Slow clap for
@WealeyH
Great post mate. That x10000
Some people on here feel like BA owe them something. And in essence they truly do not. You don't like the game, deal with it. You don't like the company don't buy their product.
Cricket games for the last 10 and even more years have been shit at best. Moddable by the community but as a stand-alone shit I tell you. If anyone here disagrees with that, fly a kite because I do not care.
Everyone keeps saying its not as good as BL99. Yeah that was a great game, we all agree. But it's been twenty years ffs get over it. It ain't never coming back.
BA have made games worth playing. Games we all wanted to play. Are they unplayable, hell no. So seriously, get off your high horse and play the tweaking game or start knitting or drawing or whatever tickles your little mind.
This is just about the antithesis of everything that such communities should stand for. The original Don Bradman game had it's success in three areas:
1. Community Engagement
2. A Solid Core of a game
3. Clear Support
That's what had made it different to say many games that game before it. That's why it wasn't filler that quickly found it's way to storage or the resale market like Ashes 2009 or International Cricket 2010 for many. With all that built however you surely have to see how far things have been going backwards since. It's not about being toxic, the passion comes out of the disappointment that has come with it all. Toxicity has from a small subset, but that exists in all communities including the original release of the game.
What we've seen from that middle group of players though, those so happy with the original game, isn't toxicity in that sense. Toxicity around those discussions has one source, Big Ant themselves; it started with DBC14 no less. They quickly started to engage more directly with pirates, and many paying and loyal customers were caught in their whack a mole against pirates. This was one of the early cases of toxicity developing; that one was on Big Ant though, they changed the deal after the transaction. At the very least though they still engaged, though with zero respect for those don't agree with them; that's just part of how Ross engages with people online though.
With DBC 17 however is where so much changed so quickly. Previous issues were around how they dealt with piracy, and how loyal paying customers were caught up. With DBC 17 they promised so much, but the game felt like a step back to so many. I was one who did enjoy it though and got a lot out of it. At the time though that transformation from Big Ant was already apparent, they no longer engaged with the community as a whole, but rather come on and sniped at people criticising the game, then talked nearly solely with a select group they chose. It's understandable why for many this was seen as them basically playing favourites with those that didn't disagree with them, particularly given some past interactions. They did at the very least still patch the game and got a solid experience out of it.
For Ashes cricket they again had some good points, and some bad points, but now they basically only come on here to market or snipe. That's not a good look. They then abandoned the game and went and released another game that had issues. Them coming back to Ashes cricket now is great and all, but they've done so with no engagement of the community at large, and making Ashes cricket look like some meaningless side project for them.
I don't think it's asking much for Big Ant to engage with the community again, particularly when little else is happening for most players. There are clearly pretty serious issues in Ashes Cricket, and for a licenced game to have such well after the series in question has ended really isn't good enough. It would be okay if there was more communication, but even simple things like the pitch actually having wear and tear, base level things aren't done with no explanation. I'd dare say this at this point just counts as a missing feature. Just coming on and saying: "Well yeah, we dun goofed, then ran off to sell another game because; well contracts..." Then stick around and discuss it somewhat, accept the mistakes. That would be enough for me. At this point though it's pretty clear that customers don't matter to them though, doubt they ever did. I'm sure the lack of positivity around their game is being blamed on "trolls and pirates" internally though.
