Pacific Beach.

[HeavySwinger]

There will be the opportunity to earn free passes. Unfortunately It's human nature to focus on the negative sometimes and ignore the positives.

 

If you like to create courses and share them with the community then you can ask us to take a look at it and if we think it's a good one that people will enjoy playing we will give you a couple of months season pass for free so you can ahead and play and design for free.

 

I think that's pretty fair and it's a nice reward for doing something that you enjoy anyway.

I think folks are misunderstanding the nature of these "free" user designed courses.  They were created with a high value ($1000 per license equivalent) design program, course forge.  Instead of amortizing this license cost over the course designers, PG is amortizing the cost over the players through charging a monthly fee.  Now my opinion on the size of this fee is that it is too high at the present time ($5 per month).  I think that amount would be good when there are 1000 user courses available, tournaments based on the real tours, etc., so raise it up then.  That means PG would have to take a temporary loss on those course forge licenses they gave away to the course designers until the course library has grown.  I would also suggest a model where a course designer gets season pass credits based on how much his course is played by the community.

[karma4u]

 

If you like to create courses and share them with the community then you can ask us to take a look at it and if we think it's a good one that people will enjoy playing we will give you a couple of months season pass for free so you can ahead and play and design for free.

 

I think that's pretty fair and it's a nice reward for doing something that you enjoy anyway.

Mike, this actually makes a lot of sense to me..It allows you to control the quality of courses published. Still, there are good designers whose courses may be very good but does not meet PG standards..so, you may very well be ahead of me here...those designers should be looked after also......Encouragement, free passes etc..hey, the community could have a say in that......the community knows these designers...

Anyways, good luck going forward....i certainly would not attempt to second guess the PP business model...I am really looking forward to the natural development of PG....Remember......controllers..

[jcolton31]

Is there any reason you couldn't allow both the opportunity to play all user made courses through the season pass and buy individual user made courses for a one-time pass (you could provide a free 24-hour preview and then force the user to buy the course if they want to keep playing it)? I know at least a number of people interested in playing one or both of my designs in progress. But I would say 90% of them won't buy the game at all once they realize they'll need an ongoing season pass to play their desired courses. I'm sure you can set-up a price structure to bring in both groups.

[sirputterman]

 

Larry that sounds fine except for one thing. In order to test your course you have to buy a pass to play test it. So if I decided to try designing a course I would in all practicality have to buy a pass. I would never think of designing a course and submitting it for PP to give approval to be played without first testing it probably to the point that I was sick of looking at  the dang thing. You know how much of a stickler I can be to detail especially for play ability. Now Mike states that I could earn a couple of months free pass by designing and submitting a course for PP to review and if it is acceptable then I would get earn a free pass for playing courses.

Kind of the old chicken and egg argument as to which came first. I mean the idea of earning a free pass by designing a course is a good one but in there lies the catch doesn't it, I have to buy a pass first in order to even play test my own course and therefore possibly create a course that would earn me that free pass. Lol see my point?

Now this is just a suggestion and take it or leave it as you may. How about after CF is released that everyone get say a 3 month free pass. Those that want to contribute by designing courses at least get a chance to get there feet wet of using,designing, and play testing their own works without having to pay to do so. After the 3 month period *this is only a number could be only one month* then if you have not submitted a course to PP for them to test then you have to pay the season pass fee.

The reason I suggest this is many may be curious to try CF but many also will give it up after a bit either due to time constraints or whatever reasons.  At least this way they can give it a shot and if they enjoy doing it most likely they will hang in there. Yes I realize that CF is not cheap for PP to create or to give to us, but it would entice more people to at least give it a shot and see how hard or how easy it is to make a course. It would be like taking a test drive before buying that Lamborghini. Lol it may look nice and you always dreamed of owning one but perhaps once you sat behind the wheel it would scare the crap out of you so bad that there is no way you would ever buy one. Still at least after the test drive and a new pair of pants you would know either you are hooked or cured of the idea.              

[Kelson64]

Tell that to the millions that play WOW, Eve, Elder Scrills, etc.

WOW, Eve, Elder Scrolls etc are MMO's. I was part of the Warhammer Online team at EA Mythic. I mean no disrespect toward Perfect Parallel at all, but EA Mythic had 300+ people in Customer Support alone, who literally provided 24/7 support and all specifically dedicated to Warhammer Online. (There were smaller also smaller groups in Customer Support working for Dark Age of Camelot and Ultima Online).

