jph27 wrote:
Perhaps a better way would be to remove accumulated training from any rider who hits free agency? Not unknown in real life for riders to decline when leaving a familiar environment so provides some realism, and would help stop stat inflation.
Yeah that could be a decent way of doing so. I do, however think it should only apply for riders being on free agents in the first line, and not sacked riders or something like that.
It may be in the interests of Schleck/Pluchkin/Spilak/Alarcon/Amador etc to do that, but I don't see that it is in the interests of the game.
Someone like Madrazo goes on the free agency and suddenly every team has a chance to buy a potential GT winner. For some teams this is the best chance they'll have to really develop into a stronger team - so I don't see any reason to restrict that.
SportingNonsense wrote:
It may be in the interests of Schleck/Pluchkin/Spilak/Alarcon/Amador etc to do that, but I don't see that it is in the interests of the game.
Someone like Madrazo goes on the free agency and suddenly every team has a chance to buy a potential GT winner. For some teams this is the best chance they'll have to really develop into a stronger team - so I don't see any reason to restrict that.
Well, it wasn't only meant for climbers like Madrazo, it was also meant for cobblers, sprinters and whatever it could be. But okay. It was just a thought.
Been interesting reading up until now. Fortunately SN provides over-sight on all of this as the DB controller, but even still, I think discussion worthwhile and want to chuck in my two-pence worth.
* I agree with a previous post that young riders showing flashes of top potential are better kept out of the DB for another year to confirm that they are liekly to be the stars of the future (e.g. Geoghan-Hart, Latour, etc.) to try and capture their true potential. If appropriate, perhaps they start at lvl 2 or 3 given they are held back. They are (and will still) be very young so no real harm in doing so in my eyes.
* There has to remain very tight control on new riders with high stat potential to avoid the already emerging issue of multiple 85 and close ranked riders in primary stat - stat inflation is already acknowleged, need to keep from getting out of hand; everyone should keep in mind when introducing their favourite new rider!
* I do have concerns that many of the suggestions are not thought through in terms of overall game impact. Although PT teams see a rider with 74 or 75 as bottle carriers, at CT level, with decent back-up stats, these guys are good enough to be team leaders. Yes it is exciting to try and identify a rider from your host country who can do a job, 15th and 20th in 2.2 races is no guarantee of a future breakthrough - many of these guys being proposed are stronger than riders already in the database who IRL reguarly ride GT's etc. I know the game is in part a blend of reality and the game (e.g. training skews things), but why bother using real names if 80% of them are not realistic even to begin with!
Spoiler
Hypothetical thought process
Although my team has a Colombian main sponsor, I would like to focus on my home country of Scotland as the 2nd nation. Not many Scottish riders in the DB, but I'm sure that Good Energy will sell me Andy Fenn for £2.50 given Fenn's mum comes from my home town of Kirky. In fact, I've decided I only want riders from my home town, so I'd like to suggest some new riders. Tam from down the street once led me out on the local bunch ride for a 30's sprint, and I won by miles; hence I'd suggest Tam be added as an 80 sprinter. Maybe only 70 as Mountain, as he does weigh 16.5 stone = don't want him to be TOO over-powered!. Oh, Rab too, he lives at the top of a really steep hill - I once had to get off and walk to visti him, and he rides up it whenever he comes out on a ride, so I'm sure with a bit of training he could win Fleche Wallone - so 82 for hill?? I know hw is 45 now, but its a game, so lets just pretend he's 18 again!
* People get there enjoyment from MG in different ways, focussing more on the role-playing (e.g. country focus), power gaming, whatever. Each way can and does work, so the game mechanics work well. Even in real life, nationally focussed teams (e.g. Sky, Katusha, Orica, Astans, etc) end up with many foreigners on board - it is often necessary to compete at the top. Smaller teams can focus on smaller nations, not winners of the PT. Even in the cycling heartlands of Spain, Belgium, France, etc. teams turn to foreign riders. Movistar is a good example, without any competiition in the home market, they have a large raft of Spanish riders, but still have the odd Colombian, Italian and Brit to cover weaknesses and provide team leaders. Teams like Europcar are an exception rather than the rule. So I (personal thought) think it is good that the game has the occasional rider from an unusual nation who is bumped up a little beyond their reality to help out a focussed team, but doesnt mean he should be a GT contender - should be limited to a decent domestique who can get round most races is appropriate in my opinion, but not suddenly 10 riders from Iceland just because Joe Bloggs requests.
