Being frustrated is understandable, but trying to change things just because it 'feels' wrong is not. In grand scheme of things, sprints are TOTALLY FINE, as far as I am concerned, and your basic analysis supports my point. and totally fine in a way that we really don't need to do anything regarding flat finishes, unlike hill changes that happened this offseason.
Not sure if you've actually played the game yourself, but reading this is honestly almost insulting. I can understand that the "spread" of points for sprinters looks realistic, but simply looking at the points can never tell the full story. If we dont care how the races play out, why not just quick sim every stage?
So the first and biggest issue with sprints is that AI riders ALWAYS start their sprint too early. When playing human vs AI, you can win with a 73 SPR against an 80 sprinter on Extreme because of this. AI usually dies about 200m for the line. Its no coincidence that high RES sprinters are the only ones performing consistently, and also the ones "over-performing" in most cases. Its because they can sustain high efforts for longer, while sprinters with less than 75 RES all die too quickly.
What makes this worse is that the 75+ RES sprinters are often not the strongest sprinters and so they are further back and have to wheel hop. Unfortunately the riders with leadouts are usually the ones that start their sprint too early, so its almost counter-productive to have one, benefiting the "worse" sprinters, with high RES even more.
The 75+ RES, 79+ SPR riders in the DB. How many of these riders are "overperforming" this season?
This doesn't mirror real life sprints to me at all. Real sprints are about who is fastest and who gets set up in the best position near the front. What we see in the MG is the sprinter in 10th position coming from behind to pass everyone else because the 9 riders in front of him started their sprints too early. Not to mention its usually a 6 rider spread across the road for who is going to win. How often does that happen in real life? It just unnecessarily adds to the randomness.
If we are using a real life example, how many times did Thor Hushovd beat Mark Cavendish (at their peaks) in an even sprint? How many times would Hushovd beat Cavendish in PCM? Probably pretty close to 50/50.
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With all that said (and the reason I came to this thread in the first place), one of the new features of PCM 21 is supposedly fixed sprint finishes, especially those with bends near the finish, so we can atleast be hopeful it is improved or fixed then and suitable for the MG.
Being frustrated is understandable, but trying to change things just because it 'feels' wrong is not. In grand scheme of things, sprints are TOTALLY FINE, as far as I am concerned, and your basic analysis supports my point. and totally fine in a way that we really don't need to do anything regarding flat finishes, unlike hill changes that happened this offseason.
Not sure if you've actually played the game yourself, but reading this is honestly almost insulting. I can understand that the "spread" of points for sprinters looks realistic, but simply looking at the points can never tell the full story. If we dont care how the races play out, why not just quick sim every stage?
So the first and biggest issue with sprints is that AI riders ALWAYS start their sprint too early. When playing human vs AI, you can win with a 73 SPR against an 80 sprinter on Extreme because of this. AI usually dies about 200m for the line. Its no coincidence that high RES sprinters are the only ones performing consistently, and also the ones "over-performing" in most cases. Its because they can sustain high efforts for longer, while sprinters with less than 75 RES all die too quickly.
What makes this worse is that the 75+ RES sprinters are often not the strongest sprinters and so they are further back and have to wheel hop. Unfortunately the riders with leadouts are usually the ones that start their sprint too early, so its almost counter-productive to have one, benefiting the "worse" sprinters, with high RES even more.
The 75+ RES, 79+ SPR riders in the DB. How many of these riders are "overperforming" this season?
This doesn't mirror real life sprints to me at all. Real sprints are about who is fastest and who gets set up in the best position near the front. What we see in the MG is the sprinter in 10th position coming from behind to pass everyone else because the 9 riders in front of him started their sprints too early. Not to mention its usually a 6 rider spread across the road for who is going to win. How often does that happen in real life? It just unnecessarily adds to the randomness.
If we are using a real life example, how many times did Thor Hushovd beat Mark Cavendish (at their peaks) in an even sprint? How many times would Hushovd beat Cavendish in PCM? Probably pretty close to 50/50.
