To give you all an overview of the most important new features of Pro Cycling Manager 2017, i made this post with some screenshots and some explaination
ENJOY!
NOTE: I've installed the Cym_ITA Realname DB and Jacky Durands sponsorkit 2017. So some visual ingame content, like sponsors, team- and rider names, will be from there.
CAREER MODE
I'll begin with the changes to the career mode.
Starting off with the Attibutes overview from your team. In the screens below you see in the Starting attributes screen the normal attributes of a rider. In this case Frantisek SISR with 71 ACC. In the next screen, the fitness attributes screen, you'll see Frantisek SISR with 68 ACC. When moving your cursor over his stats, you'll get an pop-up with 71-3. That's his real stat minus his fitness penalty.
Starting attributes
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Fitness attributes
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Next i'm going to show you the new changes to the season planning. You start with choosing your riders fitness at the start of the season, this must be done on january 1st before you can continue to the rest of your season. In the screenshot below you see you can choose the fitness percentages of your riders in percentages. Give riders you want to be in form at the start of the season a higher percentage and the riders that don't have to be in the best from at the start of the season a lower percentage. See it as a replacement of the winter training camp, which i will explain later.
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After you've confirmed your riders pre-season fitness, it's time to go season planning!
Some more changes over here. In the screenshot below you see the 'Dashboard'. Here you will do all of your season planning (well, technically not all because you have to set goals, but still haha).
In the Rider sheet, opened by clicking a riders name, you can adjust the riders fitness, drag races to their program and adjust their weekly effort (just like you could before, but now in percentages instead of columns
In the Racing sheet, opened by clicking on a race, you can add riders by dragging them to the race. You can now see on the left top the race profile, right top the fitness from each rider in different colours, left bottom the riders to drag and right bottom the selected riders with their stats and fitness forecast.
Rider sheet
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Racing sheet
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In the rider sheet you can see my rider, Jan Hirt, has 3 season goals (the circles underneath his season fitness view). Nothing new to add season goals to riders, but there have been some changes, very much to my liking to be honest!
In the screenshot 1 below you see the leaders at the tops, tab opened are the domestiques. Nothing new here, but wait! Right top you can select the select the period. Yes! This means you can assign domestiques per period, meaning you can have a good hill rider help leader A in the Ardennes classics and help leader B in the TdF for example.
Another thing you can do is assign a domestique his own goal and his task. f.e. Giving a domestique for the tour of Flanders in period 1 a Free role in the tour, in period 2. In screenshot 2 you can essentially do the same, but now instead of dragging adjust it per rider (who's no leader). Screenshot 1
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Screenshot 2
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At last i'll get back at the training camps, as i promised. I haven't tested it yet, but here's my assumption.
In the screenshot below you'll see there are no mountain, hill, cobble, sprint or ITT training camps anymore. Only the reconnoiter training camps (tour, giro, vuelta), team time trial training camps and the formerly know as pre-season training camps are left. But there have been some changes. The pre-season training camp is of no use anymore with the new pre-season tab, so they have changed. The name is just 'Training camp' and it's available througout the season. My assumption is that it's a normal, fitness boosting, training camp, to get your riders thats last little edge of fitness they need for a top form at their season goals.
Just like the career mode, the pro cyclist mode had some changes to the season planning part. In the screenshot below you see your Season objectives page on January 1st. You can choose 3 season goals and your fitness schedule will be adjusted accordingly. You can also choose your pre-season fitness at the top of the screen.
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When progressing to february 2nd, you can also see your fitness schedule. This schedule shows your fitness and your races. It's already adjusted to your season goals, so all you have to do is tweak it just enough so it's right for you. Also notice you can plan your schedule ahead for the whole season instead of only 4 weeks. Great addition to the pro cyclist mode if you ask me!
