Have been following the discussion and here are my two cents on what has already been discussed and a little more:
Move to New Game
While I think a move to a new game should be encouraged, I do not think a move to PCM 2020 (or otherwise) should be taken up for the 2021 season. Like we saw last time, half a season is probably not a long time to decide on this. Instead, we should target to switch games in 2022, having already decided to do so from now. The reason I say this is to allow managers one full Transfer Window to plan ahead and try to adapt to the change. While testing for a game change continues, suppose if we can get that started in a few days, and results are coming in from that testing, managers can read and learn about the switch for some time beforehand. This will also prevent all the discussions and mud-slinging which happened after the switch last time, because all game observations, and especially those affecting the MG DB in particular, were not shared in full detail.
Shortening of MG Calendar
This is a topic we haven't touched this season, but I do believe this will be impotant to keep the MG running for the future. While we all enjoy the huge gamut of races and the brilliant reports from our reporters, it is quite evident that the load on them is too much. We were extremely lucky to have had people suddenly get free time last year/season because of unforeseen circumstances in the world. Otherwise, I'm not sure when the season would've finished! There are 140+ plus races in the calendar at the moment, and gradual reduction over the next 2-3 seasons to 120 or even lower races should be the target.
My suggestion for a new category structure to along with the reduced RDs is as follows:
Restructure Race Bands PT - Reduce the PT calendar to include the GTs, the Monuments and 1 classic and 1 stage race of each type (Mountains, Hills, Cobbles, Flat, TT). Redistribute the races in PTHC or otherwise. PTHC - I would be in favour of removing the band structure of PTHC completely and make it similar to C1. As it is the PT calendar is quite 'boring', for the lack of better word, in the fact that there isn't a lot of choice currently in the types of races one can take. Removing the band system for PTHC, in combination with the proposed change in the PT structure as mentioned above, would allow teams at least some level of specializations in their squads. HC - Remains as it is, with maybe one extra band choice to make it 6/8 in selections. C1 - Remains as it. C2HC - Remains as it. 10 RDs can be increased from the current season. C2 - Remove completely. Spread the races in other bands if required. CT teams to ride C1 races other than C2 and also to ride HC races with spots remaining, as is currently the case.
With these changes, the XP available to PTHC and C1 races will need to be changed, so that Lvl 1 riders riding for PCT teams and Lvl 4 riders riding for PT teams do not get affected.
The factor of reducing the number of total RDs, and in turn the number of RDs for each will also reduce the problem of incomplete startlists, but they will not completely be removed as clashes can still be used to maintain the same irrespective of which division the races are in.
Tackling MG DB Inflation
While I do think the observation that there are too many riders in the same 75-79 areas for most of the specialties is correct, I do not support the idea of a mass removal of stats from all riders or even specific riders. It will affect teams unequally and that is not a solution I would get behind. Also, reducing stats of FAs only is also a no-go for me, as it makes life very difficult especially for promoting teams and gives the advantage for selling teams to try to sell their riders at a premium. Availability of a good FA class is usually what makes a Transfer Window successful, and deals are a way to complement that, I feel.
We have already seen that the new rider additions are being done in such a way that most talents need 3-4 seasons of training to become world beaters, which is the right way to go about it. I would further go to the extent of limiting the number of new additions to maybe 100 riders every season. I think the current season had 300+ (or 400+) riders being added, and I believe that's simply too much, given the already vast number of riders without contracts. By adding too many talents, we are just creating a 'Hype Race', where you constantly keep picking up riders for the future by letting go of older riders who are not much worse off. I know there are managers who prefer this kind of a tactic in their team-building, but I do believe that is still possible even with a limited number of new additions. Off course, the balancing of new additions in terms of max states should remain in place so that no batch is either too OP or too weak.
My way to further correct inflation would be to remove riders from the DB who have been out of contract for two seasons, instead of trying to get takers for them by improving their support stats or otherwise. There can be exceptions for cases like Naesen this time, but that should be a very small number (maybe not more than 5 a season), and that too not for those who should get cut by meeting the criteria in the first line of this paragraph. We simply do not need a 4000 rider DB.
