Don Bradman Cricket 17 First Impressions Thread

[Bradg88]

First days play for me today. Test match, Australia v India at the SCG. India win the toss and (strangely) put Australia in on a flat track. First over India use a quick bowler, then second over they choose to go with an off-spinner...great stuff.

So the developers have taken the time to include female cricket yet teams still open the bowling in the first innings of a Test match with a spinner. Nice to know where their priorities lie.

 

[DAP]

So I finally picked up my PS4 version and the game overall has been good and not as bad as 90% of the members are here making it out to be. The graphics are amazing and the gameplay isn't too bad either, obviously a few touches here and there would make it perfect. But I'm facing this issue with career mode, this has happened multiple times to me, despite timing the ball well and having good footwork I seem to get out 80% of the times?

If it's a rookie career mode, it could be due to the lower player skill and the timing scale is not really accurate either. This is all from my observation of Twistie's video.

 

[Zaneo]

I played my first online game today and I have to accept I had absolutely no clue what was going on. The opponent had a team of world beaters. I started with an Indian team in which Rahul opened the bating.. lol.. Won the toss and opted to bowl, my first mistake. I didn't get a chance to change field, I think may be coz of the 30 sec restriction. The default field positions are terrible. The first ball I bowled was given 8 runs where it went for a boundary. My opponent started whacking with Gayle and DuPlessis to same parts of the pitch. I didn't get enough time to see how many overs the game is supposed to be. Ran out of time,every time I tried to do something to stem the run flow. Duplessis hit 70 of 20 balls.. I was waiting for the game to end and just went through the motions until the nightmare was over as I didn't want to be rude to my opponent by disconnecting the middle of the game. To my luck, it was just a 5 over game. Lesson learnt, do not touch online unless you are playing a chap you knew and is helping you understand online game play mechanics.

Haha i struck the exact same thing, i hadn't played any game online before then I got this invite thought why not. To my dismay was a team of world all stars I was standard AUS. He had preset fields and changed the field last minute so I couldn't look. I couldn't hit a 6 he was creaming them all well better luck next time

 

[Champagnepapi]

If it's a rookie career mode, it could be due to the lower player skill and the timing scale is not really accurate either. This is all from my observation of Twistie's video.

Yeah that was the problem works perfect now.

 

[Marulz23]

Had the game for a few weeks now and really enjoying it, the graphics are amazing and they have made some great steps forward. While there are a couple of negatives honestly considering some of the older cricket games which were nearly unplayable or just plain to easy to bat and bowl in, they have gotten the balance really nice here - so hats off Big Ant Studios.

Only thing that kind of bothers me is the lack of stats in the tour mode and in career mode, while this isn't a huge problem it's one of my favourite things about cricket as I am really into statistics, would love to see it implemented at sometime.

I recall when DBC14 came out there were a few issues with bugs, the UI and overall gameplay but during patches throughout the lifespan of the game Big Ant didn't leave it alone and made it a much better game. Can't wait to see what they do with this version.

 

[Wavelberry]

Having just completed a bowling innings I had six wickets that were exactly the same which were mis-timed flicks to square leg which my fielder runs round to and catches. Has anyone else seen this? Not sure whether it'll be down to AI level or a bit of an exploit (like the midwicket hole out to a spinner on DB14)

 

[subtekjr]

First days play for me today. Test match, Australia v India at the SCG. India win the toss and (strangely) put Australia in on a flat track. First over India use a quick bowler, then second over they choose to go with an off-spinner...great stuff.

So the developers have taken the time to include female cricket yet teams still open the bowling in the first innings of a Test match with a spinner. Nice to know where their priorities lie.

If you are playing against AI, it's likely that the lineup India is playing with has the spinner to open bowling. You can change that yourself. When you choose your own lineup before the game, finalise yours and press X/A. Press Triangle/Y to change India's lineup, then press L1/LB until you find the 2nd Opening Bowler menu. Then select a quick bowler with X/A.

The problem you have is that the lineup India is playing with is by default set so the quick selected and the spinner selected are the opening bowlers. AI can't change that, the first two overs will be bowled by those two, then from that point onwards, it can be changed by the AI. Good way to make sure bad bowlers (or good ones if you are in T20 to burn off their overs) bowl first.

