What We Would Like In ICC2011

[ab5ides1]

The thing is is that sometimes odd things do happen in cricket, strange things so happen and thats one of the main attractions of the game.

EDIT: And with regards to strange AI decisions at the toss. Sometimes, when all looks good, decent pitch, good overhead conditions and the AI will put you in to bat. You think, strange, I was looking forward to batting on this... Then 10 minutes after the start there is heavy cloud... how did the AI seem to know this was going to happen when I had no idea?

Maybe they had a 'feeling' that it would happen. Many times in cricket the captain who wins the toss does choose on a 'gut feeling'. Or maybe the computer just did a cloud dance beforehand. Unless it's obviously looking to be very cloudy etc. I generally bat first. I'm not quite as strict as W.G. Grace about it however.

[siddle]

I think part of the problem is that the AI selects the players based on the ratings that each player is assigned, so it'll always pick these "best" players, when they are available. Unerringly, one might say. But, I am not sure how you'd get an AI to pick dodgy players, or stick with has beens...

i think what annoys me is that some of the future guns never be any good in the game, for example for Australia players like M Marsh, Hazlewood, etc all get dropped after the first season pretty much, where as in real life they will be the next generation of test players but they never become any good in this game. I bet Patrick Cummins will get a low rating because of his FC average after 3 games and will never become any good in the game, but in real life he is already being picked in the Australian A team at just 17 years of age

[dancingmongoose]

The pitch:

Needs to have more effect on the game, and I would like to actually see the pitch getting worse.

The players:

We need to be able to edit (Watson is not Australias best paceman), plus a bit like CC11 where there are tags for things like captaincy.
Also a potential thing, because a bunch of 20 year olds come and become the best players in the world after the first year. Just because they had a good average early doesnt mean much, and they have to grow over time (or get worse in Pontings case). It will be a couple of years before Copeland plays for Australia, let alone be the lead paceman.

The domestic teams:

We need to be able to play as teams in other countries, plus teams like MCC, Unicorns would be very nice as a challenge.
Resigning and taking up different teams is a must, and seeing the other countries domestic curciut is needed. I follow Queensland and Sussex, if I play as one I cant see how the other is doing in the game.

The Countries:
We want to play as associates, correct FTP after the first year. World Cup and T20 World Cup qualifying, plus WCL and Intercontinental Cup

[enigma]

The thing is is that sometimes odd things do happen in cricket, strange things so happen and thats one of the main attractions of the game.

That may be the case but things that happen in this game sometimes tend to border on paranormal like computer mysteriously choosing to bowl first in batting-friendly conditions AND then destroying our line-up with its ordinary attack or tail-enders smashing the ball allover the place in cloudy weather & an uneven pitch even though their batsmen had already found the conditions to difficult to handle or......... Pedro Collins hitting 14 off 4 balls in a tight situation to win the match (I don't think he's ever done that sort of thing in his entire life at any level of cricket)

EDIT: And with regards to strange AI decisions at the toss. Sometimes, when all looks good, decent pitch, good overhead conditions and the AI will put you in to bat. You think, strange, I was looking forward to batting on this... Then 10 minutes after the start there is heavy cloud... how did the AI seem to know this was going to happen when I had no idea?

Sometimes, it doesn't even need the cloudcover to show up after 10 minutes & YET it'll bowl us out with its ordinary attack.

i think what annoys me is that some of the future guns never be any good in the game, for example for Australia players like M Marsh, Hazlewood, etc all get dropped after the first season pretty much, where as in real life they will be the next generation of test players but they never become any good in this game. I bet Patrick Cummins will get a low rating because of his FC average after 3 games and will never become any good in the game, but in real life he is already being picked in the Australian A team at just 17 years of age

It may be a bit unrealistic to expect them to get every young player's rating right but may be if they'd open up a little bit more about discussing ratings then may be people can advise them to raise/lower ratings of those who mayn't be as well-known as some of the internationals.

Carrying on from your earlier post, I'd made a suggestion that may be the promising young players in the game should NOT be rated as well as are sometimes & instead their real rating should be medium-good in the original database with their "potential rating" (the rating that they should be at when they reach their peak) varying in every different save so that a particular promising youngster in real life turns into a great several years down the line while in another save, he ends up not improving very much from his original rating or even going backwards. But the issue with this could be that it may cause some statistical volatility within the game in the long-run so it needs to be implemented careful or else it can go awry.

[Phylos Fett]

Carrying on from your earlier post, I'd made a suggestion that may be the promising young players in the game should NOT be rated as well as are sometimes & instead their real rating should be medium-good in the original database with their "potential rating" (the rating that they should be at when they reach their peak) varying in every different save so that a particular promising youngster in real life turns into a great several years down the line while in another save, he ends up not improving very much from his original rating or even going backwards. But the issue with this could be that it may cause some statistical volatility within the game in the long-run so it needs to be implemented careful or else it can go awry.

I like the idea of current-rating and potential-rating, where the current-rating can rise and fall, and may reach the potential-rating if the player is nutured and trained in the right way (as well as other circumstances, obviously).

