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Suggestions for the 2013 season

It's early, I know, but with the revival of the old suggestion thread it seems people are full of ideas on how they'd like the game to be "improved" next year!

Obviously, this is all stuff that we'd like to see, wishful thinking really, but road.cc and Dave have always listened to what people think and have implemented good suggestions in the past (regional leagues, premium membership, the removal of the varying player values etc) so if you've got an idea post it below. Think of this as the place to make your request/suggestion so that Dave can see it easily. Also, tell everyone what you think works too rather than just complaining!

Firstly off, I'd like to thank Dave for the game and strides they've made over the last few years to improve it into what is an excellent competition. I think that this years game is the best yet, the 4/5 split is a massive improvement over the old 1 GC, 1 AR ,1 KM, 1 PC and 5 DS split and allows for much more interesting team selections, likewise I think the constant rider values is something that should be kept next year as I haven't missed the old system at all.

My suggestions? Nothing major...

1) Remove the 4/5 split altogether - I'd be happy if the current system was kept but would like to see complete flexibility, the limited budgets will restrict players from having a particularly unbalanced team and it will allow for even more creative team selections, especially where there are lots of cheap stars in a race (like this years classics). For example, pretty much all the top Vuelta teams will still have 3 of Contador, Rodriguez, Froome and Valverde so the 150 credit cap will restrict the makeup of the rest of their team. However, I guess the 4/5 split does give structure and makes the game easier to get your head around when starting out (my dad really struggled when he joined for the TdF but the 4/5 split made things easier).

2) Expand on the premium membership with extra features such as combined purist team on the same account and stuff like that. I will probably pay for premium membership next year but I'd like to see some extra features being included for my money, not just extra races (which have been a bit shambolic this year and are very hard to follow).

3) Teams of teams - another possible premium feature, 9 players band together into one team of players, their scores are combined in some way (straight sum of scores, average of all 9 or maybe lose the highest and lowest and sum/average what's left) and they compete against other teams for a prize (Grand tours only maybe?). Should be fun and unpredictable, also, good for getting people to get involved on the forum.

4) Fantasy jersey competitions - another thing to aim for when playing the grand tours, a selection of jerseys awarded to winners of particular comps:
- a GC jersey awarded for whoever finishes 1st overall along with the bike, a black jersey possibly something road.cc themed.
- a points jersey based on sprint stages or combined sprint points, either whichever teams gets the most intermediate sprint and flat finish line points over a race or maybe whoever scores highest just on flat stages, based on intermediate sprints would keep it interesting throughout though as you have to keep up with breaks in the mountains.
- a mountains jersey like the points but for KoM points/mountain stages

ideally these would be biased to make it very difficult to win them whilst still playing for overall placing, ie base it heavily on breakaway points (the KoM in particular) so that you need to pick the breaks and possibly suffer in the overall as a result, that'd make it something entirely separate to aim for like the riders aim for the KoM comp sacrificing their overall standings. Moreover, these aren't big cost prizes and are just for fun/pride.

5) Reduce the penalty for making additional transfers. I like the fact that there is a penalty but 20 points is very heavy, you basically need to place in the top 4 to overcome that. 10 points might bring in more tactical use of this facility and not be so penal if someone cocks up their team and needs to sort it out.

That's mine, just to be going on with. Also, a booby prize for whoever first mentions the 'reset button'.

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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198 comments

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TERatcliffe26 replied to dave atkinson | 11 years ago
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dave_atkinson wrote:
ray silvester wrote:

Looks like the Tour of Britain has done away with the 4/5 split  13

yup, email going out about that.

there's only seven 'star' riders coming, we haven't made any of the uk team riders stars as we're developing a new system for rider values next season and we kind of need to start it now  1

Good call Dave, not that credits will com into play, but everyone would have had similar stars anyway. I had SS and Langeveld just as I had to have stars, but now ive put in two DS's I wanted.

