I have noticed that rider popularity keeps decreasing during the season for pretty much every rider in the game, not regarding good or bad results. Is this a bug or is it just how PCM works?
How do new and young riders become more popular, if everyone keeps decreasing?
10. april weekly save all of my riders have lost 3 points in popularity, a quick look shows all the top riders losing the same amount
17. april weekly save: everyone (cca. 99%) has 3.2 points less
24. april weekly save: everyone (cca. 99%) has 3.4 points less
1. may weekly save: everyone (cca. 99%) has 3.6 points less, one of my riders is an exception as his popularity has risen by 1.4. He won a one day race that week, which seems to have boosted his popularity.
My theory has been that a rider popularity can increase if he does well in a race that has a higher popularity score than his current popularity. It seems that "higher" number needs to be substantially higher to take effect, and it also seems "doing well" is not very clear.
Example of my rider above: he won a 1.2 race with a popularity score of 16 to raise his score, but the week before he won a stage and the points jersey in a 2.2 race with a popularity score of 20. Before racing his popularity was 8.3 dropping from 11.7 at the start of the year.
So it seems only winning at that level can help a rider and his popularity already need to be lower before it can rise again. Although as of now his score is still lower than at the start.
The other example for the same rider earlier in the season is winning a 1.2 race with a score of 12, while the rider having a score of 10.1 at the time. The following week he received the normal 0.2 drop in his score.
It seems to me (IMO) the system is a bit flawed. In terms of the above 2.2 vs 1.2 race example and the fact that the 0.2 drop a week is a bit too large. So it's almost impossible to raise popularity, while maintaining it also seems to be too difficult.
Funny note: Kristoff won both Ronde and Paris-Roubaix, but is still constantly losing popularity
Does anyone else have any information on this subject, or perhaps experience on how an unpopular rider became more popular?
Incidentally, I wrote a post about something similar. My main example is Molano. He starts at Continental reputation, despite only having 73 SP or so. In 4 seasons he has always ranked top 15 in Continental rankings, once even 5th, and his reputation kept going down to its current National level. Apparently, even in the current season it's going down as well (the sponsor started the season stating Molano had the minimal reputation for a Colombian rider in the squad and a few months afterwards it wasn't enough), despite winning the National championships, several stages at the Tour of Poland (gamey, because only 30 AI cyclists showed up), and a few stages and races here and there, plus the Estonian Tour, for a total of ~15 victories in the season.
With uprising cyclists it isn't too much different. I had a cyclist winning Murcia, the Russian national championship, Russian ITT, San Luis, Utah and getting top 5 in several stage races, only to increase from District to Local (and then being snatched by Katusha).
I guess rising reputation via playing the actual races is easier, but not realistic. You can win races being at -5 related stats as long as you micromanage the fitness plan and the races, but that's still nonsensical. Plus also relative, because that works for hilly/mountain races, but I can't get any result on cobblestones or flat stages at hard (and switching to normal would make hilly/mountain stages too easy).
Disclaimer: The above post reflects just the personal opinion of the author and not a fact. But if you read it, you must accept it as the ultimate truth.
A rider's continental or superprestige ranking doesn't seem to factor at all. The only thing that improves his reputation is individual results in races that have a higher reputation than himself. In my observation the difference needs to be at minimum around 10 points and even at that level he will need to win the race.
Molano has 54 pts at the start of the game, Tour of Poland has 50 pts. He would need to lower his reputation below 40 pts and then either get top 5 GC, climbers jersey or points jersey to raise his reputation by a mere couple points. Stage wins and top 10 GC often don't make a difference.
A rider of his abilities seems impossible to maintain that level of reputation, because of the 0.2 drop per week (10.4 per season). Since higher reputation riders are very important in CT and PCT teams due to sponsor demands and even more importantly to obtain invites to more prestigious races. This becomes a vicious circle that can be very hard to stop, especially if you are trying to play the game more realistically and maybe focus on only certain regions to sign new riders.
My only suggestion to fix the problem is to considerably raise the reputation score of all the races in the game (even GT's and Monuments). That way at every level of cycling there is a chance for riders to improve or at least maintain their reputation.
Thanks for sharing your experience with this problem
Thanks for your analysis, redordead. As a matter of fact, I'm not too upset about the reputation thing on the lowest end of the spectrum. Riders that never show up to Pro Tour races shouldn't have more than Local reputation, at most National if they are outstanding cyclists for their level.
