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

[Valaskjalf]

...

Also how does this work if I decide to change the domestic league to that of another country? Will that domestic team just get the rating of the county team it has replaced?

That's what Im wondering as well...when I just got the game I downloaded the South African Domestic sides, which I then slotted into the Auz league - does that mean that the game sequentially substitutes stats/abilities of ie. Top 5 batsmen of OZ Team A with Top 5 Batsmen of SA Team A etc. etc. ?

What if you build an entire team/players totally from scratch? Or does the crux lie in the fact that in order to create a Domestic League from a non on-disc league (Non English / Non Aus) you can't create a NEW Domestic league, but you need to replace the Eng/Aus Leagues. So the limitations/standardisations are put in place within the setup of the League and has nothing to do with what you put in it.

That would seriously suck. If that is the case then BA made a MASSIVE blunder in putting such emphasis on the whole "because of the use of leaderboards." bulls***, because seriously....who the hell cares about XP in what is essentially an OFFLINE career mode.

 

[cricket_online]

Cheers Matt. I'll have a read through that thread.



I couldn't quote the quote but as I mentioned this is another bizarre line. How can Ross say that it is not something they've paid much attention to when AI Vs AI is a big part of career mode. If unlike myself you can bat through a session or 2 unless you are constantly hogging the strike then becomes a major part.

This concern was raised earlier as well. When you batted for long period, you found that most of the batsmen got out cheaply while slogging and you barely had a big partnership. Somehow the AI batsmen always scored more when the game was simulated after your dismissal, and struggled when you were at the crease.

 

[Chief]

I think this is a limitation of the design ethos - by trying to make the experience authentic and have less "scripting", the balance actually become random and uncontrollable at times... It can be boring, or stupidly exciting, easy or hard...

I've just hit on a vague notion related to this... Seems to me that people get wound up about "scripting" in the same way that people say "Wrestling is fake". I wonder if there's a way to rationalise this and make people comfortable with it? Have that control, but without the hollars of "it's cheating!".

 

[MattW]

I couldn't quote the quote but as I mentioned this is another bizarre line. How can Ross say that it is not something they've paid much attention to when AI Vs AI is a big part of career mode. If unlike myself you can bat through a session or 2 unless you are constantly hogging the strike then becomes a major part.

Likely because it appears to be a late change to make the career mode the single player 'be a pro' thing, there was only so much they could dedicate to an aspect of the game that would have been broadly irrelevant until they made that change.

Also how does this work if I decide to change the domestic league to that of another country? Will that domestic team just get the rating of the county team it has replaced?

Correct.

That's what Im wondering as well...when I just got the game I downloaded the South African Domestic sides, which I then slotted into the Auz league - does that mean that the game sequentially substitutes stats/abilities of ie. Top 5 batsmen of OZ Team A with Top 5 Batsmen of SA Team A etc. etc. ?

No.

Somehow the AI batsmen always scored more when the game was simulated after your dismissal, and struggled when you were at the crease.

"Somehow" is explained by the quote - the simulation engine isn't the same as the AI in game.

 

[cooks1st100]

I think this is a limitation of the design ethos - by trying to make the experience authentic and have less "scripting", the balance actually become random and uncontrollable at times... It can be boring, or stupidly exciting, easy or hard...

I've just hit on a vague notion related to this... Seems to me that people get wound up about "scripting" in the same way that people say "Wrestling is fake". I wonder if there's a way to rationalise this and make people comfortable with it? Have that control, but without the hollars of "it's cheating!".

I'm fairly sure there is some form of scripting while bowling which is more noticeable with better bowlers. It is what it is though, fair enough and doesn't detract from the gameplay in my opinion. But in this case with the teams there is just no need. If I decide to fill Hampshire with the best players in the world then they should win the majority of the games, simple as that. This would explain why you get prevented from bowling at times despite bowling well, so that the team that is supposed to do well can.

I will still test this for myself at some point otherwise I will never be convinced and if it doesn't work then I will stick to playing tours and such and just use career for batting practice once in a while.

It's absolutely ridiculous though, would you bother playing FIFA (pipe down PES fans) knowing that you could never beat Chelsea because you had chosen a lesser team even though you had replaced them with Barcelona's first XI?

RE: Simulating. I have already proved that this can be manipulated to give realistic scores both teamwise and individually outside of career mode. So that works fine in my opinion.

 

[Valaskjalf]

I think this is a limitation of the design ethos - by trying to make the experience authentic and have less "scripting", the balance actually become random and uncontrollable at times... It can be boring, or stupidly exciting, easy or hard...

I've just hit on a vague notion related to this... Seems to me that people get wound up about "scripting" in the same way that people say "Wrestling is fake". I wonder if there's a way to rationalise this and make people comfortable with it? Have that control, but without the hollars of "it's cheating!".

I think from my point of view, and possibly from others as well who almost exclusively spend time on career mode, you want to feel that you are responsible for the outcome of your decisions in-game. Otherwise there is no point....when you have as good a chance of getting a batsman out by bowling a perfect delivery as you are when your timing is totally off, and it all hinges on whether your Career bowler was lucky enough to be bowling at the exact time when the bastman was supposed to be dismissed - decided by the computer. There goes the immersion....