 

[kishore_513]

Had the game for a few weeks now and really enjoying it, the graphics are amazing and they have made some great steps forward. While there are a couple of negatives honestly considering some of the older cricket games which were nearly unplayable or just plain to easy to bat and bowl in, they have gotten the balance really nice here - so hats off Big Ant Studios.

Only thing that kind of bothers me is the lack of stats in the tour mode and in career mode, while this isn't a huge problem it's one of my favourite things about cricket as I am really into statistics, would love to see it implemented at sometime.

I recall when DBC14 came out there were a few issues with bugs, the UI and overall gameplay but during patches throughout the lifespan of the game Big Ant didn't leave it alone and made it a much better game. Can't wait to see what they do with this version.

Exactly.. After playing a week, I started liking the game more and more. But, lack of stats is a big miss for me too. Stopped playing Career mode as there isnt any drive to improve my stats as they are not visible any way..

 

[whiteninness]

First days play for me today. Test match, Australia v India at the SCG. India win the toss and (strangely) put Australia in on a flat track. First over India use a quick bowler, then second over they choose to go with an off-spinner...great stuff.

So the developers have taken the time to include female cricket yet teams still open the bowling in the first innings of a Test match with a spinner. Nice to know where their priorities lie.

This game has bugs and flaws, but why do they all have to be the fault of women's cricket?

Also India opening with a spinner isn't the most surprising thing you'd see in the world today.

 

[Saeglopur]

The problem you have is that the lineup India is playing with is by default set so the quick selected and the spinner selected are the opening bowlers. AI can't change that, the first two overs will be bowled by those two, then from that point onwards, it can be changed by the AI.

I do wish there some kind of flexibility setting in those opening bowler choices. After a couple of years of DBC 14, I started setting up some all AI competitions just to kind of see what happened, and I actually found it really interesting when they did something unexpected. Most of the time the AI would open in a Test with the main fast bowler and so on, but just occasionally it would do something a little bit different, and sometimes they'd get a quick wicket or two as a direct result of the captain's smart thinking. Of course, other times the same bowler got absolutely smashed out of the ground, but I quite liked that there was an element of randomness to it, or at least that the AI was making its own decisions. While I appreciate that it's a good idea to have an option to preset the opening bowlers most of the time, team captains do change things round a bit occasionally and I liked that little bit of unpredictability that DBC 14 had in that sense.

 

[cricket_online]

First days play for me today. Test match, Australia v India at the SCG. India win the toss and (strangely) put Australia in on a flat track. First over India use a quick bowler, then second over they choose to go with an off-spinner...great stuff.

So the developers have taken the time to include female cricket yet teams still open the bowling in the first innings of a Test match with a spinner. Nice to know where their priorities lie.

This is nothing to do with the AI or Big Ant's priorities. It's more to do with the team you are using and who has assigned the roles for the same. I downloaded the teams from academy and found out some teams had botched lineups set with bowlers slotted in the middle order, wkt keeper coming in at 11 and part timers/spinners opening the bowling. I had to go to Academy->Teams->Team Manager-> Individual Teams (Aus, Eng, SA, Pak, Ind etc.)->Lineups and modify those and assign proper roles.

You can assign the opening bowlers (nos. 1 & 2), wkt keeper, captain etc. by using L1/R1 buttons. Also in some cases I found that the individual players weren't assigned the skills/roles properly. E.g., some were branded as "Batting allrounders" whereas they were more 'Bowling allrounders" or were branded as "opening batsman" or "wkt keeper" when they were not. To correct these mistakes I had to go to the Players menu, bring up the individual player I had to correct and did so.

The AI will make bowling choices based on how players are classified (No. 1 bowler, No. 2 bowler, bowling allrounder etc.) and skill rating. Thus it's imperative you correct these mistakes in the academy. This is not a bug or error on Big Ant's part but the open framework/sandbox they have given the community to customize your experience. E.g., if India is touring Australia I would change the no. 1 & no. 2 bowlers to be pacers but if the series is played in India I would change the lineup to assign a spinner as the no. 2 bowler so it opens the bowling and I get the experience I want.