Spoiler
Hypothetical part 2
Again, as a Colombian focussed team, there are not many homegrown options for cobbled races. This leaves team management with three choices, (i) ignore cobbled races and focuse on other areas of strength, (ii) accept that we will have to pick up some cobblers form other nations, or (iii) wait for this thread each year and dig up a couple of Colombian riders who have started a race in Northern Europe that year and propose that they are therefore worthy of 80+ cobble rating. To me, options (i) and (ii) are realistic, (iii) is (a) stupid and (b) game-breaking.
Anyway, there has been a couple of good debates in the MG threads in the last few weeks, and thought this might prompt some debate. Feel free to ignore my rantings, and apologies for the wall of text! Follow up post with further thoughts to come.
Edited by Scorchio on 25-01-2015 23:35
Given the discussion of new riders, I thought it worth having a brief look at the existing DB first to consider its make-up.
Last off-season we had an excellent discussion on the relative strength of various regions and the ditribution of strong riders vs. distribution of MG teams - the general outcome was in fact a damn good match, with perhaps a slight MG team under-representation in Eastern Europe if I recall (can't currently pin-point the thread).
Here, I have looked only in terms of age and looked at the DB as a whole, and then region-by-region. Given that the DB is dominated by riders from Europe (as in real life), the shape of the age distribution (as shown below) is more or less the same for the whole DB (3818 riders) and Europe (2660 riders).
Spoiler
What does this tell us? Well to me it indicates that we have a sensible build up of younger riders towards 24-25 age reflecting the fact that new additions to the DB each year are generally focussed on the age ranges <25, hence still room each year for new additions. Similarly above 32 (when riders start to age), their is a similar drop-off (although I am not sure how this has been achieved in practise?). There is an odd blip at age 26 where the DB seems overly represented - I would have expected a flatter distribution from ages 25 through 32.
Now lets consider some other regions in the game. I have grouped two at a time, taking the most populace regions down to the lowest. First up Asia (284 riders, shown in green) and South America (265 riders, distribution in red).
Spoiler
OK, what does this say - as you can see I've plotted against the overall DB distribution (black). So in genreal terms, Asia is currently over-represented with younger riders (< 26) and under-represented with older riders (30+). South America is generally reasonably represented, with maybe a minor skew towards older riders
Next up are Africa's 193 riders (green) and N. America's contribution of 176 (red)
Spoiler
Africa ends up like Asia, over-represented with emerging young riders, all the way up to age 28, then a little behind in older rider representation. North America is generally in line with the DB distribution, and is contributing towards the '26' spike (European riders still the main contributer though).
Finally we have Oceania's 154 riders (green) and Central America's contribution of 85 (red)
Spoiler
Not a lot to say here, in general pretty well aligned, particualrly if you were to f.e. take a 3-year weighted average.
So what should you make of this - anything you want, probably nothing more than Scorchio rantings!
What do I make of it?
I conclude the following:
* Around 250 riders overall per year added to the DB makes sense, but there also has to be a mechanism to remove a similar amount of riders, not sure how this has been dealt with in the past?
* For you result scourers, Africa and Asia maybe need to go a wee bit easy on the younger age range for a year or two with perhaps one or two new riders in each of the older age ranges.
* No more riders aged 26 please!
* In general the DB is in good shape. Hurrah, and well done to those involved over the years!
* Final conlcusion is either (i) I have too much tiome on my hands, or (ii) Work avoidance has reached new heights!. I'll let you draw your own conclsuions.
SportingNonsense wrote:
You're not a fan of Isaac Bolivar then
As a Colombian MG team manager, he's definitely on my long-list if TMM wants rid! One potential cobbler from a relatively strong cycling nation doesn't seem too outlandish, however 3 or 4 would be over the top considering the country in question is Colombia, even if it would make life simpler!
