I think too many stat changes to riders under contract would just annoy managers without solving anything. As said above, if the sprint trains and leader not sprinting bugs can't be fixed due to hard coded Cyanide stuff, frustrations will remain. Just took a quick look at the DB, just normal declines and reducing FA's will already cause a lot of changes.
TheManxMissile wrote:
Regardless of tackling inflation, it won't fix the GC Lead Bug (which is unrelated to stats & inflation). Without changing the game version it's still a disadvantage to have a leading sprinter or a sprint based team vs other terrains. This AI issue is significantly more damaging than the other sprint issues.
I don't think that's necessarily true. I think we see with stages like the most recent of Romandie and another recently (I can't remember exactly which, but also one where a train delivered a win) that leadouts do work in less crowded or weaker sprint fields. It's much less of a big deal if riders get dropped into the wind too early when there's only 3-5 sprinters chasing who might even be a bit weaker and have spent more energy already, compared to ~10 sprinters who are almost just as strong.
And again, there are ideas out there for the GC bug that at least should be tested.
baseballlover312 wrote:
Related, do we know if 85 is a firm cap in this version? As in, can an 84 rider on a +5 go higher than 85 in real ability? Because if not, that would be a benefit of a mass reduction, since it would give top riders room to improve on good days.
I was actually about to point out the opposite. Daily form is really strong in PCM, even +3 or +4 can give stat boosts of 5 or more to main stats. If there is more room "above" the top sprinters, this would open the door even more for poor sprinters to overperform, no? e.g. an 81 sprinter gets a +6 in sprint, then a 83 rider would only need a +2 to keep up (which at max fitness is already achieved at 0 or +1 daily form). Whereas a 78 sprinter with +6 would be 2 points better than an 80 sprinter with +2.
To be fair though, I'm actually not 100% sure if 85 is actually a hard cap.
@Cunego - Not sure if you quoted the wrong text, or got confused on my comment.
The quoted text is only in relation to the GC Bug, as it affects sprint GC races and affects both stage results, points raknings, the GC, and to a lesser extent U25 rankings. So if you built your team around these kinds of races, that's a greater disadvantage vs a team built around "normal" GC races.
For Lead-out related issues, we do have systems already in the game that can work to balancing this problem. It's not game-breaking if we take further actions and could continue with PCM20 as is (if it was the only sprint problem).
You're point is correct that inflation reduction would also help this (as it would help reduce some of the randomness on every terrain, and help with overall game balance and training related questions and so on and so forth, beeen over inflation to death in previous years. Will happily go back into that talk in this years Suggestions Thread as relevant, because i have serious questions and doubts over the suggested ideas thus far). But again, it does not impact the bigger problem of GC Bug.
I'm happy to see the +stage idea tested, but if it does not work (or does not get tested) i need to strongly make the point about which game version we then look at.
__________
Stat Cap - I don't think PCM has changed too much in this area, where stats do go above 85 under the hood (to allow daily form to actually work).
Setting a riders stats to 86 doesn't (if i remember correctly) make the rider better. But once in-race, +ve form can give the rider the relevant boost above 85.
Now i'm giving PCM some credit here, as various of the factors which should affect Daily Form (such as favourite races, preffered weather etc) have never quite worked as intended.
TheManxMissile wrote:
I'd also remind people that PCM stats are non-linear, so mass reductions are not strictly balanced. A 77 rider is much closer in ability to an 80 rider, than an 80 to an 83..
I've heard/known this for a long time, but do we actually know what the scale of margins between stat points is? Whatever it is, this would mean a mass reduction would actually hurt inflation problems, which again, are most destructive in second and third tier riders right now. It would basically press those guys even closer together if the margin between their stats is different.
Related, do we know if 85 is a firm cap in this version? As in, can an 84 rider on a +5 go higher than 85 in real ability? Because if not, that would be a benefit of a mass reduction, since it would give top riders room to improve on good days.
