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Suggestions for 2012 season

Seeing as the 2011 fantasy season is now winding down I figured I'd start a topic for everyone suggestions/requests for next year. I know a few have been given through the season but I thought it'd be more helpful for us to have our suggestions and requests for next season all in one place.

Other than having a little more flexibility on who I can pick (up to 3 ARs, 2PC etc) my suggestion is:

- Have a team reset button when doing transfers -
Basically be able to reset my own transfers if I realise I've messed up. While this is the basic reason it would also allow people who perhaps can't always make their transfers at 10:55 to make two transfers immediately when the window opens and then if they have a change of heart or realise that one of their riders has abandoned/crashed/been done for drugs they can reset their team to how it was at the end of the last stage and redo their transfers. Also this might stop people having to keep asking Dave to reset their team if they mess up.

On variable rider values despite being against it at first I like that the riders change in value a little throughout the season but I think variations might be better if they were slightly more noticeable than they are now. How it was during the Giro was probably a bit excessive, how it was during the TdF was hardly noticeable and a bit pointless (other than to mean that I was always 0.1 short of having the team I really wanted) so either no changes or more noticeable changes would be better.

If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.

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80 comments

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JAndrewHill | 12 years ago
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How about, for the grand tours, the points you get for the GC points are based for the entire race on the team you picked on day 1.
But the points for the stages take into account the transfers you make.
So picking who you think will do well overall at the start of a long tour is going to be better rewarded (if you get it right)
I get everyone is getting GC points at the moment for Froome and Cobo, but if you guessed that on day ibe you deserve a pat on the back.  39
And so if stage one was a TTT, you would be wary of picking the TTT specialists, and more strategy is required for the picks.

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manolo replied to JAndrewHill | 12 years ago
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JAndrewHill wrote:

How about, for the grand tours, the points you get for the GC points are based ... on the team you picked on day 1.

I kind of like this idea, but with a twist:

1. You pick top 5 GC.
2. You pick PC winner
3. You pick KM winner

You get a bonus of 25, 20, 15, 10 and 5 points, at the end of the competition, if your choices place at the end of the race in the top 5. (If Cobo and Wiggins were in your top 5, at the end of the race you would get 25 and 15 points, as it stands right now.)

If you chose the PC or KM winner, you would get a 10 point bonus at the end of the competition.

None of your picks would accrue points during the race. This would be a separate prediction maybe to serve as a sort of equalizer or tiebreaker, where you could pick these riders without having the pressure to keep them on your team at all times. This would just be a bonus at the end of the competition to reward having picked the top 5 on GC, the KM and the PC winners.

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drheaton | 12 years ago
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I think that the amount of transfers and the limits on who I can pick are part of what makes the game great, I wouldn't pay half as much attention to the tours through the year if I wasn't having to try and work out which DC is on form and likely to get in the days breakaway etc or acting as a teams sprinter like Kittel/Degenkolb.

I can however see the point that making two changes a day can be pretty hard work some days and with the competition running practically every day for three weeks during the Giro, TdF and Vuelta it can get a bit much. For this I'd like to see either the Purist comp getting a bit more serious with the prizes to encourage people to try this or having a semi purist comp where you can only make changes on rest days. That way if you want to play as a purist/semi-purist you can do and judge yourself against others doing that whilst still letting the people who want to play the full two-transfers-a-day game carry on doing that.

Another idea I had (which could involve LOADS of work by Dave) is to allow players to 'schedule' transfers ie be able to choose who you're going to bring in for every stage up to the next rest day and have these changes happen automatically without you having to log in. This'd help those on holiday for the starts/middles/ends of races as they can still have the changes they want but wouldn't give them an advantage as they might be picking on old info. If you could do that and then be able to cancel changes (ie schedule three days changes then have a change of heart after two and swap who you were going to change for someone else) that might solve alot of problems.

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Gkam84 | 12 years ago
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No way, Halfords was a shocking game, want to keep away from anything they used

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mike077 | 12 years ago
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Allow me to pick any mix of sprinters/ climbers/ AR/ Domestique, and if I want them all from Sky, why not ?

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mike077 | 12 years ago
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Less frequent transfers during a tour. It is onerous to log on every day and make transfers, maybe 4 per week same as Halfords would be better.

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Gkam84 | 12 years ago
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Good point drheaton, i never thought about that, in theory, you could have alot of the GB squad if its left as is

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drheaton | 12 years ago
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One thing that I would like that should be nice and easy. Better access to the game rules and guides without having to register. I tried to get some people from work to play the TdF this year but quite a few said that they didn;t want to sign up before finding out how the game works, they wanted some run down of how it works (basically the game guide you've already produced) before deciding to play or not.

