It took me a while to find a motivation to post In this thread (you know, depression and so on). I hope I’m not too late to find my suggestions being considered. Some of my points could have been mentioned earlier, but maybe those suggestions were not exactly in the same shape as mine.
Idea: TTT World Championships
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Explanation: TTT World Championships for professional teams as it is in real life. It could be a goal to some sponsors forcing us to look for some good TT-ers, that are otherwise not very useful compared to other types of riders.
Why: Because I think it’s relatively easy to implement and may add an interesting aspect to our careers.
Idea: New mechanism of creating echelons.
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Explanation: While echelons are possible to be created in windy conditions, the mechanism is not very realistic. It’s usually race of attrition, where another riders are being shed from the peloton as they run out of energy. What I would like to see is that breaks in the peloton would appear in random places of it when there is an acceleration in windy conditions. Would be nice if important riders could drop a bit further down the peloton from time to time for different reasons to make the meaningful splits a bit more frequent, as these riders sit in the top20-30 places in the peloton all the time nowadays.
Why: It would make echelons stages more realistic and would provide further opportunities to exploit this kind of racing for your own benefits.
Idea: Improved simulation results.
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Explanation: This has been mentioned earlier in one of the post. I second that and I want to add that I’m completely incapable of getting good results in big stage races with world-class sprinters. And they usually finish way more down the order, than their skill-form combo would suggest. It also never happens that a second-rate climber from my team would go into the breakaway and finish in front of the peloton on a mountain stage. There should be more variety in results.
Why: I enjoy playing the career mode with simulating all of the races. But this brings some annoying stuff like not being able to fight for GT stage wins with world-class sprinters at all.
Idea: Riders dropping back to a team leader.
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Explanations: When I’m a team leader in “Be a pro” mode and I’m being left behind peloton due to a crash, all of my team-mates just still sit in the peloton instead of some of them dropping back to help me chase down the main group.
Why: Because it’s annoying to lose races due to the lack of support from my own team like that.
Idea: Team-orders in “Be a pro” mode.
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Explanation: This also has been mentioned many times earlier in this thread, but I think not all of the commands I can think of have already been mentioned. There should be options for us to say to our team-mates what to do:
- Stop chasing: sometimes they ride hard for us, but they’re putting the pace that makes us feeling uncomfortable.
- Ride full-gas: when there’s an opportunity to create a split and we need a short but very hard effort from our team-mates.
- Ride hard: when we feel good and want to put a pace that will tire our opponents or bring the breakaway back.
- Ride moderately: Our team-mates will set steady, but not hard pace. This could be used when there’s a hesitation in the peloton and nobody wants to chase or when we hope a given section of the race will not be raced very hard so we take the responsibility for pace-setting ourselves and hope other teams will not decide to ride hard due to that.
Also commands “go for water now”, “stop protecting me”, “protect me with the next rider” (when the rider who currently protects us is run out of energy but still able to hand onto the group).
Why: To make “Be a pro” mode both more realistic and enjoyable.
This is the first part of my suggestions, I’ll put some more later.
Explanation: TTT World Championships for professional teams as it is in real life. It could be a goal to some sponsors forcing us to look for some good TT-ers, that are otherwise not very useful compared to other types of riders.
Why: Because I think it’s relatively easy to implement and may add an interesting aspect to our careers.
I agree, the TTT WC shouldn't be too hard to implement. I think they should add the olympics in the next edition as well, especially since the olympics will take place next year.
"It's very hard to work with other guys because nobody wants to work with me so it's better to drop everybody." - Peter Sagan
Explanation: It’s frequent thing that riders develop their main skill quickly, but their secondary skills are not there yet and we see riders with strange distribution of skills. The same goes for deterioration, sometimes secondary skills deteriorate much quicker than the main skill giving the same effect. I believe there should be created a matrix which will indicate the minimum value of secondary skills for given value of primary skill. Minimum value should always be reached automatically when primary skill changes. For example, 78 MO riders should not be allowed to have less than 74 HI, 79 MO should not be allowed to have less than 75 HI etc. Sprint, cobble and TT skills should indicate minimum flat skill, and generally most of the skills shouldn’t be allowed under a certain value for riders of certain class.
