Ideas: No bugs Explanation: Do whatever you want, do it simply if you want, but without bugs. Don't make any changes on the game. Only solving 2014 problems would be great for players. Why: I personally prefer quality, in spite of quantity. You can add a new mode, but if a single online stage doesn't run, you'll work for nothing.
Ideas: AI realism Explanation: Apart from bugs, that's the worse thing of PCM, it's not realistic. In my opinion, simulating a cycling stage with 1/10 scale is impossible. I know that's difficult to change, but if you take this scale you have to know how to manage it to make the game realist. Then, when you attack (no matter who you are) they follow you, and when someone attacks, you're the only one who take the resposability. There are too many attacks. In real life, most of the mountain attacks are in 5-10 people groups, not in 150 pp groups. It's not realistic starting a climb and 15 riders attacking at the same time. Why: I've already explained it.
^ I would like to add more about what samu12 posted.
Yep, the AI as of today still sucks. They would complain that my rider isn't helping in the breakaway while he is actually relaying, then in return I can't complain on them when they're not relaying on the break. Also why would the AI slows down when they're nearing the finish line? That's so lame, as if they're trying to say that I should always lead out every time this happens and in the end spending too much energy for the final dash on the line. The time gaps is pretty unrealistic, especially mountain stages, I was just a wheel away and it shed 30sec. I know there are time bonuses but 30sec isn't the bonus for a stage winner. Does equipment really affect game play?
vismitananda wrote:
The time gaps is pretty unrealistic, especially mountain stages, I was just a wheel away and it shed 30sec. I know there are time bonuses but 30sec isn't the bonus for a stage winner. Does equipment really affect game play?
That's actually because of the 1:10 scale of PCM. It doesn't have to do neither with time bonuses nor with equipment, that's just PCM's scale.
Why? Because it would make the game seem more realistic, and that way it would also be easier to see what is going on around the world.
Also!: Maybe bring press conferences like in Football manager. It's the same concept as with the newspaper: The career will be seen as we see cycling in real life
1st of all - PCM has been my favourite game for years although I have fluctuated with very active periods and long periods of not even touching a game. I think I previously played 08-version and now started with PCM2012. Now, I know this is a thread for 2 years more modern version, but it reads to me that in subjects below nothing has really changed...
I ONLY play off-line and in career-mode. Almost solely with Continental or Pro-Conti teams.
And now to my concerns and wishlist :
Game is absolute beauty to an eye now. Graphic-wise I do not expect too much more... Maybe more realistic crashes and visible injuries would be a "nice" addition. Nice as realism goes, not that I look for gory details.
But after getting all excited for a month of two of a new season, I am starting to find a game to be boring and repetitive.
This will be a long list of issues :
1) The difficulty scale is shitty. Playing below HARD makes you win too much, but on HARD you can no longer succeed by playing things "right". Example : after a long battle, you finally place a rider in a breakaway of non-entities. Your rider may only be a rather weak helper, but he has by far the best sprint stat of breakaway (say 65 against all sub-60s). Thus you should be able to grab bonus seconds in intermediate sprints, right? But on hard, my guy always get helplessly beaten by everybody else in the group. Only way to win such a sprint is by pre-emptive move of attackig from further away... A lot of needless energy burned.
If AI was smart & good enough, one wouldn't need to give "bonus" for AI teams by upping the difficulty level.
2) Time differences in finish are too hard to achieve. When I used to play a lot of PCM08 I used the Hannes Editor and manually changed ALL stages to have a 1-second gap to count in results. That made the results both more realistic and interesting. Now you can no longer make such adjustments.
3) There is absolutely no reason NOT to put all your riders into the front end of peloton. Lagging in the latter parts (or even in thick middle) of the big group brings only risks. Yes, that is realistic in comparison to RL as you may get caught up behind splits and you are also more likely to get caught in crashes (which are way too infrequent in the game anyway). But one should pay a price in extra fatigue in constantly fighting for a good position. That would make you to take decisions about the key moments of the race. When to take it easy and when to move towards a front (think about race TOWARDS Arenberg Forest).
