Ashes Cricket 2013 General Discussion

[sahilnatu]

I think a lot of that came down to the AI ...by the 5th day of a test, the AI wouldn't be using spinners on a 'ruined' wicket with an old ball and would still be bowling it's seamers or something weird like that. The whole AI set in AC2009 really started to fall apart in the longer formats, which is frustrating for a title called "Ashes Cricket" where you'd think the AI settings, especially the bowlers and field-sets, would have been a little more aggressive and smarter.

The shorter-the-format the better the arcade-style experience was/is in AC2009/IC10. Again, vastly better than previous iterations but as you said - the longer you played it the more it kinda fell apart.

That is if you reached the 5th day at all. Never went past 1000/3 dec in two sessions and then bowling the opposition out twice by lunch Day2.

 

[Biggs]

I think that's a bit overly harsh. Took me a few weeks of solid game-time on the "Hard" setting to chase down a few scores and get a win. The issue was (as even Mike has pointed out) the learning curve wasn't as steep as it should have been, so most people got the hang of how the game operated VERY quickly and the AI settings were not (I hate this word) dynamic enough to challenge the player once you had mastered timing and so on...

The ass-backwards way to get around this is simply to lower the stats of your team that you play most often with and push the stats of the other teams through the roof. Of course, easy to do on the PC version with the mods, but not so easy on the console.

I can still have a fairly challenging Test match against the AC09 AI with my settings lowered and it takes some time to bowl the opposition out, avoiding any of the cheat-ways to do it of course. The short version is as a player you shouldn't really have to figure out 'about-face' ways to be challenged by the AI. Hard should REALLY BE hard... the best games are always the most insanely frustrating ones to beat.

 

[sahilnatu]

Yeah. Agree on that one thing, the AI got better with your team stats reduced. One format I found competitive was a 10over match with an awesomely strong team as opposition and not bowling with the off side packed field. That way the AI did score some good runs & gave us a challenge while chasing it down. Hope this iteration nails the 'Test' AI logic as thats been the hardest thing to do from what we see of the past games. Get the AI right this time & the graphics and stuff can just come along later.

 

[Biggs]

Absolutely. I think if you're going to have different difficulty levels in a game they need to have a steep learning curve, otherwise there's no point. Biggest problem with all the cricket games we've ever had is the EASY/MEDIUM/HARD settings did not have a wide enough gap of difficulty. In AC09 "Easy" was basically a tennis setting, Medium was only slightly better and only at Hard did you get any kind of AI-based challenges, that were almost always reactive, rather than proactive, especially when it came to field-sets and bowler changes. I think that's the main challenge for any cricket game these days is to have both proactive and reactive AI that can counter-attack either in the field or with the bat and gradually ramping up across all the difficulty levels (so when it's HARD, you've got really proactive AI that can counter-punch when required, with bowler-changes, field-sets or sending certain batsman up or down the order... nightwatchmen, etc).

Too often the difficulty level means "the ball is harder to hit" or "your bowling target isn't as accurate" - but it doesn't relate to AI. Making the ball harder to "time" is only 50% of the picture for me, difficulty also needs to ramp up the responsiveness of the AI to certain match-situations. Run rate, chasing down targets or quick losses of wickets all can have pre-programmed AI responses that would mimic what happens in a real match situation.

 

[Gone4aDuck]

If you lowered your players "power" stat really low then that made hitting quick high scores a lot harder. It always felt like engineering a score though and that's why it got boring quickly.
I also had to max my opponents stats and lower mine to get better results too. I never conceded more than 250 against the two licensed teams either. Around 100-150 was their average. . However against a max stated south africa I once conceded 350. (Yay)

 

[whiteninness]

Developers just did that because it was easier than making good AI.

Total Annihilation, which was lauded as one of the great RTS games of all time, had a similarly poor difficulty scaling. The AI was the exact same in all difficulties except for the speed at which they built and acquired resources. On the easiest mode you'd go and attack their base after an hour and find they'd only built 3 metal extractors.

 

[sahilnatu]

With Mike telling us of the pro active commentary in this game, more of 'what should be done at the stage', hope they put the same logic behind the AI too.
So the CPU just doesn't plug gaps to stop the flow of runs but rather bowls to a plan, bowls to a field.

 

[HappyGoLucky]

Really looking forward to this game Mike,
I hope it turns out to be the game you wanted to make,
My pre-order stands.

 

[Mike Fegan]

Really looking forward to this game Mike,
I hope it turns out to be the game you wanted to make,
My pre-order stands.

Thanks for your values support!

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Whoops.... mean't to say Valued support. I quite often think much faster than I can type

 

[Mike Fegan]

Hi Guys, Last week was a solid week of production and I am confident we are now on top of the technical issues on the consoles side. We are moving ahead on the updates for the up-coming Ashes Tour of Australia but I will give you a further update on the WIP tomorrow and the week ahead. Cheers, Mike

 

[sahilnatu]

Good to know that, Mike. Keep going!

 

[Kiko_97]

Hi Mike, with the focus shifting to the return Ashes, will you still be able to play the fully licensed Ashes series here in the UK?

 

[LittleChamp]

Hi Mike, with the focus shifting to the return Ashes, will you still be able to play the fully licensed Ashes series here in the UK?

Yes, you get to play both!

 

[Security]

Mike
Can you buy the licence of E.A.
I will fund your company for this

 

[sobti]

Hi Guys, Last week was a solid week of production and I am confident we are now on top of the technical issues on the consoles side. We are moving ahead on the updates for the up-coming Ashes Tour of Australia but I will give you a further update on the WIP tomorrow and the week ahead. Cheers, Mike

Bring it ON Mike ! I am happy for you and your team, true leadership it is. Facing harsh words from us, seeing your team fighting with those bugs and atlast it appears to be fetching good results.

Hope your team make it in time and come out with some eye candies from this game..waiting eagerly for this game visuals.