How are you doing in your career?

[cricket_online]

Finally you debrief us on the playsession

 

[kasabian21]

After playing the game for an hour or so at the play session in novemeber a few things with bowling that i picked up:

* Timing of your jump before you bowl will be the first thing that you will need to master, i found i would either jump early and bowl way before the crease, or jump late and bowl a no ball by a foot.

* Pace bowling is easy to master than spin bowling. I did struggle with my lines and lengths though, so it will still take alot of time.

* Also, building up fast pace was impossible for me, now im not sure if i was playing with dud players hence i couldnt build up anymore than about 110kph, now this could be to do with timing, hence the initial 2 points above effected everything.

* Spin bowling was difficult to master due to the fact that the controls were completely different. I bowled wide of offstump with no spin, this will take a day or so to learn, once again my lines and lengths were all over the place. timing the jump before the bowl was easier than pace though

In saying this, they have made bowling a challenge, hence it is BLOODY AWESOME!!

Not to just be able to run in and bowl 150kph thunderbolts right on a good length within an hour of playing the game is exactly the challenge we want, no doubt we will all master the controls

but the best thing is if we get too drunk, and start to lapse in our concentration, bad stuff will happen, no matter how much we have played

if you dont rotate the stick it wont spin, simple as that

Great post!

Regarding the spin bowling, do you select the length of the delivery, then rotate the stick then simply push it forward to release the ball?

 

[madman981]

Cricket online i wrote a debrief months ago.....

I cant actually remember anything to do with length when i bowled, thats why i was all over the shop

from what i believe it is determined by what point you press upwards on the analogue stick

to bowl short, you press up on the analogue stick later hence releasing the ball at a later stage, and vice versa for full length

in the short time i had the game, this is the bit i struggled with the most!! and the timing of the jump

cricket online, ask me any question ya want, i will answer it as best i can about the playsession

 

[cricket_online]

Cricket online i wrote a debrief months ago.....

I cant actually remember anything to do with length when i bowled, thats why i was all over the shop

from what i believe it is determined by what point you press upwards on the analogue stick

to bowl short, you press up on the analogue stick later hence releasing the ball at a later stage, and vice versa for full length

in the short time i had the game, this is the bit i struggled with the most!! and the timing of the jump

cricket online, ask me any question ya want, i will answer it as best i can about the playsession

Did you try manual and semi-manual fielding? If yes any insights on the difference between the two? Also, while batting did you find any gotcha fielding spots where the ball went quite often? Maybe something like short cover or short mid wkt in case of AC09 where even well timed shots could be plucked out magically by those two fielders.

Other than that I have questions about online gameplay and settings which i guess we will find out when we get the game.

 

[madman981]

Did you try manual and semi-manual fielding? If yes any insights on the difference between the two? Also, while batting did you find any gotcha fielding spots where the ball went quite often? Maybe something like short cover or short mid wkt in case of AC09 where even well timed shots could be plucked out magically by those two fielders.

Other than that I have questions about online gameplay and settings which i guess we will find out when we get the game.

Ok lets answer these

Feilding: we had limited time so all of us were pretty much playing pvp and concentrating on batting and bowling ( for the record i smashed MattW for 2 sixes) but feilding was set to manual so we did feild ourselves, there were slight issues with running after the ball and just assuming that you picked it up, so you would run to the ball and go to throw it even though you didnt actually pick it up at the point you thought you did, I put this down to user error, we will get used to it and be able to perform it properly.

Catching was difficult to begin with, we dropped a few catches, but it was just because we werent used to the controls and on a few occasions i pressed the wrong button to catch, i did eventually take a catch, but i didnt pay too much attention to feilding because honestly, i will set it to auto probaly 95% of the time, i will manual feild a little bit at the start of my career but i dare say I dont really care too much about fielding....

