Feature Requests

[mattjair]

Been playing lots since the patch.

Playing in NZ - there's no greater curse than the minimum squad limit. I currently have 17 players, 180k in the bank, and the game insists that I should have 25 players due to the number of NZ contracted players in my team. However - I can't actually sign ANY players at all - I get the dreaded "we cannot allow you to make this offer" message...

This is really infuriating - firstly, as the NZ coach also, I can guarantee that some of these players don't need the contract and won't be getting selected - not that that's super relevant as I'd obviously then have to pay them.

Secondly, I'd rather run a smaller, higher quality squad - not be forced into signing dross to make up an arbitrary number. 20 or 21 would be enough and with 180k in the bank I could easily afford that.

Third point - no matter how much I spend on youth development - I always only get two youth players to choose from at the end of each season. This feels extremely arbitrary too... and at least if I was to be forced into signing youth players, I should have some sort of opportunity to get them in the area that I want - I don't need the 3 fast bowlers it often just dumps into my squad...

The factors above are basically killing longer term gameplay - I'm forced into a squad full of players that are never going to be good enough to be competitive, and as a result my team simply deteriorates.

Shame - as I love so much of the rest of the game. Keep up the good work - but a few tweaks would be lovely.

[danielallum]

I think when measuring the success of a game a key variable to consider is its longevity. I am currently playing an IPL/Indian National team save and I have Rishabh Pant in my fourth season at Sunrises Hyderabad as well as the young Sarfaraz Khan. What is frustrating is how the players can be so misrepresented. Rishabh Pant has recently scored a 308 in the Ranji Trophy and he is struggling to average 20 in all formats.

I understand that this is an inevitable part of any game and the same criticism can be directed at the FIFA and Football Manager series. However where Cricket Captain differs from those two games is that players rarely show a sudden change of form from average youngster to world class or at least consistent international performer. Back to the original point of the player's misrepresentation. It can be frustrating when you have players that have dramatically improved over the season since the Cricket Captain has been released. In this case, it is Rishabh Pant we could also allude to Alzarri Joseph who has gone on to become very average in my saves whilst showing promise over the year. Virat Kohli is nothing like the Test Match Player he has demonstrated he is over the last four series he has participated in. Joe Root in the Cricket Captain 2014 series wasn't the world-class player he had demonstrated himself to be by the end of the cricket season.

It also works the other way as well, I'm sure people will remember how overpowered Gary Ballance and Adam Lyth were in the last edition of the game. However, I can't recall that being as much of a problem as the game not keeping up with and representing players development in-game.

I am aware that you do not have mystical powers to predict the future and are able to accurately predict how players are going to develop. However, where I think the game could learn and borrow a trick from football manager is the three stage patch process they roll out. I acknowledge that the game is patched at the moment and there are some minor player developments here and there but the majority are to fix errors, bugs and crashes. And that what I am suggesting Football Manager do not do but they and FIFA both give updates to players that are in line with their real life form. Where the developers could really show some pro-activeness and demonstrate they care about the fans who buy their product is release patches with updated player statistics and information. After all, I believe that is a part of the beauty of Cricket the abundance of data that is available at our fingertips to get lost in.

For instance, this year the game was released in July and James Vince had already made his Test debut for England and even if you load up a game with Hampshire now he still wouldn't have made his Test debut. Haseeb Hameed is another player who is a below average player in-game yet he is demonstrating immense promise at the moment, discounting the ongoing Lions tour that is. As I have mentioned I am aware that you cannot predict these things before you release the game but in the case of Vince surely you could've updated that? Anyway, I am aware I do not know the process in terms of how you make the game or when you send the final version to steam. But surely you could release 2-3 new databases over the season with updated batting, bowling statistics and international information. You adjust the statistics year on year anyway so it may save you a job when you come to make the new game and it would provide an engagement with fans that is currently lacking. It isn't difficult to keep up with Cricket game, I keep track of most games on Cricinfo myself and would be more than willing to spend time supplying data and information when I can. However, my cynical nature tells me it will fall on deaf ears as do the number of interesting and creative replies that get posted in these thread's year on year and don't get implemented.

[hitthestump]

Please update the commentary. It's always the same when catches will be successfully taken ("he's skied it", "it's in the air", "that's a big hit"), whereas the lack of any commentary guarantees the ball will be dropped.

