Ashes Cricket General Discussion

[Spoobir]

I bat with my eyes closed. You're all filthy casuals.

 

[Gamer Pradosh]

I play everything default, legend hard (i don't go to hardest because of marker timing making me premeditate too much). i play with teams that i think are skilled realistically to the real-life player (i.e. there is variation according to ability, no arbitrary judgment or strength limits). i use the classic controls. i get (some) edges.

but i still agree batting is too easy - there doesn't seem the need to play yourself in (i pretty much only play tests/first class), and once confidence is green you can go nuclear at will. there seems no difference at all batting with a low rated lower order batsman and a high-rated top order batsman.

BA have had this highlighted throughout last summer, @WealeyH in particular was going nuts about it because he doesn't get edges. @grkrama highlighted a particular issue about the top of the bat having too much power and sixes coming high off the bat. at no point in the process have they shown any interest in addressing that. if they had it would have been fixed before release.

This is one of the prime issues IMO both when AI and human bat...Top of bat and edges just fly off the bat than ball hit right off the middle of the bat...To solve this remove the response of AI going front foot to short off good length deliveries, and when pitch is hard even to good length to a level with that extra bounce...The shot animation variations arent used optimally..

 

[Chief]

weird. i've seen it in every supermarket and the local game and i live in a provincial shithole

Oh! Well I stand corrected. I looked in loads of games shops and supermarkets in London and the Midlands and didn't see it anywhere! Although to be fair the shelf space for actual NEW games is really limited everywhere these days: mostly pre-owned.

 

[blockerdave]

Oh! Well I stand corrected. I looked in loads of games shops and supermarkets in London and the Midlands and didn't see it anywhere! Although to be fair the shelf space for actual NEW games is really limited everywhere these days: mostly pre-owned.

that is weird. in fact as of last week it was definitely still in my local GAME (albeit down to 19.99) and i think it was in sainsbury last time i looked.

i think the series being in aus, on bt & england stuffed all made it fairly invisible in the UK. there were TV ads, but who was watching BT sport at 3am when they were playing? not the casual non-cricket fan gamer that the game was aimed at

 

[dhump]

I play everything default, legend hard (i don't go to hardest because of marker timing making me premeditate too much). i play with teams that i think are skilled realistically to the real-life player (i.e. there is variation according to ability, no arbitrary judgment or strength limits). i use the classic controls. i get (some) edges.

but i still agree batting is too easy - there doesn't seem the need to play yourself in (i pretty much only play tests/first class), and once confidence is green you can go nuclear at will. there seems no difference at all batting with a low rated lower order batsman and a high-rated top order batsman.

BA have had this highlighted throughout last summer, @WealeyH in particular was going nuts about it because he doesn't get edges. @grkrama highlighted a particular issue about the top of the bat having too much power and sixes coming high off the bat. at no point in the process have they shown any interest in addressing that. if they had it would have been fixed before release.

Absolutely.

I supported BA's effort back at DBC14 but was seriously disappointed with the shelf life of the game.

I am playing ashes 17 (sometimes now/already selected for national teams avg around 57 in Test) and I locked my self to career player and I play FC and Test mostly.

- Batting at any default level is just too easy as long as ball marker is set to somewhere around 23.
- There is really no difference I feel when I come to bat or I am fully settled batting on 100 plus runs.
- I hold myself otherwise I can smash every over for at-least 2 sixes without getting out.
- I never ever got a caught-behind or an edge and I played more than 50 matches already.
- There is just one difference in timing if you have to play apart from sweep shot, rest of the game block or smack it is same difficulty. There is no reward if you stop a ball, in fact if you block the ball sometimes it plays on the wrong line and you get bowled I stoped blocking completely already.
- Fielders never ever drop a catch just out of no where sometimes silly point or keeper grab a bat pad or smashed drive jumping in front of you.
- There is no difference with pitch condition, ball condition, bowler quality etc.


I think BA could have made it into a very good game but they failed to do so in last 4 years and just improved graphics and animations (slightly).

Overall I am very very disappointed.

 

[jabbathehut]

Ha in dbc 17 I was more of a leg side player because of the fear of edging to slip but in ashes I worry no more

 

[Plotinus]

To be honest, yes it is too much. The game experience should scale with preset options & difficulties. Sure, add a 'Custom' option that lets you tailor individual sliders to suit, but the sliders shouldn't overlay on top of the existing difficulty levels as some sort of multiplier, they should dictate the difficulty level.

Racing games are a pretty good parallel - some people like to race casually, some want a more hardcore sim experience. Look at F1 2017 - Easy sets AI to easy, you can have auto gears, driving line, braking assist, etc. You can then also go customer and leave AI as is, but disable auto gears, braking, etc to make it more challenging. You don't have a slider to adjust the default level of grip, or the lifetime of the tires, or the acceleration of gravity - these are constants of physics and should remain consistent in cricket as well! Don't give me a slider for pitch friction - this should be dictated by the type of pitch! Don't give me a slider for ball speed, increase ball speed with difficulty... Similarly with shot power, don't give me a slider - someone can either hit the ball hard or not and should be dictated by player attributes!

