Smowz wrote:
Great post Roman and a very interesting one. I guess the concern with a lot of the later ideas is the workload it would put on and balancing issues with the game.
I'd love to see a short cobbled stage race along the lines of:
Stage 1 - cobbled team chrono
Stage 2 - cobbled flattish Roubaix stage
Stage 3 - flat transitional stage
Stage 4 - cobbled hilly Flanders style stage
Of course in real life the essence of cobbled races is that they are one day classics in the main - with the occasional proper cobbled stage thrown into the Tour de France.
Not sure which category we would want to throw it into, but certainly would be an interesting oddity to watch.
I worked out the idea of a Benelux GT with lots of cobbles a few months ago, but I never got around to asking a stage maker. Maybe now would be a good time, so if anyone is interested..
@Roman Indeed, improving the ManGame is always the target. But I can't do it alone. Many managers do nothing to help the game. Some do help out with reporting and the occasional odd task. I've never really had a serious volunteer to help me out in a more involved way.
1. Calendar remake - new race category
I've looked at the calendar efficiency, and there should be at least 20% less race days. Teams will have less race days as a result, but it will lead to quicker seasons, so that doesnt matter. PT teams will indeed race in 1 HC band next year though.
A lack of interaction between managers in other divisions? Don't blame the system, blame yourself. tsmoha, Avin and cio have more posts in the PT race discussions than 9 PT managers - which as much shows how great they are, as how poor many managers are. Likewise roturn and Smowz have shown it is quite easy to show an interest in PCT/CT, if you merely try. But again, half of PT managers havent cared about PT this year (*sharpens hammer*), so making them also care about PCT/CT is a tall order!
8 riders per team in all race in all divisons was already planned.
Cobble stage race
Maybe. Cobbled stat is already vital for TONE though. If it happens, it would came at the expense of Omloop Het Nieuwsblad (Gent-Wevelgem is already axed). It would not start with a TTT though, from TONE and Faso my theory is that if cobbles are to have an impact in a stage race, they need to strongly early in a race.
3. Continental Championships
I would like to see this happen, and I think prior to the start of the season while race planning is in progress would be an ideal time, and perhaps the only time where it could exist and not interfere. But that is completely up to 1 or more people volunteering to take on all responsibility for startlists, routes, database creation, and reporting.
4. Level 0 of training experience
Nope. The issue I have with young talents, besides the already raised issue of maxing so young, is the whole idea of setting a rider's max stats in stone when they are only 20/21. Adding riders even earlier makes that problem worse. In reality, Im more likely to go the other way of adding very few young riders at all - for this season at least.
5. Better community
As I referenced in point 1, the responsibility is on the manager, not the structure. Lots of managers are isolationists, and I'd welcome suggestions for improving that. 13 PT managers made 5 or fewer posts in [Cont-Man-Game] General all season, including yourself. (And indeed many PCT/CT paid not attention to PT) That won't be fixed by flooding everything together. Merging forums would just make things messy, and make it harder to scroll through the race results when searching for past races.
Twitter is very very quiet during the season, it only picks up around Transfers - where we do have a general discussion thread. There's enough room for improvement in HQs and Race discussion threads at the moment.
6. Training camps
I've always liked the idea of including form in some way, and (b) may well be the answer. (Isn't (c) just the same as (b) - with one month higher than the rest?) I'd imagine 5 sets of 2 months would be the answer for PCT/CT. An individual set for each GT in PT and splitting the other races in some form too.
My choice would be that if you can choose to have no form period, but if you do choose a form period, then you have to have say, 2, out of form periods. With some form of restrictions applied to mean that the rider is racing during those out of form periods.
So long as somebody else collected the team form choices, I know how to use Excel to make it easy to create the different versions of DYN_Cyclist.
7. No-trade clause
Ehhh, riders are cheap enough in renewals as it is. It's an interesting concept to have some sort of consequence by commiting a rider to be untradeable, in a risk/reward scenario, but not sure that rewarding with a cheaper wage is the way to do so.
Older riders already get discounts because worse stats mean cheaper wages. The trading of aging riders is a key aspect of transfers, I wouldnt want to restrict that.