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With all that said (and the reason I came to this thread in the first place), one of the new features of PCM 21 is supposedly fixed sprint finishes, especially those with bends near the finish, so we can atleast be hopeful it is improved or fixed then and suitable for the MG.
Indeed, your specific purposes. Even other people who relegated are against going back, yet you still remain bitter at the switch. 18 is without a doubt better than 15 overall
quadsas wrote:
To be honest, it does sound like crying, considering sprints are NOT random and 'best' sprinters are getting more points than others. But OVR formula is silly for sprinters and mo/hil hybrids. those two need to be adjusted
Yes I am serious. When I look at last year standings (which were, btw, PCM18 too), I don't see a big issue in scoring. Sounds like bad teambuilding to me.
Actually I understood SotD's point fine. Maybe I misinterpreted yours, but to me, your point was to agitate and discredit managers with perfectly valid frustrations about an imperfect game and database structure which is not suited to the current game mechanics.
I am inclined to agree both that overall the sprints work out OK over the course of the season but that the individual sprints are messed up. Guess we will find out if PCM21 is better, that would be great, I don't think 20 is, but like it for other reasons.
That said I think the MG DB makes it worse because there are too many high SP riders. This is a count of how many riders with the primary stat:
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
SP
41
33
40
26
16
9
5
4
0
MT
60
37
24
16
17
7
3
7
3
TT
40
28
17
12
5
3
1
0
0
HI
62
28
18
14
8
6
7
2
0
CO
23
17
10
6
6
5
3
0
0
Only the SP curve is messed up. There are 66, 79 and 80 sprinters, the next highest is 40 and I think this stat inflation (consolidation) is worse for sprinting where differences are made over a very short distance.
Also there are 10 79 primary riders on minimum or free salary, 9 of them are sprinters. Basically we have an over-supply for the game engine and the salary engine.
Maybe we can't fix the AI but I am in favor of something to lower the number of 79 and 80 sprinters. Some combination of:
1) Lower stats except for protected riders as Valverde and BBl suggested, (the advantage to this is it protects the best riders while extending the distribution which is exactly what we want.)
2)Lower/retire riders in free agency
3. Lower/retire riders before CT draft.
I think if you limit this to sprinters it doesn't massively disadvantage new or promoted teams.
Haven't posted here yet, but read all the suggestions etc. I'll definitely come back here to comment on more things later, but for now I'll keep it short and I'd like to talk about some sprinting issues.
In general I think sprinting is not the best in pcm18, partly due to a stacked sprinting DB and also because of dumb AI. As has been mentioned a lot already, the trains really do some stupid stuff, and it is in most cases beneficial to have a top-5/10 sprinter than to have the absolute favourite because the favourite's train will break apart at 1 km or even way earlier. Maybe this is the way trains are built by teams, maybe this is because of dumb AI (I'm leaning more towards the latter).
Nevertheless, most sprinters earn some really good points, so just asking for their wages to be decimated because they are not earning the exact amount of points you had hoped for is not really an option for me. However, it seems logical to me that there should of course be some kind of wage difference, but not to the point where you could sign another 81+ rider or whatever for the wage coming free because of a (slightly?) underperforming rider.
Almost everyone will agree the AI does dumb stuff, but on every edition of pcm things will happen that look idiotic. The solution according to me is to 1: try solving these things with small changes, that are properly tested way before a new season starts and 2: adapt. Looking at TMM's case for example, you obviously don't like your team's results (even though you're top-10 without having a decent climber, puncheur and only half a time trialist ), but you say you want to keep your sprinter focus even though you haven't said a good word about sprinting AI this season. How you manage your team is entirely up to you and I like how some teams have certain terrain focuses, but just like me you know by know pcm18 isn't that top-sprinter friendly. First thing I would do in your situation is to adapt by not sending guys like Nelson with Ewan to every race, but instead to other stage races where he has a nice chance of winning stages/scoring points. Then again, it's up to you to decide to keep Ewan or sell him or whatever, but can't expect him to drop his wage to like 120k or sth like that. He is definitely scoring decently still (yeah, not in comparison with some weaker sprinters, but still several top-5's and podiums), but things can always change quickly with for example a switch to another game and/or a bit more luck.
