An Open Letter To BigAntStudio

[WubbaLubbaDubDub]

Hi Team @BigAntStudio,

I have been a loyal supporter since Don Bradman 14. When we all heard back in October of 2012 that BigAntStudio will be producing a cricket game and finally when DBC 14 was announced, it was met with so much positivity from cricket gaming fans all around the globe, especially here at Planet Cricket. When the features were revealed with Ross showing the player card, we were awestruck by what now we could do with Academy.

The game was released and while it had bugs, us cricket fans got a good game after Cricket 2007, so after a wait of almost 8 years. I was so happy I sent the team at Big Ant a thank you card all the way from US. Fast forward, DBC 17 came, Ashes Cricket came and Cricket 19 came. We could see that you made improvements and we could feel the difference. DBC 17 had the new batting and bowling mechanism, Ashes Cricket had the first even licenses and C19 was perfect icing on the cake.

As gaming fans, we were thankful when you all released the DLC literally 4 and half months ago. The Hundred, CPL, and other bonuses felt genunie.

Now lets come to the purpose of this letter and that is Cricket 22. I am really sad on where to start, however it is important that my thoughts which I think will be the thoughts of gamers who support you all like I do.

1. Graphics - The player modals feel like a let down. Cricket 19 had such good player modals that 22's bar is set really low for next iteration of games. While I completely agree that Covid threw all the plans out and the team was surviving in a city with the most lockdown, it is still something that is not acceptable. You have Ireland, New Zealand and West Indies added in as licenses.The players are not even scanned. Forget about mocap and scanning and all.. your team could have done is created a good playface of players.
2. Academy - This is the biggest let down. This is where I feel that we all should be refunded certain amount of money. The game as originally slated to release on November 25th. The game was delayed a week and yet the academy has bugs, has issues and NO STADIUM AND TOUR CREATOR. When this was part of all your previous iterations, how can you release a product which has 2-3 features not in the game?
3. Bugs - While I agree every game has gone out with this trend of Day 1 patch, this game is full of bugs. Cannot connect Academy, lineups changing automatically, player who is white goes black in game, frame rate drop, fielder sliding and goes 2 mile off to another place.. this is not acceptable.

I am sorry BigAnt but working 20 hours a day and fixing bug means nothing now when this could have been prevented all along. I completely sympathize with your team who is working over hours but I also sympathize with all fellow cricket gamers. I am not a hardcore gamer but like me, we all have provided you with our money only to receive a product that is 50% ready. Not being negative but I spent $60 on this game and I have yet not received

1. Academy
   1. Keeps Crashing
   2. No Stadium Creator - I use this heavily for my own fun.
   3. No Tour Creator
2. No tour mode
3. Random crashes.

The academy alone for me makes me think that game has lost half its value. While I am still willing to look past all this, please do not provide us with half baked product in future. Us cricket fans already go through a lot with cricket being run by bunch of morons, we do not need a gaming company taking us for granted. I will still support BigAnt for one more iteration but if things continue this way, I do not know about others but you will loose one loyal follower who has DBC 14 PS3, XBox One, DBC 17 - Xbox One, Steam, Ashes Cricket - Xbox One, Cricket 19 - Xbox One, Cricket 22 - Xbox Series S. Again this might mean nothing to you if you lose 1, but it will mean a lot if you lose 100.

Thank you for providing us with a half baked game, I hope your team survives all the stress that they created on themself and see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Sincerely
Cricket Gaming World Fans

 

[Mitchell]

Hi Team @BigAntStudio,

I have been a loyal supporter since Don Bradman 14. When we all heard back in October of 2012 that BigAntStudio will be producing a cricket game and finally when DBC 14 was announced, it was met with so much positivity from cricket gaming fans all around the globe, especially here at Planet Cricket. When the features were revealed with Ross showing the player card, we were awestruck by what now we could do with Academy.

The game was released and while it had bugs, us cricket fans got a good game after Cricket 2007, so after a wait of almost 8 years. I was so happy I sent the team at Big Ant a thank you card all the way from US. Fast forward, DBC 17 came, Ashes Cricket came and Cricket 19 came. We could see that you made improvements and we could feel the difference. DBC 17 had the new batting and bowling mechanism, Ashes Cricket had the first even licenses and C19 was perfect icing on the cake.