It just seems lazy to add sliders and say - go sort the difficulty out yourself, by the way we won't tell you what half the sliders do (because we don't know ourselves) so go and work it out on your own.

I hate comparing cricket games to FIFA, but in FIFA, to get a decent game, you don't need to edit all the players to have 1 skill vs 100 skill on opposing team. In FIFA you don't need to pick the worst team to play against the best team on Legend difficulty to have a good game. It should be handled in the design and not up to the user to customise the game to the nth degree.

Yes, I agree with this. Overall I get the feeling that there has been a heavy emphasis on technical implementation without the requisite attention to game design. I've said it before but I think a lot of the problems people are having with this game stem from insufficient rigour in design. The impact of this is that there are insufficient guide-rails on what actually gets implemented, complexity escalates and test coverage gets skewed towards whether the code is stable rather than whether the user experience is good (I've no idea how the beta testing works but I would be really interested to know what test cases are developed for it and what level of test automation is happening before beta). Better design would have reduced the level of complexity in the code, made it more testable, reduced support costs and increased the level of comprehensibility (let alone enjoyment) for the player. Retro-fitting design principles is very hard to do...but maybe that's where the BA need to invest for the next iteration.

 

[cricket_online]

My concern here is that while some are finding batting very easy, there is also a subset of players who are fine with the current level of difficulty. What if the batting difficulty is increased and the players who were fine with the current version begin to find it impossible to bat against the AI? It would be interesting to see how BA would strike the right balance between knowing what is easy and what isn't.

Indeed a problem, but from what I read here from Pro to Legend seems to be the problem, Veteren and Legend should be made a little more difficult to bat, Pro the same or what currently is Veteren/Legend...but yes you cant please everyone all of the time!

And that's why you have difficulty levels in a video game. I mean what's the point of "Rookie", "Amateur", "Pro", "Veteran" and "Legend" or "Easy", "Hard", "Very Hard" etc. if you can't manage difficulty levels to cater to casual and veteran folks? Why bother with difficulty settings at all if you can't figure it out?

 

[Chief]

i think the series being in aus, on bt & england stuffed all made it fairly invisible in the UK. there were TV ads, but who was watching BT sport at 3am when they were playing? not the casual non-cricket fan gamer that the game was aimed at

Yeah: the Aus series are a very tough sell over here even to the hardcore.

I didn't realise there were TV ads? Blimey. That's the first in a long time.

 

[blockerdave]

Yeah: the Aus series are a very tough sell over here even to the hardcore.

I didn't realise there were TV ads? Blimey. That's the first in a long time.

yeah there were quite a few with blowers doing the voice over. i think i even saw a few that weren't just on during the tests themselves, but i saw at other times/channels.

 

[ndschan]

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.

Yeah I remember playing DBC 14 on Legend, the drift that the spinners got was at times unplayable. There is a very little distinction in Ashes. At times I've experienced on Legend the bowlers bowl a much tighter line with not many freebies. I am a fan of the longest format, so Ashes with sliders bumped up, and not using L2 (I restrict myself to 1 big hit per over after 7 wickets are down) gives good competitive matches. (PS: I bat for both teams, have found bowling not as immersive as batting, I end up looking at the bottom right of the screen rather than focussing on the game, becomes too mechanical)

 

[wasteyouryouth]

I find batting to be the only part of the game where it's actually engaging on a gameplay level. There are problems. There's no sense the AI is trying to do anything to get you out. Fields change at random, deliveries are rubbish and/or inconsistent with real life. I probably lose so many wickets to spinners because they're always bowling wrong-runs, but once you adapt to that you can work out that anything outside off stump (for an off spinner) is unlikely to cause you any problems and can be left if necessary.

AI bowling doesn't even become challenging until they are in green confidence levels. Not sure what difference there is, maybe it's accuracy or pace. The problem is though, if they don't get an early wicket they don't get fully confident until the end of a spell or the second spell. ODI's are always tougher batting towards the end - partly because of a spread field but partly because the AI bowling doesn't seem to bowl complete rubbish.

The modifiers - in the sense of the controller (aggressive, lofted, defensive etc) - feel redundant. You can easily play normal shots without worrying you might score too few runs. Maybe in T20 you need to go a bit more aerial but I've not played as much T20 in Ashes.