Imma need the source for the attribute scaling. Otherwise its yet another conspiracy theory
First of all, I hope you won’t be offended by the fact that this comes from someone currently not a part of MG. I still love the idea and follow whenever I can, although I lost the urge to run my own team.
Saw the talk about stats and this idea for MG formed in my mind.
I showed this to Roturn and we talked about it and that if the interest is there, we will need to check if some managers would be hurt unreasonable hard if implemented.
Anyway, instead of cutting dramatically one time, might be an idea to make a long-term solution. The idea is all about decrease.
Valverde:
Every year after division changes have been posted but before renewals, a manager can select riders having “Valverde genes” no matter what age the rider will not decrease after the season.
PT can select 3 rider, PCT/CT 2 riders Only riders not selected (no matter what team) last season, can be selected.
This part of the system is to make more spread of age/stat, and will also add to the spread of stat at high end, no matter what division
Early decrease:
Note: these riders can still be trained, to maintain their previous “stats” at the usual cost)
From the age of 29 to 32 every rider will get -1 in all stats above 74, unless they are selected for Valverde rule.
Expected effects
The effect will be that (almost) every rider over the 29-32 period will get a general -3 in their best stat, making a database that looks a lot more like the one the game expects.
With a shorter period from Maxed to Decrease and the Valverde system, should create a db with more spread in the top and a less stacked field in the races. Also teams will have new options with special focus, e.g if you “save” your “cobbler” you can hope most manager focused on other terrains.
Important to note also is that if you got a 5-riders train, at a certain terrain only 1-2 (29-32 years old) are hit, as oppose to mentioned systems where you downgrade the entire database.
I hope you see that even though you riders will decrease, you are facing a weaker field, to make it all worthwhile, combined with the fact that we can hope the inbuild spread of high-level stat will create better options for the favourites. Also, a lot of interesting new options and consideration could make the game more fun, definitely interesting to see how “Valverde” is used and entire new considerations regarding training of 29-32 years old riders.
Training will also become relative cheaper as everyone have lower stat riders to compete against, unless someone (read Roturn) spoil the fun.
I don’t think this will fix what is know as bad AI, Cyanide makes a game to reflect pro-cycling and pro-cycling is very unpredictable, but it may help create a DB that Cyanide can handle, to create more fair results over the entire season. A few mystic results are fun, just not too many.
-----------------------------------
NB: Someone asked if you can go higher that 85 in PCM2020, quite sure you can’t. played a bit and never seen it. If you are +3 on the day (79 climber) you typicaly get +1 +2 or max +3 in climbing, but you get up to +8 in stat you are low. (68 RES can become 76)
That's an interesting idea with early decline for some riders. But I would only do it only for the main stats (leaving STA, RES and REC as they are).
There are two down sides I could see to this is that most likely people are going to pick their leaders to be protected and it will be the liutenants who actually go down in stats. This means that: the gap between the big guns and the very next layer will get bigger and it will result in weaker team depth. And MG are pretty lacking in terms of depth as opposed to a regular team from the daily database and weaker teams could result in even stranger results.
alexkr00 wrote:
There are two down sides I could see to this is that most likely people are going to pick their leaders to be protected and it will be the liutenants who actually go down in stats. This means that: the gap between the big guns and the very next layer will get bigger and it will result in weaker team depth. And MG are pretty lacking in terms of depth as opposed to a regular team from the daily database and weaker teams could result in even stranger results.
I actually disagree that this is a bad thing. Most of the inflation issues in the DB are not in the 80-85 range anymore. I mean, there still are some issues there, but by and large they're not game breaking and have been steadily helped by declines and talent additions over the last few years.
The main issue are in the 76-79 range imo, at least on most terrains. Almost all maxed domestiques come from this range, regardless of division. Every team can get a 50k domestique in this range (except cobbles) without any issue. This is worst at CT, where the difference between leaders and domestiques is especially small, but it is the case at every division. After the leaders, there isn't actually much of a difference between teams with lots of depth and teams without it, because there's a essentially a stat floor right now because of the oversupply in the DB.