Not to mention the fact that I would like to see more versatile newgens. For example, there are very little climbers who are good in both TT and hills, so it's hard for them to win big stage races as long as the old riders are still in the game. And I have never seen a newgen simillarly versatile to Sagan or Kwiatkowski.
Why: I’m fed up of seeing riders with unnatural set of skills. Also newgens have often problems with competing with real riders even after many years, because they have secondary skills at much worse level usually.
Idea: Improved negotiations with riders
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Explanation:
- First of all, I think riders find new teams a bit too quickly. In real life, there are still dozens of good riders still searching for new team in August or even September. In the game, all of good riders have new contract signed by the end of July. We have little options to react if our negotiations with riders who were our primary goals fail.
- Why do U-23 riders usually hesitate longer than older riders when negotiating with my team? It should rather work the other way around. Good riders who are aware of wide interest, can wait longer, but young riders for who offer from big team is a real deal, should be quick to accept it.
- More options for players in negotiations. If rider can tell us that he wants to wait, why can’t we say the same and tell a rider who wants to sign with us that we want to wait? Of course he won’t wait forever if he has other good offers, but if our is the best one, he should be willing to risk and wait a bit to maximize his chance. There could be an option “we need quick answer” as well. Also there should be option to change our offer before the rider gives us his answer.
- Contract extensions should be possible to negotiate before negotiations with other riders start. Also there should be an option to buy rider out of contract with other team, as it happens in real life.
- Feedback from riders could be implemented to make us aware how big our chance for signing a given rider is. For example he could say “I like your offer but I want to have more time to think about it” when he likes our offer or “It seems I may have more interesting options at the moment” if we need to come with something better.
Why: To have more realistic process of negotiations.
Idea: Possibility to chose the starting order of riders
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Explanation: It should be the player, not the computer, who decides which rider starts first and last in both TTTs and opening ITTs.
Why: Because in short TTTs starting order can change a lot and sometimes our good TT rider starts first in ITT so we can’t find out which effort is optimal on worse riders and that limits our chance of good result.
Because paul23 was so happy about some of my ideas I decided to think of some more ideas and hope Cyanide takes a look at this.
The training styles and relationships in PCM 2015 are making me mad. For me this was a step backwards in the training stuff.
I decided to have a look on my old writing (2014) of my thoughts about a new training system.
Back then I didn't want to post it because it is a little bit complicated and somehow just a blueprint (brainstorming).
My idea for training from 2014
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more attribute movement, training effects
get more use of training.
Riders need training to stay at their high levels or built up a new specialisation.
for example:
We all know Tony Martin is a TT Specialist, he needs to put a high effort on TT in his training.
So lets say there are all the attributes and you can decide how much percent he should use for a special attribute in training.
Personal training:
Martin is already at a high TT level so if you want him to get the max amount of the attribute, you need to invest a lot of training/percent. We give him the full 100% on TT. But now we got the problem that he is only working on his TT abilities and the other attributes will decrease, because they don't get trained.
Now Tony Martin's Training looks like this: FLA0% MON0% HIL0% TTR100% PRL0% COB0% SPR0% ACC0% DHI0% FTR0% STA0% RES0% REC0%
Trainer:
What it needs now is a Trainer.
Every Trainer is different and also got his own specialisation.
"Trainer A" has the following training effects: FLA15% MON0% HIL5% TTR35% PRL15% COB0% SPR0% ACC10% DHI0% FTR0% STA10% RES10% REC0%
Tony Martin's Training with Trainer: FLA15% MON0% HIL5% TTR135% PRL15% COB0% SPR0% ACC10% DHI0% FTR0% STA10% RES10% REC0%
Now the TTR is above 100% so we need to change Tony Martin's Personal Training:
FLA15% MON0% HIL10% TTR65% PRL5% COB0% SPR0% ACC0% DHI0% FTR0% STA5% RES0% REC0%
The final trainingplan fully build on TT:
FLA30% MON0% HIL15% TTR100% PRL20% COB0% SPR0% ACC10% DHI0% FTR0% STA15% RES10% REC0%
Bonuses:
Another aspect could be a bonus on the spezialisation. Martin is a TT-spezialist so he gets a 25% Trainingbonus on the following !4! stats: TTR, PRL, FLA, RES,
These bonuses are static and can't be moved.
