Feature Requests

[Sureshot]

Try and be as concise as you can on new features you want in the game, be it small or large we want to hear what you think.

Also, try and be sensible, as an example, putting tattoo's into player characteristics is unlikely!

[Alrounder80]

Allow us to change the counties we manage during a career or get fired from the job and be able to choose a different county if we perform poorly. This can apply to international mode, Aussie state sides and IPL sides as well.

Have fielding as an attribute that aids a player in getting picked. For example, one of the potential reasons Monty Panesar didn't get picked frequently for England (especially in ODIs and T20s) was due to his poor fielding. Jonty Rhodes, on the other hand, was sometimes selected because of his incredible fielding for South Africa. I'm not saying fielding should be an overriding factor, but if there are two similar players, the better fielder should get picked.

Show bowling speeds, whether it be in the highlights or wherever it would be most convenient.

Batsmen weaknesses should include being weak against right or left hand bowlers. KP struggles against left arm offies. I know right handed batsmen that really struggle against left arm seamers.

[KGKOOLKAT777]

Allow us to change the counties we manage during a career or get fired from the job and be able to choose a different county if we perform poorly. This can apply to international mode, Aussie state sides and IPL sides as well.

I like this idea. Also a lot of people, most vocally Scritty have requested more statistics in the game. I also think this would be a welcome addition. However the thing that needs the most redoing is the IPL.

The contracts style should in auction form and you should be able to pick up Indian domestic players afterwards. The contracts should be 3 year deals with the option of terminating the contract after one or two years. There should be a limit of 33 players and 11 overseas players. You should also have the option to retain 4 players after 3 years for 1.8 million, 1.2 million 800k and 500k.

Another welcome addition would be to be able to change the players hairstyles and hair colours.

Finally, please can a player such as MS Dhoni have 2 initials because in the game he comes up as M Dhoni. Then you could list his full name as Mahendra Singh not MS. This could be implemented through Edit Name-Initials then add First initial/s and last initial/s (although last is irrelevant)

[Dick Van Dykes Disco Dog]

Try and be as concise as you can on new features you want in the game, be it small or large we want to hear what you think.

Also, try and be sensible, as an example, putting tattoo's into player characteristics is unlikely!

Trego and Dernbach will be very upset

[Isura]

* Allow changing club/country you manage in middle of career
* Allow change the format you manage (FC/OD/T20) in the middle of career
* Fielding ratings should matter more.
* Training for fielding (slip catching, keeper, athletic skills etc)
* More variety of injuries and make nagging/long term injuries a factor (especially for bowlers)
* Editable tours
* More detailed pitch conditions. Separate pace/bounce and seam. Spin separate bounce and turn. Bounce helps leg spinners more, turn helps both. Similarly pace helps RF and RMF bowlers, and seam (and cloud cover) help RFM and RM bowlers.

* Coaching contracts. You can be sacked or take a job at new club.
* Hire coaching staff: assistants, batting coach, bowling coach, physio, fielding coach.
* Allow retired players to become coaches in the game.

[KGKOOLKAT777]

* Allow changing club/country you manage in middle of career
* Allow change the format you manage (FC/OD/T20) in the middle of career
* Fielding ratings should matter more.
* Training for fielding (slip catching, keeper, athletic skills etc)
* More variety of injuries and make nagging/long term injuries a factor (especially for bowlers)
* Editable tours
* More detailed pitch conditions. Separate pace/bounce and seam. Spin separate bounce and turn. Bounce helps leg spinners more, turn helps both. Similarly pace helps RF and RMF bowlers, and seam (and cloud cover) help RFM and RM bowlers.

* Coaching contracts. You can be sacked or take a job at new club.
* Hire coaching staff: assistants, batting coach, bowling coach, physio, fielding coach.
* Allow retired players to become coaches in the game.

Really like hiring coaching staff and fielding training. Also exhibition matches with retired players from your savegame would be great.