As gaming fans, we were thankful when you all released the DLC literally 4 and half months ago. The Hundred, CPL, and other bonuses felt genunie.

Now lets come to the purpose of this letter and that is Cricket 22. I am really sad on where to start, however it is important that my thoughts which I think will be the thoughts of gamers who support you all like I do.

1. Graphics - The player modals feel like a let down. Cricket 19 had such good player modals that 22's bar is set really low for next iteration of games. While I completely agree that Covid threw all the plans out and the team was surviving in a city with the most lockdown, it is still something that is not acceptable. You have Ireland, New Zealand and West Indies added in as licenses.The players are not even scanned. Forget about mocap and scanning and all.. your team could have done is created a good playface of players.
2. Academy - This is the biggest let down. This is where I feel that we all should be refunded certain amount of money. The game as originally slated to release on November 25th. The game was delayed a week and yet the academy has bugs, has issues and NO STADIUM AND TOUR CREATOR. When this was part of all your previous iterations, how can you release a product which has 2-3 features not in the game?
3. Bugs - While I agree every game has gone out with this trend of Day 1 patch, this game is full of bugs. Cannot connect Academy, lineups changing automatically, player who is white goes black in game, frame rate drop, fielder sliding and goes 2 mile off to another place.. this is not acceptable.

I am sorry BigAnt but working 20 hours a day and fixing bug means nothing now when this could have been prevented all along. I completely sympathize with your team who is working over hours but I also sympathize with all fellow cricket gamers. I am not a hardcore gamer but like me, we all have provided you with our money only to receive a product that is 50% ready. Not being negative but I spent $60 on this game and I have yet not received

1. Academy
   1. Keeps Crashing
   2. No Stadium Creator - I use this heavily for my own fun.
   3. No Tour Creator
2. No tour mode
3. Random crashes.

The academy alone for me makes me think that game has lost half its value. While I am still willing to look past all this, please do not provide us with half baked product in future. Us cricket fans already go through a lot with cricket being run by bunch of morons, we do not need a gaming company taking us for granted. I will still support BigAnt for one more iteration but if things continue this way, I do not know about others but you will loose one loyal follower who has DBC 14 PS3, XBox One, DBC 17 - Xbox One, Steam, Ashes Cricket - Xbox One, Cricket 19 - Xbox One, Cricket 22 - Xbox Series S. Again this might mean nothing to you if you lose 1, but it will mean a lot if you lose 100.

Thank you for providing us with a half baked game, I hope your team survives all the stress that they created on themself and see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Sincerely
Cricket Gaming World Fans

pretty sure will see stadium creator this week my best guess is there may have been a bug in it too why they can't release it ,or they are still adding features too it

 

[WubbaLubbaDubDub]

pretty sure will see stadium creator this week my best guess is there may have been a bug in it too why they can't release it ,or they are still adding features too it

While I am not denying the hardwork they are putting in or features that we will see, its the features I do not see right now. We as fans paid the money completely and not in installments. I would have preferred a buggy Stadium Creator compared a feature promised not being in the game.

 

[Stephen Bailey]

I would have preferred a buggy Stadium Creator compared a feature promised not being in the game.

While you may have preferred that, they would have received even more criticism for releasing another broken feature. Having played more than my fair share of buggy games in recent times, I truly couldn't disagree with this more. What I would rather they did was communicate that it wouldn't be in at release because it requires more work. That would then enable people to make a decision on whether they want to buy it or not with the lack of such a feature at release. The same goes for Tour Mode, but reading one of Ross' latest tweets it seems that removal was intentional rather than simply being delayed. Despite that, they've listened to the community and will be reinstating it.



I promise you, I get the disappointment around a lot of the issues and missing features. The game, I feel, was pushed out due to the Ashes. I don't know for sure, but that's my feeling. The question here is whether that was due to pressure from licence holders this time around or a self-imposed deadline. Look at how the Tim Paine situation delayed the release. None of us knows what agreements are in place or the stresses placed upon the development team in terms of working under the restrictions they have. It's worth keeping in mind that Big Ant, being an Australian company, will have been one of the hardest hit on the planet by Covid restrictions, even more so with them being based in Melbourne. Is that to say things couldn't have been handled better? I'm sure there are things they would do differently with hindsight, but you don't learn those lessons until presented with situations like this.