new training with the bonus:
FLA55% MON0% HIL15% TTR125% PRL45% COB0% SPR0% ACC10% DHI0% FTR0% STA15% RES35% REC0%
So we see TTR again over 100% the personal training needs an update:
FLA20% MON0% HIL20% TTR40% PRL5% COB0% SPR0% ACC10% DHI0% FTR0% STA5% RES0% REC0%
after all that, we have the training including the specialisation bonus:
FLA60% MON0% HIL25% TTR100% PRL45% COB0% SPR0% ACC20% DHI0% FTR0% STA15% RES35% REC0%
On all attributes with 0% there will be no improvement.
Lets try it with Contador.
In this case there is a GT Bonus: MON, TTR, ACC, REC all with 25% = 100%
and Contadors Personal training:
FLA10% MON20% HIL5% TTR20% PRL0% COB0% SPR0% ACC10% DHI0% FTR0% STA0% RES10% REC25% = 100%
all together we get his trainingplan:
FLA10% MON70% HIL15% TTR60% PRL5% COB0% SPR0% ACC50% DHI0% FTR0% STA0% RES20% REC70% = 300%
The higher the attribute the more training you need to keep it on that level. So if MON is on 85 you could stop train it, but within a few months you won't believe your eyes the stat is decreasing. In this case the training should be around 30 - 40% to keep the attribute on that high amount.
Why:
It would be a great future for the managing part. You can create a lot of various training plans and you have more influence on the riders evolution.
It's hard to understand, but this would bring the training stuff to a new level in PCM.
Idea: Potential sense
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Explanation of idea:
After also losing the Potential stars of the riders I thought why not giving the trainer the opportunity to find out the potential of every rider stat in form of a "potential sense".
After January the trainer gives his first statement on the potential value he found out during the training days with the riders. BUT this potential is not to 100% the potential the rider really got. So the better the "potential sense" of the trainer is, the closer it is to the real potential of the riders.
Why:
This would bring back the Potential stars for each stat in a more interesting way and gives also some unknown development, because the trainer could also see the false potential in a rider.
Idea: overall potential
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Explanation of idea:
What would be also great some potential variations during the seasons. Here it's hard to say on what this should depend.
So I thought comparisons during seasons and the influence of the manager (ME) himself.
If a riders got 3 top10s and 1 top5 result in the 1st season, and only a top25 in the 2nd season his overall potential is decreasing for the 3rd season.
Kittel not winning a single race in one year so his potential drops. Which means no step forward on his stats for next season. And what also could happen decreasing stats in some way, because the potential multiplication is to low to keep the stats on that high range.
So it's also in your hand what riders you are most having a look on and get the best out of them to push them forward on their potential stats.
The moral system could also be taken into count.
This is just a simple basement on how it should work, in detail race categories have to be taken into this, maybe the overall strength of the rider compared to the opponents,... to give this a better value.
So for sure victories are one thing, but what's with the helpers, water carriers?
So to be a little bit unfair that's why they are in that position. If you as manager decide to give a water carrier chances to show himself and it works, next year he will be no longer one ;-).
Why:
You can now decide how good a rider can develop. The responsibility is in the hand of us. Sure Kittel not winning a single race is way far, but this should show how it's meant to be.
Idea: temporary stats, better overview
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Explanation of idea:
I wish that the stats are more moving on influences like the fitness, moral, favourite races, weather conditions.
Overall I want to get more knowledge on the actual stat strength of my rider. With all this fitness and stuff you never know really how strong a rider is actually. So I would create a second window next to the basic stats with the actual stats of the riders including fitness and all that to see how strong my riders are at the moment.
Also some temporary stat drops.
So if a riders moral is going down during the season stats are decreasing temporary. So very bad moral means -1 on all stats, or bad moral -2 on specific ones.
The 3 favourite races could be also some big moments for the riders where they can gain temporary stats or fitness points same goes to weather conditions. Or in this way the daily form could be a very interesting point. Because this is most of the time not working on this things. Got riders loving rain and colder conditions and then they get -2 daily form on that??
