Anderis wrote:
Ok. I know the development of the game may be too advanced at this stage to seriously consider some of my ideas. Some others may be too hard to implement. Some other may be not good enough. But, since I have nothing to lose (barring a bit of my free time
), I decided to post some of my ideas I have my head full with. Even if you ignore all, but get inspired by one, I’ll feel it was worth to post them all. That’s the only way I can contribute ATM, perhaps. Sorry for longish post too, but that's the only way I can present all of my ideas.
Sorry if some of these have been discussed previously (perhaps some of them have). Feel free to ignore some and pick only what you want.
Option to stick to team's identity forever.
First of all, I would love a possibility to stick to team’s identity forever. Some of us are team’s fans and don’t like the possibility of changing name and colours because the current contract runs out and can’t be renewed. I think there should be a possibility to take an option in the game at the beginning of the career that you will always get an offer from your previous sponsor. It doesn’t have to be the best offer around, but you should be able to stick to your name and colours somehow. Some cycling sponsors stick to the sport for decades, so it wouldn’t be hugely unrealistic. And it should be optional, so the person who don’t like it, can’t play without it.
(In the same way, there could be an option that you can chose one rider who will always agree to stay in your team if you have enough money for his request. Or the option to follow him if he changes his team. For some of us, the game loses some sense if we’re not able to manage our favourite rider/team anymore, so let us build the career around them).
Separate co-sponsors.
I would like to see separate contracts from primary and secondary sponsor. So, for example, one year I can be Garmin-Cervelo, and another one I can be Garmin-Sharp.
Consistency skill
I did read you plan to add some additional skills to those which are already included in PCM. What about consistency skill? Rider with good consistency would be less prone to have a bad day during the race, less prone to get ill, less prone to miss his peak form, less prone to get a decrease in his skills for whatever reason (I will write about this decreases more below).
More complex development of skills
Very important part of the game for me would be more unpredictable development of rider’s skills than in PCM. If you look at PCMdaily databases, most of the riders gets their correction of skills each year. I think riders should be getting some random increases and decreases. Some riders (Peraud, Horner) in reality get surprisingly good late in the career, so a random growth should also be possible for older riders. Serious injuries should effect in decreases of skills, some of them recoverable (short or long term), some of them will hamper a rider forever. Also development of young riders should be less steady. Some should develop rapidly at very young age, but fail to make further progress once they hit 24 or so. Some should develop slowly at young age and take a rapid growth at 25, 27 or so. Some should look quite average before getting an unexpected growth at 30. There should be various scenarios, more randomness, but also it should be influenced to some extent by manager.
I think riding races should be a part of rider development. Development of young riders should be affected negatively if they race either too little or too much. Some riders should be more sensitive and some less. Some require a bit more racing, some less. Riders shouldn’t be able to develop and keep a world-class level without racing in the most important races (GTs, monuments etc.).
More complex training
One of the things that is in the biggest need to get an improvement over PCM is training IMO.
First change I would like to see is the possibility to implement different types of training to rider’s schedule. We should have types of training that improve climbing, hills, cobbles, sprints and TTs. And they should be contrary. So if you put a good sprinter to a solely climbing training, he will start losing his sprinting and flat skills. If you want to have a versatile rider, you need to have him doing different types of training at the same time, because he should deteriorate in skills that are contrary to his current type of training (but only to some extent, there’s no need for climber with 58 sprint to deteriorate in climbing, it should be also an individual thing for a rider of how good they’re going to be in certain skill without training it at all, for example: some climbers will settle on 61 sprint, and others will on 63 or 64). Changing type of training should result in quite quick change of skills (few weeks for example), so for example Cancellara can train cobbles for the first half of the year, and then he trains more TT to prepare for WC ITT in the second half of the year. Or you send some classics specialist for climbing training to help his leader in TdF, so they can hang onto the group for longer during the climbs in July. Some of riders should be naturally predisposed to be a versatile rider, so they can maintain multiple of skills on high level without big effort. Some other should be more one-sided, and it will be really hard to improve him in secondary skills and impossible to make a true all-arounder from him.
