Put Cobbles back to 5*
Cobbles are already restricted in days, can we please give those days significance?
My alternative would be to drop CB impact on the OVL calculation or add more CB specific Stages/One-Day races.
In terms of Roman's suggestion, I don't think that is feasible since you end up removing a ton of teams' leaders in one swoop. For instance Faiers and Diaz has this year done somewhat ok things at 77 and 78 MO, they'd be absolutely useless at 72-73. So whilst it might tackle the actual issues at hand it creates a seperate issue in the other end of the DB which then would need a fix and then we can start a new cycle of balance changes.
That would only make any sense if difference between 78 and 83 is much smaller than 73 and 78. Do we know that for sure? I for one would not mind mass regression, mainly cause of complete mess that would be transfer season (probably), and of course it would prolly be a lot of fun.
Put Cobbles back to 5*
Cobbles are already restricted in days, can we please give those days significance?
My alternative would be to drop CB impact on the OVL calculation or add more CB specific Stages/One-Day races.
Forgot to touch on this yesterday. Having been a part of the testing crew of the DB when the initial switch to PCM 18 was made, it became quite apparent that having cobbles stages in stage races tends to mess things up. The main example of this was using the 2018 variant of Tour de France, where the GC was decided by which GC favourite had the highest cobbles stat rather than in the actual mountains. I do think that it would nice to see more races like Cheshire and BeNeLux Challenge, that offer cobbles riders more chances to excel.
This wasn't just a PCM18 issue, heck i can't count the number of times i got a GC podium in the Tour on the 2010 route in PCM10-15.
But whilst cobbles in RL GTs are fun and interesting, i'd not suggest that for the MG.
My only real push for the more cobbles foxued races is drawn from my own experience, having always had a good cobbler in the game, i've never ever had a hard time planning them.
Where Ewan will always have more choices than RD, or Cataford, or a climber or puncher, the cobbles riders like Thomas or Burghardt or Altur have always had more RD than cobbles options.
Roman wrote:
One quick note: if the current state of the DB does not suit the needs of the latest versions of PCM - why don't we just mass downgrade everyone like -5? If 80 becomes new 85, it may not change anything really, but it may also allow the AI to behave differently. I remember how PCM AI behaved differently all the years back in cases like where I pushed all the riders' FL attribute all the way up to 85 - the AI was then behaving differently. Things like this shoud be tested.
Lowering the effective stat cap from 85 to 80 DOES NOT FIX INFLATION. The more effective radical solution would be a genuine re-set of the DB to remove just a ton of riders.
Now PCM AI does work well with lower stats overall, otherwise the CT division in regular DB's would be a joke. It works well, we've seen this in the U23 Worlds/races and tons of other stories etc.
Inflation is in a issue because there are too many riders at X stat level, the actual numerical value of X does not matter. If we had 20 max stat riders at an 85 cap, or 20 max stat riders at a 75 cap, the AI will work very much the same.
(now i'm not accounting exactly for the non-linearity of PCM stats (assuming this is still the case in PCM18), but my theory here would be lowering the stat cap would make this worse. PCM stats used to be non-linear with growing ability gaps at the higher end. So lowering the stat cap would, weirdly, create bigger inflation issues as the gap from a 75 rider to a 70 rider is less than an 80 rider to a 75 rider)
However, i would support an overall lowering of the stats in the game, provided this was paired with an effective re-set to remove the inflated riders. We'd lose a ton of high end riders, so the remaining 3 or 4 top end riders are capped at ~80. This would fix our inflation problem, and put us in a good starting place to avoid it returning. There are various other knock on effects of course, but not worth detailing here as i know this idea won't be used anyway.
Edited by TheManxMissile on 05-02-2021 13:53
Roman wrote:
One quick note: if the current state of the DB does not suit the needs of the latest versions of PCM - why don't we just mass downgrade everyone like -5? If 80 becomes new 85, it may not change anything really, but it may also allow the AI to behave differently. I remember how PCM AI behaved differently all the years back in cases like where I pushed all the riders' FL attribute all the way up to 85 - the AI was then behaving differently. Things like this shoud be tested.
