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Post by bosko on Feb 6, 2018 10:43:19 GMT 1
The biggest problem I bump into at the moment, is that it takes a long time to develop an acceptable leader. Still think this is an overrated problem. If you can start with an 18 year old LS 2, and you count 3 LS-points per season, then after 1 season you already have your 5 attackingpoints. Of course, when you are used to have 20 LS points, the difference is huge. No more save fitness, no second attacker, ... its a change, but you adapt fast, and really, you have a new decent leader much faster then you all think. Thé problem in my opinion is to have a decent 2nd leader ... thát will be the struggle. I agree if you really want to, you could have a decent leader in a couple of seasons. But I'm thinking about teams who try to be a stable team in top of the game. Training young cyclists is possible, because you can score points with older cyclists at the same time. Training a leader like you say (for gaining about 3 LS a season), means you almost force yourself to relegate. |
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Post by eboese on Feb 6, 2018 11:16:49 GMT 1
If we don't do anything I think only a small group of dedicated die-hards will remainI dont have your oppinion Do you think is huge time 1 year from scrath to be top 5 on div 1 ? (Thors Thunder next season) 10/9/2015 - Lucero , last season was in first division. If you like this game and you start from div 6 or 5 in few seasons you go to division 2. My opinion is that new teams need to make money first 3 seasons and then they could survive / win races in div 2 That was not really my point about the die-hards though. Of course if you pick a couple of success stories it looks like everything is fine, but what worries me the most is this: There are in total 148 team leaders. And probably this number is even overstated, because I think there are quite a number of teams in this total that have already quit again or are barely playing. People are still walking away from this game. Now I'm not saying that is purely up to the pace and current set-up of the game, but I do feel it's a factor (of course I might be completely wrong, because I haven't asked the guys that left the game). Also, from the examples you have given it includes lot of teams that have been able to buy old stars because of other teams quitting or top teams selling their riders to start a new generation. Now that we are entering a new phase in the game and only have such a limited amount of players left we won't see that kind of influx of old stars anymore. I therefore have my doubts that future teams will be able to do what for example Thor's Thunder is doing now. And on top of that, and I know I'm repeating myself again, we don't have a lot of players left, so of course it's now easier to go from Div 5 to Div 1 in a shorter amount of time. Heck, more than 50% of the managers doesn't even want to get promoted, so if you have a half decent team making it to Div 1 is definitely possible. Is it a sign of healthy game though that these 2 reasons play a major role? I personally don't think so. |
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Post by Ab Normaal on Feb 6, 2018 11:21:09 GMT 1
The biggest problem I bump into at the moment, is that it takes a long time to develop an acceptable leader. Still think this is an overrated problem. If you can start with an 18 year old LS 2, and you count 3 LS-points per season, then after 1 season you already have your 5 attackingpoints. Of course, when you are used to have 20 LS points, the difference is huge. No more save fitness, no second attacker, ... its a change, but you adapt fast, and really, you have a new decent leader much faster then you all think. Thé problem in my opinion is to have a decent 2nd leader ... thát will be the struggle. Well, it is all about making choices. You can't be in 1st division, developing new riders, new leaders, win races, gain mood, earning money and have a youth scout. If that was the case, we would all be there. It also means there is a chance for all managers to be succesful. For example: I made the choice to develop a completely new team. First I kept some oldies to win points and earn money, finally I had to relegate to be competitive and gain mood. I did developed leaders. I could have had one with LS 18 already. Instead I chose to go for multiple leader. I now have 1 leader with LS 6 for the 1 day races, for 5 attacks and 1 helper, and I have two leaders for the tours with LS > 10. 1 I stopped using him a lot so he will be my spare leader, and he keeps on racing a few smaller tours so he will still increase in LS and 1 who now develops as my main leader. That meant that for years I was not able to figth for GC. This is the first season I can do that every now and than. But it took time. Other teams like Op Kop Sloot in and Beter laat dan nooit decided to stay in first division, win races with their top riders, developed a few young cyclists and earn money. They will stay in 1st division for a long time. Droeftoeters earned shitloads of money, won the league for seasons in a row and is the most succesful manager of the game. That was his choice. he now has to decide whaT to do in the future. So everybody makes his own decisions but you can't have it all. That's what I like about this game. It is all a matter of making choices. |
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Post by rarau on Feb 6, 2018 11:49:25 GMT 1
Ab Normaal +1
if captain was easy to do then Eboese will win always.
And about development... no one speak about transfers ?!?