Why:
This would bring a good overview of the actual strength of the riders compared to their basic stats. The way it's working right now is OK for people playing for a longer time and knowing how this has to be taken into count.
The moral, fav. races and the conditions look like a realistic goal for 2016 to get them to work. Also with random weather likes, dislikes on riders having non compared to their origin. example: Spain hot, dry Bretagne: cold, rain,...
Idea: more interaction with AI
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Explanation of Idea: we discuss this very often what is the AI doing or "thinking".
With all that I remembered some RPG's were the AI Names get in different colors so you can see if they are good or bad.
So why not doing this in PCM?
green colored Name = working with you
normal colored name = neutral
red colored name = not working with you
To make it even better.
command lines to the AI
So if you ask the peloton for help to catch the front you get answers back. Yes but only if example two or more riders of my team work with them in front on around 70+ effort.
"Maybe, later!"
So if they give back "NO!" the color changes red.
If "YES" the color goes green if I do that what they asked me and help out, or I do nothing and the color stays neutral. Like in "Maybe, later!"
Or the AI asking me. Or give statements why they do this and that.
Like if I try to follow the break some teams turn green and join the follow with a comment and others turn red, because they got someone in front and don't like my work. This team could also stay red during the stage, because of that.
Or a table with options to click and see who is interested in following the break/win the stage, work against a leader of a category,... and with the neutral color we got the unknown.
Could be also a interesting point for "be a pro" in form of teammate tactics like Anderis ideas: Riders dropping back to a team leader and Team-orders in “Be a pro” mode.
Why:
You get more control of the AI and knowledge of what they are doing and why. Some things are getting very deep so this needs perhaps more development but a basic info system would be a great first step.
at the end I go on a completely different way
Idea: a new stat system
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Explanation of Idea: Who deserves the best sprinter stat in PCM? Does Kittel should get a higher rating as Cavendish? Is Greipel a 82, 84, or 83 Sprinter?
I think they are all together great sprinters. So why not giving them stars from 1 to 5 in steps of half stars like 1, 1.5, 2,...
Here a pic how it would possibly look like:
Evolutions have a bigger impact. From Worldclass to nowhere, no this sounds to dramatic, but with this system the skills become more important, because losing or winning a "star" means a lot.
Why:
If we see how close everything in today's cycling is, the pure stat rating is to detailed in it's form. The biggest factors are moving to the fitness, the dailyform, terrain, race situations, freshness, other important stats for the race,...
It just an idea and maybe it's worth a try to test it out. But as I may know this would change the whole PCM Engine so this may never happen.
Some things are more futuristic and some need more detail, but maybe they give a clue on some things possible for 2016.
Also thx to Anderis for his wishes, especially the time trail and Be A Pro ideas are convertible for 2016 in my eyes.
PS: Can someone please translate what mede 33 wrote. I tried it with google translate, but to understand it right maybe someone can have a look at it.
And if I understand right Focus has a lot of impact on the game.
Explanation of Idea: Who deserves the best sprinter stat in PCM? Does Kittel should get a higher rating as Cavendish? Is Greipel a 82, 84, or 83 Sprinter?
I think they are all together great sprinters. So why not giving them stars from 1 to 5 in steps of half stars like 1, 1.5, 2,...
Here a pic how it would possibly look like:
Evolutions have a bigger impact. From Worldclass to nowhere, no this sounds to dramatic, but with this system the skills become more important, because losing or winning a "star" means a lot.
Why:
If we see how close everything in today's cycling is, the pure stat rating is to detailed in it's form. The biggest factors are moving to the fitness, the dailyform, terrain, race situations, freshness, other important stats for the race,...
It just an idea and maybe it's worth a try to test it out. But as I may know this would change the whole PCM Engine so this may never happen.
I'd love something like this, it takes the certainty of just having the best rider and that being it. I'd especially like it if the real stats were hidden and it just showed stars, even if it's on the same scale, which would be pretty easy to do.
I'd even like a simpler scale (without half stars?) so you have to really rely on checking the palmers of a rider to see how good he is.
I think that would only work if the real stats were always behind but they were hidden, and as trekbmc said that would be much more realistic. But if the stars were the stats and they changed the engine then no, definitely not.