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Next up is the beautifull progression screen. Don't think PCM 16 had that (only when leveling up), so here's the screen
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And last, but certainly not least(!), is the Requests screen. You can still request and cancel races, just like in pcm 16, but there's more! You can now request team mates to be assigned to you whom you can control during the whole race (if i understand correctly). But, requesting teammates cannot be done until you fulfill all condition from your team manager. One of those conditions is a satisfaction percentage of at least 75%, in the screen. How satisfaction is gained you can read in the bottom of the screen. The left progression circle is your level, the right one is the satisfaction percentage of your team manager.
One more note: requesting teammates it isn't free, it costs points, which can be earned by completing goals in races.
Well.. After some quick testing of the in race gameplay, playing a sprint stage, ITT and a mountain stage, these are my findings.
Lets start with the Sprint stage. Most of the AI or gameplay changes will come in the next screens, so this one is just for fun actually haha. On the screen you can see after the riders finished what position they finished in, but that's about it.. Not much else changed in sprint stages, however i noticed i had a bit more of a challenge to get my rider into the right position. Could be the AI, could be a coincidence, could be my first feelings with the game. Needs more testing to know that for sure..
Other changes i noticed in the gameplay will come in the next sections, just because i had better screens haha
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Next up, the Individual Time Trial. The screenshot below is not the most beautiful of them all, but it tells us a lot actually.. I'll start with the energy/distance bars. Looks cute when you look at it for the very first time.. After 5 seconds you notice it's actually not so great at all. Because of the black and white blocked print it's more difficult to see the travelled distance. That, and now the distance bar fills up from the right to the left, while the energy bar empties (still) from the right to the left. This makes it more difficult to see the energy/distance ratio as well. Not a good improvement if you ask me. Luckily, that's only a small visual part.
What you can also see in the screenshot, is that the rider (Tom Dumoulin in this case) leans into the corners. That's one of the visual parts of the gameplay i noticed. It lookes a bit unnatural at times, but most of the times it's quite a nice element. Besides from leaning into the corners, the riders seem to try and get the apex of the corner, steering out - in - out and taking the shortest or fastest route. It all makes it look just a little bit faster and more realistic.
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That visual realism can also be seen in the Mountain stages, where i've seen riders dance on their pedals beautifully when going uphill! No screenshot unfortunately, hard to capture a moving image in a static screenshot. But not online the virtual realism has improved!
One of the aspects of PCM '17 i'm most excited about is the improved AI and gameplay features. In the screenshot below you see Giro stage 20. On the first climb, the Monte Grappa, i made a "skytrain" (with Sunweb haha ) pulling the pack forward and hurting those riders behind! I could do this because it's possible to follow your teammates at ANY time in the race, making it possible to form a train whenever you want to. In my short experience i believe the energy consumption is about the same as putting your whole team in relay with the front rider at infinite relay. There's one big advantage over relay though, and that is that other teams can't get into your relay. So you ALWAYS have control over the power and the order your riders are in.
You still cannot follow riders that don't belong to your team though unfortunately.. So wheelsucking in your competitors wheel is still out of the question
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And now the improved AI that i was really excited about. It has only been a short test, a 3 stage tour with this stage as last stage, but i think the AI has actually become better and smarter!
First thing i noticed was at the top of the Monte Grappa (first climb), 66 km from the line, was that when i dropped the pace to save my riders for that last climb, a few favorites attacked. One of those favorites, starting the attacks, was Richie Porte. 68 attacking stat (so not one who keeps attacking all the time) and 4th in the GC, only 53" behind. Could be ofcourse he went for the mountain points, but i don't think so because he kept attacking, even downhill!
Like i said, only 1 race, could just be a coincidence and he went for those mountain points, but it really took me by surprise! Had to put my team up front downhilling to catch them.. Will be continued i guess! (By me or someone else who tested it. Please share! )
Well.. Long post, lots of text.. Sorry about that, but it was necessary to give you a full images of what to expect from this game. I hope it did!
DECISION TIME: BUY THIS GAME?