Edited by Scorchio on 26-01-2015 00:24
I disagree with you on the "removing riders". SN said somewhere (probably at the start of the thread) that he'd add more or less any rider who tops off at 73 or 74 in his main stat. Those sort of riders will be domestiques no matter where they go, so I don't see why there could be too many of them. You also gave Iceland as an example - the lack of riders from there irl is completely down to the lack of serious racing. But imagine suddenly there'd be a serious ct team from there - given time, Iceland would produce better and better riders. Of course the only way of reflecting that ingame is overpowering some riders from there, which to me seems fair enough.
Riders on FA for two seasons in a row could be removed. If they deserve it and someone wants them after that all it takes to get back in is a new nomination here.
I think the statistics are cool, but you have to take into consideration how the game have evolved from 1 division, to 2 divisions and to 3 divisions. I dont know whether I am right or not, but I would expect that is the reason why the riders age 26-27 and riders 22-23 seems to be over represented. It could be that those years the team evolved (1-2 seasons ago and 4-5 seasons ago).
If that is the case then the amount of riders put into the game was to keep the game comptetitive, and as most lower teams tend to focus on youth (also IRL), a great amount of talent was implemented.
I do agree though, that teams are probably becoming too nationalistic in terms of realism, and I am also trying to keep my team slightly allround. My goal is to have 75%-80% of the team french and greek. The rest can come from whatever nation suite the teams focus and weakness.
It would be interesting to see those distributions only for the riders who have teams.
I don't see that free agents are doing any harm being in the DB, so no need to remove them. However that is partly what I do every year - every rider I add replaces another rider in the DB - overwriting the worst riders. And if there's a rider who does get new stats requested on here it is so much easier for me if they are already in there.
The 1988 blip (age 26) can easily be explained. After the first MG season we ran the DB through career mode to generate the stat increases, national and world champions. This also led to the addition of a load of scouted riders to the db, most of whom are born in 1988 - Ratiy, Krasnoperov, Costagli, Lo Cicero and Zaini come to mind as some of the best ones, but most of them tend to have bad support stats so haven't been used.
I can see your point of view from the fact that some posts in this thread are along the lines of. "I am from country X, I want a 80 Mo rider, a 80 Hill rider, a 80 TT rider, a 80 CB rider and a 80 Sp." Obviously that is an exaggeration - but also obviously, that's not something I'm going to do all in one year, if at all. Those posts are still useful for me as I can take those riders and if I do want to add a 77 MO rider from country X, I know who to pick.
My policy on new countries is that the first year only domestique level riders will be added and if the country continues to be focused on then it may develop from there. I actually have had someone PM me interest in starting a team in Iceland. They've sent me various riders to add and the stats are more realistic and reasonable than most riders posted in this thread! It's been slightly different in the past when teams have moved into Ukraine or Kazakhstan, which had been neglected in new rider additions in the years before that, or Greece where I just decided to add a couple of one-off good riders Vlatos and Tzortzakis, which ultimately caught the attention of SotD. I agree with Dippofix that it is quite plausible that real interest from a team can lead to stronger riders emerging, so long as they are willing to develop them.
Take real life. Colombia is a real example where a few years ago, there weren't many around in European racing, but they started making a name for themselves in U23 races and now there's more and more Colombians in the World Tour each year, as well as it's PCT team. What's to say there aren't lots of really good 'Level 1' riders in Asia or Africa in real life, who will never emerge due to a lack of infrastructure or opportunity? Each year the ManGame DB drifts a little bit more away from a realistic DB, as the MG world itself continues to develop. I do prefer to still use real riders though, as I think it makes the game more relatable and interesting. I prefer to see it as an alternate reality, rather than just complete fantasy.
One of the great things about the base database we used (PPDB) is that from the start there were plenty of South Americans good in the Mountains, as well as good other riders from around the world, particularly Sprinters. So it's never felt too unusual to be expanding upon that.
Edited by SportingNonsense on 26-01-2015 09:32
Really nice plots Scorchio. Do you have the chance to do the same but using the latest PCM-Daily DB to see if there is the same distribution in the "real world"?
