Making bowling more enjoyable, seeing weather/pitch effects etc. - invitation to playtest

[blockerdave]

long post warning:

if you've read any of my posts, you'll know I've been highly critical of the bowling to Ai experience in DBC, and more broadly of the general lack of effect of pitch/weather, and lack of seam/spin.

whilst i'm not ready to retract all of that, a few of us have been doing some experiments with amended skills for batsmen and bowlers and getting some interesting results. a big hat tip to @cooks1st100 who is the originator of the experiment, and also @wealey88 and @richowebbo who have been doing a lot of playtesting on this too. we think we're getting somewhere and so have decided to "go public" and see if by getting some more people playing similarly we can get more of a sample and move towards a better experience for us all.

the basic principle is - reduce the skills. it seems that the current state of the game is that the players become too good too soon in terms of how skills set in the academy translate into gameplay. the batsmen quickly become too good, and the bowlers almost swing the ball too much (we've all seen our bowlers hooping it round corners but don't get any edges.)

for clarity, whenever I mention an "increment" below, it means one full segment of the skills bar in cricket academy.

each of us have a slightly different set-up, but similar principles. i'm going to share mine below and the other guys can share theirs too, but also you should really please be aware that you may need to make some changes to get a better experience - I think it's not a case of one stats fits all.

I have the following set up for batsmen:
top 5 are set up:
front foot/back foot 10 increments
straight: 5 increments
everything else 6 though each of the top 5 might have one stat an increment higher or lower
number 6
ff/bf 9
straight: 4
everything else 5
number 7
ff/bf 8
straight: 4
everything else 5
number 8:
ff/bf 6.5
straight: 3.5
everything else 4
9/10/11:
ff/bf 4.5
straight: 3
everything else 4 or 3.5

I also set every batsman to precise or conservative, and set anticipation attribute to low.

fast/fast-medium/medium bowlers: max (or close to) seam, and either outswing 10 and inswing 6 or vice versa for openers, or 9 and 5.5 for 1st/2nd change. slower ball and cutters 7 or 8 for all of them.

off spinner 9 for arm ball, 15 for offie, 1 for doosra, 3 for drift, 6 for flight, 8 for top spinner
leg spinner 9 for arm ball, 15 for leggie, 12 for googly, 5 for drift, 5 for flight, 8 for top spinner

playing on pro, in test-matches, I have been getting: much more "realistic" play and misses; timing variation from the AI including bat sounds I never heard before (an end to middle or miss); more edges (still mostly to keeper, but some good variation) - realistic edges too from defensive prods and drives; more realistic bowleds (not just playing miles inside the line, top-edging a cut into the stumps or bowled off legs but being beaten for movement); and more realistic LBWs (NOT the knee in front cutting a straight one but rapping the pads off an in-swinger).

the AI were playing much more sensibly (less aerial, less late cuts to Yorkers or holing out to deep mid-on). they still post competitive scores.

similarly, batting is still good, well balanced and challenging. i'm currently in day 3 of a test match, in innings 3 the AI is 64-1 off 20 overs, after the first innings went AI 341/10 off 99.3; I went 309/10 off 88.5 - a proper competitive, balanced, realistic test match.

a couple of caveats: pitch conditions seem to matter more than we thought, a hard pristine pitch and you can expect much less edges/mistiming/play and misses from the AI; weather seems to matter a lot - even on a grassy pitch, expect the edges to dry up when the clouds disappear; when bowling, timing is crucial, you need to be hitting the equivalent of the green areas on the bowling assistance to get best results; good length bowling seems to get better results than short or full.

so, there you have it. a bit of advice that I and the other guys have been trying out and getting good results with - please give it a go and let us know your experience, maybe we can get a bit more consensus. we've all been trying it on tests, so guys who play more t20/50 over matches would be good to get on board too and see how they play.

 

[Wealey]

Just to carry on from what Dave has said, the adjusting of stats has definitely had an effect on the way the game plays. We have all messed around with the stats on PRO. I went from literally 1 increment for all batsmen and was getting 6-7 edges behind the wicket per innings and rolling teams for less than 100.