Eboese/dustin/or other rich teams if want too much a cyclist could bid a price near Malton and they have a wonderfull star captain.
And Ab and others are right, you can stay in div 2 or 1 with LS 6.
I(other) want to have all choices possible but for this i need to pay a lot of money or to have a lot of patience.
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Post by Poekie on Feb 6, 2018 12:21:06 GMT 1
Back on topic: every season we lose a few managers. When I started playing there were around 200 managers iirc, now it's 148.
So the questions are:
1) Is it better to have more players?
I think yes. More players, more income for example (assuming there are also more premium players). Less chance the game stops because of the costs. There are also the issues eboese talked about.
2) If changing the season length to 12 weeks (or any other change to the came) means more players, should we do that?
As long as the change wouldn't make the game very different, I see no harm in it and I would say: do it.
The followup question is: are there any changes that would make more players keep playing it? And that is a difficult question to find the answer to...
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Post by bosko on Feb 6, 2018 12:25:39 GMT 1
Well, it is all about making choices. You can't be in 1st division, developing new riders, new leaders, win races, gain mood, earning money and have a youth scout. If that was the case, we would all be there. You can't be all there, cause there are only 12 spaces. So maybe the fights for promotion would be more tense = more excitement = more chance players don't get bored and leave the game? That meant that for years I was not able to figth for GC. This is the first season I can do that every now and than. But it took time. So everybody makes his own decisions but you can't have it all. That's what I like about this game. It is all a matter of making choices. That's exactly what I mean. I agree you can't have it all and making choices makes the game fun. But as you say, training a (or 2) new leaders means multiple seasons your team is pretty useless. Thats a long period where lot of players slowly lose touch with the game and eventually quit. As eboese says, only the die hards remain that way. And Ab and others are right, you can stay in div 2 or 1 with LS 6. That is true. I might be able to stay in div 2.1 with LS 6. But that is only because 3 of the 12 teams aren't playing. That shouldn't be the goal of the game. At least not in division 2. I make my suggestions/remarks, keeping in mind that the goal should be to have a game with 12 active teams, at least in div 1 and 2. Just for clarity: I'm only trying to find out why many people leave the game and think about if there might be a reason in the game for that. |
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Post by evild on Feb 6, 2018 20:44:41 GMT 1
For the moment it is idd very easy to get in the higher divisions very soon. With the number of old and good cyclists on the tl and the low player base, you are there in no time. Thing is, for teams like thors, what next season? Most of his riders are old and decreasing and you dont have a lot top riders between 30-34 on the tl to compensate and compete in races. So, bad resuls, lack of interest, return to div2 and leaving the game? I hope i am wrong.
The leadership is something you have to cope with. Its part of the long term strategy where you have to adapt to. I wouldnt change this. The only thing what i would change is also the training part. I have written it before. Fast training during younger years, no skill increase or drop between 30 and 33, fast drops after 34. Somthing like that.
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Post by bam on Feb 7, 2018 11:29:42 GMT 1
Back on topic: every season we lose a few managers. When I started playing there were around 200 managers iirc, now it's 148. So the questions are: 1) Is it better to have more players? I think yes. More players, more income for example (assuming there are also more premium players). Less chance the game stops because of the costs. There are also the issues eboese talked about. 2) If changing the season length to 12 weeks (or any other change to the came) means more players, should we do that? As long as the change wouldn't make the game very different, I see no harm in it and I would say: do it. The followup question is: are there any changes that would make more players keep playing it? And that is a difficult question to find the answer to... I think we should indeed try to have more players. However, I think there are 3 "stages" that we need to consider: 1) Attracting new people to the site. I think that there are actually people coming to the site, seeing that the amount of managers does increase a bit during the week. However, more is better in this case, but the only solution I see to this is more, and more effective, advertising. This is probably difficult, and not really something we can do in game for that (and therefore maybe out of the scope of this topic). 2) Keeping new people in the short term. What happens when people just made an account? Of course, some people will conclude that it is not the game they searched for, and the will not log in again. But we may loose people as well due to a lack of information. Of course, the wiki is available, and there is a lot of information on this forum (for example the tutorial guide of seberla ), but that are all things that you need to find yourself. It would, in my opinion, be better if an automatic message is sent to new players with a link to that guide, or even a tutorial popping up that you can go through (an additional header under tools such that it can be done later as well?). Another option is to add more help on all pages, for example as a question mark in the top right corner (as is done at the race tactics). It should however be well noticable, otherwise people still look over it. And of course, people should get information what is going to happen. If you make an account just after the season ends, you will not see anything happening. No information when a season starts, and there are no races. This can be simply prevented by putting a short announcement after each season, something like "Season x has ended. It is planned to have the season update at [date], and races are planned to start at [date]. After the season update, all cyclists will be 100% fit again." 