Improvements For The Next Title
- Thread starter Gamergq
- Start date
Lee1981
International Coach
How about spinners not being able to turn the ball 90 degrees at any time, why cant spinners get no hint of turn for a while and then out of no where one turns sharply with a bit of bounce just to keep you interested.
superfreddie
Club Captain
When batting with hud off the pitch marker appears too late to react to for me. I think they should introduce a sliding marker which you can set yourself which dictates when the marker appears, this way you could set it to your own difficulty and it would be a lot more realistic as in real cricket where you have a small amount of time to choose your shot.
At the moment you either have all the time in the world with hud on, or no chance of reacting with hud off.
At the moment you either have all the time in the world with hud on, or no chance of reacting with hud off.
Watson33
Club Cricketer
Yeah, this is a good point, spinners are far too effective in the game on ANY pitch, yes fair play some pitches will spin massive amounts but not ever pitch does.
lazy_chesnut
International Coach
Here's something I started writing a while ago. Not finished, but I've lost the motivation to play any more.
Confidence
Consecutive boundaries (or maybe even one ball apart) should have a multiplier effect on confidence gained for that ball. If I bash three fours in a row, I expect to be very confident. This is important in limited overs games, where a new batsman comes to the crease in the last few overs. If he tries to score quickly immediately and it comes off, he should be confident, so you get a bit of a 'game-changer' effect.
Shouldn't lose as much confidence if I edge/miss a very aggressive shot as if I edge/miss a defensive shot. If you edge/miss a defensive shot, there should be cause for concern for the batsman, but if he's slashing at it and misses it, he probably doesn't care too much.
Bowlers taking wickets should have an effect on the entire team's confidence. So often you can take three quick wickets with a bowler, and the bowling team should be 'on-top', but instead you have only one bowler who is feeling the good vibes.
Batsman confidence when coming to the crease should depend on the score/match position. Even perhaps simplify this by having it dependent on the number of overs since the last dismissal. If very short (i.e. 2 quick wickets), lower confidence. If very long, then give more confidence - you see this especially in Test cricket, like when Ian Bell comes to the crease at 300-3 he's fine, but at 30-3 he's terrible.
Leaving the ball should gain confidence, but only to a certain point. Same for defensive shots. e.g. say confidence max = 100. Get 0.5 for every leave, unless your confidence is over 40. Get 2.0 for every well-timed defensive-shot, unless your confidence is over 60. You should only be able to get so far by just blocking and leaving.
On the execution meter, instead of going orange, dark green, light green, red, can it go: orange, dark green, light green, small dark green, small orange, red? At the moment it's annoying that getting the timing slightly wrong leads to a no-ball. It would be better if going slightly over means a worse quality delivery, and only going quite a long way over means a no-ball. In cricket these days, no-balls are becoming rarer and rarer.
Bowling controls
Scrap the bumper button delivery categories. Square = Cutter, Circle = Swing, Triggers control amount of attempted deviation. Why press the left-hand face button, and then the left bumper for a left-swinger? Press Circle, then left trigger to swing left, right trigger to swing right.
Make swing/cut amounts actually have a noticeable point. A bigger swing amount should give you a smaller 'perfect zone' in your execution meter. For spinners, a bigger swing/cut amount = more spin, so therefore more flight. More bumper-button input = more attacking delivery = harder to execute properly, but more reward.
For swing bowling, you should aim the cursor along your starting line, and the ball should swing to a different spot. If you get your execution wrong, then the ball won't swing (or won't swing as much) and the ball then lands in a poor spot, making it easy to hit. As the batsman, as you see the pitch point move, you know it's swinging and in which direction and by roughly how much.
As bowler confidence gets higher, it'd be nice to see this somehow in the controls, rather than just a bar and "apparently the batsmen find me harder to hit". Bigger confidence = bigger green zone in execution meter.
With a tired bowler, could the stop point on the execution meter overshoot a bit?
Batting Controls
Assign a button to leave the ball. Allow player to choose front/back foot when leaving, and monitor the time the player pressed the button, so you can show the timing meter in the corner. It would be nice to be able to do this against a new bowler who is a different speed to previous bowler. Also allows you to 'have a look' at playing a shot - e.g. bowler bowls a wide half-volley, but it's early in the innings so leave it, but aim into the covers and press 'leave' so you can see your shot timing - am I early/late, would I have smashed a boundary, how big is the timing window for a ball landing there? Getting the timing right should lead to a confidence boost, as described above. Give the player a reason to leave the ball.
Also, double-tap leave button for a duck? Having to always play bouncers is annoying.
