Looking through the DB a lot recently (like everyone), I wanted to bring up the problem of stat inflation again as we enter a new decade. I think it's worse than we think.
Over the past few years, a lot has been done to curb it. Reducing the amount of 80+ talents, and especially well rounded ones, has been a start. It will hopefully mean that we won't have 20 guys pushing 85 in every main stat again going forward. That's going to make competition in PT much more interesting.
However, I feel like this has only really addressed inflation at that top level. The real problem of inflation is not just there to me - it's primarily at the lower levels. I'm talking about guys with 77-79 in main stats. The guys who a few years ago were leaders in PCT, and now are commonplace on every CT team. Almost every talent nowadays, or every talent that gets a full contract, fits into this category. Add to that that we have been increasing backups stats to better handle PCM 18, and the peloton is just getting too strong overall. As older domestiques get weeded out of the DB and stronger talents replace them, we're going to have a matrix in main stats that basically only goes from 76-85 at best.
In a few years, I really worry that almost every rider in the peloton will be on a very similar level before training, all in that exact same range. The differences between leaders and your worst domestiques will be extremely marginal. Honestly, I think it's already happened, especially at those lower levels. Yes, we have fewer 80+ talents now. But at the same time, there are talents that in the future will have 76 in their main stats along with good backups who don't even get contracts anymore. It's only getting worse. In my opinion that narrow of a spread is really not viable. it deemphasizes team building and balancing multiple terrains, and leaves PCM more room to operate purely on luck and daily form.
I'm not sure what can be done for the immediate future to fix this, as it's been building for many years and has already shaped the DB But imo we need fewer talents added to the game each years and a wider spread of skill among them from now on. That's a start at least.
I'm not sure what can be done for the immediate future to fix this
Only one solution to this, if we really want to fix it without spoiling the fact that a diverse DB with many new talents from different countrys.
Minimum Wages:
Not thought it trough but something like a minimum wages on the combined 2 highest skills, mayby combined with a lower minimum wage (30.000) so that teams can still build a full roster.
This should of-course be combined with the system we already got, so only a guideline for a minimum, it can still be a lot higher.
NB: This could also lead to more complex rider development to avoid top skills
(fighter & downhill skill I quest should not count)
Some examples to what could be minimum of combined highest 2 skill:
170
2500000
165
1000000
162
500000
156
250000
151
130000
145
50000
142
47000
>140
40000
>135
35000
> 130
30000
So basically making the lower end riders cheaper and mid to high end more expensive.
Could something also be said (without any research) about the fact that we aren't getting enough lower level new riders to replace these inflated guys, because as bbl rightly said nobody wants to develop Nigel Nobody into a respectable-ish 74/75 main stat domestique from level 1 to 4? The fact I need a guy to have a funny name like Assaholin to consider picking up a focus region 74CB guy with nice other stats on a stagiaire contract is not great
I know amateur teams can help a little, but not much in the lower levels, and not at all in maxing these guys. I have crunched zero numbers here, so maybe I'm overreacting and amateurs and stagiaires are satisfactory for it.
There's obviously a balance to be struck to not make stagiaires (I know there was a decent discussion about that in the Skype group the other day), amateurs or whatever other solution we get better/more cost-efficient developers of riders than hiring them yourself, or they'd still be no incentive to do it for anybody except the top talents - sure I'd probably still fork out to "reserve" Areruya or Stannard at level 1, and some of them are properly useful right from level 2 or 3, but why would I go through the motions of paying at least 150k (not to mention dead cap space in terms of points and the work that comes with sorting out loans and making sure they level up) over the years for someone else who I could pick up for under half of that once they max? The only reason I'd pick up someone currently is to ensure they do max because otherwise they become dead weights in the DB and aren't useful to us trying to fight inflation.
But then again, maybe that situation is better than nothing when it comes to "phasing in" lower-level riders if we try to decrease inflation. Other possible solutions (rather than overpowering stagiaires or overpowering/overhauling amateur teams) I can quickly think of now with little to no consideration as to whether they would work:
Spoiler
- Levelling FA riders up so that we still get these lower level domestiques. Think of it as actual amateur/dev teams outside the MGUCI divisions, but within the wider universe. Maybe, as I talked about above, this devalues the task teams must make of doing it yourself and makes it too easy. Only con of doing it vs waiting for it to happen is the extra year missed out by not doing 1>3.
- SotD's idea he posted a while ago about a communal development team existing in the CT (sorry if I'm misrepresenting, I haven't read it for a while) which preceded amateurs and is now kind of made redundant by them Again like amateurs not much good for maxing, but maybe we can rely on most riders being semi-useful by l4, combined with, if we follow bbl's directive, there being less great domestiques around.
