Welcome to the new thread where you can discuss the stats for the PCM.daily Projects for PCM 22.
Everything commented here will be considered for the next releases of our projects.
Keep in mind that while top stats are the most noticeable stats, for us it's especially useful to discuss stats about smaller riders, those are often easier to miss.
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How did you adapt your stats to the new way endurance and resistance work? Did you do a vast stat overhaul already or is that something you plan on in the future? Thanks for the work anyway!
purepasd wrote:
How did you adapt your stats to the new way endurance and resistance work? Did you do a vast stat overhaul already or is that something you plan on in the future? Thanks for the work anyway!
For the moment, we have not made any changes specifically with that in mind. We want to do extensive testing to get a full understanding of the mechanics before doing major changes to the stats.
If you have any thoughts on how you think the stats should be adjusted, feel free to leave them here.
As far as i understand, resistance now means the ability to maintain explosive efforts (red bar) for longer amounts of time after a hard race (usage of green bar). This especially translates to punchers that can do a big attack at the end of AGR or LBL for example, or it could be the main stat for sprinters that usually do really well after long rough days. Riders like Alaphilippe, Kristoff, Colbrelli come to mind.
Endurance is now the ability to maintain endured efforts (yellow bar) after a hard race (usage of green bar too). So this would be the main stat thing defining diesel climbers (Hirt, Buchmann, Kruijswijk, Carthy, Pedrero, Landa etc.), but is important for climbers in general. Practically it resembles the old resistance stat a lot, so it's also important for riders that can solo ride after long/hard rides (Evenepoel, Asgreen, Küng).
It's a bit confusing getting used to, especially since they made endurance the old resistance stat pretty much. It's important to remember that the stats only affect performance after long or hard races that drain the green bar. So an easy day with a hard finish climb should not or only barely be affected by res/end stats. Earlier RES used to be one of the most important stats on a stage like this. On short days, the main stats (MO, HI, SPR, ACC) are now way more important compared to before.
I think the changes could be really good if we understand how to stat them. As you mention, extensive testing should be done to understand the new system. Killrob has already done some interesting testing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrpWf...U&t=1sEdited by purepasd on 14-06-2022 10:23
As far as i understand, resistance now means the ability to maintain explosive efforts (red bar) for longer amounts of time after a hard race (usage of green bar). This especially translates to punchers that can do a big attack at the end of AGR or LBL for example, or it could be the main stat for sprinters that usually do really well after long rough days. Riders like Alaphilippe, Kristoff, Colbrelli come to mind.
Endurance is now the ability to maintain endured efforts (yellow bar) after a hard race (usage of green bar too). So this would be the main stat thing defining diesel climbers (Hirt, Buchmann, Kruijswijk, Carthy, Pedrero, Landa etc.), but is important for climbers in general. Practically it resembles the old resistance stat a lot, so it's also important for riders that can solo ride after long/hard rides (Evenepoel, Asgreen, Küng).
It's a bit confusing getting used to, especially since they made endurance the old resistance stat pretty much. It's important to remember that the stats only affect performance after long or hard races that drain the green bar. So an easy day with a hard finish climb should not or only barely be affected by res/end stats. Earlier RES used to be one of the most important stats on a stage like this. On short days, the main stats (MO, HI, SPR, ACC) are now way more important compared to before.
I think the changes could be really good if we understand how to stat them. As you mention, extensive testing should be done to understand the new system. Killrob has already done some interesting testing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrpWf...U&t=1s
Thanks for this post and yes we are aware of the changes to some of the stats in game and have had some discussions on it. We've decided that we will gradually incorporate them rather than do a whole scale change at once. What we mean by this, is that the current DB will be as previous DB's using res, stat and acc as before but for the post Tour de France update we will start to incorporate the game changes based on our and DB user findings. That will give us a chance to make a better informed decision before we start making major changes to the existing stats.
Good luck with new endurance/resistance stats system, i will definitely try the post Tour update of Daily database, just coming back to the game for the first time since 2018 edition.
