Right now I'm still hesitating on coming to too quick conclusions and want to wait for Andennes first but it looks like the game is not compatible with the MG DB and I am tempted to look back towards PCM15 if that impression lasts.
Spoiler
Waited a few days to reply to this thread because i was so tempted to write a looooong rant when this thread took off.
Ollfardh wrote:
Returning to PCM15 is not a good idea in my opinion. The new MO/hill stuff seems to be here to stay, so we'll just be stuck with PCM15 in eternity.
Why is that such a bad thing? Obviously it'd be optimal to move on to new games all the time, but if they're not actually better, what difference does it make?
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Ollfardh wrote:
Returning to PCM15 is not a good idea in my opinion. The new MO/hill stuff seems to be here to stay, so we'll just be stuck with PCM15 in eternity.
Why is that such a bad thing? Obviously it'd be optimal to move on to new games all the time, but if they're not actually better, what difference does it make?
PCM18 IS a vastly superior game in every way basically, just need to sort out some quirks.
There could be an option of stat redistribution during offseason that managers have to manually apply for
Ollfardh wrote:
Returning to PCM15 is not a good idea in my opinion. The new MO/hill stuff seems to be here to stay, so we'll just be stuck with PCM15 in eternity.
Why is that such a bad thing? Obviously it'd be optimal to move on to new games all the time, but if they're not actually better, what difference does it make?
PCM18 IS a vastly superior game in every way basically, just need to sort out some quirks.
There could be an option of stat redistribution during offseason that managers have to manually apply for
Still waiting to see it.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Don't usually weigh my opinion much as it's somewhat same for me. But really, a possible change in the stats, on the calendar and another season with proper experience with this AI seems like the way to go.
PCM18 AI in my eye is much better, in the cobbles the MG 5-stars makes the difference, in the breakaways aspect it's uncomparably better, the sprints come a bit more random but let's be honest isn't that what a normal sprint looks like? The difference is in the hills, but it has to do with HOW the race is raced, regarding how things go mountain stages can fall for puncheurs and vice-versa which has happened plenty times in my experience in it.
Perhaps controversial but I'd say a manager's task is to be able to adapt to changes and thrive in them, knowledge and experience.
Yellow Jersey wrote:
Perhaps controversial but I'd say a manager's task is to be able to adapt to changes and thrive in them, knowledge and experience.
that shouldn't be controversial, maybe we have some complete babies who don't pay attention and then cry when things don't go their way.
Yellow Jersey wrote:
Perhaps controversial but I'd say a manager's task is to be able to adapt to changes and thrive in them, knowledge and experience.
that shouldn't be controversial, maybe we have some complete babies who don't pay attention and then cry when things don't go their way.
I really don't like the name calling here. It's hard to "pay attention" when you were told beforehand certain things wouldn't be issues, and they are. Many of the players don't have PCM 18 or access to the MG DB. How could they have possibly known all the implications of the switch and completely reshuffled their team to meet them?
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Yellow Jersey wrote:
Perhaps controversial but I'd say a manager's task is to be able to adapt to changes and thrive in them, knowledge and experience.
that shouldn't be controversial, maybe we have some complete babies who don't pay attention and then cry when things don't go their way.
I really don't like the name calling here. It's hard to "pay attention" when you were told beforehand certain things wouldn't be issues, and they are. Many of the players don't have PCM 18 or access to the MG DB. How could they have possibly known all the implications of the switch and completely reshuffled their team to meet them?
Vast majority of us were in the dark of how big the impact of our skewed stats was, but we all knew and we did say that MO will have a much bigger impact this year, I haven't gone through the threads but we 100% talked about it a lot on skype and we could all prepare. I also said that sprints are a lot different, but the focus wasn't as large on that one as the MO stat. Basically unless you paid zero attention you should've known that your rider will perform worse if his MO stat is on lower side.
Yellow Jersey wrote:
Perhaps controversial but I'd say a manager's task is to be able to adapt to changes and thrive in them, knowledge and experience.
that shouldn't be controversial, maybe we have some complete babies who don't pay attention and then cry when things don't go their way.
I really don't like the name calling here. It's hard to "pay attention" when you were told beforehand certain things wouldn't be issues, and they are. Many of the players don't have PCM 18 or access to the MG DB. How could they have possibly known all the implications of the switch and completely reshuffled their team to meet them?
