Cheers for the constructive reply pal! Anyway truth be told for me personally I dont think much from this current game should be taken over to the next game. I completely agree there should be a team career mode in any future game and the academy needs work (or a complete re-think as to whether its worth it or not?). I hope there is a patch for those who still play this game, but personally I would want them to just put this game in the past and move on, time to get creative about the next one(?), maybe start having a chat with all those unemployed cricketers for a start lol!!!
I'd give the match experience 6/10. I'm not sure what's easier as a developer; to build on what you have or start a fresh.
I'm probably gonna go completely off topic here and ramble about the academy.
I think the academy is great in terms of getting around licensing issues. However, having used it as much as playing the game, the are still glaring problems not just to the academy but that then seemingly effect other areas (placement of fielders and probably international selections in career mode). Simple things are really annoying: not being able to apply downloaded bats when in the equipment page of a player are really annoying or not being able to share kits like bats or transfer for them (from a men's to women's team).
The kit creation itself allows some great kits to be designed but it's also hindered by basically painting a blank canvas. It can take ages to get things in the right place or symettrical. Slots on sleeves, chest, collars etc for sponsors might be better and would make it easier. I reckon one possible reason we don't see long sleeve shirts in the game is because when you add a logo design to a short sleeve shirt it can look great, when you preview the long sleeve variation it looks silly because there's some big random patch of colour or a design from the logo that is hidden when designing in short sleeves. In PES when you create a kit you can use a template and just upload a PNG like this:
https://www.pes-patch.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Milan-Kits.png and the kits in the game look great.
This is something I've said before but player creation and editing could be made more consistent and straight forward by removing the skills from view. Instead just have a rating system for a player (World Class, Amateur, County etc). With the set ratings for different levels you'll get consistency for the most part, it'll make it easier testing the game for one. I've been tweaking skill settings for six months to see what difference it makes and I couldn't tell if you a World Class player should be rated 90 or 40 or a tail ender should be rated 5 or 20. It's difficult to know when they are underpowered or overpowered. Alongside this add different individual specialities each player can have for batting, bowling and fielding. Back foot specialist, Death Over specialist, Run Out speciliast. Stuff like that.
You could also incorporate these skills into career mode so rather than just going up in skill points you
learn new deliveries, shots, fielding techniques or getting a faster progression at them - bascially like a skill tree you see in other games. You could become a 'Wrong Un Specialist' if you get five wickets bowling googlies or bowl 500 googlies. In the background your skills go up for bowling the googly. Same with learning to execute the Dilscoop or that thing where fielders jump in the air on the boundary and push the ball back in and catch it, could make fielding more interesting. I dunno I'm waffling now.
