Support road.cc

Like this site? Help us to make it better.

Fantasy Cycling 2015 - game changes (and report issues)

There'll be a news announcement on the site too, but for you lot here's a more in-depth rundown of what's new and changed for 2015.

The back end of the game (which very few of you ever see of course) has been completely overhauled, and the game engine has had some fairly fundamental changes too. The most fundamental is that a tour is now a separate thing from a competition, so one tour can have more than one competition running at the same time. Tour Down under has three: standard, purist and an Aussies only one (we'll be doing those for the grand tours and the Tour of Britain too. Not Aussies, mind). Before it was a user that had multiple teams, and it was a bit of a hack to be honest. This is a much more elegant and versatile way of doing things.

It gives us a load more flexibility to offer different competitions, and we can now select in the back end what leagues different competitions count towards. so just-for-fun comps like the Tour de San Luis purist and the Aussies-only comp won't count towards your overall season score. That also means that down the line we should be able to offer some user-run competitions alongside the ones we're doing in-house.

So each user only has one team now. Premium is different, then, in that it simply allows you to enter as many competitions as you like. If you're a standard player, you can only enter eight in a season. Realistically that means standard users will be entering the competitions they were allowed to last year, so it shouldn't work out that different.

Also pretty fundamental is the change to the way transfers are handled. This season you'll get a set number of transfers for a standard race, and you can use them in whatever way you see fit. We tried this out with the Skoda game last year and found it a much more interesting way to play because there's more strategies available, and it opens the possibility of bigger changes at the end of a competition if different users have employed different transfer strategies, or just run out...

We now have the ability to select the team size for any competition too, as well as the budget. Generally, races will be teams of eight, with nine riders for the Grand Tours and fewer for things like the country-specific fun competitions; we've gone with five for the Aussies only one.

The roster changes thread has been replaced by an email system that will automatically send you updates of any changes affecting your team - check the checkbox in your account page if you want them. There's also the option to automatically receive stage updates, and the game will email you each time a new competition is opened if you have general updates enabled.

The overall leagues have changed. There's a standard season league for all standard comps, and a purist season league for the purist comps. As well as that there's a road.cc monuments competition which is just the big stuff: Spring Classics and the Grand Tours, presently. We may add a couple more to it but it won't be more than eight competitions so you'll be able to play it as a standard user. There aren't any specific non-premium leagues as there aren't any specific non-premium competitions any more.

Rider stats we've simplified a bit to make it easier to understand for new users, and we've also added stats to the transfers page so you can get an overall idea of the strengths and weaknesses of your team.

There will be plenty of prizes on offer this year, but we haven't teamed up with anyone to offer prizes for every stage. We're still working through some missing ones from last year, and it's better if we handle the prizes in house. There will be prizes for the Tour Down Under, news on that soon.

There's a bunch of stuff on the to-do list and there's some things that will no doubt need fixing. If you have any issues with the site functionality, comment on here and we'll have a look at them.

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.

Add new comment

210 comments

Avatar
NouveauCompte replied to dave atkinson | 8 years ago
0 likes

Thanks a lot !

Avatar
stevemarks replied to dave atkinson | 8 years ago
0 likes
Dave Atkinson wrote:
stevemarks wrote:

Dave, Are there not usually the same number of transfers as stages?

Romandie has 6 stages, but there are only 10 transfers?

six stages, so you'll get five chances to make two changes, right?

I wouldn't swear to it Dave but I am pretty certain up until now its been with two extra transfers.

Avatar
stevemarks replied to stevemarks | 8 years ago
0 likes
stevemarks wrote:
Dave Atkinson wrote:
stevemarks wrote:

Dave, Are there not usually the same number of transfers as stages?

Romandie has 6 stages, but there are only 10 transfers?

six stages, so you'll get five chances to make two changes, right?

I wouldn't swear to it Dave but I am pretty certain up until now its been with two extra transfers.

so just did a spot check TA 7 stages we had 14 transfers
PN 7 stages we had 14 transfers

Even trentino 4 stages 8 transfers.

Avatar
Saint Mikie 41 | 9 years ago
0 likes

scrub my above comment ......its early...late night being a bell end  40

Avatar
Mike.Franchetti | 9 years ago
0 likes

I seem to have been omitted from the London rankings...
It just doesn't show me to be anywhere in a regional league.
Not a big problem, but I was enjoying my high place.

Anybody else had this?

Avatar
Joelsim | 9 years ago
0 likes

I've had about 10 notifications that Vervaeke has been removed from the roster, seem to get one or two every day.

Avatar
dave atkinson | 9 years ago
0 likes

looking into the 500 badge issue too

Avatar
jova54 | 9 years ago
0 likes

Hi Dave,

Still not got my 500+ points badge for Tour de San Luis Bonus Purist and now see that I should have got 250+ badge for Ruta del Sol Purist and haven't.

Thanks.