Are you planning on including the Olympics next year. How will team bonuses for that, as well as this years World championships come to think of it, be allocated? It seems unfair to give all HTC riders 5 pts if Cav wins when his actual team on the day would be GB with people like Wiggins, Froome, Thomas etc supporting him.

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dave atkinson | 12 years ago
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Keep 'em coming... we also have plans of our own  1

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Gkam84 | 12 years ago
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So why do people have more than one then?

Yeah thats the bit i was on about, where you cant win more than once  4

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drheaton | 12 years ago
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I can't find anything about having more than one team (I admit, I have a normal team and a purist team) but I did spot this:

Rules wrote:

You can only win one major prize (first prize for a competition) during the 2011 season. In the event that you place first a second time, the prize will be awarded to the first player without a competition win, and you will be offered a runner's up prize.

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thefatcyclist | 12 years ago
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"anyone found to have more than 1 team will be removed" or words to that effect is in the rules.

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drheaton | 12 years ago
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Also, I don't think the Consistency league works, the same people (person) who's at the top of the season league is at the top of the Consistency league so it doesn't really work as intended (ie giving something for people who joined mid season to try and win).

How about a UCI style world rankings instead? Score the top few teams in each stage and add the scores up at the end of the season to get a ranking. Maybe 100 points for a stage win down to 50 in sixth then reducing in 5 point gaps to 11th and then one point gaps to 35th

100, 90, 80, 70, 60, 50, 45, 40, 35, 30, 25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20, 19... down to 1 point for 35th place?

That way if you're inconsistent but every few stages you get in the top 10 point scores you could beat someone who's consistently top 50.

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simon F | 12 years ago
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My sixpennorth of gawd help us :-

If the GT's are still to be separate comps, then a value reset at the start seems fair but maybe, after the GT finishes, your team value could be reset to the greater of it's value at the end of the tour and it's value before the reset for those who are taking part for the whole season.

drheaton wrote:

Maybe a max of two transfers carried over so you can only ever have four and all carried over transfers are reset on rest days?

This seems good, and fair, to me.

I would also like to see more races (particularly more of the one week races) but I wasn't mad keen on the overlapping so that could be difficult. Maybe having a larger budget and running two teams? You could choose to spend it all on one race or split into two lower value teams.

On similar lines, I would like to see some women's racing included. Perhaps everyone should have to have a women's team as well? If that would put people off, maybe it could be a separate competition, running in parallel. There are some very good women racers around with not much support and maybe 4 or 5000 road.cc competitors wanting to know about the races would boost the profile a little.

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drheaton replied to simon F | 12 years ago
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simon F wrote:

I would also like to see more races (particularly more of the one week races) but I wasn't mad keen on the overlapping so that could be difficult. Maybe having a larger budget and running two teams? You could choose to spend it all on one race or split into two lower value teams.

I agree, more one week races like the ENECO tour and the tour of Poland would be good as well as the Tour of Britain. Some women's races may be good too but I suspect that, like some of the smaller tours, getting the level of information required to run the fantasy game including intermediate sprints, mountain points and getting actual results in a timely manner may make some races unworkable for fantasy purposes. Even some of the bigger stage races like the Tour de Suisse were terrible for getting information.

I think that two teams where races overlap could be good and that was mentioned a while ago during the Dauphine/Suisse crossover. Maybe it could just be easier to allow unlimited transfers during overlaps so that you can still pick and choose who you want and which race they're in but it allows more flexibility.

Also, please don't drop the purist comp, it's great fun!

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thefatcyclist | 12 years ago
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A separate league table where our choices get points for the time not the position over the line on stages. So if the first 50 riders have the same time they get the same points whatever that might be. Then the next group gets less points etc etc. This makes up for riders sitting up and being placed lower down than if the had continued to ride. But it would have to ba a stand alone separate competition.

One would think that unlimited choices within budget would make the game easier but it does not(halfords). I would not go there.

I would like to be able to carry 1 transfer over once per small tour. 3 times per grand tour.

Maybe have a wild card section where we could pick 1 rider from any speciality.

I would not like to see a reset button, even though there are times when I could have used it, like inadvertantly having 3 riders from same team and having to take one out. It allows us to banter more on the forum, and avoids people changing due to that chat.