8. Franchise rider tag
I've never been a fan of the idea of giving riders more race days than their AVG-allocated amount - either through an idea like this, or through buying it.
9. Training
I am thinking about riders with average above max 73 or 74 and their attributes that are above that limit couldn't be trained at all using this possible training exception.
I didnt really follow which riders you are referring to here.
Training prices probably need looking at in terms of making it more expensive at the top, so perhaps at the same time, it could be made cheaper at the bottom.
10. Rider goals
If somebody wants to organise this, it could be an interesting addition. I'd suggest no more than 1 goal per rider. And make it harder than team goals - so minimum option of Top 5 in a race.
Would not come close to the importance of team goals though.
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sgdanny:
Activity is always a tricky one to handle. People who want to be in the game should want to be active, and the handling of the many who currently want to stay in the game while being active, is a very relevant discussion in the MG reporters forum at the moment.
2. Lower Quality = Faster Pace
This idea is already being considered. i.e. have a season where all reports are short, so that it is very quick. Then decide whether to return to more detailed, stay, with short, or have a mixture. Sometimes Ive been guilty of being too expectant of quality in the past, indeed. But I dont like it when reports skim over the real action of the stage too briefly - particularly if theyve written bucket loads on the breakaway. It's still possible to have good quality in short reports.
In your case though, I seem to remember giving you feedback, but you never came back to me with something which took on that feedback.
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Selwink's Roman comments:
5. Perhaps discussion threads in the same place would work - but not sure how it helps that much?
6. I like to think that I'm good at spreading race types across the season! Admittedly that's more restrictive in PT, where there is much more tradition in cobbled races being close to each other, and the Ardennes classics too.
Yeah, I'm still interesting in helping with reporting next year, but we can talk about that later But I didn't come with an improved report, because I found myself busy with other projects
Also taking advantage of Twitter will be something, that will add something more interesting to the game and I don't see a better way of making everyone interact with each other. It should still be an optional choice still, but it would be more interesting having that option at hand
Activeness is also hard in any project / game and while I agree that it's almost impossible, to force people into actually being active. I'm still an outsider to this discussion and I just thought coming in with some input of someone, which is not directly involved with the game There aren't any real big flaws imo and your current plan seems reasonable
The key changes implemented last season were (in my opinion) a massive success, in particular the FA bidding constraints really added extra strategy to transfer season and the HC banding had a very positive impact in limiting undersubscribed races, and again introducing more strategic-thinking to the off-season.
Roman made good contributiions to some of these ideas taken forward last season and has obviously put a lot of thought into ideas that could make further improvements. From my perspective though, I think most of the proposals this time around are peripheral (sorry). Think we can all agree that speeding up the game benefits all participants, and SN indicates some thinking has already been put into this for 2015 season in terms of some rationing of races (I like 8 riders in races across all divisions, this is good). This season was almost 3 months faster than last, so progress in the right direction (still just over a year though) - hopefully we can avoid the black hole that occured this season around the summer holiday season (northern hemisphere) and IRL TdeF period.
I will be re-installing PCM on my comp in the next week or so to have a go at a dummy race report to submit to the admins for consideration as a reporter next season as I indicated I would in last seasons application, so hopefully i can play a small part in keeping up the pace / taking some of the reporting burden currently carried on too few shoulders. More reporters is after all the most obvious solution to picking up the pace.
Some of the ideas that add extra complexity may well be worth reconsidering if we can get the pace up across the 2015 season but park for now in case they themselves create a slow down impact?
Of the discussions through the season, trying to avoid over many 84, 85 stat riders for me is important. I also strongly advocate moves to push rider introduction to a little older to ensure stats more reflective of actual ability, and to limit young riders having a 10 year fully maxed career as is too long (even if this is potentially a bumper year for potential new Colombian riders!).
Nonetheless, good discussion points, and glad that we have this opportunity for debate .