I have settled currently with:

10 bf/ff
4 Straight Bat
6 for all other batting attributes.

Bowlers have:

3 increments of outswing and 2 for inswing.

AI go at about 2.7-3.5 an over but their scores fluctuate. 150-450. Which I suppose is realistic.

Below is a few clips of the kinda Test Matches i'm having and some of the dismissals i'm now getting frequently.

However, one game ill get 5-6 edges and then the next they will dry up. Their is something else determining the edge frequency and we cant quite work it out. Cloudy seems to bring more edges. But sometimes it says its cloudy but still bright blue skies.

 

[richowebbo]

Hey guys.

I've also been testing. I have the stats slightly lower (top 5 at 8 and decrease down the order.

I haven't played the game in a while so set the stats lower because I'm crap!

But although it's realistic in many ways, the scores are low. I havent managed to get rid of the mid on/off catches completely, but certainly much less frequent. Average of 1 or 2 an innings. Lots of LBW shouts and close edge chances.

If like me you're not great at the game, my levels are a good starting point and you will get realistic run rates, but scores are lower.

Any questions, give me a shout, or any of the boys who've been testing this last week or so.

I'm about all week so just mesage me or tag me to a post in here.

The more people involved the better, this could be out own Patch 3!

 

[cooks1st100]

I havent managed to get rid of the mid on/off catches completely, but certainly much less

Hey man, you should find that these will decrease as you increase the ff/bf. When these are set low the AI seems to use it as an excuse to dolly one to mid-on/off. Similarly if seems best not to give a batsman a weaker foot setting because again they appear to use that weakness for their demise. So I recommend keeping the feet settings equal.

 

[handsome]

Interesting, i'll have a go at this on India Pakistan match. Is this Test match specific or works on ODI/T20 too?

I'm also looking if we can change the field settings, i see AI uses aggressive field sets in 16th-17th over of a T20 which is ridiculous.

 

[cooks1st100]

Interesting, i'll have a go at this on India Pakistan match. Is this Test match specific or works on ODI/T20 too?

I'm also looking if we can change the field settings, I see AI uses aggressive field sets in 16th-17th over of a T20 which is ridiculous.

For the moment it will work best for the longer formats I feel due to the lowered settings leading to lower run-rates. We've managed to improve on the gameplay in quite a big way in my opinion. Now it's a case of seeing how the attributes need to be set to get the best balance.

 

[Cricket_god]

My mod for ashes cricket 2009 was based on same principles the AI there just tried Many slogs even in tests so lowering its stats did help.In my experience of ashes cricket i felt on amateur difficulty the Ai stuck to its stats and style of play defined .The more the difficulty increases ai even does not adhere to its play style say its precise but ai batsman say cook will play aeriel shots quite early on.

Engand is perfect team to test these stats as there play styles suit.

 

[richowebbo]

Hey man, you should find that these will decrease as you increase the ff/bf. When these are set low the AI seems to use it as an excuse to dolly one to mid-on/off. Similarly if seems best not to give a batsman a weaker foot setting because again they appear to use that weakness for their demise. So I recommend keeping the feet settings equal.

Hey buddy. Yeah that's what I was thinking. ON the lower setting batsmen you do get some silly shots. I think if someone hasn't played for a while, the way I set up is good because you don't get punished to badly for bad balls. But in the end, I think going for the higher setting is a good idea as I shouldn't be bowling out AUS for less than 250 twice on a flat pitch.

I'm going to re-set all the stats today and I'm going to get a series going this week and see how it plays. I am also going reduce the straight seam stats of players like Stokes and Pattinson to balance out the lowish scores.

Thanks Cookie for putting us all on this path!

 

[thevicky]

If it's true that the issues many have had come down to imbalances in the ratings for players then that highlights the only real flaw (is that the right word? [HASHTAG]#massiveoversight[/HASHTAG]?) in the cricket academy system.