However, i would support an overall lowering of the stats in the game, provided this was paired with an effective re-set to remove the inflated riders. We'd lose a ton of high end riders, so the remaining 3 or 4 top end riders are capped at ~80. This would fix our inflation problem, and put us in a good starting place to avoid it returning. There are various other knock on effects of course, but not worth detailing here as i know this idea won't be used anyway.
Who knows they won't? I think we all understand that PCM wasn't built and tested with inflated riders. You gotta adjust to the game. Mass fixing inflation is certainly a viable choice that I would advicate for, but as you mentioned, there needs to be a clear path to how exactly and what stats would have to be nerfed.
About the cobbles I still prefer a race by race decision to get more realism. Roubaix should always be a carnage, but races like Kuurne should be possible to end up in a sprint.
Of course the cobble rating should be made visible as well then.
Roman wrote:
One quick note: if the current state of the DB does not suit the needs of the latest versions of PCM - why don't we just mass downgrade everyone like -5? If 80 becomes new 85, it may not change anything really, but it may also allow the AI to behave differently. I remember how PCM AI behaved differently all the years back in cases like where I pushed all the riders' FL attribute all the way up to 85 - the AI was then behaving differently. Things like this shoud be tested.
Lowering the effective stat cap from 85 to 80 DOES NOT FIX INFLATION. The more effective radical solution would be a genuine re-set of the DB to remove just a ton of riders.
Now PCM AI does work well with lower stats overall, otherwise the CT division in regular DB's would be a joke. It works well, we've seen this in the U23 Worlds/races and tons of other stories etc.
Inflation is in a issue because there are too many riders at X stat level, the actual numerical value of X does not matter. If we had 20 max stat riders at an 85 cap, or 20 max stat riders at a 75 cap, the AI will work very much the same.
(now i'm not accounting exactly for the non-linearity of PCM stats (assuming this is still the case in PCM18), but my theory here would be lowering the stat cap would make this worse. PCM stats used to be non-linear with growing ability gaps at the higher end. So lowering the stat cap would, weirdly, create bigger inflation issues as the gap from a 75 rider to a 70 rider is less than an 80 rider to a 75 rider)
However, i would support an overall lowering of the stats in the game, provided this was paired with an effective re-set to remove the inflated riders. We'd lose a ton of high end riders, so the remaining 3 or 4 top end riders are capped at ~80. This would fix our inflation problem, and put us in a good starting place to avoid it returning. There are various other knock on effects of course, but not worth detailing here as i know this idea won't be used anyway.
Something of an idea related to this. Im not sure how many would have knowledge of how an Expansion draft works, in the NHL (you probably would though Manx), but essentially when a new team joins the league, each existing team must "protect" a set number of riders that meet a certain criteria. This makes them safe from selection from the new "expansion team". All those that are unprotected are up for grabs, but only 1 rider from each team can be picked.
Just something I thought of in relation to the discussion of DB inflation, but we could do something similar, except instead of an expansion team picking one rider from each existing team, it would be the MGUCI, removing or reducing stats of unprotected riders (In this case more than 1 per team though probably) .
I'm not saying this has to be done or anything, but there is definitely an issue with too many strong riders in the db, so if each team could protect lets say 12 (just a random number I picked) riders (maybe change the number depending on division), and then the rest are deleted from the db, or reduced in stats maybe? Give teams a season to plan for this. We could make it so that unmaxxed riders do not need to be protected for example, or you can only have a certain number of your protected riders be above a certain OVL rating as well. This might also be kind of an "out there" idea, but it might make the preceding transfer season quite exciting, and with planning and proper implementation, might be one of the most fair ways to reduce the inflation problem, without getting rid of all decent FA options for one or two years (a team moving to PT or to PCT from CT that season would be screwed for example if all good FA riders were deleted, as I've seen as a suggestion in the past)
Obviously this plan is a bit "out there" and would require a lot of planning, but it would definitely help to get rid of a bit of the "bloating" in the db and differentiate between stat levels if unprotected riders are at the very least reduced, so that the top level guys are the top level guys and domestiques aren't 2 stats below a leader but 4 or 5.