What I was thinking about are the sprinter stage races. A big problem there is the yellow jersey being the curse, as U.U. already mentioned in another thread (and here as well?) that it looks like the holder of the yellow jersey doesn't think about sprinting, rather about conserving that jersey in the main group (but of course loses it because of bonus seconds then). If we stick to pcm18 another year, I have thought of two possible solutions:
Solution 1: Play the stages apart. Each time you'll start without a yellow jersey (or any other jersey), but thanks to some rather easy to make excel file you can keep track of it by inserting the daily result (then the top-10 would get the same seconds as they do now, same with the green jersey). At the end of every stage and the race in general you would then have a classification for both the GC, green (and white). You won't have KoM I guess, but those are just very random in those races anyway. That might mean some teams don't go to those races anymore, but those same teams never could have hoped for much points there anyway.
Solution 2: Do the same races, but add like a 30 km time trial as the first stage. You can then either count this time trial for a GC win or just have points for it as a one day race. The upside to this is that there will be real sprints then, as all the sprinters can't/won't care about the GC anymore. The green jersey after stage two will still be sprinting in the following stages, as has been proven and seen in other occasions this year where the sprinters where already far behind in the GC. At the end of the race you could then let the green jersey classification count for GC points for example, as the best sprinters will be there (You can manually edit the tt'ists out for example) - this way, you'll even have a KoM-ranking as well if you want to.
I think it's more of a running gag than actual problem. Well, it's just part of the some sprinters not sprinting problem, but not a problem on its own I think?
It is definitely a problem, as observed in many sprint races this season. Not only sprint races, but races starting with two flat stages I reported on clearly had this problem. Your sprinter wins the first stage, he's almost guaranteed an outside of the top-10 in stage two. Even when Kemboi won the prologue in Uppsala he simply said nope to sprinting in stage two because of the yellow jersey.
Also, spoiler alert for TOME stage 1 just posted so don't read the spoiler if you want to read the report first:
Spoiler
Boeckmans was leading the virtual GC after winning two intermediate sprints and then simply couldn't care less about the final sprint. Might be coincidence, but at this point I fear so. The (virtual) yellow jersey is a curse.
There are also (few) instances of the leader sprinting for the win (even in a flat sprint, haven't seen any uphill problems), but saying the yellow jersey isn't a problem for sprinters sadly isn't correct.
Of course, the biggest problem concerning sprinters is still in general several sprinters deciding not to sprint on a lot of occasions, which is understandable for a 78/79 guy to not sprints in a stacked field, but not understandable for an 80/80 to not give a fuck when there are 79 guys sprinting and doing well. Bonifazio is of course the perfect example. He didn't sprint in several classics I reported on, and I had the idea of checking whether he would so so if I reduced his flat to like 74 (to see if the game doesn't think of him as some kind of rouleur) and/or removed certain guys such as Vanbilsen/Biermans from the team (to see as Bonifazio was reduced to domestique for those rouleurs). I won't be able to test this before next Monday, but when I do I'll make sure to let the results of those tests known here But yeah, I was mostly addressing the sprinter yellow jersey curse above, which will still be there if we stay on pcm18 for one/more year(s). Don't know about any other versions of pcm as I haven't played any recent ones.
Ollfardh wrote:
I think it's more of a running gag than actual problem. Well, it's just part of the some sprinters not sprinting problem, but not a problem on its own I think?
I have only reported one such race, I did saw it happen, but it didn't end up having a huge influence on the expected result as a whole.
But given this was mostly noticed and flagged, by the reporters, I think it is real and shouldn't be dismissed.
I think the problem is different as it`s just virtual. Here I think it`s more an issue with exhaustment from intermediate sprints as I doubt virtual standings can impact this, while it surely can when being actual leader.