[Hampshire]

Make a sort of recovery time for injuries. As soon as one of my key players comes out of injury after a longer time period , I can just stick them on physio and play them in the next game , knowing its very unlikely they'll get injured. In real life , a lot of the time they will ease them back into the team , perhaps only playing them in a couple of formats to reduce the chances of them getting injured again!

[Dick Van Dykes Disco Dog]

I'd suggest no massive changes but just some more leagues - NZ or Sth Africa maybe or the West Indies

[Imager36]

Being able to play different formats for Domestic and international teams in the same save?

[Graham_5000]

- Events that change the settled/unsettled nature of bowlers/batsmen in games e.g. losing a batting partner (I mentioned this in another thread) - this could develop the psychological angle of the game.

- Other nations' domestic competitions and national reserve (A) teams in order to develop up and coming players.

- Pace of wicket (as mentioned above), in order to add to the parameters of weather, wear, unevenness etc.

- If implementable, perhaps a fielding training budget in addition to Youth, Physio, and Coaching.

- More player development, training, and feedback on their progression.

- Option to alter the level of risk to take with regards quick singles in matches.

[Alrounder80]

More to do with match engine or whatever the term is, make it so that when teams are faced with a very big total they don't slog and get all out for a very low total. Irl, if teams lost 2 or 3 quick wickets they would shut up shop to avoid embarrassment. Also, no proper batsmen (ie selfish ) would give their wicket away by slogging when they know they have 0.1% chance of winning (pardon the exaggeration).

Have AI use more than 5 bowlers if one or two of the main bowlers leak too many runs. Nowadays, teams rarely use only 5 bowlers. Also, the AI mustn't ALWAYS necessarily pick 5 bowlers. Teams like India sometimes go with 4 bowlers and make up the rest of the overs with just part timers and make up for it with their strong batting line-up.

Left arm seamers should be more effective bowling from over the wicket to right handers in general. Most batsmen will tell you that the angle it creates is quite difficult to contend with, I know from experience how difficult it can be. I realise LBWs are harder to come by, but you only have to look at how many left arm seamers that go over the wicket to right handers to understand it is really the most effective method of bowling to them.

Allow us to select players that play for Ireland or Scotland for England since that is what can be done irl. I guess you would have to limit the amount of players we can select from each since some guys might just select a squad comprised of all Irish or Scottish players. Also, we should have the choice of buying players representing the Unicorns (which have players without professional county contracts I think) as well as Irish and Scottish players.

Allow us to play as associate nations!!! This has always been a dream of mine...

If not the above, at least simulate matches that go on between associate nations (so that it emulates real life and so the best teams qualify to World Cups rather than terrible associate teams like UAE!) and schedule the occasional match between an International team (team in top 10 rankings) with an associate nation.

Have players who are FC or Test specialists because of their inability to bowl slower balls, yorkers, etc. Guys like James Anyon, Huw Waters, Gemaal Hussain, Vernon
Philander, Chris Martin (batting a problem as well for him), etc never cut it in the One Day formats.

Brings me on to my next point, allow some bowlers to have good variations making them effective in OD matches.

Not only youth team players should come through to counties for selection. There are always premier league players irl around that could cut it at county level. I agree this happens rarely in English cricket, but happens a lot in Australia for example (Darren Pattinson and Dirk Nannes are what first come to mind).

Have injury prone players with general tendency for injuries or a recurring injury. Maybe some players could just retire early because of their persistent injury problems.

If a player isn't getting picked at all for a county, they shouldn't keep getting their contracts renewed by their county or at least the player should retire due to lack of opportunities. As a sidenote, stop making AI generated players so amazing and current youngsters so terrible!.

Some players should be able to easily clear the ropes. Guys like Pollard, Gayle, Sammy (West Indies have some big hitters clearly), etc mostly deal in sixes. In game, they hit a fraction of sixes they would hit irl.

