Weekly Question Time 1 - your questions answered

[CaptainOZ]

Thanks for the podcasting - an excellent idea.

Any details you could give us on how statistics will be tracked, or about a possible career mode, would be greatly appreciated.

 

[cricket_online]

Did I hear something about difficulty sliders? There are some guys here who will remember me banging on about this for many years.

Yup, that would be me. Here's the post and the question to Chief at the Ashes 2013 forum...
How to enhance Ashes Cricket 2013's longevity - Must have for the game - General Discussion - The Official Ashes Cricket 2013 Forum

Thanks for answering the questions Chief!

 

[MattW]

Interesting take with the sliders for difficulty - though I think if it's just opposition ability alone then there's not enough of a counterbalance to timing and hud.

I really dislike how difficulty is linked almost solely to an ability to perfectly time a button press - I'd want to see the AI tactics as distinct from AI ability as a component of any difficulty setting.

Someone should be able to play a smart AI from a strong team with forgiving timing - even if that just means that the likelihood of it resulting in a wicket is changed rather than the ability to score runs - indeed that might be a way to increase longevity in test matches, have an extremely high accuracy threshold for run scoring shots, but have a relatively low one for avoiding dismissals.

I'd suggest that the best way to implement the difficulty sliders is to have the default be an automatic adaptive option - if the game can judge by your play style the aspects of difficulty that have the most impact on your ability to score, and then adjust for that as the game goes on, you could basically always have the player on a threshold of being just hard enough. I can't imagine being able to perfectly set a difficulty level without a lot of matches if there were sliders without the game giving guidance as to where you fit.

I've said before, in a lot of cricket games, particularly BLIC 2005, I've found bowling on hard to be enjoyable, but then being unable to bat well at that setting - simply because to get the AI hard enough as a target to bowl to, the batting timing gets beyond my ability. At the very least they should be distinct difficulty settings, because I've never found a game which gets both of them right.

Thanks for doing the podcast btw - try the auto YouTube captions...

 

[MasterBlaster76]

Just a few things, and I'll try not to turn this into a wish-list: I'll probably post a full one at some point though:

In no particular order:

Make fielding mean something! Too often, fielding is just sit back and watch, while the AI makes a hash of it.

You could do a lot worse than take a good look at Ashes Cricket 09 after Patch 2 on the PC - that was really getting there as far as simulating a realistic cricket match is concerned. The one and only reason I'm not still playing that one is the dire lack of content; learn from that. Granted, it should heavily feature the Ashes, but it should also have content that goes beyond that. The fact that AC 09 didn't have such content hurt it badly in my opinion.

Get the lengths right! I remember one of the worst things about Ashes Cricket 09 was that the lengths were all wrong: the good length was too full for example, so you'd bowl endless half volleys, which would be blocked. Get the height of the ball right, the way it comes off the bat - basically, get the physics right!

I'm looking forwards to the next video!

 

[Orangzeb]

2013 is going to be a fantastic year!

What about December 21st 2012

 

[MasterBlaster76]

What about December 21st 2012

Five days away from Christmas 2012, isn't it?

 

[Lee1981]

Me old dears birthday

 

[savvart]

What about December 21st 2012

You mean we won't be around to see the New Year - or worse a New Cricket Game, aaarrrggghhh...!!!

 

[MasterBlaster76]

According to a British academic, the Mayan BS wasn't Mayan at all - it was actually from some 'New Age' books written in the Seventies/Eighties.