Welcome to Season 8!
The “Short” aiming arc setting has been replaced with two new options: “Long” and “Tour”. “Long” functions the same as “Short”, but shows a slightly longer ball flight than “Short”. “Tour” only shows the ball flight to the apex and it does not include the effects of wind, slope, or lie penalty. “Long” is now the default setting for Arcade and Pro gameplay styles and “Tour” is now the default setting for Tour gameplay style. Apart from checking your gameplay settings, you can tell which aiming arc you’re using by its length or by noticing that “Long” sways in the wind while “Tour” does not.
The capabilities of the Putting skill have expanded so that it now affects the scale of the Putting Grid. Golfers with a lower Putting skill will see a Putting Grid with larger grid squares, while golfers with a higher Putting skill will see a Putting Grid with smaller grid squares. This is intended to simulate a golfer’s ability to read greens.
Shot dispersions for these shot types have been updated:
- Pick: Increased shot dispersion length and slightly decreased shot dispersion width for lower skilled golfers.`
- Blast: Decreased overall shot dispersion.
- Finesse: Increased overall shot dispersion.
- Knock Down: Decreased shot dispersion length.
- Stinger: Decreased shot dispersion width.
Due to the volume of gameplay changes that have been made this season, the cost of retraining skills has been reduced from 200 to 50 Reward Points per Skill Point.
Gameplay visuals have also seen a couple of noteworthy improvements. The rotation of the ball model has been updated to be more realistic and no longer appears to sometimes spin as the ball stops rolling. Note that this change has no effect on ball physics, it only affects the visuals of the ball. Also, the putt meter is now brighter so that it has improved visibility on courses with lightly colored greens such as The Country Club.
Pro Pass has been paused for this season, but will be returning in Season 9 with new content.
Online and Tournaments modes have been updated to allow any number of random holes to be selected for a round. Going forward, this will be used in 4, 6, and 9 hole Daily Tournaments so that holes are randomly selected for each Tournament instead of using the same sequence of holes. In Online formats, 9 holes will now be randomly selected instead of only playing the front or back nine.
Lastly, we’re expanding Online formats on PC only to allow players to use 3-Click Swing Mechanic when playing with Pro gameplay style.
New specs for Season 8:
- Superior Brute Series: These Specs significantly improve both Power and Recovery attributes.
- Superior Precision Series: These Specs significantly improve both Accuracy and Control attributes.
Gameplay:
- Fix for the shot shaping preference bonus being incorrectly applied for swing paths outside of the mishit window. Now when you are hitting shots with your golfer’s preferred shot shape, swings outside of the mishit window will be much more forgiving, as originally intended.
- Fixed an issue with the pre-shot camera where it would stay pointed towards the golfer instead of reorienting to the target if you were aimed in the opposite direction of the target before pressing “Reset Shot”.
- Fixed an exploit where some players on PC were still able to use keyboard input to control the Analog Swing Mechanic.
- Fix for the orange circle effect shown for obstructed shots remaining visible for an additional second when the shot is no longer blocked after changing club or shot type.
Online:
- Fixed matchmaking join timer not being properly synced. This was causing some players who joined late into a lobby being left behind and returned to the main menu instead of transitioning into gameplay. This issue was most noticeable in Online Stroke Play, but also affected Online Foursomes.
- Fix for seeing a ball floating in midair while remote golfers are dropping their ball after hitting into a hazard in Online Stroke Play matches.
- Fix for some players not being shown the full screen leaderboard that is shown during the round completion cutscene in online stroke play matches.
- Fix for needing to accept an invite twice in order to be transitioned to a private match if a player accepts an invite during gameplay.
Career:
- Fixed the hole number not being displayed on the leaderboard shown between holes.
- Fixed the Longest Putt stat, so that it updates correctly after each tournament concludes.
- Updated the Augusta National Women's Amateur trophy sequence to include characters wearing green jackets.
- Fix for some of the club heads being invisible during the Masters Honorary Starters cut scenes when playing in Performance Mode.
