Patch #2 Must Fixes

[Biggs]

That's the beautiful irony of this game. We were all worried about every other feature of the game we never stopped to think about fielding and turns out that's the bit that's broken. Batting is fine, once fielding is fixed. Bowling is fine, once batters stop getting out to over-powered fielding and the Hellicopter-shot easter-egg is easily found so just fix the f'n Avengers in the outfield and bam, cricket game done.


P.S I average 18 in T20's now. Bow down to the... bow down to the king...

 

[The_Pharoah]

honestly, it's the fielding is the issue. set a proper field, with realistic abilities, and batting is so much easier.

Right now, especially in career mode, you get out for 5 the first time you mistime a shot, because you haven?t got value for the few shots you?ve played well because the bastard lovechild of superman and thor has stopped everything 30 metres either side of him? and the front foot cover drive you premeditated to a bouncer that should have dropped safe has been caught by a guy who made Usain Bolt look like Steven Hawking to cover the distance to get there and Dick Fosbury look like well, still Steven Hawking, to leap the final 7 metres he couldn?t be arsed to run? so you have no leeway. And no chance to make a couple of mistakes but survive and stay out and learn from them and build up the player skills? it?s one mistake, out, and next innings where you?re feeling pressure to pick up your piss poor average and not make the same mistake again and oh my god there?s that steroid-freak, super agile ------ in the covers again, that?s already 12 runs I?ve just been robbed of and oh, there?s a bouncer I?ll hook it for six oh thank god it?s gone in front of square, no mid wicket? what?s that, deep backward square leg has caught me 2 metres from the rope at deep mid wicket, WTAF?

Sometimes it actually feels like my game has somehow failed their ?piracy? check and I?m getting the stitched up ?all the fielders are amazing? version, and I?m sat there thinking ?but I paid you bastards??

Fix fielding, and I guarantee 90% of the bitching about batting disappears overnight.

almost choked on my dinner reading that lol. Totally agree. I have been out quite a few times to 'superhuman' fielders (getting caught at MidOff by the guy at MidOn off a popped drive).

 

[sami ullah khan]

Another area that I struggle with constantly is blocking. I can only block against spinner and even that I have to premeditate. I don't block against pacers as I am always on front foot and a short delivery will always lob up into the air for the ever present silly mid off. I don't think block needed to be played with R2. A flick back of the right stick should have been the ideal way. If blocking was not overly complex, may be we could have been better at longer versions of the game.

 

[dhump]

honestly, it's the fielding is the issue. set a proper field, with realistic abilities, and batting is so much easier.

Right now, especially in career mode, you get out for 5 the first time you mistime a shot, because you haven?t got value for the few shots you?ve played well because the bastard lovechild of superman and thor has stopped everything 30 metres either side of him? and the front foot cover drive you premeditated to a bouncer that should have dropped safe has been caught by a guy who made Usain Bolt look like Steven Hawking to cover the distance to get there and Dick Fosbury look like well, still Steven Hawking, to leap the final 7 metres he couldn?t be arsed to run? so you have no leeway. And no chance to make a couple of mistakes but survive and stay out and learn from them and build up the player skills? it?s one mistake, out, and next innings where you?re feeling pressure to pick up your piss poor average and not make the same mistake again and oh my god there?s that steroid-freak, super agile ------ in the covers again, that?s already 12 runs I?ve just been robbed of and oh, there?s a bouncer I?ll hook it for six oh thank god it?s gone in front of square, no mid wicket? what?s that, deep backward square leg has caught me 2 metres from the rope at deep mid wicket, WTAF?

Sometimes it actually feels like my game has somehow failed their ?piracy? check and I?m getting the stitched up ?all the fielders are amazing? version, and I?m sat there thinking ?but I paid you bastards??

Fix fielding, and I guarantee 90% of the bitching about batting disappears overnight.

This is some how my biggest concern when fielders are normalized. ATM I dont play many front foot drives and cover drives because anything I mistime and flash will catch it 99%. But when fielders are normalized I dont want bouncers to be smashed for fours straight and mid off by a straight or cover drive. I would prefer a short sweet spot on the bat for straight shots and anything else will be a dull drop of ball or going high in the air or leading thick edge to slips if bouncer are tried to be played with flat bat.

Anything above blade face should not even pass the area of pitch if played with, so we should not have straight drives going to boundary on bouncers (This happened to me at times while batting when fielders are inside the circle).

Same should be the case for straight drives, when bowler is not stopping everything marker for perfectly time straight drive should be very small (as it is in reality). Miss timed shot should either fly in a manner that it can be caught by close fielders (mid on/mid off) or just rolling slowly to edge of circle if on the ground and not racing to the boundary.

 

[Alberts]

That's the beautiful irony of this game. We were all worried about every other feature of the game we never stopped to think about fielding and turns out that's the bit that's broken. Batting is fine, once fielding is fixed. Bowling is fine, once batters stop getting out to over-powered fielding and the Hellicopter-shot easter-egg is easily found so just fix the f'n Avengers in the outfield and bam, cricket game done.


