In this article, we’ll discuss an upcoming balance change to The Rocket, a dominant long-distance club.

First, you may want to catch up with last week’s post, where we discussed motivations behind making changes, as well as compensation we’ll be paying out to anyone who invested in The Rocket.

Notably, at the time of that post, we believed we’d be making two changes. We’ve changed that decision, for reasons explained below.

Changes to The Rocket

The Rocket has gained a small amount of base Power:

However, the Rocket Boosters ability now provides less Power based on the stats of adjacent clubs:

The change to Rocket Booster is a big cut, and the numbers look drastic. Despite what it may look like, our goal is to leave The Rocket as a top-tier long distance club on most Par 5 holes. If we overshot that mark and over-nerfed, expect to see further balance adjustments in coming weeks. We may continue to adjust Rocket Boosters to ensure The Rocket remains a high-quality club.

Compensation

Anyone who upgraded The Rocket will receive back 100% of the silver they invested in upgrades.

Change Motivation #1 — Club Balance

This might go without saying, but we want Golf Shootout to have lots of fun, useful clubs. More usable clubs means more interesting bag-building, fewer dead cards in packs, and hopefully a more fun play experience.

Since March, we’ve applied a lot of buffs — fifty-five to be exact. This has led to a lot players experimenting with previously-unused clubs.

Here’s what the daily club-usage chart looks like at Level 7:

You can see a few thick lines. The Gold and Yellow in the middle are Lodestar and Lowball, while the brown at the bottom is Skyfury.

However, there are also lots of other clubs seeing at least a little play. As a rule of thumb, we occasionally look at how many clubs are seeing play in at least 3% of bags, and at Level 7, there are 42 clubs that see at least that level of use.

Meanwhile here’s what it looks like at Level 9:

The picture here is a drastically different. Here, just 18 clubs see at least 3% of bags. Most can’t compete against the titanic clubs available at the top.

The thickest line, Meteor, is the yellow-green line running through the middle. Meteor sees play in almost 75% of bags at Level 9. However, we have no plans to nerf Meteor. It’s extremely fun, and we think it opens up more possibilities than it shuts down.

Unfortunately, The Rocket appears to have had the opposite effect. It’s so powerful that it has crowded out the use of many, many other clubs. Between Level 7 and Level 9:

• The use of other Woods drops by 74.1%.
• The use of Hybrids drops by 88.7%.
• The use of Drivers drops by 62.5%.

Most of this gets absorbed by The Rocket.

This isn’t to say that there shouldn’t be powerful clubs, or even that we don’t want The Rocket to be strong. However, we’d like to experiment with The Rocket being less dominant and allowing a few other clubs to come out to play.

Change Motivation #2 — Future Difficulty Modifiers

For a long time, we’ve been interested in introducing gameplay modifiers to Tournaments, Duels, or Challenge Tiles that might result in holes that take more than two strokes to complete. For example, one modifier might be 25% stronger gravity, while another one might make the world itself 50% larger.

These kinds of modifiers seem to us like a fun, simple way to add variety to the game while we continue to work on longer-term improvements to Clubhouses and game physics.

As we explored these options, one thing became clear: no matter what distance-related challenge we threw at players, The Rocket was the best club at solving it. The special thing about The Rocket is that it doesn’t just reach the green on any Par 5. It hits far, far beyond. Several standard Rocket bags, like the one shown below, can reach distances of over 1,000 yards.

For this reason, we think that there’s a comfortable middle ground. We can allow The Rocket to reach the green on Par 5s without letting it easily go double that distance. In the future, this will allow us to create game modes where 3- and 4-stroke games are a reality for higher-level players. We hope those modes will be one step among many to keep the game fresh for years to come.

Side Discussion — Weren’t There Two Nerfs?

At the time of writing last week’s article, we had considered nerfing Homecoming. Since this club has a huge Power stat anywhere off the green, it’s been The Rocket’s partner in crime, and nerfing it was one way we considered reining in The Rocket.

However, playtesting showed us that this was a very un-fun nerf. By changing Homecoming, we hadn’t really made The Rocket less powerful, just less reliable. Rocket was still able to achieve unbelievable distance, but doing so required relying on Windstrike, The Seeker, and other situationally-powerful clubs. These clubs reward you for knowing the conditions around the tee during bag selection (how near to out-of-bounds for Windstrike and how many trees for The Seeker), and we felt that rewarding this degree of memorization was un-fun.