Further, as already mentioned previously, I would be in favour of reducing the main stats of declining riders faster than the support stats, in keeping with the their potentials. This should help with the top-heaviness of the DB as well.
Training Overhaul
I had suggested the following overhaul (made some minor changes) to Training Prices, all the way back in the 2018 Suggestions thread
Spoiler
Stat
New Cost
Current Cost
85
3,200,000
2,700,000
84
2,600,000
2,300,000
83
2,200,000
2,000,000
82
1,800,000
1,700,000
81
1,500,000
1,400,000
80
1,250,000
1,200,000
79
1,000,000
1,000,000
78
800,000
850,000
77
600,000
700,000
76
500,000
600,000
75
400,000
500,000
74
350,000
450,000
73
300,000
400,000
72
250,000
350,000
71
200,000
300,000
70
150,000
250,000
69
125,000
200,000
68
100,000
175,000
67
75,000
150,000
66
50,000
125,000
≤65
25,000
100,000
I feel that the current training setup is too expensive for lower stats and perhaps not expensive enough for higher stats. As such, a reduction in the lower costs especially will motivate teams to work on the non-main stats of some of their riders.
In addition to this, I in favour of Roman's suggestion to modify the -10 AVG exemption rule wherein stats only 10 points lesser than the average can be trained at the their actual price. If we can do away with this, that would be the best, but for the next couple of seasons, maybe we can increase the limit to allow stats to be up to -5 points below the average to be trained at their actual price instead of the price of the average. I'm quite certain this will motivate some managers to invest in support stats, rather than keep pushing 1D monsters further into the red zone.
Yeah, I agree lowering those 75-78 riders that are stuck in free agency will have an impact. Because teams won't be able to replace their old 50k domestiques with a similar rider from free agency who will again be just a 50k rider. So managers will have to either keep their declined rider for another season, buy the same quality rider from another team or get a worse or unmaxed rider from free agency. We might not get a big shift immediately, but in a year or two it's sure to have a noticeable impact.
I also pretty much agree with SotD regarding training. I don't think we should make it any easier to train up a 2nd main stat. For example I don't think we should make a 80MO, 73HI rider get to 80HI any easier than it is now. If you want to have a rider that specialises in two main stats then that path should largely be made through using different stat gains, not through training.
We could make the Average Exemption a bit less restricting by using less than 10 values under the OVL and perhaps raising the max stat to 68, 69 or maybe 70. But we also need a better and more accurate OVL for any type of training to work fairly.
But on a whole I don't think the training system is that bad. Maybe I'm wrong speaking as someone who hasn't yet been able to do any training myself yet, but I feel that on the whole the amount of training being done is still quite decent and doesn't really need to be altered a lot one way or another.
I like the restructure idea, I think it would be good for all the division. Especially PT should have a bit more freedom, since they have the most rigid calendar as is.
I agree with the reasons for reducing the number of RDs and races. Our reporters do an excellent job, but it's quite a challenge to report on so many races given the number of reporters, and their time and resources. So I'm all in, if we can make their job slightly easier. Obviously with less races and restructuring the race bands, we need to make sure that the exp gained for levelling up riders is still fair across all the divisions and wildcards can be adjusted accordingly.
My own slight pause at reducing the calendar is that I strongly feel we have too many of the "same" races and if we have less of them it's gonna make for even less space to add different ones. I believe a lot of the issues in the DB also stem from the calendar/races. If most the same type of races all favour riders with one stat distribution, it makes the DB inflated with so many similar riders and doesn't give the managers any incentive to use different development paths for their riders. The same thing then happens with training.
It's something I believe could or should be looked at. It seems a more "natural" solution/change than altering certain rider stats or changing certain game mechanics/rules, perhaps for the wrong reason. But I will confess that we obviously can't just change everything or anything and we probably have a limited choice of stages we can use and can't just make new ones.
AbhishekLFC wrote:
Also, reducing stats of FAs only is also a no-go for me, as it makes life very difficult especially for promoting teams and gives the advantage for selling teams to try to sell their riders at a premium. Availability of a good FA class is usually what makes a Transfer Window successful, and deals are a way to complement that, I feel.