3) Keeping people in the long term. How do things remain interesting in the long term? I think that it is a good idea to speed up things a bit. However, I don't really like the idea of shorter seasons. Since we still want about 10 races in a grand tour (I think that making it shorter reduces the amount of choices that has to be made) and we may want 3-4 WC races, that would mean that nearly half of the season (33-34 out of 72 races) is fixed. I think that the season length is now quite good, it is also something that people can get used to. However, it would be nice if the training went faster. I actually do like Ab's idea about a range of ages where cyclists cannot train anymore, and also do not loose skills. This means more competitive cyclists, which makes it more fun. I think that the mentioned ages, 31 to 34, are also quite realistic for that phase. I would however want to compensate the "lost trainings" (compared to the current situation) at younger ages. That can be done by doubling the training speed during 4 years. We should however be very careful in doing that too soon. If we speed up the training at 18-21 years, this means that the U21 races will be dominated only by the 21 yo. In addition, the differences between youth pulls from early in the season and later in the season is enlarged as well, which isn't a good thing in my opinion. Therefore, I wouldn't change the training speed at these ages. However, it may be nice to double training speed from 22 until 25. In real life, cyclists do make large steps at these ages, and some are able to compete for the win. This may also be possible in Peloton if you train your cyclists at these ages for very specialistic races (for example for Paris-Roubaix you shouldn't need much more skills than flat, sprint and TT). From 26 to 30, cyclists train at normal speed again, such that they are still better than the younger ones, but the difference isn't as large as it is now.
It remains difficult to implement such things in a fair way for older cyclists, but in this case things can be compensated by longer training, or temporarily train older cyclists faster for the transition as well. Another attention point is that injuries during the faster training period have double the amount of influence. So a 4 week injury during training (=5 missed trainings) will in that case mean that you miss 2 points (below 7), which is far too much I think.
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Post by Mike on Feb 7, 2018 11:44:10 GMT 1
Agree totaly
Nicely said...
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Post by eboese on Feb 7, 2018 11:46:01 GMT 1
Indeed, a very nice analysis and good suggestions. Thanks bam! |
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Post by rarau on Feb 7, 2018 13:26:28 GMT 1
Attracting new people to the site.
I think that there are actually people coming to the site, seeing that the amount of managers does increase a bit during the week. However, more is better in this case, but the only solution I see to this is more, and more effective, advertising.
I think on this ElGringo probably needs help with facebook account peloton.
In the past ElGringo was alone on this and probably needs help.
I cant help on this because 2 years ago i close my fb account and i dont know if i will open in the future.
I dont remember if peloton have a twitter account.
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Post by Slayer772004 on Feb 7, 2018 16:55:29 GMT 1
Another important 'stage' is to know why people quit.
Good and promising teams like Zapardiel, Towerriders, Hennerie, or earlier P&P Runners, Schwabewald quited, even they had a great team, good results, a good contact on the forum ...
I think its quiet a lot of work, but maybe someone can send a standard mail to all ex-teammanagers with the question why they stopped playing:
- to easy to win races
- to diffecult to win races
- the game is too complicated
- the game is too slow
- the game isn't what I expected
- too much bugs in the game
- other cycling games are more fun
- poor grafics
- desinterest
- other
Its just an example, but if you know whats the mean cause of quitting, you can work on that.
And about 2) Keeping new people in the short term.
Dustin and myself worked hard to support and motivate new teams for a few months. I posted the results and statistics on Wielerflits (I should search them), but it felt like useless work. Its all about how motivated new managers are, if they see or find the fun part of this game and if they want to go for it yes or no.
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Post by heppie on Feb 7, 2018 22:18:38 GMT 1
Nice analysis. Regarding the three phases:
1) I don't think this stage is the major point of concern. Like you say, there are still new managers subscribing. Okay, it could be more if more effort is put into this. However, if you loose them in the second stage it's not worth it. In my opinion we better focus on the other stages.
2) This is a critical stage. I think improvement is possible here. An automatic welcomes message with link to a tutorial is a good thing to start with. Also the wiki is a good thing, but I think it's a bit outdated at some points and if I'm not mistaken, there used to be differences between the different languages (at least Dutch and English versions).