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Gkam84 | 12 years ago
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Yeah the team values need to be sorted out and hopefully its a SEASON long credits system, non of this re-setting nonsense, if your in at the start, good on you, if you start late thats your tough luck  19 I feel if it had been that way right through i could have had more points as i would have been able to pick the team i wanted with the amassed credits and not limited because the game was reset

Also, as many more races as you can and more overlaps aswell because that was great having to balance two races between your nine riders

I would like to see more flexible choices, but still so you can only have one GC guy and then pick what you want a bit like this

Want 2 sprinters, then fine, you can only have 1 AR, same with climbers

But if you want 3 AR them you can only have 3 DS, slightly flexible, but not hugely

I dont want to see a team reset button, because thats just a cop out, if you make a mistake, thats your fault, dont go making it easy

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drheaton replied to Gkam84 | 12 years ago
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Gkam84 wrote:

Yeah the team values need to be sorted out and hopefully its a SEASON long credits system, non of this re-setting nonsense, if your in at the start, good on you, if you start late thats your tough luck

To be honest I completely disagree on this point, the way the prizes are dished out means that really it's not a season long game. You get the big prizes, bikes worth £1k+, for the three GTs and the season long prize is 'just' a £200 Evans voucher so in prize terms the season long comp isn't as important as the three GTs. As far as I'm concerned the Giro, TdF and Vuelta feel like separate competitions with major prizes and the season long prize tacked on the end.

If you don't reset then going into the TdF the top 50-100 players from the Giro will have a massive advantage over everyone else and you run the risk of the same people winning every GT. If you reset then players who only want to play the GTs or even the TdF (and who are we to discriminate against them?) will have as much chance as anyone else to do well. Whatever happens those who make the right picks will do well but the reset evens the playing field for the start of each GT. 'Forcing' people to play the whole game would be counterproductive for the site and the game and if people feel like they're not being given a chance they won't play.

thefatcyclist wrote:

I would like to be able to carry 1 transfer over once per small tour. 3 times per grand tour.

I agree on carrying over transfers, if I choose not make transfers on one stage it'd be nice to have those to use later on and it adds another element to the game, choosing not to make changes one day in order to carry them forwards to later in the game. Maybe a max of two transfers carried over so you can only ever have four and all carried over transfers are reset on rest days?

Another option might be to have a 'wildcard' where, if you play it in a transfer window, you get double transfers. That means if you were to play your wildcard during a normal Grand Tour transfer window you'd get four transfers instead of two BUT you can also play it on a rest day and get eight transfers instead of four thus adding a skill element to choosing when to play it.

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Gkam84 replied to drheaton | 12 years ago
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drheaton wrote:
Gkam84 wrote:

Yeah the team values need to be sorted out and hopefully its a SEASON long credits system, non of this re-setting nonsense, if your in at the start, good on you, if you start late thats your tough luck

To be honest I completely disagree on this point, the way the prizes are dished out means that really it's not a season long game. You get the big prizes, bikes worth £1k+, for the three GTs and the season long prize is 'just' a £200 Evans voucher so in prize terms the season long comp isn't as important as the three GTs. As far as I'm concerned the Giro, TdF and Vuelta feel like separate competitions with major prizes and the season long prize tacked on the end.

If you don't reset then going into the TdF the top 50-100 players from the Giro will have a massive advantage over everyone else and you run the risk of the same people winning every GT. If you reset then players who only want to play the GTs or even the TdF (and who are we to discriminate against them?) will have as much chance as anyone else to do well. Whatever happens those who make the right picks will do well but the reset evens the playing field for the start of each GT. 'Forcing' people to play the whole game would be counterproductive for the site and the game and if people feel like they're not being given a chance they won't play.

That all depends on IF Evans donate prizes again??

I think there should be season long credit though and if there are prizes going to be offered then its off benefit to play the whole season, if you just want to play a one off GT then you'll just have to be lucky and pick well

There was only 7 stages before the Giro this year and the gain over others was not that much. But with the game going to be started in January next year, the gain could be much greater  4

So say it did go that way and I happened to win one of the prizes for one of the GT's, then that should automatically rule me out of a prize for the rest of the game, even the way it was re-set this season, it still meant that someone could go on to win Giro, TdF and Vuelta if they picked the right guys, so i would hope they wouldn't win all the top prizes??

drheaton wrote:

Also, I don't think the Consistency league works, the same people (person) who's at the top of the season league is at the top of the Consistency league so it doesn't really work as intended (ie giving something for people who joined mid season to try and win).

I agree with the consistency not working at all, It is the same person that is top in both, scrap it all together in my eyes

The other thing, is LIMIT everyone to 1 team, because i've seen on the forum that others have more than one, which if not in the rules it should be. Although, if you wanted to have 2 one for the normal and one for the pursuits, then name your teams the name but put (pursuit) afterwards??

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JAndrewHill | 12 years ago
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...and let me win some time

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