This change will help that. If leaders are the ones who end up being protected, it will indeed cause more guys in that stacked range to decline, but not all of them, because leadership v. domestique depends on the division. They will be the protected leaders in CT and occasionally PCT, while they likely won't be in PT. Some will decline to the 74-75 range, while others won't. This means the same riders will be spread out over a greater range after the declines, which is a good thing. It's good for racing, and it's good for the market because return on investment for that tier of rider becomes more predictable again.
So, honestly, I like the idea. I think it's drastic compared to what we've done in the past, but this is the kind of thing we pretty much need to do in order to sort out the DB long term.
Two ways I might adjust it:
My gut reaction is that a 29 year old declining is pretty rough. At that point you might be discouraging people from developing talents that may max at 26 or 27 because they will barely have any peak time. I'd probably make the cutoff 30, though I recognize that would have some implications with the training deadline. That would mean everybody, even if protected the max amount of times, at least gets a -1 before their actual decline. But if we make it so no released/disbanded FA's can be Valverde'd, there would still be variance at the top. It being an odd number of years may not be great though because everyone would choose 30 and 32, whereas now you may choose that or 29, 31 instead.
I'm wondering if 74 is still too low. Long term, do we still want a stat floor that high? I'd say make it 73 instead, or maybe even 72. That's not an unrealistic level for a CT domestique in DB's that the game want to act like. And over time, with talent addition adjustments, it will widen the spread even further. Perhaps Alex makes a good point though that it should only apply to main stats, since energy stats are never trained and are often already lacking in MG - we don't want to decrease the differences of riders in those stats further.
This type of decrease is also much more important to retaining integrity at the top end if Tamijo is right that Daily Form helps the top guys less because of the 85 limit. I say we go for it in whatever form we can agree on. We need to increase the range of stats in this game desperately. This plan, along with adjusted talent additions, has the potential to make our DB workable again within a few seasons.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
baseballlover312 wrote:
The main issue are in the 76-79 range imo, at least on most terrains. Almost all maxed domestiques come from this range, regardless of division. Every team can get a 50k domestique in this range (except cobbles) without any issue.
This only happened this year though because we had 2 PT teams less than usual and most prices in FA dropped. You couldn't get 77-78mo domestiques for 50k before that. They usually went for more than 100k. And I think the plan is to go back to 22 teams next year so we will be back to higher wages for domestiques.
On first glance, I like the idea - especially since it could solve one of the biggest non-AI issues i have with the game: I think it is very beneficial from a management POV (!) to have an ongoing inflation and having some sort of MAL like top talent in each talent intake / FA class of the DB to allow newer teams to catch up with existant top teams. But since we have overdone it with the inflation in the past that could not continue. A solution like this could allow us to add top tier talents once again since it helps fizzle out the top a bit before they decline.
Spoiler
i think it has to be either only main stats (MO, HI, SP, TT, CB and possibly PRL) or all stats. Randomly adding certain important backup stats like ACC but ignoring others like RES or FL seems quite arbitruary.
Right now, i think i would say main stats only since backup stats are already so harshly hit by the current decline and this could make the cool dynamics that older riders turn into strong energy lieutenants.
knockout wrote:
i think it has to be either only main stats (MO, HI, SP, TT, CB and possibly PRL) or all stats. Randomly adding certain important backup stats like ACC but ignoring others like RES or FL seems quite arbitruary.
Right now, i think i would say main stats only since backup stats are already so harshly hit by the current decline and this could make the cool dynamics that older riders turn into strong energy lieutenants.
Agree with this, though the one exception would be ACC for sprinters. Perhaps your acceleration decreases with the main stats if you have over a certain sprint stat?
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
"Valverde Rule"
1) You really need to give PT & PCT teams the same number of protects. In the current rules both divisions require 20 riders & they race directly against each other for points in PTHC. Allowing PT to protect more riders gives them an extra advantage ontop of the increased budget & wage cap, which i feel is unfair.
2) It's hugely unfair against certain teams. Having flicked through the DB some teams could protect everyone this season, and then protect every new 28yo next season as well. Other teams take declines to more than half their squad this season alone.