These changes are making it harder and harder.
How can we balance vingegaard vs pogacar when:
- Pogacar is one of the best classics riders (LBL, Lombardia and even flanders)
so he needs to have stats like the classics riders.
- Pogacar is most vulnerable on stages with multiple long climbs (at altitude which isn't a factor in game) with extended effort being put in by the riders.
- Furthermore, he's a great time trialist which means he's able to do those longer efforts for a prolonged period.
These three things are non compatible in game (nor do they make sense in real life), either you give him massive base stats with lower supporting stats, to represent him being the master of 15-20 minute climbs, but vulnerable on these couple of stages with extended climbing efforts. But that will impact his abilities in classics where he's shown to have a big engine being able to go all the way.
Or you turn it around and give him massive support stats and slighyly lower base stats.
Or you give him both massive base stats, and massive support stats and he wont ever crack like we saw a handful of times now, meaning he's defacto the best rider in the game and without flaws. Or you balance him but he wont be represented accurately in either the classics or the grand tours
Based on what pogi is doing in classics, he should just be incredible on longer climbs, he has the engine to go long. And based on shorter climbs he has the "base speed" to just demolish everyone on those. But somehow this kid has problems when you combine his two strenghts, endurance and "base climbing speed"
All this basically also applies to roglic, who IMO shows exactly the same characteristics. For me the two of them are really similar.
Edit:
Thinking about it some more, Having riders like pogi and rogla have incredible RES alongside ACC and HILL stats will provide enough to represent them being able to ride at a higher base speed for a relatively short amount of time while giving them slightly lower STA will still allow them to be beaten by the more classic prototype climber such as vingegaard, bardet and quintana. It just has to be quite extreme, then you also need to rebalance the more pure punchers (Ala, Gaudu, Cosnefroy, Teuns etc) and.
But I can imagine the following to represent things quite fairly:
Pogi:
CLI: 82
Hill: 82
ACC: 79
RES: 84
END: 76
On shorter climbs it should be nearly impossible for Vingegaard to beat Pogi with these stats, especially when attacking, while on longer climbs it should even out quite a bit, and on these stages that are set up like the one we just saw a couple days ago, with basically 100km of climbing/decending at "top speed" it's possible to tire him out.
With END being the only low stat he'll easily be strong enough to fight for the classics, as long as the classic riders are getting a bit more juiced as well
Edited by Ho0liGaN on 16-07-2022 19:42
I don’t necessarily DISAGREE with the assessment here — but I also think the difficulty in judging Jonas v. Pog right now comes from their team strength. I think it would fair to say that Pog doesn’t fair well in the extreme heat, it definitely saps him (perhaps it’s youthful exuberance on his behalf to not know how to pace himself in such conditions).
But let’s not forget that on the Galibier Pog covered each and every attack from both Rog AND Jonas. I doubt any other rider in the world is pulling that feat off. Even with Rog being injured and less than 100%. Again, the ultimate reason Pog cracked on the Granon was the “youthful exuberance” of needing to show his superiority. I think it’s fair to say if he doesn’t a) cover Rog’s deliberate attempts to cause him to dig into his reserves; and then b) basically pull Jonas up the rest of the Galibier burning yet MORE energy then we likely see another battle on the Granon.
I think we can conclude from this that Jonas and Pog are likely both on 82. Then the rest of the climbers start at 81 and drop from there. Perhaps Pog needs a drop in endurance, but it’s definitely looking like Jonas needs a bump. The real test will come on stages 17/18 when we will see how Jonas handles racing the FULL three weeks for the first time, and whether Pog can get distance on Jonas (or vice versa) on Hautacam or Peyragudes.
Until then, I think the two are essentially equal in MTN and the discrepancies we’ve seen this year come from Pog being a bit TOO excited to boss things, and Jumbo simply having a superior (and fuller) team. None the less, I do agree with the fact that Pog is extremely hard to rate in the game. He’s just so good at so many aspects, you can’t really knock him anywhere (maybe, MAYBE) endurance, but even then the winner of the longest stage of this year’s Tour? Pog. Should be interesting to see what we learn over the next week!
