Allright, time for the testing results!
I made it to 2020, which looks fine for me.
The XMLs are looking really good! Still, I'm going to be as critical as possible, to make it as best as possible
I took 2020 because it should be the point where regens should start winning quite some races, since the oldest regens would be 25-27.
First, the real riders:
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Here's the AVG, I haven't made screenshots of all the stats.
It looks good, but there's 1 thing bothering me.
The 23-28 year old riders that are dominating/really strong in 2014, will dominate even more in 2015-2019.
I'm talking about Tony Martin, Marcel Kittel, Mark Cavendish, Christopher Froome & Nairo Quintana, and even Dan Martin.
They all have 3-5 potential, and except Dan Martin(who just was the best puncher, but didn't get to 84/85s), they all developed to 85 in their main stat.
Quintana & Froome developed to 85 MO, while the second-best ever in the 6 seasons was 83 MO(Nibali).
Cavendish & Kittel developed to 85 SP quickly, and were by far the best for a few years, especially when Greipel started declining. Ewan & Coquard managed to bridge the big gap between the 2 big sprinters and the (big) list of 80 sprinters, and Mohoric(now 83) is getting close as well.
The fact that there's nobody else with 81-84 really worries me though.
Tony Martin developed to 85 TT, with Phinney being the biggest threat, at 81 TT, so it's safe to say that Tony dominated the seasons.
Froome, Cavendish & Martin started declining in 2019, so that's where it ends(and that's why they're not 85 anymore).
Point: So I'd like to see a way to prevent the current dominators to dominate even more, or, to see other riders coming a bit closer(but of course, that might be 'dangerous', because I'd make too many high stats appear).
That last thing is really good in this XML though, the DB doesn't really get 'overpowered' with 80+ stats.
Now the regens(and also some young riders, because it was unavoidable).
I sorted on Age <28, because there was no other way than doing that, so you'll see a few real talents appear, but it might be useful to see their stats as well.
Note: I had a youth academy thingy, so a few are mine, but as said, my best trainer had a 6/10 in his best stat, so that shouldn't have influenced it a lot, because PCM players would have scouted some regens as well, and might even put a better trainer on them.
FL
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I feel like the FL limits are too high, the amount of strong riders on the flat seems to increase a lot(if I'd simulate to 2022 f.e.).
F.e, Janssen(only 24) is mine, so I know he still has 2 stars left. Also, don't forget, Janssen isn't even a fighter, cobbler or sprinter(where the FL stat is really important), but he's a TTist.
Ferrarese is a fighter though, so it makes sense.
(Semi-point: It might be a good idea to higher up the starting FTR stats of fighters. Not necassarily of other specialities though). Point: The FL stat limits might be a bit too generous, especially for TTists, but it's not a big deal.
MO
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Good! Very good!
2nd to 4th one are all regens, and this is where I hoped they'd be at this point. None of them were ever on my team. (Though I have another Andy Frederick, at 76MO, but he's a clone )
Worrying, for both the real riders and regens, is that HI really lacks. This is easy to explain though, since the climber & stage-racer training methods give more stars to MO than HI.
Though I checked their HI limits, and they were around 71-73, which is bad!
Point: Climbers and Stage-racers are good, but the HI limits of both the climbers and stage-racers should be higher
HI
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I love these. We have our first regen that's really at the absolute top(second-best HI stat) here. Checking their limits, they will even get better, there are 4 regens having a 82+ limit, against 1 real rider. What's lacking is their STA though, also their STA limit, which is around 73. Point: The STA limit of the punchers should be a little bit higher Point: Their limits might be a little bit OP, especially in the Daily DB, where the HI stat is a bit lower. Not a big deal though.
TT
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These actually look fine, not having much to say about these.
COB
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As you can see, the best COB regen is 74 at this moment. Which is way lower than the others. Though it makes sense ofc, there are less cobblers than other specialities irl, this isn't enough for me. Though on the other side, their limits look fine, so I'm not sure if there's a big problem.
Something else I saw was the FL limits though, they seem a bit too low for the regens, since FL is really important in COB and the best riders on the FL irl are cobblers(think Cancellara, Chavanel, Ballan, Terpstra etc.) Point: Good, but FL limit should go up
SP
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Good, actually.
At least for the regens, I told you about the others earlier(that 80 SP group and that giant gap to the dominators).
Maybe ACC lacking a bit, but that's not for all of them.
Maybe something that should be changed is their HI stats(limits actually ofc ).
They are obviously too high, with nearly everyone having over 70 HI. Point: Lower HI stats.
DH
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Surely I had to include this one.
The problem was really way smaller than I expected. Still, I think they're too high, given that the DH stats will develop further than this for most of them. There's also a fairly large group of 70+, larger than ideal. Point: Bit lower limits should be cool, but not a huge problem.
Young regens AVG
Just thought this might be useful for you.
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My team:
Just thought this might be useful for you.
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Something Else: Allround riders. I really think it's a problem.
It might not be reflected that good in the 'sorted on main stat' screens, especially not the MO & HI, where the problem is small.