I think it would probably work better in conjunction with an elimination of riders though. So all unprotected riders are deleted from the DB, and then FAs and protected riders are given a -3. This reduces the stat cap to 82, and I believe the best unmaxed talents atm are capping at around 79/80, so with the changes they would be around 76/77. Then we can just shift down the training costs so 85 cost would be the cost to train to 82 and so on. The elimination of unprotected riders, most likely removes a lot of riders in the 75-78 (pre stat reduction) range that BBL pointed out as an issue and most under that range are likely super domestiques with near 70's in all stats, or an unmaxed talent at this point (as BBL said talents that reach 75 aren't even getting stagiare offers)
This strategy could also be implemented over a few seasons at a slower rate, if managers think one big fix all at once is too drastic, but like I said, Im mostly just tossing out an idea at this point.
Roman wrote:
One quick note: if the current state of the DB does not suit the needs of the latest versions of PCM - why don't we just mass downgrade everyone like -5? If 80 becomes new 85, it may not change anything really, but it may also allow the AI to behave differently. I remember how PCM AI behaved differently all the years back in cases like where I pushed all the riders' FL attribute all the way up to 85 - the AI was then behaving differently. Things like this shoud be tested.
Lowering the effective stat cap from 85 to 80 DOES NOT FIX INFLATION. The more effective radical solution would be a genuine re-set of the DB to remove just a ton of riders.
Now PCM AI does work well with lower stats overall, otherwise the CT division in regular DB's would be a joke. It works well, we've seen this in the U23 Worlds/races and tons of other stories etc.
Inflation is in a issue because there are too many riders at X stat level, the actual numerical value of X does not matter. If we had 20 max stat riders at an 85 cap, or 20 max stat riders at a 75 cap, the AI will work very much the same.
(now i'm not accounting exactly for the non-linearity of PCM stats (assuming this is still the case in PCM18), but my theory here would be lowering the stat cap would make this worse. PCM stats used to be non-linear with growing ability gaps at the higher end. So lowering the stat cap would, weirdly, create bigger inflation issues as the gap from a 75 rider to a 70 rider is less than an 80 rider to a 75 rider)
However, i would support an overall lowering of the stats in the game, provided this was paired with an effective re-set to remove the inflated riders. We'd lose a ton of high end riders, so the remaining 3 or 4 top end riders are capped at ~80. This would fix our inflation problem, and put us in a good starting place to avoid it returning. There are various other knock on effects of course, but not worth detailing here as i know this idea won't be used anyway.
Something of an idea related to this. Im not sure how many would have knowledge of how an Expansion draft works, in the NHL (you probably would though Manx), but essentially when a new team joins the league, each existing team must "protect" a set number of riders that meet a certain criteria. This makes them safe from selection from the new "expansion team". All those that are unprotected are up for grabs, but only 1 rider from each team can be picked.
Just something I thought of in relation to the discussion of DB inflation, but we could do something similar, except instead of an expansion team picking one rider from each existing team, it would be the MGUCI, removing or reducing stats of unprotected riders (In this case more than 1 per team though probably) .
I'm not saying this has to be done or anything, but there is definitely an issue with too many strong riders in the db, so if each team could protect lets say 12 (just a random number I picked) riders (maybe change the number depending on division), and then the rest are deleted from the db, or reduced in stats maybe? Give teams a season to plan for this. We could make it so that unmaxxed riders do not need to be protected for example, or you can only have a certain number of your protected riders be above a certain OVL rating as well. This might also be kind of an "out there" idea, but it might make the preceding transfer season quite exciting, and with planning and proper implementation, might be one of the most fair ways to reduce the inflation problem, without getting rid of all decent FA options for one or two years (a team moving to PT or to PCT from CT that season would be screwed for example if all good FA riders were deleted, as I've seen as a suggestion in the past)
I was actually thinking of this exact idea of idea with regard to protections in NHL expansions, but I figured it would be too radical to post. Now I'm thinking it could work if done right. I've always been against direct stat adjustment for the sake of MG history and continuity, but perhaps it is time to make a sacrifice.