- Just adding people who aren't top talents at 26 and maxed, or at 25 and L4,whatever. This sucks and I just included it for completeness since I did think of it It takes away the fun for guys who might want to pick up a 74-76 talent from their own country, but would ensure we don't see any career level 1 guys or people who get tossed around, a year on a CT team here, an amateur team there, a stagiaire contract or two, and then start declining as a level 3. It's a worse version of the "level up FAs" idea, basically
Sorry, just a lot of rambling based on my intial thoughts but I think there needs to be either an incentive for teams to create this future generation of deflated domestiques outside of role-playing (without punishing teams who quite fairly want very little to do with developing their own talents, which may not be possible) and/or an alternate pathway, more effective than amateurs and stagiaires (again, maybe they're good enough, I didn't check ), that will help these guys reach their potential to fill the deflated future with domestiques as well as leaders.
Haven't thought much yet about Tamijo's system as a whole, but not sure at least about the super low minimum wages being suggested for riders who would never otherwise be hired - no hate to the ICL guys who do this, it's a perfectly viable strategy, I had to do it once, but the inevitable 5 or 6 shit useless riders on some teams to increase cap space for their actual squad (which is now much lower than the rider cap, and results in them sending 4-6 "real" riders to a race and a bunch of guys who will abandon early on and provide nothing) is pretty ugly to me personally at least and could seriously mess with the designed cap spaces for each division.
The distributions of MO, HI, SP have completely spiraled out of control. Even TT/PRL looks somewhat unhealthy. The only main stat that looks to have a reasonable distribution is COB.
Don't think we need drastic measures to counteract this immediately. But we should start reversing the process by adding less 76+ talent to the db next off-season.
I don't think wage differentiation will add much more than confusion and major work for the admins checking every single bid against stats in the DB.
Giving some XP to FA's would be great though. To still reward own development perhaps just 50 XP to all FA's after transfer season. Main problem is really in regards to stagiares, who won' be able to get as much. Needs a balance so signing is always better than not signing. Perhaps just giving stagiares a flat 4 xp pts per race day giving a max of 80 XP in a stagiare season?
You have to see this as a way of getting low level talents active (you talk about them yourself) as a combined <145 will almost always be a talent able to develop, why not take a talent if you have to fill in an empty 30.000 - 40.000 space.
But the most important in my system is that you will not have competitive riders with a close to 50.000 wage, that way we still got a fine DB with many riders, but on team level a CT team will not be able to get many +78 riders sending their budget surplus upwards.
Same goes for PCT just on a bit higher level.
As it is now we got sprinter at S79-80 - A79-80'ish with a pay check 100.000-150.000 not hard to see why we got too many top sprinters in almost every race.
Also great climber at 80 MO and fine support with a pay check about 200.000 - riders like that should be worth at least 500.000 (and they are if they go to free rider)
Atlantius wrote:
I don't think wage differentiation will add much more than confusion and major work for the admins checking every single bid against stats in the DB.
Well if you make a bit below minimum wages you don't get the rider that will be your problem.
But that will be shown in the transfer DB a formular is not hard to make.
Although not comparable in its size, I think the wage differentation works very well in ICL and keeps the teams balanced in hiring top talent and pack fodder. At the end, I think it could be done on a practical level for the DB but the current system has also worked very well.
"It’s a little bit scary when Contador attacks." - Tommy V
In the transition phase there might be a temporary shortage of 74/75 riders because they are currently not getting developed.
But this automatically gets solved once the surplus of 76/77/78 guys is gone. Because once that happens the 74/75 are valuable so they actually will be getting developed again.
And don't forget that there's also a constant stream of old riders dropping into the 74/75 range.
Good points being raised. Just checked the DB to get an overview of the depth for the different main stats:
MO - 349 riders with 75 or more, of them 52 with 80 or more.
Hill - 342 riders with 75 or more, of them 35 with 80 or more.
TT - 204 riders with 75 or more, of them 21 with 80 or more.
COB - 123 riders with 75 or more, of them 19 with 80 or more.
SPR - 333 riders with 75 or more, of them 59 riders with 80 or more.
PRL - 252 riders with 75 or more, of them 23 riders with 80 or more.
So totally agree with bbl, it's certainly becoming an issue. As someone who's been a part of the game for some years, I remember having hilly riders with 73-75 as leaders in both CT and PCT and having great results with them.
Now with Pedersen on the team, I've started to think about his training, and to be honest I'm not quite sure what to do about his sprint stat, as an 80 rider will in many ways just be one of many (though with great backups) and you really face the risk of them not sprinting.