Batting: not at all, I didnt notice anything dodgy like that. I remember thinking to myself, its easy to score off the cover drive, i will just play that shot all the time and score, the moment i thought that i scooped one straight to cover point. Sure you might come in and make a quick 12 off 5 balls, but if you keep going, you will go out!! I expect alot of us at the start will be getting out with 24 runs of 12 balls because we thought "this is easy to score" and didnt mix in the patience required to score big runs with the use of defence

I think thats the best thing about this game, yeah the AI is going to leave cover open for us to play the cover drive, but there doing it for a reason, if you play 10 cover drives in a row, i reckon you will nick or mis time at least 3 or 4 of them.....

I just have this feeling that patience is going to be a big key while batting.

Ive gone a little off topic, i did get caught at silly point playing a cove drive, i think that may be an issue when we are playing, i dont think it is wise to play a cover drive if a silly point or short cover is in place, because if its fractionally in the air, we will get caught, hence though if we know that, dont play the shot, eventually the AI will remove that fielder and there ya go, we will be back playing the cover drive.....

If you call that a bug, then I am happy with that, because at least the AI will be challenging, if your a strong cover driver, then they will put that man there for that exact reason, hence we have to change our plans

as they say, Challenging AI will give this game the longevity we have always desired in a cricket game

i think i have covered everything here??

 

[cricket_online]

Ive gone a little off topic, i did get caught at silly point playing a cove drive, i think that may be an issue when we are playing, i dont think it is wise to play a cover drive if a silly point or short cover is in place, because if its fractionally in the air, we will get caught, hence though if we know that, dont play the shot, eventually the AI will remove that fielder and there ya go, we will be back playing the cover drive.....

If you call that a bug, then I am happy with that, because at least the AI will be challenging, if your a strong cover driver, then they will put that man there for that exact reason, hence we have to change our plans

as they say, Challenging AI will give this game the longevity we have always desired in a cricket game

i think i have covered everything here??

Thanks for the info. A bit concerned about the short cover/silly point catching the ball fractionally in the air. I can see folks online putting in short cover/silly point and short mid wkt etc. to get cheap wkts. I guess we will find out when we get the game.

 

[madman981]

I always prefer batting.

Also, I never played a cricket game for longer than a week because I hated bowling every ball, I used to just sim them all the time. I used to love ricky ponting cricket because they had that challenge mode, where you had to win the ICC champions cup 8 down with the windies etc etc so Im probaly the wrong person to ask

Thats what makes me so excited about this games career mode. Yes I will bowl every ball with my player because it Means something. What did it mean in other games?? awesome i won the ashes with australis on a computer game.... big deal

but when Mick Whiskas takes 5 for in an ashes test after bowling 28 overs, then hell yeah, it means something!! and hell yeah i will bowl every ball for 28 overs or 3 days... there is meaning to this game for me

obviously this is all personal opinion, i respect the fact that some of you prefer to bowl every ball with the aussies to smash the poms, i got no problems with that each to their own

It was the same with me in NBA2k13, couldnt care a less about winning the title with the lakers in franchise mode, but was obsessed with winning the title with the lakers controlling Mick Whiskas in every game dominating with triple doubles!! This is where sport games have gone with me, its all about Career mode in single player and smashing your mates in PVP!!

getting back on point, I much preferred batting, it was unbelievably awesome, trust me, but with career mode, bowling is going to mean alot more to me from now on also

 

[cricket_online]

Good stuff madman!

 

[ChinamanSpin]

Thanks for the info and I agree with the points about playing as one player or in games that mean something. That was one of the biggest problems with the old cricket games in my opinion. You win a test series against the best team in the world, but now you've done that everything returns to normal and that series could have never happened. The match and tour designers are also a big draw for me though.

Sorry for deleting the question. I thought it might have already been covered in your previous posts.

 

[thevicky]

@madman981

You mentioned you struggled with the catching, can you provide some details with regards to the catching system? I know that you use the right stick but could you provide a bit more of an explanation?

To clarify a couple of things you said (taken form previous posts by Ross and others):

Bowlers Pace (seamers) - for a fast bowler pace is controlled by how fast you pull back on the right stick to initiate the bowling action. Be careful though as the more deliveries you bowl at full pace the quicker the bowler tires. Not sure if how fast you push forward again (to release) affects pace as well.