[Oli987]

1. More batting options in addition to sliders, especially for limited overs games. I'd like to see options to "rotate the strike" and "look for the boundary." I find that batsmen play out too many dot balls when they're on less than six bars, or less than seven in T20. This is particularly noticeable when players first come in and play out too many dot balls, and particularly problematic in T20 - if they're on six bars they tend to score too slowly, seven or more and they're likely to get out straight away, often triggering a collapse.
2. Relating to point one, some players need to be consistently better at scoring quickly from the start of their innings. The choice in T20 is far too often to either score at less than a run a ball, or for most players to get out in single figures on seven bars. The match engine is generally alright, but far too often a good score is reliant on one or two players getting in and scoring big, with everyone else getting out in single figures. You rarely have a T20 innings where multiple players have cameos of 20-30.
3. The ability to see a pitch and weather forecast before you select your squad for a home test, or at least the ability to select a 13 man squad, and "release" one of the players a day before. You might want an extra spinner, seamer or batsman depending on the conditions.
4. An international calendar on domestic games when you're signing overseas players.It's good to know when players might be unavailable during the season.
5. Green pitches that are trickier on the first morning but gradually flatten out by the end of the first day,and are at their easiest to bat on by day 2-3.
6. Being able to select fielding positions from a drop-down menu rather than having to drag them into position.

[Cam]

i think the Number 1 thing in this game that needs to be done, could even be a patch...

INTERNATIONAL CONTROLLED being able to CHOOSE YOUR PITCH
and spinning pitches have 2 levels, INDIAN SPINNING or Sydney Spinning,

Indian, you would pick 1 maybe 2 quicks
sydney you would pick 2 maybe 3 quicks the rest spinners

same with WACA SEAM or GABBA SEAM

WACA would give alot of pace and bounce
GABBA would swing alot,

[Raver]

Been playing lots since the patch.

Playing in NZ - there's no greater curse than the minimum squad limit. I currently have 17 players, 180k in the bank, and the game insists that I should have 25 players due to the number of NZ contracted players in my team. However - I can't actually sign ANY players at all - I get the dreaded "we cannot allow you to make this offer" message...

This is really infuriating - firstly, as the NZ coach also, I can guarantee that some of these players don't need the contract and won't be getting selected - not that that's super relevant as I'd obviously then have to pay them.

Secondly, I'd rather run a smaller, higher quality squad - not be forced into signing dross to make up an arbitrary number. 20 or 21 would be enough and with 180k in the bank I could easily afford that.

Third point - no matter how much I spend on youth development - I always only get two youth players to choose from at the end of each season. This feels extremely arbitrary too... and at least if I was to be forced into signing youth players, I should have some sort of opportunity to get them in the area that I want - I don't need the 3 fast bowlers it often just dumps into my squad...

The factors above are basically killing longer term gameplay - I'm forced into a squad full of players that are never going to be good enough to be competitive, and as a result my team simply deteriorates.

Shame - as I love so much of the rest of the game. Keep up the good work - but a few tweaks would be lovely.

Just to echo this. I completely agree, and have been struggling with this setup since the game's release. Would be good to fix the weather bug too.

[danielallum]

One thing that would be great is an option to 'add a new captain at any point during you current save. So if we had a save game where we were in 2022 and decided we wanted to manage a different international or domestic side then we could retire our current profile and start with a different team during that time period. It can get frustrating constantly having to start afresh when you want to manage different international or county side and you have to start a new game.

I think it would also be a big help to have the domestic competition of whichever international team you choose to manage made available to view without having to manage a domestic side. I have a particular England only save where I am in the stage where it is mostly regenerated players and not knowing which players are in division one and division two can make it difficult to fully assess who the best players are. Because logic should dictate it is going to be easier for bowlers to take wickets and batsmen to score runs in division two and in division one the runs the batsman makes are going be made against a better bowling attack and the bowlers wickets should be taken against better batsmen. Knowing which teams are in which division is crucial in terms of giving a full assessment of a player and that information isn't available without managing a county side.

Also, the training could be given more context for both batsmen and bowlers but especially so for bowlers. I feel the current three options of defensive bowling, aggressive bowling and accuracy training are a bit limited and lack context. If you stayed with the current options it may be useful to have some kind of least some kind of percentage value to which the player has mastered a certain skill relative to his overall ability. I see the problems with attributing values that dictate how good a player is but this would be a bit different it wouldn;t reflect his overall ability rather what he needs to work on in order to achieve his maximum ability.

Instead, I would say it could be more meaningful to expand the options as is such with batsmen. There could be a 'fast bowling' option, which would aim to increase the bowlers pace. A 'spin bowling' option which could specifically aim to work on how much a certain player turns the ball. A 'slower ball' option so all types of bowlers could work on their variation. Or a 'seam bowling' option in which they would try to improve their swing and seam skills. I don't know if that would be too complex for the match engine, but even if it wasn't truly and 100% accurate reflected in game, I feel it would give what you are doing more purpose and clarity and maybe the bowlers could have preferences and fast bowlers could be categorised and their preferences displayed as 'fast bowler, 'swing bowler' 'slower ball specialist' and spin bowlers could be differentiated in terms of your Ravi Jadeja, Michael Beer, Samuel Badree who vary their pace and don't necessarily turn the ball as much with the bowlers who turn the ball alot. Obviosuly good spinners can do both I just feel it would give the training a bit more meaning than it currently has.