3) What's my incentive to protect a 31yo vs a 28/29yo? If i have 4 scoring leaders with similar stats/OVL, 3 are 28-29 & one is 31, i have no reason to protect that 31yo. They hit normal decline next year anyway, where as i could protect the 28/29yo twice. I have no reason to say "yes, please decline this rider 3 times, so i can save this rider for one year".
The result of this is just changing the age of decline to 32, and allowing me to benefit from this sytem vs. a team who has all younger leads, or all older leaders.
4) These Valverde declines hit enough riders across the divisions that whilst the overal stat level comes down, the general distribution of stats remains unchanged.
Each year 168 riders get a protection. And i estimate about 260 get some -1's. But the average age of rider signed is less than 28, and i estimate it that ~600 riders either remain static or increase (some very rough guesses here, i have also made allowance for riders over 32 getting normal declines).
With such a system designed to encourage you to protect the best rider possible, we force even more riders back into the 73-79 range that is currently causing a lot of our inflation issues. So yes this system lowers the overall stat values, but does not fix the actual problem of too many riders on similar stats.
Anyway, "Valverde Rule". I get the underlying theory behind it as an alternative to blanket -1's. But for me it's impacts are still not fairly distributed across the game, and it does not give us the stat distribution required.
But i'm about to dive off into arguing for a re-set of the DB so we can get back to one that PCM is intended to work with (and build in better protections to avoid the same issues in the future, and help create a more sustainable Division system with great incentives and motivations for different managers with different kinds of goals, and just overall help tidy up the MG into a stronger game better suited to modern interests & PCM editions). And i know that idea of a re-set will not be accepted by the majorit.
I agree, that rule would be really unfair to some teams and heavily favors teams that rely only on few leaders.
Also looking at my team, I got myself team captains that are rather young, so I wouldn't have to worry about them declining in a long time. Now Mohoric, Kasperkiewicz, Gidich, Hsu & Mano would be in that 29-32 area at the same time and couldn't all be protected, which would force me to completely abandon my longterm plans.
Just to take the concept of more stratified declines, and alter it slightly, i'd suggest the following:
Rider turns 30. This triggers a "decline dice roll". For every rider at 30 you generate a random number in the excel file. 0.001-0.499 = No decline. 0.500-0.999 = Start Decline. No decline obviously means continue as normal. Start Decline means that, the rider starts to decline as if they were 32 in our current system.
For all the riders who did not Start Decline at 30, when they turn 31 you repeat the process. And all riders Decline at 32 as usual.
This can be applied equally across all contracted and FA riders.
This would help give us more decreases, and in a greater variety (as Potential now also plays a role in decline speed), whilst maintaining 3-4 years of max'd usage for most riders. It would also be fairer, because as a manager you have no control over if a rider declines or not. Plus you can still have an older team and suffer no declines, with a little luck.
You could take it further and bring the system down to 28year olds, and change the cut-off for starting decline e.g at 28 you only decline if the number is 0.801-0.999. Or set it to start rolling after 4 years at xp4.100. Can get really creative with the idea and boundaries!
I would only introduce this sytem (or any new decline system) after the coming off-season, to allow managers a renewals-transfers to account for it as a new system & make any team changes accordingly.
TheManxMissile wrote:
But i'm about to dive off into arguing for a re-set of the DB so we can get back to one that PCM is intended to work with (and build in better protections to avoid the same issues in the future, and help create a more sustainable Division system with great incentives and motivations for different managers with different kinds of goals, and just overall help tidy up the MG into a stronger game better suited to modern interests & PCM editions). And i know that idea of a re-set will not be accepted by the majorit.
