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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The roster changes thread has been replaced by an email system that will automatically send you updates of any changes affecting your team - check the checkbox in your account page if you want them.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.

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210 comments

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Joelsim | 9 years ago
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Quite a few bugs still remaining with the leagues. I can't access the TDU stage scores and the private league scores are all wrong.

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livestrongnick | 9 years ago
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Competition leagues overall not showing.  39

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simon F | 9 years ago
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A couple of minor points - I don't seem to have got the sprinter badge for my TDU standard team and the stage totals (under competition stats) are 0 for all competitions.

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Twybaydos | 9 years ago
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Looking at the overall score list I can't click on people's totals to see what other people scored in the last stage. Clicking on the person also does not bring up their stage scores. Was this intended?

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dave atkinson | 9 years ago
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Looking at the other stuff too

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Tingo | 9 years ago
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Hi - The automatic competition leagues are not appearing for TDU Standard or Purist. Although the user leagues are.

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simon F | 9 years ago
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In the viewuser screen (http://fantasy.road.cc/viewuser?uid=9110) the stage scores don't appear when the dropdown is selected.

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LukeClosely | 9 years ago
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In the Tour Down Under Purist Competition stage 4 I finished joint 9th along with one other player but I haven't been awarded a top ten stage finish badge.

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VVV73 | 9 years ago
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running like a greased wheel ...lol

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EnglishmanAbroad | 9 years ago
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Anyone else missing badges from today?

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Digy46 | 9 years ago
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Had a great TDU stage 5 scored 238 one of my highest ever . Should have had four badges
200 stage points,summit, podium and top 10 stage finish
sadly badges there were none  2

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livestrongnick | 9 years ago
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I'm still waiting on badges for stage 2 (lobato) but got the relevant badges for stage 5  39

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EnglishmanAbroad | 9 years ago
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I also had a great stage 5. Highest ever stage score of 235 and stage position (12th  11 ). I'm missing the 200 point badge and the summit badge. I'm also missing the stage winner badge from aussie purist  37

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AngeS | 9 years ago
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Hi. I seem to be missing badges from tdu purist and Aussies only.
Other than that - having a great time with the comps. Cheers!

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Twybaydos | 9 years ago
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From the scores I see the overall competition is just TDU standard. However the totals in my mini league include all competitions, including the Aussie game. Will there be an overall competition of every game (standard, purist and bonus or not) and are you happy that mini leagues are judged on everything

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jova54 | 9 years ago
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Hi Dave,

Couple of issues, not sure if they've been raised yet.

1) My running Total is stuck on zero

2) I scored 500+ points in Tour de San Luis but didn't get the badge for it.

Thanks

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LukeClosely | 9 years ago
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There seems to be a top class field at the Vuelta a Andalucia this year with Froome, Contador and Quintana. I know this isn't always the case at this race.

The question is how flexible is the schedule of races you have at the moment and do you have any plans to add or change any races?

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DonnyCampo | 9 years ago
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The points from the Aussie only league have been counted in the overall user league scores, but surely they shouldn't be?

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BigBear63 | 9 years ago
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I think I have a bug that hasn't been flagged on the forum. At least as far as I can see.

There is no Total score on each of my Competition stats. Stage scores appear fine but not the Total score, which always shows as "0" for each of this years comps, TDU Standard, Aussies & Purist & San Luis. I am running in the latest Chrome Version 40.0.2214.94m with no extensions blocking on a Win8.1 x64. I checked in IE11 and the bug is the same.

Also on a general team selection point, we cannot filter the riders by specialism any more. Is there a reason for this change?

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BigBear63 | 9 years ago
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Has anyone noticed receiving ongoing email notifications on Roster changes for the Tour San Luis?  7

I received another one today advising:

Tour de San Luis - bonus purist: Davide Appollonio was removed from the roster
Tour de San Luis - bonus purist: Isaac Bolivar was removed from the roster

 24

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Joelsim | 9 years ago
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Just wait til after Paris Roubaix.

Bradley Wiggins has been removed from the roster and can be found in the pub.

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enrique | 9 years ago
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oooh!... Pretty things!  1 I just saw the column where the scores for the riders in the current competition appear.. how nice!  4

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LukeClosely | 9 years ago
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Copied and pasted this originally posted by enrique just to make sure it gets seen asap

Regarding points today I think there are some errors:

Terpstra has 33 - Came 17th in stage, 4th in GC and 2nd in intermediate sprint (15)
Ferrari - 30 points - Came 14th in stage, 5th in GC, 3rd in intermediate sprint (15)
Haussler - 14 points - Came 7th in stage, 9th in GC (18)
Guardini (who I have) - 12 points - Came 8th on stage, 10th in GC (15)

Can you have another look please?

replyquote

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LukeClosely | 9 years ago
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I'm not sure how readily available the relevant information is but as points are awarded for the young rider competitions it would be helpful to be able to filter riders that are eligible for this competition when picking teams

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jova54 | 9 years ago
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Thanks for sorting the ongoing race total scores Dave.

Can I have my competition badge for 500+ points on Tour De San Luis please?

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Nix | 9 years ago
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I just checked the Tour Downunder results from last month.

This is working more like last year now.

All my mini leagues are giving the totals and rankings I expected based just on standard scoring.

I can click on another player's score and see their team and what they scored in the last stage.

So thanks very much to techies for changing this.

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Turns8 | 9 years ago
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Don't think the competition badges are working properly...scored 564 for Tour of Qatar standard...and don't seem to have the 500 badge

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Cirage | 9 years ago
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Tried to upgrade to Premium, using Paypal, cannot get past login to pay in paypal box.

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Saint Mikie 41 | 9 years ago
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Morning , just gone in to make changes to my Tour of Oman Team (standard not purist) to find that I have no riders showing at all. Bit odd considering they scored points yesterday and that is showing on the dashboard. Can someone have a look at for me please? As it stands at the moment I have no riders for today! All my other teams are showing full teams. Thanks

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dave atkinson replied to Wig_Billy | 9 years ago
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Wig_Billy wrote:

I'm quite happy with my purist TDU team, so before I think about making any changes, should I be worried about this?

heh. i'll look into that. but no, you shouldn't be worried

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