All in all, I'm a big fan of the game and have been for years, I just think some small/minor changes can go a long way.

[Oli987]

When the forecast is different in the second session of a one day game, the weather shouldn't always change at the exact moment of the innings break. This is especially annoying when it's very cloudy when you're batting, but the clouds lift the moment the other team starts their innings.

[Sureshot]

Just to echo this. I completely agree, and have been struggling with this setup since the game's release. Would be good to fix the weather bug too.

Can you confirm by the weather bug you mean the issue with missing icons as reported here?

http://forum.childishdownloads.co.uk/forum/current-and-future-games/cricket-captain-2016/59846-cricket-captain-2016-bug-reports?p=60861#post60861

[Raver]

Yes that's it - as reported by Rumblah.

[markkkkk]

The one thing I'd like if in CC17 you could sim games without having your team perform worse. I way prefer the managerial aspect of the game than actually playing and quite frankly don't have the time to play every individual 4 day game. However I have to as I don't like getting relegated from Divison 1.

[Blade007]

I know not many people use the export feature, but I have few request please:

1. Please increase the FileName Size a little
2. Please export the "Balls Faced" too, it is already showing on the screen where you export from.
3. Also export the partnership information, the fall of wicket is already there but not who was involved in it
4. Maybe export who the captain was

They should all be easy to do as you have all the information available at the time of export

[TheRysingTyde]

Some items I'd like to see implemented:

1. The ability to "drop" or "gain" specific game types as captain (e.g. if I am captain of Somerset in all 3 formats and I get sick of t20, it'd be nice to be able to withdraw from that, just as it would be good to be able to "add" formats onto a captaincy)

Note: if you are a domestic captain and earn international captaincy, it'd be awesome if you could also pick what format(s) you wanted to go with as an international. E.g. you may do all 3 formats as a captain of Lancashire, but when you get the nod for England you may only want to do Tests

2. Billy Stanlake and Adam Zampa are woeful in the game - both are internationally capped now (and Zampa is a regular), and both are playing IPL 2017 (just a note). I've used Billy Stanlake in multiple games for Bulls and he legitimately bowls at around 55-70 runs per wicket in first-class.

3. The ability to "retire" from international captaincy (e.g. if you take it on after a successful period as a first-class coach and then, after 3 years, decide you don't want it anymore, it'd be great if you could drop it.

4. The ability to mould specialist bowlers and batters into all-rounders (or even part-timers, with a new section/diagram for that). Darren Stevens started out as a top-order batsman and now mostly holds his spot as a bowling all-rounder. He's had a huge change. So I guess, if a bowler hits X runs at Y average then they could be considered for a promotion. This can then drop back off if they stop scoring or bowling/taking wickets. I guess same theory with keepers or keeper-batsmen, but that'd require a lot of training too. It'd just make things more varied and you could ultimately hone and craft a side in your image and as required. Steve Smith was a leg-spinning all-rounder early on and now is the best Test batsman in the world, so I guess the same could work in reverse (e.g. if a player doesn't bowl much or have much success it could drop off and they'd thus focus more upon that new specialisation). Maybe even morph a pie-medium bowler into a darty off-spinner. Johan Botha did such. That stuff is hyper-interesting and would be great for the more obsessive fans (like me, who has owned every copy since 1998).

5. Those global domestic tournaments for t20 and List A would be sweet.

Just want to say - this is the best version of "skipper" in 8 years or more, I'm loving it, I'll be up to my 1,000th hour in the next month or so. A credit to the team, especially Chris Child and the tireless Sureshot.

[Sureshot]

Thanks for the feedback. You can resign the international captaincy in existing versions of Cricket Captain with the Resign Captaincy button in tour squad selection screen.

[bestie_96]

Think workload management could be done a bit better, as I always face Ben Stokes coming in at number 3. Maybe there could be some option for players' batting preferences beyond opening or not? It would be better not to see a specialist batsman with a v defensive mindset coming in at 7/8 with Stokes at 3.

I've also wondered about over rates. In real life, it's a big consideration when using spinners but in game teams often have all-seam attacks. Maybe if your over rate is too low too often you could be forced to sim the next game, or just have the captain banned (trouble would be people selecting a non-crucial captain as the role is irrelevant otherwise). Just feel like it would make it more realistic.

One other minor tweak is the coming in and bowling one over before lunch/close (I also don't seem to get 2 overs deducted for the changeover). Having it like in real life where that over will be bowled after lunch would appeal to me. It's the little things! And also being able to agree a draw when it's clearly meandering towards that would also save some futile sessions bowling part-timers!