2014 was a good year for new features in sports gaming. We had a long laundry list of new features and innovations to choose from. At the end of the day, our staff picked the course creation suite in The Golf Club as their favorite new feature of 2014 while our reader's picked year to year saves in MLB 14 The Show as their favorite new feature. 

Let's discuss the winners...

Matthew Coe: All in all 2014 turned out to be a mixture of good and bad. Botched launches marred many releases while others saw features gutted.

Luckily, we saw the introduction of some really cool new features in old favorites (NBA 2K and MLB The Show) and a surprising newcomer (The Golf Club).

My personal pick for best new feature was the introduction of the freelance offense system in NBA 2K15. For me, freelance offense impacted my favorite yearly sports franchise in a tangible way that is felt in every game and it helped breathe fresh air into a somewhat stale CPU offense. The results are brilliant and the feature lays the foundation for layers of refinement going forward.

Chris Sanner: My favorite feature this year was easily the creation suite in The Golf Club, which allowed you to create courses easily and quickly and then have your friends play them. There was an odd bit of satisfaction when you created a course and saw friends struggle with holes you expected them to, but also over perform on other holes you thought were going to be tougher.

The trust HB Studios gave to its players to make the game what it is was phenomenal and something other studios should consider when creating their games. The other feature I personally thought was over the top was the quick counts in MLB: The Show. There are improvements it'll need this next year, but for the first time in years I finished a full 162 game season. Game times were shrunk, and the ability to sim into games towards the end (this should be a standard feature in every game), made for the ability to really move through your season and series quickly.

Jayson Young: There's a powerful secret in the gaming industry, one that PC developers like Valve discovered almost two decades ago, and most console sports franchises stubbornly choose to ignore:

When it comes to content creation, no gaming company can ever compete with the abilities of its audience. A community of hundreds/thousands/millions will always be able to make better rosters, design better uniforms, produce better sliders, and build better courses than a few dozen salaried employees.

The Golf Club is the only sports title this year that understands how much better a video game can become when the playing community is allowed to create and share content, instead of being nickeled and dimed for it.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14, a $60 product, offered gamers 14 downloadable courses for $40.

The Golf Club, a $35 product, offers close to 40,000 downloadable courses at no additional charge.

Bob Kollars: Rarely on a console does a developer give the user a chance to be truly a part of the games creation and direction, but that is exactly what HB Studios has done the Golf Club

The course creator included with the purchase of the Golf Club allows users to run wild with their imagination and share their idea(s) with the community. Whether you are trying to create a real course, or one from the inner workings of your thoughts, the Golf Club gives a person the ability to do just that. While the course creator is still a 'work in progress' and needs a few more themes and objects added, it is by far the best new feature made offered this year. Most developers would never dream of allowing this type of feature to be included on a console, because frankly, it helps keep the game fresh and minimizes the reasons to purchase the next of iteration of said game. HB Studios really hit this one out of the park and should be highly commended for the having the guts to take this approach.

Ben Vollmer: From here on in, it will be hard to imagine a golf game without a feature to create your own course. Part of the brilliance in The Golf Club is being able to experience your own design. In an age of video games where customization is so pivotal to enjoyment, it's not hard to understand why the course creation feature is so popular.

For similar reasons, I thought NBA 2K15's MyLeague was one of the best new features of 2014. Despite the rough edges, there's a lot of good to be found. Being able to customize things like the frequency of blockbuster trades and the difficulty of signing a superstar allow me to create the NBA universe that I want. Moving forward, it would be in the best interest of all sports games to leave it up to the user to decide what kind of experience they want to have.

Glenn Wigmore: I can certainly see the appeal of year-to-year saves and quick counts in MLB The Show. Those are meaningful changes to an already great product (if we just ignore the maddeningly laggy online). It's nice to see a company reflect on how people play the game and iterate accordingly.

As a personal note, I wanted to recognize NHL 15's crowd tech. It was a game with many problems, but that was something that looked absolutely fantastic. It created a frenzy and atmosphere that I hope they build on.

My personal top feature was indeed the Greg Norman course creator, and I think the secret weapon of this feature is it's simple UI and blistering speed. The Unity engine allows people to jump to any spot in the course instantaneously to try things out. That lack of load time beckons users to try out the feature, which has some other cool bells and whistles too. That whole game is just a breath of fresh air in the sports game space.

Caley Roark: My vote was for MLB 14: The Show's cloud and year-to-year saves. To me, this is literally game-changing, as you'll never need to restart a franchise or Road to the Show player needlessly. Plus, it enhances the year to year value of the title, knowing that no progress is ever lost.

I also liked The Show's first attempt at Quick Counts, though this is less of an innovation and more like a long awaited feature. Though, to be fair, the same could be said of NBA 2K15's face-scanning -- we've seen this before, though perhaps with less success. I remember fighting with an old version of Tiger Woods Golf, trying just to get my facial scan just right.

Dustin Toms: Even though my top vote went to NBA 2K15's face scan, I can't complain about this year's best feature. The Golf Club revitalized golf gaming in a matter of months. Old fans of Tiger Woods quickly heard about the new game and jumped on board the instant they pressed start and saw the course creator. We've seen similar create features in the past, but The Golf Club truly makes your course 100 percent yours.

But it's still awesome to be able to see yourself throwing down dunks on Kevin Durant.