Bowlers Length (seamers) - to begin the runup you press one of the face buttons which also selects the length "zone" (from memory on PS3 "x" = good length, "triangle" = full, "circle" = short). You can then choose where in that zone you want it to land by how early or late you release the ball by pushing forward on the right stick. So if you want to bowl a full toss you would select the full length then release the ball early, if you want to bowl a short short bouncer you would select short ball and release the ball as late as possible.

What I don't know is how you vary pace and length with a spin bowler. Pulling back on the right stick for a spinner means you bowl an arm ball/slider while pushing forward bowls a topspinner; but how do you control pace/flight of the delivery and where exactly in the length zone you want it to land (you still use the face buttons to select the zone). If anyone who played the game could clarify would be great. thanks.

 

[sami ullah khan]

All these juicy tidbits are making the wait a lot harder than it already is. Two more weeks, I keep telling my self.

 

[mbgrice]

I have vivid memories of going from fine leg to fine leg for 50 overs when I used to fill in when I was very young. A form of torture.

By fun, I might have thought fielding in the covers would be good fun. At least you'd be involved at deep mid wicket. I'm still going to simulate most of the time though.

In the next edition you should start as the 13yo who gets a go on the B team as 12th man and all you do is go fine leg to fine leg and you bring out the drinks (beer) for the older blokes. On another note I would like to see in later iterations for bowlers the stick you use to release the delivery is the same as the hand your bowling with. So with spinners if your a right arm bowler you use the right stick to spin it and vice versa. This would make it more interesting as you would probably be more stronger on one hand.

 

[madman981]

@madman981

You mentioned you struggled with the catching, can you provide some details with regards to the catching system? I know that you use the right stick but could you provide a bit more of an explanation?

To clarify a couple of things you said (taken form previous posts by Ross and others):

Bowlers Pace (seamers) - for a fast bowler pace is controlled by how fast you pull back on the right stick to initiate the bowling action. Be careful though as the more deliveries you bowl at full pace the quicker the bowler tires. Not sure if how fast you push forward again (to release) affects pace as well.

Bowlers Length (seamers) - to begin the runup you press one of the face buttons which also selects the length "zone" (from memory on PS3 "x" = good length, "triangle" = full, "circle" = short). You can then choose where in that zone you want it to land by how early or late you release the ball by pushing forward on the right stick. So if you want to bowl a full toss you would select the full length then release the ball early, if you want to bowl a short short bouncer you would select short ball and release the ball as late as possible.

What I don't know is how you vary pace and length with a spin bowler. Pulling back on the right stick for a spinner means you bowl an arm ball/slider while pushing forward bowls a topspinner; but how do you control pace/flight of the delivery and where exactly in the length zone you want it to land (you still use the face buttons to select the zone). If anyone who played the game could clarify would be great. thanks.

OK Lets dig into this, before I get into Catching, the information you mentioned about bowling is coming back to me. Once again i have no idea what buttons i was pressing for length, thats fine, and easy enough to fix, it was the Line of the balls i was struggling with, i continued to bowl wide of offstump, im not sure if it was the way i was holding the analogue sticks or what, but trust me all of you, we will master it, its the concentration levels that will cause us to bowl bad balls.

The pulling back of the stick as quick as possible is what i honestly thought i was doing, i also thought that it was the pace that you pushed up the stick at release is where the pace came from, i honestly had no idea, all i know is i was bowling 110kph wide half volleys that MattW was dealing with rather easy!!

spinners, once again i had no idea, all i remember was telling myself to make sure i rotated the stick so it would spin, with my natural ps3 retardness, trying to rotate the stick, line up the ball on the stumps, jump early so i wouldnt bowl no balls, it got too much for me and all i ended up doing was bowling straight wide loopy balls, spin is tough!!

