Cricket 19 General Discussion

[MattW]

But why be defensive.. just take it for what it is. They work hard. They get some shit wrong and they get some bang on.

I unfortunately don't have the time at the moment to really follow up in detail on anything posted, other than noting that I do try and read along with it all and note down things to investigate/good ideas, but just to quickly contribute my perspective on this...

The main problem for me is when trying to filter for how significant an issue is - if someone's posts on the game are generally negative, I'd naturally place less weight on things they call out as bad, as you just judge their standards differently. The better you have an idea for the things people think are right or close to it, the better I can contextualise their feedback on problems.

There's just an absolutely massive gulf between different people's perception of the game, and their wants - especially venturing to the feedback from outside the site or directly sent to us. You see it in that next edition thread a lot, where you'll get a detailed post about some game mechanic, followed by a comment about some visual presentation item. None of that is inherently the "right" feedback - in one game there's the goal to try and make both sets of audiences happy - those who want a detailed cricket simulator, and one for perfecting an arcade experience. There's rarely things that are mutually exclusive, however it's the requests/priorities of the extremes of either end that are most likely to be disappointed in things that get cut/deferred in the development process, which unfortunately often overlaps with some of the people who play the game the most.

I'm not sure what the takeaway I'm trying to give people here is - other than to again say, I continue to be very interested in people's ideas and I do hear you all on a lot of the complaints. There's often a huge overlap between complaints in posts here, and things I'd most want improved or features I'd want to do, however I'm sure most of you can appreciate I'm not going to jump on here and say everything I hate about the game, but don't mistake the lack of such a post as thinking that you're talking to a wall.

As an aside - re that PC patch - as noted in the Online threads - the only change in the most recent Steam only patch was to fix an exploit people were reportedly using to play online matches on an easier difficulty. The exploit wasn't possible on console, hence no associated console patch.

 

[GuyIncognito]

Somewhat unrelated to recent discussions but I thought this was amazing, I just got two caught and bowled wickets - in a row (in career mode.) Couldn't believe it lol.

 

[GuyIncognito]

I unfortunately don't have the time at the moment to really follow up in detail on anything posted, other than noting that I do try and read along with it all and note down things to investigate/good ideas, but just to quickly contribute my perspective on this...

The main problem for me is when trying to filter for how significant an issue is - if someone's posts on the game are generally negative, I'd naturally place less weight on things they call out as bad, as you just judge their standards differently. The better you have an idea for the things people think are right or close to it, the better I can contextualise their feedback on problems.

There's just an absolutely massive gulf between different people's perception of the game, and their wants - especially venturing to the feedback from outside the site or directly sent to us. You see it in that next edition thread a lot, where you'll get a detailed post about some game mechanic, followed by a comment about some visual presentation item. None of that is inherently the "right" feedback - in one game there's the goal to try and make both sets of audiences happy - those who want a detailed cricket simulator, and one for perfecting an arcade experience. There's rarely things that are mutually exclusive, however it's the requests/priorities of the extremes of either end that are most likely to be disappointed in things that get cut/deferred in the development process, which unfortunately often overlaps with some of the people who play the game the most.

I'm not sure what the takeaway I'm trying to give people here is - other than to again say, I continue to be very interested in people's ideas and I do hear you all on a lot of the complaints. There's often a huge overlap between complaints in posts here, and things I'd most want improved or features I'd want to do, however I'm sure most of you can appreciate I'm not going to jump on here and say everything I hate about the game, but don't mistake the lack of such a post as thinking that you're talking to a wall.

As an aside - re that PC patch - as noted in the Online threads - the only change in the most recent Steam only patch was to fix an exploit people were reportedly using to play online matches on an easier difficulty. The exploit wasn't possible on console, hence no associated console patch.

I'm somewhat curious actually, as to how you folks decide on leaning towards simulation or arcade based gameplay? Because there's always that risk of trying to please everybody and end up pleasing no-one. Personally I prefer sim, that's just my preference.

 

[Rex0]

Don't know anything about that,but there's definitely not been another patch on console.

Hmmm... current version is 1300 right? Last notes they shared were for version 1281 if I'm not wrong, and that was on 6th March.

 

[Dutch]

Hmmm... current version is 1300 right? Last notes they shared were for version 1281 if I'm not wrong, and that was on 6th March.

Read the post above from MattW

 

[Rex0]

Read the post above from MattW

Yeah I was just writing about it. Thanks @MattW !