Avatar
EnglishmanAbroad | 9 years ago
0 likes

Hi,
It appears there's quite a few problems with the points badges.
I'm missing;
-Ruta del sol purist 250
-Ruta del sol standard 500
-Tour of Qatar standard 500
-Tour Down Under - Aussies only 250

Avatar
Nix | 9 years ago
0 likes

I am getting an email every day telling me to log in to check my stage scores.

However, I clicked the button that said I didn't want to play those games (and I didn't ever start to play that race by picking an initial team or something).

I ticked the notifications box to get emails, but surely I should only be getting notifications about races I am actually playing.

Avatar
conor550 | 9 years ago
0 likes

Problem resolved. Great game btw!

Avatar
Marauder | 9 years ago
0 likes

Is the server which hosts the fantasy game offline today?
Need to sort my team out for tomorrow.

I just get:
Service Unavailable

The service is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.

Avatar
Joelsim | 9 years ago
0 likes

I'm getting this too

Avatar
Joelsim | 9 years ago
0 likes

There are 549 riders available for Paris Nice including Contador, Froome etc...who are racing Tirreno.

Avatar
dave atkinson | 9 years ago
0 likes

game is back up.

startlists for paris-nice and tirreno are far from complete so i haven't done the first trawl yet

Avatar
fxceltic | 9 years ago
0 likes

Hi Dave, a few issues to report

1) Arnaud Demare was showing as selectable for KBK, I picked him then discovered he was never riding, so this was an error in him being listed, can I have the transfer back please?
2) i left Stijn Vandenberghe in for KBK, and though he didnt race, Cav won, Stijn would, in the past, have picked up 5 points for a team mate win, but I didnt get that. Has the rule on this changed?
3) I selected a team for the first womens classic on saturday, I dont know how they did because I appear to have scored zero points, despite having Lizzie Armistead in my team, who came third?

Cheers

Avatar
Joelsim | 9 years ago
0 likes

1) Demare was due to race but pulled out late
2) Only riders who are riding score the team-mate bonus
3) The first women's classic is happening right now as I type

Avatar
singlespeedan | 9 years ago
0 likes

I'm currently being told my team is over budget but in the balance section i have still got 4.4 points, why is this? if I remove someone and replace it with a very low priced rider it works but not if it is within 5 points ish of 0?

Any suggestions?

Avatar
conor550 | 9 years ago
0 likes

Looks like people are having their points from the Womens's Classics added to the overall season league, but the competition info says it's a Bonus race that won't count towards any leagues??

Avatar
Digy46 | 9 years ago
0 likes

Am I hallucinating or is Greg van Avermaet leading the Strada Bianchi when I received an email 24 hours ago telling me he had been removed from the roster and I took him out of my team. Can I have the points he scores please.

Avatar
Digy46 | 9 years ago
0 likes

Looks like the changes I made on the back of the Van Avermaet email have been reversed and the right points and badges awarded well done game!  103

Avatar
1wrangler | 9 years ago
0 likes

Is Benat Intxausti not starting Paris-Nice? I didn't see him on the available rider list.

Avatar
The Wolfpack | 9 years ago
0 likes

Big issue in Paris Nice Stage P : Maurepas › Maurepas points:

You have Sebastien Chavanel FDJ 20!

It's Sylvain Chavanel from IAM Cycling who got the 20 points.

(You have this game running with names and not unique id's... ??!!??)

PS: Hope you fixed the Womens Classics - Bonus Standard because you said "This competition doesn't count towards any leagues" but it was counting (i lost a couple positions in the Overall Season league right after you uploaded the points from Le Samyn des dames.

Avatar
adholman | 9 years ago
0 likes

Paris Nice Stage 1 - Morkov was 17th but I got no points for him  2 please fix thanks!

Avatar
robacairns | 9 years ago
0 likes

Tirreno Adriatico - Jesse Sergent should be on the Trek team - everywhere I can find shows him starting rather than Stuyven.

http://www.cyclingquotes.com/news/stuyven_out_of_tirreno-adriatico/

Could be important with the change to an individual TT for the first stage.

Avatar
BUZZ6835 | 9 years ago
0 likes

I seem to be missing some points.
Paris-Nice Stage 4
Tom Dumoulin
Apologies if I've got it wrong!

Avatar
Wig_Billy | 9 years ago
0 likes

If I wanted to get spammed with roster changes I would have ticked the 'send me updates about roster changes affecting my teams' box. I didn't, so please stop sending me them.

Avatar
djpalmer32 | 9 years ago
0 likes

When will you be updating the Milan Sanremo roster? It still doesn't include Cav.

Avatar
adam.mosleyuk@h... | 9 years ago
0 likes

Are the riders going to updated for the classics prior to Milan-San Remo as some favourites that are riding for example Mark Cavendish, Kristoff etc are not available to choose?

Avatar
Turns8 | 9 years ago
0 likes

HELP!!!!

I'm trying to update my teams for the races this weekend and all I get on the login page is a message that says "the game is updating", this has been the same since yesterday afternoon...what's going on...

At this rate I am going to be unable to update any of the races both standard and purist....  102  102  102  102  102  102  102  102  102  102  102  102  102  102

Pages

Latest Comments