Ho0liGaN wrote:
These changes are making it harder and harder.
How can we balance vingegaard vs pogacar when:
- Pogacar is one of the best classics riders (LBL, Lombardia and even flanders)
so he needs to have stats like the classics riders.
- Pogacar is most vulnerable on stages with multiple long climbs (at altitude which isn't a factor in game) with extended effort being put in by the riders.
- Furthermore, he's a great time trialist which means he's able to do those longer efforts for a prolonged period.
These three things are non compatible in game (nor do they make sense in real life), either you give him massive base stats with lower supporting stats, to represent him being the master of 15-20 minute climbs, but vulnerable on these couple of stages with extended climbing efforts. But that will impact his abilities in classics where he's shown to have a big engine being able to go all the way.
Or you turn it around and give him massive support stats and slighyly lower base stats.
Or you give him both massive base stats, and massive support stats and he wont ever crack like we saw a handful of times now, meaning he's defacto the best rider in the game and without flaws. Or you balance him but he wont be represented accurately in either the classics or the grand tours
Based on what pogi is doing in classics, he should just be incredible on longer climbs, he has the engine to go long. And based on shorter climbs he has the "base speed" to just demolish everyone on those. But somehow this kid has problems when you combine his two strenghts, endurance and "base climbing speed"
All this basically also applies to roglic, who IMO shows exactly the same characteristics. For me the two of them are really similar.
Edit:
Thinking about it some more, Having riders like pogi and rogla have incredible RES alongside ACC and HILL stats will provide enough to represent them being able to ride at a higher base speed for a relatively short amount of time while giving them slightly lower STA will still allow them to be beaten by the more classic prototype climber such as vingegaard, bardet and quintana. It just has to be quite extreme, then you also need to rebalance the more pure punchers (Ala, Gaudu, Cosnefroy, Teuns etc) and.
But I can imagine the following to represent things quite fairly:
Pogi:
CLI: 82
Hill: 82
ACC: 79
RES: 84
END: 76
On shorter climbs it should be nearly impossible for Vingegaard to beat Pogi with these stats, especially when attacking, while on longer climbs it should even out quite a bit, and on these stages that are set up like the one we just saw a couple days ago, with basically 100km of climbing/decending at "top speed" it's possible to tire him out.
With END being the only low stat he'll easily be strong enough to fight for the classics, as long as the classic riders are getting a bit more juiced as well
teamdoubledragon wrote:
I don’t necessarily DISAGREE with the assessment here — but I also think the difficulty in judging Jonas v. Pog right now comes from their team strength. I think it would fair to say that Pog doesn’t fair well in the extreme heat, it definitely saps him (perhaps it’s youthful exuberance on his behalf to not know how to pace himself in such conditions).
But let’s not forget that on the Galibier Pog covered each and every attack from both Rog AND Jonas. I doubt any other rider in the world is pulling that feat off. Even with Rog being injured and less than 100%. Again, the ultimate reason Pog cracked on the Granon was the “youthful exuberance” of needing to show his superiority. I think it’s fair to say if he doesn’t a) cover Rog’s deliberate attempts to cause him to dig into his reserves; and then b) basically pull Jonas up the rest of the Galibier burning yet MORE energy then we likely see another battle on the Granon.
I think we can conclude from this that Jonas and Pog are likely both on 82. Then the rest of the climbers start at 81 and drop from there. Perhaps Pog needs a drop in endurance, but it’s definitely looking like Jonas needs a bump. The real test will come on stages 17/18 when we will see how Jonas handles racing the FULL three weeks for the first time, and whether Pog can get distance on Jonas (or vice versa) on Hautacam or Peyragudes.
