Patch #2 Must Fixes

[Jadel]

Try reading it again .. sound out the words you dont understand.

 

[The_Pharoah]

Try reading it again .. sound out the words you dont understand.

lol okay mate...my bad...obviously didn't read in full - I apologise for the rant.

 

[T.J.Hooker]

This is a recurring theme in many threads right throughout the Don Bradman boards. People saying well "I couldn't possibly want X, so I hope it doesn't get implemented". Options for people who aren't the same as us are important.

This is my point. Pharoah here is saying "slow the deliveries down, I haven't got time!", but the deliveries are already in slow motion anyway and slowing them further still just makes it less fun for everyone who is comfortable with the pace.

Obviously you're going to have opposing camps of players on an issue like that without scaling options.

 

[kingoffuel]

The batting, fielding and camera angles need to be addressed. The bowling is fun and works really well.

Batting:
The stumping and run out issue.
And the "automatic sliding" when playing an early shot.

Fielding:
Fielders slide unnecessarily and unrealistically when stopping or catching a ball.
Also they sometimes seem to run behind the ball instead of using angles to cut it off.

Cameras:
The ball always seems to be at the center of the camera. A better TV style broadcast camera would give it a much more authentic look and feel.

 

[Mr Snrub]

This is my point. Pharoah here is saying "slow the deliveries down, I haven't got time!", but the deliveries are already in slow motion anyway and slowing them further still just makes it less fun for everyone who is comfortable with the pace.

Obviously you're going to have opposing camps of players on an issue like that without scaling options.

Yeah I appreciate that, but it really does not seem that the majority of players are comfortable with the pace on the medium (Pro) and higher levels. Or more to the point, the time it takes to pick length, line and react with two appropriate thumb stick choices. As someone else has said, they have to forget about modifiers altogether and focus only on those two things as there's just not time.

I think it's a great thing that they game has some real range in the difficulty. Previous cricket games have been ridiculously easy to master. Even a large number of the better players are talking about how good it is that they're being really pushed to keep up with the ball. A recent poster has said that they feel almost like they're just about as good against Mitchell Johnson in this game as they'd be against him in real life and I guess that shows that they're saying they're absolutely terrible against the better pace bowlers.

Like you said there are bound to be opposing camps when it comes to areas like this and really two opposing camps on an issue as large as batting isn't ideal.

Surely the idea isn't to have some people giving up on the game after having a really good go for a month or so and then parting with it? I'm not talking about people here at Planet Cricket, or any hardcore fans. There's bound to be a segment of that going on in the casual purchase section of the audience after a while.

Options to scale pace exist in games like Fifa and I guess if it was somehow implemented here with only a very small difference between normal, fast and slow, it'd be enough to help those in need.

I don't agree with Pharoah saying above that he'd like to score a century every outing, because he bought the game (or something like that anyhow), but I do feel some very minor alteration by way of optional only changes would be a good thing.

 

[MattW]

How bad for the flow do people needing more time find the animation for bowlers online? If you had that brief freeze of the bowler just as they release their ball, you could show the circle and have some extra time to see it.

Perhaps they could then make that a checkbox option for a short delay, and apply an appropriate scaling to the leaderboard points/XP for the use of extra aids?

 

[Jadel]

It seems like amateur has auto footwork for both front and back as well as lateral.

Then pro has neither.

I think the should keep lateral in the first difficulty jump, and only remove both on the next level after that.

I think that might be enough

 

[StinkyBoHoon]

I'd agree with that, in all honesty, having to pre-meditate the foot you play off isn't that bad, it means you can get suckered in to playing off the wrong foot. the lateral corrections would be good, as where the batting falls down is it's hard to cash in on sloppy deliveries. struggling to get to 20 against good bowling is a fair enough challenge. but you will also struggle to get to 20 against shoddy bowling because you need to make too many adjustments to smash a short wide ball, or something too full on your legs, to the boundary.

 

[cricket_online]

This is my point. Pharoah here is saying "slow the deliveries down, I haven't got time!", but the deliveries are already in slow motion anyway and slowing them further still just makes it less fun for everyone who is comfortable with the pace.

Obviously you're going to have opposing camps of players on an issue like that without scaling options.

Best option is to have a slider setting for determining line & length, i.e. the colored circle around the ball. As Matt has mentioned, if the bowler has to be slowed down for the same, so be it. But it's a better option than slowing down the bowling as you want to be hurried when faced with a bowler bowling in excess of 150 kph.

