MartijnVDD wrote:
I haven't bought PCM 19 yet, sticking to 18 as long as there's no good db around for 19. Though, I'm curious about the current state of the game after a few patches. I'm mostly interested in Career Mode.

Reading through the forums here and on Steam doesn't make me very hopeful...

tellico wrote:
Negotiations of objectives with sponsors are not avaiable anymore or i'm missing something??

dominox wrote:
I actually think AI is much better than in previous version I played (pcm17). Flat stages no longer ends with breakaway win every 3 stages, or 3 flat classics in a row. That especially was happening while playing as sprinter. On mountain stages in GT you get crazy big breakaways like in real life of 30 riders. And it's usually much easier to catch a breakaway. Heck, sometimes it's over even 50kms before the finish.

No attacks on downhills? Do you even check if they have energy for it? Because most of the times riders are out of energy about 1kms - 500 metres before the final summit, or barely have anything left.

I play only "be a pro", but even if new upgrade system is really nice looking... it's not that great at all. You have less potential upgrades with your stats (15-16 to 18 in pcm17), and skill tree is basically useless except of 3 things: Attentiveness, Training (that one is fucked actually - 120 race days with 3 GT? No problem - no tiredness at all!) and Fitness Peak.

- Willpower would be working nice if you would be able to turn your negative race day condition on every stage. And you can do it only on one day classic, or first stage of stage race.
- Discovery part is basically useless, unless you want to know stats of every rider in the game. I'll tell you all something, you won't.
- Network makes choosing the team much easier.
- Charisma is useless after 3 seasons. You have so many points at the starts of the 3rd season you can do anything you want.
- Super Leader is useless also. With the stats you can have you are the leader almost every time.
- Stealth sucks too. You can't use that with less than 15k to finish. So what's the point of it?
- Only Technique is part of decent. Moving through the peloton is nice, aerodynamic position... meh. Acrobatic descent saved my ass once. It works fine, but have to have full energy for that. And after summit if there is a downhill you usually don't have it.

Only real positive about stats upgrade is that you can choose what you want to upgrade and you actually can see the difference! I was sick of upgrading mountains or anything else in pcm17 for 3 lvls and it was not upgrading anything at all from what I wanted! But! The final stats looks basically the same as in previous system.

I started with the lowest potential possible out of 4 to choose. Definitely it is "very good"...


I don't think it would be much different with "Grand Champion" opener. Unless you get more lvls of upgrading. Because only difference is in xp after every month: 65 to 45. Wow

So, that's my thoughts about "new" Be a Pro. tl;dr looks nice, works the same, and it's sick with all the skills.

kaarewilloch wrote:
Just played the 1st stage of Etoile de Bessèges. Fair amount of wind, so I spent the last 60k trying to blow the peloton apart.
Managed to do so, riders were all over the place in small groups.
However, riders arriving at the finish 4 minutes and 30 seconds behind stage winner, still got the same time as stage winner (except for time bonuses).

This kind of ruins the game, because windy flat stages are completely irrelevant to GC in stage races.