Vast majority of us were in the dark of how big the impact of our skewed stats was, but we all knew and we did say that MO will have a much bigger impact this year, I haven't gone through the threads but we 100% talked about it a lot on skype and we could all prepare. I also said that sprints are a lot different, but the focus wasn't as large on that one as the MO stat. Basically unless you paid zero attention you should've known that your rider will perform worse if his MO stat is on lower side.
Yeah, Skype should be the main source of information of a forum game..
Yellow Jersey wrote:
The difference is in the hills, but it has to do with HOW the race is raced, regarding how things go mountain stages can fall for puncheurs and vice-versa which has happened plenty times in my experience in it.
Perhaps controversial but I'd say a manager's task is to be able to adapt to changes and thrive in them, knowledge and experience.
We have had changes in the strength of the rider before and that's okay. Guys like Madrazo went from being a winning candidate towards being mostly reduced to a top 5 candidate due to bad ACC. If guys like Skujins/Bobridge/Ginanni go from top 3 material towards top 10 material then that's fine for me. However, it looks like top 50 positions on what I think are and should be hill-dominated stages are often missed by these riders. If that continues to be the case with increased sample size then this game is broken for a subgroup of riders that is too large to ignore (every puncheur with a mo-hi difference of more than 5or6 points) and I rather keep the DB as it is and move back to PCM15 than change the DB to adapt to PCM18.
Yellow Jersey wrote:
The difference is in the hills, but it has to do with HOW the race is raced, regarding how things go mountain stages can fall for puncheurs and vice-versa which has happened plenty times in my experience in it.
Perhaps controversial but I'd say a manager's task is to be able to adapt to changes and thrive in them, knowledge and experience.
We have had changes in the strength of the rider before and that's okay. Guys like Madrazo went from being a winning candidate towards being mostly reduced to a top 5 candidate due to bad ACC. If guys like Skujins/Bobridge/Ginanni go from top 3 material towards top 10 material then that's fine for me. However, it looks like top 50 positions on what I think are and should be hill-dominated stages are often missed by these riders. If that continues to be the case with increased sample size then this game is broken for a subgroup of riders that is too large to ignore (every puncheur with a mo-hi difference of more than 5or6 points) and I rather keep the DB as it is and move back to PCM15 than change the DB to adapt to PCM18.
Since there isn't a 'fair' way to do things, as I previously alluded a small MO/HIL stat redistribution could work, let's say if you have 70MO 80HL rider, cost to upgrade from 79 to 80 is 1,000,000, so you can simply go from 70/80 to 73/79 if you choose, obviously it's not perfect but rather than doing global changes maybe something like this could work for one season only and on sort of case-by-case basis
Yellow Jersey wrote:
The difference is in the hills, but it has to do with HOW the race is raced, regarding how things go mountain stages can fall for puncheurs and vice-versa which has happened plenty times in my experience in it.
Perhaps controversial but I'd say a manager's task is to be able to adapt to changes and thrive in them, knowledge and experience.
We have had changes in the strength of the rider before and that's okay. Guys like Madrazo went from being a winning candidate towards being mostly reduced to a top 5 candidate due to bad ACC. If guys like Skujins/Bobridge/Ginanni go from top 3 material towards top 10 material then that's fine for me. However, it looks like top 50 positions on what I think are and should be hill-dominated stages are often missed by these riders. If that continues to be the case with increased sample size then this game is broken for a subgroup of riders that is too large to ignore (every puncheur with a mo-hi difference of more than 5or6 points) and I rather keep the DB as it is and move back to PCM15 than change the DB to adapt to PCM18.
What I think should be the most viable solution to this issue is to have a little change in the calendar. For example AMR is a race purely for the puncheurs, I am sure the AI suffers no issue whatsoever in there. Perhaps some hilly classics/stage-races can have slight changes in the profiles (or a replacement) in order to be puncheur-suited. In Pais Vasco for example the profiles were HIL but the stages clearly weren't, in the Arrate stage for example and if you look in real life you wouldn't expect a MVDP-type rider to shine as he doesn't have the legs to fly in those climbs, but instead the climbers and those that are more explosive but can handle the amount of elevation gain.
Yellow Jersey wrote:
The difference is in the hills, but it has to do with HOW the race is raced, regarding how things go mountain stages can fall for puncheurs and vice-versa which has happened plenty times in my experience in it.
Perhaps controversial but I'd say a manager's task is to be able to adapt to changes and thrive in them, knowledge and experience.
