What is a fair expectation of game quality? (Voted best thread by Zim)

[BigAntStudios]

I worked with the NFL for five years with 16 clubs as clients, in terms of money there is no sport like it on the planet. Billionaires pitted against each other that will do anything to have their photo with the trophy. It is the McDonalds of sport, the money and reach enables them to have the most finely tuned and best athletes I have ever set eyes on. Obviously their demographic correlates well with console gamers also.

 

[blockerdave]

absolutely, American Football is one of the biggest sports in two of the richest countries in the world, with a joint population in the 100s of millions and growing following worldwide.

that's why it's had so many iterations of games and why they are so polished. the money involved is unbelievable and trying to claim it's niche as it's only played in two countries is ridiculous.

i think for cricket / rugby union / rugby league / afl etc. most of us appreciate we won't get that polish, and i think all we want is good attention to detail, and to be taken seriously.

i think we also want a developer that will commit to the genre so the polish can come through the iterations, rather than 2/3 years later a new developer starts almost from scratch.

 

[Chief]

i do thing i am right about the game/simulation aspect though, and i think the fielding illustrates this.

Ashes: "who enjoys fielding? nobody. these are guys with controllers not jonty rhodes. let's let em worry about batting and bowling"

DBC: "fielding is an important part of the game. let's try and make it realistic but fun."

Moving my answer to this here, as I'm not representing AC13 now and I don't want my answers to be thought of as reflective of that game or its makers: they represent only my personal opinions and experience only.


I explained the thought process on that fielding mechanic a couple of pages back in that thread... I hope you get to try it and see what you think, but not sure if it will have changed since last I saw it.

The comments on the game/simulation line are very important in terms of keeping a cricket game commercially viable. It's a delicate balance - the market for a really hardcore cricket simulation is highly passionate, but incredibly small. You have to be more mainstream than that, especially with regards to a console product.
My aim has always been to be to make games that are accessible to the mass market, but layering in deeper, optional levels of complication for the hardcore where I can.
I've been pretty open about that all along: in any of the games, the perception that features you guys wanted were excluded because we "didn't listen" or "ignored" them is wrong - it's because their value in the wider context of the product was not equal to the cost.

I know that's not necessarily what you want to hear... but that's how it works.

 

[BigAntStudios]

I am of the same opinion, I guess as a programmer I might come at things from a different angle with regards to degrees of difficulty for implementation.

We've included manual, semi-automatic and automatic fielding in DBC14.

I do enjoy the manual fielding in our game the most though as I feel in control of the outcome, it will be interesting to see how Ashes 2013 implements a shy at the stumps or overthrows etc.. especially on last wicket stands in tight games.

 

[Chief]

I am of the same opinion, I guess as a programmer I might come at things from a different angle with regards to degrees of difficulty for implementation.

We've included manual, semi-automatic and automatic fielding in DBC14.

I do enjoy the manual fielding in our game the most though as I feel in control of the outcome, it will be interesting to see how Ashes 2013 implements a shy at the stumps or overthrows etc.. especially on last wicket stands in tight games.

The problem I've always found with some casual players (and indeed I've seen it with some games reviewers!) is that they tend not to want to concede that they are - They will stick it on hard difficulty, try and slog every ball out the park, be all out for 8 runs and say it's unrealistic scoring.
They will use hard control schemes because they think of themselves as experts, and then say the game is rubbish because they can't IMMEDIATELY pick it up.
They will choose a defensive field and bowl attacking balls, because they don't know any better, and be outraged that there's never a fielder in the right place.
They will point blank refuse to step-down difficulty OR controls, preferring to think that it's a deficiency in the game rather than themselves...

They come to it thinking that they know what they're doing, and you have to tell them they don't WITHOUT telling them.

It's a very difficult balancing act. Sometimes it's better to simplify, and sometimes it's better to cater for your core instead. But no magic formula. That's why I think of the previous games as having been "successful" (and get all defensive when people suggest otherwise!): they balanced sales figures and critical reception very nicely.

 

[MattW]

Doesn't that suggest difficulty levels are an outdated concept - just like how most games got over the idea of 'lives'.

I think eventually we can get to the point of games with adaptive difficulty that try to keep the player just at that curve between hard and frustrating.

I've long complained about the apparent link between the intelligence of the AI and timing. Basically with cricket, I think the AI should start as smart with decent timing windows - if you're playing well, make the timing windows smaller until you aren't. If you suck, make the timing windows longer, and then eventually dumb down the AI.

Obviously for now that probably needs to be paired with a difficulty level system, as it's hard to 'train' a game all the time - but if the game can figure out how good you are it should go a long way to solving the inherent problem of medium being too easy and hard too hard.

 

[Chief]

Doesn't that suggest difficulty levels are an outdated concept - just like how most games got over the idea of 'lives'.

I think eventually we can get to the point of games with adaptive difficulty that try to keep the player just at that curve between hard and frustrating.

I've long complained about the apparent link between the intelligence of the AI and timing. Basically with cricket, I think the AI should start as smart with decent timing windows - if you're playing well, make the timing windows smaller until you aren't. If you suck, make the timing windows longer, and then eventually dumb down the AI.

Obviously for now that probably needs to be paired with a difficulty level system, as it's hard to 'train' a game all the time - but if the game can figure out how good you are it should go a long way to solving the inherent problem of medium being too easy and hard too hard.

I'll tell you one thing I toyed with for a long time and agonized over...