 

[runner4life]

Is anyone else being driven truly mad by the ridiculous amount of overthrows? and the fact i have the ball thrown to the bowlers end 60% of the time.

Also why on the last ball of nearly every over do they lash out or try and score runs after 5 dot balls.....

 

[cricket_online]

Is anyone else being driven truly mad by the ridiculous amount of overthrows? and the fact i have the ball thrown to the bowlers end 60% of the time.

Also why on the last ball of nearly every over do they lash out or try and score runs after 5 dot balls.....

I play the shorter formats in Casual mode most of the time and Extras (wides & byes) is what gets on my nerves. A odi innings has anywhere from 40 to 60 extras with lots of 5 wides and 4 byes sprinkled in, especially if it's a hard pitch.

 

[Wavelberry]

Having played a couple of games on patch two here are some more impressions.

1. The display during batting and bowling definitely needs to be switched around given that once the facing batsman faces and scores or whatever all the info pops up on the screen and obscures their name rather than the name of the non-facing batsman so you can't see any data about the batsman who has just scored the runs.

2. The four in the last ball of the over needs to be toned down because it's so obvious it's immersion breaking. Not sure how you would do it mind or what knock on effects it would have but I feel like it should definitely be something that is worked towards as it takes away from the flowing game of cricket being played and turns it into a mini-game for the last ball of each over when bowling.

3. Loving that you can't change up quick when you premeditate a position and think this is an excellent addition to the game. The whole bowler marker when batting and the way you choose shots is the best thing about DBC17 and a reason I'd struggle to return to DBC14. It's a learning curve to change from 14 but I'm so glad with the way that has evolved.

4. AI field choices are still very behind where they should be. They don't change to adapt to the batsman and bowlers tend not to bowl to them. I appreciate this is probs very difficult to code etc but it's definitely still noticeable.

5. Days work very weirdly when I play a first class match. 44 overs in the morning session and then 30 odd in the afternoon and then less in the evening. They seem very uneven.

6. The worm is available for the first innings in First Class/test matches which makes no sense. A graph that shows score and FOW would be an excellent thing for such matches rather than an ODI worm but obviously not sure if that's easy to do. Would love to see that during a test match though.

7. Shots missing. We know this though...

8. Could there be some sort of indicator to show whether we're dealing with a bump ball or a chance when doing the bullet-time fielding? Sometimes it's really hard to tell what kind of ball we're dealing with.

9. Commentary seems to be all over the place at times with maidens being called when not etc. I haven't played a game with a review yet but I'm worried there is no 'HOLD THE PHONE' either so if someone could ease my worry and tell me it does exist that'd be great.

10. I am hitting batsmen with throws a hell of a lot when returning to the stumps. I don't mind bullying them (especially that bastard Joe Denly) but this seems a little out of kilter.

11. Got a 5fer but didn't get any commentary acknowledging it. Did I just get unlucky?

12. Some fielders are mega-diver super men and need to be stopped.

There might well be more that occur to me later but what I want to be clear about here is that there is a great game in here waiting to emerge from its chrysalis. The first class match I played (which I won be a wicket) was genuinely fun to play and the advances in the game make me not want to return to DBC14 so this is good progress. The key things I hope are addressed on the pitch are the AI field/bowler selection decisions, 360 batting and the last-ball amaze-o shot. Beyond that if some of the commentary/display stuff is actionable then it would absolutely make the game better. Looking forward to Sunday and the PC version coz hopefully then we'll start to get a few more tweaks tested and I'll be there to test them with my awesome bowling with James Porter!

 

[WubbaLubbaDubDub]

So have bought the game on PC too(shh dont tell wifey). Played for 2 hours straight and WOW! What a big difference from Xbox version that I have now that things are sorted.Cover drives,square cuts backfoot shots all are in. We now have required run rates, projected scores all displayed while playing. So people who were whining see???? You nicely ask things and you will have it

This game has surpassed DBC 14 and is now the best ever cricket game. Wish they released the console version like this at start and there would have been zero negative publicity