Tweet
Cheeky, but I thought I should post a thread with this title as I was chatting to a guy who is a big fan of the game and was pointing out that this was his favourite version ever. Best game balance, best transfer system, great range of game options. Whenever I check into this forum recently it's kind of depressing as you get the impression everyone hates it. Why is it always the negative that get's the top billing on the forum?
Anyway - I thought I should let you know that we pay close attention to the forum (as regular posters will know), and we use all the suggestions to improve the engine and the game every year. More stats will definitely be a focus.
There seems to be a big theory that the game has a "catch up mode". I can promise you that there is no such thing. I've always made sure the match engine is absolutely fair and unbiased. I've looked at this in depth and I think people thinking this is in the code must be a side-effect of a couple of issues:
- There is also a general trend in cricket that batting scores are higher than they used to be, which has the effect of more good batsmen being available in the game.
- In the first release we didn't compensate for this, so the AI was trying to buy the excellent batsmen ahead of decent bowlers. If you played a lot of matches pre-patch, the batting teams got stronger and the bowling weaker due to a bug in the optimal team balance the AI looked for.
-Strong batting meant big totals could be chased down in the 4th innings, as well as in T20/ODI matches. This is probably being mistaken for "catch up code".
Another issue seems to be with dismissal types. I've looked through this for hundreds of matches and the balance between catches, bowled and LBW looks spot on to me. Anyone got any ideas as to why some people are experiencing more LBWs? If you have a defensive field under normal conditions you'll get less catches, so more LBWs, but you'd probably know if you were doing that. I have seen matches with a lot of LBWs but there are others where everyone is caught. That's just the nature of cricket. If you simulate 200 matches in a season you're bound to get some odd looking score-cards. If you gave England 200 attempts to chase down nearly 400 in the last innings at Perth they'd make it a few times (although it may never happen in our life-times in real life).
OK - I've fallen into the trap of concentrating on the negative again. Hope you are all enjoying the game. Feel free to shout about it if you do, and please let us know what you think of the iPhone game on the app store review system. I'm completely addicted to it. If this goes well we can make versions for PSP, Android and lots of other hand-held platforms, which would be fantastic. We're working on an update at the moment which will fix a couple of early teething troubles - the "sound off" options cause the game to crash at the end of an innings (dumb mistake) - the aggression control needs a bigger pressable area.
Anyway - I thought I should let you know that we pay close attention to the forum (as regular posters will know), and we use all the suggestions to improve the engine and the game every year. More stats will definitely be a focus.
There seems to be a big theory that the game has a "catch up mode". I can promise you that there is no such thing. I've always made sure the match engine is absolutely fair and unbiased. I've looked at this in depth and I think people thinking this is in the code must be a side-effect of a couple of issues:
- There is also a general trend in cricket that batting scores are higher than they used to be, which has the effect of more good batsmen being available in the game.
- In the first release we didn't compensate for this, so the AI was trying to buy the excellent batsmen ahead of decent bowlers. If you played a lot of matches pre-patch, the batting teams got stronger and the bowling weaker due to a bug in the optimal team balance the AI looked for.
-Strong batting meant big totals could be chased down in the 4th innings, as well as in T20/ODI matches. This is probably being mistaken for "catch up code".
Another issue seems to be with dismissal types. I've looked through this for hundreds of matches and the balance between catches, bowled and LBW looks spot on to me. Anyone got any ideas as to why some people are experiencing more LBWs? If you have a defensive field under normal conditions you'll get less catches, so more LBWs, but you'd probably know if you were doing that. I have seen matches with a lot of LBWs but there are others where everyone is caught. That's just the nature of cricket. If you simulate 200 matches in a season you're bound to get some odd looking score-cards. If you gave England 200 attempts to chase down nearly 400 in the last innings at Perth they'd make it a few times (although it may never happen in our life-times in real life).
OK - I've fallen into the trap of concentrating on the negative again. Hope you are all enjoying the game. Feel free to shout about it if you do, and please let us know what you think of the iPhone game on the app store review system. I'm completely addicted to it. If this goes well we can make versions for PSP, Android and lots of other hand-held platforms, which would be fantastic. We're working on an update at the moment which will fix a couple of early teething troubles - the "sound off" options cause the game to crash at the end of an innings (dumb mistake) - the aggression control needs a bigger pressable area.
Comment