Well.. The most important new features have been discussed. Now it's time for you to decide wether or not to buy this game. Big decision!
Neh, I'm not going to buy it...
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Well, that's your decision of course.
Let me try and persuade you one last time. How? Open the next spoiler
YEAH BABY! I WANT IT SOOOO BAD!
Or a little bit at least...
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At last! All new aspects of the game (except for the track, i don't know if anything changed in that part) have been reviewed
Hope you enjoy reading it and hope it's helpful to you guys who have not made their minds up yet
assing wrote:
can you use the pcm 16 variants dlcfor pcm 17?
I assume you're talking about this variants dlc (link). In that case, no. All stages from pcm 16 and prior need to be converted to work in pcm 17. But i think it will come soon for pcm 17, as i believe there are a bunch of people working their behinds off in order to release the PCM.daily DB and stages
Edit: See i got beaten by Matt.. Clearly the faster sprinter
Masterblaster01 wrote:
Next i'm going to show you the new changes to the season planning. You start with choosing your riders fitness at the start of the season, this must be done on january 1st before you can continue to the rest of your season.
This is interesting for WT careers, but for (P)CT careers it's pretty annoying.
The invitations for .HC races are usually quite random, so I always skip a day or two before planning my season, just to see which races I'll get invited to.
When I tested the game as a beta-tester, i noticed something in the cyclist editor... in the animation tab, a bike-throw animation is available, I also read somewhere it could be possible in-game to throw your bike when sprinting to the line, which would be pretty cool But i haven't found it anywhere
jarneke1404 wrote:
When I tested the game as a beta-tester, i noticed something in the cyclist editor... in the animation tab, a bike-throw animation is available, I also read somewhere it could be possible in-game to throw your bike when sprinting to the line, which would be pretty cool But i haven't found it anywhere
That would be pretty cool! Though, it could be yet another feature that messes up the AI, if they fail to time their throw right or, even better, don't throw at all...
OT: Can we request tests from you?
For example, something that has annoyed me a lot in previous editions was the lack of small time gaps. You would often get lots of little groups with small gaps in between them, yet in the final result they would all merge to one big group with the same time. This would usually happen in echelon stages and short uphill sprints.
Also, realism of start lists in career mode. Do teams still send climbers to Paris-Roubaix?
jarneke1404 wrote:
When I tested the game as a beta-tester, i noticed something in the cyclist editor... in the animation tab, a bike-throw animation is available, I also read somewhere it could be possible in-game to throw your bike when sprinting to the line, which would be pretty cool But i haven't found it anywhere
Have not seen it, but didn't pay attention to it as well.. Could check it for you but like MartijnVDD said, it could also be really messed up..
For example, something that has annoyed me a lot in previous editions was the lack of small time gaps. You would often get lots of little groups with small gaps in between them, yet in the final result they would all merge to one big group with the same time. This would usually happen in echelon stages and short uphill sprints.
Also, realism of start lists in career mode. Do teams still send climbers to Paris-Roubaix?
Yeah, could check that out to see what it does, play some windy stages perhaps.
About Paris-Roubaix.. I could test it for you, but i think other users are going through the career a lot faster so perhaps someone else could check this?
What I would really like to know is whether the transfer engine is as fucked up as in PCM15 , where every single team in my pro cyclist career quickly lost all trace of identity. After 5 seasons there were barely any Danes left on the Danish CT-teams for example.
MartijnVDD wrote:
For example, something that has annoyed me a lot in previous editions was the lack of small time gaps. You would often get lots of little groups with small gaps in between them, yet in the final result they would all merge to one big group with the same time. This would usually happen in echelon stages and short uphill sprints.
There is a value for each stage, which set the gap between two groups\cyclists necessary so that it's considered in the standings. Generally, this gap is set high in flat stages, while for mountain stages is low (in fact few meters are enough that you allocate 10/12" gap). You can find this value in the stage editor, but I don't know if you can edit it on default stages, I don't think so.