We have had changes in the strength of the rider before and that's okay. Guys like Madrazo went from being a winning candidate towards being mostly reduced to a top 5 candidate due to bad ACC. If guys like Skujins/Bobridge/Ginanni go from top 3 material towards top 10 material then that's fine for me. However, it looks like top 50 positions on what I think are and should be hill-dominated stages are often missed by these riders. If that continues to be the case with increased sample size then this game is broken for a subgroup of riders that is too large to ignore (every puncheur with a mo-hi difference of more than 5or6 points) and I rather keep the DB as it is and move back to PCM15 than change the DB to adapt to PCM18.
What I think should be the most viable solution to this issue is to have a little change in the calendar. For example AMR is a race purely for the puncheurs, I am sure the AI suffers no issue whatsoever in there. Perhaps some hilly classics/stage-races can have slight changes in the profiles (or a replacement) in order to be puncheur-suited. In Pais Vasco for example the profiles were HIL but the stages clearly weren't, in the Arrate stage for example and if you look in real life you wouldn't expect a MVDP-type rider to shine as he doesn't have the legs to fly in those climbs, but instead the climbers and those that are more explosive but can handle the amount of elevation gain.
Yes but you still need to change top punchers on the 55-65 MO level. otherwise they will still suffer a lot, it is very hard to make a puncher stage that will suit a MO 60 rider in most game situations.
There is only two options either make a more realistic DB or force those riders out of the database by natural selection, they will not be very useful even if we fix as many stages as we can.
Yellow Jersey wrote:
The difference is in the hills, but it has to do with HOW the race is raced, regarding how things go mountain stages can fall for puncheurs and vice-versa which has happened plenty times in my experience in it.
Perhaps controversial but I'd say a manager's task is to be able to adapt to changes and thrive in them, knowledge and experience.
We have had changes in the strength of the rider before and that's okay. Guys like Madrazo went from being a winning candidate towards being mostly reduced to a top 5 candidate due to bad ACC. If guys like Skujins/Bobridge/Ginanni go from top 3 material towards top 10 material then that's fine for me. However, it looks like top 50 positions on what I think are and should be hill-dominated stages are often missed by these riders. If that continues to be the case with increased sample size then this game is broken for a subgroup of riders that is too large to ignore (every puncheur with a mo-hi difference of more than 5or6 points) and I rather keep the DB as it is and move back to PCM15 than change the DB to adapt to PCM18.
What I think should be the most viable solution to this issue is to have a little change in the calendar. For example AMR is a race purely for the puncheurs, I am sure the AI suffers no issue whatsoever in there. Perhaps some hilly classics/stage-races can have slight changes in the profiles (or a replacement) in order to be puncheur-suited. In Pais Vasco for example the profiles were HIL but the stages clearly weren't, in the Arrate stage for example and if you look in real life you wouldn't expect a MVDP-type rider to shine as he doesn't have the legs to fly in those climbs, but instead the climbers and those that are more explosive but can handle the amount of elevation gain.
Yes but you still need to change top punchers on the 55-65 MO level. otherwise they will still suffer a lot, it is very hard to make a puncher stage that will suit a MO 60 rider in most game situations.
There is only two options either make a more realistic DB or force those riders out of the database by natural selection, they will not be very useful even if we fix as many stages as we can.
I don't really feel riders like that should remain at the top, if you wanna go that onedimentional, you'll only be good at _____________/ profiles.
As we can't seem to agree on a fix, natural selection may be the best way to handle this.
knockout wrote:I rather keep the DB as it is and move back to PCM15 than change the DB to adapt to PCM18.
In my opinion core of Man-Game is the reports, if we are only focusing on the results we miss the main objective of the game.
Yes with the current DB/Profiles PCM15, due to the fact that we have adapted with fixed profiles and a single minded DB and upgrade structure works better, but reports is based on a old engine with few variations and especially without "crash" everything gets rather boring.
With PCM18 you get a much more unpredictable race, with larger breaks, breaks that are brought back by teams wanting to join the counter break, attacks at unexpected points in time, and less stupid breakaway wins where the pack gives up for no reason. All in all a more realistic engine making funnier races. I believe that is a strong point for staying with PCM18 or a later version, and fix whatever is necessary to make that happen.
There are options to make lower level MO upgrades unrelated to OVL
and maybe also cheap for a season, do some profile updates or whatever, instead of just going backwards.
knockout wrote:I rather keep the DB as it is and move back to PCM15 than change the DB to adapt to PCM18.
In my opinion core of Man-Game is the reports, if we are only focusing on the results we miss the main objective of the game.
Yes with the current DB/Profiles PCM15, due to the fact that we have adapted with fixed profiles and a single minded DB and upgrade structure works better, but reports is based on a old engine with few variations and especially without "crash" everything gets rather boring.
