Alright, another review coming up. Case's is gonna hate me lol. But I'm just trying to help the community so we can come up w/ something that is as close to a perfected game as possible. These are just recommendations for whenever you guys make a new patch.
So lets start w/ my experience with this updated patch.
I played two games today and won them both. When I started my first game, I noticed a dramatic difference when I was choosing teams. Each team's stats were much higher than before. I was happy until I saw Pakistan's stats. Unfortunately, Pakistan was still the best team, which was just unrealistic. Don't get me wrong - I have nothing against Pakistan. They're a great team with great players. But if you just glance at the statistics, its so clear that they're behind Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and Sri Lanka and more on par with a team like India. It's strange to play a cricket game where Australia isn't the best team. I've seen this tactic used by big companies when making games - fullfilling one promise and forgetting about another. Yes, I'm a fan of India, but I'm a bigger fan of the game of cricket. To cut it short, I've devised a method to rank each player and each team in the game.
Ideally, the ranking should be where Australia has the highest stats - by far. In the next tier of the heirarchy, South Africa, New Zealand, and Sri Lanka should be very closely matched (in the order that I stated them) - but they should also be well below Australia's stats. The third tier should include India and Pakistan - matched very evenly, but below Sri Lanka, South Africa, and New Zealand. The gap between the second and the third tier shouldn't be as great as the gap between the the first two tiers. The fourth tier should include England and West Indies - again, they shouldn't be too much lower than the third tier. The fifth tier should include just Bangladesh - their stats should be significantly above Zimbabwe's. Finally, the last tier would include Zimbabwe.
How to put stats for players:
I think everyone will agree that it is TOO easy to bat in this game. This is why a batsman shouldn't have a rating in any of his attributes over 85 (and by this, I mean only the very best will have 85, like Lara, Tendulkar, Jayasurya, Inzamam, Ponting, Kallis, Dravid, Gilchrist, etc). It will make the game more realistic - less hitting, more running, and more thinking. Furthermore, batsmen should be rated by their stats on cricinfo. Their stats should be based from their average, # of 50's, # of 100's, and matches played. A batsman who has an average of 40+ from 100 matches should be rated higher than a batsman who has an average of 40+ from 10 matches.
Bowling stats should be made similarly. They should be based from # of wickets taken, number of matches played, average (lower is better), economy, etc. Unlike batsmen - where the best batsmen will only have 85 as their max skill, bowlers can have up to 100. This makes the game more realistic. It is important to view everything in bowlers because some bowlers are strike bowlers who get wickets (like Vaas), and then there are bowlers who bowl mostly to keep the runs low (like Harbajan). It's very complex to make accurate bowling stats.
Fielding is the most difficult and frankly, I have no idea how to do it. Perhaps looking at catches taken would help, but I think it'd just be wise to leave it alone.
Anyway, I hope this helps.
