I'd like an in game progress monitor. I am tired of having to resort to screenshots of my riders´ stats in order to see how they have improved over the season.
In 07 you could see when the riders improved from level 1 through 4. In 08 that is not the case. The changes happen more fluently which is ok, but I'd like a way to track these improvements to see if the riders are on the right training schedule.
I'm tired of seeing people having the same rider in the break 15 stages in a row. It's not possible in real life. Changing the rider's stamina and/or fatigue so they can't do that would be really nice.
Edited by issoisso on 11-01-2009 18:37
I do agree with almost all hat have been said, but I understand most of them may be difficult to implement. However there are also a few minor issues in career mode which I don’t believe would take to much time to solve :
1) For every PT race, we are served a mail with the teams that have been “preselected”. Now as these are always all the PT teams and only those, we could be saved the trouble ?
2) I just hired a free agent for next season, and he was “sad to leave”
Sad to leave what ? Unemployment ?
3) When preselecting a team of riders for the world champ, every rider tells us by means of special pop up that he would be glad to ride.
Now I believe we can assume every rider of every nation in every DB would be glad to ride the worlds, and save us from the pop ups. (I’ve already done 3 of those selections, and I’m still waiting for the first rider to refuse my invitation)
4) We are now selecting a squad for the world champ, but doing so without the slightest idea of who is in shape and who is not in the other teams. Wouldn’t it be possible to have a view (say the last day of the selection) of the condition of all the preselected riders ?
5) Renewals as they now stand are quite realistic, as you don’t know your budget before October 15 th. (I believe in real life some teams don’t even know their budgets on jan 15 th.)You don’t know your objectives either. But you do have to hire new riders and renew existing one’s before you have those 2 very important pieces of information.
Would it be possible to have at least an idea on july 1st of which kind of budget we are facing ?
Once October 15 th has come, it’s frustrating to have a lots of cash, and nobody to spend it on, because your transfer budget hasn’t been adapted as much as your salary cap.
6) To prevent riders to perform Saturday in one country and Sunday in another 1.000 miles away….
7) For the die hards, possibility to hide (some of) the stats of the riders.(a bit like the fog of war in a war game). Or to have those replaced by a general assessment : very good meaning 77-80, exceptional above, etc.
7) To me the whole thing of the secondary sponsors as it now stands can be skipped. What can definitely be skipped is this: the info on the secondary sponsors includes their financial situation. We are receiving (part of) their advertisement budget, not buying their stocks or lending them money. I believe this could be deleted ? I sense it was the intention to actually do something with this info, but as it now stands...
It would have been funny i.e. to have those sponsors filling for bankruptcy after their first month of sponsoring, making you rush to have a replacement,
or I dream of those secondary sponsors coming up with their own set of objectives (which would be visible before contacting them) and renewing the sponsoring if those have been met, or if their fin situation is still OK. Hence you take the risk when contracting with a “fragile“sponsor that he will stop subsidizing you, eve if you get him what he wants …
For the more important but more complex improvements I believe everything has already been said, but this is personal “best of”, most important first :
1) More races -> more teams > more riders > more nat championships > more jersey’s
2) Less crashes (pcm.exe): I must admit pcm 08 seems better than pcm 07, itself better than pcm 06. But out of the dozen computer games I played seriously, PCM is the only one (well, 3 of them) with random crashes.
3) Better scaling when entering the last 15 Km, to avoid those 3 Km sprints and unreal time gaps. (Mithrandir’s point above)
4) Issoisso’s idea's
issoisso wrote:
-> A sprinting system where a team train and helpers actually are worth anything (think Fassa, Milram, Domina, etc.)
-> Option to choose whether the teams use the racing calendar set for them in the DB (as in previous PCMs) or for the game to set the teams' calendar (as in this PCM). In PCM08 it's always the second way. You can't make the teams have the exact calendar that is set in the DB.
This KILLED the chances of a lot of mod teams coming to PCM08.
-> A chance that a cobbled race might actually end in a sprint (like Kuurne, Wevelgem or the Scheldeprijs) instead of ALWAYS ending in successful attacks
-> For it to be possible for a medium mountain transitional stage in a Grand Tour (which in real life ALWAYS ends in a breakaway winning by 10-15 mins) to actually unfold realistically, instead of the favorites attacking, which is what happens now and is extremely unrealistic.
-> Corrected sprints. As it is now the difference in speed between good and bad sprinters is so small, that people like Ballan keep winning ProTour sprints, or guys who are relaying at the front of the peloton (NOT THE ONES LEADING OUT SPRINTERS) win...
-> Real sprints in mountain and medium-mountain stages that end in flat. The way it is now, when a mountain stage ends in FLAT TERRAIN, the better climber outsprints the better sprinter....for instance, Basso easily beats Di Luca, or Contador easily beats Valverde just because it's a mountain stage, even though the sprint is ON A FLAT MOUNTAINTOP
that's all for now
Hopefully Cyanide will actually read this...
