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jimi |
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| Posted: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at
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When one looks at the download figures for the custom courses that are being put up here, it would appear that 4 magic letters influence the number of downloads for any particuar course more than anything, including the actual quality of the design. These magic letters are r, e, a and l. Together they spell real. For some reason TW players seem to have got it into their heads that any real course design will always be more satisfying to dowmload and play than a fantasy course, no matter how good that may be. Just check the courses on number of downloads and youll find that you have to scroll through 3 or 4 pages to get to the first fantasy design.
Although many of the real courses, especially from the old and experienced designers, are definitely worth the download and often are fairly realistic renditions of the actual course they were based on, I have to say that the large majority of so-called real designs that I have come across hardly deserve that epiteth. Careful comparison of course pictures that are avauilable on the web for many of these courses with what the designer came up with, will often show glaring mistakes and lousy terrain work. Without wanting to completely disqualify their efforts (I am sure every designer puts his or her heart and soul into every design), in truth most so-called real courses are as much fantasy as any fantasy design.
I would suggest to die-hard real course downloaders to try the occasional fantasy course from one of the old hands. You will be surprised at the realism, compared to what you may have become used to :)
(PS I have designed a couple of real courses myself, with varying degrees of success, as far as I myself am concerned, so I I am aware of the challenges involved. One more reason maybe for new designers to first learn to master the CA with some less ambitious projects. And dont just listen to the comments of your buddies.) |
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JSJarvis |
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| Posted: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at
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| Excellent observation, Jimi. It is a consistent trend that has happened every year and unfortunately Im not sure there is a good solution. Some people only want to experience real courses. In my opinion if players do that then they are missing out on some other excellent courses. |
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ZB |
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| Posted: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at
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| edited by: ZB on
Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at
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I would suggest that real courses receive more downloads because there are more real life golfers playing this game than just pc gamers and as a golfer myself, I would always prefer to play a round at a replica course rather than one that is borne from imagination. For example, it is highly unlikely that in my lifetime, I will ever get the opportunity to play courses such as Augusta, Torrey Pines, many of the TPCs etc, so to play a simulation of these on a PC will be the closest I will get to playing them.
In my experience, many (not all mind) of the fantasy designs are created by those who have very little knowledge of golf courses and real course architecture, in the real world and therefore, realism is simply not something that can be applied.
There is another type of course which we often forget however, those creating Fictional courses. For me, that means they would usually have experience of real golf and real courses and have applied these thought processes and experience into a course design that may not be a replica of a real course, but could quite easily, be a real course. These are the only fantasy type courses that I would download and keep. |
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jimi |
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| Posted: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at
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| Good point, Zee. Then again, if you play on a real course that bears hardly any resemblamce to what its supposed to represent, thats no fun either, is it? Actually my feeling is that the best fantasy courses are always fictional courses, in that they should play like a real course, but with fantasy accents or a fantasy theme. That way you should get the best of both worlds. My own latest course is a links course thats got only par 3s and par 5s on it. Thats the fantasy element, because there arent any actual courses like that, as far as I know. But each hole should play like a real hole. |
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jimi |
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| Posted: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at
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| What I am actually striving for is a fictional/fantasy course where people would go, wow, I wish it was a real course so that i could play it in real life also. Dont think I have accomplished that yet, tho LOL |
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jimi |
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| Posted: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at
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| This f.i. is not a real course |
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Otto Kriete |
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| Posted: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at
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| I agree with Jimi on this one. My favorite courses were always fantasy courses. Why? Because they generally had elements that couldnt be overpowered by just hitting powershots and the like. I always like Dampaas creations, along with those from Justastiffy. I was also one of the folks that really enjoyed the Highlands........ lotsa eyecandy and interesting terrain. |
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eagls628 |
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| Posted: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at
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I aways thought there should be 3 kinds of courses.
Real= Actual courses that now exist
Fictional= Courses that do not exist but could very well be a real course.
Fantasy= A course designed in such a ratical manner that it could never be a real course.