Interesting on how your doing that then regarding the new system  39 Does that mean its going to be very complicated, and also values may change based on there likely standing in the race?

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TERatcliffe26 replied to drheaton | 11 years ago
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drheaton wrote:
livestrongnick wrote:
chrisdstripes wrote:
Wig_Billy wrote:

Everybody could have a 'palmarès' page, were any wins/podiums (stage or overall) are recorded for posterity.

LIKE  4

OHHH Yes i like this alot!!  41

Yeah, an excellent idea. Possibly somewhere that records your final standings in each race split by season (so you can see 2011 results, 2012 resuts etc) then you can drill down into each competition and see individual stage results.

Then a palmares section which shows good results, top 50 in stages, race overalls or anything like that.

Then a piece of code which you can copy from the site (and is dynamic so stays up to date) that you can paste into your Road.cc signature, or a signature on other forums, and shows your best results?

I like the Palmares system idea and would probably be better than the current cumulative score system as im always focused on not dropping places as its so hard to gain places after the first few races.

Could the cumulative system be changed and done in a similar way to the IG pro cycling index?

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dave atkinson | 11 years ago
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Quote:

Yeah, an excellent idea. Possibly somewhere that records your final standings in each race split by season (so you can see 2011 results, 2012 resuts etc) then you can drill down into each competition and see individual stage results.

Then a palmares section which shows good results, top 50 in stages, race overalls or anything like that.

Then a piece of code which you can copy from the site (and is dynamic so stays up to date) that you can paste into your Road.cc signature, or a signature on other forums, and shows your best results?

we're not going to roll it back to 2011, i don't think. it was a completely different engine. but forward from now we'll try and keep everything in the game historically.

code for your sig is a good idea...

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dave atkinson | 11 years ago
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Quote:

Interesting on how your doing that then regarding the new system. Does that mean its going to be very complicated, and also values may change based on there likely standing in the race?

it won't be based on a rider's likely standing but on their past form. it's a work in progress  26

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drheaton | 11 years ago
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I assume pricing will be based more on past form in the upcoming event rather than past form overall? So for the uphill finishing classics where Cavendish is poo he's likely to be cheap whereas someone like Gasparatto may be more expensive?

Would that also mean that riders not racing in the upcoming event would have no value set and therefore be unavailable for selection?

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dave atkinson | 11 years ago
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Like i said, it's a work in progress  1

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ray silvester | 11 years ago
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I like it.....we won't have the anomalies of Cobo still so expensive this late in the season and Bouhanni still so cheap for example.

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drheaton | 11 years ago
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I admit, I do like that there are weird values throughout the season. It means that you need to have the knowledge to pick those riders.

My dad started playing during the TdF, for the Vuelta he had no idea who Bouhanni was and didn't pick him as a sprinter as he was DS and not down as a PC rider. I knew who he was and obviously had him right at the start.

The weird values are part of what makes the game harder to read unless you have some knowledge I guess, for example people who didn't know much about cycling might have picked Cobo as defending champion and as an expensive GC rider (assuming cost = likihood of success) whereas those of us who've been with the comp all year know he's not worth the price (and wouldn't be worth any price at the minute).

Also, part of what makes the game fun is trying to identify the cheap DSs who can go on and get a boat load of points. If we'd gone into the Vuelta and riders like Bouhanni and Viviani had cost 30 credits because they were going to be protected sprinters, and Degenkolb 40 as he was clearly going to be dominant, everyone would have had much similar teams restricted to a few good sprinters then random DSs likely to acheive nothing (as the prices of the ones likely acheive something would have increased...).

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dave atkinson | 11 years ago
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degenkolb has been dominant but there's not necessarily the history there to suggest that would be the case: half of all his points all year have been in the vuelta.

you'll still need your nous to pick the people who you think will do well in a certain race. the parameters might be a bit different. past form is not always an indicator of future success...