+ what he said about those riders atticking 15 days in a row. Much too easy to get mountain jersey.
A lot of other things would be welcome, but I could live without them.
I don't know for sure what the legal structure behind a team looks like, but what happened with Telekom -> High road -> Columbia tends to make me believe the team manager "owns" the riders contracts.
His management company (unknown to the opublic) actually hires and fires the riders. And the main sponsor cannot fire the team manager, it can only stop the sponsoring contract.
What happened with Astana/Marc Biver/ Johan Bruyneel looks like the other way around: Marc Biver would have been "fired " by Astana, and Bruyneel "hired".
But if you take a closer look, and especially the number of discovery channels riders who moved to Astana, it wouldn't be impossible that Bruyneel indeed owned his riders contracts, and that he signed a sponsoring contract with Astana (astana sponsiring the ex discovery team)
Now in most cases when a sponsor resigns it's contract, this end up with the team being disbanded (phonak, credit agricole, gerosteiner), but this is due to fact the manager (owner) doesn't find a replacement sponsor and doesn't want or isn't able to carry the financial burden.
For the game, this leads to the following :
Instead of being offered to manage other teams with other riders in sepember, and instead of being fired, the sponsor who isn't happy would be able to stop it's sponsoring.
If it's your sponsor, you would have to look for another main sponsor, and if you don't find any your team is disbanded and game over (and in real life, bakrupcy, legal proceedings etc.)
Main sponsors would be divided in pt sponsors and continental sponsors, meaning if you can't find a pt sponsor, but you do find a conitinental one, you're team is in fact demoted.
Instead, if a pt sponsor makes an offer to your continental team and you accept it, the team gets in fact promoted.
If it's a computer team, idem, except the riders of a disbanded team are "free agents"
Now each main sponsor would have
1. A limited evolution of availlable budget totally independent of sporting results, meaning you could end-up with real life injustice of having to downsize your team even if you performed well (I believe this happenned this year with quickstep)
2. A limited evolution of budget based on sporting results : ie the management of the sponsor has decided to realocate part of the advertisement budget of the company to sponsoring of cycling due to it's better than expected return on investment, or to downsize sponsoring because it didn't pay off.
3. An own set of objectives which would be in line with the budget, the markets targeted, etc.
This would make the game more lasting, as you could try out different sponsors to get different objectives.
Even if I understand it would be quite difficult to implement :
There would have to be some kind of generating mechanism of sponsors, to replace the one which left, or got bankrupt, with an objective generating mechanism.
And also some kind of team generating mechanism to replace the disbanded teams.
And also if main sponsors tend to switch teams, we might get a bit disoriented, i.e. columbia taking over telekom, who would take over elk haus, who would stop sponsoring etc.
But anyhow as riders tend to switch teams more often in the game than in real life, after 3 seasons you are a bit disoriented anyway….
I don't know for sure what the legal structure behind a team looks like, but what happened with Telekom -> High road -> Columbia tends to make me believe the team manager "owns" the riders contracts.
His management company (unknown to the opublic) actually hires and fires the riders. And the main sponsor cannot fire the team manager, it can only stop the sponsoring contract.
Yes. The sponsor only gives the team money so they will bear the sponsor's name and logos. The team itself is a separate entity that can have one sponsor one year and a different sponsor a different year. The riders are contracted to the team.
nicolas7412 wrote:
What happened with Astana/Marc Biver/ Johan Bruyneel looks like the other way around: Marc Biver would have been "fired " by Astana, and Bruyneel "hired".
But if you take a closer look, and especially the number of discovery channels riders who moved to Astana, it wouldn't be impossible that Bruyneel indeed owned his riders contracts, and that he signed a sponsoring contract with Astana (astana sponsiring the ex discovery team)
No, the team is the same. The team manager changed, but the team is the same. Thus the riders' contracts carried on. Bruyneel was hired as new team manager and a lot of former discovery riders signed there because they were used to working with Bruyneel.
nicolas7412 wrote:
Now in most cases when a sponsor resigns it's contract, this end up with the team being disbanded (phonak, credit agricole, gerosteiner), but this is due to fact the manager (owner) doesn't find a replacement sponsor and doesn't want or isn't able to carry the financial burden.
For the game, this leads to the following :
Instead of being offered to manage other teams with other riders in sepember, and instead of being fired, the sponsor who isn't happy would be able to stop it's sponsoring.
If it's your sponsor, you would have to look for another main sponsor, and if you don't find any your team is disbanded and game over (and in real life, bakrupcy, legal proceedings etc.)
Main sponsors would be divided in pt sponsors and continental sponsors, meaning if you can't find a pt sponsor, but you do find a conitinental one, you're team is in fact demoted.
