Don Bradman Cricket 17 First Impressions Thread

Ok folks was finally able to get my hands on DBC 17 and spent a few hours playing the game and here's my initial review/ first impression of DBC 17. I'm a person who prefers batting and that's why you will see majority of my review focused on the same. Before I start off I would like to say that the game is cricket gaming fans dream come true. There are a few things that still need to be sorted (I will get to them below in "Areas of improvement" section) but make no mistake, it's a pretty solid follow up to DBC 14.

When I started the game, the first thing I did was start a casual match. The game asked me to select difficulty level and I could see options such as "Easy", "Hard", "Hardest", "Custom" etc. When I saw custom setting I decided to fiddle around with "Gameplay Modifiers" before starting the match. I tweaked a few Gameplay sliders (found under settings) and the number of options provided were mind-blowing. I can honestly say that the amount of customizations available will cater to cricket fans ranging from casual ones who prefer "pick up and play" to hardcore ones who want everything just right. Gameplay modifiers is the biggest and most important addition in DBC 17 IMO. I changed the "ball marker" slider to 50 and "Max Pace" slider to 75 and started a match with custom difficulty. After I selected the teams I was asked to specify the match difficulty once again and these difficulty settings are the ones folks who played DBC 14 are familiar with ("Pro", "Veteran", "Legend" etc.) I was a bit confused as I had no idea what the difference between "Custom/Hard/Hardest" and "Pro/Veteran/Legend" difficulty levels is. In fact that's one area Big Ant can improve on, i.e. provide explanation regrding various settings and modifiers. Even when I was fiddling around with gameplay modifier sliders, I didn't have a clear idea what some of the modifiers meant and whether I should increase or decrease the slider.

Now onto the match gameplay. The visuals are a step up from DBC 14. Everything looked smooth and I didn't have any framerate or related issues. It could be that I used the standard teams and not the academy ones. Fans of grass and horticulture in general will be thrilled to know that the grass looks spectacular :) I won the toss and decided to bat in an odi. I took the stance and was eager to find out whether I will be able to see the line & length marker early. The bowler was three quarters into his runup and the ball marker turned up and I was over the moon. So folks like myself and @Pat can finally play bowling on its merit. Thank you Ross! The bowler bowled the delivery and it zipped past my bat. The feedback (another great addition) said I was late. I checked the delivery speed and it said 171 kph!!! I thought it was an error and got ready for the next delivery. Next one seemed even faster and I couldn't connect once again. This time the speed was 181 kph. The next delivery zipped by at 178 kph and I quit the match to tweak the gameplay modifiers.

I saw lot of people saying that the bowling doesn't look fast enough. Guess what folks, "Custom" difficulty is for you. Ramp up the "Max Pace" slider and Jeff Thomson in his prime would look like a military medium pacer. I had set the "Max Pace" slider to 75 and the ball speed was touching 180 kph. I shudder to think what would've happened had I changed it to 100! Next up I lowered the modifiers but found out that I had erred on the side of caution and batting seemed too easy. I tweaked the sliders some more and I think I'm close to my goldilocks zone.

The game is pretty good but it isn't a perfect game. There are still a few areas of improvement and hopefully some of them (especially 1, 2 and 3) can be patched...

1. IMO one thing which should be tweaked and prioritized to be included in a patch is Cover Drive. The cover drive range is from mid off to extra cover/wide off and if you have extra cover and mid off, you can't do much with cover drive. I tried playing on the easiest level but still couldn't get cover drive to go right of extra cover. The arc from right of extra cover to Cover point can't be driven through. Even if an occasional drive does go through the area, it shouldn't be that rare. A cover drive though the cove or cover point is one of my favorite shots and I would love for it to be added in the game the same way square drive was added in DBC 14.

2. It's way too easy to get 1s and 2s. Once you hit a ball you can take a run no matter where it goes. I hit the ball straight to extra cover, mid off, square leg etc. and took singles easily. You can maintain a run rate of 8+ without taking a risk as the fielding side can't put any pressure by blocking singles. DBC 14 had superhuman fielders but in DBC 17 the fielders are on the other extreme. Would be great if fielding within the circle can be tightened a bit.

3. The AI batsmen run too conservatively similar to how they were pre-patch in DBC 14. It would be great if AI can run aggressively and take 2s and 3s the way a human player would.

4. The front foot cut shot needs to be looked at as the animation looks as if a tailender is backing away and poking bat at the ball. I understand this may need a new animation and may not be easy to patch so this item can be addressed in a future iteration.

5. The incorrect overthrows bug is still present. I tried taking a bye and the throw from the wkt keeper went for 4. Instead of getting 5 runs I was given 4 byes.

6. Fields and field settings are similar to DBC 14 - at least in the odis. You still see weird fields such as no deep fielder on the leg side with a huge gap making it easy to hit boundaries on the leg side.

Overall DBC 17 is a great follow-up to DBC 14. Thanks @BigAntStudios, @MattW and Big Ant team for listening to cricket fans and giving us a game which I'm sure we will spend countless hours playing.
 
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Thank you big ant it's a great game love you guys and please can someone download all team with correct names
 
Anyone knows who has the best India team?

right now rajsvm team is closest you can get. Mainly for appearance, but squad is bit outdated and other things need to be setup, like lineups grounds kits etc, was in the process of curating and putting together one before cyclone hit chennai, right now on slow wireless, so cant work on it till next week. But it shouldnt take you much time to put together a solid team form the fantastic creations there. For ind stadiums i would suggest prashkhan90 in academy.
 