Until then, I think the two are essentially equal in MTN and the discrepancies we’ve seen this year come from Pog being a bit TOO excited to boss things, and Jumbo simply having a superior (and fuller) team. None the less, I do agree with the fact that Pog is extremely hard to rate in the game. He’s just so good at so many aspects, you can’t really knock him anywhere (maybe, MAYBE) endurance, but even then the winner of the longest stage of this year’s Tour? Pog. Should be interesting to see what we learn over the next week!
Im not just looking at this stage. Im also taking into account last years double Mont ventoux stage and the year before that where he got dropped by Roglic on the Col de la loze. all three of them being climbs that take longer than the regular 20-30minute efforts he excels at.
While true that pogi covered all the attacks made by roglic and vingegaard. You cant forget that jonas himself has made those attacks, and followed the ones made by roglic. So those efforts are not completely equal, but it's not like Jonas was just chilling. In regards of being the one setting the pace on the galibier, ill give you that. While not nearly as effective as on the flat, sitting on the wheels will make it slightly less exhausting.
Seeing how jonas will handle three full weeks of racing does not really impact my opinion on these stats simply because thats almost purely a REC thing.
It does however jolted my memories, and made me think of the discussion of rating roglic 2 years ago, where the only thing that was a small knock on him was his REC stat.
Right now, (disregarding WVA as thats a whole different kind of discussion)
- Is Pogi the best rider in the world/game with these stats I gave him.
- Is he most likely to win the GT's
- Is he viable to compete with the best in the classics
- Does he have that 1 weakness, his only weakness, that he has shown 3 times now that on stages with long ass climbs, in the heat, at altitude, he can crack/lose time to better climbers.
- Is Vingegaard likely of beating Pogi on this very specific set of criteria
- Is Vingegaard likely to lose on climbs/stages that do not feature these criteria (flat stage with just 1 mountain top finish, or simply shorter climbs)
I think I can safely say yes to all of those questions. (well I cant for the second to last point, as I haven't tested it in game, but thats what im aiming my stats for)
The most important thing to take away from the way I stat is this:
- I stat the riders so I can get specific results in game.
Do i think that Pogi is the best climber in the world? yes, by quite a margin.
I would actually rate Roglic as the second best climber in the world, in front of vingegaard. In any given stage race where you have cat 1 and cat HC climbs, those two riders are the most likely to win, due to their explosiveness.
Does that mean their actual CLI stat should be the highest? Not really, because:
Do I think that if we had a stage that only featured a climb, but the climb was a 60km at a constant 6-9% gradient, Roglic and Pogacar would be the most likely winners? No, I'd put vingegaard in front of them. And back in the days, a top form quintana, Bernal or even landa. They lack the pure speed and explosiveness but are in my opinion better endurance climbers.
I do agree though that we should see what the stages in the Pyrenees bring, but remember that the climbs are a bit shorter than some of the Alp ones, and we lack the altitude. So they should fit Pogi better.
Some interesting info here and I'd basically reached a similar conclusion with the RES and STA stat mechanisms too but there is an element of contradiction too with how these mechanisms work as well. Example 1 can have Pogacar with very high RES as he's proven that he is one of the best classics riders in the world and his performances at LBL and Flanders support this high RES. Example 2 though shows that it would've been high STA that got his victory at Lombardia with a long solo effort and in many ways I do think of Pogacar as a climber that can maintain a huge tempo for a long time period but I do accept that the examples being given above showt that is not always the case.
I would propose given Pogacar's overall high primary stats he should have a high RES and slightly lower STA and that would be his only weakness. In general we still don't have all the info about Pogacar on really long climbs. Is this his weakness, was he affected by heat the other day, or did he do too much chasing down the other day or does he just suffer from youthful exhuberance, which could be the reason behind his off day, as it was behind his eventual fourth pace finish at Flanders where he had been the strongest rider in that race, despite no real history on the cobbles but then again the amount of non-cobble specialists that currently do well at Flanders is quite surprising (but that is a different debate)
Pogacar is the hardest to stat as we don't have all the info and may have it by the end of next week or maybe not. Vingegaard is imo a much easier proposition, a pure climber that just needs a high STA and a lower RES and with Roglic who is similar to Pogacar we do have quite a bit of info and know that his achilles heel are the longer climbs with the exception of the long climb a couple of years ago and a REC that is certainly lower than Pogacar and Vingegaard.