 

I certainly don't pretend to know how many man hours went into the creation of Perfect Golf. I don't know how many developers they have, how many are in quality assurance or if they will even have a support team. I don't know the total development cost, nor how much it will cost to run their online servers. But I'm fairly confident that it pales in comparison to World of Warcraft et al. (An interesting tidbit. I was told that the opening cinematic in Warhammer Online cost more than the entire development cost of Dark Age of Camelot . . which was about $7 million dollars if I'm not mistaken).

[Armand]

At the moment, I'm thinking of the season pass as a "green fee" to the play any course that is available.  The "green fees" get a bit pricey if I only play a few rounds a month, though.

 

My question is will there be other courses from PP that are included in the "base game" over time, or are the courses we currently have available the only ones that will be able to be played without paying "green fees" (and thereby, the only ones able to be played offline)?

[IanD]

One licensed course has been announced, Bethesda,  and Mike indicates that are 30 or so courses that users have created that are ready to go.  I suspect that there will always be more user created courses available then licensed ones.

If we buy a licensed course we can play it without purchasing a season's pass.  If we want to play a user created course we have to buy a season's pass.  I would prefer paying one time for a user created course exactly the same as we will be doing for a licensed course.  Playing new courses interests me a lot more than country clubs or tournaments.

I don't know about the legalities of charging for user created courses  but if the money stays with PP and the designer is compensated by a temporary free pass for each course that is accepted by PP then maybe this could be an option.   From what I've read here on the forum there is a site that charges for user created courses for Links and they use the real name of the course.  However if this is an issue I could care less if a user creates Pebble Beach and names it Pacific Beach.

 

Your wishes may come true...
 

[IanD]

Is there any reason you couldn't allow both the opportunity to play all user made courses through the season pass and buy individual user made courses for a one-time pass (you could provide a free 24-hour preview and then force the user to buy the course if they want to keep playing it)? I know at least a number of people interested in playing one or both of my designs in progress. But I would say 90% of them won't buy the game at all once they realize they'll need an ongoing season pass to play their desired courses. I'm sure you can set-up a price structure to bring in both groups.

 

Surely you know the answer to this ?
 

[IanD]

Larry that sounds fine except for one thing. In order to test your course you have to buy a pass to play test it. So if I decided to try designing a course I would in all practicality have to buy a pass. I would never think of designing a course and submitting it for PP to give approval to be played without first testing it probably to the point that I was sick of looking at  the dang thing. You know how much of a stickler I can be to detail especially for play ability. Now Mike states that I could earn a couple of months free pass by designing and submitting a course for PP to review and if it is acceptable then I would get earn a free pass for playing courses.

Kind of the old chicken and egg argument as to which came first. I mean the idea of earning a free pass by designing a course is a good one but in there lies the catch doesn't it, I have to buy a pass first in order to even play test my own course and therefore possibly create a course that would earn me that free pass. Lol see my point?

Now this is just a suggestion and take it or leave it as you may. How about after CF is released that everyone get say a 3 month free pass. Those that want to contribute by designing courses at least get a chance to get there feet wet of using,designing, and play testing their own works without having to pay to do so. After the 3 month period *this is only a number could be only one month* then if you have not submitted a course to PP for them to test then you have to pay the season pass fee.

The reason I suggest this is many may be curious to try CF but many also will give it up after a bit either due to time constraints or whatever reasons.  At least this way they can give it a shot and if they enjoy doing it most likely they will hang in there. Yes I realize that CF is not cheap for PP to create or to give to us, but it would entice more people to at least give it a shot and see how hard or how easy it is to make a course. It would be like taking a test drive before buying that Lamborghini. Lol it may look nice and you always dreamed of owning one but perhaps once you sat behind the wheel it would scare the crap out of you so bad that there is no way you would ever buy one. Still at least after the test drive and a new pair of pants you would know either you are hooked or cured of the idea.              

 

Agreed, read my post #107 too..!
 