I'm not sure about this one, so if I'm wrong with my assumption, then ignore this: I think at the moment that as you increase in confidence, instead of getting a bigger timing window, there is some 'helper' which compensates your timing towards perfect by some amount. Increased confidence should mean a bigger timing window - even though the two different methods basically produce the same result for the player, it shows you how your confidence affects your ability.
Make bad balls a lot easier to hit. If the player gets a nice easy half-volley outside off-stump, it should be really easy for a (good) batsman to hit for four. They should have a nice, big timing window so you can really feel that it was a bad ball. Shot power should be increased by some distance. Also, this might be an argument for including 'reverse-hotspots' for bowling, too - i.e. areas in which the ball is really easy to hit, so leg-stump half-volleys, half-volleys outside off, short balls which are not short enough for a bouncer. I think these bad areas should be in orange, and the current orange areas be upgraded to dark green.
If you get a big half-volley to hit, you shouldn't need anywhere near full power to get the ball to the boundary easily. Time it well and it should race away. This doesn't really happen in real life when the ball is of a good length as it's much harder to time, but with a half-volley, just a well-timed nudge should get you a boundary if the field is in close.
Misc
Front- and back-foot shots are sometimes very wrong. For example, hooking 'stumps/lbw' balls, playing forward defines shots to bouncers. I'm not sure whether or not this 'works' when choosing your own footwork (so, if I choose to play a forward defines to a bouncer, will the ball interpolate to hit the bat?) or only when auto-footwork is chosen. If it's only for auto-footwork, then it's just an animation selection issue. If it allows the player to get away with wrong manual footwork then I'd propose something like this. At good length, the timing window for FF and BF get multiplier of about 0.7. Going shorter, FF should drop off very quickly to zero, so it's 'WRONG FOOTWORK' and you miss the ball/get hit in the nuts/edge to the keeper or whatever. Going fuller, BF should drop off very quickly to zero. At stumps/LBW length, you have absolutely no hope if you try to go onto the back foot - you're pretty much going to get bowled/LBW in this case.
Different pitch types. This should be do-able by having multipliers for:
pace (i.e. shot timing window moves forward or back)
spin/cut (bowlers need to change their line - spinners will bowl straighter)
bounce (changes lengths slightly - this is probably the least important)
swing (bowlers have to compensate the new swing-aiming by a different amount)
outfield speed
With these in, you should get a reasonable representation of a pitch (ok, swing might be allocated to the weather rather than the pitch). With spin higher, facing spinners should be more difficult. With low spin, they should be much easier to face. With high swing, pace bowlers are more difficult to play. Etc, etc. These multipliers should be effected by the ball age, and the pitch age. This sounds pretty complex, but it's only multiplying some numbers together after having read them from a graph (e.g. swing amount vs ball age; spin v pitch age). I'd be happy to work all this out. This should give lots of added benefits, such as why you generally don't open the bowling with spinners, why batting last in a Test against spinners is difficult if the pitch goes off, why James Anderson will never be any good in Australia, where it doesn't swing.
Add batting stats (-10 to +10, say) for: leg-side v off-side; front-foot v back-foot; square v straight. Immediately, you then have character variation between players, for both AI and human players. Bowling to Andrew Strauss? Don't give him anything to cut. Batting as Andrew Strauss? Wait for anything short and wide. For Strauss I'd go with something like: leg/off - +3; front-foot/back-foot - +4; square/straight: -3. For Matt Prior: leg/off - +6; FF/BF: -7; square/straight: -5. There is quite a bit of data to make up here, but I'm sure you can find some people to help out. Also, square/straight might be slight overkill, but you get the idea. You would probably be able to get a good effect from this without changing the AI at all - though it would be good to see the AI deciding to bowl short to Greame Swann or Michaeal Clarke (after his hilarious dismissal against England in the ODIs recently).
Confidence
Consecutive boundaries (or maybe even one ball apart) should have a multiplier effect on confidence gained for that ball. If I bash three fours in a row, I expect to be very confident. This is important in limited overs games, where a new batsman comes to the crease in the last few overs. If he tries to score quickly immediately and it comes off, he should be confident, so you get a bit of a 'game-changer' effect.
Shouldn't lose as much confidence if I edge/miss a very aggressive shot as if I edge/miss a defensive shot. If you edge/miss a defensive shot, there should be cause for concern for the batsman, but if he's slashing at it and misses it, he probably doesn't care too much.
Bowlers taking wickets should have an effect on the entire team's confidence. So often you can take three quick wickets with a bowler, and the bowling team should be 'on-top', but instead you have only one bowler who is feeling the good vibes.