I never liked the word fantasy for a so called fantasy course that could actually be built as a real course in real life. |
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JSJarvis |
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| Posted: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at
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Ive seen the fictional/fantasy debate before. When CS was originally designed we went with the word fantasy. Some people dont like the word fantasy to describe a course and I can understand the argument. Maybe it would have been better to just designate whether a course was real or not (real vs. non-real). At this point, I dont want to have to go back through 1000+ courses and try to make a designation of fantasy vs. fictional vs. real vs. course has a real name but isnt anything like the real course.
People have their own personal preferences for courses. Personally, I like playing a course that is realistic (notice I did not say real). I want to play courses that have those real elements that make me think just like I do when I play real golf. I am not one that likes the extreme elevation changes and such, but some do and there are courses out there for them just like there are courses for me. As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are some very good non-real courses that have great detail and play just like a real course would. Those to me are just as enjoyable as a real course rendition. Those that only download a course because it is listed as real are missing out on some well made courses. |
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eagls628 |
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| Posted: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at
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| Very well said Jeff and I am sure that no one would expect you to go through and re classify all the courses. Although IMO it would have been great if there could have been the 3 classifications that I mentioned all along. The way it is now, when you see fantasy you really dont know what you are going to be getting. If a fantasy course was what I indicated, the person would know what they were getting and would download it if they enjoyed that type of course. Not to say that a course indicated as fictional might actually be a course that should have been called fantasy. All in all though you cant really go wrong with a course designated as real, and even around 95% of the ones designated as fantasy. |
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jimi |
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| Posted: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at
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| Saying that you cant go wrong with a real course depemnds on how you define going wrong, I suppose. What Im saying is that many so-called real courses would better be labeled fantasy designs because they bear little or no resemblance to the real thing. |
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BladeRunnerZ |
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| Posted: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at
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The problem with this argument is that at what point does a real course cease to become real.
Consider a perfectly designed course with respect to layout and elevation but with the wrong type of planting or with a clubhouse that has not been purpose made for the course but is used from an already created custom library - is this course no longer a real course?
I know how much work goes into a realistic real course. I also know that not every designer knows how to create panos or use gmax or lib creator or has access to DEMs in order to approach the level of realism they would like.
My feeling is that a real course must at least follow the layout and play like a realistic course and if possible bring out a some of features that define that course. |
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BladeRunnerZ Signature |
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Golf can best be defined as an endless series of tragedies obscured by the occasional miracle
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eagls628 |
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| Posted: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at
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| edited by: eagls628 on
Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at
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| "Saying that you cant go wrong with a real course depemnds on how you define going wrong, I suppose. What Im saying is that many so-called real courses would better be labeled fantasy designs because they bear little or no resemblance to the real thing." |
I might very well have played a real course that did not resemble the actual course, but without seeing the real course first hand I wouldnt know.
I cant remember any course that was labled as real that I absolutely did not like. There have been a few fantasy ones that I absolutely did not like, but as I said it was no more than maybe 5% or less of the ones I have downloaded. But then again, there are far more fantasy designs then there are real. With the rating system now, I will not bother downloading any course that isnt rated a least a 3/12 or 4, but that is mostly because there are so many new courses and I dont bother downloading them unless they are rated near 4. |
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Otto Kriete |
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| Posted: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at
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| I really like Eagles proposed classification, though Id never expect anyone to go through the course files and label existing courses. I never pay attention to how many downloads a course has when I download one ..... I tend to grab the courses by designers whose work has already impressed me........ and I like to play the occasional course by new designers , as well. You never know who might be the next Danut.......... |
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jimi |
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| Posted: Friday, June 13, 2008 at
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| edited by: jimi on
Friday, June 13, 2008 at
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There was some dicussion here that got lost due to server problems, i believe, I pointed out to Zeebee that even the realest of real courses has started out as a fictional courtse, in the sense that it´s a designer´s idea first, even before the first actual work gets started. My ideal TW course would be one where the PGA or any of its counterparts would say, great course, we´ll need to build that one for out tour LOL.
So here´s a fictional course that´s located near Ballindalloch castle, which actually exists. It might be real ) |
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ZB |
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| Posted: Sunday, June 15, 2008 at
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But not in the fictional sense you refer to jimi, a real course has to follow real design principles.