I saw lot of people saying that the bowling doesn't look fast enough. Guess what folks, "Custom" difficulty is for you. Ramp up the "Max Pace" slider and Jeff Thomson in his prime would look like a military medium pacer. I had set the "Max Pace" slider to 75 and the ball speed was touching 180 kph. I shudder to think what would've happened had I changed it to 100!

Oh my, the potential for forum challenges with this is great. How long can you survive at the crease against the classic Windies bowling attack with the pace and bounce turned up to their maximum? How many runs can you score against a team of spinners when the ball is more than turning square with plenty of drifty and turn, and there are fielders all around the bat?

Anyone could set the parameters and then post them to see who can do best in certain conditions. Realistically though, I imagine full pace settings will feel a bit like the last Ashes tour down under...
 
First impression so far been good but the game crashed like 4 times already and I didn't even use "Get Best". Which is not a big deal, it will be fixed I know.

In career mode though I wish they used the same statistics info presentation from DBC14. It was really nice there separating bowler/batsman stats and giving much more detailed info for each series/tournament. It had strike rate, average, high score, best figures all sort of info for both bowlers and batsmen.

This time around they put in all the batsmen/bowler stats in one single screen. Not much details too, only runs, balls, wickets, and catches.

To see your overall career stats you have to wait for a match to start. Depending what format the game is it will obviously show only that format's stats. Another way to check out your performance is by going into stats and search for your player but that only gives you info for whatever series/tourn. you're taking part in. Where is my complete stats of all performances across all formats?

I know it's not a big deal for most of you but for some reason it bothers me alot. It's not gonna stop me from playing and enjoying this beautiful game though. I just wish BigAnt would somehow tweak this in a patch and make it somewhat similar to DBC14. Not a demand, or a complaint just a wish...

Also, you can't make any changes to your player once you start your career in terms of equipments which is a little bit disappointing. Whatever bat/gloves/pads you start your career with those will be locked till the end of your career. Your appearance is editable though which is cool.
 
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First impression so far been good but the game crashed like 4 times already and I didn't even use "Get Best". Which is not a big deal, it will be fixed I know.

In career mode though I wish they used the same statistics info presentation from DBC14. It was really nice there separating bowler/batsman stats and giving much more detailed info for each series/tournament. It had strike rate, average, high score, best figures all sort of info for both bowlers and batsmen.

This time around they put in all the batsmen/bowler stats in one single screen. Not much details too, only runs, balls, wickets, and catches.

To see your overall career stats you have to wait for a match to start. Depending what format the game is it will obviously show only that format's stats. Another way to check out your performance is by going into stats and search for your player but that only gives you info for whatever series/tourn. you're taking part in. Where is my complete stats of all performances across all formats?

I know it's not a big deal for most of you but for some reason it bothers me alot. It's not gonna stop me from playing and enjoying this beautiful game though. I just wish BigAnt would somehow tweak this in a patch and make it somewhat similar to DBC14. Not a demand, or a complaint just a wish...

Any chance of a screenshot of the main player stats screen? I'll be really disappointed too if that's been reduced. I kept my own records too last time anyway (including things like best partnerships), but I was hoping it would be even more detailed in the game this time if anything. :(
 
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Here you go mate. @Saeglopur
 
I have done the lineup and players for Pakistan but I downloaded kits from someone else's team. You can find it under spiderman493.

Now on to my impression.
Really good game more edges than last time in bowling. Stunning graphics for a cricket game. Great job BigANT
 
Wait, so there's no actual overall summary page? Highest score in each format? Best bowling figures? Even something as simple as your batting average? Number of 50s/100s? Surely there's got to be a way of seeing them somewhere. That just doesn't make any sense.
Nope, only way to check these are when you coming out to bat or bowl.
 
@BigAntStudios - Is there any chance of this being expanded? I loved looking through my career stats on DBC 14 - unless it's all there already anyway and people are missing something?

I'm assuming there's a logical reason behind it otherwise, but I can't understand why that kind of information would be removed from view, particularly in the context of career mode?
 
Great reviews guys and I can not wait to pick up my copy this afternoon.
Quick question, can you complete manual stumpings?
 
Wait, so there's no actual overall summary page? Highest score in each format? Best bowling figures? Even something as simple as your batting average? Number of 50s/100s? Surely there's got to be a way of seeing them somewhere. That just doesn't make any sense.
Agree...and I would have loved to have seen a table showing my last five innings totals, a bit like in Cricket Captain.
 
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Agree...and I would have loved to have seen a table showing my last fie innings totals, a bit like in Cricket Captain.

Yeah, I always thought there was so much more that could be added, even if it was only appreciated by some people. You could have things like 'Highest Partnership - [# of runs] with [batsman name] (vs [team name])', or 'Longest innings (balls faced)', or with the new dynamic lineups 'Batting average at [batting position]' for comparison. Even things you get coming up in reality like '5th Test Hundred (2nd against Australia) and things like that would be nice. To be honest though, there's tons of stuff that could be included and I wouldn't expect most of it anyway, it's just one of those 'wouldn't it be cool if...' scenarios.

The DBC 14 stats screen was almost perfect realistically, and I looked through it frequently to see how was doing in different ways. I took notes or screenshots as I went along too, and it was rewarding when I noticed, for example that my strike rate as a bowler had improved slightly, or I could see if my economy rate was sliding. Things like averages and 50s/100s are a bare minimum I'd expect though, so it seems really weird for them to potentially be hidden away somewhere.

Does anyone know if it's the same in the competition mode? I did a massive modern-vs-classic international league a while back and loved being able to see at the end of it that, for example, Tendulkar had scored the most runs, but Bradman had a better average, while someone else had the highest score, and little details like that. I really hope they haven't disappeared.
 

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