In the future, we actually plan to allow players to adjust their bag any time before making their first shot. However, until that is implemented, we don’t want to increase the need to memorize the tee conditions of every hole.

Side Discussion — What about Magnesis?

Many players wrote to us assuming that we would be nerfing Magnesis. However, we don’t think Magnesis is as big a problem as The Rocket, and it might not be a problem at all. It’s obviously a good club, but stats show that it does less to hurt the usage of other clubs. Additionally, Magnesis is hard to use. Overcoming its challenging swing timing is an art unto itself.

At some point, we may revisit the question of Magnesis, but it’s very doubtful we’d make a large change like we’ve made to The Rocket.

Over the last three months, we’ve released five balance updates, including a total 49 buffs across 30 different clubs.

We’ve been interested in increasing the variety of strong, usable clubs for players of many different levels. We want there to be fewer “dead cards” in packs, and we want bag-building to be more fun and rewarding. Finally, we want to give players more fresh, new things to try.

During this process, we’ve managed to bring several clubs into what we consider to be the sweet spot, seeing play in a wide variety of bags at several levels. Outset, Conqueror, Neon Impulse, and Cyclotron are examples of clubs now seeing more experimentation and play among mid-level players, and we hope to add a lot more names to that list.

Reasoning Behind Club Nerfs
We believe that buffs alone aren’t enough to add the kind of variety and freshness we’d like to provide. At high levels, and among certain club types, there are clubs that are so dominant that we believe there’s currently little chance for other clubs to emerge as viable options.

We don’t believe that all super-strong clubs should be nerfed, but if they have a powerful negative effect on the use-rate of all other clubs in their category, we will consider it.

We expect to announce two club nerfs next week.

Nerf Compensation
While nerfs can open up new experimentation and gameplay, they can also feel terrible, especially for players who have spent a lot of time and resources chasing after the nerfed cards. For that reason, we’re introducing two tiers of compensation, depending on the size of the nerf.

• Major Nerf — If a nerf is large enough that we expect it to change the role of a club, we will offer compensation for 100% of the currency spent upgrading the club.
• Minor Nerf — If we are making a small numerical adjustment designed to slightly reduce a club’s effectiveness and allow other clubs to compete, we will offer compensation for 25% of the currency spent upgrading the club.

Additionally, you may see a third category of nerf pop up:

• Nerf as part of a Buff — If a club sees extremely low usage, we will sometimes do a major change that will involve buffs and nerfs in order to shift the role of the club. Since these changes are designed to improve a club’s viability, no compensation will be offered for these changes.

Why Offer Compensation?
As a final note, we think it’s worth explaining a bit why we’d offer compensation at all. Many games buff and nerf their content freely, or even outright ban problematic cards.

At Concrete, our intention had always been to provide buffs and nerfs to keep gameplay interesting. However, we were very slow to actually implement nerfs. In the first four years of PGA Tour Golf Shootout, we’ve really never nerfed a card, leaving aside The Reaper, which will be a target for future buffs.

By not applying nerfs for multiple years, we’ve set the expectation that putting resources into upgrading clubs is a safe investment. We’d like to honor this expectation. By refunding currency spent upgrading, we hope to allow players to re-invest in other clubs they may be interested in.

Finally, we expect to implement nerfs sparingly. We don’t like to tamper with players’ long-term investments, and will only do so when we see overwhelming evidence that doing so will improve bag-building and gameplay.

Welcome to the final Nautilus preview! Before we get to the new stuff, let’s talk dates.

Release Date and Bundle Announcement

Over the next week, as you update to version 3.7.0, you’ll be able to play on the new holes in Duels, look for them in the Mythical course.

On Friday, December 9th, you’ll have an opportunity to grab the new clubs in a pre-release Nautilus bundle. If you do, you’ll have early access to those clubs over the weekend.

On Monday, December 12th, Nautilus clubs will begin appearing in packs and in the in-game Pro Shop. The same day, we’ll be running a Mythic Odyssey tournament featuring the new holes.

Speaking of new holes, let’s get a look at Mythical Hole 5.

Our artist first turned in this sketch back in August. At the time, we had just started looking for concepts that could become new Par 6+ holes, so we told him to go big.

His first draft came back, and it nailed the size. At 825 yards and with an impressive vertical rise, this hole was the biggest and hardest challenge Golf Shootout had ever seen.

However, we had a couple of notes.