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant." [ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT] Xero Racing
I don't think I like the star system. Current one is good, IMO. The star system would flatten the scale of the skills, resulting in many riders being capable of very simillar results and that would make transfers and development of riders kinda less meaningful. Also if you want to hide the skills of riders, it should be optional.
Here is yet another bunch of my ideas. Possibly not last.
Idea: Fix “struggling” animation
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Explanation: I’m a world class rider in “be a pro” mode and I have good form and I’m riding dot 85 effort (my energy bars are not empty) and I still can’t catch the rider with “struggling” animation who rides 15-20 seconds in front of me (alone, not in the group). This should not appear. “Struggling” animation should mean rider does really struggle.
Why: It’s frustrating to see rider who is visually struggling, but still manages to keep a good pace.
Idea: Less good newgens from exotic countries
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Explanation: After just few years of the career, there are multiple of very good newgens (main skill>78) coming from exotic, I mean really exotic countries. Something should be done to prevent this.
Why: It’s unrealistic.
Idea: Peloton always leaves a space
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Explanation: Unless the pace is very high, or the road is very narrow, peloton should always leave a space from one side of it, so any rider could quickly move up the peloton if uses enough of an effort. It’s really frustrating that sometimes you need 15 or 20 kilometers to move yourself from the back to the front of the peloton, when the pace is slow, the road is wide and nothing special happens. Set the riders behavior so they never use (unless the road is narrow, the pace is high or the terrain is complicated) the space at the very left (or right) side of the road (unless they want to move, of course) so anyone who gets there, can get to the front in reasonable time.
Why: It will prevent riders from getting stuck in situations they wouldn’t have got stuck in real life.
Idea: Be a Pro: Visual improvement/choice
Explaination of idea: When creating your pro, have a small 'face editor' so you can sort of adjust your pro a bit to look like you want him, too. Could be simple, some types of hair, some types of eyes, color...
Why (No one word or some word posts): I think it would contribute to the Be a Pro experience. It would only be one rider so loading time would suffer under it.
Explanation of Idea: Just give Money in be-a-pro some sort of use. Spend it on your own training camps or recon or better equipment. Anything will do! Just give it a reason to actually be there.
Why: Ok it's not just PCM that does this, it's all sports management or be-a-pro games. Your contract is coming to an end and you're looking for a new one, you are picking the contract on three criteria: Length, Salary and Squad. By squad i mean, are you going to be a helper/leader/free-role. Except, Salary means litterally nothing because Money has zero use in Be-a-Pro.
You can't spend it. You don't need it to live. You just collect it endlessly as like a tertiary counter of success (behind your rankngs points and results). I know when i play be-a-pro i don't even give a consideration to the Salary, and often i'll drop my request to the minimum to guarantee myself a spot at the team i want.
In Career mode Money has a purpose, you use it on Wages and Camps and Recon and various bits and pieces. If you run out you get into trouble and if it's low your team suffers. In Be-a-pro that will never happen, you can coast by on a minimum wage as an 85AVG rider for the lowest CT team in the game. It just kills so much of the challenge and realism for me.
Force me the make a real choice. Do i sign with the team i want, but struggle financially, or do i take the extra cash i need (not want, need)
Idea: More handy list of sponsors to chose from creating a new team in career mode
Explanation: It takes ages to check all of the potential sponsors if you can only scroll them one by one in alphabetical order. I imagine it would be better to have a list reminding those which are for choosing a team in single race mode, so you have dozen of teams on one page and you can check them and scroll them much faster.
Why: Some facilitation on this ground would be really welcome by players like me and it could enable to create a new team in career mode much faster in some cases.
Idea: Some national teams in carrer modes (Manager and Pro Cyclist)
Explanation: We often see 2-3 or more national teams on tours and classics. For exemple, there's a Poland team at Tour de Pologne, UniSA at Tour Down Under or a lot of african national teams in african races. It could be a gread addition to career modes, pro cyclist or manager.
Why: If you're in manager mode, it would be better than some unrealistic teams in races (Sky at Tropicale Amissa Bongo...). And in Pro Cyclist mode, it would be really interesting for the first seasons, where the player could be selected for .1, 1.2 and even .HC or WT races with their national team, with other cyclists that haven't been registered by their teams.