Whether or not there is a way for the AI to not just select the player with the best potential-rating, and then train them to that potential in a fashion that a human player can only do occassionally, I don't know.

[enigma]

I believe there's ALREADY a "real-rating" (or "current-rating" as you've termed it) & a "potential-rating" but I'm not a 100% certain because of some aberration I've seen but I'm just proposing to expand this already existing feature by randomising the "potential-rating" of promising young players in every new save that we'd make.

I'm saying, for example, why not have Eoin Morgan on 1250-1300 in the original database as his "real-rating" (instead of 1500 or whatever he's on in the current original database) & then over a period of time let his "real-rating" move towards his "potential-rating" (right now young talents are given too good a rating in the original database itself); in one save his "potential-rating" could be 1400, 1500 or 1600 in another, it could even be 1200 or 1100 in another & thereby have him going backwards over time, & so on. As it works right now, he'd be on 1500 or whatever in all saves we'd start & his "potential-rating" would be the same in all saves as well & obviously, the same holds true for rest of the younger talent around the world & that's why, after a few seasons, in each save, we end up with the same bunch of top players around the world.

But as I've said before, this thing can really go awry with statistical aberrations, if it is not implemented properly & that's probably the reason why the developers haven't yet introduced it.

If this thing is implemented properly then we WON'T have to worry about the AI picking the best-rated players because then the best-rated players will automatically be somewhat different in each new save we'd start.

[El_Zigi]

Ha, I wrote a longish post yesterday and then due to some connection glitch it didn't post and I lost it. What a waste of time. Oh well.

With all due respect Enigma I think you may be giving too much weight to the effect that cloudcover has on proceedings. I'm getting the impression you seem to think that cloudcover always means a big advantage for pace bowlers. In my experience playing ICC 2010 this isn't the case at all which is how it should be. I mean in reality if it's mostly sunny and a batting side is going well and then it becomes mostly cloudy this doesn't mean that suddenly the wickets are going to start a tumblin' now does it. As I've said before on the forum, I wouldn't pay too much attention to conditions in the middle of a game. I pay far more attention simply to how the game is going. Am I batting and scoring runs easy and not losing wickets? If the answer is yes then as far as I'm concerned the conditions are good for batting regardless of what the little 'conditions' box says. This is because I've realised that the so called 'conditions' feature is mostly b****x. Too misleading, too vague and thus to be ignored, not all of the time mind, but certainly most of the time.

So really the bottomline of this post is that: imo the whole area of conditions in the game needs a big improvement because, far more often than not, conditions just seem to be something that's there but not something that actually has any effect on proceedings. Or least not any effect that the player could possibly recognise. Why? Well because the more you play the game the more you'll find you'll score plenty of runs in certain conditions sometimes and other times, in the same conditions and adopting the same tactics, you will collapse. The only conclusion a player could possibly come to is, conditions are misleading. Hence the reason they should be ignored. This needs to change.

(I'm referring specifically to FC/Test matches here)

[enigma]

I think I (& I'm sure plenty of other gamers who use cloudcover to their advantage) would like to respectfully disagree; when used properly, even average seamers, sometimes even part-time seamers, become absolutely lethal in cloudy conditions & one can easily end up bowling oppositions out for paltry totals when there's cloudcover around.

I'd agree with you that the "Playing Conditions" part of the game does need a big improvement as some of the aspects of it aren't having the proper impact, I've talked about the excessive impact of spin in the past as well as the need to add factors like pace of the pitch, extra bounce, seam-movement of the pitch, etc BUT based on my experience, I'd like to think that the developers have found a decent balance when it comes to cloudy conditions ie we can often put up decent totals even in cloudy conditions if we use our batsmen judiciously while bowlers seem to perform as well as they probably should so I'd give credit to the developers for at least getting that thing right for the most part.

[El_Zigi]

One thing that baffles me. In reality a test pitch generally becomes better and better for spin bowlers to do there thing on as the pitch wears and probably becomes drier, so generally spinners become more effective as a test match develops. But I've lost count now the number of test matches I've played where the spinners have been more effective in the first 1, 2 or 3 days than they are in the last 2 days when the pitch is, according to conditions, good or even excellent for spinners. It could be that in sharp turn conditions u need to change your tactics a bit, but I don't know. Whatever the AI is doing doesn't seem to work for it either.

In my latest test I made a bit of a miscalculation and serious blunder at the toss.

Pitch: No help for pace/good for spinners

Weather for 5 days was:

1. cloudy/rain/very cloudy
2. rain/very cloudy/very cloudy
3. very sunny/sunny/sunny
4. sunny/sunny/sunny
5. unsettled/unsettled/sunny

I won the toss and batted first. I had my reasons. I batted for the first 2 days in which there were big interruptions. I was all out for 219, so by the time the oppo started their innings it was actually the start of day 3. I was actually expecting to be bowled out quicker, thats why I batted first . Have you figured out my strange logic yet?? Anyway the oppo went on to score 505-3 and declared early in the 3rd session of the 4th day with their massive lead. Now what happened next I find hard to understand. We're talking about two teams of similar strength here. If the oppo can bat like that then surely my batsmen of equal ability can do something similar. As far as I'm concerned the conditions must be excellent for batting so I approach my 2nd innings in a normal fashion, ie as if it was my 1st innings. They rolled me over for 130 odd. This I find hard to understand.

