'Fun factor' variety and custom tees

When designing a course either for virtual golf or the real thing, it's often easy to overlook the fact that people play the game to have fun, more than any other reason. If a course is dull to play, no amount of additional 'stuff' that goes along with it, will count for much.

Defining what is 'fun' can be tricky to say the least, as people's ideas of what constitutes fun, varies as wildly as the different types of bad shot you can hit in golf - that is to say A LOT!
Obviously, it's going to be almost impossible to please everybody, so what do you do?
Well firstly, if you're playing Links because it makes you feel like you're playing real golf, you will expect the course to mimic a design that you might go out and play for real.
Some of the golf courses produced with apcd, remind me of those calenders of the worlds most difficult holes with fictional holes laid out across the grand canyon or halfway up the side of Everest! This type of course isn't going to appeal to the purist so that type of course is out.

I've developed a reputation for creating difficult courses but they have proved over the years to be quite popular. Some of it is no doubt the artistic effort I put into my courses, but for people to have fun, it has to go beyond that.
Personally, I get the most fun from courses that are a challenge to 'beat' which is almost certainly why I tend to make my courses that way. On the other hand it's no fun to play one difficult hole after another until they all blend into one seemingly never ending nightmare! There has to be light at the end of the tunnel so to speak. In designing this course I've tried to interject a few easier holes in there that for expert players they might consider them a 'must' birdie. Indeed the last two holes of the front nine are a short par 4 and a very reachable (in two) par 5. No matter how badly the round may be going, there will always be a chance to claw some ground back and launch into the back nine with renewed hope!

The Links 1.07 patch has made it possible to select not only the usual custom pins, but also for the first time, custom tees. This is a fantastic new feature and one that I hope will be used often. Setting custom tees before your round will bring new and different challenges into play on each hole as well as perhaps bringing the difficulty level to one you are most comfortable with, without compromising the nature of the course. That is to say, you might choose mainly back tees with a few medium tees thrown in to add some variety and to spice things up a little.

In the accompanying readme file for the course, I will be detailing my suggestions for some of the custom tees and indeed depending on the feedback from beta testing, I may be adding longer tees on some holes to really challenge the expert who is on top of his game.

I have decided that my tees markers will not be colour coded ie: there will be no black, yellow, blue, red tees etc. There will be no visible distinction between the different sets of tees at all.
The reason for this being, as we do not have to worry about people playing from the 'wrong' tees (!), we can select custom tees and simply be happy in our mind that these are the 'tees of the day' and not have to feel like we are playing from some set of yellow, blue or otherwise 'less manly' tees.

I'll post a picture later from one of the alternative tees on the par 3, 14th hole.