If Big Ant chose to go back to their attitude, public engagement and releasing of actually near finished games from around the time of Rugby League Live 2 and Don Bradman Cricket '14 (they both eventually became very good games via patches and were adequate at release), then they'd find that they wouldn't be copping anywhere near so much criticism.
I've seen the annoyance, contempt and silence Big Ant has had for naysayers (first it was the nasty people on Facebook, then on their forums, now on Planet Cricket, next it'll be reviewers) and it's getting them nowhere.
In my view this is a slightly rose-tinted view of dbc14.
DBC14 at release was much worse than ashes cricket, and where it finished on console was worse than ashes is currently (stats excepted)
it released with issues such as: no AI edges, the AI didn't use slips even in first class, if you played a forward defensive the AI put in a silly mid-off, it had ludicrously overpowered AI fielders who could throw with 100% accuracy (irrespective of fielding stats) without a moment's pause to steady themselves or even face the right direction or even wind back their arm (the ball literally hit their hand and flew to the stumps like a rocket), pitches deteriorated during play but reset on save and reload, pitches didn't seem to vary much, weather was non-existent (it was sunny 99.94% of the time).
patches improved it but actually a number of the above issues were never fixed, and
@francobaldo1 saved it on PC. On console it never progressed beyond adequate.
I think some of us are going Awol in the brain department: Yes there are plenty of issues but at the mo the forum is just spiralling into abject negativity about everything ba has ever done. We are just dragginf each other down into perceiving everything as broken. Its certainly not objective any more.
@Dutch the negativity around ashes is because there are actual regressions in that base to where ashes is now, (pitches don't even deteriorate, and their visuals are nothing compared to dbc14; we've lost stats tracking outside career, and in career they are incorrect) or there are other problems (fielders don't drop catches irrespective of stats). The general gameplay is actually quite good for the most part (see my last match description), but the whole thing is cut through by annoyances, errors and a lack of attention to detail, and absolutely no thought whatsoever to polish or coherence in presentation or UX to make life easier or more interesting. they have removed features! unless it's an obsolete one superseded by a new thing, who the hell removes features?
even leaving aside our comments about a beta build that was the nuts, anyone who played day one vs now can see that BA's "support" have regressed the game. (leaving aside nuances of Ai batting, lets take an obvious example - where have rain breaks gone? why take them out?). And BA have no idea what changes caused these regressions.
dbc14 got a lot of benefit of doubt, as did BA more generally, because it was obviously a more passionate, ambitious and competent effort than fegan's fraudulent shitgrab. they have squandered that benefit of the doubt and i think as a userbase removing it is the reasonable thing to do. 4 years and 3 iterations down the line the only real progression is we can now dismiss the AI in all legitimate manners. So we should! Would we accept a football game that initially launched and you couldn't score with headers, iteration 2 they added headers but took out volleys (as they did removing bowled's in dbc17), and finally in iteration 3 we can score all types of goals but the goalkeeper's stats have no effect on whether he's more or less likely to save a shot?