 

[MattW]

I'm somewhat curious actually, as to how you folks decide on leaning towards simulation or arcade based gameplay? Because there's always that risk of trying to please everybody and end up pleasing no-one. Personally I prefer sim, that's just my preference.

In general the last few games have been trying to shift what was fairly heavily biased towards simulation game in DBC14, to being more approachable to a wider audience with Ashes/Cricket 19. Adding in the 'Standard' controls* helped here a lot, but that was able to be added without any changes to the Classic controls that wouldn't have been made anyway.

There's a lot of "arcade" things you can do that can be entirely invisible - improving the broadcast camera for example, I wouldn't recommend using it, but it should be good if you do.

When it comes to gameplay more specifically, the idea is the easy difficulties are arcade, and the harder ones are closer to simulation. The problem is that means occasionally you need to push things beyond realistic to make it harder to play - the biggest problem for cricket is obviously run rates. It's harder if the AI can score off you easily, yet if they do that, they'll score unrealistically quickly until you get extremely good, at which point they'll probably fail to score. The balance there would usually fall to making the game play better, than try and be pure simulation - a "pure sim" experience would be far more rewarding of blocking/defending 4/5 balls an over in a test match - but very few people will find that fun.

It's not to say you go out of your way to stop that approach, but if an element of the game at that margin has to be optimised to one way or the other, it probably does fall to the arcade side, but the goal is to minimise areas of the game where such a choice needs to be made, or letting you override that with a slider.

* One specific post I should have commented on but won't bother looking back to quote - yes, I don't know the right naming for the two control schemes. If I was more creative I'd be able to come up with something like EA's "Century Stick" to name the DBC14 style stick controls, but we settled on "Classic" in reference to it being the 'Classic' controls for Big Ant games, not "Classic" as in old.

 

[Acid Burn]

Yep, we've had the discussion in every game, funnily enough the answer has typically been the players are overskilled!

I've never understood people's inclination to tinker with sliders as a first resort, and worse still after one game or session where "x" happened too much, or "y" didn't happen at all.

It's a game, there's gonna be anomalies. Play the game on default, if anything's not to your liking after several matches, check the difficulties. if it's still not to your liking, check the player set ups. Sliders should be an absolute last resort when you're absolutely certain you can't get x or y right otherwise after a lot of playing.

Good example, I took 4 wickets in the opening session of the match last night, for not many. Could be easy for me to ramp up difficulty, reduce swing, reduce wicket chances, increase AI timing... maybe all 4. Or I could do what I actually did, carry on and play (some last night, some this morning) and end up being on the verge of the new ball having only taken 1 more wicket...

I've said it before - it's a good game, this. People should get on with enjoying it.

Thats one of the Joys of Playing online Only , all of the tinkering cannot be done , so we play it like it came out.

Only thing allowed is the Player Skilling , and I`m also of the Opinion that the Players are way over skilled , the way bowlers are swinging the ball is ludicrous to say the least.

 

[blockerdave]

I have never had an innings where I’m struggling to score, that the AI hasn’t gifted me runs in byes. Like the game HAS to maintain a user run rate around 3rpo. Why??

 

[GuyIncognito]

In general the last few games have been trying to shift what was fairly heavily biased towards simulation game in DBC14, to being more approachable to a wider audience with Ashes/Cricket 19. Adding in the 'Standard' controls* helped here a lot, but that was able to be added without any changes to the Classic controls that wouldn't have been made anyway.

There's a lot of "arcade" things you can do that can be entirely invisible - improving the broadcast camera for example, I wouldn't recommend using it, but it should be good if you do.

When it comes to gameplay more specifically, the idea is the easy difficulties are arcade, and the harder ones are closer to simulation. The problem is that means occasionally you need to push things beyond realistic to make it harder to play - the biggest problem for cricket is obviously run rates. It's harder if the AI can score off you easily, yet if they do that, they'll score unrealistically quickly until you get extremely good, at which point they'll probably fail to score. The balance there would usually fall to making the game play better, than try and be pure simulation - a "pure sim" experience would be far more rewarding of blocking/defending 4/5 balls an over in a test match - but very few people will find that fun.

It's not to say you go out of your way to stop that approach, but if an element of the game at that margin has to be optimised to one way or the other, it probably does fall to the arcade side, but the goal is to minimise areas of the game where such a choice needs to be made, or letting you override that with a slider.