But the worst part of it is, we as community have this great tool called Cricket Academy, where you can fiddle and mess around to try and curb the "scriptedness" to an extent, or give your bowler a better chance at dismissed the superhuman James Anderson on his way to a 100....but you can't because even this "tool" we have is scripted. Bollocks.

 

[cricket_online]

I think this is a limitation of the design ethos - by trying to make the experience authentic and have less "scripting", the balance actually become random and uncontrollable at times... It can be boring, or stupidly exciting, easy or hard...

I've just hit on a vague notion related to this... Seems to me that people get wound up about "scripting" in the same way that people say "Wrestling is fake". I wonder if there's a way to rationalise this and make people comfortable with it? Have that control, but without the hollars of "it's cheating!".

I don't think "scripting" can ever be removed. After all it's a video game and game developers will need to define and code the game physics. And whenever you try to implement in-game physics there's bound to be scripting.

 

[MattW]

Found a way that helps demonstrate my point - when you choose a team to start with, it shows you the rankings of the teams you can pick from. So I replaced all the Australian Domestic teams with clones of the Weaklings team:


Then I loaded up the base rosters from a clean profile - the on disc teams. They aren't in order - but I think it's obvious that the second Weaklings team is the one linked to Victoria - because it's higher than all the others. Note though that they don't exactly match, which means your stat changes do have an impact - but they are still restrained by the overall 2 ranking.

 

[Chief]

I don't think "scripting" can ever be removed. After all it's a video game and game developers will need to define and code the game physics. And whenever you try to implement in-game physics there's bound to be scripting.

I think it's a PR issue - admitting that ANYTHING is scripted is a red rag.

I remember asking Ross why they couldn't pre-empt the bowling indicators when the AI were bowling to help the player batsman - He said that it's because it doesn't lock the calculation until it leaves the bowler's hand in the interests of realism. My point was: Why can't it? I don't see why making an early decision on what the AI bowler actually throws down affects things at all.

 

[cricket_online]

I think it's a PR issue - admitting that ANYTHING is scripted is a red rag.

I remember asking Ross why they couldn't pre-empt the bowling indicators when the AI were bowling to help the player batsman - He said that it's because it doesn't lock the calculation until it leaves the bowler's hand in the interests of realism. My point was: Why can't it? I don't see why making an early decision on what the AI bowler actually throws down affects things at all.

Whether anyone admits it or not, it's logical to assume there will be some level of scripting. Even the likes of Madden or FIFA has certain amount of scripting and I don't think it's bad TBH. Video games, especially sports based ones, have to straddle a fine line between realism and fun. The game has to depict nuances of the sport accurately but at the same time has to be engaging and entertaining. If the game's too dull and meandering it risks being a failure commercially and if the game's too "action packed" it risks being labelled "too arcadey". I don't think you can strike the perfect balance without any "scripting".

 

[cooks1st100]

Found a way that helps demonstrate my point - when you choose a team to start with, it shows you the rankings of the teams you can pick from. So I replaced all the Australian Domestic teams with clones of the Weaklings team:
View attachment 145628

Then I loaded up the base rosters from a clean profile - the on disc teams. They aren't in order - but I think it's obvious that the second Weaklings team is the one linked to Victoria - because it's higher than all the others. Note though that they don't exactly match, which means your stat changes do have an impact - but they are still restrained by the overall 2 ranking.

That actually gives me some hope that we may still be able to see a difference in the gameplay. As I have said if it does it will be good enough for me personally.
Ideally though Big Ant will scrap this crazy system, I just don't see any need for it. If somebody really wants to go out of their way and spend hours making teams weak just so that they can score highly on a leaderboard , let them.

 

[Langeveldt]

I just hope someone official is reading this, and cares about it.

 

[Cricket_god]

I think this is a limitation of the design ethos - by trying to make the experience authentic and have less "scripting", the balance actually become random and uncontrollable at times... It can be boring, or stupidly exciting, easy or hard...

I've just hit on a vague notion related to this... Seems to me that people get wound up about "scripting" in the same way that people say "Wrestling is fake". I wonder if there's a way to rationalise this and make people comfortable with it? Have that control, but without the hollars of "it's cheating!".

The game is heavily scripted.You can just make an opening batsman with zero skill but he will bat as well.I feel As it was left to us to create teams they had to do this.Every position seems to be scripted .

 

[cooks1st100]

I can confirm that career mode does indeed ignore our changes to attributes I'm afraid. Couldn't sleep last night so set up a career and just as I had predicted the difference was clear to see within the first couple of overs. Played around 20 overs due to the fact I was actually batting well for once, then I set up a casual game between the same two teams and it was back to the improved gameplay experience. The difference was as clear as night and day.

Such a shame, but it did confirm just how much better the game is with the tweaked attributes. So unless Big Ant can or are even willing to give us the option of having career mode normalised or not in the next patch these changes will be of no use to those who prefer to play career mode.

It's so disappointing that the devs chose to do this for the sake of a poxy leaderboard.

So it will be tour and competition mode for me from now on and the seemingly endless quest to get the game playing to it's potential, I'm sure once I do the next version will be released. I'm a bit down on cricket anyhow atm so it's back to Fishsim2 for me for a bit.

 

[Hartley]

ah
Its sad to hear that normalization hurts us in career mode , i hoped it wasn't the case. So higher priority will be changed to removing normalization and making attributes work better along with Adding Academy to career mode for patch #3.