Instead, if a pt sponsor makes an offer to your continental team and you accept it, the team gets in fact promoted.
If it's a computer team, idem, except the riders of a disbanded team are "free agents"
Now each main sponsor would have
1. A limited evolution of availlable budget totally independent of sporting results, meaning you could end-up with real life injustice of having to downsize your team even if you performed well (I believe this happenned this year with quickstep)
2. A limited evolution of budget based on sporting results : ie the management of the sponsor has decided to realocate part of the advertisement budget of the company to sponsoring of cycling due to it's better than expected return on investment, or to downsize sponsoring because it didn't pay off.
3. An own set of objectives which would be in line with the budget, the markets targeted, etc.
This would make the game more lasting, as you could try out different sponsors to get different objectives.
Even if I understand it would be quite difficult to implement :
There would have to be some kind of generating mechanism of sponsors, to replace the one which left, or got bankrupt, with an objective generating mechanism.
And also some kind of team generating mechanism to replace the disbanded teams.
And also if main sponsors tend to switch teams, we might get a bit disoriented, i.e. columbia taking over telekom, who would take over elk haus, who would stop sponsoring etc.
But anyhow as riders tend to switch teams more often in the game than in real life, after 3 seasons you are a bit disoriented anyway….
I'd love that, but I don't see cyanide ever doing it. Simply because for them it's all about the money (they're a company, so that's normal), and in this case, the marketing effect this would have in terms of sales is far too small to compensate for the effort this would require.
1. Better DatabaseEditor
DatabaseEditor in PCM08 is better-arranged than other editors, but there is only a few options, I think that inspiration by Full Editor is not bad idea. For example in new editor we'll can change places of WC in future (2011,2012,...). Or in Rider View will can change potential of single values. In Team View used equipment, areas for scouts and so many things, that we can change in other editors, but more difficulty.
2. Changing objectives
In PCM08, there can be situation, that for example in season 2008 I finish all my objectives and in next season I get the same objectives. I think that in PCM07 it was little bit changing every season.
3. More staff
7 mythical scouts? I think it's too little...
4. Equipment
I don't know, if autors need licence for equipment, to use it in game (probably yes), but I think that for example only Cervélo and CRC frames are very poor... And fans have to solve it with own packages.
5. Track and cyclo-cross as component of carreer (I'm not sure that's good idea)
There can be in carreer new values of riders for track and cyclo-cross and also races for them. So in the team you can have track cyclist and you use them to track races and you can use them as sprinters in flat stages, too.
6. More developed U23 system
U23 in PCM08 was very good idea, but why there isn't U23 WC for riders without pro team, too? Or other things...
7. PCTs a nd CTs
There is difference between reality and PCM in this. In reality there are Professional Continental Teams and Continental Teams, but in PCM, there are all PCTs and some CTs in one category. I think, that instead of 2 categories, in PCM there can be 3 categories as in reality. And for example CTs can't request for a wild card. And for perfection, in PCM09 there can be all CTs... (ohh, too much work)
8. Junior team
In some fan packages there is team Rabobank Continental, it's good example. I think that every PT team have got something like junior team with talented riders with 15-17 years... And you can control their values and training and after season you can take them in your A-team.
9. Changing values after good performance
For example when some rider unexpectly win Tour, there is no change. I think, that his value of Recovery and market value should go up after the Tour. I think that can change the value "Favourite race" in rider main menu after win the race.
10. The end of financial limits
I think that the limit for wages reduce potentiel of some teams. I think it's useless thing. Wages can normally reduct the budget. But if you are under zero with wages limit, you can't offer a contract - ithink that's stupid. The same is the limit for transfers. If I all the season economize, why in the end of season I can't buy a rider for more than 2 millions? I think that one budget for all (equipment, training camps, wages, transfers) is enough .
11. Watching course of training again
I PCM07 there was in rider menu Training next to the values percentage of development of the value. In PCM08 there are insted of this stars. I think that both things are very good and both things, there can be. I miss the percentage.
12. More realistic names of young riders
If I scout riders in Czech Republic, there are riders with very unusual names. There are about 180 of man names in Czechia, but all the names have got in PCM the same chance. I thik, that the most applicated names have to have got much chances... I hope, that you understand
13. Czechoslovakia? Bad joke?
In map for scouts in Central Europe there is Czechoslovakia! I know, that in databse the area is named "Ex_Tchequoslovaquie", but Czech and Slovak Republic are independent countries for 16 years!
14. And more and more things from fan packages
In original PCM database there is for example always too little national champion jerseys...
15. Rider's height
This value is in database, but I think, that in race I can't see difference between Gesink and Bettini...
16. More realistic sprints
I think that someone has wriiten it there...