I gotta be honest here. I'm not sure how you can argue for a total reset of the DB and yet argue against more incremental solutions because they favor certain teams over others. It's not like a full reset would be even handed whatsoever. There are teams right now who are much better, and have a much better future lined up. A full reset hurts them way, way more than any of the solutions hereto suggested could hurt any single team. I'm not saying the Valverde Rule would work, or be better than other solutions, or that any specific change we've discussed would help the DB in a way that's worth it. But no solution is going to affect everyone equally, and a full reset seems to me to be the most unfair and discriminatory of them all. I also fail to see how using a dice roll to make declines is at all more fair to anyone than allowing real control from the manager. You've just created a system where one team can have all their leaders decline, and another has none, despite them all being the same age.
I'm not trying to attack you personally TMM (or Bikex), so I apologize if I'm coming off a little harsh here, but I'm getting pretty frustrated with this pattern of discussions. Whether it's the Valverde Rule, or staggered reductions, or voluntary declines. No idea ever goes anywhere. It seems like we've had these same discussions for years now. We make a thread like this every year. Over the course of a couple of months several people bring ideas forward that while not perfect, could help with refinement. After a mixed discussion, enough people are opposed for one reason or another that the discussion fizzles out.
In the end, nothing gets done. We've talked about this stuff on and on for years, and nothing has ever changed. Nobody can agree because no solution is perfectly fair to everyone or can satisfy everybody's desires for improving/preserving the game. It's all a waste of time and energy.
We should either do something, or not do something. I'd like to make some changes to improve the stability of the game, and I'm not alone. I think we all share that desire to some extent. But if no new idea ever has a real shot of getting off the ground, these discussions are not even worth the brainpower for any of us. I'm gonna stay in the Man Game no matter what. I hope it survives whatever happens.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
In the end, nothing gets done. We've talked about this stuff on and on for years, and nothing has ever changed. Nobody can agree because no solution is perfectly fair to everyone or can satisfy everybody's desires for improving/preserving the game. It's all a waste of time and energy.
Agree with a lot of what you say. But after years of advocating you got your new fighter path last year. So things can change on a more modest basis. I think that example is a model for changes that are realistic.
1. Incremental - radical changes are just too likely to be controversial or risky
2. Balanced - avoid impacting different teams differently while recognizing no change can be completely fair.
3. Clearly defined - specifics make for a more actionable outcome.
4. Limited in scope - fix one thing at a time.
So while I may agree some more radical surgery on tthe DB would be nice I don't think it is realistic.
So I am going to narrow back down to my favorite topics - sprinters and make a specific proposal there. I think if we can find something that works for sprinters then it could be expanded to other rider types in the future. But right now sprinters are the biggest issue.
So my suggestion is a refinement of what Roturn suggested like 3 pages ago. It would apply only to free agents:
if Current Speed Is
SP + ACC reduced
84
No Change
83
No Change
82
No Change
81
Reduce randomly from 0 to 2
80
Reduce randomly from 1 to 3
79
Reduce randomly from 1 to 3
78
Reduce randomly from 1 to 2
77
Reduce randomly from 1 to 2
76
Reduce randomly from 0 to 2
75-
No Change
The randomly determined value would create more spread. The same value would apply to SP and ACC so they wouldn't average out, some would get a lot worse some only slightly.
In addition I would the renewal salary demands of the impacted riders should all be 10% higher than they otherwise would be to raise the cost of retention. Otherwise everyone will just retain all their sprinters.
I would also say now we are going to do this the next two seasons at a minimum and then decide whether to continue or not.
Assuming 30% of relevant riders become FA (maybe too high) and the Randoms distribute evenly and we ignore other other age related changes the DB distribution change looks like this after one offseason:
SP
Current #
% of Current 76+
Estimated Future #
Future % 76+
84
2
1%
2
1%
83
6
3%
6
4%
82
8
4%
8
5%
81
12
7%
10
6%
80
20
11%
15
9%
79
43
24%
34
20%
78
26
15%
25
15%
77
33
19%
33
20%
76
28
16%
36
21%
75-
+9
I might also change the development tracks for lower potential SP but going to follow my own rules and limit my scope.
baseballlover312 wrote:
The main issue are in the 76-79 range imo, at least on most terrains. Almost all maxed domestiques come from this range, regardless of division. Every team can get a 50k domestique in this range (except cobbles) without any issue. This is worst at CT, where the difference between leaders and domestiques is especially small, but it is the case at every division. After the leaders, there isn't actually much of a difference between teams with lots of depth and teams without it, because there's a essentially a stat floor right now because of the oversupply in the DB.
a) That is just not true. Across all divisions, there are 149 maxed riders with a mountain stat of 76-79 (and a hill stat of at best 76, to exclude Beltran type of guys). Just 39 of them make at most 55k. That's not even enough for one per PT and PCT team.
