Fabianski wrote:
It's true that there were some disappointments (mainly Ras Tailteann, where for whatever reason Cissé sprinted on stage 1 and Reinhardt just didn't care all race long), but he was mostly way inside the Top 10 when not suffering from "GC curse".
So history repeated itself this year in Juarez?
Yep. Was obviously great to see Habtom win S1, but it was bad for Reinhardt's GC ambitions, as he simply didn't care. Stupid AI for sure, but like Ollfardh wrote, we can't fix Cyanide stupidity
roturn wrote:
With the reduction I planned, the diversity should come as it`s not just -1 or -2 for all but in a stairs way.
I dont think the sprint stat should be the sole factor for a reduction. Particularly as it favors the one stat sprinters way too much over well rounded sprinters.
Example: Bouhanni vs Dzamastagic
80sp, quite shitty everywhere else vs 76SP, quite awesome everywhere else (no bias ^^)
Dzamastagic is usually ignored by the sprint AI because of his low sp but is competitive if he is allowed to sprint.
With the suggested adjustment Bouhanni would remain 79sp while Dzamastagic would drop down to 73.
Not only using an example from my own team, i want to point to Simon Yates, Mads Pedersen, S. Kragh Andersen, Alex Konychev or Barnabas Peak as cool riders that would overly lose from this sort of action while all those shitty & boring one stat sprinters would remain near the top when the abundance of all those shitty one stat sprinters is the problem. So basically we remove a lot of the diversity from the db.
roturn wrote:
With the reduction I planned, the diversity should come as it`s not just -1 or -2 for all but in a stairs way.
I dont think the sprint stat should be the sole factor for a reduction. Particularly as it favors the one stat sprinters way too much over well rounded sprinters.
Example: Bouhanni vs Dzamastagic
80sp, quite shitty everywhere else vs 76SP, quite awesome everywhere else (no bias ^^)
Dzamastagic is usually ignored by the sprint AI because of his low sp but is competitive if he is allowed to sprint.
With the suggested adjustment Bouhanni would remain 79sp while Dzamastagic would drop down to 73.
Not only using an example from my own team, i want to point to Simon Yates, Mads Pedersen, S. Kragh Andersen, Alex Konychev or Barnabas Peak as cool riders that would overly lose from this sort of action while all those shitty & boring one stat sprinters would remain near the top when the abundance of all those shitty one stat sprinters is the problem. So basically we remove a lot of the diversity from the db.
Yeah I have to say I’m very much against a Stairs stats reduction although it appears your testing has already ruled it out roturn.
My reasons being, firstly what is said in the post above. I have Benjamin Thomas as an example who is a great TT rider and also lead-out with 74SPR. Take away 4 and he’s got 70SPR and won’t be at all useful in the sprint train.
The second reason is that it’s entirely unfair. Let’s say I wanted to train Jakobsen (80SPR) to be the same level as a current 84SPR rider. At the moment he would need +4 SPR. However with him receiving a -2 and the 84 rider only getting a -1, it would mean he needs +5. I don’t see how that would be fair.
Stat altering may be required and I understand that but, not unlike many other managers, years have been invested into developing riders who will all of a sudden be years away from success. This would be a real downer for someone like myself. Again I’ll use Jakobsen as the example as I’m reaping the rewards about 3 and a half years after signing him
For sprinters, I really do think Roturn's plan, or a variation of it, is the only way forward. The inflation in the 77-80 range is too insane to even fathom. Will these adjustments fix the sprint issues? Definitely not. But we've already basically admitted we can't fix those bigger issues, so why not do something that will at least mitigate the problems?
Reduction are a big change, but we need big fixes. Staggering the reductions is the most important part of it, and it helps to accomplish what we want. We want the gap between first and third tier favorites to be bigger. So even when the first tier favorite messes up, they have more leeway. It should normalize things at least a little bit.
I realize it creates problems and the reductions might favor pure sprinters, as knockout and croatia noted, so perhaps other stats would need to be involved in the calculation as well. Someone would have to come out with a better formula then. Maybe it only applies to pure sprinters, or applies to them more? The thing is, then you're just advantaging weaker sprinters who already have better backups even more, essentially closing skill gaps rather than widening them. I still think widening the gaps is a necessary adjustment, even if it does reduce diversity.
