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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The roster changes thread has been replaced by an email system that will automatically send you updates of any changes affecting your team - check the checkbox in your account page if you want them.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
Can I say that 100 is too high for just 5 riders in the Aussies comp.
Oh boy, no penalties... they worked out fine for me last year... anyway, changing rules is always fun... can't wait to see those guys on bikes again
...
Just looking at my competition archive it seems like everything has been included twice.
Also, I see the Women's world cup no longer has a name and is labelled (2014). I see this as a spoiler alert
Glad we have moved to skoda transfers it worked better in the tdf if you ask me .....a lot more strategic nice one
Wohoo open
How do I look at the rankings of all riders? I can only see those in TDU and San Lis at present, but the riders have a number next to them as if all riders are logged.
Thanks
Thanks Dave
(i've added a note to that effect)
Not sure if I am missing something here.
Received an email to say my Premium membership expires on the 20th and asks me to log in to renew.
However when I do login and navigate to Go Premium it says I am already a Premium member but there is no option anywhere to renew.
One of my main concerns is that my membership expires on the 20th which is mid way through the up coming two tours.
go to your account page and you can renew from there
I think it looks fantastic and the lack of penalty transfers is going to really change the strategy.
When selecting a filter for rider such as score:summit finish, i get the following error:
There was an error running the query
I get this error when sorting riders:
Rider options
Price range: 3 - 40
Order: Score: Flat
Find:
There was an error running the query
I'm getting the same "error running the query" message.
looking at that now
Like the addition of the stage profiles!!
Woooo!! So excited!
So guess the major changes are having a set amount of transfer for each competition, will defo change the tactics slightly!
Will it always be roughly equivalent to 2 transfers per stage, as the Tour Down under is?
Will defo eliminate stage hunting, but I suppose if there aren't individual prizes per stage then the appeal for that isn't as high.
Sorry Dave I posted this on another thread & then realised it may belong here ---
How can you pay for Premium without having to set up a Paypal account. I tried using my Mastercard and it directs me to Open Paypal acc. Note I live in Belgium, the page changes when I alter Country, don't know if that makes a difference.
I seem to have too much money
Yes, my top score on a stage was earned on the Tour Down Under stage from Pau to Hautacam.
Looks like some good changes - not sure about having all the transfers up front though, I suspect that just means people will be able to select riders who are in form and by the end of Tours everyone will have the same team (i.e. by the end of the 2014 Vuelta absolutely everyone had Bertie, Froome, Aru, Valverde and Purito).
I like the structure and graphics changes too, including little things like the new icons for the achievement badges: knowing how much work can go into these apparently trivial things someone's done a fine job there.
Bring it on
'tis ever and so. teams tend to end up the same no matter what the transfer policy. some riders pick themselves by the third week.
other stuff mentioned here should be fixed now
All looking very good and some interesting new angles. Just one wee bug I can see- if you click on your palmares and previous competitions archive every single race is listed as "Tour Down Under" eg clicking on "World Championship 2014" has the ITT,TTT and Road Race preceded by "Tour Down Under" and this seems to be the situation the whole way down.
Just a small pointer but the rest looks superb.
Couple of minor things - on the "How to play" tab, it says non-premium users can enter a max of 10 comps, but elsewhere it says 8. No biggie, but consistency would avoid problematic quibbles later on.
Also, would it be possible to have the link to the fantasy cycling forum back on the tab list? - again no big deal, it's just a handy shortcut.
Cheers,
Simon
Strewth that was quick. Cheers.
Simon
Looks like we were the two who slept on the pavement outside all night to get in first
Yes, working for me too now
fixed now!
...on my desktop and mobile!
try again now
Me too!
Hi, when i login and go to the fantasy site i get "Sorry, there are already the maximum number of teams registered from this IP address."... Is there a problem with the site or is it my account?
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