(Since you said you've got time I wanted to ask)
Also, maybe is not a problem of age of riders but the relation between age and ratings. I feel that usually the riders peaks too soon (when the normal thing for a rider is peak at the 27)
ggDonovan wrote:
.I feel that usually the riders peaks too soon (when the normal thing for a rider is peak at the 27)
I have the same feelings and also when seeing this thread i cant help myself but to say that we are maybe adding the riders when they are too young and because of that they are too good and maxed when being 22-23 years old.
I think that we have too many real life "talent hunters" here who think that results achieved as 18years old are somewhat a guarantee that they will put the world of professional cycling on fire and they are rated as supertalents. We can see it in cycling threads and we can see it here.
Actually hardly 2 from 10 of these supertalents achieve something notable in WT/PT and in man-game i feel like 10 supertalents are added yearly in recent years which will probably lead to pool of hundreds of 80+ riders across categories in few seasons, while i feel there should like ten-twenty 80+ riders in each category to avoid overcrowding with talent. But SN seems to control these things to avoid it.
Edited by Avin Wargunnson on 26-01-2015 13:38
Indeed, thats unavoidable unless we become more patient in adding riders. But then, would it be a bad thing if we didn't add any top young riders this season? I'm not sure, would be interesting to hear other opinions on that actually.
SportingNonsense wrote:
Indeed, thats unavoidable unless we become more patient in adding riders. But then, would it be a bad thing if we didn't add any top young riders this season? I'm not sure, would be interesting to hear other opinions on that actually.
I would be 100% in for that. At least a year off from supertalents would be cool
I think we add good youngsters too soon. Adding one or two guys from Junior/U23 level is ok provided they are the top riders at that time at that level. Otherwise i'd be happy to see delaying until 22/23 years old rather than 20/21 as seems to be the case currently. It would just bring a bit of realism back and hopefully shift the peak years on a bit.
Otherwise i fear we get a DB, as is happening, with lots of top riders who will be at the top for up to 7 years or more! If i didn't muck up Ewan a bit he would max out with ~8 years left with his top stats. Most guys will max out with 5+ years at the top which is a lot considering the number of riders at that level for that amount of time.
All we'd have to do is add top riders at a slightly higher age after slightly more real world proof of their skills. I see no harm from that.
I wouldn't mind if there is none of those top talents are added this year. Personally, i always let others suggest those top talents anyway, as i don't want the db crowded with too many of then. That's why i just suggested useful CT-riders like Roe or Bevin.. Well, Flakemore, but i don't mind if his stats stay the same as before.. And there is indeed a point in what Avin said. I saw too many beasts suggested here (I know i suggested Kerrison, too, but not without saying, that he may be added next year)
Looking at next year's Avenir favorites, i guess we already have plenty of talents up there in high spheres and maybe a few of them might be up for grabs (free agents) as well... So I'm definitely interested in the idea to wait for a Robert Power to be added
The only problem with not putting young riders into the DB is that the Tour de l'Avenir would be pretty useless. But I do think that the level of competition this year is amazing, as to next season where riders who could do a GC top 10 in the PT are there... I don't think that is realistic... So perhaps make them go into the DB at earliest when they are 21 is a good idea. That way you have two seasons of l'Avenir with them, while the first season it will be difficult to do well, but the second season your rider would be among the best. That way we also ensure that a 22 year old cannot be more than a level 3 rider. And a 24 year old cannot be trained...
This way the U25 rankings will also be a bit more realistic instead of now where Phinney wins both the GC of a GT and the white jersey. I know there are talents like that IRL, but I don't think it is necessary in the Man-Game.
I think that Avenir-disscusion post where someone listed stats for top GC contenders for Avenir for next year says it all. Avenir full of beasts touching 80 in stats and they will be 80 plus year after when being 23 years old... (or also my boy Grosu, who should be PCT sprint star in 23).
SotD wrote:
The only problem with not putting young riders into the DB is that the Tour de l'Avenir would be pretty useless.
Avenir will always be a good race - doesn't matter if the best riders in it have 80 MO or 72 MO.
These things go in circles. The first Avenir had a really strong field, Gesink v Intxausti at the top. I'm not sure Intxausti was maxed then, but I think Gesink was.
Two years ago the Avenir field was pretty weak. The off-season that followed was the first where there was a real effort to add young riders again, and now 3 years on from those additions the 2015 Avenir field may be very strong again.
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg)
