An update from us

[Sureshot]

We'd like to address some points raised in posts across the forum.

First of all, we're sorry for the lack of response from us. We were due to release an update in early August, but unfortunately due to some technical issues this over-ran and we hit scheduling issues with various holidays. Releasing updates on all platforms requires several of us to all be available at the same time. Chris, Charles and myself have all been unavailable at various points in the last 2-3 months, which has complicated matters.

The next update is close to release.

I've spoken to Chris, and he agrees that it would be good for him to get back to replying on the forum. Input from the forum has been vital in improving the game over the years, and this is best done with a dialogue.

In terms of balance, these issues aren't being caused by the Bazball introduction, as it can't have the impact described by users (the bazball changes we made have no impact on white ball cricket, for example). We are investigating this further, but need more testing time to further analyse the game engine in a range of match situations.

Regarding sales, the continuing trend for Cricket Captain for the last decade or so (since introduction of the new interface engine in 2014) has been movement of sales from Desktop to Mobile. Whilst Steam reviews are poor, it's not an indicator of sales. Steam and Android generate similar sales, but don't generate similar review numbers. The next update includes an in-game review prompt which I created a couple of months ago.

[RVallant]

I really am disappointed that it seems to be "well, sales are fine so lol, never mind the negative reviews."

The thing for me is, it is not just Steam that this game gets fairly negative reviews. It is on cricketing communities, PlanetCricket pretty much pans this game. Battrick and other cricket forums also have fairly negative takes on the series.

I think disregarding reviews just because sales numbers are healthy is not going to work in your favour in the future tbh.

But what I also take from this post is that you're content with mobile gaming. I might suggest going 100% all in on mobile gaming if you're chasing that, because they're seldom compatible with "desktop" gaming/sales for quite a few reasons.

[Yorkie]

Balance issues not having an impact on white ball?
Some of the scores now achievable on 23 are ridiculous. The accuracy and realism are sadly miles away from 22.

[Yorkie]

Ok it’s vs Nepal but 519/7!! - Al Hasan firing at a bonkers 208.4SR%!! Jos Buttler one of the most aggressive 50 Over players in the World Ave around 118SR% irl at 50 Over!. It’s not realistic and these occurrences happen regularly.

[Yorkie]

Tests regularly lose the plot too. I’ve had Ireland beat Australia by 723 runs! And here’s another that shouldn’t/wouldn’t happen.

[Chris Child]

There were some minor tweaks to white ball aggression settings for 2023 to reflect real-world higher scores. Nothing that should make major differences. The chance of losing a wicket would be about 5% less at the 7/8 bars level. I'm looking into this more. Some of these above are outliers. We're simulating thousands of games between us (as players), so there will be times when something happens that has never happened in real life. The Shakib Al Hasan innings shows 30 missed chances, which is very unlikely on its own, but can happen, and then it's against Nepal. We did have an issue with overrated ODI/T20I stats for nations that play the minnows a lot. This will be fixed in the next database update. I've looked at the Bazball code in detail. It's working correctly - in that FC ability us used for 3 bars and below, OD ability is then mixed with test at 4, then you get OD only after that (so it couldn't really changeT20 scores and will have little effect on OD).

I'll look into this more an give more feedback. Obviously the game engine being perfect is our top priority as that is the core of our game.

[Yorkie]

Thanks for giving some reply, we all appreciate that. I can supply more anomalies as my group get them. Outliers maybe but happening way too often imo. Records broken regularly, irl records tumbling almost daily. Al Hasan (at 40 when most batsmen in game are done) breaking the personal record of Rohit Sharma! These things don’t happen regularly in cricket. They’re happening too regularly in game and it’s spoilt my immersion and I’m sure I speak for others. The answer “well it is possible” is wearing a bit thin. I buy the game for its accuracy and realism, and 23 has lost that realism.

[Chris Child]

In regard to the Steam vs other platforms - we treat all platforms equally and the engine/code for all is the same. There has been a gradual shift from PC sales to mobile over the years, but that's not something we've targeted, it's just the market. For some reason our reviews on iOS are much better than PC, other years it's the other way around. Only a small fraction of the people that play the game write review so there is some randomness involved (as the engine is the same).

[Chris Child]

Checked both ability and aggression ratings again for the Bazball changes (where we mix between FC/OD/T20 aggression and ability at each separate level). These are working as they should.

The Shakib Al Hasan innings is a good example. If he's had 30 missed chances, that's the equivalent of being out around 13 times on average. So his average score batting like this over a large number of innings would be 273/13 = 21. He got very very lucky in this innings (and that was against Nepal who have a poor bowling attack anyway). The chances of getting this lucky in an innings (30 chances) are about 1 in 50,000, which would indicate the engine is fine and this was just an outlier. If you do see odd innings, we need this level of detail to try work out if it's one of those random things, or there is something that's gone wrong somewhere in the engine.

Records do tumble a lot of the game, but then we measure so many of them now, that you do tend to break a lot.

We're running a lot more tests over the next few weeks. As I say - the game engine is key, so we absolutely want to make sure it's correct and as realistic as possible.

[Yorkie]

He’s good but I doubt this good.

[Yorkie]

Normal difficulty

[Chris Child]

What season were you in with Kohli? Is he one of your players? Just started an India domestic game. A couple of games in for the a new season for him (not my player), he’s got two ducks. All the T20 scores look realistic and the engine is playing well.

[Chris Child]

Zimbabwe score is plausible. England were looking like they could score 1000 against Ireland at the start of 2023.

[Yorkie]

Ok I’ll let you waste your time bombarding the forum with obsessive, mainly what ‘you’d like to see’ database queries.

Good luck with that whilst I’m back playing 22 along with a lot of others, because something is certainly not right this year.

[Yorkie]

I run a Facebook Group dedicated to the game. Currently 2500 members and via a recent poll over 70% stated that 23 is now too aggressive due to the Bazball tweak.
I’ve also never mentioned bringing an old engine back?
Like I said, good luck.