Career mode in Big Ant cricket 22 just seems to be the same thing over and over again. It get's boring extremely quickly and with the same world cup being hosted by England in the same format every 4 years it is just so lame. No T20 world cup or ICC champions trophy either in career mode. Here are ways it can be improved:
- If you can't make it good leave it editable. This is my rule for games in general, especially with sports games. Take Football Manager as an example pretty much everything is editable with the editor and in-game editor and all the community customizations we are able to do. NBA2k has the MyNBA mode which is so editable that anything is possible in this mode. Cricket 22 is amazing for letting the community contribute to the graphical elements of the game but it needs to let us edit the database during a career mode. This will allow us to create tournaments, change the squads of all teams, change schedules, change game formats(bring 10 over games in). It will let us control our career mode in any way we want and make us make our own stories. Make some players play only franchise cricket make some players play just internationals.
- Stats and records. Cricket is arguably the sport that first emphasised the importance of stats and data-driven approach. A game that comes in this needs to have all the stats available or let the community add it in. A place in the career mode where we can compare our player to the GOAT's is absolutely a must. Think of the list in cricinfo of the top run scorers of all time or top wicket takers of all time and see where you would fit in will make the game so much more immersive and a challenge for us to achieve. You can then use this stat to determine how to bowl to a player how to bat to a bowler how to face a specific team in a specific venue. It will make the game so realistic and immersive. We see all the stats when a player comes to bat or bowl we need an area where we can compare the best 100 in each section at least.
- Skill point should be easy. I legit have no idea how skills are allocated anymore. It used to be so simple in ashes cricket 17 just go back to that. When we do certain things in a game we get skills to allocate to different elements. Either that or bring money into the game and we can use that to upskill. The current system is largely useless and hard to understand.
- AI needs to be realistic. AI captains changing the field every delivery or bowling for a different field makes the game awful. It just makes it make no sense at all. This needs to be so simple keep the plans simple if you leave space on the offside don't bowl on off. Bowl stump to stump. If the player has a history of getting out to short balls or the wagon wheel shows he performs badly on the offside set him up. Its all there to use but it isn't being used in a game. Its just so dumb to see the AI change the field every delivery with no real plan in mind. You can just block and get a run every ball which is just unnaceptable it can never happen in real cricket. It makes every match easily winnable from a batting perspecitve. Then other games you will hit 220 in a t20 game and the opposition will chase it down losing just 1 wicket. Truly changing the AI to be just slightly smarter will enhance the game experience 10 folds.
- Key moments. How about adding a feature that notifies you while batting or bowling of a key moment in your career. Imagine the last test of your first tour to England and your team need a very important wicket of Joe Root early on. You get notified when you come on to bowl of a key moment. And your nerves are up your confidence is low but you have to get Root out in your next spell of 4 or 5 overs to achieve the key moment goal. Or your First Oz tour you have to as a batsmen face of Starc and Hazlewood without losing your wicket. Getting these moments will give you more points to spend on skills will be so useful and add a further challenge to the game instead of boring old game after game time after time. Even in first class cricket when you get close to your first 50 or your debut match are key moments. Or a random match where a scout is watching and you have to perform.
These are just some simple suggestions but just doing the first two will make the game mode far better and immersive for our players. We can already see that cricket 24 is no different to cricket 22 except in menu colour and some new licences why not spend time working on features rather than licences that the community do an excellent job of rectifying anyway.
- If you can't make it good leave it editable. This is my rule for games in general, especially with sports games. Take Football Manager as an example pretty much everything is editable with the editor and in-game editor and all the community customizations we are able to do. NBA2k has the MyNBA mode which is so editable that anything is possible in this mode. Cricket 22 is amazing for letting the community contribute to the graphical elements of the game but it needs to let us edit the database during a career mode. This will allow us to create tournaments, change the squads of all teams, change schedules, change game formats(bring 10 over games in). It will let us control our career mode in any way we want and make us make our own stories. Make some players play only franchise cricket make some players play just internationals.
- Stats and records. Cricket is arguably the sport that first emphasised the importance of stats and data-driven approach. A game that comes in this needs to have all the stats available or let the community add it in. A place in the career mode where we can compare our player to the GOAT's is absolutely a must. Think of the list in cricinfo of the top run scorers of all time or top wicket takers of all time and see where you would fit in will make the game so much more immersive and a challenge for us to achieve. You can then use this stat to determine how to bowl to a player how to bat to a bowler how to face a specific team in a specific venue. It will make the game so realistic and immersive. We see all the stats when a player comes to bat or bowl we need an area where we can compare the best 100 in each section at least.
- Skill point should be easy. I legit have no idea how skills are allocated anymore. It used to be so simple in ashes cricket 17 just go back to that. When we do certain things in a game we get skills to allocate to different elements. Either that or bring money into the game and we can use that to upskill. The current system is largely useless and hard to understand.
- AI needs to be realistic. AI captains changing the field every delivery or bowling for a different field makes the game awful. It just makes it make no sense at all. This needs to be so simple keep the plans simple if you leave space on the offside don't bowl on off. Bowl stump to stump. If the player has a history of getting out to short balls or the wagon wheel shows he performs badly on the offside set him up. Its all there to use but it isn't being used in a game. Its just so dumb to see the AI change the field every delivery with no real plan in mind. You can just block and get a run every ball which is just unnaceptable it can never happen in real cricket. It makes every match easily winnable from a batting perspecitve. Then other games you will hit 220 in a t20 game and the opposition will chase it down losing just 1 wicket. Truly changing the AI to be just slightly smarter will enhance the game experience 10 folds.
- Key moments. How about adding a feature that notifies you while batting or bowling of a key moment in your career. Imagine the last test of your first tour to England and your team need a very important wicket of Joe Root early on. You get notified when you come on to bowl of a key moment. And your nerves are up your confidence is low but you have to get Root out in your next spell of 4 or 5 overs to achieve the key moment goal. Or your First Oz tour you have to as a batsmen face of Starc and Hazlewood without losing your wicket. Getting these moments will give you more points to spend on skills will be so useful and add a further challenge to the game instead of boring old game after game time after time. Even in first class cricket when you get close to your first 50 or your debut match are key moments. Or a random match where a scout is watching and you have to perform.
These are just some simple suggestions but just doing the first two will make the game mode far better and immersive for our players. We can already see that cricket 24 is no different to cricket 22 except in menu colour and some new licences why not spend time working on features rather than licences that the community do an excellent job of rectifying anyway.
