Making bowling more enjoyable, seeing weather/pitch effects etc. - invitation to playtest

[MattW]

First match I've played with these teams - I played Weaklings vs Weaklings just to make sure I was getting the whole experience. Playing on Pro difficulty and a regular test match, and had random for all the ground settings.

Scorecard of the first innings - I just finally removed the last guy:


And as you'll see - four caught and bowled dismissals for the fast bowler. The catches were one at mid on, a genuine edge to the keeper and whatever you'd call this going to gully:


Obviously the other thing from the scorecard there is again the lower order being very difficult to remove 108/6 to 237 all out is a problem. But obviously you can't expect magic from a few stats tweaks when there's underlying issues.

I'll try batting patiently...

 

[grkrama]

Save your mods gentlemen: looks like pretty soon you'll be able to CASH IN on them.

Valve letting users sell Steam Workshop content | GamesIndustry.biz

Pity that majority of the money goes to publishers rather than mod creators, the publishers are allowed to set the percentage on their cut and bethesda have set it at 75-25.

 

[Chief]

Pity that majority of the money goes to publishers rather than mod creators, the publishers are allowed to set the percentage on their cut and bethesda have set it at 75-25.

Yeah. Depending on the actual content of the "mod" itself, and the conditions agreed in the EULA, for me it's the correct approach, but the wrong split. I think once they find this, those splits will change.

 

[Biggs]

People getting paid to mod games is about the worst thing ever. If I ever swing back into modding for DBC14 when it's made a little less complex to implement, sure as hell won't be making people pay for it!

 

[grkrama]

Yeah. Depending on the actual content of the "mod" itself, and the conditions agreed in the EULA, for me it's the correct approach, but the wrong split. I think once they find this, those splits will change.

ya sure, say publisher should be allowed to have a cut, and select a bottom line they want but ideally it should be around or less than 25% in my opinion and max 40% incase of a publisher actively supporting modscene with tools, like creation kit for skyrim.
some of the mods for skyrim are massive overhauls like falskaar or interesting npc mods, it would be a pity to see the authors of these kind of mods getting very little of the pie also it will only cause modders to price it higher.

the green light community system should work for selecting mods that are worth paying and also plagiarism of mods to a good extent. what i see is lot of indie devs freelancers and small teams doing cash in modding to games, thus people other than modders who mod for the love of the game will start getting into action.

On the other hand it will also help give that edge to modders when tey do get paid for doing something they like and give them more resources and time to spend on something they love making things a lot better, ex: being garry's mod etc.

 

[Snowy]

So how much for the rest of my World Cup kits....$1 each I reckon.

 

[grkrama]

I dont think either we or ross will be able to profit from mods for dbc that are licence based material. But we can always cut a deal with matt to unlock downloads forums only for people who have bought our custom 'retro rainbow pack ' for measly 10$ deal .

 

[Chief]

I dont think either we or ross will be able to profit from mods for dbc that are licence based material. But we can always cut a deal with matt to unlock downloads forums only for people who have bought our custom 'retro rainbow pack ' for measly 10$ deal .

This is almost certainly true. I hadn't even thought of what would happen: I would guess that at this point it would get shut down: if there's a really clear $ value on a piece of IP, I'm sure that the owner would come knocking looking for their cut too.


EDIT: annnnnnnnd they've got rid of it. Before it began. Probably on its way though - I think they've cancelled the Skyrim one because it was an already established community and there were already loads of free mods out there.
I suspect that this WILL become a thing, but for new titles in the future.

 

[grkrama]

Too much community backlash, but like you say its bound to happen sometime down the lane and certainly skyrim may not have been the best place to start, though it has some of the best and most hard worked mods, Mainly because it has a long established community going back to morrowind and often, one mod works on the top of another, community tools and they are way too interlinked with each other in many cases, to be separately monetized. which also would be one of the drawbacks of paid mod scheme as it would stop people making overhauls with a bunch of mods, for example a decent modded skyrim would carry anywhere between 100-200 mods..certainly cant expect people to pay for all of them and thus may cut down the whole experience of a modded playground dramatically, people often have their own best in a modding scene, even our dbc cricket academy players or mods would be a good example of this, if they have to pay, this having the best of all would vanish a lot. I think it would best work for massive overhaul standalone mods like dayz falskaar, etc and their modmakers.

 

[cooks1st100]

Obviously the other thing from the scorecard there is again the lower order being very difficult to remove 108/6 to 237 all out is a problem. But obviously you can't expect magic from a few stats tweaks when there's underlying issues.

I'll try batting patiently...