Not so sure I'm for completely deleting guys though. Perhaps we could all get certain levels of protections in certain OVL ranges, depending on division. For instance, some riders stay the same, some get -1, -3, -5, etc, based on a finite number each manager is allowed, and for FA's it's random. If we stratify by what you can do with different skill ranges (so everyone doesn't just keep all their leaders the same), I think this could be an effective way of staggering the DB. Then new talents could be added with a much more diverse range of skill levels.
It's an extreme solution that I would normally oppose fiercely, but we are in an extreme situation. Even if we changed all talents to add a perfect amount and wide range of skill levels today, it would take a decade for inflation to be weeded out. Perhaps this is the only way.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
I'm supportive of the idea of stat reduction to combat the inflation, but that's easy for me to say because I don't have big attachments to any rider that could potentially suffer from it, so I won't take a big stance on that.
What I think is necessary in addition to the short-term solution is to think about how to keep the DB stable over time (and those two things could be intertwined).
For one, this means deciding how the structure of the stats should approximately look like. So, how many 84-85 climbers or sprinters do we actually want? How many 81-83 guys are feasable? And then it's about implementing mechanisms to enforce that (maybe not to the extreme, but at least roughly). For instance, would a stat cap via potential be an option? Something like, only potential 7 guys can reach 85 (or 84) in any given stat, potential 6 caps at 83 (or 82), potential 5 at 81 (or even lower) and you're not allowed to train them any higher.
In this example, that could also provide some guidelines for the immediate reductions. So any unprotected potential 5 guys would have their stats reduced to whatever the potential 5 cap would be and so on. And for the future, the number of riders at a certain skill level could be regulated via the potential of the riders that enter the game.
I'm not sure if this solution through potential works super well, because there is an immense amount of 5 and 6 potential riders, so you would have to lower the caps on that quite a bit, probably. And also, I understand that a lot of the fun comes from boosting riders that originally may not have been the biggest prospects (especially for smaller nations). My main point is that there has to be some kind of consensus on how the stats should generally be distributed in the future.
I have no clue if lowering the stats would help, but I would find it interesting and fun tbh!
But I can see an issue in terms of current top riders that can’t be trained, as they will be overtaken by younger riders which couldn’t happen before. Eg. Madrazo at 85MO would be stuck at 80MO while Lecuisinier could be trained to 82MO and thus become the sole GC leader.
But I do think the idea is very intruiging. I think this and a new rule that only +1 pr. stat of 80+ could be interesting. But I know it screw over long term planning - including my own!
Roman wrote:
One quick note: if the current state of the DB does not suit the needs of the latest versions of PCM - why don't we just mass downgrade everyone like -5? If 80 becomes new 85, it may not change anything really, but it may also allow the AI to behave differently. I remember how PCM AI behaved differently all the years back in cases like where I pushed all the riders' FL attribute all the way up to 85 - the AI was then behaving differently. Things like this shoud be tested.
Lowering the effective stat cap from 85 to 80 DOES NOT FIX INFLATION. The more effective radical solution would be a genuine re-set of the DB to remove just a ton of riders.
Now PCM AI does work well with lower stats overall, otherwise the CT division in regular DB's would be a joke. It works well, we've seen this in the U23 Worlds/races and tons of other stories etc.
Inflation is in a issue because there are too many riders at X stat level, the actual numerical value of X does not matter. If we had 20 max stat riders at an 85 cap, or 20 max stat riders at a 75 cap, the AI will work very much the same.
(now i'm not accounting exactly for the non-linearity of PCM stats (assuming this is still the case in PCM18), but my theory here would be lowering the stat cap would make this worse. PCM stats used to be non-linear with growing ability gaps at the higher end. So lowering the stat cap would, weirdly, create bigger inflation issues as the gap from a 75 rider to a 70 rider is less than an 80 rider to a 75 rider)
However, i would support an overall lowering of the stats in the game, provided this was paired with an effective re-set to remove the inflated riders. We'd lose a ton of high end riders, so the remaining 3 or 4 top end riders are capped at ~80. This would fix our inflation problem, and put us in a good starting place to avoid it returning. There are various other knock on effects of course, but not worth detailing here as i know this idea won't be used anyway.
I am sorry, my point was not about fixing inflation at all. My point basically was that AI may behave differently with all-around lower attributes.
