 It is that time of year again, with approximately 3 months until the new game is released, and this year PCM.daily have been given the first interview about the game!
The interview is with Clément Pinget, and reveals the first real bits of information about what we can expect in Pro Cycling Manager 2014. The main conclusions are below, or you can click here to read the full interview.
Career Mode
The career mode has been one of the main areas of focus for improvement this year, and two systems have been developed from scratch. The first involves equipment, and allows you to sign contracts with suppliers and participate in research and development programmes for new parts. The second involves the contracts and transfers system. The realism of transfers have been improved - in terms of both salary levels and the nationality focus of a team - and players will have more choices available when dealing with this part of the game.
Tutorials
It has been many years since there was a demo for the game, and this looks set to be partly addressed in the form of two tutorial levels. One will be aimed at total beginners, but the other will be geared towards more advanced players and will help to highlight the changes that have been made between 2013 and 2014.
Gameplay
The main change here relates to an automatic mode where it seems that you can let the AI take control over part of your team - to allow you to focus only on the important riders. It will also be possible to give multiple orders to a rider at the same time. So while a rider is collecting water bottles for the team, you can tell him to go straight to relaying once that task has been completed.
Daily Form
The impact of daily form looks set to be greater this year, which will lead to some more unpredictable results - an outsider could achieve a big result if he has a great daily form for that race. How the daily form is generated has also been changed - with a rider's recovery and the weather conditions being important factors. In career mode, rider illness will also lead to a rider receiving low daily form for a few days in a row.
Resistance Stat
As many people noticed, the Resistance stat had become irrelevant after changes to PCM2013. This has been addressed for this year's game.
Stage Editor
A new feature will allow climbs or route sectors to be inserted straight into a .zcts file, without the need to map them out every single time. Already nearly 60 famous climbs or places have been recreated from France and Italy, including the likes of Alpe d'Huez and Mont Ventoux. This could be a great time saving feature for stage makers.
Long Term Plans
Beyond PCM 2014, there is a hope to improve the ease in which the game can be modded, in particular with the installation of different database - making it possible for the game to work with multiple different databases at the same time. Cyclocross is also in the minds of those working on the game, having been a popular suggestion for many years.
More news to come
There will be improvements to the multiplayer mode, and other changes to the career mode, as well as news about new features for the console version of the game. But further information on this will have to wait for now! |