We certainly need to remember that RES now is primarily just for classics as really long stages in GT's are few and far between. STA we have to treat just like the old RES stat and it would be interesting to know just how effective this is on long mtn stages and if it has any effect. For example if it has no effect then a rider like Landa can just keep a high mtn stat and lower STA but if it does effect him then a lower mtn stat and a higher STA.
I think the STA stat will be the harder to get right as it can be seen in two aspects. For classics riders a high STA will be essential to riders like WVA, VDP, Asgreen and Remco etc whereas a classics sprinters like Kristoff and Pedersen could have a lower STA and a high RES. As we can see, its going to be a task to mix all this in with the primary stats and there will be many different interpretations of this as well.
If the STA does come into effect on longer climbs it's riders like Vingegaard and even lower stat riders like Quintana and and Meintjes that really are suited to going well on very long climbing days but I'm not sure yet if long climbing days in a GT have STA kicking in, if it doesn't then the stat will be much easier to get right.
I've also heard and from some of the DB Team's testing that ACC only really works on sprinting, what are others opinions on this, because if that is the case it takes out one of the key uses for acc which of course is the ability of certain riders to make an explosive jump like Alaphilippe and Pogacar etc. We know that ACC is effectively now RES in hard races but how effective is ACC in shorter races.
I'm also hoping that mtn and the hill will go back to how it was many game editions ago where they were more distinct and also it will be interesting to see if acc is even more important for sprinters than it was before.
I do some testing but it is limited and certainly not exhaustive. Most of the time spent with the game by me will be trying to make sense of these new stat mechanisms for the post Tour update which will be the first stats update to have these new adjustments and work is being started on this.
As always leave any more opinions here.
Edited by Tafiolmo on 17-07-2022 08:55
This is how I would go with the big three at the moment and of course for Pogacar and Vingegaard we have another week to go. I've gone for some less extreme differences as well.
If the STA does come into effect on longer climbs it's riders like Vingegaard and even lower stat riders like Quintana and and Meintjes that really are suited to going well on very long climbing days but I'm not sure yet if long climbing days in a GT have STA kicking in, if it doesn't then the stat will be much easier to get right.
I've also heard and from some of the DB Team's testing that ACC only really works on sprinting, what are others opinions on this, because if that is the case it takes out one of the key uses for acc which of course is the ability of certain riders to make an explosive jump like Alaphilippe and Pogacar etc. We know that ACC is effectively now RES in hard races but how effective is ACC in shorter races.
I'm also hoping that mtn and the hill will go back to how it was many game editions ago where they were more distinct and also it will be interesting to see if acc is even more important for sprinters than it was before.
As always leave any more opinions here.
I'm not sure how STA affects longer climbs, or if it does at all (I doubt it). All I know is that you can abuse the base stat as a substitute for STA. Having a higher base CLI stat allows you to go as fast as someone else with less effort, which for better or for worse means you have better stamina.
When riders go above 85 effort, the Hill stat is used. I said this before in previous years' discussion, the name doesn't make sense, and I agree that they should revert the system to how it was years ago where stages had a modifier that decided how much of the CLI stat was used and how much of the Hill stat was used. IMO a much cleaner way to differentiate between Climbers and Punchers, and between Amstel gold race and Lombardia, but we don't have that luxury so we have to work with what we got.
It would suck if ACC really only works when sprinting...
Also what do you mean with: We know that ACC is effectively now RES in hard races but how effective is ACC in shorter races.
Did some further testing. ACC doesn't do anything when attacking, so that's a real bummer.