I'm just putting out ideas by the way, some are not really important, just would be nice additions to an already very good game.

[rock_cool2003]

The latest patch is good but the fix for the 4th and the 5th day pitches is too bad... Now the pitches become minefield on 4-5 day and its like win the toss bat first and win the game. This is the case in every match, the team batting first in a test match wins 90% of the matches.

[pearljammonkey]

Ability to tailor your home ground pitch in internationals. Better AI for team selection and bowling selections. Eg ai often leaves out their spinner even if they are a legend just because the pitch favours quicks. Also ingame ai is poor for bowling, they don't take off bowlers when they are getting smashed, and they bowl part timers in overs 13 and 15 while waiting for over 15 to use the spinner. Fix the long time bug on over display if you take the final wicket on the last ball of the over.
As mentioned, ability to change teams.
Internationals - editable tours, FTP needs to change according to ratings. Eg if you take bangladesh to number 1 then there needs to be more 3 test series etc. ability to view detailed scorecards of any international and any state/county game at any point in the season, regardless of who you coach and how long ago those games were.
And finally, more accurate stats generation of FC players - it should not be possible for all players from the squad of a particular club to play every FC game in the season! Someone had to miss out,.and instead they should play 2nd XI cricket.

[pearljammonkey]

Also need more rain as per real life, and some form of duckworth Lewis would be great.
Oh and super overs in T20!!

And some players need to have six hitting ability. players like Gayle and Dhoni should hit more sixes in icc. I mean look at ind v sl just completed. Dhoni can hit 6s at will when his is on his game.

[ab5ides1]

Oooh, feature requests - this'll be fun.

The number one request I will always make is for a complete rehaul of the way the game handles associate nations. At the moment International Cricket Captain treats them in a smaller regard than even the ICC does. :P Of course that's understandable, and from a view-point of being attractive to potential customers, this may not be the best feature for getting a sale - the addition of the IPL for example was always going to be more useful in terms of attracting Indian customers. What I'd very much like to see though is for there to be the ability to play as Associate nations, even if it's just the top 6 or so in the world, and have some sort of system which allows for progression into test cricket, perhaps at the expense of the lowest-ranked of the test nations. Now I definitely see some problems here, for a start the fixtures would have to be dynamic. I do assume that would be possible though, considering the way the game can decide on who plays in finals of domestic and international tournaments. This game is truly a joy to play, but being able to captain Ireland to the realm of test cricket and have fun keeping them there over years of development? That would be brilliant indeed.

Another thing I'd like to talk about, which leads on slightly from my last point, is the idea of dynamic fixtures. In-game, even if Bangladesh get to the top of the test table, they will still only play test series of a couple of matches because the fixtures are set in stone, they don't change. I think it would make the game much more realistic if fixtures could change depending on where the teams playing are in the rankings table. This would also add to the already immense replay-value of the game. If this would be too difficult to implement on its own, then adding the option to customise fixtures manually would also be a nice option, perhaps with the side-effect of not being able to play online with teams that have had fixtures edited.

Less rigid AI in terms of bowlers would be good too. A lot of the time the AI just bowls the best bowlers ability-wise consistently even if they're being hit for lots of runs and would IRL be taken out of the attack. Also a lot of the time the AI will select a bowler for a test, but because they have a lower ability-rating than the other bowlers selected they will bowl hardly any overs at all. For example, they AI may select 4 fast-bowlers and a spin-bowler, then 3 of the fast bowlers might bowl 20 overs, and the spinner might bowl 30, but the other bowler selected would only bowl 3 or 4 overs. This seems a little unrealistic and while it doesn't occur all the time, it's still enough to show that the AI could use some work bowling-wise.

There are other things I could suggest, but I'll leave it there for now. I must stress though that all these things are added extras that I would love to see, not things that would make the game suck without. The game itself is already brilliant, just suggesting some things that could make it more so. ^_^