With such a big depth, I think we'll also see many riders with 73-76 as their best main stat be left without contract. Could it be an idea to start giving them decreases/take them out of the DB, just to reduce the depth a bit as a start?
While I would love to give unsigned riders xp, it would only deepen the problem. If we reduce the stats of new talents, how will team rebuild? Its a very hard issue to fix, with simplest solution being mass reduction of literally everyones stats
I strongly agree with many of the feelings expressed above. From my perspective, there is little to no point investing in riders who aren't going to go above 76 in their man stat when there are other, better, riders to invest in.
I'd argue for a rapid deflation of the talents coming into the DB from next year onwards, with stop gap measures in place to ensure continued development.
I propose we aim for cobblestones, or even slightly more deflated ratios than that. 15 riders at 80+ sounds good to me, more than enough for the PT to fight over. However, I'd also ideally have at most another fifteen in the 78-80 range, where the PCT & PT might be competing. Below that, maybe another 40 who are 75-77. That way there is enough for every team to have a rider at 75+, but there will be heavy competition for them.
Riders will be in their prime from 25-32, and assuming that anybody hitting 78+ will be trained. These are the soft caps I propose, riders being per terrain:
Max Out:
75
76
77
78-80
# of
4
3
3
2-4
This should produce an additive distribution something like:
75+
76+
77+
78+
80+
98
70
49
35
12
At a conservative estimate.
Obviously such aggressive deflation will see this year's talents increase in value, as they won't have to compete with a younger generation coming through. This means managers will spend time developing them instead of younger riders. As such, I propose a modification to the stagiare formula and/or wage cap, to encourage the development of these deflated riders. It could easily be that each rider born after 1998 has 30k of their wage ignored in wage cap calculations while they are not maxed. Even if a more conservative deflation curve is preferred, some similar mechanism that realigns the cost-benefit of deflated riders will be necessary. I heavily disagree with development of unsigned riders, as that completely undermines the idea of signing riders to develop them. Instead, development should be incentivized.
Although I agree with a lot of what was said here, I think that you can't just look at the main stat in the db because there are several riders with 80 or more that are completely useless. Riders like Vogt, Seboka, Zaini, Bakari, Guillen, etc. are useless at ManGame.
fintas wrote:
Although I agree with a lot of what was said here, I think that you can't just look at the main stat in the db because there are several riders with 80 or more that are completely useless. Riders like Vogt, Seboka, Zaini, Bakari, Guillen, etc. are useless at ManGame.
Agree with a lot of what is posted. I think the best answer is to do it naturally by gradually lowering the quality of neo-pros (my sense is this has started). My suggestions is to enhance that is do some early retirements.
Maybe you retire a random 25% of all 32 yo+ ovl 72 to 74 riders sand 50% of all 74+ Ovl rider who are free agents after renewals (or something like that). This doesn't hurt any one team and just ends some riders careers a little early. You do that for 2 or 3 seasons and it would work its way down and force people into lower scoring riders and developing young riders.
I don't think having enough riders is that big an issue I bet there are tons of unsigned mid-level domestiques available after transfers close. I am one of the worst teams in the league and I pretty much sign riders from only 1 country. Yet the last rider I am signing is Connor McCutcheon and he is very solid mid-levle guy with all 70+ in his key stats. And there are 6 other US riders alone who are of a similar or near similar quality who will go unsigned and likely undrafted.
One other thought is to allow riders below an OVL of X to develop to 4.100 without a PT loan. That is a big pain and doesn't seem merited for lesser talents,
I had a look at some of the distributions of riders for main stats. I think it would be worthwhile to look at adjusting riders in bulk (perhaps all the free agents). The distribution of main stats can be altered to look like a more "sensible" one such as the cobble stat
fintas wrote:
Although I agree with a lot of what was said here, I think that you can't just look at the main stat in the db because there are several riders with 80 or more that are completely useless. Riders like Vogt, Seboka, Zaini, Bakari, Guillen, etc. are useless at ManGame.
Alright, if 300+ points and 21st place in CT are useless, I'll take only useless riders in the future
If you're talking about the upcoming season, however, I'd probably agree.
I say this for multiple seasons and no-one pays attention
We are well past the point where the DB can be saved (well, not without serious acts that won't be supported by the majority).
In real life riders go up and down in skill from year to year, you can look back 5 years and the top riders are almost entirely different to what they are now. In the MG you go back 5 years and those top riders are pretty much still the top riders.
This is just a natural result of the type of game this is, and you see it in normal PCM, in FIFA, in FM, in every game like this.
