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

[richowebbo]

I haven't played the game for a few weeks, but its good to see more people trying out theories put forward.

I had real problems with the tail in the games I played. They'd always stick 40 or 50 runs on the board, and the new ball didn't appear to help.

 

[cooks1st100]

You are completely wrong I'm afraid. If teams are replaced with different attributes then they will also come into effect in career mode.

I'm actually going to take this back for the time being, as I am now thinking that the difference I had noticed maybe due to fact that the skills are normalised and as a result appeared better than they were with the attributes set as they were before I began messing around with them. The only way to check would be to reduce the attributes for one team and start a new batting career playing for that team. Anyone who has played career mode regularly should be able pick up on any differences fairly quickly in the way that your team mates bat and how shots come of the bat.

Unfortunately I don't have any spare time at the moment.

I will find it strange if it doesn't though even more strange than being told that AI Vs AI games are not a reflection on how the game plays when in career mode much of the gameplay is AI Vs AI.

 

[Valaskjalf]

I'm actually going to take this back for the time being, as I am now thinking that the difference I had noticed maybe due to fact that the skills are normalised and as a result appeared better than they were with the attributes set as they were before I began messing around with them. The only way to check would be to reduce the attributes for one team and start a new batting career playing for that team. Anyone who has played career mode regularly should be able pick up on any differences fairly quickly in the way that your team mates bat and how shots come of the bat.

Unfortunately I don't have any spare time at the moment.

I will find it strange if it doesn't though even more strange than being told that AI Vs AI games are not a reflection on how the game plays when in career mode much of the gameplay is AI Vs AI.

I find all of this quite bizarre...essentially there's a chance that all the 100's of hours spent by community members on CA were done in vain - and they basically created tons and tons of faces with skills that mean nothing. I havent played another innings yet of the revamped career, but will give some feedback once Ive played a couple of FC matches. Since I havent changed any bowling stats/attributes, the batsmen in my team will (hopefully) struggle when they face the AI.

 

[zimrahil]

Pretty sure altered attributes carry through to career mode it's skills that are normalised

 

[Valaskjalf]

Pretty sure altered attributes carry through to career mode it's skills that are normalised

This totally blows my mind....out of all the Versions / Iterations of the game they decided to normalise the skills in Career mode, which you play by yourself and should be able to alter any way you want. Why? To prevent you from "cheating" yourself, or the Leaderboards (whatever they're for and who the hell cares about XP!?)....but in PvP it's totally fine to implements stats shenanigans so you can trash your buddy with a jacked up OP team.

I will be mightily pissed if I spent the better part of my Saterday tediously fiddling with stat bars that don't mean jack-s***.

 

[MattW]

Key quote from Ross -

It does not make all teams equal, it will make them equal to the teams we had originally set.

This means that if you're starting off a new career, you're playing with teams that are low rated - the county/state teams already had very low overall rankings - so the effect of the normalisation would be relatively minimal. That means that for those matches, playing with teams like the Weaklings one substituted in, won't be changed much to normalise them overall to match the original team that you replaced.

However once you make the international level and they have teams that originally were 3 or 4 rated, there'd be a fairly large scaling up of attributes to keep your altered teams in line with them. The scaling however is proportional however - they aren't totally ignoring or discarding the attributes/skills.

The only real way to view this in game is once you're captain - if you replaced the Weaklings for your national team and for your county/state team, I expect that you'd find that the same players would be rated higher in the national team than they would be in the county team. I've not tested this as there's a huge amount of games you need to play through to get selected as captain. Maybe if someone is captain internationally and also shares a county/state team with a linked player that's also in your international team you could check that - I don't have any ongoing careers where I'm captain though.

 

[cooks1st100]

The more I think about it the more ridiculous it seems. A team should be as good as the individuals within that team and a player should definitely not be rated differently between his club team and international team. An international team would generally be better due to the individuals being better as a whole so there absolutely is no need for this system. As Valaskjalf said if you choose to make teams weak you are only cheating yourself and so chuffing what if you do.

If this really is the case then this needs to be scrapped in the next patch.

The scaling however is proportional however - they aren't totally ignoring or discarding the attributes/skills.

But they are though aren't they? If the Devs decided that a certain bowler swings the ball a great deal then I change his attributes so that he doesn't swing it, what you are saying is that in career mode he will still swing the ball so the attributes are being ignored.

Are you sure that this normalising does not just affect simulated/ other teams matches? Does it even exist at all, such as the supposed injuries?

Could you point me in the direction of the thread where Ross spoke about this please Matt?

 

[cricket_online]

The more I think about it the more ridiculous it seems. A team should be as good as the individuals within that team and a player should definitely not be rated differently between his club team and international team. An international team would generally be better due to the individuals being better as a whole so there absolutely is no need for this system. As Valaskjalf said if you choose to make teams weak you are only cheating yourself and so chuffing what if you do.

If this really is the case then this needs to be scrapped in the next patch.



But they are though aren't they? If the Devs decided that a certain bowler swings the ball a great deal then I change his attributes so that he doesn't swing it, what you are saying is that in career mode he will still swing the ball so the attributes are being ignored.

Are you sure that this normalising does not just affect simulated/ other teams matches? Does it even exist at all, such as the supposed injuries?

Could you point me in the direction of the thread where Ross spoke about this please Matt?