With PCM18 you get a much more unpredictable race, with larger breaks, breaks that are brought back by teams wanting to join the counter break, attacks at unexpected points in time, and less stupid breakaway wins where the pack gives up for no reason. All in all a more realistic engine making funnier races. I believe that is a strong point for staying with PCM18 or a later version, and fix whatever is necessary to make that happen.
There are options to make lower level MO upgrades unrelated to OVL
and maybe also cheap for a season, do some profile updates or whatever, instead of just going backwards.
The second paragraph perfectly assembles my thoughts, on how the AI is much more realistic and makes the game a better experience. And I too agree with Ollfardh, this season has been better for some managers than others, but obviously next season everyone knows what to expect with no possible excuse, I was perfectly aware of the MO/HIL difference but still got Dowsett who has 65MON and has been total disaster so far. Next season his value will be much lower, whilst a rider like Beltran will be even more desired.
More and more the idea of more PCM 18 seasons is making me contemplate quitting the MG. I know I'm being a sore loser, and I apologize for that, but even the terrifically written reports are having a hard time keeping me involved at this point.
We're over halfway through the year, and I am convinced this game does not work with the MG DB. It's basically eliminated a ton of competitors from the pool completely and artificially boosted those who by chance had a select kind of versatility. Some continue to argue that PCM 18 has better overall AI, and that may very well be true. But it is not true with our DB. And the DB is everything to this game.
PCM 15 did not have good AI all the time. I understand that. But PCM 18 has destroyed how the DB and therefore the game functions, beyond repair or adjustment. It hasn't knocked a few riders down a notch, it's taken half the leaders in the DB out of the equation completely. Enough is enough.
We're halfway through the year, and I think it's important that this discussion resurfaces now so decisions can be made ahead of time, and we know what XP to give, who to build around, and whether or not we will disband.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
a proper comparison over rankings, OVL, rider type in between the actual season and last season would be good to further look into the AI issue.
To really see if it`s a feeling or can be proven with stats.
e.g. A list of big underperformers and overperformers so far this season (which is a bit hard as it`s not finished yet and future race plannings still play a role) and last season.
Maybe for this season due to race planning issues, also individually for couple of races e.g. the two GTs and some PCT/CT races.
That is very difficult to say as the season isn't over yet, and we can't even say that projected points are a good indicator.
For me I have Bryan Coquard underperforming. He either wins or don't perform at all. He usually was a sprinter who performed reasonably well according to stats, getting 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th places too. That has vanished entirely. He is now a winner or a 10-15th sprinter.
In terms of points he is looking to get 250 points or so less than last season - but the season isn't over, and the remaining races doesn't suit him as well as the first part. So I suspect he will end up scoring around 350 points less. His calender however is MUCH better suited for him - so with PCM 15 he would have scored significantly better than last season.
Overall the deficit is around 500 points I would say, which equals to around 30-35%.
Maxime Daniel was among the top 10 cobblers (easily) last season, this season he is around 20-25th and this is looking to score around 25-30% of what he scored last season. So a deduction of aproximately 70%.
Panagiotis Vlatos is now just a TT'er, and not a flat GC with TT rider which sees him score around 50-60% of usually.
Sprinters in general are heavily affected by more random breakaways which on the contrary have given me around 100% higher efficiency from riders such as Aidan van Niekerk and Charalampas Kastrantas. Those figures, however are so small, that it can vary in that region from season to season. If said riders get a GT win, they are already likely to get 50% higher outcome than usual.
A rider like Koretzky is in terms of points not heavily affected - although he was trained, so it's difficult to say for sure. He is, however a significantly worse GC rider, and doesn't get his top 10 results which makes him much less versatile than he was in the past. It makes for some planning issues, where I can no longer see him as a leader for races that are not one-day races or strictly limited to hilly GC races - And those are usually disrupted in some form by breakaways or riders with stronger mountainstat. So how, has he scored points? Well - after losing time, he has been an effective breakaway rider winning a couple of stages, aswell as claiming KOM points. Those are a bit fluffy, but so far add up. I think he will be a rider that can potentially vary up to 75% from season to season, which I guess goes for may similar riders indeed.
So when discussing figures we have to be pretty smart at looking at how the figures have come through, and not just looking at whether a certain rider scores similarly or not. It's not necessarily a good indication if the rider cannot be used the same way as before. Whether that is an indication of adjusting or not is not up to me, but in order to take the right decision we need to look a bit deeper into the figures...