CLI stat is waayyy more important than any other stat when it comes to climbing (what a suprise).
Hill Stat is almost never important in the true mountain stages so not really able to use this one as a way to balance between riders.
RES and STA dont really seem to make a difference at all when riding 85%, there's some realllly small differences noticeable but it'll be impossible to achieve what we want with them.
Testing info:
- Changed Kruiswijk to have the stats I assigned to Pogi
- Changed Roglic to have the exact same stats as Pogi, just with 81 CLI
- Changed Vingegaard to the stats I assigned him earlier
Results: on basically all the stages Vingegaard would come out ahead,
On a very long MTN top finish roughly 30ish seconds in front of Kruiswijk(Pogi) and 60 in front of Roglic.
On stages with multiple climbs but not extremely long last climb 20 and 45 seconds
on Stages with a short final climb it would be really close.
Adjusting their effort from 85 to 90 or 95 didnt have the effect I was hoping for where Rog and Pog would go faster, and hold the effort for longer. neither were really noticeable since going at those efforts just makes you blow up and end up without red nor yellow bar.
I tested on 220km flat stages with 1 final climb
I tested on 140km (relatively) flat stages with 1 final climb
I tested on 75KM stage with 2 Big climbs
I tested on Stages with very steep climbs
I tested on Stages with not so steep climbs
Results: CLI stat is the most important.
My final test was to add in 1 more rider, a rider with 70 in every stat, except for climbing. Tested it on a 208km stage with 4 or 5 10-15km climbs. I drilled up every climb at 85% till I ran out of domestiques about halfway the penultimate climb. I put my 3 riders on 85 effort and just let em free. At that moment in time, The rider with 70's all around (and 85 CLI) had significantly less yellow bar available than Vingegaard and Roglic yet rode away from both of them simply due to going faster. In the end both he and vingegaard finished at exactly the same moment. And that was only with a difference 85 vs 83 CLI but 70's in the support. Rglic was a good minute+ behind them.
TLDR: It looks like it'll be impossible to stat riders so that they represent their real-life counterpart. CLI is most important stat by a mile. STA and RES do still do something but its nowehere near as important.
Edited by Ho0liGaN on 17-07-2022 19:58
Tafiolmo wrote:
This is how I would go with the big three at the moment and of course for Pogacar and Vingegaard we have another week to go. I've gone for some less extreme differences as well.
My main issue with this would be the TT, is Vingegard really as close to the other two as you make it seem? He's definitely not bad, but I feel both Rogic and Pogacar should consistently beat him.
Yes the mtn stat is very dominant but have noticed on short climbs like the Croix Nueve that is less than 3km the puncheurs were easily able to match the climbers.
Also the effect of ACC just seems to be on sprinting and not attacking which is something I don't like at all.
As for Vingegaard TT we can wait till the end of the Tour to decide this.
I am very worried about the general opinion of giving Vingegaard a higher No than Pogacar. We are basing that on one pretty extreme stage after before thinking Pogacar is THE dominant rider in today's era. Also don't forget that Jumbo wore him out as a team. Yes, the tour is the biggest race. But it's not the only race. Over the last 2 years we've seen that Pogacar is the best climber in the world, eventhough Vingegaard this tour is up to his level.
Croatia14 wrote:
I am very worried about the general opinion of giving Vingegaard a higher No than Pogacar. We are basing that on one pretty extreme stage after before thinking Pogacar is THE dominant rider in today's era. Also don't forget that Jumbo wore him out as a team. Yes, the tour is the biggest race. But it's not the only race. Over the last 2 years we've seen that Pogacar is the best climber in the world, eventhough Vingegaard this tour is up to his level.
I agree, Pogi is the best climber in the world, however, on one very specific part of climbing, climbs that take 40+ minutes preferably at altitude (which is almost a given if a climb is that long) he's not the best IMO. I'm just trying to find ways inside the game to represent that.