What I can say is I've never seen any game developer CEO do what Ross has been doing the last few days on Twitter. I know he's an acquired taste for some, but he's been answering anything he can. His and Big Ant's response to a lot of the issues has been first class. He and the Big Ant team know the game didn't release in the best state and they're working incredibly hard to rectify that. Including the day zero patch, there have been five patches in total I believe. I get the feeling they're going to leave no stone unturned to polish this thing. Then we can get back to arguing about more fundamental aspects of the actual gameplay.

I feel us consumers need to take some responsibility for our purchases as well. Sure, we spent the money based on previous iterations generally improving over the years, but the warning signs were there. There was so little information and footage actually provided of the game beforehand. For us to buy it simply because it's a new cricket is pretty daft, really. I bought it because it's a new cricket game, I know Big Ant games don't typically go on sale much and that it would play a part in my Twitch channel going forwards.

 

[WubbaLubbaDubDub]

While you may have preferred that, they would have received even more criticism for releasing another broken feature. Having played more than my fair share of buggy games in recent times, I truly couldn't disagree with this more. What I would rather they did was communicate that it wouldn't be in at release because it requires more work. That would then enable people to make a decision on whether they want to buy it or not with the lack of such a feature at release. The same goes for Tour Mode, but reading one of Ross' latest tweets it seems that removal was intentional rather than simply being delayed. Despite that, they've listened to the community and will be reinstating it.

View attachment 258775

I promise you, I get the disappointment around a lot of the issues and missing features. The game, I feel, was pushed out due to the Ashes. I don't know for sure, but that's my feeling. The question here is whether that was due to pressure from licence holders this time around or a self-imposed deadline. Look at how the Tim Paine situation delayed the release. None of us knows what agreements are in place or the stresses placed upon the development team in terms of working under the restrictions they have. It's worth keeping in mind that Big Ant, being an Australian company, will have been one of the hardest hit on the planet by Covid restrictions, even more so with them being based in Melbourne. Is that to say things couldn't have been handled better? I'm sure there are things they would do differently with hindsight, but you don't learn those lessons until presented with situations like this.

What I can say is I've never seen any game developer CEO do what Ross has been doing the last few days on Twitter. I know he's an acquired taste for some, but he's been answering anything he can. His and Big Ant's response to a lot of the issues has been first class. He and the Big Ant team know the game didn't release in the best state and they're working incredibly hard to rectify that. Including the day zero patch, there have been five patches in total I believe. I get the feeling they're going to leave no stone unturned to polish this thing. Then we can get back to arguing about more fundamental aspects of the actual gameplay.

I feel us consumers need to take some responsibility for our purchases as well. Sure, we spent the money based on previous iterations generally improving over the years, but the warning signs were there. There was so little information and footage actually provided of the game beforehand. For us to buy it simply because it's a new cricket is pretty daft, really. I bought it because it's a new cricket game, I know Big Ant games don't typically go on sale much and that it would play a part in my Twitch channel going forwards.

While I certainly agree that Ross has been doing a fantastic job of replying to people on Twitter, I did mention this was something that would have been avoidable. I am sure they are not working on the game since the last 4 months post the DLC release. This looks like work from a year or more. There are so many issues that just does not equate to licensing and the agreements they have in place.

One small example is when a fielder slides, the same fielder vanishes and goes few meters over the fence and appears at a different place. This is simple QA. While people might think I am being critical of them, but this is the fact. How are players colors changing mid game? Why is Academy which has been part since DBC 14, suddenly so buggy. These are the questions I am asking them. These are the problems that could have been easily avoided. Also some of these dint exist during the pre-release. These happened post the Day 1 patch. We have also seen that sometimes patches have regressed gameplay even in previous iterations.

Also while I agree we are responsible for our purchases, if this was a clothing brand with a tear or a food brand with taste not upto standard, they would have partially refunded or given something for free. I did not buy because its a new cricket game, I bought because last time I bought BA product it was not half baked. It was complete even though it had the bugs and all. It was a COMPLETE release.

 

[wasteyouryouth]

@WutUpMahGlipGlops
I'm going to lock this because I don't see what discussion it will prompt beyond what can already be found in the general discussion or the first impressions thread. People can express any feedback, good or bad, and in as much detail as they want. We don't need multiple threads going over the same sort of topics.

If you can convince me otherwise let me know.

By the way, this isn't an attempt to silence any negative views.


Or is it....