Suggestions for the 2013 season

drheaton · 2012-09-03T11:01:37+01:00

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'.

This topic has 198 replies, 29 voices, and was last updated 13 years, 6 months ago by Ghedebrav.

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September 3, 2012 at 11:01 am #16723

drheaton

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’.
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September 30, 2012 at 4:48 pm #698049
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enrique

I used to like something
I used to like something about the old game – having to have a GC guy and a PC guy. I’d be ok if for next year, insteade of Star Riders, you were required to have 1 GC guy, 1 PC guy and one KM rider.

Just playing around with the idea 🙂

Another option I thought about was to eliminate the GC, KM and PC points, except for the riders you had on your team that were chosen for the GC, KM and PC slots.

Maybe the GC, KM and PC slots could be filled with any rider you choose, not those designated by the game as KM, PC or GC guys,l but whoever you wanted in those slots.

For example, at the start of the Tour I could choose Cancellara to fill the GC slot, Cavendish the PC slot and a DS to fill in the KM slot. Only thoes guys I chose would get the extra points for GC, KM and PC points. The rest my team, the other 6, would just get Finsih Line Points and PC and KM points along the way.

I guess what I like about it is that most teams have someone who pursues the GC, or at least the yellow jersey, a sprinter and a climber or breakaway guy. I guess I like the idea of requiring a GC guy, a PC guy and a KM rider from last year. I guess I’d just like to choose who those guys are and not have to choose from a designated list like we used to.

Just playing aroud with ideas… 🙂

September 17, 2012 at 9:32 pm #698047
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enrique

drheaton wrote:As a
drheaton wrote:
As a compromise to all the suggestions (10 point penalty transfers, more banking of transfers etc) how about we just make stage 1 (or the prologue) effectively a rest day? 4 transfers for the first stage… the rest of us will be trying to fix our teams.

I’d go for BOTH 4 transfers after the 1st stage AND being able to bank transfers till the end of the competiton…

Hell. I’d say you should be able to bank transfers all season long! 🙂 If you did that!, I’d have no problem with not being able to buy any extra transfers at all! 🙂

I know STEVESPRO is right, in that it’ll end up with people having more similar scores, but therein the challenge… It’ll give you more uncertainty in that if you get a huge day from one from your DS’s you can’t sit back and enjoy your haul too long because other teams can adapt more quickly and erase the deficit faster than they can right now… if you play your cards right and have luck on your side! 😉

September 11, 2012 at 10:43 am #698045
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James Warrener

Sounds a good idea…
Sounds a good idea…

September 10, 2012 at 5:05 pm #698043
0

drheaton

I agree, definitely loving
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?

September 10, 2012 at 5:01 pm #698041
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Gkam84

londonplayer wrote:Loving the
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.

September 10, 2012 at 4:58 pm #698039
0

londonplayer

Loving the flexibility of 9
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.

September 10, 2012 at 4:01 pm #698037
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drheaton

I also love the squad idea
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.

September 10, 2012 at 3:39 pm #698035
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James Warrener

Or just leave it as it is of
Or just leave it as it is of course… then everyone can play the way they choose.

Love the palmares by the way.

September 10, 2012 at 3:38 pm #698033
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James Warrener

+1 for the idea of picking a
+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.

September 8, 2012 at 5:49 pm #698031
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Raleigh

Didn’t there used to be a
Didn’t there used to be a figure for how many teams picked a rider?

September 8, 2012 at 5:37 pm #698029
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enrique

drheaton wrote:… I’d like
drheaton wrote:
… I’d like to… see every riders cumulative score… broken down by stage (I like statistics…).

I really like this idea! 🙂

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! 🙂

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?

September 7, 2012 at 5:18 am #698027
0

drheaton

I’m not sure including KoM
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?

September 6, 2012 at 11:49 pm #698025
0

enrique

Alan Tullett wrote:If
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! 🙂

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! 🙂

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! :)

September 6, 2012 at 10:39 pm #698023
0

Alan Tullett

drheaton wrote:I think the
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.

September 6, 2012 at 8:41 pm #698021
0

Raleigh

Yeah alright.
Whatever.
Just
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.

😀
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