17. National teams
If I'm trainer of national team, I think that I can do 1 or more training camps, for beter preparation for Worlds. And second thing - for example I'm trainer of team Netherlands, but I prepare my other riders (from Spain, Italy...) for Worlds, and in the end, they aren't in the national team. I think, that about 2 months before WC a trainer of spanish team should ask me for my good spanish time-trialist to use him in Worlds... Concrete in WC ITT there is very small competition in PCM...
Heres a list of a few i should think should happen:
1. The last 10km or last climb of the stage should be on a 1:1 setting so it would make mountain stages harder and you could crack the favourites easier and it would have a realistic sprint rather than from 3km out.
2. Fix e sprint where a flat rider wins because he is half a km ahead of all the sprinters.
3. More breakaways on hard level to make it as i have only seen one breakaway make it on hard in all my time playing this new version and i dont even chase on the fronherefore the new breakaway issue isnt working at all.
4. A team like milram was should stay as mainly a sprinter team rather than when you are them in the 2nd year i was told to win the tdf and i only had knees and velits
5. It said when they brought out this game that euskaltel would only sign basque and spanish riders and other teams only sign from specific nations but on mine euskaltel had around 5 italians on their team in the 2nd year which i though was stupid.
6. ess transfers in the off season as you dont see all the main riders no sign a new contract and leave for different teams. e.g. levi, sastre, di luca etc leaving their teams in the first season.
7. There are too many free agents that turn into tour winners to quickly e.g. pardilla, and they all end up overtaking contador etc after the first season which i find silly as you might have 1 or 2 that become and 79/80 from knowhere but when do you see 4/5 riders a season go to 80+ mountain i find it unrealistic.
8. Riders like valverde contador win all year round where as in real life it is only sprinters who can keep up a high level of performance all year round so it seems silly when valverde is winning in febraury march and some classics along with the giro and vuelta as in real life he would be too tired never minjd that he cant perform well for a full 3 weeks
9. Surely when you sign a scout they should have knowledge in their home region e.g if you sign a spanish scout they will surely start with knowledge in valencia adalucia or somewhere in spain??
and finally...
10. I like the idea of viewing it but you would then have to have a director sportif that you would have to hire and you should only be allow to do 3d race in one race as you can be in 3 races in the same day and somehow turn up fo them all so if this watch feature is included then director sportifs will.
Thats my moaning done now haha, waiting for V2 database until i play again Edited by Smitho on 14-01-2009 14:57
They need to tweak the development system. I am tired of 21-23 year old riders with 80 Sprint or 80 Mountain. Plus my Garmin riders have not developed after three years in my career.
My biggest wish is that the game will make new teams during it. In may you get an offer to manage new coca cola team and you will have to sign riders and make everything before the new season - would be a brilliant issue for the game
It'd definitely be fun to be in control of a completely new team, starting from e.g. July when it's possible to sign new riders. That's certainly also one of my biggest hopes although I don't think we'll see it anytime soon.
ABridgeTooFar wrote:
They need to tweak the development system. I am tired of 21-23 year old riders with 80 Sprint or 80 Mountain. Plus my Garmin riders have not developed after three years in my career.
Seconded and Thirded. It ruins long term games for me.
CrueTrue wrote:
It'd definitely be fun to be in control of a completely new team, starting from e.g. July when it's possible to sign new riders. That's certainly also one of my biggest hopes although I don't think we'll see it anytime soon.
Yeah, that would have been fantastic.
I would also liked to have a "be a pro" mode. When you start to make you're own rider. You will have to choose a team and you're spesialties. You're team manager will choose witch races you could ride. You're stats will grow from you're peformances(if you go often in attacks, you're fighter stat will raise). Before and in every race you're manager will give you missons/tasks. Like to pick up water or go in a attack. In the start you will have to help you're team leader, but mayby get you're chances in smaller race's. After you grown to be a really good rider you will get help from you're teammates and win the Tour de france or Milan-san remo.
I know this never gonna happen, but its my dream..
CrueTrue wrote:
It'd definitely be fun to be in control of a completely new team, starting from e.g. July when it's possible to sign new riders. That's certainly also one of my biggest hopes although I don't think we'll see it anytime soon.
This really would be fun and it would also be quite a challenge to start from scratch. This is also my main wish for PCM09.
For the stage commentary to actually play during TTs.
Why do they even bother adding "today's stage is a 40km mostly flat time trial from whoever to whatsit" for GTs if the game doesn't play the sound file?
I think that his year has actually been really good, I have played 6 seasons, only scouted one potential great, only in the most recent worlds has a scouted rider won anything major, and then this year I have won PR with a scouted rider but that doesnt really count.
Also the teams are still amazingly well balanced, all of teh PT teams have basically the same sort of make up as they did before, only CSC, Astana and Adrii(my former team) do not have more than half their squad from one or 2 countries
[url=www.pcmdaily.com/forum/viewthread.php?thread_id=33182]Team Santander Media Thread[/url]
