Hello,
So I've put in a decent amount of time over the last couple weeks playing the latest iteration of CC and thought I would collate my thoughts.
Pros
The match engine
I actually think the match engine is the best it's been this year. I think it's more challenging than last year in every format and this is a good thing. I'm having to think carefully about how to prepare my pitch when at home based on the opposition and not just my own squad's strengths. I've also had matches where we've had to dig in and scrap just to get an unlikely draw. White ball cricket feels much more challenging and I'm not able to bat as aggressively as before which again is good as hitting 200 in t20s was all to easy last year.
If I had a couple of quibbles I'd say that:
Teams chase down huge 4th innings totals a bit too often.
I've found it very hard to bat aggressively at the start of 50 over games, even picking aggressive players it seems hard to avoid a slow start.
Batting second in one day games seems to be very advantageous. I haven't recorded any stats but I'd guess my win ratio when batting second is significantly better than when batting first.
Overall though, good job!
The database
Unsurprisingly I think Sureshot has done a superb job with the database as per usual. It's great to see player feedback constantly leading to updates as well. As we move away from the more frequent updates after release it would be great if there was a live database update available anytime or a monthly update as feedback continues to be actioned.
New features
Rain during white ball matches and the associated Duckworth Lewis additions are absolutely superb. I've had some superb and very tense run chases following a bit if rain and it really adds to the realism.
The Hundred generally seems to have been well executed as well and the option to edit club names is great to add to realism. Only irritating thing here is that their squads seem uncapped, whereas in real life there is a limit of 15 players the franchises will stock up with up to 22 contracted players. This has the knock on effect of devaluing the One Day Cup even more than the ECB have already managed!
Cons
Player development
No surprise to see me banging on about this again. I've actually come round to the idea that strong regens are generally fine and don't detract from immersion (although we could do with an update to the pool of names they draw from, Jeff, Morris and Terry aren't that common these days!) But the real life young prospects that Sureshot adds seem to very rarely develop into county regulars. I wonder if regens are in general a touch too strong, you only have to glance through their list a averages in England to see the two generated in every county side ahead of the tournament will have outplayed any real youth players. An example would be the 7 youth players added to Gloucestershire by Nige: Willows, Charlesworth, O.Price, T.Price, Goodman, H.Hankins and Drissell. The regens will always get more gametime and will always average more with the bat and less with ball when the real players do play and this is the same across all counties.
Chris kindly took the time to explain how player development works on the previous iteration's forum and I believe potential ability is included for each player as well as current ability however I feel that some sort of random development acceleration needs to happen for these youngsters somewhere between the ages of 18-23 so that we see them improve and break into sides. I've played many, many saves into the future and rarely see any real life young players break into county sides and have promising careers. I've never seen a non regen player break into the England team for example.
Following on from the above technique coaching remains frustrating, I feel in order to build engagement as a player we need more feedback on what this coaching is achieving. As mentioned on another thread attempting to train aggression or opening can feel like a wasted slot when nothing happens for season after season and it may be better to cap this type of coaching to a 3 month limit or something at which point if there has been no improvement you get a message saying the player has struggled to adjust and advising to try something different.
I feel the coaching screen has massive potential for player engagement and immersion and with a few simple tweaks/better in game feedback could really nail this. Some of the options for example attacking bowling coaching should be really useful but I don't really know which bowlers would benefit from it above and beyond the bad ones who I'm sure will just benefit from general technique coaching or not as it seems to be.
Squad Building
Something seems off with county team finances, a lot of the counties start with large squads including youth players (which is good!) and this seems to have pushed their baseline budgets up. A couple seasons in and most of the counties seem to be carrying 30 plus players, Gloucester who traditionally aren't an affluent county have 37 players in my current save. A big chunk of these additional players are bang average or worse and never close to getting games. The AI seems to just sign players for no other reason than having too much money.
An additional thought here is the need for more contract variation, increasingly we see domestic players on white ball only contracts or overseas players signed either for JUST the championship games or t20 AND list A games.
Overall
Score out of 10:
8/10
I think this year's game is really strong. I want to stress that all the pros I've called out are basically the core of the game, the match engine, the database and the new features. These have been delivered really well.
The cons named are really areas that could be polished to really add to the in game experience and I think would be worth some attention by the develops for either patching where balance is concerned (squad sizes, youth player development speed) or added to a future feature list where it's not just balance.
Overall it's a good game and worth the purchase. Will stick this review on Steam too. Thanks devs!