The problem is the biggest for the fighters, and it's also a problem for the sprinters & TTists.
It's best reflected in the ''Young Regen AVG'' screen and the ''My team'' screen I think. Half of them are too allround.
And something else, which was a common issue, is that the main stat of the riders getting high enough, but other important stats lacking, especially in limits. F.e 1. MO high limit, HI low limit 2. HI high limit, STA low limit. 3. (Though smaller problem than the others) SP high limit, ACC lower limit. etc.
This also explains why nobody has a higher AVG than 76 yet.
Thanks for all that work. I can definitely look into making those adjustments.
1: Nothing can be done about the current riders, the way it works, the game looks at their current stat, if it is over what their default rider potential should be they will get a potential stat value within the range of their current value (IE. Cav with his sprint, will automatically get a potential 8 sprint value).
The best way to help other riders, anyone under the age of 26-27 probably should be given an accurate potential. IE Sagan needs to be an 8, etc. that way their potential stats have a chance to get up high enough to rival.
2: I'm a little surprised that TT seemed to get its secondary stat Prologue consistently but others like MO did not. I'll look into what could be causing this. And actually have a decent idea of how to fix.
3: For the TT and Fighters, I want to leave the possibility of becoming an all-rounder, but I will reduce the chances in each category so they should become less common.
4: I'll adjust the fighter starting stats to equal potential stats since this does not increase.
Don't forget, the XMLs are really good, those are just tips to make them even better
That's the goal, luckily the game doesn't seem to change how these work each season so eventually we should get them just about right and be able to carry them over each year. These should work all the way back to at least PCM11 (the first game of the series I owned), I don't know about the game before that.
Edited by Kentaurus on 02-03-2014 13:46
2: I'm a little surprised that TT seemed to get its secondary stat Prologue consistently but others like MO did not. I'll look into what could be causing this. And actually have a decent idea of how to fix.
In your XMLs the TT regens have a higher statistical chance to have a good prologue stat, the MO regens do for the hill stat, so just adjusting the probabilities should do the job
Good to see it was useful, looking forward to the next XMLs, and I think I can better wait a bit before I start my regen-only career
@Ogla
You mean that the TTists have a higher probability to have a good PRL than climbers having for HI, right? Sorry, just confused me a little Edited by Jesleyh on 02-03-2014 15:51
For example under the current set up,
A potential 7 time trialist has 10% chance of having a maximum PRL stat of 81-85, 80% chance of having a maximum PRL of 78-80 and a 10% chance of having a maximum PRL of 75-77.
A potential 6 time trialist has 10% chance of having a maximum PRL stat of 78-80, 80% chance of having a maximum PRL of 75-77 and a 10% chance of having a maximum PRL of 72-74.
While a potential 7 climber has 4% chance of having a maximum Hill stat of 81-85, 40% chance of having a maximum Hill of 78-80, 35% chance of having a maximum Hill of 75-77, a 14% chance of having a maximum Hill of 72-74 and a 7% chance of having a maximum Hill stat of 69-71.
and a potential 6 climber has has 4% chance of having a maximum Hill stat of 78-80, 40% chance of having a maximum Hill of 75-77, 35% chance of having a maximum Hill of 72-74, a 14% chance of having a maximum Hill of 69-71 and a 7% chance of having a maximum Hill stat of 66-68.
It's all in the numbers and it's an absolute pain trying to be consistent across rider types, not least because they aren't equal. I tried to match up my likely max stats with the max stats for that type of rider in the starting DB, with current limitations in place. I am not sure I succeeded and I have found what seems to be evidence the game can exceed the limits I put into the xml's. It's very confusing
IMO top level TT'ers should have a small boost to Flat, might just be a personnal preference but I like them to have good enough flat stats that they can bring a sprint train into position and I tend to use them from about 15KM out to the start of the sprint. If you look at Martin, Phinney, Jungels and to a lesser extent Oram (as I doubt he's fully developed) from the screens Jesleyh posted that's more how I'd see the top regen TT'ers come through.
That said I really like the fact it's mainly pure TT'ers shown and not loads of stage racers. It does look like stage racers TT stats are down abit though, especially when looking at the mountain screenshot, but I think the best stage reacers should always stay a level below the best Pure TTers.
looking at the Hill stat screenshot the punchers seem to be down a little in Acc aswell, the stats seem to suggest they'll lack a little bit of explosiveness when they attack each other.
Jesleyh wrote:
it looks good, but there's 1 thing bothering me.
The 23-28 year old riders that are dominating/really strong in 2014, will dominate even more in 2015-2019.
[long text about current young riders who are good
That's one of the things I mentioned in the 2100 story thread (funnily enough, after dozens of posts bashing solely the .xmls files no one answered me). You can't want regens to compete with Cav, Kittel, Sagan, if these guys will stay at the top ( = their current skill + improvements) for another 5, 10 years. In the 2100 story, Quintana had 84 MO in 2024! If you have regens competing with them that way, it leads to overpowered stats, 15, 20 riders with 80+ MO, which is also really bad.