I'm not too much fan of the sponsors being bitchy about that, tho. It doesn't make any sense Manzana was producing 100k per month in salaries and they asked for a more popular cyclist when every Colombian cyclist at Continental or higher reputation was asking +30k per month and the sponsor didn't even allow higher than 28k/month salaries. Not to mention said Continental reputation cyclists would quickly stagnate to National by being racing in Continental races. Pro Continental teams should ask for reputation equivalent to what a cyclist can realistically gain in Continental races (except by top teams or just relegated teams, of course).
There are 2 concerns, tho. First, your data about cyclists losing 0.2 reputation per week, apparently disregarding their actual values. That's skewed against the low reputation cyclists. In my opinion, the losses shouldn't be absolute, but a proportion of their current value. The second concerning thing is your point about Kristoff losing reputation even after winning Roubaix and Ronde. Seems too extreme.
Disclaimer: The above post reflects just the personal opinion of the author and not a fact. But if you read it, you must accept it as the ultimate truth.
Ildabaoth wrote:
There are 2 concerns, tho. First, your data about cyclists losing 0.2 reputation per week, apparently disregarding their actual values. That's skewed against the low reputation cyclists. In my opinion, the losses shouldn't be absolute, but a proportion of their current value. The second concerning thing is your point about Kristoff losing reputation even after winning Roubaix and Ronde. Seems too extreme.
I think we agree the reputation scale is a bit off. My reasoning for raising every race score is to make it "fairer" for everybody. Kristoff losing 0.2 pts every week is not terrible because his score is so high (maybe too high) to start with, but he should have the right to maintain his current score if performs like I mentioned above.
You are right the problem comes with the lower reputation riders, because if they ride CT they will very rarely ride in races where their score can improve and because of the constant drop they will quicky reach zero. Also they will keep complaining they are racing in lower reputation races, which also shouldn't apply in most cases.
I am currently starting my 2nd season with my Slovenian custom team where I increased the reputation scores of all the races. I was CT in the 1st season. I had a couple of veterans with scores around 15-25 to keep the sponsors happy, others were mostly unproven young riders. We had moderate success and scored enough pts to reach PCT.
I still lost some of my better riders to WT, PCT and CT teams, but I was also lucky to sign some good riders like Grega Bole and Svein Tuft from WT teams, both have high reputations over 50 pts. Now I am able to satisfy my sponsor and was able to get enough invites from races to have a competitive race schedule. In the past I tried only having mostly younger or lesser known riders and my race schedule would be empty after getting promoted.
Since Bole and Tuft are both older I am not sure how long they will stay, but hopefully my other talented young riders can increase their reputation in riding some bigger races and replace them as the faces of the team.
Nice, you're looking into one of the finer points of the game, don't think anybody checked reputation this carefully before. The only thing I can add is that the in-game reputation is dependent on both columns, popularity and popularity_max.
For example, in 2023 Froome is 38, his AVG has dropped to 73, he doesn't record many good results anymore. His popularity is just over 40, his max popularity is 84 - and he's still a star (but not a superstar, which he would be if only max popularity counted). A newgen with a slightly higher popularity, which is also his max popularity, only has a national reputation.
So Cyanide's idea seems to be: If a rider wins the TdF once popularity gets a huge boost and max popularity gets pushed out. Even if he can't repeat that performance and popularity drops constantly, people "still remember" his victory so his in-game reputation stays high much longer. Maybe it drops from superstar down to star, but no further, not with a Froome or Sagan.
Which isn't the worst idea. However, when it comes to how the sponsor evaluates your team, my guess is he only looks at the popularity (rather than the max popularity or in-game reputation). And that's a mistake. But that would explain why you can check one month and it'll say the sponsor would like to see a more popular rider (even though you have a star) and if in the next month your captain scores a good result he's suddenly happy.
Raising the race score is a possible workaround, though it might produce too many stars, since it'll apply to everybody. Cyanide should fix this and base the sponsor evaluation on the in-game reputation rather than the current popularity score.
I think you might be into something, because something very strange happened in my case. Fabio Duarte got available, and since he's already quite declined, nobody wanted to hire him and I could get him. I only did that because of his continental reputation, given Molano is stuck at national and the sponsor happiness bars related to reputation are at zero.
Well, it completely backfired. I'm paying a salary for Duarte, who is quite worse than my newgens, and the sponsor says my best reputated cyclist is a local reputation newgen, despite having Molano at national and Duarte at continental. Moreover, that local reputation for the newgen seems like too harsh. The guy got these results last season:
3rd Spanish NC
5th Spanish TT
2nd Tour of Poland
8th Tour of Colorado
5th Artic Norway
3rd Tour of Japan
Maybe not extremely impressive, but then again, he was probably the 9th-10th best stage racer from Pro Continental, only defeated by guys from teams whose salary budget is 4-5 times mine.