Besides which, your original post here was asking the question why people download more real courses than fictional and to be honest, my original response stands. There are more real golfers I believe, playing this game than non-playing gamers. As a result, the majority of those real golfers prefer to play real courses simply because they are real and not courses that are borne from imagination where no real design principle has been followed. For example, I may never get the chance to play somewhere like Kapalua, so this game gives me the closest way to do so. I would always prefer to play a real track rather than an imaginary one.
Im not saying fictional courses are of lesser quality than real (in many but not all cases) I am just suggesting that a real life golfer would normally prefer to play a real course as it may be somewhere they had always dreamed of playing but unlikely to, or it may be a case of playing a course on which Tiger has tamed, or it could be because of the realism a real course gives where a fantasy doesnt due to real achitecture principles being evident.
I think it only natural for people, especially true golf fans, to want to download and play real courses, no matter what the quality, instead of fantasy courses which in many cases do not resemble anything you might find on a real course.
Interestingly enough, there are 23 pages on CS for 08 fantasy designs released and yet, only 12 for real courses. |
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jimi |
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| Posted: Sunday, June 15, 2008 at
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| Good point, Zee. There are, however, many so-called real courses out there that bear litle or no resemblance to the actual design, apart from the name. I figure there are a number of legendary courses that any golfer would want to play, but if I do a rendition of one of our local golf courses, which nobody has even heard about, who is going to check how real they really are. Or how well done they are for that matter. But just the word real will affect the number of downloads, apparently because players assume that a real course will always be better than a fictional one. I could easily do a very realistic course, give it the name of one of our local courses amd upload it as a real course. (I won´t do that, because it would be cheating, lol.) But I´m sure if I did, I´d get twice as many downloads as I´d get if I´d called it a fictional design. Which seems a bit silly to me. |
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ZB |
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| Posted: Sunday, June 15, 2008 at
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| edited by: ZB on
Sunday, June 15, 2008 at
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But its not a competition Jimi. Whether somewhere like TPC Louisiana gets more or less downloads to a fantasy course by another designer, means very little to me personally. It is the fact that when leading that design work (Louisiana) I know, I followed every piece of info I could glean from countless hours of research and in other cases, actual info from the real achitect, direct to my inbox. This results in playing a course that has been adapted for use within this game, that does indeed, follow the design principles put into the real course and is therefore, a close simulation of the real thing.
I agree that there are some courses out there which are touted as real but may not follow the exact terrain. This will never change, however it is also true to say, that those designers can only improve because they are studying and trying to follow, real design principles. I think that it is that which most downloaders are attracted to. It is so easy for a designer of a real course to be slated for their interpretation of a real course however it is difficult for anyone to actually fault a fantasy design because it is mere fantasy.
The two real courses you were lead designer for at PGAX, have received more downloads than most of your current fantasy courses. This should tell you something. It is easy to do something from imagination (and quickly) however to attempt a real course, no matter how accurate the result, is I think, far more greatly appreciated by the real golfers out there and now we are back to the answer as to why real will always result in more downloads than a fantasy.
Most online tours will also lean towards a real course too, therefore, this helps increase the numbers.
I think you just have to face facts in that the reality of it all, real will always outweigh fantasy. |
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axe360 |
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| Posted: Sunday, June 15, 2008 at
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Well Jimi, I can think of a few designers of fantasy courses who have plenty of downloads, big9324, Homeboy and the list goes on..
Maybe we just arent that good yet Jimi, myself included..
So lets just keep on tryen our best and Im sure the downloads will come.. |
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eagls628 |
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| Posted: Sunday, June 15, 2008 at
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| The ratings and comments highly influence me on which courses I download. After a new course is uploaded I will wait a couple of days until there are about 100 downloads of that course. Looking at the ratings and comments will tell me if I want to download that course or not and it doesnt really matter if it is a real or so called fantasy course. If there were not ratings or comments available to look at, I would more than likely download every course that comes along unless for some reason I am pretty sure that I wont like it. Of course there are many designers out there that I would download their courses with no information whatsoever. |
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