This is where in my "proposal" increased wage demands would come in. Because yes, if we just took the same FA classes and simply made them worse, that would obviously be unfair. But if we increased wages for riders under contract during renewals, this would push more strong riders into free agency. Say for instance knockout won't be able to afford MVS, Lopez, Skujins AND Blythe anymore, then maybe Skujins enters FA because he wants to focus on Lopez. Or Koretzky becomes available because a trained Van Niekerk plus Coquard plus Lecuisinier plus strong depth leaves no more room for him. These are just some scenarios that don't have to play out in this way and obviously this would be in line with my earlier point of teams necessarily becoming weaker. If that can't be the case, all of this is of course moot.
Even if those riders then get -1 when they enter FA, they'd still be viable team leaders, and in addition because of the overall drop in skill level, a good chunk of their opposition may have decreased as well which softens the impact even further. So yes, those guys who would have been FAs anyway would get worse, but more good riders who would have stayed on teams get to FA, which could even lower prices for the absolute top free agents. Also, if through this process there are fewer 75-77 riders available as strong domestiques, maybe there's more money tied up in them as managers still want to aquire depth but for a higher price. Plus, and this is another major thing, all teams would get worse so the team leaders you'd pick up in FA had more value.
We could also exclude riders from disbanding teams from regression so that guys like Kwiatkowski stay as they are.
Maybe my logic here is faulty and I my conclusions don't hold water and everything would play out differently, but I just wanted to clarify that I agree that just reducing FA stats and nothing else isn't a viable solution. It would have to be complemented by other changes.
When speaking about trying to avoid things hitting unequally, I don't quite understand suggestions like higher wages for strong riders or lower amount of races. Those two definately hit unequally.
Lower races would mean a higher percentage of top quality riders in whatever races are left - and that seems to be what we have to fight against, not towards.
Higher wages for good riders hurt teams with strong riders more than those not so strong. Planning long term is definately difficult if you have to cut riders from one season to the next. I believe this is very much already in the game, and to an extend we should not enhance! I had to sell Ricco one season and still came out with a massive wage above the cap. The next season I had to sell Coppel and Spilak to keep up.
I am aware of the fact that this is mainly due to quality and performance, and that had it not been like that I could have kept on winning forever, but it made it very difficult to keep a good team, and that is a battle that is fun, but not if it is overdone. Honestly I was close to throwing in the towel when cutting a leader worth 600-700K wasn't enough, and I was still over budget with 14 riders. By then I had to sell off talents like Pichon and Paillot just to scrape through. By bargain dealing I made it through stronger than before, but it definately wasn't what I planned when signing some talents, that I couldn't even build a team around them for one season.
Obviously a team can only have 1 Lecuisinier if you also want to have a decent allround team. That speaks for itself. But the fun of building a team quickly stops, if you have to let go of all depth because you have a team leader. I mean, Lecuisinier might be the best climber in the game next season, but he isn't exactly unbeatable to an extend where he is worth 3-400K more than no. 3-4-5 climbers. He already have less racedays and is valued higher and paid more (after this season). To give another increase just so managers at lower level can accept domestiques going from 76 key stat to 74 key stat is overcomplicating things imo.
I also think the wage balance is pretty fine in MG right now. And if scoring has slightly more influence on wages (and the AVGs are slightly revamped) then we're on a good path I guess.
Maybe I didn't phrase that quite right, but I wouldn't want to increase wages specifically for the top riders, but for all riders except those types of riders that we want to make valid domestiques that right now are left out of teams (i.e. riders maxed out at 74 or 73; and this is given that we actually do want that, of course).
I don't want to punish teams that build top heavy. I don't want to change the balance in that regard. In the same way, I don't necessarily want parity - as I said, I think savvy team building should be rewarded with a comparatively stronger team. My thinking is just that there is overall too much quality across all teams and if we don't want to decrease stats of riders that are on teams, and we don't want to disproportionately disadvantage managers that rely on FA to a large extent, then this is a way I see that could work somewhat fairly to counteract that.