So I've put in a decent amount of time over the last couple weeks playing the latest iteration of CC and thought I would collate my thoughts.
Pros
The match engine
I actually think the match engine is the best it's been this year. I think it's more challenging than last year in every format and this is a good thing. I'm having to think carefully about how to prepare my pitch when at home based on the opposition and not just my own squad's strengths. I've also had matches where we've had to dig in and scrap just to get an unlikely draw. White ball cricket feels much more challenging and I'm not able to bat as aggressively as before which again is good as hitting 200 in t20s was all to easy last year.
If I had a couple of quibbles I'd say that:
Teams chase down huge 4th innings totals a bit too often.
I've found it very hard to bat aggressively at the start of 50 over games, even picking aggressive players it seems hard to avoid a slow start.
Batting second in one day games seems to be very advantageous. I haven't recorded any stats but I'd guess my win ratio when batting second is significantly better than when batting first.
Overall though, good job!
The database
Unsurprisingly I think Sureshot has done a superb job with the database as per usual. It's great to see player feedback constantly leading to updates as well. As we move away from the more frequent updates after release it would be great if there was a live database update available anytime or a monthly update as feedback continues to be actioned.
New features
Rain during white ball matches and the associated Duckworth Lewis additions are absolutely superb. I've had some superb and very tense run chases following a bit if rain and it really adds to the realism.
The Hundred generally seems to have been well executed as well and the option to edit club names is great to add to realism. Only irritating thing here is that their squads seem uncapped, whereas in real life there is a limit of 15 players the franchises will stock up with up to 22 contracted players. This has the knock on effect of devaluing the One Day Cup even more than the ECB have already managed!
Cons
Player development
No surprise to see me banging on about this again. I've actually come round to the idea that strong regens are generally fine and don't detract from immersion (although we could do with an update to the pool of names they draw from, Jeff, Morris and Terry aren't that common these days!) But the real life young prospects that Sureshot adds seem to very rarely develop into county regulars. I wonder if regens are in general a touch too strong, you only have to glance through their list a averages in England to see the two generated in every county side ahead of the tournament will have outplayed any real youth players. An example would be the 7 youth players added to Gloucestershire by Nige: Willows, Charlesworth, O.Price, T.Price, Goodman, H.Hankins and Drissell. The regens will always get more gametime and will always average more with the bat and less with ball when the real players do play and this is the same across all counties.
Chris kindly took the time to explain how player development works on the previous iteration's forum and I believe potential ability is included for each player as well as current ability however I feel that some sort of random development acceleration needs to happen for these youngsters somewhere between the ages of 18-23 so that we see them improve and break into sides. I've played many, many saves into the future and rarely see any real life young players break into county sides and have promising careers. I've never seen a non regen player break into the England team for example.
Following on from the above technique coaching remains frustrating, I feel in order to build engagement as a player we need more feedback on what this coaching is achieving. As mentioned on another thread attempting to train aggression or opening can feel like a wasted slot when nothing happens for season after season and it may be better to cap this type of coaching to a 3 month limit or something at which point if there has been no improvement you get a message saying the player has struggled to adjust and advising to try something different.
I feel the coaching screen has massive potential for player engagement and immersion and with a few simple tweaks/better in game feedback could really nail this. Some of the options for example attacking bowling coaching should be really useful but I don't really know which bowlers would benefit from it above and beyond the bad ones who I'm sure will just benefit from general technique coaching or not as it seems to be.
Squad Building
Something seems off with county team finances, a lot of the counties start with large squads including youth players (which is good!) and this seems to have pushed their baseline budgets up. A couple seasons in and most of the counties seem to be carrying 30 plus players, Gloucester who traditionally aren't an affluent county have 37 players in my current save. A big chunk of these additional players are bang average or worse and never close to getting games. The AI seems to just sign players for no other reason than having too much money.
An additional thought here is the need for more contract variation, increasingly we see domestic players on white ball only contracts or overseas players signed either for JUST the championship games or t20 AND list A games.
Overall
Score out of 10:
8/10
I think this year's game is really strong. I want to stress that all the pros I've called out are basically the core of the game, the match engine, the database and the new features. These have been delivered really well.
The cons named are really areas that could be polished to really add to the in game experience and I think would be worth some attention by the develops for either patching where balance is concerned (squad sizes, youth player development speed) or added to a future feature list where it's not just balance.
Overall it's a good game and worth the purchase. Will stick this review on Steam too. Thanks devs!
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