Oh, and my other main discussion point related to stat inflation/too much money rising to the top few team in PT for training during the season - too me, it is good that riders can be improved after maxed, but perhaps some limit on just how much in one season, e.g. no 82 - 85 jumps in 1 off-season? The other thought in this area is that I personally think that the very top stat training costs are still too cheap; for a team in the top 5 of the PT, I'm sure that 2 million is better spent on 1 rider 84 - 85 (now potential to win the biggest races in their category) than on 2 riders 79 - 80 (who in top PT races, still have 10-20 higher stat riders in front). This maybe a different decision in PCT, but these teams do not generally have this disposible cash - better spent on transfers. If I am reading this right it then indicates that the prices above 80 need to have bigger price increases as it moves towards 85.
None of this directly impacts my team, but for game balance think does need consideration in some sort of way to limit the rapid accumulation of hordes of mid 80's stat riders in the db. Of course status quo or changes, some will like others not - my conceen is where the db will be in 2 or 3 years time, not necessarily right now.
I think we had them before, and I would love to see them back. A report that is streichers into 3 parts or so, and run for a couple of hours. Only absolute key stages should do this, but it is a nice twist and it keeps people online chartring away and such. Perhaps we could even make some sort of betting game as we do live reports, Where all managers gets - Lets say - 10.000 to spend on betting. Then the guys winning the best could get that amount of money ontop of their cap (not salary cap). Obviously it should be limited to a low overall amount, say 3 x live reports of a potential 100.000 each. No manager would be able to guess the right winner all 3 times, especially not if the favrorites Where low odds riders.
I think it would add for some more fun, while not really taking out more time on the reporter than he could take. The reporters would need to plan when they have that time, but it could be done I think. And that would give managers across divisions something to actively be a part of.
While this might offer more options like betting etc. it still costs more time and still longer reports to even be able to split.
I would really prefer to have big cut in lengths, then better have 2-3 very short reports and finish the season in like 6 months.
As SN said. Just give this short way a chance and after the season decide how to do it the seasons after.
With long reports, it would be hard to finish in less than 9-15 months again as 2 reports a day would be hard at times.
roturn wrote:
While this might offer more options like betting etc. it still costs more time and still longer reports to even be able to split.
I would really prefer to have big cut in lengths, then better have 2-3 very short reports and finish the season in like 6 months.
As SN said. Just give this short way a chance and after the season decide how to do it the seasons after.
With long reports, it would be hard to finish in less than 9-15 months again as 2 reports a day would be hard at times.
I agree... It would be much better to make it all way quicker, but what would it cost in time to have 3 of these in a season? An extra 3 days? Less?
Lets say it could be something like:
Paris-Roubaix
Liege-Bastogne-Liege
King stage of TdF
I think it would make for a couple of interesting days where people would really aim to be online for that period of time, where as normal you just click online whenever, and doesn't necessarily comment. A live feat would give atleast 5 comments pr. active manager, meaning the thread would easily pick up to 10 pages. I don't think many races (bar perhaps the GT's) gets that sort of activity - And that is over the course of a month. This could be over the course of 2-3 hours.
A live feat would give atleast 5 comments pr. active manager, meaning the thread would easily pick up to 10 pages.
If managers don't post even once per stage normally do you really expect to get 5+ three times over?
Plus it's not something i'd see you could limit to a few PT races without making PCT and CT managers feel less important. And one race per division doesn't really seem worth it in my eyes when the big aim is to speed up the game and reduce the workload of the reporters.
A live feat would give atleast 5 comments pr. active manager, meaning the thread would easily pick up to 10 pages.
If managers don't post even once per stage normally do you really expect to get 5+ three times over?
Plus it's not something i'd see you could limit to a few PT races without making PCT and CT managers feel less important. And one race per division doesn't really seem worth it in my eyes when the big aim is to speed up the game and reduce the workload of the reporters.
Yes, I do. If the live-report is combined with a game of betting, then I can't see how the live-report should be much different from a real cycling race. There is atleast 3 stages of the stage, in which I think the most active managers will post atleast once. Then there will be the discussion about the betting and teasing eachother and stuff. I can't see how that should not tally up to aprox 5 post pr. active user (and by active I mean those who are online in the proces).
Why would the CT managers feel less important? How many of those races they are currently racing are shown in real life? Hardly any... We all aim to get into the PT because the strongest riders are in there. I don't see any problem in inviting the lower ranked managers up for "dinner" in the big league. The betting could influence their moneys talley aswell... Imo I would still watch it if it was Tour of Brazil and it was a live stream, but I would find it more interesting to pick the races with the most top stars present. No offense to the CT, but I guess they do realise what their riders are capable against the likes of Trofimov.