And transformation of type of rider should be possible, but not be that easy. So for example if you put climber on sprinting training, he will get quicker, but most likely his decrease in climbing skills will be bigger than his increase in sprinting skills, so it will make no sense. But they will be some exceptions with riders possible to get the transformation done successfully (but some should be more likely than others, for example you are more likely to get a good climber from TT-er than from sprinter). And sometimes you can get huge improvement in one area without big loses in other. And if you have good staff in your team, sometimes you get a suggestion that this rider can be successfully transformed into other type of rider.
Also there should be ways to improve secondary skills, so I can imagine a few types of climbing training (one more steady, one more dynamic or so). Some of them will effect in improving hills and acceleration along with climbing (and they may have slight influence on sprint then, for example) and some other will rather improve resistance and recuperation and will allow to maintain a good TT skills, but at the cost of acceleration and hills.
Also getting rider into good form should be more interesting. For example high-mountain training camps that result in decrease in from shortly after, but a big increase few weeks later. And each rider should react a bit differently to them, so sometimes you don’t get it right for less experienced riders.
Radical proposition: skills changing costantly and adjusting to rider's form.
I have pretty radical proposal with skills constantly changing and adjusting itself to rider’s form. So for example Contador in peak form would have 82 mountain, in off-season let’s say 74 mountain, and let’s say 72 mountain if he gets ill. Thanks to that, we could estimate how good a rider will be in his peak form, but we will never know for sure. And I think there should be kind of uncertainty if rider has achieved his peak form already. For example, he was 82 in his peak last year, but now he achieved 81 and we don’t know If that’s his limit, or will he go 1 or 2 further in the following weeks. I think that would be a good step forward in realism.
I think that, like in Football Manager, there should be an option to hide skills of riders from other teams. Also each rider should have his own reputation, so opponents react to his riding based on his reputation and previous results more than his actual skills. Even if our rider is the best climber in the game, he will not be treated as a race favourite if he has never achieved anything in big races before.
Relationships between riders and staff
As in Football Manager, I would like to see some kind of relationship between riders and staff. All riders should like some other and dislike some other. We, as a managers, should become disliked by a rider for who he didn’t keep our promises for. It would make a lot tougher to keep him or sign him in the future this way. It should also work the other way around. If rider feels happy riding for us, he will start like us, and we will be more likely to keep him despite the interest of other teams, or have him back in the team in the future. This should apply especially for riders, who really stepped up at the time they were riding in our team. Also random “likes” should be appearing between riders (especially the same nationality, but not only), who are riding for the same team for a while. So you always have a better chance of attracting riders to your team, if some riders who are liked by him are already in your team.
Buy riders out of contract option
I hope there will be a possibility to buy riders from other teams out of the contract. It would be also interesting if other teams can try to buy our rider out of the contract occasionally, so we end up with additional cash. There should be negotiations in case, but also a possibility they will buy a rider out of the contract without our permission (if rider is really unhappy at our team), so we will end up with huge financial compensation for that.
Rider's personality and how it affects contract negotiations. Managing riders ambitions.
I think I’ve read in this thread riders could have a different personalities. I recommend them to have ambition and professionalism features. How will they work in the game, I will write below.
It would be good if riders want to ride or have leadership in certain races. They should state during contract negotiations “I want to have a certain participation in Tour de France”, “I want to have a leadership for one Grand Tour this year”, “I want to have a free role at Eneco Tour” etc. If we can match their ambitions, then OK, but if we can’t (we feel we have better leader for given race for example) then we should have an option to offer them other guarantees instead (for example a free role for Giro instead of participation in TdF) or to convince them by offering more money. We should be also able to ask them to give up on their ambitions in order to help other rider in this race. It should have the best possibility of success, if the potential leader is in “like” relationship with rider we currently negotiate, or at least from the same country.
There should be also differences in riders behaviours. Ambitious riders should demand more guarantees. And if manager doesn’t give them what they demanded during contract negotiations, ambitious and professional rider will keep working hard but he will leave the team the first time he will have a possibility. A rider with high ambition, but low professionalism will start whining and maybe ignoring some of our instructions regarding training etc. so we will have a hard time with him. A rider with low ambition and high professionalism will perhaps accept the situation. But these kind of riders will rarely be able to reach very high level and keep it for a long time.