Training limits to “POT” is an interesting idea for future additions, but it would be harsh to existing leaders I think.
Also it could end up making the search through DB uninteresting. I am always looking for “hidden gems” of pot 3-4 myself. If those can be trained past 77-78 F.e. they would be very uninteresting unless they fit just right due to nationality.
SotD wrote:
Training limits to “POT” is an interesting idea for future additions, but it would be harsh to existing leaders I think.
That is where the "protection" idea would come in. So if you have an absolute team leader that would be cut down, you could leave him as is. But maybe if you have 3 or 4 or 5 of those cases, you could only keep 2 of them or something like that. Maybe that could work.
SotD wrote:
Also it could end up making the search through DB uninteresting. I am always looking for “hidden gems” of pot 3-4 myself. If those can be trained past 77-78 F.e. they would be very uninteresting unless they fit just right due to nationality.
Yeah, that was my main worry as well. However, this could be fixed (I think) by lowering the base stats and/or regular progression gains and then stacking them differently. So for instance, you could have a certain amount of pot 3-4 guys that would be maxed out at a similar level as pot 5-6 guys. And yes, you couldn't train them as much as those pot 5-6 riders, but they would still max out (untrained) higher than some of the other 3-4 guys and maybe even some of the higher potential riders (who would in turn need more investments but have a higher ceiling). So, stacking the types of development, if that makes sense. Then in-depth scouting would still be worth it. Also, in this szenario, 77-78 would be much more valuable than it is right now, ideally.
But in the end, the reality just is that if we want to combat this inflation, it inherently limits some of the rider development options (at least from every angle I think about it), yes.
Not so sure I'm for completely deleting guys though. Perhaps we could all get certain levels of protections in certain OVL ranges, depending on division. For instance, some riders stay the same, some get -1, -3, -5, etc, based on a finite number each manager is allowed, and for FA's it's random. If we stratify by what you can do with different skill ranges (so everyone doesn't just keep all their leaders the same), I think this could be an effective way of staggering the DB. Then new talents could be added with a much more diverse range of skill levels.
cunego59 wrote:
I'm supportive of the idea of stat reduction to combat the inflation, but that's easy for me to say because I don't have big attachments to any rider that could potentially suffer from it, so I won't take a big stance on that.
What I think is necessary in addition to the short-term solution is to think about how to keep the DB stable over time (and those two things could be intertwined).
For one, this means deciding how the structure of the stats should approximately look like. So, how many 84-85 climbers or sprinters do we actually want? How many 81-83 guys are feasable? And then it's about implementing mechanisms to enforce that (maybe not to the extreme, but at least roughly). For instance, would a stat cap via potential be an option? Something like, only potential 7 guys can reach 85 (or 84) in any given stat, potential 6 caps at 83 (or 82), potential 5 at 81 (or even lower) and you're not allowed to train them any higher.
In this example, that could also provide some guidelines for the immediate reductions. So any unprotected potential 5 guys would have their stats reduced to whatever the potential 5 cap would be and so on. And for the future, the number of riders at a certain skill level could be regulated via the potential of the riders that enter the game.
.
I think kind of a combination of your ideas and mine could work well. So there could be different levels of "protection" based on each division. Lets say we dont do the deleting riders thing, but just a reduction of stats, in PT for example, you could protect 1 80+ OVL rider, ensuring they are given the minimum stat reduction possible (or none at all depending on whats decided, if this were to happen). Any other 80+ OVL riders on a team could be given a larger reduction. Then the same for riders in lets say the 76-79.99 OVL range, you could protect 2, ensuring they get the minimum stat reduction. For CT the upper limit could be a 76+ OVL rider.
(im looking at the DB now, and the top limit for PT would probably be lower than 80, maybe 79 or 78.5, as theres only a dozen or so riders at 80+, meaning most teams wouldnt even have a choice to make)
The other thing I thought of was that stat reductions could be in line with the riders potential. So a Pot 7 rider may only get about a -1/2 across the board (more or less), but a Pot 4 guy may get -3/4.
