Explain this to me.........

[El_Zigi]

I play this game (ICC 2008) on and off, mostly off, but when I start a game I tend to get a bit addicted for the duration I'm playing it. However always at some stage I get infuriated, stop playing and wonder is this game just taking the p*ss. I'm not one that just wants to win all the time, no fun there, no I want a challenge but not an unfair one.

I'm top of the CC with 6 wins outta 6. Next game home v Worcs who are bottom of the table with a terrible batting record (10 bonus pts out of 30). I prepare a seamers pitch and play 4 pacemen. I bat first and they bowl me out for 250 odd. Fine. They then proceed to bash my lads for over 500 runs on a good pitch for pace bowlers. Remember this is the worst batting side in the Division. I admit my bowlers are not exactly in top form but still that just seems ridiculous. They go on to win the game by 9 wkts.

Next game away to Glamorgan. Their bowling attack is decimated. 3 on Eng duty and 2 probable starters injured. I win the toss and bat first on an excellent batting surface. Their second string attack (bar their decent spinner) bowl me out for less than 250. They go on to amass over 500 runs and proceed to bowl me out for less than 250 again with their poor bowling attack to win by an innings.

Annoyed I move on to my next game at home to Worcs in pro 40. These lads really do have an average batting line-up. I prepare a spinners pitch and bowl first in overcast conditions. They smash my bowlers around and score about 260. I get nowhere close. I restart this match and this time prepare a batsmans pitch. I bat first and score 220ish, they chase this EASILY. I restart, same conditions, bat first again and score 230. This time I dont customise my field I just bowl with the auto field settings and lo and behold............I bowl them out for...............78??????????????

How can there be such wild variance??

It just seems that the game from time to time just gets a bit gaga.

BTW The reason I'm still playing 2008 is because from what I gather the newer releases still have a lot of the same old problems so why would I bother. Frustrating isn't it, when you consider the potential this kind of game has.

[6ry4nj]

I don't have ICC08, but having played ICC09 extensively, I share your suspicions. I would prefer bad opposition bowling attacks to bowl badly, and bad opposing batting lineups to set bad totals, fairly reliably. But they don't. (This does assume that your field placings are sensible and your bowling - and batting - is not too aggressive, or defensive). From what I read of ICC10 (and having simmed nearly half a domestic/international season on the trial), I would say that this has not improved.

And this is not an issue with variability. Bad batting teams get consistently higher first-innings scores than the player, as do bad bowling teams. Certainly not every time, but more often than not.

The devs do tweak the match realism between games, so I would not give up hope that this will eventually be fixed in a future version. But I expect it might take a few years.

Regarding wide variations between the same game when re-simulated, I don't have a problem with that. Consider the Brisbane Test of the recent Ashes series. England get a sub-par total. Australia in reply get something closer to par, for a substantial lead. England then fail to lose another wicket for two days - 500+ for 1 I think it was - and save the match. I agree it doesn't happen very often, but there was a huge variation in the performance of the same team under the same or worse batting conditions.

(Coincidentally I saw a rather similar thing happen in ICC09. It wasn't a game I played - it was AI vs AI. Australia had a 300 lead on the first innings. England got 380-something, then bowled Australia out for 70-odd to win by 10.)

So how come you didn't have these problems for your first 6 FC matches? Or did you re-simulate them a few times? (I've done that in the past - not only for experimentation - and I would definitely recommend re-simming each game once if you have to skip matches, where pathetically unrealistic results are common. So this isn't any kind of accusation)

[El_Zigi]

I replayed one of those games, the other 5 no. The game I replayed I did from this situation: 4th innings I'm batting and need only 120 odd to win. My no.3, whose avg is close to 50, is retired hurt from 1st innings. Their main bowler, career avg 28, takes 6 wkts to add to the 8 he took in the 1st innings(not to mention it was he who took out my no.3 also) and they win. Ok ordinarily I might accept this result despite the fact this good but not great bowler of theirs has taken, effectively, 16 wkts in the match. But I have a rule. In this situation I say you can sod off if you think you're injuring one my top batsmen and beating me by 5 or 6 runs or whatever it was.

So I restart and this time, of course, I reach the target for the loss of 1. I should add that I had almost a full day to get the runs, so I could bat normally.

I'm a pretty experienced player so you can be sure I'm not setting stupid fields or batting/bowling to aggressively.

Anyway I've continued with my game. Lost Semi F 20/20 v Glam. Dog of a pitch. They get only 124. I play it cagey in the conditions and come up just short. With only 2 overs to go I think I needed 11 to win with 5 wkts left. I got about 7 runs batting very aggressively. I suppose this isn't beyond the realms of possibility?? I suppose you could say my two relatively unsettled batsmen at the crease just made a dogs dinner of it.

Next game CC away to Hamp. They get first use of a good pitch and weather and post 480 odd. I'm thinking here we go again. But wait. My no.1 (350+) and no.3 (200+) put on over 450!!! I finish on 705. I'm yet to play the final day as I write.

Maybe I'm just having some interesting games at the moment or maybe my game is starting to go nuts. It's the year 2018.

Needless to say I'm playing on Normal.