(Mind you, I did rush this match a bit, so that's probably why I got thrashed, that and my strange toss logic)

Anyway with regard to improving the conditions aspect, I believe the developers are intending to do something about this. It's needed. Often times after losing a game players are left scratching their heads with absolutely no clue as to why what happened actually happened. So some of us like to come on to the forum and have a moan about it too . But this is the real problem with gameplay in ICC. I wait for the day when after a defeat I can look back at the match I think "darn I think I went wrong here and maybe there too, I should of done this" instead of looking something like this . This is the challenge for the developers. And I've probably been as vague here as the conditions in ICC.

[Chasjs]

Sometimes, I feel, like in real life, the ball will be turning too much and the batsmen will struggle to get a bat on it whereas in the first innings the ball was turning just enough to get the edge or catch the stumps. In that situation it's perfectly reasonable to think that the spinner would have more success earlier in the match.

Example/ I've just played a game away in South Africa (On ICC2009 admittedly) that looks like the pitch will spin loads... Swann takes 5 wickets in SAs innings on day 3. Then in the second innings on the final day with the pitch turning right angles he only manages 1 wicket, but he is causing problems in almost every over.

[El_Zigi]

Sometimes, I feel, like in real life, the ball will be turning too much and the batsmen will struggle to get a bat on it whereas in the first innings the ball was turning just enough to get the edge or catch the stumps. In that situation it's perfectly reasonable to think that the spinner would have more success earlier in the match.

Example/ I've just played a game away in South Africa (On ICC2009 admittedly) that looks like the pitch will spin loads... Swann takes 5 wickets in SAs innings on day 3. Then in the second innings on the final day with the pitch turning right angles he only manages 1 wicket, but he is causing problems in almost every over.

This reasoning had crossed my mind. It certainly seems to be how ICC works but I don't believe it should work like this. If a pitch is offering considerable turn for the spinners then this should always make them more likely to get wickets. Why? Because it means there's the possibility for much more variation. Spinners can negate the massive turn simply by putting less revs on the ball. So now you should have a situation where the spinner can get any kind of turn, big or little, instead of just a little turn only.

Having said that, in reality old pitches that are offering plenty of turn can also be at the same time slow or 'dead' pitches which means that the batsmen have plenty of time to react to anything the ball does. I wonder does ICC operate on this basis. If it does, that's fine, but the balance is wrong. I'm not for a second saying that every time you have a pitch offering plenty of turn that the spinners should always take wickets, but more often than not they should.

Lastly, with regard to Swann turning it at right angles, only getting the one wicket but causing problems in every over. Well I wouldn't mind as much if my spinners (and indeed the oppo spinners) on sharp turning pitches only took 1 wicket or no wickets but were creating many chances (then I could say, well, they were unlucky). But this more often than not isn't the case. I find that they not only don't take wickets (or only 1 or 2) but they also don't create many chances.

[Jaypol]

Are then any plans to inculde the Test Cricket Championship.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/conte...ry/481373.html

This would be a nice to have.....

Come on India, pity about South Africa exiting the World Cup....

[golden]

11) Retired players - Ability to save records of retired players is a must. May be at the end of each season, as players retire, ask the users if they want to save certain player(s)'s records. Also, most of the times players could tell us that they're going to to retire. Some should retire from one or two forms of the game & play on in others rather than giving up completely.

This please!!! I actually wait before going on at the start of each season, look back over all players I've used that season, and jot down their statistics, in case they retire in the off season. Sad, it's true, but I would be saved a lot of hassle by at least having an opportunity to know who was retiring and thus only have to jot down those players stats who are actually retiring - or indeed just be able to save them! After all, I want to construct 'career records' for my team over a long period of time.

[6ry4nj]

This please!!! I actually wait before going on at the start of each season, look back over all players I've used that season, and jot down their statistics, in case they retire in the off season. Sad, it's true, but I would be saved a lot of hassle by at least having an opportunity to know who was retiring and thus only have to jot down those players stats who are actually retiring - or indeed just be able to save them! After all, I want to construct 'career records' for my team over a long period of time.

You could just make a backup copy of your save files at the end of every season before retirements take effect.

[Phylos Fett]

I was thinking if there was a way to include longer injuries into the game - sometimes players suffer an injury that requires surgery, or opt to have surgery in the off-season to fix a problem that has been there for a while.

The other thing I was thinking about was illegal bowling actions - they don't happen too often these days (after they changed the parameters), but there are still bowlers that get picked by match referees (or one of the several umpires) to have their action reviewed.

And suspensions for ball tampering, dissent, and other infringements.