Published November 13, 2023

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On the subject of club updates, what is Concrete’s thought process that goes into tweaking the stats on older clubs? Are you guys constantly chasing after low club-use data to try and rejuvenate interest in them? Or is it more about providing better options to make the game more competitive for lower level players?

Both! One of our biggest successes this year was broadening the number of clubs that are useful at some level.

We know that with the way our economy works (and the limitations of bags + the bag UI), it can be cumbersome to experiment with new clubs. Usually shifts in club usage are very slow, and we like to make very small shifts in club quality so we don’t have to snap back and nerf something.

In a recent-ish update, Meanderer was given a new ability called Green Grip, which turns it into a much more interesting and useful club. Do you see a possibility of other older clubs getting new abilities that could make them more desirable?

I would LOVE to hear any ideas people have to make older or weaker clubs more desirable. My dream is that people are always excited to see legendaries/mythicals in particular, and we came into 2023 with a fair number of duds. I’m hoping to exit 2023 with a much better ratio.

Is there much more room for new clubs in the existing brands or do you see more new brands continuing to be added? If so, can you drop any hints about what may be in the works?

You’ll see some of each!

Club buffs and new clubs within existing brands will help to improve some of the weaker brands, club types, and synergies already in the game.

New brands give us more room to experiment with hot new concepts and go a bit crazy with artwork.

New avatars were being added on a weekly basis for quite a long stretch, but it seems now like that has stopped. Will we be seeing another flurry of new avatars coming into the game again?

Our release schedule for Avatars has slown a bit, but we do have new Avatars still to come! We also love hearing about ideas players have for new Avatar designs, so please be sure to send them our way!

You guys have mentioned that a big clubhouse overhaul is in development right now. Concrete has confirmed that clubhouse vs clubhouse duels is definitely part of that plan. Is there anything else you can tell us that will be in the long term plan for clubhouses?  Maybe improvements to chat, more behind the scenes tools for clubhouse captains?

Yes, I think that those two items — chat improvements and tools for clubhouse captains — are extremely well-represented in our current priority list. Examples are the ability to ban players, require users to accept clubhouse rules before joining, and pin a message within clubhouse chat.

However, I’d like to invite you, your clubhouse, other clubhouse captains, or anyone reading this to spend a little time coming up with a top five clubhouse feature list and send it to me or post it in our Discord. This is kind of a pivotal time where we are nearing the end of our server-side overhaul and haven’t quite solidified what items to work on first. If you want to have an impact in our decision-making around clubhouses, it’s go time.

In-house tournaments are becoming more and more common in clubhouses, but need to be organized and executed in creative ways outside of the game. Are there any long term plans to add an in-house tourney builder interface of any kind?

I’d love to discuss this more, but I don’t think we can possibly get as feature-rich as Challonge or any of the other resources people are using. I think it’d be possible to hook up the clubhouse interface to be able to create in-house tournaments using the existing tournament system (e.g. create a pocket tournament only your clubhouse can join), but I wonder how popular that’d be.

It looks like the original user interface for solo mode didn’t take into account future content additions. Would an overhaul of solo mode need to happen for us to finally see Boston and the Mythical courses be added?  And do you see Solo Mode being expanded in any other way, say, like with a practice driving range or something along those lines?

I think a practice driving range is a possibility. Currently people have to use the dueling interface or take a fairly cumbersome path through the solo board to test bags.

I heard someone pitch the idea recently of a driving range where you can build bags mid-game and work to complete a set of achievements. I thought that sounded really cool.

So few people play Solo Mode that it’s pretty deep in the back-burner. I’m always interested when I meet someone who was really into it, but the number of those players is pretty slim. Because of that we probably won’t spend any time adding more to the current incarnation of Solo.

Can you tell us anything at all about new courses in the works that you’ve alluded to on Discord?  Can we assume that they will also be TPC courses?  

Does the player data show enough interest in the Mythical holes to complete the development of that course, or at least take it to 9 holes?  Or is Concrete looking at it in the rear view mirror as a fun experiment and just leave it at that?

New course? Well, I never.

I believe 2024 will include both Mythical holes and TPC holes, though I do not know for sure.

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