My stance on this isn't even that firm. I'd be fine if we went with a more careful, long-term approach, some finetuning (and maybe looking at sprints/sprinters specifically). And again, maybe I'm coming to wrong conclusions with my scenario. But if we want to tackle inflation in the short-term and do so somewhat fairly, everyone has to lose out to some extent, and if we're not fine with that, we should probably move on from that aspect. That was my main point. But maybe I'm wrong on that, too
My impression from a playing PCM20 a little and reading the forum was that breakaways win less in PCM20.Given all the discussion of breakaway wins in Grand Tours I decided to rerun the mangame Giro on PCM20 using the same startlist and course to see if the breakaways were less dominant.
I transferred the Mangame 2020 DB from PCM18 to PCM20. This was pretty easy, the tables have barely changed and since both stages and jerseys from 18 work in 20 that is easy as well. The only thing I didn’t look at was equipment. I just remapped the teams to equipment in the official release. The CDB is in the link at the bottom of this post.
I ran the Giro twice in PCM 20 and compared the results to the 2020 Mangame results. Overall, the race structure was very similar in both the original and the two tests. A breakaway rider got the lead early and then the GC riders chipped away and eventually Taaramae won. Although the early GC leaders in the tests were distanced a lot more than Malecki.
Based on the test I am pretty sure the breakaways do win less often. Particularly in the sprint stages and the in-between stages the peloton did a much better job of bringing back the breakaway. Overall I counted 13 breakaway wins in the actual Giro in PCM18 and only 5 and 6 in the two tests in PCM20. I think the wins by Boswell and Vakoc were significant - in the tests they did that by winning from the peloton on hilly stages whereas in the PCM18 race they had to join breaks. I recapped the outcomes by type in the first spoiler below.
I have recapped some other data in the spoilers below and the link contains and excel file with the Stage Results and GC positions from all 21 stages on both tests if anyone feels like looking closer. If this is useful, now that I have set it up, it wouldn’t be a big deal to do more tests.
Comparison of Stage Outcomes
I counted a break as winning only if a rider from the original break wins without ever being caught by the pack. There were a couple of stages where the GC riders caught the break but then the break rider won in a sprint. I didn’t consider this a breakaway win since the GC riders were there to contest the finish. Also, by GC I mean the break was caught and the GC riders were competing, although the actual winner might not be a true GC rider. The number is the gap to the main peloton or the first GC rider to finish, if the race had broken up.
I do like the spread of GC/Sprint fights better, as it becomes less random. There still seem to be quite a lot of breakaway riders dominating the points, but it's definately better than the 2015 edition. But in honesty I also think that a re-run of the 2015 edition would turn out closer to the results you get. Maybe not all the way, but it should be better. The Vuelta was atleast.
I guess I'll have to rethink my planning strategy no matter what, as Bongiorno was even worse in your tests (not even top 20 in the last one) aswell as us not having a single stagewin or day in a jersey. And I basically send my team to be aggressive in breaks...
Still Taaramäe winning just 2 stages in the first run and NONE in the 2nd isn't good I think. The sprint results seem much better though (although I can't tell if it's as messed up on lower positions as in this version).
There are no big gamechangers it seems, except for the fact that the new version likes Reis much better
It's not a problem that the winner takes 2 stagewins - This also happened to Lecuisinier despite being the clear favorite. But no stagewins for the GC winner isn't good for the Man-Game I think. We need the winners to also score some points for it to make sense.
It happens from time to time, that a GT winner doesn't manage to take a stagewin in the proces, but it very rarely happens. In the past 15 IRL GT's it has happened 1 time - When Froome won the Tour in 2017. On average the winner from the past 5 seasons in all Grand Tours have won 1,7 stagewins with a clear median of 2 stagewins (7/15). So if it happens on a 50/50 type basis (I know the amount of evidence is too low) I would argue that it would be hurtful for the game.
Just for the record:
Tour 2020: Pogacar 3
Tour 2019: Bernal 0/1 (Won / Would have won the eliminated stage)
Tour 2018: Thomas 2
Tour 2017: Froome 0
Tour 2016: Froome 2
But you still score points for 2nd? I understand why it would be good to avoid some guys basically outscoring GC winner by getting dropped on 1 stage and dominating the rest, but making it more top heavy IS bad for MG I'd say.
quadsas wrote:
But you still score points for 2nd? I understand why it would be good to avoid some guys basically outscoring GC winner by getting dropped on 1 stage and dominating the rest, but making it more top heavy IS bad for MG I'd say.