First, we wanted to add more challenge to the green. While the labyrinth hole (Mythical Hole 3) has its detractors, one thing we love about it is the riskiness of shooting directly to the green. We added a bit of that here:

Second, the rise posed some problems. We hadn’t added a scale-able cliff before, so we had to double-check that the ball couldn’t get stuck. A lot of diligent work went into QA-ing this hole!

We can’t wait to see how players tackle this hole in the tournament on the 12th!

But that’s not all! We also have two new clubs to talk about.

The first is Obelisk:

Obelisk is a rare Iron you can start collecting at Level 3.

Its first ability is Sand Bonus. When hitting from Sand, Obelisk has increased stats.

Its second ability is Terrain Resist. Obelisk suffers less when hitting from sand and other rough terrain types.

Here are its stats:

Obelisk is intended as a hard-hitting alternative to Sandblast for low-to-mid-level players. Since it can chip far and fast, it might be worth a look when time matters most.

Speaking of hitting hard, our final club is Leviathan:

Leviathan is an Epic Wood that unlocks at level 6.

Its first ability is Boundary Bonus. Leviathan gains stats depending on how close you are to the edge of the map.

Its second ability is Water Bonus. Leviathan also gains stats depending on how close you are to water. Both of these bonuses start when you are 33yds or closer to the edge or water, respectively.

Its third ability is Water Rush. When Leviathan hits, the ball travels farther and faster over water.

These are its stats:

Just like the Atlantis putter, this club is very selective about where it shines. However, on long holes with lots of water, Leviathan can serve up better off-the-tee drives than just about any club out there, while remaining a mighty Wood to use from the Fairway.

Bon Voyage!

Thank you so much for joining us for our first-ever content preview week! We hope you’ll enjoy the new holes and the Nautilus brand. Good luck in the Mythic Odyssey on the 12th, and remember to leave us feedback to help us make the Balance Patch on December 16th.

Until next time, happy golfing!

Today’s club is a powerful one. Before we get to it, we have an announcement:

December 16th Balance Patch

We’ll be putting out a balance patch with expected rollout beginning December 16th. We expect this to be mostly buffs, but Dunecrawler is one we have our eye on in case it needs a change either way. In the right situation, it’s very powerful.

Now on to the card!

Dunecrawler is an Epic Hybrid that unlocks at level 2. As the name suggests, this club has a burning desire to see you succeed on any hole involving sand.

Its first ability is Power Shot. When you hit with Dunecrawler, you can pull all the way back for a few seconds to hit even further — at the price of a more difficult swing.

Its second ability is Bag Sand Bonus. While Dunecrawler is in your bag, all of your clubs get bonus stats when hitting from sand.

Its third ability is Terrain Resist. Compared to other low-loft clubs like Drivers and other Hybrids, Dunecrawler suffers a much lighter penalty when hitting from sand.

These are Dunecrawler’s stats:

Like Maelstrom, Dunecrawler lives a double life.

Near the green, Dunecrawler takes on a secondary role, helping irons and wedges eke out longer, more accurate chipping shots.

Away from the green, Dunecrawler is itself a heavy-hitter. Any sand trap becomes a launch pad to Power Shot the ball into the stratosphere. But when do you need that much distance? We’re looking forward to showing you a few places in coming months, including a new Par 6 hole, tomorrow.

See you then.

Today, we put a new hole under the microscope — a brilliant new Par 3 experience devised by artist Jamie Dean. Let’s take an overhead view:

Mythical Hole 4 puts you in a challenging spot. Starting directly behind a treeline, you’ll need to come up with some way to defeat the obstacles and arrive on the green.

A first temptation might be to bring The Seeker, a legendary wedge with Bag Tree Passing, letting you cut through the foliage without much thought. However, there’s a second obstacle in the straight-to-the-hole approach: it’s easy to fall off.

In our in-house tournaments, there were three camps:

• Play it safe but slow with Blacksmith.
• Seeker-drive through the trees for speed.
• Angle in from the right or left.

So what if you decide to go right?

Right is definitely the faster route, but much more dangerous. A line of columns and a second patch of trees interfere with a direct shot. Even worse, coming in at the wrong angle can lead you to bounce in an unintended direction.

If only there were some way to reduce the bounce of a club!

To make the best right-side shot, we found ourselves doing all kinds of things, from boosting drivers with spin for a better angle to trying to intentionally hit the trees behind the green and then chip in from there.

Going left is, of course, no picnic either. There are more safe places to land, but making it to the hole may require multiple strokes unless you’re taking the most daring of all Skyfury paths.

Before we go, here’s a look at a few of the new avatars you’ll see in the shop soon!

See you tomorrow.