P.S I average 18 in T20's now. Bow down to the... bow down to the king...

Bowling is not fine in the slightest. Even the fittest bowlers are buggered after a whole 3-4 overs and it seems that long breaks don't do any good for their pace. It seems they didn't ever actually see a bowler at test level steaming in for over number 26 of the innings, breaking the 145 barrier yet again. In this game I'd be surprised to see Johnson make 125kmph after 10 overs, let alone 130, let alone anything even approaching 140.

Then there's the AI batting (and bowling for that matter) that need some serious tweaks. The fact that most wickets are either bowled (or LBW) with the bat over their head, caught after trying to loft their 5th shot over the top of the over (in the 3rd over a test match, already 3 wickets down) or run out making another suicidal run is comical. This is particularly odd when edges, the most common mode of dismissal is a rarity worth videos being posted a lot of the time (for the AI, as a human player I edge plenty).

There are issues with the fielding (and particularly the fields), but we need to make sure we don't overlook other serious issues which need serious work for patch 2.

 

[Guybrush Threep]

Well I can honestly say I find it easier facing guys bowling 130 - 140 km/h in real life than I do in this game. I really think that there needs to be additional forewarning of some kind if we are to play each delivery on its merits. Yes in real life there is a degree of anticipation but this is based on so many minute details a cricket game on 2D object cannot possibly replicate.

How many can honestly say they can pick up the length of a ball, decide what shot to play, in which direction and whether the shot is a block, regular, aggressive or leave?

Batting should not be about pre-meditating.

 

[blockerdave]

@dhump - i think now, playing front foot to a short ball (even a good length ball landing at the "short" end of that range) will result in the ball getting big on you and you mistiming it - certainly i don't smash it for four.

the biggest issue with that is even if it goes towards a "safe" area, the fielder will get and you will be out.

 

[cricket_online]

@Biggs, you're spot on... sometimes batting in career mode really isn't fun at all when you're getting out for low score after low score, no end in sight, it's a frustrating grind. that's when i'll usually go and play a quick T10 or two in casual mode, just getting used to hitting the ball and not worrying if i'm out, i've got another guy along... usually helps me a bit.

i keep at it, and still find it fun "overall" because a)i'm still bad enough that i think 90% of my dismissals or more are entirely my fault and i can usually pinpoint what i did wrong, and b)the speed of the first patch makes me confident the other things will be addressed.

to bring this back to an element of on topicness, for me, Big Ant should take longer over the second patch but make sure the following things are patched:

1) Pace bowler stamina/speed cliff - the speed reductions and not getting back up for 2nd or 3rd spells is uber ridiculous

2) AI field settings - come on, every cricket game in history (even Ashes 13!) knew what a realistic field looked like

3) fielder abilities -
i) as you say, they cover a FAR wider area than they should... i had it illustrated yesterday, one ball i hit a drive, well timed, probably , 15 metres to the right of extra cover - not only did i not get my four but i didn't even have time for a single. very next ball, an even better timed shot 15 metres to the left of extra cover with the exact same result. That's 8 runs i've been robbed of and when I average less than 8 that's enormous.
ii) as i mentioned elsewhere, for every "metre" the fielder has to cover, there should be an appreciable reduction in their ability to catch or even stop a ball. running 50 metres and taking a diving one-handed catch should be something that happens every 100hrs of gameplay, if ever, not once every game.
iii) as you say, the bowler should not be stopping everything going near him... he should have an appreciable "follow through" and during the follow through window his ability to stop anything that doesn't actually hit him should be reduced by circa 95%

4) improve AI batting to make career bowling more of a challenge or at least add variable difficulty to allow say batting on pro bowling on veteran.

almost every other issue, including people moaning about the difficulty of batting will be improved by fixing these four issues. every thing else is cosmetic, or misunderstanding the cause of the issue. i appreciate these may not be easy fixes, but i would honestly rather the next patch come in 5 or 6 months and fix these than be rushed out before the PC release and be more "cosmetic". i would lose a lot of enthusiasm for the game and big ant in general if a patch was released that didn't fix these fundamentals.

as i say, i appreciate that some or all of these are probably not easy fixes, and i am hugely sympathetic to the issue of trying to fix one issue but that resulting in big changes that causes a lot of issues in other areas. that's why i say let the patch wait, get it right. we don't need another patch in a month that just stops the keeper knocking down the stumps or gives us a nicer scorecard.

I have to say that point # 4 about improved AI batting is a must for game to have longevity in modes other than the career mode. In all other human/user vs AI modes (Tour, Competition, League, Test series, casual Tests/odis), AI batting poses no challenge whatsoever and you have to simulate AI innings to get realistic or challenging scores. This needs to be fixed as I want to play Tests against AI where I'm hammered for 600 on a flat pitch.