Of course, staggered reductions would mean some people lose out more proportionally on riders currently under contract. Someone with a sprinter losing -2 will now be worse off than one losing -1, and they won't be happy. Perhaps there could be a one time budget compensation for the decreases, depending on how much was lost? Then the team can do as they wish with the new version of their rider, who will at least be cheaper wage wise as well.
Any reduction system should likewise be paired with a purging of the replacements that are currently FA's in the DB, across all terrains. Incentivize people to want to renew/sell domestiques without feeling like they can always pick up an identical rider for minimum in FA. It's an issue that's bad with sprinters, but happens everywhere. A lot of riders could be deleted, maybe some with MG history could be reduced just so they are only viable for a team who is dedicated to roleplaying that nation. Or maybe only their top stats are reduced. But regardless, I think this is needed. It creates scarcity for when current riders hit FA, and will help rebalance as current riders decline.
And, of course, this all only works if we really think hard about how talents are added going forward. We need fewer talents, with a much larger range of maximum skillsets. There was some progress last year, but not nearly enough for the type of evolution that we need. The new fighter helps incentivize versatility over peak, but there are still too many guys added who max out in the 76-79 range, and that's where the inflation really kills us these days. A 73 climber should be a viable climbing domestique on a CT team. Right now anyone under 76 is useless without crazy backups. It's untenable. Obviously change won't happen overnight, but the root cause has to be addressed now, or the problems will keep perpetuating themselves.
Once you widen the range of talent and reduce the number of similar riders, we could potentially reduce training costs to allow for more variation and investment. But the main issues have to be addressed first.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
baseballlover312 wrote:
Any reduction system should likewise be paired with a purging of the replacements that are currently FA's in the DB, across all terrains. Incentivize people to want to renew/sell domestiques without feeling like they can always pick up an identical rider for minimum in FA. It's an issue that's bad with sprinters, but happens everywhere.
I think I wrote this last year, but I think the only somewhat fair way (and even then, not fully) to approach any active stat deflation is by limiting it to free agents. Something like, cut every rider who is a free agent after renewals by 1 in every stat, or 2 in the main stats - with the exception of riders from dissolving teams, I would say. (Maybe limit it to riders 28 or older, or some other constraints, the specifics could be worked out.)
With that, you couldn't just pick up a 79 sprinter or a 77 climber for near minimum value in FA. For instance, I would have thought much harder about renewing Selig for 100k, because I could not have counted on getting an almost identical rider for 50k (which I did with Perera). I maybe still wouldn't have done it, but then I also wouldn't have gotten a Perera who is now cluttering the occasional sprint field. And Selig wouldn't be the n-th 79-sprinter in CT.
It would make growing talents in-house more rewarding and reduce the talent pool overtime without - and I really think this is crucial - devaluing riders who managers have put time and effort into developing, especially when it's in a disproportionate way.
Now, I said it was at best somewhat fair because this will likely hurt new managers and also teams who are at a point in their trajectory where they need an influx from FA. But the suggested formular by roturn also has some imbalances as LLS pointed out. And as noted before, with a few teams disbanding every now and then, highly rated FAs will still be a thing. Just this year, available top sprinters would have included Ahlstrand, Kennaugh, Manninen, Halvorsen and more. But guys like Swift, Howard or - a tier below - Vanderbiest, Appolonio, Selig or Boeckmans would have been 80 to 77, instead of 82 to 79.
And, with potentially more money tied up in teams after renewals, FA might not be as contested for the guys who need it. Or you could tinker with the wage cap to budget ratio to make aquiring riders via trade more palatable, especially for teams in the lower divisions.
Maybe I overlooked some big ramifications with this approach, since I don't have that much experience with the market and rider development in general. I just don't think across the board stat reduction is the way to go. Let managers decide who is valuable to them, leave those riders as they are, adjust the rest.