 

[T.J.Hooker]

Yeah I appreciate that, but it really does not seem that the majority of players are comfortable with the pace on the medium (Pro) and higher levels. Or more to the point, the time it takes to pick length, line and react with two appropriate thumb stick choices. As someone else has said, they have to forget about modifiers altogether and focus only on those two things as there's just not time.

The modifiers issue is just an inherent problem with a cricket shot selection control schemes, and how similar you want your shot selection process to be to real batting.

In real life shots evolve and you have a degree of control throughout the process. You prepare your backlift and footwork for an off drive, say. Right at the instant before you execute the downswing you've still got a choice of the exact placement, how much power, whether you want to go over the top or not. You could probably still pull a solid block out if the delivery is a bit short of the half volley.

Clearly, mapping those variations to buttons is only a very rough approximation of the process, and it's going to require a twitch response of some sort unless you're going to go for psychic foreknowledge or massively reduced speeds, or some sort of freeze frame in delivery as suggested a couple of posts ago.

Some of the stuff players are identifying as "pre-meditating" are dead similar to real life batting issues, though. Reducing your shot selection under pressure of pace or movement is just part of the game, and every player has had to do it, for one example. Having a couple of key shot choice issues in mind at delivery is just a good, solid batting strategy, and a situation where I hold down two triggers for a power shot, but prepared to release one to defend a good delivery as my most likely shot choice, for instance, feels like a reasonably satisfying analogue of this.

If you want the same sort of time to make your shot choice that you had with the donut then yeah, you need a pre-delivery indicator or a huge delivery slowdown, and that is a totally different design philosophy. I totally see the appeal though because being able to plan your shot at leisure, almost like you plan a golf shot, was one of the things I enjoyed about the donut.

It's a shame they can't use the speed of the right stick to control power because you'd open up a whole load of options for differentiating shot choices without requiring a reaction-time-consuming button modifier.

 

[Biggs]

having to pre-meditate the foot you play off isn't that bad, it means you can get suckered in to playing off the wrong foot.

I think to a degree, in real cricket you pre-meditate front or backfoot movements anyway. The difference is in real-movement you have time to change your initial movements organically. You can move forward initially, then rock back onto the backfoot if it's a shorter ball... Evolution gives us the ability to quickly identify line and length. Since none of us play international-level cricket, I would assume after a while facing 140kmph bowling becomes relatively easy once you get used to the pace and you get better and identifying deliveries to go back and forward to. In the game, once you've selected front or back foot, that window for change closes and you can't change your mind as the ball hits mid-pitch to rock onto the back foot, because of the timing window and other factors. I imagine that's something BigAnt will look into in any follow-up game, the ability for the footwork change to not "time out" so you can switch between front or back-foot at any moment.

Problem is we haven't yet evolved the ability to transfer those skills to our thumbs that drive a controller. Furthermore, while you might have reasonably good abilities judging a delivery in the game without pre-meditating and then moving your thumbs quickly, the rest of the system is controlled by 1's and 0's which aren't as fast as the human brain, muscles and so on.

So to have the computer accurately replicate 140kmph would make it impossible to play the game, simply because hand-eye-computer co-ordination is minute-seconds out from real movement.

That being said, I think the ball-speed is absolutely fine in the game and getting used to the varying pace in PRO mode takes some time, but is reasonably easy once you get over the learning curve. The issues with batting comes to down the oft-repeated "value for shots" opinion, that many have identified.

The fielding is the biggest issue to batting at the moment. The field sets, the unbeatable bowler who stops all drives, the impossible mid-on/mid-off diving catches and so on. You're not getting value for correctly executed shots when you do pick the right shot, time it well... and square leg plucks it millimeters from the ground for a catch that simply wouldn't happen in a real game, or would maybe happen once in a blue moon. Problem is, while visually these catches have spectacular animations, they happen 1 in 3 times, where it should be something like 1 in 100.

I think of the MANY things that are right in the game, the bowling is pretty much note perfect, fatigue needs to be fixed but that's a pretty easy job... the speeds are fine, if you want a more difficult pace just play at a higher difficulty. Currently though, that higher difficulty means the fielding and batting gets much too hard much to quickly, but I have no doubt that'll all get ironed out in patch two.