Like @blockerdave says there feels like no difference between top batsman and lower rated batsman. Using the comparison to Fifa (or in my case PES) that @Nathaus used, you notice a difference in execution when playing with Messi or just some average player. Whether it's ball control, passing ability or shooting. It adds some level of immersion because you can learn which players are good at certain things and adapt how to play to suit certain player or team. There just isn't that in Ashes. Maybe it's because attributes seem completely meaningless so that then you can play the same with everyone, but there's no emphasis on you to bat (or bowl) according to a players strengths or weaknesses because they don't seem to have any. Yes, you can choose to bat like Alastair Cook or Ben Stokes but there's no actual need to or benefit from doing so. It's this area where I think BA need to decide do they want a pick up and play game that is accessible but ultimately flat. Or do they want something that allows for greater immersion for people who want it. I don't feel it would spoil the immersion of the game if when we have a batsman came in we can bring up a pop up box of all their abilities (not that they matter in this game) so that we can then see - right I'm going to benefit from playing these shots or I want to avoid these shots. I don't see why you can't have both, through difficulty levels, with the greater necessity to play to strengths coming the higher difficult you go up.

The more I've played of this game the more I feel like batting in general has too many flaws that can't be fixed with simple patching. Attributes are an issue. The multiple difficulty levels and sliders - in my opinion - make providing consistent gameplay far too difficult. I don't know how the beta team can effectively test the multiple variations that are available - even if they never touch the sliders. It should be a case of picking Rookie, Amateur, Pro, Veteran, Legend and that gives you a difficulty level. Then you can add or remove markers (which I also think are a problem) if you want a little more difficulty.

 

[Chief]

yeah there were quite a few with blowers doing the voice over. i think i even saw a few that weren't just on during the tests themselves, but i saw at other times/channels.

With Blowers as well? Good Lord. I didn't see any of those! Though to be fair I was away a lot and didn't see much of the series at all.

The budget for marketing must have been pretty big. I wonder if ECB/CA chipped in for all that.

 

[Nathaus]

I find batting to be the only part of the game where it's actually engaging on a gameplay level. There are problems. There's no sense the AI is trying to do anything to get you out. Fields change at random, deliveries are rubbish and/or inconsistent with real life. I probably lose so many wickets to spinners because they're always bowling wrong-runs, but once you adapt to that you can work out that anything outside off stump (for an off spinner) is unlikely to cause you any problems and can be left if necessary.

AI bowling doesn't even become challenging until they are in green confidence levels. Not sure what difference there is, maybe it's accuracy or pace. The problem is though, if they don't get an early wicket they don't get fully confident until the end of a spell or the second spell. ODI's are always tougher batting towards the end - partly because of a spread field but partly because the AI bowling doesn't seem to bowl complete rubbish.

The modifiers - in the sense of the controller (aggressive, lofted, defensive etc) - feel redundant. You can easily play normal shots without worrying you might score too few runs. Maybe in T20 you need to go a bit more aerial but I've not played as much T20 in Ashes.

Like @blockerdave says there feels like no difference between top batsman and lower rated batsman. Using the comparison to Fifa (or in my case PES) that @Nathaus used, you notice a difference in execution when playing with Messi or just some average player. Whether it's ball control, passing ability or shooting. It adds some level of immersion because you can learn which players are good at certain things and adapt how to play to suit certain player or team. There just isn't that in Ashes. Maybe it's because attributes seem completely meaningless so that then you can play the same with everyone, but there's no emphasis on you to bat (or bowl) according to a players strengths or weaknesses because they don't seem to have any. Yes, you can choose to bat like Alastair Cook or Ben Stokes but there's no actual need to or benefit from doing so. It's this area where I think BA need to decide do they want a pick up and play game that is accessible but ultimately flat. Or do they want something that allows for greater immersion for people who want it. I don't feel it would spoil the immersion of the game if when we have a batsman came in we can bring up a pop up box of all their abilities (not that they matter in this game) so that we can then see - right I'm going to benefit from playing these shots or I want to avoid these shots. I don't see why you can't have both, through difficulty levels, with the greater necessity to play to strengths coming the higher difficult you go up.

The more I've played of this game the more I feel like batting in general has too many flaws that can't be fixed with simple patching. Attributes are an issue. The multiple difficulty levels and sliders - in my opinion - make providing consistent gameplay far too difficult. I don't know how the beta team can effectively test the multiple variations that are available - even if they never touch the sliders. It should be a case of picking Rookie, Amateur, Pro, Veteran, Legend and that gives you a difficulty level. Then you can add or remove markers (which I also think are a problem) if you want a little more difficulty.

Haha thanks for the mention but I do hate that comparison! Football is quite an easy game to simulate. Cricket is not. But yea I totally agree. Players with low drive ability should edge drives more often - it should discourage you from driving. There is the option to view opposition batsman strengths and weaknesses, and I 'feel' it does restrict their scoring and ultimately lead to wickets if you bowl to their weaknesses, but as a human batting, I feel I can play any shot to any ball with little to no consequences.

 

[Wealey]

My issue is simple:

BA have given us the best cricket games.

But for a third iteration the progress is so minimal it’s a bit ridiculous.

When things aren’t fixed from the first game and carried to the third that’s where frustration grows.

Also when thing like DRS have got worse over the 3 games same applies.