[worrybirdie]

As far as I'm concerned if you design a course on Courseforge and are willing to share it with the community you should be able to. The message from the devs is that you'll need a membership to play it (thats the way they want it).  I still think this game has the possibility of competing with the TW series (the old one) in sales. But not if corporate is going to be so small minded about it. I agree with a previous poster who commented that the devs are thinking too small, and trying to get as much as possible out of a small market (which will fail) vs. going for the gold and trying to create a game that will sell to the masses because it is great, and has infinite potential in free, user designed courses.

I would like to know if there is any way planned to allow users to share courses without the membership?

[IanD]

This seems like a new direction unless I've misread it. Now a designer has to impress someone or a panel that his course is "a good one".

I'm sure this will disqualify a good many people from earning a temporary free pass so that benefit would appear to only apply to a minority. This is not knocking any designer because I know from experience that everyone who creates a course puts their heart and soul into it. However, as soon as a qualification rule is introduced it's a fact of life that the "good" courses as  judged will be in the minority. If the "good" courses were in the majority you might as well give everyone a temporary free pass.

 

We also brought this up in discussions in the Testers group...  and as yet I've not seen the 'standard' required. However, I do know there will be a lot of support available for the CF users. The program itself will have several tutorials, it will have examples and downloads available too. I have no doubt it will have Community Support once it makes public release, as this thing is quite versatile and with Unity, the endless third party additions can also be introduced too. PP will be supporting CF and furthering the ability of the programs capacity and they do have a monster on their hands.

 

How does that help us design a course that is worthy...? The bar for a standard will be raised many times. K11's courses have already done so, and there are others that have been tested that display directions for more grouping. This doesn't mean to say that only the winner is rewarded. There can be tierred rewards and encouragements in many guises.

[IanD]

As far as I'm concerned if you design a course on Courseforge and are willing to share it with the community you should be able to. The message from the devs is that you'll need a membership to play it (thats the way they want it).  I still think this game has the possibility of competing with the TW series (the old one) in sales. But not if corporate is going to be so small minded about it. I agree with a previous poster who commented that the devs are thinking too small, and trying to get as much as possible out of a small market (which will fail) vs. going for the gold and trying to create a game that will sell to the masses because it is great, and has infinite potential in free, user designed courses.

I would like to know if there is any way planned to allow users to share courses without the membership?

 

Mike has stated you can freely share the courses. OGT has suggested they may be hosting the courses, and offering a review/rating system.

 

However, it has generally been announced that you cannot play the courses without a Season Pass.

 

If you think about this, you can of course (like Steam occasionally does at the weekends) see what could occur on holiday periods or promotional events..

[IanD]

Yes Glen, I agree, I would never build a course if I couldn't Play test it in the game as I went along, I don't  know how you could or why you would?

 

You make some very good suggestions...

 

Your memory gets worse...lol

[worrybirdie]

I'll try again. I own the game (a game which I'm willing to pay more for if they ever finish it). I own the course I design. If I'm willing to share it with the community for free I'm not allowed to?

[sirputterman]

I'll try again. I own the game (a game which I'm willing to pay more for if they ever finish it). I own the course I design. If I'm willing to share it with the community for free I'm not allowed to?

Well from my understanding you don't own the course that you design. Since you are using CF which is owned by PP that means the course is there's and  not yours. On your second part of sharing it with friends, or the community for free then technically yes you could probably share it with them its just that you or they will not be able to install and  play it unless you and them pay for the season pass. As it stands right now you possibly may not be able to even test the course yourself without having a season pass as once again you need a pass in order to play or test the course in PP.   

At least this is my understand how it may be. If I'm incorrect then I apologize for miss speaking. 

[IanD]

Sirputterman - technically not quite right, but that's Mike splitting the pedantics lol.

They claim to not own the course you created, however, they state you may not sell it without their permission. Therefore you only have the ability to distribute it freely. However, the actual file may not be played within the game itself without the user having a Season Pass.

So, worrybirdie, your offer of sharing it within the community for free isn't possible.

[highfade]

Another option to help designers play testing their designs is to offer lets say, three "FREE" slots where you can putt your user made courses to play without a pass. People will probable  abuse this and keep swapping courses into these free slots but hopefully will get fed up and just pay for a monthly pass.

[wim1234]

There are naturally issues in designing things this way, as well as controlling them. What we must remember, is the files we create using the CF, are not ours. Therefore there is an ownership control by PP which can aid in revenue.

 

is this really the case??? so i create a course and it aint mine..thats ridiculous totally not acceptable