What We Would Like In ICC2011

[outbreak]

Or ICC2011 could just have Zimbabwe playing tests right away

http://www.foxsports.com.au/cricket/cricket-world-cup-2011/zimbabwe-to-return-to-test-fold-by-playing-matches-against-bangladesh-pakistan-and-new-zealand-in-2011/story-e6frf3ju-1226011099982

I dont' see how a referral system would be needed. To do this they'd have to up the number of wrong decisions...

[Phylos Fett]

I was thinking that maybe an "opening bowler" icon might be a good idea (similar to the opening batsmen icon), and training in techniques such as Opening Bowler and Opening Batsman.

[Sureshot]

Ok, seeing as there's been some discussion on another thread, to give some more control over your batsmen, maybe a drop-down box instructing them how to play? For example:-

Normal (How the batsmen play at the moment)
Rotate the strike (Both batsmen would need to be set to this for it to be effective)
Aim for boundaries (Basically hit out or get out)
Defend <Partner> (Similar to the option we have now)
Give strike to <Partner> (When a new batsman isn't actively avoiding the strike but is trying to give it to his (settled) partner)

Feel free to suggest more, I know that's asking a lot, but at least it's asking

Most of those instructions can be done with the aggression bar, maybe a more defined rotate the strike and a get the single now option would be beneficial.

Some really good ideas here guys, keep them coming. Giving us ideas for several years ahead (I've got my own ideas which I think could last 4 to 5 versions!).

[El_Zigi]

I raised this issue very recently and because it annoys me so much I'm gonna have to raise it again.

Batsmen getting hit and retiring hurt happens FAR TOO OFTEN!!!!!!!!!! It's unrealistic and unfair. It shouldn't happen at all. I swear that barely a Test goes by in this version without this happening to either me or an AI player. How often in real life does this happen? Once in a blue moon is how often.

Please fix this.

[enigma]

^^^
Although I wouldn't exactly say that it happens "far too often" but still, I'd say it seems to happen more often than it does in real-life, & it does need to be reduced in my opinion & there definitely need to be times when the injured batsman returns to the crease in the same innings or the second innings, if the team really needs it; this decision could be offered to the user, whether he wants to make the guy bat & aggravate his injury or would he rather not bat him & thereby have him back a few days earlier. That'd be a nice addition.

[El_Zigi]

It's happening far too often for me anyway. Maybe I'm just being unfortunate in this regard. Personally I would like to see it gone from the game altogether, or at least ensure that it happens only very rarely. I'm not so obsessed that I'm going to look through the last 250 tests to see how often a batsman was retired hurt (suffering a fracture that sidelines him for 2-4 weeks) after being hit but I'm pretty sure that if someone did they'd discover they could count the number of times on one hand.

As I said before on this issue, injuries should of course be a part of the game but players getting injured in this way should be a rare occurence at the very least. I wouldn't mind seeing new ways of players getting injured during a game. For example, your bowler pulls a hamstring during a spell ruling him out for x amount of time or a fielder injuring himself in some way. But if this was to be implemented then it would be very important for the balance to be right. Nobody wants their players getting injured every other match they play. It would have to be, again, a rare occurence. On top of this you would then be able to replace any injured player while on tour.

[Dogwood]

I think a revised transger and budjet section at the end of a season. Instead of having a list that you can buy from have it so you can also go to clubs and offer amounts for other players (like fifa or fm) who aren't on the "market" they might be more expensive but it would be a better way of building a team if you could bid for the best players

[Dogwood]

Also what about with the graphics if you could have the real bats, this might take a while so maybe not for this year but for coming games because it would make it more realistic to see them holding kookaburra bats rather than blank ones

[6ry4nj]

^^^
Although I wouldn't exactly say that it happens "far too often" but still, I'd say it seems to happen more often than it does in real-life, & it does need to be reduced in my opinion & there definitely need to be times when the injured batsman returns to the crease in the same innings or the second innings, if the team really needs it; this decision could be offered to the user, whether he wants to make the guy bat & aggravate his injury or would he rather not bat him & thereby have him back a few days earlier. That'd be a nice addition.

I could hardly believe my eyes but I had a game as Australia in ICC09 where Jaques retired hurt in the 1st Innings, and came out to bat - despite the supposed 'fracture' - in the 2nd! How rare is that?!! I assume if it can happen in ICC09, it can happen in the latest version too.

[outbreak]

Something i'd like to see is more editing (maybe an official editor?). Make sides edited unusable in online games (if anyone plays these?). I'd love to be able to make my own tournaments (say pick the amount of fc,od and t20 matches in the season then pick 8 or so international/county/aussie/ sides competing) and i've love to be able to edit teams rosters myself.

[Machinax]

Will ICC 2011 do a mandatory ball change in ODIs, after 34 overs? The physics and dynamics of a new ball could be interesting.

[enigma]

I could hardly believe my eyes but I had a game as Australia in ICC09 where Jaques retired hurt in the 1st Innings, and came out to bat - despite the supposed 'fracture' - in the 2nd! How rare is that?!! I assume if it can happen in ICC09, it can happen in the latest version too.