You can tell normalisation is in play in career mode when you make all the other career teams weak other than the one you play for and still find the career as difficult as the ones you played earlier. As I said in one of my earlier post, Big Ant folks discussed the normalisation in career mode when the game was about to be released or was just released. It was supposed to be a safeguard to ensure integrity of career leaderboard along with other design decisions such as career mode limited to PRO difficulty or higher.

This is definitely something Big Ant should address as let users who paid for the game define their user experience. If folks want an easier career mode or want to rack up career points, let them. It's their game and let them play as they wish.

 

[cooks1st100]

But as we have already found it's not a case of making the game easier it's a case of improving the gameplay and as a result it would improve the career mode, imagine having a batting partner who can actually bat as opposed to constantly trying to melt the ball.

You can tell normalisation is in play in career mode when you make all the other career teams weak other than the one you play for and still find the career as difficult as the ones you played earlier.

So you have done this then?

 

[cricket_online]

But as we have already found it's not a case of making the game easier it's a case of improving the gameplay and as a result it would improve the career mode, imagine having a batting partner who can actually bat as opposed to constantly trying to melt it.

I agree and that's why Big Ant need to rethink some of their design choices. They have already allowed career difficulty level to be Rookie and this forced career normalisation can be eliminated in the next iteration of the game.

So you have done this then?

Not in the detailed manner you guys did but I did tweak intl teams & players across various careers but didn't see any perceptible change. However as Matt mentioned, someone will need to tweak skills/attributes of a team and use the same as your county/FC and national team. I haven't done so and most of my changes have been limited to just the national/intl teams.

 

[MattW]

But they are though aren't they? If the Devs decided that a certain bowler swings the ball a great deal then I change his attributes so that he doesn't swing it, what you are saying is that in career mode he will still swing the ball so the attributes are being ignored.

No. It would work so that the skills that the bowler is good at would be enhanced (or reduced) to make them reach the skill level that would make the whole team balanced with the on disc original. If they boosted all the stats, the teams would all be full of all rounders.

Are you sure that this normalising does not just affect simulated/ other teams matches? Does it even exist at all, such as the supposed injuries?

Yes - because if you've ever played against those people online who use those mega teams of 5 star players and checking the normalise box, it is clearly effective. The difference is that where the teams are normalised against eachother online in career they are normalised against the original on disc team. It's the same mechanism for both though.

Could you point me in the direction of the thread where Ross spoke about this please Matt?

It came up mostly in the discussion before patch 1, where it was compared to the original implementation of the career, where you couldn't change skills at all and it was tied directly to the skills of the corresponding position in the roster of the on disc team. This implementation was much better by comparison.

I can only really suggest starting here and reading 20 pages of discussion of it before the patch. It wasn't discussed in detail from Ross - it was just the quick response to an out of the box problem.

While I'm searching for quotes, to reiterate this one -

AI vs AI games are not something we've paid the greatest attention to, they are not representative of Human v AI nor Human v Human and are not used for the "simulation" in career mode.

 

[Valaskjalf]

No. It would work so that the skills that the bowler is good at would be enhanced (or reduced) to make them reach the skill level that would make the whole team balanced with the on disc original. If they boosted all the stats, the teams would all be full of all rounders.


Yes - because if you've ever played against those people online who use those mega teams of 5 star players and checking the normalise box, it is clearly effective. The difference is that where the teams are normalised against eachother online in career they are normalised against the original on disc team. It's the same mechanism for both though.


It came up mostly in the discussion before patch 1, where it was compared to the original implementation of the career, where you couldn't change skills at all and it was tied directly to the skills of the corresponding position in the roster of the on disc team. This implementation was much better by comparison.

I can only really suggest starting here and reading 20 pages of discussion of it before the patch. It wasn't discussed in detail from Ross - it was just the quick response to an out of the box problem.

While I'm searching for quotes, to reiterate this one -

Ok so then it appears this game is totally boned and phony. Thanks BA....give us a career-mode which is actually just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. Nice job.

 

[cricket_online]

Found the following post by Ross from the link Matt posted above...

There is definitely an issue with downloading teams and their effects on the roster in Career.

Players likeness and names are downloaded correctly however the roster is not being respected. Essentially the likeness and name for position 1 in the on disk roster is replaced with the likeness and name for position 1 of the downloaded team however retaining the attributes and role of the on disk position 1 rather than the download position 1 (and so on for positions 2,3,4,etc..).

The issue arises because of the need to equalise the skills and attributes of all players because of the use of leaderboards. The system is used to ensure all users start a career with the same skills and attributes however we can see flaws in this now and are working on a fix.

 

[cooks1st100]

As I have already mentioned you should be able to observe differences in the very first match played. If I had the time to test this I would and I will when I get the chance, because I'm not convinced at all.

It doesn't matter if the AI will still get out for whatever Big Ant decided (apparently DBC isn't scripted though!) but if the gameplay is improved then it is worth doing surely even if it's for just the reason I mentioned previously.

To be honest I don't play career mode anymore as a bowler due to the poor captaincy but I can definitely see the potential benefits batting-wise. Hopefully Valaskjalf will confirm my doubts.

Also how does this work if I decide to change the domestic league to that of another country? Will that domestic team just get the rating of the county team it has replaced?

 

[cooks1st100]

While I'm searching for quotes, to reiterate this one -

Cheers Matt. I'll have a read through that thread.



I couldn't quote the quote but as I mentioned this is another bizarre line. How can Ross say that it is not something they've paid much attention to when AI Vs AI is a big part of career mode. If unlike myself you can bat through a session or 2 unless you are constantly hogging the strike then becomes a major part.