I always thought that for the sake of game balance it would have been preferable for BA to include skills/attributes for the players corresponding to the developers view of the respective real world players abilities. This would then have tied in well to the player linking aspect when users changed names and appearances and would (presumably) not cause any issues vis-a-vis licensing (given the player linking function is already there)

These abilities need not have been 100% spot on but users could then tweak these abilities as they saw fit and at least there would be a template to work from.

I don't think this is something that can be fixed for the current iteration but hopefully something @fiction, @Ross et al will look at doing for the next version.

 

[Westindies]

yesterday i started a new career as batsman, i didnt see this post but i wanted to test how the game works if i go on to a shell mode i.e defend defend defend i blocked 70 balls as an opener scoring nothing and i notice that the confidence was boosted to full and after that i started playing shots i scored the first run on 71st ball and the commentary was "There is the first scoring shot" and i got out for 12 from 83 balls. I was surprised to see that the confidence actually carried over to 2nd innings from the ball one, i.e the confidence was full for the batsman . i never knew that this is present in DBC , but i got out for 4 ball duck playing a rash block :P

 

[grkrama]

sorry for being lazy but blocker is your team in academy updated with these skill points, or can you upload one team say eng with these stats.

 

[Acid Burn]

One thing I can add , is that the different pitches defnitly has an adverse effect in Online play . Although strangely , you would sometimes select all the best attributes for the pitch (Hard , Pristine , No cracks ) and then have both players not being able to time anything properly with lots of edges .

And then sometimes you will get the belter , where both sides creams the ball to all corners , on the same settings as above.

Where the Pitch attributes can clearly be seen as well is in Spin Bowling . There the different bounce and amount of turn is quite evident.

 

[blockerdave]

sorry for being lazy but blocker is your team in academy updated with these skill points, or can you upload one team say eng with these stats.

It's not but if you can wait till the end of the day UK time I can upload. I am using custom teams I made of random unlinked players so it doesn't mess up anything else till we know for sure if we're on the right track.

 

[blockerdave]

If it's true that the issues many have had come down to imbalances in the ratings for players then that highlights the only real flaw (is that the right word? [HASHTAG]#massiveoversight[/HASHTAG]?) in the cricket academy system.

I always thought that for the sake of game balance it would have been preferable for BA to include skills/attributes for the players corresponding to the developers view of the respective real world players abilities. This would then have tied in well to the player linking aspect when users changed names and appearances and would (presumably) not cause any issues vis-a-vis licensing (given the player linking function is already there)

These abilities need not have been 100% spot on but users could then tweak these abilities as they saw fit and at least there would be a template to work from.

I don't think this is something that can be fixed for the current iteration but hopefully something @fiction, @Ross et al will look at doing for the next version.

it definitely seems that a lot of the stuff we thought wasn't in the game (or barely in the game) is there (not always as much as we'd like) but the calibration of skills in the academy into gameplay is well off and that was what gave us the more disappointing results. we seem to be getting somewhere with this which is why we wanted to bring others in on the basis of more people playing this way the quicker we might get to an optimal balance.

as i said the other guys in a PM - for the moment this set up is like patch 3 for me; reinvigorated my interest and the way i play, you can play every ball of a test and feel you're always in the game. (obviously you still have awful AI field sets though).

 

[Wealey]

As i said to the boys in a pm, i used the same stats for 5 separate innings.

All games were Australia v New Zealand.

All were on a flat pristine pitch.

The scores were:

456
145
256
274/6
180/7

Now as far as having variable scores this is ideal but i cant work out which variable determines the edges.

From what i saw edges were a lot more frequent when cloudy. As you would expect. However not when the weather said cloudy as sometimes it was blue skies but when the day actually looked dull and overcast. Which isnt that often!

I am going to start and England v West Indies test series tonight and document it in this thread and see how much variation is scores we get and the modes of dismissal.

The annoying part is we can select fine weather but not cloudy.

Its confusing that i can get all these edges one game but then the next nothing. In a way thats good but i would just like to no what determines this!