* One specific post I should have commented on but won't bother looking back to quote - yes, I don't know the right naming for the two control schemes. If I was more creative I'd be able to come up with something like EA's "Century Stick" to name the DBC14 style stick controls, but we settled on "Classic" in reference to it being the 'Classic' controls for Big Ant games, not "Classic" as in old.

Thanks for the reply MattW. Yeah I could see people would find playing 4/5 blocks an over in test cricket boring lol. That's why I'm glad, and many others are with the ability to adjust sliders, albeit with a lot experimenting (would be nice to know what some sliders do in a specific sense.) I feel this game has a good balance between sim and arcade, just wish the AI was a bit more reactive with field settings to what the player is actually playing. And bowling to the field placements (example: seems to happen alot when they set an offside strong field, the bowler continually bowls a middle/ leg stump line.)

I'll be honest, I actually play with broadcast camera, can't remember which one exactly I use, when batting and bowling, I actually like it a lot.

 

[blockerdave]

And bowling to the field placements (example: seems to happen alot when they set an offside strong field, the bowler continually bowls a middle/ leg stump line.)

Very important this is tied to ability, form and confidence.

Good bowlers bowl to a plan, and have the patience to stick to it. Bad bowlers spray it around, or slip in a “different” ball that doesn’t suit the plan because they don’t have patience.

We don’t want to lose variety in opponents: in fact it should be increased a lot.

I do think being able to set “plans” for fields: as in the lengths and lines this field suits would be good, and to an extent help them AI. But the ability of a given bowler to execute and/or stick to the plan has to vary. (Mental attributes including patience for both bowler and captain would be good - would affect how long a bowler sticks to a plan and how long before a captain panics and changes the field.)

 

[wasteyouryouth]

I do think being able to set “plans” for fields: as in the lengths and lines this field suits would be good, and to an extent help them AI. But the ability of a given bowler to execute and/or stick to the plan has to vary. (Mental attributes including patience for both bowler and captain would be good - would affect how long a bowler sticks to a plan and how long before a captain panics and changes the field.)

There's quite a bit going on in this area. I would say AI strategy is pushed as far as it could be in the time scales.

 

[blockerdave]

Seriously... I’ve scored 73 runs myself in 35 overs (72 off the bat and 1 leg bye), I’ve had to go and massively reduce bounce (and save and exit so it hopefully works), and even take over the bowling side and push the keeper back... so instead of byes now I get wides.

this is absolutely maddening. Should be the toughest innings of the tour, instead it’s the one that will probably make me give up and stop playing.[DOUBLEPOST=1587022468][/DOUBLEPOST]

There's quite a bit going on in this area. I would say AI strategy is pushed as far as it could be in the time scales.

yes I’ve made suggestions around this many times both when I was in beta and in the forum posts. It’s actually something that can help arcade players too - if you see easily how you can bowl to a certain field

 

[blockerdave]

The balance there would usually fall to making the game play better, than try and be pure simulation - a "pure sim" experience would be far more rewarding of blocking/defending 4/5 balls an over in a test match - but very few people will find that fun.

Anyone who’s watched my live streams of me batting will know that despite my user name even I can’t block like that in a test.

But on the occasions where I am defending or otherwise struggling due to defensive field, slow outfield etc. having the AI artificially maintain my run rate by extras is absolutely the opposite of improving the game play.

 

[GuyIncognito]

Very important this is tied to ability, form and confidence.

Good bowlers bowl to a plan, and have the patience to stick to it. Bad bowlers spray it around, or slip in a “different” ball that doesn’t suit the plan because they don’t have patience.

We don’t want to lose variety in opponents: in fact it should be increased a lot.

I do think being able to set “plans” for fields: as in the lengths and lines this field suits would be good, and to an extent help them AI. But the ability of a given bowler to execute and/or stick to the plan has to vary. (Mental attributes including patience for both bowler and captain would be good - would affect how long a bowler sticks to a plan and how long before a captain panics and changes the field.)

Hmm, okay. I should add this is more in career mode, playing international cricket. Its more just quirks than anything, like the AI changing the fields every ball, and then not bowling to said field. I can live with it, but I feel this can definitely be improved upon next game. Given the amount of content for these games, and the studio size, I'm not expecting perfection or a revolution in AI programming, I am a realist, this is me just being more hopeful than anything.