Tournaments:
- Fixed an exploit where players were able to enter a different tournament than selected by pressing up or down immediately after entering a new tournament.
Challenges:
- Fixed a rare softlock that could occur when loading into gameplay in challenges with AI golfers.
- Players were not able to complete challenge objectives on November 8th from approximately 9:00pm - 11:00pm UTC due to a server issue.
Quests:
- Players were not able to complete quest objectives on November 8th from approximately 9:00pm - 11:00pm UTC due to a server issue.
Pro Pass:
- Fixed an issue that allowed players to claim duplicate Season 7 Pro Pass rewards. The issue occurred on October 24th and the fix was applied to servers shortly after.
- Additional improvements to ensure that the game functions normally when no Pro Pass is active.
Courses:
- [Bay Hill] Reprimanded and corrected camera operators in the towers on hole hole 9 who were not filming their green.
- [St Andrews] Updated physics to increase resistance of rough and heavy rough and also increase the lie penalty of heavy rough.
- [The Country Club] Fixed crowd sometimes obstructing the low camera view on the hole 14 tee box.
- [The Country Club] Fixed a missing hit box on the large rock on the right side of hole 10.
Gear:
- Fixed color being too dark on a number of Nike polos.
- Fixed clipping around the armpits on the male Nike Dri-FIT Polos.
- Fixed clipping around the neck and wrists on the female long-sleeve Nike Dri-FIT Polos.
- Fixed caddie bib being black instead of the correct color for the event.
- Fixed clipping in a number of pants visible when previewing in the outfits screen.
- Fixed clipping in shoulder and waistband when wearing Skeleton Quarter Zip.
- Reduced size of the “P” on Puma Snapback Cap.
- Fixed Scottie Scheffler's belt so that the end is now tucked into the last belt loop.
- Fix for briefly seeing a pink hat on Ian Poulter if he was quickly scrolled to in the golfer select screen.
UI:
- [Challenges] Updated the camera angle that is used when previewing Challenge rewards.
- [Equipment] Fix for club heads slowly transitioning from low to high resolution models when scrolling through the equipment screen.
- [Gameplay] Fixed “Reading Putt…” indicator not being displayed for secondary players in local multiplayer.
- [Gameplay] Fixed the shot result widget overlapping with the bottom third scorecard, which was most noticeable if a player reached the stroke limit while putting.
- [Main Menu] Sound effect no longer plays if the player presses the Y/Triangle button in the main menu while a booster banner is displayed, since the action is non-functional.
- [Main Menu] Updated text on the booster banner title from “...left" to “...Remaining".
- [Main Menu] Fix for seeing the wrong trophy icon when reconnecting to servers after disconnecting in gameplay.
- [Online] Fixed Online Foursomes lobby incorrectly indicating that matchmaking stopped for all players after one player left the lobby during matchmaking.
- [Private Match] Fixed Private Match background not updating if a player accepts an invite while in Career mode.
- [Quests] Fixed “Item collected” ribbon not being displayed for the first item when previewing rewards that have already been earned.
- [Settings] Removed the “Low” option from the “Crowd Quality” pc-specific visual setting since it was non-functional.
- [Store] Fix for putter grips incorrectly showing a description that indicates that it can’t be equipped when attempting to equip grip to a putter after purchasing.
- [Store] Fix for the "Insufficient Funds" pop-up no longer being displayed after it is dismissed once.
- [Tooltips] Fixed positioning of the wind and elevation tooltips in gameplay.
- [Tooltips] Fixed positioning of tooltips in Tournaments mode.
- [Tooltips] Fixed tooltips for Quick Play and Private Match which were being shown on the course select screen instead of the mode select screen.
Branding:
- Update PGA of America logo to latest version.
Stability:
- Update equipment and outfits screens to better support large inventories.
- Fix for a softlock that could occur if a player accepts an invite when the game is closed and there is a new dynamic message displayed that they haven’t previously seen.
- Fix for a softlock that could occur if a player accepts an invite while in Quick Play and then backs out of the lobby to the main menu.
- Additional crash and stability-related fixes.
