EA Sports PGA Tour Is Getting A New Swing System And Other Major Changes After Criticism

EA Sports has announced major changes to EA Sports PGA Tour in the wake of criticism from fans, including an entirely new swing system, better camera angles, and putting improvements.

Perhaps the biggest change is that EA Sports is bringing back the three-click swing system from past titles. The current swing system involves pulling the stick back and pushing it forward, with players graded by their tempo and consistency--or at least that's how it's supposed to work. GameSpot's review and others noted that the swing system is laggy and inconsistent.

The new three-click swing system is coming to EA Sports PGA Tour later in April, and EA Sports said fans can expect "updates and previews" about this soon. Presumably the new three-click system will be an option and not a replacement, but that and other details remain unknown.

EA Sports is also making changes to the putting grids on greens. These are supposed to help people line up their putts, but players have observed that the grid's "bead lines," as they are called, do not always work as intended and can actually throw people off. EA Sports said it was able to observe this bug internally and a fix for it is coming in a new update. Additionally, putting will get a visual update in the future so that the grid fades away after players hit their putt.

EA Sports PGA Tour players have also complained about the game's camera angles and zoom feature not working appropriately. In some cases, certain camera angles can obscure the gameplay. EA Sports said it will deploy a fix for this, and it will look into methods to improve the pre-shot zoom camera. The studio is also planning a change to the camera for players who don't use the putting grid.

Other upcoming improvements and changes include additional game formats for online play (stroke play is the only current option), additional career mode options, better cup physics to ease the pain of lip-outs that shouldn't have happened, and a new "fast play" option that removes golfer reactions and other presentation elements. Currently, the game shows your golfer cheesing with the crowd after hitting a routine shot, which is something they probably wouldn't do in real life and slows down the pace of play because players have to watch the cinematic instead of hitting their next shot right away. There will also be new "Putt Meter" and "Button Hints" settings available for putting.

"The 'Putt Meter' setting removes the putt meter that's on the ground while putting and the 'Button Hints' setting removes the button hints in the bottom of the screen during gameplay," EA Sports said.

What's more, EA Sports said it's already made some changes to the matchmaking algorithm to help players find better matches faster, and the studio is continue to explore "all options" to help improve things further. In terms of changes already in place, here is a quick rundown of the fixes EA Sports has deployed thus far.

• Fixed an issue that was putting players into a repeating loop when trying to claim tournament rewards.
• Fixed an issue in Career Mode that was causing some users' game to crash when resuming a round of playoffs.
• Fixed a compatibility issue related to certain monitors and TV’s with Dolby Vision HDR that was causing the game to crash.
• Fixed an issue that would cause a crash if players changed menu tabs too quickly while tooltips were enabled.

Beyond these changes, EA said it is "constantly evaluating community feedback" as it looks to make additional improvements to EA Sports PGA Tour over time. Fans have been calling for a proper tutorial mode to help them learn the basics, but EA Sports didn't say if this is being worked on.

The game was released on April 7 during the middle of the biggest professional golf tournament of the year, The Masters. GameSpot's EA Sports PGA Tour review scored the game a 7/10.