Edited by SotD on 07-03-2015 10:51
I think the season that just ended was a strong success. It was run faster and the Free Agent changes were for the better. I was not in favor of the "Block" scheduling implemented this season and I think my team suffered as a result of having to attend races not suited to the team. Now that the season is over the overall benefit of the scheduling was a success.
The block schedulingl impact some of my off season rider decisions, but that's what this game is all about decisions.
If I could request any changes they would be the following:
1. I love the idea of a stage race with the key stage or stages having cobbles and/or a TT with a cobble section.
2. I would also like to see 3 race some grouped one day race Championships that would have standings. One for Hills, One for Sprints, One for Stage Races and One for Cobbles. Points earned in the 3 race sets would be cumulative over the 3 races. We would also have a new goal options for Winning and Top 5 in these Championships.
3. An idea has been posted recently, but also floated in previous years to having rider goals. I think this is a great idea, but we have to cut down the scope/workload. I suggest that each team has to select two or three riders from their roster that they then have to set goals for that way the Admins do not have to log and track over 1500 goals, but just 160-240.
The idea to cut down the race days for each tour is fine as long as the ratio of race types/terrains remains the same. Having fewer races to report with fuller grids would help speed up the season even more in the future.
Finally the shorter reports are a necessity, I love the longer reports, but time and efficiency are a must to the ManGame's future. What I do ask is that full results are shown for each stage. Some of us track our riders results. I do it to learn more about the synergies of the game.
To all of the Admins and reporters a HUGE THANK YOU for all you do to keep this wonderful hobby alive and thriving.
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Haven't had the time to read the long posts in this thread yet, so don't know whether this was suggested before; but what about a centralized news thread per division?
It would be cool to constantly keep a discussion about everything happening in the season going. Currently I guess the place for such talk are the HQ's, but they are not very well suited for this. It feels wrong to hijack someone's thread for a long discussion that changes subject all the time. So after a few posts about something the HQ owner's team did, the discussion dies. A dedicated news thread would solve this.
Also, managers who just updated their HQ could notify others by posting a short summary and a link to the update in the news thread. This could solve the number 1 problem with HQ's: most managers somehow don't feel compelled to frequently go to the HQ section to 'blindly' start checking all the HQ's with new posts. Because of this, HQ updates have a relatively small audience, which causes many to decide the hassle of frequent updates is not worth it.
The discussion about the HQ update could now be held in the news thread, which allows it to gradually go off-topic without polluting someone's HQ. And these updates would in turn be a great way to fuel the discussion in the thread. Win-win if you ask me...
And yes, I know this is basically what Twitter is for. But a majority of managers simply forget to go to Twitter, while a thread on the forums here would constantly be noticed by everyone.
I don't use Twitter for the simple reason that I really dislike Twitter. And to use Twitter for a fake team just doesn't seem worthwhile to me. I would prefer to have everything on this site.
I think a big General Discussion type/style thread would be a really nice idea. Twitter is great in the off-season but get's bloody quiet for the other 10months. And the general chat about the Man-Game outside of the off-season is really interesting and fun and good. Certainly looks like a way to encourage more managers to interact and participate more if there are ongoing chats through the season.
It might need some policing to keep it within rules and from becoming too spammy, but i'm certain the Admins/Reporters can handle that.
I have to agree with SotD here. I rarely looked at PT this year unless I was checking on Garby's progress. But if there was some kind of live betting game, I would definitely be into that, and I wouldn't feel neglected in any way as a CT team, because it's not a real privilege. It's not a major part of the game that would give them a better experience in the actual game, so it could work. And if CT and PCT managers participated, that just increases cross branding a bit.
So for huge stages I could support this. of course I don't know about the practicality of it though.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Rather than 'Live' betting which could become hassle to organise, why not try to incorporate some form of pre-race Betting. Is that something that might get managers to take more interest in other divisions?
Edited by SportingNonsense on 07-03-2015 13:49
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