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ray silvester | 11 years ago
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If you put Greipel,Sagan,Cavendish,Goss,Farrar etc into the Vuelta then Degenkolb's price is correct.

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Raleigh | 11 years ago
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I like the points for starting and finishing a stage.

I mean, that's a pretty big effort isn't it?

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STEVESPRO 79 replied to Raleigh | 11 years ago
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Raleigh wrote:

I like the points for starting and finishing a stage.

I mean, that's a pretty big effort isn't it?

Please tell me that this is tongue in cheek humour or are you on drugs.....If its not humour or drugs then please explain in detail how this would improve the game...  7

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londonplayer | 11 years ago
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Can't remember whether it was the Halfords game or RCUK but.... one of those comp.'s gave you points for a rider completing a stage.

Just checked - in the Halfords game, you got 2 points for every rider that completed a stage.

I guess it would sort of make sense in the Purist league. But, in the ordinary game with transfers, it would surely just make everyone's scores higher with little effect on the result overall?

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drheaton | 11 years ago
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Yeah, it'd be a 'no change' change with everyone for the most part just getting 18 points more per stage. The only change would be that you'd be penalised a tiny amount (2 points in the scheme of things isn't much) if you either lost a rider in a crash (which is kinda unfair) or chose to leave an abandoned rider in your team like I did with Bouhanni for a few stages.

Also, it'd work against purist players as if you are unlucky enough to lose a couple of riders mid-race you're not going to be able to swap them and would be stuck with non-scoring riders.

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londonplayer | 11 years ago
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I agree with previous commenters that the game works well and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. There is a danger that the 2013 comp. could end up so complex and detailed that it would become less fun to play.

Couple of points though. Have always thought that picking the winner of a stage should carry more points. Trying to predict who will win a stage is bloody hard so when you do, you should be well rewarded.

Secondly, I often wonder whether you should receive GC points for your riders. In some unpredictable stages, players go for "insurance points". Surely you should only get points for being the jersey holder? If you're 2nd, 3rd, or even 10th, why should you get any points?

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drheaton replied to londonplayer | 11 years ago
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londonplayer wrote:

I agree with previous commenters that the game works well and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. There is a danger that the 2013 comp. could end up so complex and detailed that it would become less fun to play.

Couple of points though. Have always thought that picking the winner of a stage should carry more points. Trying to predict who will win a stage is bloody hard so when you do, you should be well rewarded.

Secondly, I often wonder whether you should receive GC points for your riders. In some unpredictable stages, players go for "insurance points". Surely you should only get points for being the jersey holder? If you're 2nd, 3rd, or even 10th, why should you get any points?

I agree that the game should probably remain pretty stable, most of my suggestions were around 'adding features' to the premium side of things to make it a more attractive proposition, stuff that would be fun and not overly complex for the regulars (as premium users are unlikely to be the newbies) while adding something to an already great game.

I disagree on GC, Sprint of KoM jersey standings, I think that they work well as they are, there needs to be a reward for being high up in the GC or other standings and I think the current standings are fairly well balanced against the other points available.

For example, Rodriguez today is guaranteed 17 points (probably) but only because he's so high up in all three competitions, that doesn't mean I won't pick Degenkolb, Davis or Bennati though as they've all got the potential to outscore him. He's safe points but not enough to compete for the stage win.

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enrique | 11 years ago
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I know I sound petty, but my biggest issue is not being able to bank transfers... I know it's weak, and that it's the same for everyone, so it's not unfair per se, but I'd just love the discretion to use the accrued transfers when I want and not lose them if I don't use them.

For example, I would have loved to bank the 6 transfers I had on my account after the last rest day and save them for later on in the week. Spreading them out instead of losing them would have felt like a better strategy than just letting some of them go to waste.

I do like the idea of differnt values for different competitions, though!  1 Though it'll probably be a pain for the game managers with all the different competitons we have now!  1

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drheaton | 11 years ago
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This is a personal thing but I'd like to be able to look at a race and see every riders cumulative score or even score broken down by stage (I like statistics...).