Batsman confidence when coming to the crease should depend on the score/match position. Even perhaps simplify this by having it dependent on the number of overs since the last dismissal. If very short (i.e. 2 quick wickets), lower confidence. If very long, then give more confidence - you see this especially in Test cricket, like when Ian Bell comes to the crease at 300-3 he's fine, but at 30-3 he's terrible.
Leaving the ball should gain confidence, but only to a certain point. Same for defensive shots. e.g. say confidence max = 100. Get 0.5 for every leave, unless your confidence is over 40. Get 2.0 for every well-timed defensive-shot, unless your confidence is over 60. You should only be able to get so far by just blocking and leaving.
On the execution meter, instead of going orange, dark green, light green, red, can it go: orange, dark green, light green, small dark green, small orange, red? At the moment it's annoying that getting the timing slightly wrong leads to a no-ball. It would be better if going slightly over means a worse quality delivery, and only going quite a long way over means a no-ball. In cricket these days, no-balls are becoming rarer and rarer.
Bowling controls
Scrap the bumper button delivery categories. Square = Cutter, Circle = Swing, Triggers control amount of attempted deviation. Why press the left-hand face button, and then the left bumper for a left-swinger? Press Circle, then left trigger to swing left, right trigger to swing right.
Make swing/cut amounts actually have a noticeable point. A bigger swing amount should give you a smaller 'perfect zone' in your execution meter. For spinners, a bigger swing/cut amount = more spin, so therefore more flight. More bumper-button input = more attacking delivery = harder to execute properly, but more reward.
For swing bowling, you should aim the cursor along your starting line, and the ball should swing to a different spot. If you get your execution wrong, then the ball won't swing (or won't swing as much) and the ball then lands in a poor spot, making it easy to hit. As the batsman, as you see the pitch point move, you know it's swinging and in which direction and by roughly how much.
As bowler confidence gets higher, it'd be nice to see this somehow in the controls, rather than just a bar and "apparently the batsmen find me harder to hit". Bigger confidence = bigger green zone in execution meter.
With a tired bowler, could the stop point on the execution meter overshoot a bit?
Batting Controls
Assign a button to leave the ball. Allow player to choose front/back foot when leaving, and monitor the time the player pressed the button, so you can show the timing meter in the corner. It would be nice to be able to do this against a new bowler who is a different speed to previous bowler. Also allows you to 'have a look' at playing a shot - e.g. bowler bowls a wide half-volley, but it's early in the innings so leave it, but aim into the covers and press 'leave' so you can see your shot timing - am I early/late, would I have smashed a boundary, how big is the timing window for a ball landing there? Getting the timing right should lead to a confidence boost, as described above. Give the player a reason to leave the ball.
Also, double-tap leave button for a duck? Having to always play bouncers is annoying.
I'm not sure about this one, so if I'm wrong with my assumption, then ignore this: I think at the moment that as you increase in confidence, instead of getting a bigger timing window, there is some 'helper' which compensates your timing towards perfect by some amount. Increased confidence should mean a bigger timing window - even though the two different methods basically produce the same result for the player, it shows you how your confidence affects your ability.
Make bad balls a lot easier to hit. If the player gets a nice easy half-volley outside off-stump, it should be really easy for a (good) batsman to hit for four. They should have a nice, big timing window so you can really feel that it was a bad ball. Shot power should be increased by some distance. Also, this might be an argument for including 'reverse-hotspots' for bowling, too - i.e. areas in which the ball is really easy to hit, so leg-stump half-volleys, half-volleys outside off, short balls which are not short enough for a bouncer. I think these bad areas should be in orange, and the current orange areas be upgraded to dark green.
If you get a big half-volley to hit, you shouldn't need anywhere near full power to get the ball to the boundary easily. Time it well and it should race away. This doesn't really happen in real life when the ball is of a good length as it's much harder to time, but with a half-volley, just a well-timed nudge should get you a boundary if the field is in close.
Misc
Front- and back-foot shots are sometimes very wrong. For example, hooking 'stumps/lbw' balls, playing forward defines shots to bouncers. I'm not sure whether or not this 'works' when choosing your own footwork (so, if I choose to play a forward defines to a bouncer, will the ball interpolate to hit the bat?) or only when auto-footwork is chosen. If it's only for auto-footwork, then it's just an animation selection issue. If it allows the player to get away with wrong manual footwork then I'd propose something like this. At good length, the timing window for FF and BF get multiplier of about 0.7. Going shorter, FF should drop off very quickly to zero, so it's 'WRONG FOOTWORK' and you miss the ball/get hit in the nuts/edge to the keeper or whatever. Going fuller, BF should drop off very quickly to zero. At stumps/LBW length, you have absolutely no hope if you try to go onto the back foot - you're pretty much going to get bowled/LBW in this case.