4) Daily form and recovery status should play bigger role in rider's performance (and it should also be a trackable feature of AI riders as it used to be...). It should be especially important in rider's ability to carry tough tasks. A rider with a low daily form could still minimize the losses (would become tactically important especially in stage races) by riding conservatively, hiding in the pack and making a steady effort, but could not carry on setting the pace, going on high-number "dot" riding or effective attacking. Especially, he wouldn't recover after taking any such risk. Otoh, a rider (even a bit more mediocre rider) having a 5-day would have "wings" for spectacular efforts (f ex riding on high "dot".
This would make a player to adjust mid-race when the daily form of your captains is revealed. Can you go for victory or just loss-limitation on a day...
And catching an AI opponent on bad day would similarly CALL for putting him under pressure.
4) Pace-setting in mountains. It seems way too tough to make selections and eliminate weaker riders/helpers from the peloton in climbs. I have maybe not yet played MAJOR mountain stages, but groups at finish of mid-mountain/hilly seem way too large despite my adjutants really sacrificing them on pushing the pace uphill after uphill. This appears to have gotten WORSE from PCM08.
5) Voluntary autobus (or lack of it). EVEN in stage races, every AI rider tries to hold on as long as he can. We well know that this doesn't happen in reality. A lot of people give up a mountain stage as soon as gradient goes up and only concern themselves with beating the time-cut limit. With recovery being more of a factor, this kind of a self-preservation would become important player and acknowledged/practiced by AI too...
6) More DNFs. In real life, not all the riders will finish the race almost any a day. I want to see more injuries, I want to see demoralised riders climbing off the bike. Heck, I even want sprinters to pull out of tours to save themselves for other races. I want AI to do this too...
7) Realistic global travelling from race to race. Getting from Tour of Taiwan to start at Trofej Porec in Croatia next day is not realistic, yet it is completely doable. When you insert a rider to a race, it should also occupy a varying amount of dates before/after event where he could not race elsewhere. Geographical proximity would add/lessen the days needed between two races.
9) Races competed in realistic order during a single date ie. starting from the East and towards the West. I found it stupid to read a result from Vuelta de Colombia before taking it to the road at Malaysia. Not important, but nevertheless...
10) Some new rider stats would be nice... Lead-out stat for one, protection stat 2nd. (if fighting for a position in peloton would realistically eat to one's energy, a quality protector like Eisel, now-retired Carlström and so on, would greatly save captain's energy level. OTOH, you would not use Samuel Dumoulin to protect Cancellara )
11) AI to also use "dot" and to occasionally use "dot" for attacks. Current attack is definitely worth of keeping, but many important attacks (look at Paolini this year in G-W or Terpstra/Kristoff in Flanders) come from dot-type riding. A "follow"-order should probably be available throughout the race to counter such moves energy-efficiently (and AI riders should similarly counter player's moves as well as AI counter AI), but one should probably be capable of limited amount of "order"-commands (either per km or per race).
12) And finally - MORE VARIATION to race strategies of AI!!! I have yet to see a favourite trying ANYTHING before last 5-10 km of stage. Not a single long-distance move, no effort to break the peloton to echelons (even on 40+ winds), no pushing for selection on cobbles. Nothing at all...
PCM08 was unstable when played with big database. It had graphical blunders of riders riding through obstacles and each other. It lacked getting blocked (important if at times frustrating feature in sprints) and so on... But it seemed much more arying playing experience where not only player could use several raceplans but even AI had some jokers in it's sleeve. I am getting really worried that newer PCM wears down fast 'cause you know EXACTLY what is gonna happen...
seldon71 wrote:
The difficulty scale is shitty. Playing below HARD makes you win too much, but on HARD you can no longer succeed by playing things "right". Example : after a long battle, you finally place a rider in a breakaway of non-entities. Your rider may only be a rather weak helper, but he has by far the best sprint stat of breakaway (say 65 against all sub-60s). Thus you should be able to grab bonus seconds in intermediate sprints, right? But on hard, my guy always get helplessly beaten by everybody else in the group. Only way to win such a sprint is by pre-emptive move of attackig from further away... A lot of needless energy burned.