The theory would be that you use the scores of each (in-game) player as a guideline. So, Ricky Ponting comes out: his average score is, say, around 50. Therefore the timing window is very forgiving to the player up to 20 (assuming they are attempting the right sort of shots of course). The timing window then becomes more challenging up to 50. Between 50 and 100 it becomes harder, and then above 100 you are basically on "hard" difficulty.
Eventually it becomes incredibly hard beyond 200 and if you get anywhere near 300 you're then on a timing knife-edge.

Obviously for every different player, the same rules would apply but using a lower/higher average. It wasn't a hard average either: it used the person's lowest and highest scores also as outliers to make it a bit more accurate.

Experiments were very successful in that they produced the desired sort of scores, but ethically people found it hard to swallow and felt that it was "cheating". My answer was that ALL video games have SOME smoke and mirror elements, but I was comprehensively outvoted. People just felt it was wrong.

Personally I felt it was a good leveller: to achieve a batsman's best you would have to be very good at the game, but a beginner could at least score something vaguely in keeping with the abilities of the players he was playing with (essentially, they were kept afloat by the abilities of the in-game players!)

 

[blockerdave]

I'll tell you one thing I toyed with for a long time and agonized over...

The theory would be that you use the scores of each (in-game) player as a guideline. So, Ricky Ponting comes out: his average score is, say, around 50. Therefore the timing window is very forgiving to the player up to 20 (assuming they are attempting the right sort of shots of course). The timing window then becomes more challenging up to 50. Between 50 and 100 it becomes harder, and then above 100 you are basically on "hard" difficulty.
Eventually it becomes incredibly hard beyond 200 and if you get anywhere near 300 you're then on a timing knife-edge.

Obviously for every different player, the same rules would apply but using a lower/higher average. It wasn't a hard average either: it used the person's lowest and highest scores also as outliers to make it a bit more accurate.

Experiments were very successful in that they produced the desired sort of scores, but ethically people found it hard to swallow and felt that it was "cheating". My answer was that ALL video games have SOME smoke and mirror elements, but I was comprehensively outvoted. People just felt it was wrong.

Personally I felt it was a good leveller: to achieve a batsman's best you would have to be very good at the game, but a beginner could at least score something vaguely in keeping with the abilities of the players he was playing with (essentially, they were kept afloat by the abilities of the in-game players!)

That's a very interesting perspective, and sounds like a potentially very good system. However, and it goes back to my game/simulation comparison earlier, the one problem I'd find with that is it goes against the difficulty of a batsman "getting in" then beginning to "see it big"...

it's a very fine balance. I think even we here maybe get on the wrong side of what we think would be "awesome" in terms of a detailed game, and what actually we as a gamer would be prepared to do. I LOVE the "be a pro" idea, it's one of the things that would make me buy one game over another. but I guarantee I won't be spending too much time in the field in the career mode however much "fun" the fielding mechanism is in Bradman. Yeah i'll do it a bit, and maybe more than a bit if it's fun like Ross says, but will I spend 3 days in the field as my team struggles to get the opposition out on a featherbed? - will I hell!!

same as I asked Ross about whether it's always the same difficulty to get into a national side in career mode, e.g. average over 40 in first class cricket and you will be in the Aus team for example. or will it fluctuate game to game based on a random assignment of the strength of the national team in that iteration of the career mode...e.g. you end up with an Aus late 90's early 2000s situation and you're the Stuart Law.

Now the second option there would be "awesome" in terms of a detailed game, but I am pretty sure nobody would want to be on the end of it as a gamer.

 

[Chief]

it's a very fine balance. I think even we here maybe get on the wrong side of what we think would be "awesome" in terms of a detailed game, and what actually we as a gamer would be prepared to do. I LOVE the "be a pro" idea, it's one of the things that would make me buy one game over another. but I guarantee I won't be spending too much time in the field in the career mode however much "fun" the fielding mechanism is in Bradman. Yeah i'll do it a bit, and maybe more than a bit if it's fun like Ross says, but will I spend 3 days in the field as my team struggles to get the opposition out on a featherbed? - will I hell!!

Have you played "New Star Soccer" on mobile? Wonderfully done game where you play as one player on a football team. But you only get the bits you're involved with: the "opportunities" to make your mark on the game.

I could see a great mode where you field, but it skips through only to the bits where you can make a real difference: catches or important blocks/returns... Maybe some direct hit/run out opportunities. I just don't see how they can do that without SOME sort of the "mini-game" mechanics which they have been so against.

I don't think that would get boring if it just skipped to the next important moment?

 

[barmyarmy]

Part of fielding though is the fact that when you are switched off and not concentrating is when the ball comes to you. Not sure I want that replicated in a video game though...

 

[blockerdave]

I've not played that game but I will check it out.

@barmy - yeah exactly. I think there have been a few features that people have asked for, or have said would be awesome that yeah are a part of cricket, but dunno how much of an exciting game they'd be...

 

[MattW]

However, and it goes back to my game/simulation comparison earlier, the one problem I'd find with that is it goes against the difficulty of a batsman "getting in" then beginning to "see it big"...

I agree here.

I'm thinking adaptive difficulty in terms of over many games - as you get better the game should silently up the difficulty so you're not running over the AI. Ideally that would be through smarter captaincy first off before rushing to make timing harder.

 

[Dutch]

I agree here.

I'm thinking adaptive difficulty in terms of over many games - as you get better the game should silently up the difficulty so you're not running over the AI. Ideally that would be through smarter captaincy first off before rushing to make timing harder.

Absolutely. Field settings, field settings, field settings. Not just plugging a gap but the AI reading how you are playing and working on that, adapting to your way of playing and trying to counter-punch......

 

[Dutch]

I like that kind of thanks......I suspect DB cricket will be doing just this!

 

[blockerdave]

that will be very special