The current system with the points on the riders page is good but it annoys me that when a rider is removed from the race they no longer appear on there. I would like to be able to go to the rider page and see the scores for everyone who had scored in the race. I'd also then like to be able to click on a rider and see their scores per stage (in a similar way to how my teams scores are shown for each stage.

All minor personal thing but I like to be able to look at the riders after a race and see what I missed and, mainly for my purist team, see what type of riders score well throughout the whole race.

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Raleigh | 11 years ago
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Yeah alright.

Whatever.

Just leaveityeah.

Only thing is to change Mehdi Sohrabi's value for next season, after all, by then, everyone will have cottoned on to the fact that Sohrabi Subaru's GC rider, Sprinter, Climber and Classics specialist are all the same man.

MEHDI.

 4

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Alan Tullett replied to drheaton | 11 years ago
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drheaton wrote:

I think the change to 4/5 splits was a small change from the previous year where it was 1 GC rider, 1 all-rounder, 1 climber and 1 sprinter plus 5 DSs. It was an incremental change that wasn't a massive departure from previous years.

For what's it's worth, I think the current system is infinitely better than last year and I wouldn't be particularly upset if in the end it didn't change.

Re transfers, I don't think the game would improve if we went to a 'Halfords' style transfer system where you get a batch of transfers to use over a number of days. Apart from the fact that it might hurt site traffic (as you may choose to make all your weeks transfers in one go or every few days and not be on the site every day) it'd also take some of the fun of having to change your team in small batches. Having a floating two transfers you can use at any time or something similar would be good but I don't think being given all 40 in one go would make things any better.

It was two all-rounders and 4 DSs last year and you had 175 points as well, which could go up (although it was reset for GTs). The problem this year is the lack of points and the fact that everyone ends up with the same limited number of cheap DSs as expensive ones are not worth the punt. Who had Cataldo when he went on a break? Without a Star/DS distinction everyone will have the same team after a while. It's happened in the Vuelta, which from a fantasy point of view has been a bit boring, even when the GC racing has been good.

Without decent KOM and break points it's impossible to get back in the game if you have even a little bit of bad luck, (the Valverde-Intxausti crash situation cost me dearly early on). Since then I've had very little chance to get back in the game but from a worse position in the TdF I went from 74th to 12th in Premium by doing very well on 2 stages (winning one). Even if I'd done the same in the Vuelta I wouldn't have caught up much. If anything I would like KOM points on the final climb to count, after all they do in the real race and I think the points in the race should reflect fantasy points as much as possible.

I'll make another post later about my own views when I've got more time and I've thought about it a bit more.

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enrique | 11 years ago
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Alan Tullett wrote:

If anything I would like KOM points on the final climb to count, after all they do in the real race and I think the points in the race should reflect fantasy points as much as possible.

I agree with this one! I like it alot!  1

Two more suggestions:

1. On the subject of graphing results, I know this would be a nightmare to program, but I would love a page where I could graph my overall score in a Grand Tour competition against other players. For example, if I wanted to see how I fared against drheaton or Gkam, I could go to a page, enter their user Id's and I could see a graph of my scores and theirs as they go up and down, each in different colors. I know it's far-fetched, but it would be so cool!  1

2.

Alan Tullett wrote:

Who had Cataldo when he went on a break?

This leads me to a suggestion I had posted on another thread:

enrique wrote:

It'd be cool to see a figure that read something like 24/2567, meaning [Cataldo] was in 24 of the 2,567 teams contesting the Vuelta...

