Ashes Cricket General Discussion

[cricket_online]

I stressed and made the point that in my opinion you have to LOVE cricket to put hours into a cricket game.

The casuals will slog around for an hour or so then shelve the game. For me making a cricket game catering to the casual may increase sales. But you alienate the hardcore and they are the ones that will carry on playing the game

Couldn't agree more. There are some sports which are easy to pick up and play or most folks already have a basic understanding, e.g. footie/soccer, golf, tennis, basketball. And then there are a few sports which only the true fan of the sport will play and you can't expect someone without understanding of the sport to play, and cricket falls firmly in this category. In all my life I've never seen one person who didn't grow up following cricket who became a cricket fan. I've had numerous discussions around sports with friends and colleagues, have explained similarities between baseball and cricket, and generally tried to get folks to give it a shot and so far nobody warmed up to the sport.

The sport is just too complex to be followed by casuals or by folks who don't have an idea about it. In fact folks have even found NFL easier to follow instead of cricket and TBH you can't do much about it. It is what it is and I doubt Big Ant can change the image much but the way Big Ant left DBC 17 incomplete and the way they handled Ashes Cricket is a slap on the face to the folks who backed them since the beginning. Ashes Cricket was shipped with the same bugs DBC 17 so it definitely reeked of cash-grab. And all that talk of "we back our product" was just that - talk.

 

[blockerdave]

Very interesting. @blockerdave was a big BA supporter from the start (level-leaded mature type, as opposed to mad fanboy type) and also on the beta team for Ashes. Obviously a lot must've happened (haven't followed the forum closely for the past month) to lead to this ton of discontent. I'm curious if others on the beta team feel the same?

Personally, I still think Ashes is the best cricket game on the market (better than DBC14/17; bought and played all of them) with a few things holding it back from being a 8-9/10 (AI field settings issue being the top one). I still have hope that this patch that BA alludes to in various twitter posts will take us there. I realize I only play offline T20s/ODIs and so people who play tests/online/career will have a different opinion.

Truth is I'm certainly not anti BA.

The best 3 cricket games I've played are dbc14, dbc17 and ashes cricket I think the gameplay has broadly improved in each iteration but sadly none has delivered the truly balanced game.

At the beginning of the beta for ashes I was clear to BA I didn't intend to buy the game unless there was an obvious step forward from dbc17 and I repeated that for the first several builds. I was clear I didn't count licenses, face scans and animations as being in themselves enough. They kept me in the process and listened to my points even when I said I was annoyed at things in dbc17 annoyed they weren't fixed and wouldn't buy the game as it was then. They got and will always have a lot of credit in my book for that cuz I'd have had no issue if they'd told me to sling my hook at that point.

The game that was released was one i would happily have paid for. Unfortunately the post release "support" for the game led me to a point where - in concert with some frustrations that have existed in the beta - I don't have optimism that there is appetite or systems in BA to bring ashes up to potential and I didn' want to be part of the beta process any more.

I haven't paid for ashes cricket but I would happily do so (and offered to do so when leaving the beta) as I feel I got money's worth.

I am certain there will be at least one more patch, and though I am not optimistic about its scope or likelihood of resolving major issues I would love to be proven wrong - all I want is a good cricket game!

I have no problem with them prioritising tennis. A commercial company must make it' choices based on the health of the company and people rely on that for their living.

But it doesn't mean I have to like that cricket had next to no support post release.

Honestly I think as a community, we have given BA a very fair crack and everyone wants them to succeed. We want ever improving cricket games. But I think we have to exercise a little more cynicism in future - we must insist on proper and accurate stats, varying and visible and deteriorating pitches, proper explanation and implementation of attributes and more than 2 days of support. And we should treat with scepticism future BA releases until they have proven that those minimum requirements can be met.

 

[blockerdave]

The words, I worry people will kick off if the game ships with this, definitely left my mouth on more than one occasion.

I just come back to the same old.. I have no idea what goes on behind scenes so I’ll never understand.

What I will say though, is with the Ashes tag this game in my opinion was definitely aimed at the more casual fan base.

I stressed and made the point that in my opinion you have to LOVE cricket to put hours into a cricket game.