Disclaimer: The above post reflects just the personal opinion of the author and not a fact. But if you read it, you must accept it as the ultimate truth.
Yeah, that sounds about right. You can only check the popularity score with an editor, in-game you just see this reputation which is mostly based on the (rider career) max popularity. That explains Duarte.
I agree, your newgen's reputation should be higher with those great results. For me, the easiest ways to raise reputation is to win a KoM jersey in a GT. If you have a climber with MON 75 and concentrate on the jersey it's doable, depending on certain factors, sometimes the GC leader will outscore you, sometimes a really good climber is chasing that jersey.
Having said all that and having played many long PCM careers: You can pretty much ignore your sponsor's happiness bars as long as you deliver some good results. I usually ignore the nationality wishes of my sponsor, I have the popularity problem, I can fail all objectives, registered rider happiness (popularity again, I believe) is terrible... a few wins, something like that KoM jersey, and the overall happiness is at/near maximum. Essentially, results matter most. And so it's not really an issue.
supporting this, I won KOM jersey in tour TdF with a talented young rieder and now the sponsor is considering him the star of my team (Pro conti and now WT) despite I signed Latour and I.Izaguirre that were much best placed in GT GC (also top10)
Ripley wrote:
Having said all that and having played many long PCM careers: You can pretty much ignore your sponsor's happiness bars as long as you deliver some good results. I usually ignore the nationality wishes of my sponsor, I have the popularity problem, I can fail all objectives, registered rider happiness (popularity again, I believe) is terrible... a few wins, something like that KoM jersey, and the overall happiness is at/near maximum. Essentially, results matter most. And so it's not really an issue.
I remember back in the days I used to race every single race, including flat stages even if I didn't have a sprinter there. I usually started down the ladder, with one of the lowest budget teams, but I could steadily rise by winning the KOM in almost every single stage race including Grand Tours with cyclists in the 70 to 72 mountain stat, and a few season afterwards even contesting top 5 in Grand Tours with 75 or so mountain stats.
Naturally, sponsors were happy regardless the objectives and the number of cyclists from their prefered country, plus cyclists got high reputation quite quickly.
The problem with that is, it doesn't feel organical and sensical. A team like Manzana Postobón, with 100k total salary budget (and I think <50k at start) shouldn't even ask for any kind of reputation in the first place and they should feel quite satisfied with a couple of top 5 GC in 2.HC races. That's already way higher than what you can realistically expect from a team whose best stage racer starts at 73 mountain and his best sprinter starts at 73 (maybe 74; I don't remember) sprint.
You can fool the game by artificially getting unrealistically high results. I'm showing the best GC I got while simulating the first 3 seasons and the GC I've gotten so far early in the season by playing the mountain stages (not even the hilly or the TT ones, which are fully simulated):
Race / Best simulated / Playing the mountain stages this season at hard:
San Luis / 18th / 3rd
Dubai / 26th / 11th (with a fully new newgen at 71 mountain)
AndalucÃa / 22nd / 8th (having lost 48s in the 8km TT)
Algarve / 17th / 4th (73 mountain stat)
Obviously, the sponsor is quite happy (although still only 2/3 of the bar, because of the reputation bars being at zero). However, I'm feeling a bit distasteful by playing this way, and I could actually get even more unrealistically good results by chasing the KOM with a secondary cyclist and by playing the hilly and TT stages as well. It would be way better if you could get realistic results and an extra mile and that being enough for the sponsor being satisfied.
Disclaimer: The above post reflects just the personal opinion of the author and not a fact. But if you read it, you must accept it as the ultimate truth.
I'd call that another matter entirely - we'd all like to see a more challenging AI. But I honestly think you don't need to game the system to make the sponsor happy. Or, looking at it the other way round, making your sponsor happy every season means higher wage budgets every season, allowing you to hire better riders, making the game too easy.
So yes, the sponsor expectations for rider popularity seem weirdly high. But that's not the expectation to just preserve the status quo, but for maximum sponsor happiness which means a significantly higher budget next season. If you want more realism, you shouldn't aim for that high happiness = higher budget. Maybe all it needs is a simple rephrasing, instead of "would like to see a more popular rider" it could read "is content with the popularity of..." - just do that in your head.