Now catching, well once again, I could be corrected, but at the start i totally forgot that when I went for a catch i had to press up (for a high catch) on one of the analogue sticks for the bloke to try and catch it. Its also all about timing there as well, listen it was in early november so i am struggling to remember exactly what i did, but from ememory, the first couple of catches i went for i ran to the right position and dropped them, then Mikeym mention to me that to catch the ball dont forget to press up, i think with the right analogue, just as your about to catch it, and bang, mattW loses another wicket with a stunning (standard) catch!

Another thing i want to mention, which may get a little annoying, you may call this a glitch, but when playing spin, and playing a front foot stroke or any type of aggressive stroke, your players natural footwork moves you out of the crease... if you dont press the triangle button (i think) then you will be stumped EVERY TIME!! This is the only negative thing i remember from the day, playing a cover drive to a spinner and being stumped!! Ross said to me to make sure i pressed the button to get back into my crease, so here is the MadMans 1st tip ever, when playing against the spinner in the nets, if you miss a ball, practice pressing the button that gets you back into the crease.

I for one would just rather play deeper in my crease so i dont have to worry about getting stumped everytime i miss a spinner even if im not adbvancing

this may be fixed, I strongly suggest someone check it out in the nets, play against the spinner, miss a normal cover drive, and see if your back foot is on or outside the crease, if this is the case, please let me know if you get the option to bat further in your crease, if not, then make sure you lot learn the button of how to get back into your crease and practice pressing that ba$tard!!

 

[thevicky]

Once again i have no idea what buttons i was pressing for length, thats fine, and easy enough to fix, it was the Line of the balls i was struggling with, i continued to bowl wide of offstump, im not sure if it was the way i was holding the analogue sticks or what, but trust me all of you, we will master it, its the concentration levels that will cause us to bowl bad balls.

The pulling back of the stick as quick as possible is what i honestly thought i was doing, i also thought that it was the pace that you pushed up the stick at release is where the pace came from, i honestly had no idea, all i know is i was bowling 110kph wide half volleys that MattW was dealing with rather easy!!

spinners, once again i had no idea, all i remember was telling myself to make sure i rotated the stick so it would spin, with my natural ps3 retardness, trying to rotate the stick, line up the ball on the stumps, jump early so i wouldnt bowl no balls, it got too much for me and all i ended up doing was bowling straight wide loopy balls, spin is tough!!

Thanks for the info. With pace I'm pretty sure form the info so far that only the pull back controls the pace. The push forward controls the length and the line (I believe if you get it right at 12 o'clock the line is offstump while pushing it either side sends it towards off or leg).

Like I said, at least from what I can see the right analog stick has a completely different function for spinners only controlling selection of delivery type (up or down bowls a top spinner or slider respectively) or direction of drift. This is why I am wondering about how pace and length are controlled for spinners.

 

[angad]

Another thing i want to mention, which may get a little annoying, you may call this a glitch, but when playing spin, and playing a front foot stroke or any type of aggressive stroke, your players natural footwork moves you out of the crease... if you dont press the triangle button (i think) then you will be stumped EVERY TIME!! This is the only negative thing i remember from the day, playing a cover drive to a spinner and being stumped!! Ross said to me to make sure i pressed the button to get back into my crease, so here is the MadMans 1st tip ever, when playing against the spinner in the nets, if you miss a ball, practice pressing the button that gets you back into the crease.

I think this should still remain in the game. Even in real cricket when you go for aggressive expansive drives (without coming down the track), the momentum takes your foot outside the crease and the batsman has to drag it back.....it should be the same in the game. If I beat someone in flight and he goes for an expansive drive and misses it (risk and reward) there should be a chance for stumping if he didnt drag his foot back in time!

----------

Like I said, at least from what I can see the right analog stick has a completely different function for spinners only controlling selection of delivery type (up or down bowls a top spinner or slider respectively) or direction of drift. This is why I am wondering about how pace and length are controlled for spinners.

I think it would be the same as pace bowlers....the speed with which you pull the stick back would determine the bowling speed (I am assuming you move RAS back for spinner as well since, I think, madman has said that he had to time the jump for a spinner as well) while the final length (I say final, as you do choose the initial length area before you start the runup) would depend on how early/late you move the RAS forward.