If that can happen then I wonder why the developers have never mentioned it on threads saying that should happen I don't know, may be they have & I just haven't happened to stumble upon any such posts. Anyways, if it's already there then its frequency needs to be increased a bit as we do see people coming back in real life when their team really needs it, although I'd still like to see the frequency of "got hit & out of X weeks" reduced a bit anyway.

I like El_Zigi's suggestion of sudden & small injuries happening during a match; for example, as Kallis pulled muscle or something in 3rd Test against India recently & then he didn't bowl but batted (& scored a wonderful 100 too). But again, this too needs to be a rare occurrence, especially with bowlers as one can make-up for one less batsman but losing a bowler in the usual 4-man-attack makes things very difficult.

[Phylos Fett]

I was thinking as I was playing (as I always do), and just thought that 2 additional "lengths" might be interesting - a bouncer and a yorker. I put the "lengths" in quotes because it might be better to have these as one off deliveries, rather than something you set for the entire over (bouncers especially, as they'll get you called for no-balls or wides if used too often).

This, in turn, got me thinking about the batsman's guard. At the moment, I assume that they bat with one foot on either side of the crease with a middle stump guard (I may be wrong - they may take guard based on their batting preference). It might be interesting if the batsman could take a different guard, and perhaps bat within the crease, or out of the crease.

Anyway, that's all I was thinking at the moment.

[enigma]

As the developers are at work right now on ICC2011, even though I've posted features here & there, I thought I should assemble them & make a single post about features that are top-priority for me for ICC2011; don't mind if some of them are repeats, I guess that'd only demonstrate that there's more demand for them :

1) Budget - Please let us carry our remaining budget-money into the next year. Sometimes I've enough players or there aren't any good players in the pool, in that case I'd like to save my money for the next year. Money just "vanishing" isn't realistic.

2) Singles Bar - A MUST for ODs & T20s. Setting it higher, should result in batsmen taking more singles more frequently while chances of them getting runout also increase somewhat. The risk of runouts should be less for better runners (Bevan?) & more for bad-runners (Inzamam?) the higher the bar is set at.

3) Bowling-form & RPOs - Here, I'd made a suggestion about a dynamic system considering bowlers' economy-rates & other factors (near misses should count for something too) for calculating their bowling-form, I hope we'll be seeing something like that implemented.

4) 90-Overs-days - No more 100-110 overs days, there should be no more than 90 overs bowled in a day in the longer forms of the game.

5) Central Contracts - Award them based on domestic & international PERFORMANCES of players instead of skill-ratings so if my player is scoring hundreds or taking wickets for my county & for England then give him a contract instead of some 22-year-old who averages 25 with the bat or 35 with the ball just because he has better skill-ratings.

6) Super-regens & online cheating - Please kill the super-regens! Under current skill-ratings system, players average 50-60 in FC & Tests at batting-skill of 1700-1800 or so & bowlers average 20ish & a little less at bowling-skill of 500 or so & regens having skill-ratings any better than this is just unrealistic & they kill the fun & longevity of the game, I mean where's the challenge in beating teams just because you've regens with vastly superior ratings! Where's the fun in that when I can just win almost every match! The game becomes boring then.
If regens' skill-ratings are capped at certain levels (around about where you get FC & Test batting & bowling averages of 50-60 & 20ish respectively) then that'll significantly curtail online-cheaters' fun if the servers just started auto-banning online-teams with skill-ratings better than the capped levels as no such players would exist in a non-edited team.

7) Improvement in playing conditions & skill-ratings - Suggestions made here.

8) Pitches, spinners & spin-modifiers - It seems far too many pitches turn too often, it's realistic in sub-continent I guess but elsewhere? And spinners also seem to overperform so may be spin-modifiers need to be looked at.

9) Keeping & fielding stats - There must be stats like byes-given/overs-kept % & catches-dropped/catches-taken %
Here, I've also suggested about how fielding could be more specialised along with training for keepers & specialised fielding positions, etc.

10) Saving scorecards - Balls-faced should be saved in the saved scorecards. May be there should be an option to save the whole season or all matches of a specific forms in a season - FC, OD or T20

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.

12) Shots - I know it's a "cosmetic" thing but still, may be include some better classical shots (at least in FC/Tests), rather than slogging that is shown right now, for gamers like me who often like to play ball-by-ball.

13) Man of the Match - Another "cosmetic" thing but it's extremely annoying that sometimes AI's MOTM decisions are really crazy so may be give us like 3 "reviews" every season to overturn (within reason of course) AI's choice of MOTM. Also, no. of MOTM should be recorded for each player.

14) Modes of dismissal - A lot more people should be getting out caught in the inner-ring or on the boundary, especially in OD & T20 as that's what happens in real-life.

15) More records - May be records for each year should be shown instead of just current, last year & last year+1. Plus, series records, records against teams - home & away.

[Sureshot]

I'd say we're looking at most of those (the singles problem is something I've highlighted, but it may be one for 2012), so it has been discussed and some of it is in the 2011 design.

Shots - All depends on the animations we can get (along with hopefully proper umpire animations so we can do leg-bye/bye properly).

I know I'm biased, but the 2011 design is looking good to me.