My Suggestions for PCM 2015

Like last year I want to give a short comment on PCM 2014 with suggestions for PCM 2015.
First of all thank you for the great game and I have to say you guys made a lot right from the last year.
But I think you can do even better.

I hope you recognized the wishlist on pcm.daily and can handle some things for 2015 and also response on my post to let me know if I'm wasting my time doing this or if it helps you developing and introducing some new things for the next game.




what I like in PCM 2014
• The sprints are great and make fun, especially the flat sprint are awesome to watch and you really fever with the sprinter to the finish line.
• The automatic mode gives you more time for the important things on a stage and let the AI bring the water, save a captain, ...
• animations
• Cobbeld races are now better than last year, well done!!
• And even more things in detail.


But now I come back to the facts that made me think about again this year:

3D Gameplay:
• As last year the "time" gaps are too big in my eyes. riders are just 2 bike length away from me and I’m over 30 sec. behind. This puts down the thrilling factor of the game.
Everyone loves tight races and fights till the very last km of a GT and when you just see you are 3rd and 6 mins. Behind you feel like almost losing within the first days of a GT. I know I could get it back, because the relation will stay the same but the feeling on just seeing it is bad.
• AI favourites attack 40km’s before the finish.
Again the AI makes dump decisions and you feel like: what’s going on here?
If a rider with weak teammates and positioned at 8th starts a breakaway around 40km’s before the finish to get some lost time back I would say OK let him go for a while and maybe let the 7th positioned rider or his teammate’s decide to follow or not.
I hated it to see one favourite attack and the others immediately follow after the first attack. This is most of the time nonsense. If the leader got his full crew why should he attack? If the leader has enough helpers available get them in front and make the pace. That saves energy and maybe a second team gives help.
• Teammates on breakaway should work together. This is just a little remark I sometimes noticed. I can’t say it for sure, because I don’t always have an eye on the breakaway.
• Then I got one question: Is the drag in relation to the km/h? Because I always feel the drag difference between uphill and flat passages is not big enough.
• One last thing I didn’t even have to explain TT’s and TTT’s. One thing that made the game feels bad. If this ain’t work next year, I don’t know if it’s worth to buy it, sorry for the hard words but that’s a fact.



Training plans:
• When you select a new goal for the rider the riders season plan creates new peaks and lows in fitness. This should be switched off, I always anger myself when I want to select/deselect one more goal and I have to start from the beginning.
• riders with low stats got a problem with high rated races so they need like 1.1 or HC races to be happy, but now I also have to ride there with my "stars" because my squad is not that big and they don't really love it to be in such low class races and become unhappy.
It's not a big point, but it's very hard to satisfy everyone. It's just a matter of right managing to keep them in an acceptable range.


New equipment section:
• The most improved and also a little annoying new feature of the game.
• Now I got the chance to select personal equipment for every rider, but it also has its pitfalls.
for Example: no selectable helmets!!!
the most important thing when it goes for aerodynamics!!!!
• The development for frames and wheels is great and there is really nothing to say against it. The only problem is that it’s now not that easy to implement custom frames, because the development only goes for one frame and not the whole pack of different frames in your assortment.


Features:
• What about a breakaway cam to see the breakaway in front? Like picture in picture mode or something like that. This could also be good for marked riders to see their attack.
• Starting orders in Prologs, best TT riders at the end, select TTT starting order
• Observe riders like in the last PCM versions about daily form, conditions,…
• Involve other teams in tactics, create alliances,
• Create random teams riders for small NC’s so it makes more fun to play.
• On/ off options my personal favourite.
• More mod friendly stuff!!! Like the Stage Editor


If this is not enough there is also the PCM.daily community with lot’s of suggestions: http://pcmdaily.com/forum/viewthread.ph ... d_id=35621

And my old thread from last year with some open points in it especially the managing part and the rider training/attributes: viewtopic.php?f=127&t=15972

I also know this thread comes a little bit late but I hope it gives you some new ideas and maybe inspiration for 2015.

Merci!

florian96

My suggestion for PCM 2015, is DONT make one! There will be no one bying it after playing PCM 2014! You had the chance, but you failed to produce a great game. People are tired of the HUGE ammount of bugs, and that there is no support! PLEASE, hand over the project to someone who want to devolpe it further.

THX for that well-conceived comment zachbastian
Before you write things down like:

You had the chance, but you failed to produce a great game.

Give some suggestions how they could do it better, or produce the "great game" you got in mind.

I'm not a developer, but I know from modding, that creating stuff like that can be very difficult and sometimes annoying, when things don't go that way you want it to.

But in the case this is called a "manager game" the 3D part of it is outstanding in relation to other managing games. And in my eyes the graphics need no improvement for the next years only the AI would need some fixes at all. And for sure the managing points I already wrote down above.

But I'm with you on the support thing, The only community who cares about us is the modding community and there cyanide also should work on it on giving the game more modding options like Giants do with their Simulators like the Farming Simulator for example.

Give yourself a kick Cyanide and join the modding communities and write or answer to the people out there and discuss all sort of game relevant solutions, improvements, suggestions, etc

lg
florian96

maak eens een stage die b.v zoals canton avenue gaat, 37% cobble klim
of baldwin street nieuw zeeland 37% straight, this will make a really hard mountainstage,

Fix the Sprints,
most of the stages i have the best sprinter, full energy at 3 - 1,5km from the finish,
and let him sprint, but the others gaining on him with less stats and less energy, how is that even possible?
my rider is full red and yellow, Green is still good, and i have highest stats from all riders WTF?

The sprints became more tricky in the last years. Back in the old times (2009 around) it was way to easy to win a sprint. But the newer system is more challanging and forgives less mistakes. That`s how sport should be.

I hope you build up a sprint train.
On the 3km you should have about 2 riders left. Best opportunity is a good flat rider in front and a good sprinter in front of you to carry on the sprint on the last 1,8 - 1,0kms.
Then it`s all on your sprinter to get this one home.

Daily form, fitness levels and the race rythm are also big factors since 2014!
So if you play a career keep that in mind. Create a training plan for your rider and decide in which races he should be on his peak with Fitness 1. Don`t forget to ride some races before to get into race rythm and the daily form is also a big part of it.

What do you mean with less energy?
You can`t see the energy of the other riders, only the ones of your team and they should not try to win for theirself they should be in a train to bring you the best possible position for the last kms.


But with your question you also bring me to another point.
What I also miss is that the sprinters or riders how are going on stage huntings, don`t really save their energy on the grand tours. On mountainstages it seems like they are going on until they "die" (empty red and yellow bar).
Why don`t they try to save the energy for important stages? What also would be nice is a timelimit to know who long I got time to reach the finishline.
In the end of a grand tour the Overall riders sometimes beat the pure sprinters and that`s very curious.
That would be a point to overthink a few parts of the sprinting system.
This question goes to the folks of Cyanide.