The casuals will slog around for an hour or so then shelve the game. For me making a cricket game catering to the casual may increase sales. But you alienate the hardcore and they are the ones that will carry on playing the game

I can verify 100% everything wealey has said.

 

[silentuk]

Fairly certain not timing related as I get very early, early, late, very late all the time and either miss the ball or just loses pace/direction

I sometimes think I must be playing a different game to everyone else as I get loads of edges.

I'll admit I'm not great at batting and haven't poured a 1000 hours into the game so that my timing is perfect. For me though it seems to relate to the foot placement slider. If I have it around 70 I edge so often it's ridiculous, down around 50 and hardly any. Have settled on 62 and that seems to work for me. Driving outside off or playing across the line to leg has some risk and I'll get plenty of edges. Mistimed back defence shots also edge sometimes and I have had a couple from forward defence shots too. Plenty of edges from cuts and pulls too. My favourite thing in the game is the edge that flies down to third man for 4.

I think pitch type is a factor too. I get most edges from seaming balls not swing or cutters so grassy gets the most and crumbly the least. A few from spin too. I have timing on 55 and the other two on 75 and this is just on pro which I feel brings mentalities into the game although that might be in my head.

At the end of the day though maybe it's just the case that if you are really good at the game you won't get edges. If you aren't you will. In fact rather than edges, what I feel is missing from the game is hitting the ball in the air from a miss-timed normal shot. At worst it carries about 6 yards and 2 feet off the ground before landing. Miss-timed drives should sometimes loop up to mid-off but they never do and caught and bowled wickets are always miracle catches or bat-pads, never just chipped back by being to early on the shot. Cuts sometimes fly to gully but pulls never carry to square leg.

As for the target run rate thing I really hope it won't end up being a case of be careful what you wish for. At the moment we get relatively realistic run rates for first class matches. Now I'll admit that it does grate that you can predict the aggressive shot with the last ball of every third over. However, I'd hate to see a situation where you couldn't use aggressive fields because the AI just mashed the ball through the gaps every ball ending up with unrealistically high run rates, or conversely where a ring field would lead to a days cricket being 100 runs in 90 overs. Maybe the way it's been implemented isn't great but it does have its point.

 

[Mr Snrub]

the way Big Ant left DBC 17 incomplete and the way they handled Ashes Cricket is a slap on the face to the folks who backed them since the beginning. Ashes Cricket was shipped with the same bugs DBC 17 so it definitely reeked of cash-grab. And all that talk of "we back our product" was just that - talk.

I could be completely wrong, but it feels like there's a sense that once the next patch drop (if it fixes a lot of issues), that we'll all forget this experience, the time we're in at present, and that no-one will look back at all this. I will, because I remember the many, many months it took the magical "Patch 3" to drop for consoles for DBC'14.

This is nothing new, it's becoming the status quo, with the exception of AO Tennis (which could have global sales potential, so they're playing fix-it-up-as-we-go with the Australasian market before worldwide release). Releasing "technically not broken, but badly disabled" games and then try and sort it out later is the way it looks to me.

Patches were at one stage looked to in part as a hope for some post-release bonus or "enhancement". What a laugh. Now everyone has given up on that and just wants a game, that for this day and age, the rules and the conditions, plays properly.

There are definitely Cricket games, that for the technology available, for the era they were released that play much better all round as an experience stretching back to the 16-bit era. Bear in mind, not comparing them as they are today, but in their time.

PS: I'm also NOT ANTI-Big Ant myself. I don't care who the developer is, if it's not good or aspects are not good, I'll say the same. There have been poor-terrible rugby games from Sidhe and Big Ben. I've called that as I see it and I've praised Big Ant for good work in the past, many, many times.

 

[Nathaus]

What I will say though, is with the Ashes tag this game in my opinion was definitely aimed at the more casual fan base.

I stressed and made the point that in my opinion you have to LOVE cricket to put hours into a cricket game.

The casuals will slog around for an hour or so then shelve the game. For me making a cricket game catering to the casual may increase sales. But you alienate the hardcore and they are the ones that will carry on playing the game

While there is nothing wrong with wanting mass-market appeal (and it surely benefits the franchise as a whole), it is still possible to have mass-market appeal and an element of simulation in there. They tried to do this with the control scheme and then completely fluffed the naming and confused everyone. The player likenesses are decent enough, and the best seen in a cricket game. Casual fans would appreciate the gloss more than the hardcore and it's a lot of the gloss that's missing such as decent catch animations, highlight reels, different pitch conditions.