Therefore one thing that definitely needs to be considered is changing the age of decline. I've lost count of how many times I've read isso saying that if a rider is good in his early 20's, he won't be at the top anymore quite early, i.e. 29, 30. The problem here is that PCM declining system is really bad. If you put Quintana on 29 at a.o.d., in a couple of years he'll be reaching the low 70's. Ifi there's a way to make the regress slower without affecting the progress, then this could be used. Another alternative would be to higher the starting stats of regens and then slower down regress/progress, but that again wouldn't be perfect.
(in fact most of it goes down to PCM's lack of randomness that makes real life unexpected. Riders have good seasons, seasons where they reach excellent form, but also bad seasons; in PCM, it's all too fixed, there is no trouble in reaching peak form when you want and riders don't decline until mid 30's, etc).
In terms of the limits: I think SP and ACC should be treated with the same importance for sprinters, they should have the same %'s. This way, you'd also have sprinters with higher ACC than SP, which seems to be lacking for regens in the screen Jesleyh posted. Partially this could be applied to TT (more chances of a TTlist having an even higher PRL than TT).
In terms of flanders' riders, I think all values of the flanders' .xml should be raised. It's quite different to the other rider types because it's the rider type that has the least chance of being created according to the settings in STA_region, thus less talents appear. For example, the region of Flanders, obviously, has the highest chance, with 25% of their weight-3 rider production; then 5 regions with 15% of chance, and the rest with 10 or lower. If you take MO, there are ~15 regions with chances higher than 25% to generate climbers. Of course, this is a rather simple analysis, without considering region weight of all regions, nor chances of talent on that region, but even then it should be clear to see that there'll be less COB riders generated = .xmls should facilitate the creation of top talents.
Yeah, some good points.
Quintana was 85 MO in my game, which is indeed not what we wish for the regens, but that's what I said in my 'essay' as well I believe.
Another alternative would be to higher the starting stats of regens and then slower down regress/progress, but that again wouldn't be perfect.
I do not want this to happen though, they are perfectly fine now(in terms of how high they start, at least). Stronger than that(f.e. current Daily .xmls) is just not something I'd like.
about the limits about the potential 3-5 current riders
I've told you guys so.. about 20.000 times. Give low potentials to current riders and they surpass their limits because current riders get their potentialmax from the xml files.
If their current stats already surpass the potentialmax, they get weird limits, usually 85-84-83 etc.. call it the rule of 3, usually 3 points higher than their current max.
And that's why kid's, you should give current riders, even very old ones, normal fitting potentials.
But then again, i've told that story so many times, and last 2 years everyone ignored it.
I have the Spr and Acc roughly the same for sprinters in mine, and Kent can easily make that adjustment.
I also adjusted the Flandriennes potentials slightly for the reason Luigi mentions, At least the top guys. They are still rare but should have a higher chance to be strong. I'm not sure I adjusted it enough though.
There is an issue of Age of Decline for Regens as so many are set to start declining at 28 or 29, given they often take ages to develop then they likely get a 1 year window at their peak, which is a bit extreme.
Hmm. I'm working on some ideas of how to limit that, but they would be fairly radical changes to what I currently have. I really wish Simming a season was much faster... We need to create an empty DB that doesn't have very many races for this (I tried earlier and failed). I'd like to keep the same number of teams in the game since that would affect how many riders get picked up etc.
ruben wrote:
about the limits about the potential 3-5 current riders
I've told you guys so.. about 20.000 times. Give low potentials to current riders and they surpass their limits because current riders get their potentialmax from the xml files.
If their current stats already surpass the potentialmax, they get weird limits, usually 85-84-83 etc.. call it the rule of 3, usually 3 points higher than their current max.
And that's why kid's, you should give current riders, even very old ones, normal fitting potentials.
But then again, i've told that story so many times, and last 2 years everyone ignored it.
I've said the same thing for the last two years also...
Ruben, I've read about your hypothesis on this several times indeed, and I've tested it a couple of times, but the result was about the same for when top riders had low potentials and 'normal' potentials (though there usually was a slim advantage to low potentials, who looked a bit better).
I think the stat limits in the Expansion Pack, which used the "low potential system", were pretty good. So taking the Expansion Pack .cdb and .xmls, can you post a test of yours that, by raising the potentials of top riders, creates better limits than the E.P. with low potentials? Please don't take this offensively or as a challenge to what you claim, it's genuinely the willingness to make the game better, but I couldn't reproduce what you say in my tests.
ruben wrote:
about the limits about the potential 3-5 current riders
I've told you guys so.. about 20.000 times. Give low potentials to current riders and they surpass their limits because current riders get their potentialmax from the xml files.
If their current stats already surpass the potentialmax, they get weird limits, usually 85-84-83 etc.. call it the rule of 3, usually 3 points higher than their current max.
And that's why kid's, you should give current riders, even very old ones, normal fitting potentials.
But then again, i've told that story so many times, and last 2 years everyone ignored it.
I've said the same thing for the last two years also...
yep i know,it's more for the stat makers/db makers out there
)
