Gameplay Loopholes to Avoid
EA Cricket 07 has been my game of choice and the heavily modded version makes for interesting and competetive gameplay.
However, there are a couple of major issues with the gameplay which people will not observe against the AI. These issues come to the fore when human intelligence tries to exploit all the loopholes in Local Multiplayer mode. (over several months)
1. Slow Medium pace bowlers get prodigious swing by bowling extremely short pitched deliveries (read as bowler's half of the pitch) without any pace on them.
The problem here is not only the movement (which is in the range of a couple of metres) but the extreme lack of bounce which means that these deliveries end up attacking the stumps (At an awkward height to play off the front foot, which can easily result in a glove to short leg or an LBW if you try to play off the backfoot).
The issue is further exacerbated if a right arm bowler is bowling around the wicket to a left handed batsman as the amount of movement, aided by the angle can easily be around 3 metres.
The issue explained above also applies to Spinners.
I understand that the speed of the ball and the length, determines its bounce alongwith the type of bowler who is bowling but EA and other games have got the proportion horribly wrong.
In real life, a slow medium pacer or a spinner bowling such a rank long hop would disappear out of the stadium 9 out of 10 times; but the same manifests into a vicious delivery in the game, especially in test matches.
Note: We are extremely good players and play Test Matches on Level 5 and always select the 'Hard' pitch which is supposed to offer the most bounce but it makes little difference.
2. Pace Bowlers can bowl bouncers and achieve a length which is in no man's land, a few inches short of Hookable but few inches above Cuttable/Pullable (even a dab down to third man). We have tried hooking with Power, without power, tried Square Cuts with and without power, glance of the backfoot (always with perfect timing) and played around with the positioning of the batsmen but the chances of a proper connection are very slim.
This takes the fun out of the game and coupled with unrealistic movement brings the scoring rate down to 2 RPO at the most.
I completely understand the Big Ant Bowling System (Love it to bits) and I know that it will be impossible to hit these sort of lengths consistently and it alleviates this problem to a large extent.
The inherent issue however is with the Batting System and maybe with the batting animations which does not allow one the flexibility to make the slight adjustments necessary for proper execution.
We have limited info on the BA Batting System but I hope that this has been addressed.
I request Ross or Mike to respond to both these points and confirm whether they are aware of these deficiencies with previous games and if they have avoided these pitfalls.