 

[dhump]

I agree with most if the points made above about judging the bowling. I my self is not able to play fast bowler on merit and mostly play pre-meditated front foot shots (I got better and better in doing so as I progress) but this is not the solution in my opinion. I think avg speed a fresh fast bowler is bowling in game is around 145-150 KPH with some random balls I saw of around 155 KPH (I guess from Steyn) I dont think that it is possible to ball anything above 150 KPH every ball in game (as in reality) and fast bowlers are bowling around 140-145 window mostly which is fine.

Now what I think will give us more time to judge is some how much clear or bigger view of bowler and some kind of visible change in release position (to which we actually react in reality) to guess the length of the ball. I am not sure but still we have difference in release position for short and full deliveries but it is no clear enough to be used as indicator to pick up the length.

In counter to this to make things more interesting more visible swing and seam movement can be introduced as currently there is hardly ever you see visible seam and swing from fast bowlers and in reality when a bowler is really moving the ball it is quite obvious. This way the balance factor will still remain in the game and shining the ball can actually give you more benefit.

Just my opinion may be others can advice on this if it is something useful in there opinion or not.

 

[Offie]

I wonder if the leaderboard sends info back to big ant about how people are doing in terms of batting and bowling averages in the career mode? If they can see that people really are struggling averages wise generally, it might precipitate a change, if on the other hand we're a vocal minority who can't get our averages above 5 then we'll get nothing!

 

[venkniralac]

will patch 2 be applied to pc version before release or we have to download it?

 

[Mr Snrub]

The modifiers issue is just an inherent problem with a cricket shot selection control schemes, and how similar you want your shot selection process to be to real batting.

In real life shots evolve and you have a degree of control throughout the process. You prepare your backlift and footwork for an off drive, say. Right at the instant before you execute the downswing you've still got a choice of the exact placement, how much power, whether you want to go over the top or not. You could probably still pull a solid block out if the delivery is a bit short of the half volley.

Clearly, mapping those variations to buttons is only a very rough approximation of the process, and it's going to require a twitch response of some sort unless you're going to go for psychic foreknowledge or massively reduced speeds, or some sort of freeze frame in delivery as suggested a couple of posts ago.

Some of the stuff players are identifying as "pre-meditating" are dead similar to real life batting issues, though. Reducing your shot selection under pressure of pace or movement is just part of the game, and every player has had to do it, for one example. Having a couple of key shot choice issues in mind at delivery is just a good, solid batting strategy, and a situation where I hold down two triggers for a power shot, but prepared to release one to defend a good delivery as my most likely shot choice, for instance, feels like a reasonably satisfying analogue of this.

Agree with just about all of this.

If you want the same sort of time to make your shot choice that you had with the donut then yeah, you need a pre-delivery indicator or a huge delivery slowdown, and that is a totally different design philosophy.

Not in any way what I'm saying. The donut gave you some seconds to see what was going on. I've been talking 2-3 extra frames per second on lower difficulties only. A huge difference and NO donut.

I totally see the appeal though because being able to plan your shot at leisure, almost like you plan a golf shot, was one of the things I enjoyed about the donut.

There's no mutual appeal to see, because what you're saying here is completely foreign to what I actually said. There's no way I'd want this to happen.

I myself, am actually perfectly okay with the speed and difficulty of countering it myself and am doing okay in my career with a decent 50 in my first 6 or 7 games. I am not self orientated and do care that people not having time to switch between front and back foot (mostly the issue) are able to learn to switch correctly.

There needs to be difficulty levels for most of the audience. Given that this is Planet Cricket and even here people are discussing the difficulty of batting, I'd imagine that out there in the casual-semi fan gaming area, that there will be people without the time we'd likely have, who will give up on the game at some point.

I'd really like them to be able to play something semi-authentic, if not on Rookie then maybe Amateur with it's own separate Leaderboard, or maybe just no Leaderboard. It's a shame that batting on Amateur is quite a lot too easy and the bowling is a little too because right now that difficulty wouldn't even suit casuals wanting a career in the longer term.

It's a shame they can't use the speed of the right stick to control power because you'd open up a whole load of options for differentiating shot choices without requiring a reaction-time-consuming button modifier.

It'd be very hard for people reproduce the shots they are looking for consistently. If it could work, that would be a good idea. Just can't see that level of precision working well with the analogue sticks.