TBH there are a few things in DBC which sort of stand out in terms of WTF! For folks who obviously get cricket and have created the best cricket game, this "Jekyll and Hyde" phenomenon is quite perplexing. Here are a list of things that you would expect any cricket fan to have thought through...
1. Scorecards - The weird way the scores are presented where you can't quite figure out who actually batted 1st or 2nd. Plus you can't view the scorecards with info such as the no. of overs remaining in the match or a particular day.
2. Stats - Leaving out no. of maiden overs and no. of 4s and 6s hit by batsmen. These are pretty standard stats and have been around for ages.
3. Field settings - The OOB (out of box) field sets are mostly useless and you can barely use 15 or so fields most of the times. It almost seems like the fields were designed by folks who had no clue about cricket.
4. Lack of square drive - How such a basic shot, which is a staple for countering pitched up deliveries outside off, can be missed is astounding. Surely someone should have put up their hands during design/development/testing cycles and said "looks like we are missing a shot to counter pitched up deliveries outside off".
5. Inability to save custom fields - Whenever you make a field change for your bowler, it's not saved or persisted. You have to keep on making the same changes for the batsman at the other end, a new batsman or for the next over. In a video game if I make a field change, surely that should be the one used for all scenarios unless I changed it. At the moment it takes forever to make the same field changes again and again.
6. Squads/Team players for offline multi-player - As has already been discussed I you want to have some fun and play the game with your mates, it presents unique challenges. First off is the inability to use downloaded/updated teams/players for others. You don't want to go through hours of effort to set the other profile. The logic of folks to do the same stuff over and over again for various profiles is beyond me. I tried to play DBC with my friends and it was such a nightmare that I gave up and went with AC09. Must admit AC09 is a much better game for offline multiplayer with your mates even with all the warts and all.
7. No split screen for offline multiplayer - Big Ant have mentioned that they want us to forget how earlier games used to work and I must say I love it, especially the way you bat from behind the wkt keeper. But unfortunately you can't do so for affline multiplayer coz there's no split screen for bowler and batsman. The game essentially forces you to play the game like "earlier" cricket games since broadcast camera angle is the only feasible option. For a game which wanted us to embrace the new way of playing cricket and the new batting controls, not to have a split screen where you can have the batting (behind the batsman) and bowling cameras adjacent to each other for offline multiplayer does seem to be a miss. Surely folks would have seen it while playtesting when I found the offline multiplayer experience so jarring on my first try.
Other things such as enhanced AIs, better edging mechanism including plays & misses, a bug free online mode and more stats is something you can expect in future iterations as you do expect these things to get better over time. But the above mentioned points do seem like an oversight and most of them, except split screen mode, wouldn't have needed a huge development effort. That's exactly the reason why I would love for Big Ant to involve select folks from PC.net (Matt and maybe a couple more) at an earlier stage (say design) to provide inputs coz inviting them for playtesting at the end of the game development cycle is way too late for any meaningful feedback to be incorporated.