So Cunego Zabel'd me on this. Agree with most of what he said. Also in a field with a reducing number of teams not deleting/nerfing free agents is as unfair to existing teams as deleting them is to new and promoting teams in a growing or stable environment. Finally I would only do it with sprinters at first to see how it works.
My original post:
I like the spreading idea a lot. And I think the solution to some of the issues is to only apply it to the free agents but plan to do it repeatedly over the next 3 seasons.
This means you can protect unique riders by not releasing them. It also removes the need to worry about OVL and salary changes - just leave them as is, so folks know they can either keep the rider they have at current costs or gamble on a weaker free agent class. Then see how it goes after Y1 and tweak renewals.
This will slow it down but as Roturn noted I don't think it is that bigger fix to the lead out issue so OK to gradually move in the right direction.
To Cunego's point, this is one of the reason there aren't many sprinter only races in real life. How I think it would work is that only 8-10 teams would have a premium sprinter, the other guys would be sending 74-77 SP riders and hoping to pick up lower GC positions. Just as in any stage race where a team doesn't start with a favorite.
baseballlover312 wrote:
I realize it creates problems and the reductions might favor pure sprinters, as knockout and croatia noted, so perhaps other stats would need to be involved in the calculation as well. Someone would have to come out with a better formula then. Maybe it only applies to pure sprinters, or applies to them more? The thing is, then you're just advantaging weaker sprinters who already have better backups even more, essentially closing skill gaps rather than widening them. I still think widening the gaps is a necessary adjustment, even if it does reduce diversity.
There are possible changes to the core idea that could improve the idea and avoid a bit of the unfairness of this approach / keep diversity in the DB. e.g.
One could say that every manager has to pick one of their top 3 sprinters (purely by sp stat / pre-renewals but post stat gains+declines), another one of his top 6 sprinters and another one of his top 9 sprinters to downgrade according to the table roturn suggested. That would still downgrade one third of all contracted sprinters but every manager can avoid those extremely annoying special cases himself. Downgrading every sprinter that went unsigned through a(/last) whole transfer period can increase that number further.
We would still thin out the higher tiers of sprinters, this idea can include sprinters and managers while it is somewhat more fair to managers with extreme cases like Yates since Zwift could pick Ben Swift or Eric Young + 2 lower sprinters for the downgrade. Sure this is still not perfectly fair either due to different squad setups but no unpredicted change will ever be but if we decide on big scale changes, we have to find solutions that feel somewhat fair and acceptable for the large majority of managers and giving managers a bit of a choice which riders are impacted could help.
Quickly skimming over the DB tells me that there would be plenty of 78-80 SP that would likely be selected for this so this would surely help already.
baseballlover312 wrote:
I realize it creates problems and the reductions might favor pure sprinters, as knockout and croatia noted, so perhaps other stats would need to be involved in the calculation as well. Someone would have to come out with a better formula then. Maybe it only applies to pure sprinters, or applies to them more? The thing is, then you're just advantaging weaker sprinters who already have better backups even more, essentially closing skill gaps rather than widening them. I still think widening the gaps is a necessary adjustment, even if it does reduce diversity.
There are possible changes to the core idea that could improve the idea and avoid a bit of the unfairness of this approach / keep diversity in the DB. e.g.
One could say that every manager has to pick one of their top 3 sprinters (purely by sp stat / pre-renewals but post stat gains+declines), another one of his top 6 sprinters and another one of his top 9 sprinters to downgrade according to the table roturn suggested. That would still downgrade one third of all contracted sprinters but every manager can avoid those extremely annoying special cases himself. Downgrading every sprinter that went unsigned through a(/last) whole transfer period can increase that number further.
We would still thin out the higher tiers of sprinters, this idea can include sprinters and managers while it is somewhat more fair to managers with extreme cases like Yates since Zwift could pick Ben Swift or Eric Young + 2 lower sprinters for the downgrade. Sure this is still not perfectly fair either due to different squad setups but no unpredicted change will ever be but if we decide on big scale changes, we have to find solutions that feel somewhat fair and acceptable for the large majority of managers and giving managers a bit of a choice which riders are impacted could help.
Quickly skimming over the DB tells me that there would be plenty of 78-80 SP that would likely be selected for this so this would surely help already.