They have the sliders, so why not embed some "presets" such as an Arcade mode, and a Simulation mode? There are so many ways they could appeal to both markets and keep both happy while delivering a superior game with just a little bit more spit and polish.

 

[jabbathehut]

We were specifically told that the reason why the pc version was so expensive was because they didn't have any other moneterising options and because they would be continually working on patches to improve the game therefore it is not fair enough that they are working on ao tennis .The tennis game has nothing to do with us ashes cricket buyers.

 

[Dean johnes]

It still has not reached the Shores of South Africa in Physical Copy guise , hence only option for us is Digital Download...

Nay be they are waiting for the gobal launch

 

[BaseballJunkie]

Couldn't agree more. There are some sports which are easy to pick up and play or most folks already have a basic understanding, e.g. footie/soccer, golf, tennis, basketball. And then there are a few sports which only the true fan of the sport will play and you can't expect someone without understanding of the sport to play, and cricket falls firmly in this category. In all my life I've never seen one person who didn't grow up following cricket who became a cricket fan. I've had numerous discussions around sports with friends and colleagues, have explained similarities between baseball and cricket, and generally tried to get folks to give it a shot and so far nobody warmed up to the sport.

The sport is just too complex to be followed by casuals or by folks who don't have an idea about it. In fact folks have even found NFL easier to follow instead of cricket and TBH you can't do much about it. It is what it is and I doubt Big Ant can change the image much but the way Big Ant left DBC 17 incomplete and the way they handled Ashes Cricket is a slap on the face to the folks who backed them since the beginning. Ashes Cricket was shipped with the same bugs DBC 17 so it definitely reeked of cash-grab. And all that talk of "we back our product" was just that - talk.

It seems to me, that in addition to difficulty levels and sliders, maybe being able to select between “Casual” mode and “Simulation” mode would be the solution. Take the training wheels off for the Simulation mode and let the die-hard cricket fan adjust the game to play exactly the way they want it. And, please, for the love of everything Holy, explain to the customer exactly what adjusting each setting actually does. I found something like that for AFL Evolution, and it made all the difference.

 

[cricket_online]

It seems to me, that in addition to difficulty levels and sliders, maybe being able to select between “Casual” mode and “Simulation” mode would be the solution. Take the training wheels off for the Simulation mode and let the die-hard cricket fan adjust the game to play exactly the way they want it. And, please, for the love of everything Holy, explain to the customer exactly what adjusting each setting actually does. I found something like that for AFL Evolution, and it made all the difference.

The sliders were supposed to solve the problem but apparently they don't do much. Adding to the confusion is that the AI difficulties ("Pro", "Veteran", "Legend" etc.) don't serve much purpose as well since the AI acts the same way across all the difficulty levels. To me a lot of slider settings and difficulty levels don't do much other than giving users an illusion of the game having plenty of options.

 

[BaseballJunkie]

While there is nothing wrong with wanting mass-market appeal (and it surely benefits the franchise as a whole), it is still possible to have mass-market appeal and an element of simulation in there. They tried to do this with the control scheme and then completely fluffed the naming and confused everyone. The player likenesses are decent enough, and the best seen in a cricket game. Casual fans would appreciate the gloss more than the hardcore and it's a lot of the gloss that's missing such as decent catch animations, highlight reels, different pitch conditions.

They have the sliders, so why not embed some "presets" such as an Arcade mode, and a Simulation mode? There are so many ways they could appeal to both markets and keep both happy while delivering a superior game with just a little bit more spit and polish.

Sorry, didn’t mean to mostly repeat what you said...my page hadn’t refreshed yet.

 

[Dean johnes]

Meaning past patch 'fixes' ergo past patch notes...

Future patches are a thing of secrecy and I have never seen 'pre' patch notes... Their is a wish list but do we hear of current work... ?

Hope you've had a good valentines day x

Tons of gold is there in the next patch so they keeping in secret they are scared ea sports may rob it from them.

