Sorry, I wont be buying this, and its a real shame.

[tommyjay1]

We're summarising the request from the forum so that when we start development for 2011 we know what you want. We have discussed some aspects in a bit more detail. But for the moment, we are still in the development stage of 2010, which is important to bare in mind in terms of how we respond to requests.

yer i understand completely ... im loving 2010 by the way, and im not complaining. just throwing ideas out there

[Scritty]

That's all we can ask from here.

Thanks for the reply.

Scritty

[wilkiburger]

Grrrrrrrrrrr!

I am truly saddened by the direction here. Don't get be wrong, there seems to be a real dearth of cricket games which is also truly depressing. So it leaves us cricket lovers champing at the bit to get the developers to listen and incooporate our wishes.

The strangest thing is, I am totally aghast at the revelation that not everyone is after the same thing. As Scritty said, is it really that much to include these features, surely?.

Im all for bringing in further leagues so that others purchase the game around the world and make the developers millionaires, I really am, however, is it not true to say that there is already a market base in England who know about the product who would be more likely to buy with the improvements stated. This must be an interesting point to the marketing team when you rate it versus time and effort to get the game recognized abroad.

However I am absolutely thrilled to hear that Scritty is willing to offer his time to program something which could improve the record collecting, I would pay for that!!!!

I am interested to hear what statistics/records are wished for however. Again as already stated the game generates all the information required. It just needs more places to recoginise where to put them.

Partnerships is a key one for me when you play every game for season after season there is nothing apart from the one record for each wicket partnership. When you are on your tenth season what is there to keep me interested.?

For instance, imagine im having a bad season but I have one young spinner who is taking the best of the few wickets im getting. Im bottom of both leagues and out the comps. My interest would multiply infinity still if I had three CC matches left and on the tab on the menu I could see that he was 15 wkts off making into the top 10 of CC wkts taken in the season and 30 wkts off of being the best season for wkt taking since the game I was playing began. Another example would be along the lines of this. I have had a medium pace bowler who has served me well, he has said he is retiring and its the last game of the season. He has 15 5wkt halls, just one more would take him above the current record holder as they are tied. However Its a must win game for the title!!, sentiment v glory, a decision to make!

I think its important to understand the midset of the gamer, how many people are happy to pick up and put down, because thats how I see this argument. When I kept my records I played the game all the time. Then I stopped as I could not be bothered to keep my records. Then I continued buying the game and played a season with players I knew then put it down as one season was enough. Then the next version came along and I decided there would be no reason to buy it as I knew I would play it for the novelty of having the new players then put it down.

So how many players are out there are like me?

There has to be goals in the game to keep the interest. I personally get engrossed in the game world, surely people like me outweigh the other, what I would call console players?

Im worried im gonna be dead before I ever get my dream cricket game!

Funny thing is I love my sports simulation/management games and Im a massive football fan.

I have played football manager forever and will add the following titles that ive played in order of most played for your interest of finding out what a sad geek I am!

Football Manager
OOTP Baseball
Front Office Football (American football)
Eastside Hockey manager
Cricket Captain
Basketball Manager (Wolverine Studios)
Cycling manager!

There have been others over the years, including F1 Tennis and Horse Racing!

The strangest thing is that of all the above titles CRICKET!, is the one Ive wanted to come along the most.

Ive said it once and Ill say it again, for anyone that likes records and stats have a look at the screenshots for OOTP11, that game keeps me going for the sole reason of its recording of the game produced stats. Im just convinced that it cant be that hard to record them somewhere.

I would be interested to see what records Scritty would like to seefirst and in order of prefernce.

[Sureshot]

Im worried im gonna be dead before I ever get my dream cricket game!

Hopefully we can settle your worries next year some what, not saying it will be perfect to how you want (after all, we can never meet the demands of each user), but we are listening to you.

We made some big steps this year, I can see why some aren't going to like those as people will play with just one team, so the Aussie inclusion might no tbe a big deal. We'll strive to make big steps next year too.

People will tend to be split up in to various areas:

Graphics
Depth of gameplay (modes, etc)
The gameplay itself w/ realism
Stats

To actually make the game appeal to all the various types of user is a monumentally difficult thing to do, particularly with such a niche market.

[Scritty]

Graphics
Depth of gameplay (modes, etc)
The gameplay itself w/ realism
Stats

To actually make the game appeal to all the various types of user is a monumentally difficult thing to do, particularly with such a niche market.

I think that's a pretty good summization of the areas of the game.

Graphics - ...Are important. No matter how much I (and much of the strategy games media) say they aren't important, I have to shrug and admit that to many they are. Not least when being reviewed by mags and sites outside of your niche. To get even a look in a game needs to look presentable.

Depth of gameplay - This is a "more to do" thing. It's a tricky one to balance. For my money FM has gone so far in this direction that new players are positively alienated from the learnig curve. There's always that niggle in your mind that you lost a match because there was some obscure setting to do with left sided free kicks that you didn't tweak - or that you in the pre-match player talks you should have said "stay back if we're down" to the right sided centre back.