I like this a lot. It would self select out a lot of those secondary filler guys while leaving the big guys that have been invested in a lot intact. I do think the divisions would have to be closer to the top though to make sense. For instance, maybe you have to decrease 1 of your top 2, then 2 more of your top 6? We could discuss the specific thresholds, but I really like this a lot.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
I don't think it is fair to demand decreases to sprinters that are contracted, even if it is just one out of 2 or 3. Due to the way teams are built this will have a different impact on them.
In my opinion a better way could be to create incentives that would make a decrease worthwhile, for example by increasing other stats (that are not so inflated). So managers could have the choice between not decreasing the sprint stat of a rider and decreasing it and then getting an upgrade for the rider in maybe flat & resistance or so.
The very first thing in terms of stat changes that I'd approve of is mass reduction of all stats by let's say 5. Its not to battle inflation, it's to simply give game more of a chance to not spazz out, as all the normal single player DBs are mostly in 70-80 range, not 75-85 like in MG DB. Not sure if that would change much, but if Cyanide makes the game for their default DB, then it should theoretically be helpful.
I don’t really have much more to add that hasn’t been said, sprints are broken far more than previous versions, TT’s are a joke, etc., but I think the consensus around the game version we choose to use from next season onwards needs to be based around manager retention. A lot of managers are disillusioned with the mg currently and as we’ve already seen, it’s starting to cause some managers to consider leaving and I feel more will inevitably follow. PCM20 is probably the least enjoyable game version the mg has used in my experience since I started (in 2015 for reference) and I think we either need to make fundamental changes to the game itself, or a new or different game version from next season onwards to prevent burnout and the slow death of the mg because ultimately with no managers, there’s no game.
I also agree with bbl about exploring other avenues in terms of recruitment - We’re just not getting the same numbers coming through the site anymore. I think there needs to be a serious discussion about this so we can try to keep a healthy user base, and also keep the game at 3 divisions.
Regarding the sprinter reductions by choice, it would need to be more like bbl suggests and more extreme than knockout suggests I guess.
e.g. my team (ignoring loans)
Top 3 is Groenewegen, Minali, Vermeersch. Obviously would go with later then.
Top 6 are de Kleijn, De Bie, Zardini. Obviously with 1 or 3.
Top 9 are Barbin, Schädlich, Vanhoucke. Could be all 3, no one cares.
This wouldn`t change anything at all then as all riders that are supposed to sprint or here even considered to leadout are basically not impacted.
If, let`s say 2 of top3, 2 more of top 6 and all from 7-9, this would at least have some impact as I would probably only "secure" Groenewegen and De Bie here as leaders.
That all said, as others have mentioned, it would have different kind of impact on teams. Teams, that are sprinter focussed and already are hit by the AI the most, would also lose the most stats of important riders due to it. Feels like double punishment, while teams without a sprinter would come out pretty free.
What I like as suggestion was the general reduction of all FAs post renewals. Yes, it can be a bit annoying as this might change plans you had. But it is a good way to reduce stats a bit without impacting existing teams and also if it`s just -1 everywhere or the general 1st decrease level, it wouldn`t hurt a lot as it`s still very solid riders afterwards.
Obviously for new and promoted managers the FA market would still need to give enough room to improve and have a chance in the next season, but from the most recent experiences, this should still be given. Right now we have lots of teams that are able to back to back promotions or come out very strong at least. So even a small FA change wouldn`t really change it a lot I think.
In especially with the most recent years where we had big managers leaving, which filled the FA market with lots and lots of superstars, the transfer market was too crowded imo and with some post renewals stat reduction, it would work a bit against it.
As long as we can fill up the managers to the same amount as before, it might work, but with less managers in the following season, the transfer market just offers too much.
I'm in favor of fixing overinflated stats by abovementioned equal reduction across all riders.
In the case of Sprint for example, a reduction of 3 would push the huge blob of riders in the 75-80 range down to 72-77, which is far less damaging to the game engine.
All riders keep exactly the same competitiveness compared to others, so it's fair in that regard.
