 Much has been talked lately about the long-awaited release of PCM.daily’s Expansion Pack. Indeed, rumors about a release date haven’t been accurate, and we have worked on it for longer than we wished to. Justifiably, some of you may have lost your patience with us; for those who haven’t, we’re glad to announce the release of what we consider to be one of the best DBs ever released by PCM.daily.
A whole new feeling to career mode
The first change you’ll notice in the Expansion Pack is the addition of 5 new teams, bringing the total of teams to 100 – check out the full list here. Together with the teams, changes have been made to the riders’ part of the DB; in fact, lots of changes. You’ll find updated rosters, salaries, popularities and, certainly, updated stats. Together with the latter, the Expansion Pack uses a stat matrix that - although it may look “overpowered” at first glance - we believe combines fun and realism for the best gameplay. We’ve also adjusted riders development in careers, which is now much improved and means that you won’t get the truly overpowered matrixes after a few years of career, as you might have seen in other releases.
Another new feature concerns the young riders. Not only have many new riders – mostly, young talents – been added, but also the scounting system has got many changes. We have completely re-worked the U23 calendar, giving more realistic stages to the races, removing old races and adding nearly 20 new ones. Together with that, the young rider .xmls are fined tuned not only to be as adapted to the DB stats matrix as possible but also so that scouting will be less foreseeable. This means that, despite the big number of U23 races, scouting will unlikely be any easier; on the contrary, hiring the most promising talents will be more challenging and more realistic than before.
Another part which has received a big update is the sponsors. More than 250 sponsors with HD graphics have been added, making it a total of 517 future sponsors overall. The sponsors’ info of real teams and future sponsors has also been updated to match better PCM13’s new features, namely the goals and objectives system.
More graphics than ever
When it comes to graphics, in the Expansion Pack there’s thousands of new things to see - literally. Starting off by the teams’ graphics, every single team has got HD jerseys and HD accessories. Lots of extra shirts have been added too, namely more than 800 HD national champions or team race leader jerseys. Several races have also got their leader shirts in HD, and we’ve completely recreated the default champion shirts folder, meaning that all champion stripes and default champion jerseys are now in HD.
Equipment is another part in which you’ll see lots of works of all kinds: team equipment, auto-color equipment, champions equipment and GT equipment. In numbers, more than 150 equipment pieces are included, of which more than 75 are brand new equipment. In terms of auto-colored equipment, you’ll find more than 10 new brands of frames, such as Jorbi and Simplon; there’s also many champion or rider-specific equipment, from Contador’s and Nibali’s bikes to Gilbert’s World Champion helmet. To close the equipment part, you’ll also find several new GT colored equipment, like Froome’s Tour yellow bikes and helmets or Horner’s Vuelta red helmet.
The graphics of the Expansion Pack are not limited to 3D mode. We’ve added brand new flags and new logos for all teams, plus many new and updated race logos and cyclists pictures (for the latter, nearly 1500 pictures have been updated).
Stages, many stages
PCM.daily’s Expansion Pack might look quite heavy to download at first, and that will mainly be because of stages. More than 130 stages (50+ races) have been added to replace the fake ones that come with the game. You’ll also find 94 new races in the DB, as usually delivering realistic startlists. The high number of races also comes towards making the DB more adapted to PCM 13’s new fitness and goals system.
But the part where you’ll see the most stages is certainly variants (changing race routes every year), the cherry on the cake of any career. In the Expansion Pack, we have compiled lots of variants, always paying attention to give you good quality works: for the WT races, you’ll find more than 110 variants, of which more than 30 are for the 3 GTs alone - the Vuelta being the GT with the less variants, with 9 of them. Dozens of routes have also been added for the national championships, and, to close it all, you'll find no less than 20 new variants for the World Championships.
Miscellaneous
We’ve named many features, but there’s even more to be explored in the DB: updated national teams, more sound comments, updated scouting zones, and, of course, everything else you know from the usual PCM.daily DBs, such as the more realistic names for young riders or the many new journalists.
There’s also content that, for several reasons, we’ve decided to leave off the main download. Nevertheless, knowing that some of you might be interested in it, we’ll be releasing additional packs and edited versions in general in our “Extras” thread, like in PCM12. There you’ll find, for example, a pack with more than 120 faces for the Expansion Pack, or a DB that adds many new national championships, but also simple things like the no-equipment version for those who wish a better game performance.
Finally, you’re probably asking right now “when is the release?!”. We’re doing the final polishments to the DB, adding the last few graphics and doing the last testings. Should everything go according to plan, you’ll be able to download the DB on Tuesday, at the latest. If it helps making the wait a bit smaller, we’ll be releasing screens of the Expansion Pack frequently. If it doesn’t help, well, you’ll have to wait anyway ;) Stay tuned |