Im not sure Im a fan of that method though, just like the stat cap for potential suggestion, just because riders improve based on levels, and as such some riders start at Lvl 3, with a 75 stat, but at Pot 2, while others can get added at 68, with a potential 5 and Lvl 1. , and end up with pretty similar stats. In the future this could be resolved, but as SotD points out, I like to find anomalies in the DB of an older rider at low Pot, but maybe they already have a 70+ stat.
- And as Im writing this, Ican see Cunego's new post:
SotD wrote:
Also it could end up making the search through DB uninteresting. I am always looking for “hidden gems” of pot 3-4 myself. If those can be trained past 77-78 F.e. they would be very uninteresting unless they fit just right due to nationality.
Yeah, that was my main worry as well. However, this could be fixed (I think) by lowering the base stats and/or regular progression gains and then stacking them differently. So for instance, you could have a certain amount of pot 3-4 guys that would be maxed out at a similar level as pot 5-6 guys. And yes, you couldn't train them as much as those pot 5-6 riders, but they would still max out (untrained) higher than some of the other 3-4 guys and maybe even some of the higher potential riders (who would in turn need more investments but have a higher ceiling). So, stacking the types of development, if that makes sense. Then in-depth scouting would still be worth it. Also, in this szenario, 77-78 would be much more valuable than it is right now, ideally.
But in the end, the reality just is that if we want to combat this inflation, it inherently limits some of the rider development options (at least from every angle I think about it), yes.
Okay, so Im liking this idea more now. Maybe we could just add limits to riders into the MG DB, that everyone can see based on Pot similar to how it is in an actual career mode. There could still be a bit of variance (so not all POT 5 guys cap at exactly 77 f.e. but maybe 76, or 78 but other stats could be distributed differently apart from their main stat).
I think this would be a huge huge task to implement, but a guy that maxes as 76 MO (from levelling up), but has a limit of 79, could end up being more sought after than a guy that maxes at 77, but has a limit of 77. It might add a different element than we are used to in transfers, but could still be manipulated to curb inflation each season. An easier way could just to be add up the total stats for when they will be maxed and give a limit 2-3 higher than that number, to allow some training, but not a lot and maybe that number would change based on potential. So a Pot 5 or less is allowed one training, Pot 6 is allowed 2 and Pot 7, 3?
The idea of limiting the maximum stat is very interesting, because as far as I know we don't know for sure if the game actually recognizes stats of over 85 with the positive daily form or if it's capped at 85.
Because if it's capped the 85 riders are definitely at disadvantage over the riders in the low 80's as they don't benefit from positive daily form as much as the others. So a 85 mo rider with +3 from the daily form would be at the same level of a 82 mo rider with the same bonus from the daily form. They would still benefit from the daily form in the secondary stats as the daily form affects all stats, but not in those where they hit the cap.
Edit: Or we can just make a petition from Daily to Cyanide to add to the next game the option to turn off the daily form just as we can turn off random fitness. In a career mode the daily form makes a lot of sense and is a great addition, but not being able to turn it off in single races is ludicrous.
Edited by alexkr00 on 05-02-2021 21:28
valverde321 wrote:
I think kind of a combination of your ideas and mine could work well. So there could be different levels of "protection" based on each division. Lets say we dont do the deleting riders thing, but just a reduction of stats, in PT for example, you could protect 1 80+ OVL rider, ensuring they are given the minimum stat reduction possible (or none at all depending on whats decided, if this were to happen). Any other 80+ OVL riders on a team could be given a larger reduction.
In a game state plagued with randomness which sparked this discussion in the first place, I'm not sure the solution is to punish teams that rely on a few superstars actually showing up to make a living harder than those with a broader, more redundant leader structure.
I think one reason for the stat inflation is that the game and the development system have encouraged one dimensional riders. So all resources get put into improving the primary stat. There are 40 79 riders in the DB. Not one of them has a mountain or TT over 70, 1 has a hill over 70, only 5 have CO over 70 and only 3 have resistance over 73.
So this leads me to two suggestions:
1) if stat reductions were to be implemented there could be some provision for shifting stats to other attributes. So I can't keep my 79 79 sprinter but I can turn him into a 75 75 sprinter with 73 hills.