The other suggestions are also good. The per page help can be very effective, although I never saw it till now. The tutorial banner is maybe a bit more work to implement.
3) This is a difficult one. In the long run it is inevitable that people stop playing at some moment due to reasons not related to this game. So this is about how to keep the game interesting. Like @slayer said it is good to know why managers quit. I think this holds especially for managers in this phase and also I think that ex-managers who left the game at this stage are more willing to answer a mail/message/questionnaire about this.
One reason might indeed be the time it takes to grow a generation. Shorter seasons can be a solution for this, but this will indeed limited the variation in races. An intermediate solution might be 7 races a week for 12 weeks (I realise this will have effect on fitness management). This means 84 races, 12 less than in the current calendar, but 12 more than a 12 week season with 6 races.
I also like the ideas to shorten the training period of cyclist and make the training speed more age dependent. Training cyclists up to 30 sounds good for me. Of course one must be careful with those changes and implement them slowly such that there is not a too big disadvantage for the current cyclists.
About leadership. Raising a cyclist to a reasonable amount of leadership (5 or so) takes rather long. My impression is that it doesn't depend on the current amount of leadership (so from 4 to 5 takes as long as from 19 to 20). I think it's a good idea that it goes faster at the lower levels and slower at higher levels. In this way most people can have a reasonable leader but you need really to invest to get an exceptional leader.
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Post by rarau on Feb 8, 2018 12:04:30 GMT 1
Good and promising teams like Zapardiel, Towerriders, Hennerie, or earlier P&P Runners, Schwabewald quitedP&P Runners quited probably because is busy in RL Evcont also have a busy RL now (or this is what i remember from last messages) Others romanians? Probably put hattrick in first plan. When we have our league ( in v1) a lot of romanians was more active. We are good but not so good like Genomico, eboese, BAM, heppie. So probably most of the romanians want to win 1.1 and they cant or want to play more with their friends. Also after 30-35years when you have kids you have less time for peloton, and peloton consume a lot of time. Why i m still active? Because i dont play anymore hattrick, rugbymania, velo manager ; i enter only 1-2 times per week. In peloton i enter 3-4 times per day. Good thing :
24 people viewing suggestions topic  i never see so many people on the same topic Mostly i see only 3-5 users on divisions
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Post by Stinus1986 on Feb 8, 2018 13:11:58 GMT 1
2) Keeping new people in the short term. About this I want to make some suggestions: 1. Make race tactics and fitness planning easierCurrently it is just impossible to set your tactics and make a good fitness planning directly on the website, so every manager has his own excel-sheet to do this. This is at the moment essential to be any good in this game and probably too much effort for a lot of players. If this game want to appeal to a wide player base in the future, the race tactics and fitness planning just has to become way easier and be possible to do directly on the website. For example change the tactics page so you can set them for multiple races (entire week or tour), have an overview of the fitness of all your cyclist for the next weeks and give an indication which cyclist are best suited for which race. 2. Eliminate big impact decisions for new managersWe all know the importance of choosing a good trainer when you start and it is clearly stated in the wiki and on the forum. But there are however still a lot of teams in the lower divisions that hired a trainer with low skills and this is deadly for their future. Why not force them to hire a good trainer and eliminate the option to make a mistake? For example, give them only the option to hire a trainer with 10 on one of the main skills. The same can be done with the youth scout. For example, forbid them to hire a youth scout in their first season. 3. Make the lower divisions more challengingCurrently the majority of the lower divisions consist of only a few active players and in most cases one team that dominates the rest. This leads to boring races and no challenge for short term goals. I read often on this forum that the 2 lower divisions are necessary, so the new teams can earn enough money. But I feel this is no solution for the root cause of this problem. There are also just not enough new teams to fill division 4 and 5. At the moment even some bot teams will promote to division 3. So for the lower divisions I suggest a complete overhaul of the division system. Why not make a separate Pro and Amateur league? A little like the Belgium football competition (for the people who know it). Division 1 and 2 can stay the same in a Pro league. Division 3 and 4 can be rearranged in an Amateur league. For division 5 I would even make a Starters league. Here you can implement the limitations like no youth scout and no transfers, so they first learn to set correct tactics and no team can completely dominate from the start. These are just my suggestions to help this game become bigger. I think there is a lot of potential, but this game still misses some essential features. I played ten years ago on the old race engine and still see mostly the same problems today. Wow, this post became much longer the I wanted  and sorry if this is not really on topic. |
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and sorry if this is not really on topic.