I think the problem is different as it`s just virtual. Here I think it`s more an issue with exhaustment from intermediate sprints as I doubt virtual standings can impact this, while it surely can when being actual leader.
What you said in the spoiler is indeed also possible, also crossed my mind. That's why I used the words "I fear" in my spoiler
Nemolito wrote:
Of course, the biggest problem concerning sprinters is still in general several sprinters deciding not to sprint on a lot of occasions, which is understandable for a 78/79 guy to not sprints in a stacked field, but not understandable for an 80/80 to not give a fuck when there are 79 guys sprinting and doing well. Bonifazio is of course the perfect example. He didn't sprint in several classics I reported on, and I had the idea of checking whether he would so so if I reduced his flat to like 74 (to see if the game doesn't think of him as some kind of rouleur) and/or removed certain guys such as Vanbilsen/Biermans from the team (to see as Bonifazio was reduced to domestique for those rouleurs). I won't be able to test this before next Monday, but when I do I'll make sure to let the results of those tests known here But yeah, I was mostly addressing the sprinter yellow jersey curse above, which will still be there if we stay on pcm18 for one/more year(s). Don't know about any other versions of pcm as I haven't played any recent ones.
But the thing is, he's also the better rouleur compared to Vanbilsen and Biermans, so if somehow we want to go for a roleur victory, he should be in the front as well.
I know, but just to see whether the game had some kind of difficulty with it I'll test it and post what the results are
edit: Also, I do think Vanbilsen is the better rouleur with a +12 stamina, and maybe the game thinks the same, no idea. That's why I'll do those tests as well, hopefully bringing you/other managers some useful insight
I'm not sure it does affect the PT that much to be honest.
Tour of Qatar, stage 2 (Grosu leading):
11th Grosu (definately trying)
Tour of Qatar, stage 3 (Degenkolb leading):
3rd Degenkolb
Tour of Qatar, stage 4 (Grosu leading):
9th Grosu (definately trying)
Tour of Qatar, stage 5 (Bewley leading):
8th Bewley (definately trying)
Vuelta a España, stage 2 (Harrison leading):
3rd Harrison
Tour of Norway, stage 2 (Coquard leading):
5th Coquard
I guess those are the only examples that can be used. I agree that the results isn't looking good at all, but in all honesty I see that more as a skewed AI in general. Riders like Coquard, Swift and van Stayen didn't do well either (In Qatar).
Edited by SotD on 12-04-2021 12:23
SotD wrote:
I'm not sure it does affect the PT that much to be honest.
Tour of Qatar, stage 2 (Grosu leading):
11th Grosu (definately trying)
Tour of Qatar, stage 3 (Degenkolb leading):
3rd Degenkolb
Tour of Qatar, stage 4 (Grosu leading):
9th Grosu (definately trying)
Tour of Qatar, stage 5 (Bewley leading):
8th Bewley (definately trying)
Vuelta a España, stage 2 (Harrison leading):
3rd Harrison
Tour of Norway, stage 2 (Coquard leading):
5th Coquard
I guess those are the only examples that can be used. I agree that the results isn't looking good at all, but in all honesty I see that more as a skewed AI in general. Riders like Coquard, Swift and van Stayen didn't do well either (In Qatar).
What happened in one of my reports, is the yellow jersey just sat up in the last few kms while everyone else started sprinting. But then he started sprinting in the end and was able to finish 6th iirc. So in the end the result wasn't as terrible as it often is, but it looks very weird and it mostly matches what others have observed.
I am addressing this problem because I want the game to improve and hope to do my part by helping to do so. When I (and other reporters) claim that there is a problem, this isn't a joke. From a personal pov I couldn't care less, because I don't have decent sprinters, but I'm trying to help improve the game. I've reported on many races this season, so I think I am able to see what kind of problems there are.