2) Another way to cap development would be to prevent riders from using their aligned skill set ever time they level up. So maybe pot 5 and lower riders must use at least one level up on a non-primary development. This would increase the cost and time to train a rider up to be a top rider in one skill and also increase the diversity in the Db. Or instead of making it potential based you could add a rider type and only "pure" types are allowed to use the primary dev all 4 times.
As an aside I don't support going back to all 5* cobbles because I think it turns cobbles races into boring processions of exhausted riders. If we want to make cobbles riders more valuable add more cobble races that require a combination of CO and another skill which would also encourage diverse rider types.
I think one reason for the stat inflation is that the game and the development system have encouraged one dimensional riders. So all resources get put into improving the primary stat. There are 40 79 riders in the DB. Not one of them has a mountain or TT over 70, 1 has a hill over 70, only 5 have CO over 70 and only 3 have resistance over 73.
So this leads me to two suggestions:
1) if stat reductions were to be implemented there could be some provision for shifting stats to other attributes. So I can't keep my 79 79 sprinter but I can turn him into a 75 75 sprinter with 73 hills.
2) Another way to cap development would be to prevent riders from using their aligned skill set ever time they level up. So maybe pot 5 and lower riders must use at least one level up on a non-primary development. This would increase the cost and time to train a rider up to be a top rider in one skill and also increase the diversity in the Db. Or instead of making it potential based you could add a rider type and only "pure" types are allowed to use the primary dev all 4 times.
As an aside I don't support going back to all 5* cobbles because I think it turns cobbles races into boring processions of exhausted riders. If we want to make cobbles riders more valuable add more cobble races that require a combination of CO and another skill which would also encourage diverse rider types.
Agree on the one dimensional riders. It's a massive problem, and it's why I fought so hard for an all-around fighter type xp path last year. While that wouldn't solve it completely at all, it would be a small change that would at least give another valuable option. Otherwise we'll keep pumping a bunch of one dimensional guys into the mid-high 70's for one stat, which then messes with the AI.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
valverde321 wrote:
I think kind of a combination of your ideas and mine could work well. So there could be different levels of "protection" based on each division. Lets say we dont do the deleting riders thing, but just a reduction of stats, in PT for example, you could protect 1 80+ OVL rider, ensuring they are given the minimum stat reduction possible (or none at all depending on whats decided, if this were to happen). Any other 80+ OVL riders on a team could be given a larger reduction.
In a game state plagued with randomness which sparked this discussion in the first place, I'm not sure the solution is to punish teams that rely on a few superstars actually showing up to make a living harder than those with a broader, more redundant leader structure.
(obviously I'm somewhat biased here)
I think it would actually harm a team with a broader structure more, since the idea is to protect your best riders on a team (in general) so a team with less superstars, but more solid riders may not be able to protect them all, while a team with one or two superstars can likely keep them all protected, mitigating/lessening their reduction. The gap between some superstars and the tier below may still be the same difference stat wise, but there would likely be less in that 2nd tier, for the superstars to compete with, and so on down the "tiers" of riders.
An issue I see happening, is that it somewhere (maybe around 75) there will be a huge number of riders, after the changes, as some top riders not protected could be reduced from lets say 79/78, while a 76 rider thats valuable to a CT or PCT team is protected and isn't reduced that much, so both end up in that range of stats. This is why I believe deleting riders may be necessary.
I’m more in favor of giving all riders the same decrease, rather than picking out some riders from each team. IMO the Man-Game DB have a history that shouldn’t be semi erased from one day to the next. Giving everyone -5 would keep the history in terms of quality.
Otherwise I suspect we will end up with a few VERY good riders that you have to have 1-2 of to succeed. I think everyone would do the same. Make sure the highest scorers/highest potential/youngest stars would stay the same, and allow riders with High stats, but isn’t necessarily performing like they should go Down.
For me Lecuisinier would obviously be the safe keep, and then I would save Aidan over Koretzky because of the huge age gap, and how quick I could get Aidan up to his level.
But is it good that Koretzky moves from being a top 10-15 puncheur (pointswise) to a domestique from one day to the next? I think that would be a bad call.
And if we keep 4-5 riders from each team safe, do we even tackle the problem?
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg)