Even if you exclude everyone making more than 150k to really try and limit it to domestiques (otherwise you have guys like Chiarello, Arndt or Warbasse in there), you still end up with an average wage of 79k.
If you do something similar with hills (76-79 hill stat, at most 74 in either mountain, cobbles or sprint stat), you're at 104 riders, of which 43 make less than 60k. A higher percentage for sure, but still not like every team can just grab one or two of them off the street.
I agree with you a bit more in CT where there are three guys with 79 or 80, one of which is Seboka, and 31 with 78-76. It would be nice to have a bit more stratification there. But also, only 12 of those 31 guys make less than 70k.
b) I still feel like the best way to approach this issue is through Free Agent reductions. You said it yourself, it might be too easy to pick these guys up - well, it won't be anymore if you reduce riders out of contract pre free agency. In my opinion, this is still the easiest way for managers to protect their riders. Maybe you can force their hand a bit by slightly increasing wage demands, but I'm not sure that's even necessary.
If you excluded riders from folding teams (which I would, as I've said before), these are the riders who were available in FA who had previously been under contract (if a rider hits multiple 75 stats, he's only included for the higher one):
82
81
80
79
78
77
76
75
Mountain
3
0
9
9
12
7
Hill
3
1
2
9
12
13
TT
1
2
5
3
11
Cobbles
2
0
1
6
1
10
Sprint
3
2
4
18
15
17
-
-
First, I think this shows how exponentially worse this issue is for sprinters. Second, if you reduce these guys by 2 in their main stat, 76-75 immediately becomes the top range of most of the domestiques available in FA, and there are only 9 sprinters with 78 or higher available instead of 41.
In that window, you'd still have 11 78+ climbers, 12 78+ puncheurs and 10 79+ sprinters from disbanding teams, hopefully that won't be as bad in coming seasons. If it is, we might have to tackle those as well. But those disbanding teams otherwise also provide the pool for potentially getting a real leader in free agency, which I think should still be possible.
This process might be a bit slower than others, but I think it's the best way to tackle inflation in the tier 3-5 range, while leaving managers the options to protect their riders. And this way, it doesn't even matter if you have one or four top leaders, or if your leaders are 26 or 30. We all have the same money available that we can spend on who we want to keep that way.
I like a lot of the suggestions, while I also see suggestions to problems that doesn’t exist or can’t be fixed through DB changes. I think it’s important to thoroughly address which issue it is that one suggest changing and why the solution is going to fix it. Otherwise it feels like just throwing random solutions into a possible problem, in which we may inflict a lot of damage to some teams while not at all solving the “problem”.
Also I’m heavily against any sort of randomness. We already have a huge amount of randomness and fairness forced upon us in the attempt to actually create competitiveness… IMO we need to reduce the amount of dice rolls, not enhance them.
Lowering the age of stat reduction might from a fairness perspective be OK, but some teams are created from a RP perspective and thus hurt their interest in creating long term projects IMO.
To me there is nothing broken about the rider development line of the game. And this include everything from stat gains, training and decrease. I think it’s close to perfectly balanced and not a place focus need to be directed.
Too many similar riders might (MIGHT!) be an issue, but does DB altering actually solve the problem, or is it an AI issue? Have we tested what happens when theres a wider spread and does the game indicate that bigger spreads will solve the problem?
And what happens in the future? The history of the game shows that managers copy eachother when they spot a good solution, hence the amount of riders with a certain path of development. Won’t we just replicere our current situation in 5-6 years?
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg)