Managing rider’s ambitions would be a great addition for the game and would improve realism. Also it prevents us from creating super-teams without artificial limitations like “you can’t spend more than 600 000 for cycling’s salaries”.
Regarding contract negotiations, the biggest names could come with a demand like “OK, I may sign with you, but your team doesn’t look particularly strong in climbing/sprinting/whatever is the rider’s strength, so you need to contract a few riders to help me in this kind of races before I sign a deal with you.” And sometimes they may recommend a particular name, most possibly the one being in a “like” relationship with him.
More roles and goals to chose from for given race.
I think there should be more options with setting roles and priorities for the team before the race. Priorities available for the race would be: GC, sprints and breakaways (and stage hunting possibly). We could chose a primary and secondary priority out of these (with a possibility to have no secondary priority, full focus on GC for example). If we have a famous GC rider, he will get angry if we don’t set a GC as our main priority for an important race for him. The same goes for a very top sprinter. Riders who were promised a free role may get angry if you don’t set breakaways as one of the priorities.
Also there should be more roles to distribute. For example:
- A sole leader (no additional leaders can be chosen if one of riders has this role set)
- Primary leader/Secondary leader (in case of having two leaders with one of them being slightly favoured)
- Co-leader (in case of having a few equal leaders)
So we can have either a sole leader, a primary leader and secondary leader, or some co-leaders (only one of three options can be used at the same time) and then:
- Protected rider (barring unusual circumstances or very last kilometers, rider is not used to do some work for his team-mates, so he can maintain a decent position in GC for example)
- Free role (rider can attack or ride on his own)
- Domestique
More roles available will give us more options in managing riders ambitions. For example Contador will perhaps demand a sole leader role, or primary leader role at the very least, while Hesjedal and Dan Martin can be satisfied enough as co-leaders for GTs.
Dynamic calendar. Your long-term influence part 1.
I’m also curious if you could introduce a dynamic calendar. With races changing dates (and I don’t mean few days each year, but one-off change by few weeks or months) occasionally and categories. Again, it would be great if we can contribute to this, so if we can make a rider or team from lesser cycling country successful, there is a good chance that one of the races taking place in this country will get a higher category (in ideal case, a brand new race could be created in countries that don’t have any race in UCI calendar ATM). It’s perhaps not an important thing to focus on, but if it’s doable, it could make longer careers interesting IMO and add some realism as well.
Dynamic level of cycling talent in a country. Your long-term influence part 2.
I would also like some changes in level of talent in some countries. For example, if I create a team from, let’s say, Romania or Brazil, and my team becomes successful, then after few years I should have a bit more of choice of talent available from this country. Also random growths and decreases among other countries, so we can experience some interesting scenarios in longer careers.
Bigger role of reputation
I think good improvement In realism would be if each rider has a certain level of reputation based on his previous results and is treated in negotiations, pre-race predictions and races according to his reputation, not actual skills. Also you could have your own reputation and at the moment you become a very successfull manager, it will get easier to negotiate some good deals and riders will tend to trust your choices more. There should be also an option to hide the skills of riders outside our team, so we need to guess based on race results. I think it would be fun and kind of challenge, but it should be optional if it’s introduced.
3D propositions
I also trust your 3D will be more realistic, than in PCM. If you plan to use bars of energy, like PCM, then I recommend you that running out of yellow bar should have more dramatic effect. It would make managing energy of a rider more interesting, especially for a GC contenders that are not among top3 climbers in the race. You should decide whether you want to hang onto as long as possible, using slipstream and high pace set by others and risking running out of gas completely, or you run your own pace. AI should also miscalculate sometimes and run out of yellow bar with rider slowing down dramatically for a kilometer or two. Having still a team-mate with you should minimize the effect. Whole thing would allow better selection, because domestiques can run out of yellow bar setting the pace, while most of the leaders will try to avoid it.