Yeah the tailender's issue seems to be a difficult one to fix although my tactic of spin with an attacking field from one end and pace with a defensive field from the other has been working for me. It can often take quite a few overs but generally I get the last 4 wickets for under 60 runs.

You say you obviously can't expect magic from a few stat tweaks yet I have managed to increase edges, decrease aerial shots, improved stumping possibility, fixed the keeper diving in front of the slips, decreased catches to mid-on/off and generally improved the game-play experience vastly from doing just that.

Oh and the caught and bowled's are most likely due to the low straight shot attribute and your bowlers having high anticipation.

 

[Langeveldt]

I have tried literally everything to get the tailenders to play like tailenders this game, and it just doesn't work.. it went in the bin after Tendai Chatara smashed Johnson, Harris and co around for 104 against me on pro mode (I normally take wickets fine). It's like there is some hard code that boosts numbers 9-11 regardless of their stats... I would love to hear some thoughts from other people on this, as I can't believe people can tolerate it..

 

[cooks1st100]

The problem lies in how the AI has been designed, in that they will always play in the same way regardless of the attributes but with higher attributes they will hit the ball better and pick up the line/length more easily.

Now it has been discussed that setting a tailender to zero attributes messes things up and may end up with the batsman being given random attributes as a result. I disagree with this as have tried all sorts of attributes combinations yet the issue remains the same.

I now set up my tailenders so that they will just have a fleck of an increment in either backfoot or frontfoot and a fleck in just one of the other attributes while bowling all-rounders I will assign 2 increment for each batting attribute.

Now I would say this has improved on the issue just slightly and appears to give realistic results when simulated.

As far as getting them out, see my post above yours. I basically decided to devise a plan for the tailenders and the attack with spin/defend with pace seems to work for me. I will still get a few stands but by blocking out run scoring opportunities I can get the last few wickets for not too many runs even if it still takes a while. Do not bowl with tired bowlers and switch bowlers every 3/4 overs if you are not seeing results. Do not under estimate bowling yorkers but to do this successfully you have to bowl a few short of a good length or short until you notice the batsman attempting to hit everything on the back-foot, when they do it's time to strike with the yorker.

An issue most have not picked up on is that these stands seem to happen when the top order have been skittled, some have mentioned the game trying to balance things out while my viewpoint is that it has a lot more to do with the ball being old when the tail begin to come in to bat. Unless the conditions suit a 50 over+ ball can be pretty tiresome to bowl with. The new ball and a morning session have seen me destroy the tail on many an occasion.

Hope that helps.

 

[Valaskjalf]

The problem lies in how the AI has been designed, in that they will always play in the same way regardless of the attributes but with higher attributes they will hit the ball better and pick up the line/length more easily.

Now it has been discussed that setting a tailender to zero attributes messes things up and may end up with the batsman being given random attributes as a result. I disagree with this as have tried all sorts of attributes combinations yet the issue remains the same.

I now set up my tailenders so that they will just have a fleck of an increment in either backfoot or frontfoot and a fleck in just one of the other attributes while bowling all-rounders I will assign 2 increment for each batting attribute.

Now I would say this has improved on the issue just slightly and appears to give realistic results when simulated.

As far as getting them out, see my post above yours. I basically decided to devise a plan for the tailenders and the attack with spin/defend with pace seems to work for me. I will still get a few stands but by blocking out run scoring opportunities I can get the last few wickets for not too many runs even if it still takes a while. Do not bowl with tired bowlers and switch bowlers every 3/4 overs if you are not seeing results. Do not under estimate bowling yorkers but to do this successfully you have to bowl a few short of a good length or short until you notice the batsman attempting to hit everything on the back-foot, when they do it's time to strike with the yorker.

An issue most have not picked up on is that these stands seem to happen when the top order have been skittled, some have mentioned the game trying to balance things out while my viewpoint is that it has a lot more to do with the ball being old when the tail begin to come in to bat. Unless the conditions suit a 50 over+ ball can be pretty tiresome to bowl with. The new ball and a morning session have seen me destroy the tail on many an occasion.

Hope that helps.

I also find that tailender really hate slower balls and managed to get quite a few out relatively cheaply with full, slow offcutters. They either get LBW or hit it to their favourite spot on the field - mid-off/mid-on.

 

[Markkkkk]

Has anyone tried changing the mentalities to opportunist or aggressive and seeing if that makes the AI post higher T20 scores?

 

[blockerdave]

Has anyone tried changing the mentalities to opportunist or aggressive and seeing if that makes the AI post higher T20 scores?

Nope, I might give that a go when I get a chance