And while at first it does nothing to spread the quality of sprinters more, it will inevitably lead to a bigger spread for sure. After the change the best sprinters have 80/81 SP. There will be a very interesting opportunity for managers to create the next generation of 83+ sprinters themselves with training, and this time they will truly stand out from the pack.
The only minor unfairness I can think of right now is that the older riders wont have the opportunity to be trained and will fade into obscurity sooner than they otherwise would have. We could look to address this by either restricting SP training for one season after the reduction, or by giving the older riders a one time dispensation to get trained.
We should not underestimate how damaging inflation is to the game and the morale of the managers keeping it alive. In my opinion fixing it warrants a one time minor competitive disadvantage to some.
If we are going to touch sprinters stats to try to create less randomness, I think we should also try looking into increasing stamina and resistence (and even flat) for sprinters. I think that could potentially fix the issue with having a sprint train being usually a disadvantage as opposed to just following wheels from way back.
At the moment a lot of the sprinters have very low STA and RES and it is even worse for their lead-outs. That must have some impact on sprint trains being so unsuccessful.
Regardless of tackling inflation, it won't fix the GC Lead Bug (which is unrelated to stats & inflation). Without changing the game version it's still a disadvantage to have a leading sprinter or a sprint based team vs other terrains. This AI issue is significantly more damaging than the other sprint issues.
The other big problem of lead-outs we can fix in our current system by rebalancing Wages for sprinters; to up those with higher FL/RES and close the gap between them and the current OVL leaders. After two seasons we know the best sprinters to own are not the current best in the DB, and we should make the changes to our calculations to reflect this.
At least then managers will be less annoyed, as they are no longer paying a premium wage to operate as a lead-out man.
And if we cannot change our systems to reflect these changes in the game, then we have to look seriously at which edition of PCM we are using.
I'd also remind people that PCM stats are non-linear, so mass reductions are not strictly balanced. A 77 rider is much closer in ability to an 80 rider, than an 80 to an 83.
I'm very happy to roll onto PCM21/22, provided the GC Bug is not also in these versions. And i accept the general opinion is not to go to PCM15. But we cannot continue in PCM18/20!
If the GC Bug is also in PCM21/22, then we have a real problem and are just re-arranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic.
TheManxMissile wrote:
I'd also remind people that PCM stats are non-linear, so mass reductions are not strictly balanced. A 77 rider is much closer in ability to an 80 rider, than an 80 to an 83..
I've heard/known this for a long time, but do we actually know what the scale of margins between stat points is? Whatever it is, this would mean a mass reduction would actually hurt inflation problems, which again, are most destructive in second and third tier riders right now. It would basically press those guys even closer together if the margin between their stats is different.
Related, do we know if 85 is a firm cap in this version? As in, can an 84 rider on a +5 go higher than 85 in real ability? Because if not, that would be a benefit of a mass reduction, since it would give top riders room to improve on good days.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Regarding the wages, the 2 years in place now "performance ratio" can fix a bit of this. e.g. shown also on Reinhardts pretty high wage as last year was overperformance, clearly will go down again a lot after this year due to the opposite.
Nevertheless the OVL might be looked into, not as much as last time but slightly as sprinters in PCM18 and PCM20 are different.
Therefore though the decision of next years version might be key. As first couple tests showed, the stat changes won`t really work out as solution for the sprint issue. So it might help in other areas but won`t fix AI or anything.
So before deciding about what future changes are needed, the game version might be most important to see what needs to be fixed.
Therefor though some versions need to be tested.
We know about PCM18 or PCM20. No idea myself if PCM21 is any better or different to PCM20 as I don`t own it? If anyone knows about this or has time to test the bigger PCM20 failures there, it would be very helpful.
With PCM18/20 we probably would need to "live" with the AI issues and only can "fix" them with workarounds such as OVL/wage reductions for some riders, basically what we did in the past as well when e.g. acceleration ruined the likes of Gesink, Madrazo, Tenorio after they were world-beaters in the previous versions. It would still suck to see how sprints turn out, but then it might be more fair in the end from a point/wage view, less so from an stat/expectations view, which obviously should be more ideal from a role play view as well.
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg)