I know there's [a figure on the rider page] percentage of teams that chose the rider... but I think it'd be cooler to have actual figures... Thanks!  1

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drheaton | 11 years ago
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I'm not sure including KoM points on a final climb would help. The reason everyone has the same Vuelta team is that you'd have to a) be taking a huge punt or b) be a bit dim not to have had three of the top 4 GC riders in your team once it became clear that they were head and shoulders better than everyone else. No matter what the budget is and how many stars we have to pick anyone with an eye on stage wins or their overall standing would now probably be picking a team that included

Contador
Valverde
Rodriguez
Quintana
Talansky
And maybe a couple of Anacona, Verdugo, Niemic, Marczynski, Henao etc

That's just picking a team based on form and nothing will change the fact that people tend to pick whoever is in form towards the back end of a grand tour. All adding summit finish KoM points would have done for the Vuelta is increase the points awarded to the riders everyone was picking except for when Cataldo won.

Also, just putting this out there, is it fair to include summit finish KoM points and not sprint finish PC points?

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enrique replied to drheaton | 11 years ago
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drheaton wrote:

... I'd like to... see every riders cumulative score... broken down by stage (I like statistics...).

I really like this idea!  1

drheaton wrote:

I'd also then like to be able to click on a rider and see their scores per stage...

I like this one, too!  1

On the riders page for each competition I'd also like:

1. Maybe have sortable columns so you could sort to see which rider has had the most points during the compeition.

2. Maybe have a value column - where you could divide the rider's points by their value.

3. Like I've said before a statistic that said how many teams, not percentage of teams, out of the total pool of active teams, had that rider on their team during the last stage played.

OTHER REQUESTS:

1. On the competition individual stage team scores or the overall competition team scores, I'd also like to see sortable columns to see who gained or lost the most positions during a stage or in the competition.

2. When I click on a team score I get, for example:

The Manx Missiles : Points for stage 105

Could you add left and right arrows so we could see The Manx Missiles (in this example) team for previous stages?

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Raleigh | 11 years ago
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Didn't there used to be a figure for how many teams picked a rider?

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James Warrener | 11 years ago
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+1 for the idea of picking a squad at the start of the season and then having to work with it throughout the year.

Maybe a budget of 200 to get 20 riders.

Would be a true test of covering the classics and tours (standard and premium) for those of us who don't want to make lots of changes lots of times.

I have always tried to manage a group of riders and tweak between races. More realistic in my eyes, but I can see that isn't the way to play and win.

It's a kind of middle ground between full and purists.

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James Warrener | 11 years ago
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Or just leave it as it is of course... then everyone can play the way they choose.

Love the palmares by the way.

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drheaton | 11 years ago
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I also love the squad idea (or even better a 'keeper' league where this squad rolls over year on year and you have to manage transfers) but agree that its a big departure from the current game and might not necessarily work alongside.

However, if Dave were to ok it this could be something we run on yet another extra team via the forum maybe and a separate league. Limits put in place so we can only select riders in our start of season squads would create the same game in essence but the standard game would take the strain when it came to scoring

The only down side? Variable rider values next year would make it very difficult to set squad values at the start of the season and we'd be restricted to team 150 credit cap and two per team rules (which I'd personally scrap for the squad game).

If enough people are interested I could set something up.

Also Dave, for the Palmares it'd be nice if we could include results from two teams (purist and normal) on one list, either through merged or linked accounts or some other fudge.

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londonplayer | 11 years ago
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Loving the flexibility of 9 ANY riders in the ToB comp.

As I've mentioned before in previous comments, you've got to stick to a points budget, so can't see any harm in it.

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Gkam84 replied to londonplayer | 11 years ago
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londonplayer wrote:

Loving the flexibility of 9 ANY riders in the ToB comp.

As I've mentioned before in previous comments, you've got to stick to a points budget, so can't see any harm in it.

I also like this. But it can't really be classed as a "trial run" because of the lack of stars. If the race had quite alot of stars. I think it would be much harder to pick riders.

Although I like it. Would like to try it in a race with many more stars.

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drheaton | 11 years ago
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I agree, definitely loving the lack of restrictions but agree that the ToB isn't much of a trial run. How about running this system for the world's or Lombardia where there's likely to be more big names?

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