If you move to another version of pcm this might not be a problem anymore, so great, if that is the thing most people want and it is feasible, let us do so. If we stick with pcm18, you can always keep blaming things on bad AI, which is definitely true. There is bad AI now, there has been bad AI on previous versions and there will also be bad AI on the more recent versions of pcm (sth bad ai concerning sprints, sometimes cobbles, sometimes that sometimes that). What I am trying to do now is come up with solutions how to possibly solve "parts" of the current bad AI. Instead of just saying "yeah sprint is bad AI" (which, once again, it also is according to me), I am trying to look at the several problems of sprints. One of those is the yellow jersey curse in sprint stages and second stages, which I have seen so many times as a reporter and in other stages.
I am not saying there aren't times where it can be okay. Qatar seems decent, even though the yellow jersey changed every day as well. Harrisson was one of two guys who had either or both 80+ sprint or acceleration in a very small sprinter field, so a bit harder to include that one. Can't say anything about Norway, haven't read it.
I can give you many examples as well of how the yellow jersey could not give a single fuck about sprinting and "sprinted" the way redordead just explained, waiting until it is too late, as he kind of realizes he is also a sprinter after first thinking he is just a guy who's leading the GC and has to protect it by staying in the peloton. I waited a long while before addressing this, because I wanted to be sure about it being a problem first. It is a problem, which I've noticed in many of my reports and other reports, with other reporters also having written about it. I don't have anything to gain personally with addressing the problem and trying to solve it, I am trying to help MG.
Nemolito wrote:
I am addressing this problem because I want the game to improve and hope to do my part by helping to do so. When I (and other reporters) claim that there is a problem, this isn't a joke. From a personal pov I couldn't care less, because I don't have decent sprinters, but I'm trying to help improve the game. I've reported on many races this season, so I think I am able to see what kind of problems there are.
If you move to another version of pcm this might not be a problem anymore, so great, if that is the thing most people want and it is feasible, let us do so. If we stick with pcm18, you can always keep blaming things on bad AI, which is definitely true. There is bad AI now, there has been bad AI on previous versions and there will also be bad AI on the more recent versions of pcm (sth bad ai concerning sprints, sometimes cobbles, sometimes that sometimes that). What I am trying to do now is come up with solutions how to possibly solve "parts" of the current bad AI. Instead of just saying "yeah sprint is bad AI" (which, once again, it also is according to me), I am trying to look at the several problems of sprints. One of those is the yellow jersey curse in sprint stages and second stages, which I have seen so many times as a reporter and in other stages.
I am not saying there aren't times where it can be okay. Qatar seems decent, even though the yellow jersey changed every day as well. Harrisson was one of two guys who had either or both 80+ sprint or acceleration in a very small sprinter field, so a bit harder to include that one. Can't say anything about Norway, haven't read it.
I can give you many examples as well of how the yellow jersey could not give a single fuck about sprinting and "sprinted" the way redordead just explained, waiting until it is too late, as he kind of realizes he is also a sprinter after first thinking he is just a guy who's leading the GC and has to protect it by staying in the peloton. I waited a long while before addressing this, because I wanted to be sure about it being a problem first. It is a problem, which I've noticed in many of my reports and other reports, with other reporters also having written about it. I don't have anything to gain personally with addressing the problem and trying to solve it, I am trying to help MG.
I'm definately not trying to neglige your points if that is how you feel - I only question it because I haven't noticed it myself. But being a PT manager, I sometimes doesn't get the full picture, so I just present what I see, as it sometimes make for a more nuanced debate (I think).
I see a lot of people asking for change - also a lot of people suggesting what could be done (which is great). But from time to time I have to take a step back from my personal emotions on what to do, and see the results in a bigger perspective. And when I do so I don't really see a massive sprint issue, that haven't already been tackled very well. I don't think that PCM 18 will ever be close to perfect regarding sprints - neither do I think adding a LOT of work to reporters to attempt to fix something that A) Isn't really fixable and B) Might not be THAT big of an issue is the way about it.