 

[Alberts]

@dhump - i think now, playing front foot to a short ball (even a good length ball landing at the "short" end of that range) will result in the ball getting big on you and you mistiming it - certainly i don't smash it for four.

the biggest issue with that is even if it goes towards a "safe" area, the fielder will get and you will be out.

It does seem to be something that needs to be looked at. I think a lot of it is to do with reaction times, agility and acceleration all being a bit too quick.

To be honest, it's gotten to the point I've put the game down for the moment. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry at times. The AI constantly mauling the stumps, and I mean, just destroying them without any mercy ball after ball was absolutely hysterical, but hitting a lofted shot that isn't particularly high, only to watch long on run all the way to square of the wicket to take a catch is just a bit... odd. The bowler makes some absolutely stunning stops in his follow through as well.

I think half the issue is that the fielding doesn't have enough limiting factors included. Reactions and agility limitations (that is, how quickly the bowler can stop themselves in their follow through, react and then move to catch/ stop a ball) should all but stop 90%+ of those incidents of the bowler fielding. I mean, watching a 150kmph+ bowler power in from a long run up, bowl at middle stump, have it middled a foot over his head, and then witness him reacting from the moment it touches the bat and getting a hand to it is comical to watch, yet if it's in his reach he will. To be blunt this is a huge problem.

There isn't enough momentum with the fielders, they basically just go from 0 to pace and given that in my experience they react as it happens (that is, they don't seem to have reaction times, though this is something that should probably be directly checked). This is an area that needs a lot of tweaking to get it right, particularly as it is one that can lead to a lot of frustration. This all said, I don't think it's as huge a problem as the pace bowlers losing 20-30kmph after only 4-6 overs or the AI batting issues or even the field placements problems.

 

[StinkyBoHoon]

I honestly think fielding is fine, it's the field placements that suck.

when you're a pace bowler, you shouldn't be able to set spinning fields to batsmen. they should set slip cordons and bowl for edges. the ground the fielders cover isn't that much of a problem to me, it's just there are always 10 of them saving runs or catching in the deep.

they set an ODI field and pepper you with slower balls and try and cramp you up bowling on leg. funnily enough I do a lot better in FC cricket when I just decide to play limited over slogs.

 

[blockerdave]

it's definitely both, but the placements exacerbate it

 

[Alberts]

I honestly think fielding is fine, it's the field placements that suck.

when you're a pace bowler, you shouldn't be able to set spinning fields to batsmen. they should set slip cordons and bowl for edges. the ground the fielders cover isn't that much of a problem to me, it's just there are always 10 of them saving runs or catching in the deep.

they set an ODI field and pepper you with slower balls and try and cramp you up bowling on leg. funnily enough I do a lot better in FC cricket when I just decide to play limited over slogs.

My first century at first class level came by just smashing them off my pads, racing to 100 off 81 balls. Bowling down leg is another problem with the AI.

 

[timma]

I know its just nitpicking, but I don't like it that you can't adjust small details after you start the career mode. Things like changing the teams uniforms etc, should be able to be changed during the career mode. Also, if I want a new haircut or a new coloured bat grip I should be able to damn well change these if I wanted to.

 

[The_Pharoah]

Nah, the whole fielding process (ie. field settings and fielders themselves) is a bit wonky - as an example, watch highlights from say a domestic 4 day game between say Qld and NSW. Watch how fielders move, how easy it is to glide shots through gaps, past fielders, right back past the bowler, how many nicks there are, how accurate the bowling is, etc...and compare it to ingame. Big difference.

I'm very interested in hearing from @Ross.

 

[dhump]

@dhump - i think now, playing front foot to a short ball (even a good length ball landing at the "short" end of that range) will result in the ball getting big on you and you mistiming it - certainly i don't smash it for four.

the biggest issue with that is even if it goes towards a "safe" area, the fielder will get and you will be out.

True...Although possibilities are there but not playing straight back to the bowler it should go Deep Extra Cover or Cow Corner but if only played with cross bat. Playing a proper shot with straight bat to a short ball is not possible.

For e.g. see those 2 pull shots from 3:17 mark, both of them are kind of played on the front foot specially the 2nd one is played on the front foot and went for six between cow corner and mid off.

For the last issue you cannot time is properly in reality and it should not get passed bowler mostly or go high in the air (realistically speaking I dont think of playing a short or shortish good length ball with straight bat and getting passed the 30 yard circle.

I was able to hit quite a few boundaries over the bowler head while playing a straight shot on a short balls (an by short I mean really short) and they were not hitting any close to the middle of the bat but approx at the makers name. I feel that sweet spot area or face of the bat needs to be modified(if possible).

Another Issue I feel from day 1 is the weight of the ball or power of batsman or the bat needs to be adjusted. I feel that ball really fly too high in the air when hit or the batsman is too strong when he smashes the ball wrongs it really goes way too much into the air. May be I am tricked into this effect due to fielder speed but I am not sure.