That's why I don't play with the default settings. I struggle with hard myself and playing with normal is too easy actually, so I created a new race difficulty, thought I would share it with you
1. Open local.cdb with Cyanide's Full Editor V4 and tick local.cdb patch (first backup your file in case something might go wrong, though);
2. Open sta_race_difficulty;
3. Create a new race difficulty by adding a brand new line with an unique id (5 for example);
4. In the columns starting with gene_f_refcarcoeff always put a number between normal and hard until you find the perfect balance (I personally use 1,012);
5. Now there is a column called gene_strid_label, you'll need to edit another table of local.cdb, LOC (or sta_localized string). In this table add a new line with an unique id but only edit "constant" and your language's column with the name of the difficulty followed by level (so like ModerateLevel). In your language's column write the name of that difficulty level in your language (so Moderate I guess).
6. Go back to sta_race difficulty and in gene_strid_label input the id you used in the last point. In constant you can write whatever you want as long as it's in capitals.
7. Save and you should see the brand new difficulty in game!
Not sure if you needed this but I thought that it could help
2) Time differences in finish are too hard to achieve. When I used to play a lot of PCM08 I used the Hannes Editor and manually changed ALL stages to have a 1-second gap to count in results. That made the results both more realistic and interesting. Now you can no longer make such adjustments.
Is there anything to do? I would really like to see more time gaps too...
Some good suggestions there, seldon. Though I disagree with point 4, daily form should matter more. I believe it should matter less - winning a race on +5 feels like cheating and a fat -5 on a queen stage can lead to rage quitting. So here's my wish - give us more options! There can never be enough options to customize the gaming experience to the player's needs. So give me the option to turn the feature off entirely (in career mode) and/or better yet, give me the option to adjust how much it can vary by - personally, I'd choose between +2 and -2. Same goes for the difficulty level. matt posted a workaround, but why isn't there a slider to finetune the difficulty?
What I find annoying with daily form, and I seem to have this quite often, is on one day races, a rider that had this race as an objectives turns up and has -4 or -5.
It has happened to me so many times when one of my riders turns up at one of his objectives (for example a puncher on LBL) with an awful form. I know that in real life, riders will have days off, but it seem to happen to me loads.
I understand that, for example, in stage races, everyone will have a day off, even in the mountains, but in real life, you always see the favourites there or thereabouts at the end.
Also another thing that is annoying is that the favourites in Stage Races don't seem to have days off
I think the crash system needs to be looked at. Currently there seems to be no logic behind when a rider will crash. They are just as likely to crash on an ascent as they are on a decent or on the flat which is completely unrealistic. Cobbles don't seem to increase the likelihood of crashing at all.
Also, I don't think I've ever seen a crash in a sprint finish on the game. This is also completely unrealistic and should be looked at for future versions.
I'm been playing PCM for some time, had PCM 2012 and now 2014. Used to play on Desktop with keyboard and I usually speed up boring part of races with + or - .
But now for some reason having to live far from home and using Laptop with short keypad. I does not have + or - . I mean there is no nums pad on keyboard of laptop.
So I have to press [shift+=] for + and [shift+_] for - which is inconvenient.
Is it possible for developers to possibly make it available in future editions games?
1. Add more variants from the grand tours. EX/ Tour de France 2011 route.
2. Bring back detailed simulation.
3. Bring back season mode.
4. Have a new mode called MyCycler mode where you are one individual cyclists and you ride the races with him and have personal talks with your teammates and train to win races!
5. Add a mode in armada where you can trade cards and auction cards.
6. Add create your own grand tour mode where you can create your own races and routes for each of the three grand tours where you would use the power of Google maps to create the route to make it easier to make races rather than spending 30 minutes to create 1 stage in stage creator.
7. Make the races have more crashes because in real life there are lots of crashes in races, like at the end of the Tour de France there are usually 150 - 170 riders coming out of it at the end, not 180 - 185 riders.
8. Add the team cars at the back of the peloton to make the race more realistic.
This is gold!
Few more wishes:
a) Realistic rider signatures (Example: Conta is always "dancing" on the bike while Froome is more watching at his cycle computer :b
b) 1:1 stage on mountains and other famous hills/paves.
c) More rider faces
d) The olympic games
e) possibility to negotiate with riders all season long
f) press conferences after wins or loss.
“When it’s hurting you, that’s when you can make a difference”
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