Also AI’s reaction to our attack should have a random factor. It should be possible to surprise them. But it shouldn’t be too easy. I think attacking is not rewarding enough in PCM, you’re almost always better with dot. It would be nice to see a change of it, enabling us more strategic moves that can actually work.
I also think enabling multiple protection should be possible. So helper 1 protects our leader, and helper 2 protects helper 1. We see this kind of things in reality, trains consisting of 4 or 5 riders in mountain stages. So only first rider uses more energy and only last rider uses less. If the first rider can no longer maintain the pace, the second is taking “uses more energy” mode. I think it would also be good for helpers to be able to set the pace while still protecting the leader. We see this kind of behaviours in real races. I also think protection should cost a little bit less energy than in PCM (in real life we see riders taking care of their leaders a bit longer than I feel it’s in PCM), and protected rider should not be allowed to ride dot or relay. Either hold the position in the group or follow your team-mate, otherwise you lose protection (I think it’s unrealistic to ride dot under protection).
And one less important story is that in 3D mode riders appearances could vary a little. A few features like faces, hairstyles, hair colours, riding styles, which would vary a little among riders, would do the work, because it’s sad to look at the peloton in which every single rider looks identical.
Rider's skills should make more sense
The thing that is very disrupting in PCM is that, after few years of the career, you often see riders, who are good in sprinting skill, but quite bad on flat. Good on cobbles but bad on flat. Good in mountain, but far worse in hills. Good in TT but bad in prologues. It’s unrealistic. I think there should be mechanism that won’t allow:
- Hills to be much worse than mountain.
- Flat to be much worse than sprinting or cobbles.
- Time trial to be much worse than prologues.
The former skills should accommodate to the latter, so if for some reason, mountain take much higher rise that hills, hills automatically get a rise too, not to fall to much behind mountain. A certain difference (3-4 points) between the two should be allowed, but if it gets more than that, it should be reduced automatically. And it should work the other way around, so you can have a man who is good on flat but bad on cobbles, but you can’t have a man who is good on cobbles but bad on flat.
Also secondary skills should be reasonable as well. I remember having a newgen who would max out on 82 cobbles, but around 70 in flat, and below 70 in acceleration, stamina and so on in PCM2013. Please, ensure we have no more stories like these in your game. Being good in one skill doesn’t have to mean a rider will be good in other, but some outcomes may be unrealistic and it would be good to avoid them.
Development teams
Another interesting feature would be a possibility of having development teams. We could chose which young riders we would like to sign a contract (of course the best prospects wouldn’t be interested if they have offers from professional teams), monitor their development and influence it a bit. Of course it should be possible only with the biggest teams and we need to persuade a sponsor first, which won’t be an easy task usually.
More focus on TTTs
One of my favourite things in cycling are team time trials. I would like this aspect of cycling getting a bit more focus, than in PCM. First of all, there should be WC in TTT, and it could be an important goal for some sponsors.
I would also like to see guys with good prologue but worse ITT to be useful even in longer TTTs, as it is in reality.
It would be also good to see some TTT training camps improving team-work during TTTs. And also an option for manager to train TTT in 3D in career mode.
Also some more options during TTT itself so the TTT is more than just a sum of skills of riders in the team. Maybe an option to recommend more/less risk in corners (more risk results in more frequent crashes, but it should also be dependent on riders skills). Maybe riders with poor prologue skill being unable to set the very high pace while they’re leading. Something to make TTTs more tactical.
Sporting directors
I would also like sporting directors to appear in this game. They could (depending on their particular skills) influence riders contract negotiations, riders morale during the race, maybe training etc. They could also be in “like” and “dislike” relations with riders, so having a popular sporting director onboard would help us to attract certain riders.
Also there should be an option to offer a sporting director role in our team to a retiring rider.
I’m aware many of these things are impossible to implement, but ATM I can’t determine which suggestions can be useful and which not, so I wrote everything that came into my mind. Sorry for long post once again, I admire everyone who's managed to read it all.
"When i get sad, i stop being sad, and be awesome instead... True story..."