Here is where the intangibility of hidden ratings comes in. You never actually know what caused you to lose. You are tempted to tinker in 1000 areas.

This isn't statistics, this is control and player ratings.

Depth of gameplay is a hard one to judge, but I think there is scope for ICC to have a little more for the player to do both between games and on the pitch.

Realism/Gameplay. Having all the right players at the right counties, the competitions held at the right time and in the right format. ICC has been very good at this. It admittedly leaves a few things out (IPL "foreign league") but what it models it models very well

Stats - The ability to archive, to see how progress relates to previous years. To compare and contrast players of different generations - and sides of different era's.

Cricket has always bee a stat filled game. Sky TV and Statsguru have raised the bar significantly in the last few years.

It used to be that you could get away with bland stattements like "Crawley likes it on his legs" or "Gatting is good against spin" even "Robin Smith prefers pace bowling"

It is strange to note, that at the end of each of their careers - just as Sky started doing pitch maps. scoring zones etc - all these were proved either partially - or in Smith's case totally - wrong.

But until someone collated data from many matches, forms of dismissal, scoring areas etc - people just took the commentators word for it.

Crawley looked great clipping the ball off his legs - and subsequently got caught at mid wicket and square leg more than just about anyone in the early 2000's

His "caught at slip" percentage is about the lowest of any player in the COunty system during the same period.

Bowlers "should" have bowled at his legs, but had a 5-4 or even 4-5 field attacking when they did so. But Charles Colville seemed to convince bowlers that he was great there, so they pitched the ball outside offstump, where he would grind out huge hundreds without a chance.

Gatting's reputation against spin came after the '84-'85 tour to India (the famous "Gatting and Fowler were the last Europeans to see Indira Ghandi alive tour")

Other than that he was very stiff legged and back footed. Pakistan and Australia had spinners who could get him out at will.

Robin Smith was the opposite. One bad tour by Warne in '93 labelled Smith as a player who couldn't bat against spin.

Only retrospectively, looking at the "How outs" and scores and averages for tours etc over a period of time actually showed the errors of these assumptions.

As the MMEB said "That's where the fun is"

Scritty

[AlexB]

FWIW the reason I won't buying this is because there is no immersion in the cricket world for me - you can only see two year s worth of individual stats, and very basic ones at that.

There's no sense of anything happening outside of your own team, and no affinity for your team as old matches and players vanish into the ether.

Without a continually building history, the game is essentially a two and a bit year snapshot of a cricket world, and it has no interest to me at all

I've given similar reasons, and other aspects, in another thread, but wanted to add another voice in this one in support of expanded and recorded stats

[wilkiburger]

I don't think there are enough voices on theses forums standing up to be counted. Im convinced that the majority are after stats and records and I think we need to prove disprove the theory!

[Scritty]

I sense that the point has been made and taken.
I don't expect any immediate comeback on this - after all ICC 2010 has only been out a week.

However, unlike last year (and every year previous to this), my position is that I WON'T be buying next years game unless there is a large improvement in records and statistics. Preferably with the list of features published some time before release (so I can either stay tuned into this site, or leave and go and do something else - like support Oli's game a little more)

But I think we have made the point.

Scritty

[wilkiburger]

Olli's game? What is this?

[Chewie]

It's the 'other' cricket management game.

[matt5]

Talking bout stats have you noticed that some of the older indian and aussie playes such shane warne,anil kumble,matt hayden and a few others just do nothing, no opurtunites to give them 20 over contracts ICC 2010 needs to let us offer them contracts or get rid of them in the next patch,it won't take much effort, but on what u guys have been saying there needs to be a balance between extensive stats, good graphics and other game modes, the ashes mode from the 2009 game was good or maybe the IPL ect.

[matt5]

I get they're only there for a year or 2 and it might not be a problem for player generations in the game after that, but it gives you the chance to see if they still have they're legendary skill , can Warne still spin well ect.

[6ry4nj]

I hope no-one minds me resurrecting this thread.

I was moved by scritty's lament of 4 generations of players gone buried and forgotten. I second his appeal for retired players to be retained in the database - without being selectable naturally.

I would like more stats in the game, but I don't need a top ten Kent v. Lancashire 1st wicket partnerships in first-class, as requested by wilkiburger. The most I would want is the top two (I'd settle for one) 1st wicket partnerships for each county in each of the 4 formats (ie. FC, 40-over, 50-over, T20). And keep the Historical and Since 20nn distinction of course.

As to buy or not buy, let me say this for the record/FYI. I have bought 2 versions of ICC (06 & 09). I have not decided whether or not to buy ICC10 yet. I have no competitors' products.

[Scritty]

Thanks

First time back here in months.
Glad to see people are still looking for a stats improvement.

I hear that a third contentder for serious cricket sim is on the horizon for 2012 (google that phrase - I don't want to disrespect Chris by typing it here) and it will be stat-tastic

Scritty

[Themer]

Care to elaborate? I've googled that term to no result.