TW 13: Online Tour game mode speculation

[RynoAid]

EA SPORTS has released some more tidbits of information related to this years version of the golf titan. One thing in particular really caught my eye and I wanted to share it with everyone.

“In Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 13, gamers will be able to invite friends to join their own exclusive country club and team up to gain quicker access to downloadable golf courses or compete against other club members for the coveted Club Championship.”

link to more from TSO.. http://traditionsportsonline.com/tig...ally-a-reality

link to the EA blog post.. http://www.ea.com/tiger-woods/1/tiger-13-features

[OnlookerDelay]

Great discussion topic and certainly one that is fraught with all sorts of speculation potential! I've been pleading for years for what I was terming as "User Created Live Tournaments" in the official EA Tiger Woods forum. By that I mean tournaments (18 to 72 hole) that a user could create and customize to their desire, and then invite people to join them or even make them public.

The current Live Tournament structure EA Sports supports on XBox Live is still a bit limited and "non-realtime" for my tastes though. The tournament leaderboard would only get updated for 18 hole totals, for the other players. If someone was playing their round concurrent with yours, you didn't get hole-by-hole updates on thier progress. I want the user created tournaments to go a bit beyond that though and give hole-by-hole scoring updates.

But wait, there's more... beyond the hole-by-hole scoring updates, I wanted to have the option for tournament players to play their rounds in groups, head-to-head, if desired, or perhaps in the case of some tournaments - required.

What we're seeing with this "Online Country Clubs" feature might be their way of finally answering this request, which has not only come from me, but a number of others as well. Wouldn't it be cool to have a 72 hole tournament that you could play in groups with other tournament players, as well as getting hole-by-hole updates of the scoring of others? I'd love to organize a shotgun start and have say a dozen groups of two go off the first tee at about the same time. You'd not only have the ambience and camaraderie of playing with a live human in your group, but you'd have the additional atmosphere of a real event unfolding around in real time in other groups, reported hole-by-hole.

EA Sports seems to have gone beyond that in creating something that's more than just a tournament/club championship vessel. It sounds like we'll be able to share DLC and perhaps equipment. I tell you what, you've got to give this group credit for what they've done with Tiger 13... there is truly some "out of the box" thinking being birthed before our very eyes!

[kickingguru]

As long as you can level up your character properly in the Online Mode with out doing the "Slog" offline to get attributes, this sounds great. This has been a great lacking in Tiger Online games. Online mode needs to be a stand alone that is so immersed, you do not need to play the offline modes. This would be similar to NHL as I have hours and hours into that game and have yet to touch the offline components.

So far, this sounds like some nice jumps in their innovations... but I have been wrong before...

[OnlookerDelay]

I just noticed during a load screen in the Giant Bomb video that one of the Tips screens said the following:

"To manage your team or create a Custom Club Live Tournament, visit the EA Sports Country Club website."

So as I'd suspected, we are going to get to have custom live tournaments using the Online Country Club feature... really cool. What I wasn't expecting was what the second part of that tip said - "visit the EA Sports Country Club website". It sounds like we're going to get to manage and monitor our console tournaments via a website that we'll access with our computers 8)

[kickingguru]

As an old founder of Tiger leagues in 02 03 04 and 05.... The website would be unbelievable if implemented properly.

Here is hoping the game turns out to be closer to what we have been wanting...