My wish seeing the teams' cars on the road, with 2 or 3 motorbikes of TV and direction's car of the race, is too few and not realistic. When there is a breakaway, a rider that needs water, It can appear his team's car and I don't think It's complicated, because there are motorbikes and cars already.
Idea: the possibility to decide at which km to start a 3D simulation.
Explaination: the first part of a stage, which is often quite boring, could easily be run with the fast simulation mode up to the point you have decided to start the 3D simulation. You could make such decision in the stage's preparation window, as an alternative of the two possibilities we already have (either fast or 3D simulation).
Why: I think my idea is quite an easy issue to the game's programmers, while it could provide great advantages to the players: e.g. we could control only the crucial phases of a stage, and save a lot of time passing over parts of a race which are less exciting.
What's more, a new game section could be dedicated to a new kind of stage simulation in which the virtual world has a more realistic SCALE than the traditional one. Nowadays a real world's km corresponds to approximately 50 meters in the game's 3D simulation. Could we start the 3D simulation closer to the finish line, then 100, 250 or even 500 meters per real kilometers would be a suitable option.
I hope my idea is good... not the same with my english!
Edited by GL95 on 30-10-2015 16:44
Example: on the stages' preview window there could be the following interface:
(button) FAST SIMULATION
(button) 3D SIMULATION
SWITCH TO 3D SIMULATION AT: KM *** OUT OF 201
OR/AND when the breakway has an advantage of ** min Y/N
OR/AND a favourite attacks Y/N
OR/AND 8 km before the first intermediate sprint Y/N
and others...
Explanations: Gaps on hilly stages during GTs are too often too big, this is unrealistic and causes riders with good hills outperforming riders with clearly better mountain skill in GC. I once put something like 12 minutes on Ulissi on all mountain stages alltogether in “be a pro” mode during the Giro, yet he still beat me in final GC because he gained even more time on hilly stages. And I was not awful on hills, was finishing those stages in top10. Also time gaps in races like Pais Vasco (with no big mountains, only hills) sometimes happen to be ridiculously big.
From a player who has only played in traditional career-mode & doesn't ever game on-line...
1) More time-gaps (no bigger time gaps, but counting smaller gaps).
In one of the old PCMs (pre-2010) where there was more options which you could edit yourself, I manually changed the minimum calculated gap to 2 secs (instead of 10) and started to get much more realistic results. Additionally, it made all stage races much more exciting as you could both steal seconds by well-timed sprint or late attack. OTOH, if you played too daring and ended up low in energy in finale, you could easily be gapped and lose some important time to your opposition despite kinda hanging in the main peloton.
2) Remove the stage characterization (flat, hills, mountain) altogether and make those attributes to match with the actual gradient. Now, even a smallest bump in the start of MTN stage drops half of the peloton, but the tough 10 km climb at the early part of "flat" stage won't make Napolitano to breathe hard. STUPID and limits the strategy.
3) Make positioning in peloton more important. Staying close to the front should really tax your energy, but taking it easy at the back would cause a much bigger risk of crashes and also being left behind of a peloton splitting (splits should regularly happen due wind, road "furniture" and similar.
4) More crashes, more damaging crashes and less random crashes. A lot of crashes on cobbles, a major risk of crashing if going fast in steep downhills (say 60 = safe, 80 = dangerous, 95 = begging to die)... Mass crashes when a big peloton goes really slow. More randomisation on whether a rider gets right up or breaks his bike. Also more injuries and injuries which you can ride with, but on limited capacity. Those injuries to become "visible" in game again...
Idea: More cyclists giving up in classics and tours.
Explanation: I just mean that more cyclist give up in classics and before a stage in tours.
Why?: It would be more realistic. In classics, riders at the back mostly don't finish in real life. The same counts for tours, many don't finish. Some can't handle 3 weeks and some get sick, etc.
Explanation: When our contract with current sponsor expires, we are getting dozens of good offers from potential sponsors from multiple countries. But in real world it’s not easy to find a sponsor nowadays. I think we should be getting only a few offers each time, and nationality of those sponsors should most likely either be the same as the previous sponsor or the one that is soundly represented among riders from our roster. Especially if we're not a top WT team.