Different pitch types. This should be do-able by having multipliers for:
pace (i.e. shot timing window moves forward or back)
spin/cut (bowlers need to change their line - spinners will bowl straighter)
bounce (changes lengths slightly - this is probably the least important)
swing (bowlers have to compensate the new swing-aiming by a different amount)
outfield speed
With these in, you should get a reasonable representation of a pitch (ok, swing might be allocated to the weather rather than the pitch). With spin higher, facing spinners should be more difficult. With low spin, they should be much easier to face. With high swing, pace bowlers are more difficult to play. Etc, etc. These multipliers should be effected by the ball age, and the pitch age. This sounds pretty complex, but it's only multiplying some numbers together after having read them from a graph (e.g. swing amount vs ball age; spin v pitch age). I'd be happy to work all this out. This should give lots of added benefits, such as why you generally don't open the bowling with spinners, why batting last in a Test against spinners is difficult if the pitch goes off, why James Anderson will never be any good in Australia, where it doesn't swing.
Add batting stats (-10 to +10, say) for: leg-side v off-side; front-foot v back-foot; square v straight. Immediately, you then have character variation between players, for both AI and human players. Bowling to Andrew Strauss? Don't give him anything to cut. Batting as Andrew Strauss? Wait for anything short and wide. For Strauss I'd go with something like: leg/off - +3; front-foot/back-foot - +4; square/straight: -3. For Matt Prior: leg/off - +6; FF/BF: -7; square/straight: -5. There is quite a bit of data to make up here, but I'm sure you can find some people to help out. Also, square/straight might be slight overkill, but you get the idea. You would probably be able to get a good effect from this without changing the AI at all - though it would be good to see the AI deciding to bowl short to Greame Swann or Michaeal Clarke (after his hilarious dismissal against England in the ODIs recently).
Gone4aDuck
International Coach
- Joined
- May 11, 2010
Cant argue with any of that chestnut. Add rain/bad light delays, stop yorkers being hit for 6 and make fielders dive to stop boundries, and were well on our way to a great game!! :banana2
lazy_chesnut
International Coach
I was trying to avoid suggesting additional features (like rain, bad light) and concentrate more on the game engine and how it portrays cricket, like the balance between bat and ball, etc.
Gone4aDuck
International Coach
- Joined
- May 11, 2010
Ide like to see at least 7 or 8 umpires on the next game. And you should be able to choose who you want, and make them editorable. Better umpires make better dessions and visa versa. As for your comment about rain/bad light chestnut. I find the chance of a shorter test makes the experience better. You dont know if you can play to deffensive due to time and that sort of thing. As any test fan will tell you, the weather is a massive part of the game. Too me its just as important as other gameplay details. For those who just dont like the sounds of it, there should be a "stopages/delays on/off" option. Simple if you ask me!! Just like on-line game saving! but thats another arguement!!!!
Watson33
Club Cricketer
3 very good points there, I would like the inclusion of rain, as it is a huge part of test cricket and can effect the result massively. Yorkers being hit for six does aggrivate me, especially as you know it would never happen in real life. And just make fielders more athletic in the field, too often a ball is near to them and they will let it go. Fielding needs work on! And a better field editor allowing you to place your fielders anywhere and not be restricted to orthodox field placements. And general asthetics of the game need improving, especially the annoying sound of the cursor when you move up and down the menu. Plus, some better game music would be nice =D
zimrahil
Retired Administrator
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2001
- Location
- Birmingham, England
- Online Cricket Games Owned
- Don Bradman Cricket 14 - Xbox 360
- Don Bradman Cricket 14 - Steam PC
Great post Tom.
To add, AI needs to take match situations into account. At present they simply don't.
Plus let us alter default fields as no developer has ever produced good ones!
To add, AI needs to take match situations into account. At present they simply don't.
Plus let us alter default fields as no developer has ever produced good ones!
jan52
Associate Cricketer
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2006
- Online Cricket Games Owned
- Don Bradman Cricket 14 - PS3
- Don Bradman Cricket 14 - Steam PC
my next improvement will be to not buy the game new version until i get review for online part of the game.After unlocking all trophies in single player still cant play multiplayer which is sad and doesnt justify my purchase.
Imo, and this is from playing against my friend a few times on the game. The timing is very strange, you have to press the button very early for each shot, rather than actually when you want to hit the ball. Short balls are bloody useless (pretty much a guaranteed four or six) and all bowlers are extremely slow; even at 150kph, the ball takes an age to arrive. Moreover, the defensive shot is extremely risky and so one I can never actually play well.
Watson33
Club Cricketer
Am I right in believing that there is an IC2011 coming out just before the World Cup? Can anyone confirm?
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