Of course - but it isn't easy to see where the GC leader ends up in these scenarios. I can just spot that it isn't necessarily the biggest contenders winning the stages which leads me to believe that it is the subtop leaders that is allowed a small gap to win the stages.
If you take a look at the second run, these "GC"-riders take stagewins (Their GC position is marked after it):
Spilak (2nd)
Schleck (Outside top 20)
Aleksander Roman (20th)
Nikias Arndt x2 (17th)
So there are hardly any big points to the riders in 1-10th whom should usually pick up quite a decent amount of points. It's not an argument for not making the switch, but just to ensure that points are actually awarded to the better GC riders like it should - otherwise it could lead to people not wanting to ride a GT with their star rider as the points are lower than what could be scored in week long GC races.
quadsas wrote:
But you still score points for 2nd? I understand why it would be good to avoid some guys basically outscoring GC winner by getting dropped on 1 stage and dominating the rest, but making it more top heavy IS bad for MG I'd say.
Of course - but it isn't easy to see where the GC leader ends up in these scenarios. I can just spot that it isn't necessarily the biggest contenders winning the stages which leads me to believe that it is the subtop leaders that is allowed a small gap to win the stages.
If you take a look at the second run, these "GC"-riders take stagewins (Their GC position is marked after it):
Spilak (2nd)
Schleck (Outside top 20)
Aleksander Roman (20th)
Nikias Arndt x2 (17th)
So there are hardly any big points to the riders in 1-10th whom should usually pick up quite a decent amount of points. It's not an argument for not making the switch, but just to ensure that points are actually awarded to the better GC riders like it should - otherwise it could lead to people not wanting to ride a GT with their star rider as the points are lower than what could be scored in week long GC races.
Well it's kinda been happening already, Giro was very weak. I don't think the game is an issue, more like scoring formulas in the long tours. But it's extremely hard to fix.
SotD wrote:
There are no big gamechangers it seems, except for the fact that the new version likes Reis much better
We should definitely make the change then
Less breakaway wins and the GC in general looks more than how it would be expected, also Spilak more at where he should be (although riders Schleck & Bongiorno still have a lot of variation).
I also noticed that the total time that Taaramäe took for the giro is more than 5 hours less than in the original run and the time gaps are a little bit larger. I think this is also a sign for more selective racing which is definitely what we need.
However I'm not sure if it is already enough data to make definitive conclusions. Maybe the giro we had also was more of a one off in PCM18. The Vuelta at least looked a little bit better already.
Besides this Giro PCM 18 haven't had any sort of issue with pointscoring leaders IMO.
Lecuisinier will come away with aproximately 1200 points. In the Tour de France last season Gazelle (#1 Madrazo) scored 1500 points, eBuddy (Dombrowski #2) scored 1000 points and Grieg (#5 Phinney + leading a while) scored 1200 points. The Vuelta last season had Aker (#1 Taaramae) score 1600 points and Tinkoff (#2 Kritskiy) scored 950 points. Pluchkins points weren't calculated. He finish 3rd, but I'd like to think they scored atleast similar to Tinkoff. In the Giro last season Puma (#2 Herklotz) scored almost 1700 points, Isostar (#1 Spilak) scored 1400 points and Generali (#3 Gesink) scored 1050 points.
This is basically what happens always and always have. The Giro is a fluke that I don't think we should put too much notice in, as all other GT's so far have worked out decently.
So what we should do instead is maybe to look at the stages, and to limit the amount of lumps that is obviously for the breakaway riders. We don't need 8-12 breakaway winners in a GT. 4-6 is fine. So let the sprint stages be more flat, or atleast with a sufficient long flat run-in to ensure they will catch up - and let the mountains mainly be very difficult.
Those difficult hilly stages ALWAYS (almost) turn out to be breakaway madness.
Edited by SotD on 09-03-2021 10:26
As a sprint team owner who will probably never return to the PT, i'm impressed with the improvement in sprint chances in the GT. Not convinced about a decrease in the lottery of results but it gives me an idea maybe PCM20 can help start to repair this broken discipline.
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg)