 

[gideon_swrd]

Truth is I'm certainly not anti BA.

The best 3 cricket games I've played are dbc14, dbc17 and ashes cricket I think the gameplay has broadly improved in each iteration but sadly none has delivered the truly balanced game.

At the beginning of the beta for ashes I was clear to BA I didn't intend to buy the game unless there was an obvious step forward from dbc17 and I repeated that for the first several builds. I was clear I didn't count licenses, face scans and animations as being in themselves enough. They kept me in the process and listened to my points even when I said I was annoyed at things in dbc17 annoyed they weren't fixed and wouldn't buy the game as it was then. They got and will always have a lot of credit in my book for that cuz I'd have had no issue if they'd told me to sling my hook at that point.

The game that was released was one i would happily have paid for. Unfortunately the post release "support" for the game led me to a point where - in concert with some frustrations that have existed in the beta - I don't have optimism that there is appetite or systems in BA to bring ashes up to potential and I didn' want to be part of the beta process any more.

I haven't paid for ashes cricket but I would happily do so (and offered to do so when leaving the beta) as I feel I got money's worth.

I am certain there will be at least one more patch, and though I am not optimistic about its scope or likelihood of resolving major issues I would love to be proven wrong - all I want is a good cricket game!

I have no problem with them prioritising tennis. A commercial company must make it' choices based on the health of the company and people rely on that for their living.

But it doesn't mean I have to like that cricket had next to no support post release.

Honestly I think as a community, we have given BA a very fair crack and everyone wants them to succeed. We want ever improving cricket games. But I think we have to exercise a little more cynicism in future - we must insist on proper and accurate stats, varying and visible and deteriorating pitches, proper explanation and implementation of attributes and more than 2 days of support. And we should treat with scepticism future BA releases until they have proven that those minimum requirements can be met.

Thanks @blockerdave for the clarification and I pretty much agree with your final assessment.

Regarding my opinion of a few fixes away from a 8/10, let me elaborate. First, it's not clear what people mean by casual vs hardcore. I certainly want a challenge and don't want to smash every second ball for 6. But like @silentuk said above, I often wonder if we are playing the same game. Setting the sliders to 100 for ball quality and shot quality (don't recall the exact setting names right now) and setting timing and foot-placement in the 70s created a setup for me where I found batting quite challenging and wasn't able to hit boundaries so easily. Moreover, raising the judgement of the opposing batsman and bowlers caused them to play better. So in the end, I often find myself playing competitive matches that are not slog fests. Where I admit I'm no longer a hardcore gamer is the amount of time I spend on the game - I play it for a couple of hours at a time max. I simply don't have the time to play a 5-6 hour test marathon. May be that makes me a casual gamer but that is a weird classification (again, I want a realistic cricket game and not some arcadey crap)

Anyway, coming back to the issues that truly impact gameplay (so ignoring silly stuff like better animations etc) I feel there are a handful of things that people keep bringing up (for me, things I would love fixed are AI field placements and bowling changes). More importantly, these don't seem particularly hard to fix. So my sense was that adding these things should make the game even more competitive, warranting a high score. Now, why BA hasn't added these things is the bigger question and I get what the fuss is all about, but that's a totally different point than "the game is currently unplayable or unfixable"

TBC, if they fixed the few gameplay issues people have raised, would it be a perfect simulation - hell no. The AI is overall still mediocre etc (I happen to know a little about AI: https://www.planetcricket.org/forums/threads/designing-an-ai-engine-for-cricket.104349/). But as the saying goes in statistics - all models are wrong, some are useful

 

[Plotinus]

Well I'm delighted to hear that things are underway on the patch. I hope it's not rushed just to get something out the door as something that fixes just a couple of things (and maybe breaks others) is probably not going to be met with much enthusiasm. I've reverted back to playing Career mode because that is slightly less exposed to some of problems playing full games...but even Career mode has many glitches and oddities. Still, I have had some good games and can't say that overall it hasn't been an enjoyable experience.
Top of my list to fix, however, are:

• Catches being given off the pad (see this a lot)
• No ability for caught and bowled when bowling
• Collision detection generally but certainly the ball going through the bat and players going through both other players and umpires needs fixing...the only solid collision detection seems to be the non-striker when trying to get a straight drive through...he blocks the lot.
• On that topic, getting the non-striker to dodge balls being played at him...if the umpires can move to avoid the ball, he should too.
• A return of BARS to at least DBC14 levels...but hopefully better.
• Bowling camera following the ball after it is struck (or cut to a camera that shows the ball) so that everything doesn't happen off-screen. Trying to do that slo-mo catching/stopping thing is really hard when player, ball and LS-icon-thing are all off screen.
• Edges that go to positions other than keeper, 2nd slip and gully...it makes the rest of the slip cordon redundant...at least I haven't seen edges going elsewhere.
• Proper out-fielding with dives to stop fours and attempt catches...but not have every catch stick...only my wicketkeeper ever spills anything.

Of course there are many other things that people have already mentioned (not least of which is the fixed run rate thing). I've no idea what a patched version of Ashes will play like...I hope it will be great for everyone but I'm sure it won't be perfect. I think BA would help themselves by being more communicative...a community is generally a lot more forgiving of imperfection if they feel that there is some engagement with the developer. The fact that BA abandoned their Steam forum within a few days (if that) of release is not good PR or likely to engender a sympathetic response to any flaws in the next patch...particularly off the back of their PC pricing statements.

I am still grateful for BA doing so much for cricket gaming...I have enjoyed all three releases...I just feel that Ashes could have arrived in better shape than it did. I doubt there is much commercial gain for BA to invest much more in something that is marketed at an event that is now in the past (and was not much of a contest anyway). We can but wait and see.

 

[cricket_online]

Thanks @blockerdave for the clarification and I pretty much agree with your final assessment.

Regarding my opinion of a few fixes away from a 8/10, let me elaborate. First, it's not clear what people mean by casual vs hardcore. I certainly want a challenge and don't want to smash every second ball for 6. But like @silentuk said above, I often wonder if we are playing the same game. Setting the sliders to 100 for ball quality and shot quality (don't recall the exact setting names right now) and setting timing and foot-placement in the 70s created a setup for me where I found batting quite challenging and wasn't able to hit boundaries so easily. Moreover, raising the judgement of the opposing batsman and bowlers caused them to play better. So in the end, I often find myself playing competitive matches that are not slog fests. Where I admit I'm no longer a hardcore gamer is the amount of time I spend on the game - I play it for a couple of hours at a time max. I simply don't have the time to play a 5-6 hour test marathon. May be that makes me a casual gamer but that is a weird classification (again, I want a realistic cricket game and not some arcadey crap)

Anyway, coming back to the issues that truly impact gameplay (so ignoring silly stuff like better animations etc) I feel there are a handful of things that people keep bringing up (for me, things I would love fixed are AI field placements and bowling changes). More importantly, these don't seem particularly hard to fix. So my sense was that adding these things should make the game even more competitive, warranting a high score. Now, why BA hasn't added these things is the bigger question and I get what the fuss is all about, but that's a totally different point than "the game is currently unplayable or unfixable"

TBC, if they fixed the few gameplay issues people have raised, would it be a perfect simulation - hell no. The AI is overall still mediocre etc (I happen to know a little about AI: https://www.planetcricket.org/forums/threads/designing-an-ai-engine-for-cricket.104349/). But as the saying goes in statistics - all models are wrong, some are useful

I submit the following video for your reference regarding the batting being easy. Do watch the slider settings at 0:15 mark to see that I had put most of the batting sliders to 100...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=3iyvTJN3P9o

And here's the thread where you can see more discussion around the same...
https://www.planetcricket.org/forum...asy-on-hard-hardest-difficulty-levels.109590/

Batting has been arcadey for me after spending just a few hours on the game irrespective of sliders. The edges are rare and the only way to pose a challenge artificially seems to be to reduce the "Ball Marker Display Time". But even then I end up losing a wkt is by being LBW or bowled due to reaction time being too low. When you add this arcadey batting with broken stats (including career mode), poor AI, poorer AI fields, online bugs etc. I fail to see too many positives. I wish I could see something positive about "face scans" and "motion capture" but I don't when the core gameplay, especially batting, is so limited.