So what do we do?
A mass game reset would work, but i know that will never be supported by anyone else.
A mass -X to all stats would not work, as this doesn't decrease inflation at all. All this does is change the stat ceiling, but as inflation is cause by more riders going up in stats vs those going down it doesn't actually change anything. This is an incredibly bad idea to use!
Stop adding talents? We'd need to go something like 5 years of this to start working! And this puts a huge penalty on managers that have older teams now. Could be balanced by changing the wage calculations to include age as a factor (yes i'm aware that hurts managers with young teams, but this seems better than the game breaking & they can always take a renwals fine to sell for profit)
Add less talents. This will be slow for sure, but is overall less damanging. Works very easily too. For everyrider that is about to turn 33 and decline we add 0.5 replacements. Eg we have 100 riders turning 33, we add 50 new talents. Importantly the 50 new talents are roughly max-ing at the same level. So Ricki Nelson and Keukeliere would decline down from 81+80SP, one new rider comes in with an 80SP max. A 82 and 79 MO rider are to decline, an 80MO talent is added.
That's a lot of manual calculation to do, but split it between four or five people and we can make it work. Then over the next 5 years we'll see the DB settle down to better overall level.
But TMM, won't we start running out of riders? No, because....
Starting add older & lower potential riders. Most talents are added at lvl1-2, age 21-23, with a potential 4+. Why don't we make up the lost numbers from above by adding riders at 25-30, with potential 1-3, but importantly at 4-4.100 already at the 70-75 domestique range.
This keeps the FA pool topped up, allows us to add the random nation riders, and will help slow increases and speed declines.
We would need a bit of a DB clear out first (not a bad idea in general). Take the 100 declinging riders from above as an idea, we don't need to add 50 of these every year. Instead we only replace those who have retired from the DB.
So each season now we're adding 75 riders for every 100 declinging, and we are adding at a level to lower the DB overall. There will be enough riders for teams to fill up their old riders, but naturally raise wages of the young riders as we battle for them. After 5-7 years of this, the MG DB is back to a normal PCM DB level.
Note: Training is entirely separate from this because it serves a very different purpose in the game and should be protected. The last two suggestions combined mean no manager is disadvantaged heavily. We don't need to change the wage calculations or calendar or anything other MG systems.
The downside is it won't be fast, and will require careful management from year to year. Basically, the same i've said for the last few years whenever this converstation comes up.
fintas wrote:
Although I agree with a lot of what was said here, I think that you can't just look at the main stat in the db because there are several riders with 80 or more that are completely useless. Riders like Vogt, Seboka, Zaini, Bakari, Guillen, etc. are useless at ManGame.
Alright, if 300+ points and 21st place in CT are useless, I'll take only useless riders in the future
If you're talking about the upcoming season, however, I'd probably agree.
I'm not talking about the past, I'm talking about the present. this season with only SP/AC above 70 I think that even in the CT it will not be very useful
A mass -X to all stats would not work, as this doesn't decrease inflation at all. All this does is change the stat ceiling, but as inflation is cause by more riders going up in stats vs those going down it doesn't actually change anything. This is an incredibly bad idea to use!
Hence, you could adjust the stats distribution to model it in accordance with a distribution you would want.
For example, it is common practice in some countries to "adjust" the final exam marks for final school exams. It is known that the exam marks are normally distributed with a mean of 60%. However, this year the exams were uncharacteristically difficult and as a result the average is 55%. The normal distribution curve is "shifted" so that the new average is 60%. This means results are adjusted - but not adjusted equally. Students whose marks are close to 55% see a relatively "big" adjustment (their marks would be raised by about 5%). However, students at the tail end (ie really high marks or really low marks) see a very small adjustment in their marks. The result of this statistical handywork means the mark distribution is more similar to the historical norm.
Now what I suggest for MG, would be a large-scale adjustment to the the stats. We identify a stat distribution which is more sensible - eg. attempting to closely model the PCM Daily db stat distribution (hypothetically). We can "convert" MG stats to be look identical to the desired distribution. Unlike the school mark example, this conversion would likely penalise riders where there are "too many" falling into a certain stat band (too many riders on 75-79 MO). It would also penalise riders who are too overpowered.
It is worth noting while powerful riders will be penalised more, they will still be the most powerful riders after the adjustment. The overall distribution would look more sensible and we would rid of the phenomenon where riders who are on decent stats (70-73) get overlooked.
Again like amateurs not much good for maxing, but maybe we can rely on most riders being semi-useful by l4, combined with, if we follow bbl's directive, there being less great domestiques around.
