MasterBlaster76
ICC Chairman
Alright guys bear with me, this will be a long-ass post and probably a little ambitious.
I have a different spin on things....I admit I havent read through each and every comment in this thread but so far I havent seen something similar so here goes:
Introduction:
One of my main gripes with realism in cricket games is the contest between bat and ball and often when I play AC09 I try to imagine the interaction between bat and ball in real life cricket and make a comparison and Ive come to this conclusion.
- Its far too easy for bowlers to swing/seam the ball at WILL in any direction at any given time.
- Carrying on from the abovementioned point, it is even more unrealistic just how easily ANY batsman play these deliveries.
Just imagine a real cricketing scenario...If a bowler gets the ball the seam and swing at will and get it in the right areas most of the time it is VERY unlikely that even THE BEST batsmen out there will be able to survive for very long. Just look at some of the best bowling spells, with great bowlers getting 4 perfect outswingers to beat the bat only for the 5th/6th balls to duck back in and take out off stump. Those are very real scenarios and some incredibly good batsmen have been made to look like complete chops when a bowler is on song.
The problem I have with the implementation of this in game is that it is too easy for any bowler to ball superb deliveries all the time with tons of variation - I can bowl off-cutters following it up with in swingers and slower balls and some outswiginers for good measure at will ALL IN ONE OVER....its unrealistic and if it were to happen in real life the batsman wouldnt simply be able to "predict" it and defend it away 90% of the time.
The reason this is a major problem for me is that it takes the fun out of bowling really good deliveries. It makes special deliveries, or the one that pitches on middle and nips away to take off stump, completely irrelevant and discredits its quality. Isnt that what test cricket (for example) is about? Bowling that unplayable ball to change the course of the match? If every ball you bowl looks like a beauty then it simply makes it ordinary. It is made ordinary because batsmen hardly have a problem playing these unplayable deliveries.
My suggestions:
INTERACTIVE PITCHES / BOWLER WRIST POSITION meter
We seem to forget how important pitches are...Ive never in my life played a cricket game where winning the toss actually has ANY bearing on the game. It has always just ended up being a gimmick and pitches simply cosmetic for the most part.
What I would like to see are interactive pitches with hidden hotspot within them - "virtual cracks" for lack of better term. These hotspot are inivisible so that you can not simply aim the reticule on them every single delivery. What could make this cool is that their properties could change or they could increase as the days go on. They would also function differently depending on the wicket - on a green pitch, pitching the ball on one of these hotspots could make the ball zip through or move off the seam, and as the days go on their properties could change to perhaps some of them staying low.
This "virtual hotspot" idea could tie in with my second suggestion - Bowler Wrist Position meter. We all know the phrase "The fast bowler has great rhythm" - this usually suggests that (from a physiological perspective), the bowler releases the ball with a good wrist position resulting in an upright seam which increases his chances of swinging/seaming the ball.
A combination between this and the interactive pitch idea, one could possibly limit the "swing and seam the ball at will" problem I mentioned in the introduction. Depending on the bowler's skill the wrist meter would determine whether the seam is upright/scrambled on the point of release, hence have a direct impact on the extent to which a bowler is able to get swing or seam. Movement off the pitch is consequently based on both the seam position AND whether the ball lands on a "virtual crack". This would bring excitement back into the bowling, where bowling a seriously good off-cutter actually becomes a skill the player needs to perfect - the way players in real cricket need to do as well. The better the skill rating of the bowler, the bigger the chance of him achieving good rhythm.
In order to combat the batting issue mention at the start, where batsmen seem to play these incredible deliveries with too much ease, their defensive abilities are critical. Adjusting at the last moment to a surprise off-cutter from Dale Steyn at 145kph after a barrage of 5 out-swingers beating the bat should, as in real life, cause problems for a no.8 - not be defended with so much ease (as is currently the case in ALL AC09).
A possible solution to this:
When a bowler has perfect wrist position, hits the "virtual crack" and directs it at the stumps and bowl what one could describe as a severely good delivery, a minigame could pop up which focuses in on the batsman and his task at hand. Sort of like the coloured catching circles where the player needs to stop the meter in the green circle in order to survive the ordeal. I think it would allow for a lot of tense moments and depending on the coloured ring the meter is stopped at, could result in various outcomes:
Green - Safe (manages to keep the ball out at the last moment, perhaps if he's a tailender he inside edges onto his pad)
Yellow - 50/50 obviously...mostly reliant on the quality of the batsman whether he can keep it out.
Red - Very likely to be dismissed by bowled/lbw BUT could possibly result in an edge, which again puts the batter's fate over into the bowling side's hands with the already-included catching minigame.
I think what the game needs are more tense moments similar to the catching-ring setup at the moment. One obviously dont want to saturate the game with mini-games but I think there is a place for it when a bowler (for instance) manages to bowl very good deliveries and therefor involve the batting side in a mini-game of their own....
Ok so thats just a couple of my ideas, feel free to agree or shout at me haha
Excellent ideas there. I'd also add the 'catching ring' minigame to runout situations, so we feel as though we're more involved in fielding, maybe in situations where diving for the ball as well. Games are about being interactive - right now, we're hardly interactive at all in the field.