Anything 30 minutes or less pogi is gonna be the favourite to win, same goes for Roglic BTW. I'm not that convinced roglic is a worse climber than Pogacar, Roglic just recovers worse in 3 week stage races but seeing how he dominates the 1 week events, and the vuelta climbs which are usually more punchy, he's gotta be in contention for best climber in the world.
But like I said, I'm just looking for ways to represent vingegaard being the better climber on 30+ minute efforts, and for climbers like Landa, Bernal, Quintana to be relatively better on those than Pog and Rog (not outright better, just a lot closer) And that's proving to be nearly impossible, especially with ACC and HILL stat being either completely useless or next to useless.
Having the old way of doing the CLI and Hill stats would've been perfect, where each stage had a coefficient on how much of each stat to use. You'd really be able to make a distinction between those shorter and longer climbs.
I dont know if anyone here is still in contact with Cyanide, but if they could return to that system, it'd be great.
Croatia14 wrote:
I am very worried about the general opinion of giving Vingegaard a higher No than Pogacar. We are basing that on one pretty extreme stage after before thinking Pogacar is THE dominant rider in today's era. Also don't forget that Jumbo wore him out as a team. Yes, the tour is the biggest race. But it's not the only race. Over the last 2 years we've seen that Pogacar is the best climber in the world, eventhough Vingegaard this tour is up to his level.
Agreed. It was a one off. At max they should be equal in CLI, Vinge with slightly higher STA and Pogacar better in everything else.
Croatia14 wrote:
I am very worried about the general opinion of giving Vingegaard a higher No than Pogacar. We are basing that on one pretty extreme stage after before thinking Pogacar is THE dominant rider in today's era. Also don't forget that Jumbo wore him out as a team. Yes, the tour is the biggest race. But it's not the only race. Over the last 2 years we've seen that Pogacar is the best climber in the world, eventhough Vingegaard this tour is up to his level.
Agreed. It was a one off. At max they should be equal in CLI, Vinge with slightly higher STA and Pogacar better in everything else.
It took me a minute to jump back into this, but this is mostly where I was at before the Pyrenees, and unless something drastic happens tomorrow, I think this ultimately is the most “logical” outcome — equal on MTN, slight STA advantage JV, rest of back up stats favor Pog.
I feel like the think that makes this hardest to translate to PCM is two-fold. First, stronger teams rarely utilize their numerical/power advantage correctly. Again, TJV put forth a PERFECT game plan on stage 12. And Pog took the bait 100%. We don’t have the AI to replicate that. Pog has already proven that individually he is better than any one rider, but we’ve seen now that he can brazen at times, enough to do himself in.
Secondly, and I haven’t REALLY seen this addressed, the CO advantage that Pog has on pretty much every other GC rider. While in reality WVA saved JV, and TJV’s, hide by turning himself inside out to single handedly mitigate that attempt from Pog on stage 5, in game the AI creates some many breaks that’s Pog’s 77 (iirc) CO always leaves him minutes ahead of the other main GC guys.
I don’t know if there is a harmonious balance there or not. It’s not like MOST of the GC did much but ride WVA’s engine, but they did stay upright (mostly). Still, there is no denying that Pog deserves his CO rating. Boosting the other GC guys doesn’t seem fair based on their merits, but pave containing GC stages are always a tough balance in PCM.
Finally, as a side note, it kind of sucks that Cyanide have relegated ACC to that of JUST sprints. I feel like that seriously dampens the “style” possibilities of GT riders. Some guys are engines, like GT, they aren’t ever going to be explosive, but they are also damn hard to fully drop/crack. Then you have the jackrabbits who can pop off and be 50m ahead of you in a few seconds, forcing you to either tempo ride to catch up, or risk blowing yourself up. Not to mention guys that in between those extremes.
With JUST MTN accounting for speed, it feels very…one dimensional. The AI is better this year than just about any other version over the last, what, 7-10? But that is an unfortunate step backward. Alas, to Hautacam. That climb seems to always produce great Tour moments — fingers crossed for one more!