So if we really want to put a burden on reporters etc. we have to look beyond the "I have spotted"-discussion and rather present solid evidence for a mishap. Again, I really do think you might have a point, and I'm not trying to pull your observations out of the equation as you have a reason for feeling that way. My point is just, that in order to fix a certain problem, we need to look very wide and see where it happens and where it doesn't to isolate the reason. And I don't think i'm stepping on anyones toes when concluding that sprints in general is a weird thing in PCM '18. The question is - can it be solved and to what extend should we work to solve it?
I honestly don't care too much whether we stick to the game or move ahead - but I could be intruiged to see more tests of a newer version. I think we have stalled long enough and a decision need to be made sooner rather than later so people can start investigating what to do. The way PCM 18 was implemented was (IMO) the worst I have ever experienced in my long run as a manager. We need to know what will happen and when - preferably a season in advance - but at the very least half a year in advance so planning can start. Especially for those with long term plans.
That is the thing, I came here because there actually is so much evidence, just scroll through the results and look at the reports and you'll find tons of it. It's not that I'm just "feeling" like sth is wrong with the yellow jersey, but I'm also not going to spend time to make a spreadsheet or whatever to make sure it becomes even more clear - because it is. Like I said, anyone can check the reports
Also, I know in general sprinting AI sucks on this version, as I have already said multiple times. I am also not saying it is the only "problem" MG has to deal with. I am also not saying moving to another game is the (only) right option to solve this and/or other problems. I have only said that, if we decide to stick with pcm18, I had some possible solutions to the yellow jersey problem in flat stage races. I know this doesn't solve other problems such as trains being terrible, the DB being a bit too top-sprinter heavy, or any other problem, but it could be a solution to the yellow jersey problem, which is a very real and actual problem with pcm18 as well.
I'm glad you're thinking about the reporters and the burden new changes would mean for them. I am obviously also thinking from that perspective, and I can tell you implementing the first solution I proposed (race the five stages apart and give the same bonus seconds in an excel file) seems very feasible to me and doesn't add that much burden to just creating the report(s) itself, that take so much more time. Honestly, that would be like one minute of excel work as soon as we have the right excel code(s), which I'm sure multiple people on here are able to give.
An other thing is the testing you ask. Don't get me wrong, I would also like new ideas/other versions to be tested to know more about it. But to really have a good idea we'll need a lot of testing. Who will do this big amount of testing and report on it? Indeed, the reporters again. So that will definitely add to their "burden" as well. Also, I don't think a lot of reporters actually also have pcm 19/20 and/or 21 soon. So that burden will be on very few people then. Also, I've checked last year's discussion thread. Some guys did a lot of testing, with some very well explained results and thoughts. Things changed after that, but many problems stayed and even new ones came up such as the random gap after the first ten riders/sprinters forming and sometimes even causing time gaps.
I am not saying one of my solutions for the yellow jersey problem would mean sprinting will be just perfect. There will still be broken trains and top sprinters will probably not start performing like a half-god. But, a small change (like the first solution I proposed) could make sure that you know your rider won't just lose his lead in the GC because he is leading the GC, which is already a great thing imo.
Thanks for your work Nemolito, I'm sorry if I treated it as a joke earlier, but I thought it was more of a meme than a real problem at first. But now it does seem that this is a different problem on top of the many sprinter problem we already have.
), but you say you want to keep your sprinter focus even though you haven't said a good word about sprinting AI this season. How you manage your team is entirely up to you and I like how some teams have certain terrain focuses, but just like me you know by know pcm18 isn't that top-sprinter friendly. First thing I would do in your situation is to adapt by not sending guys like Nelson with Ewan to every race, but instead to other stage races where he has a nice chance of winning stages/scoring points. Then again, it's up to you to decide to keep Ewan or sell him or whatever, but can't expect him to drop his wage to like 120k or sth like that. He is definitely scoring decently still (yeah, not in comparison with some weaker sprinters, but still several top-5's and podiums), but things can always change quickly with for example a switch to another game and/or a bit more luck. 
But yeah, I was mostly addressing the sprinter yellow jersey curse above, which will still be there if we stay on pcm18 for one/more year(s). Don't know about any other versions of pcm as I haven't played any recent ones.
