Races for lower divisions teams

[cataracs]

I noticed there have been a few comeback teams and new comers lately, maybe it's time to bring back the low divison races div4-6? Maybe like once a month to test it at least.

It would help them get a chance to ride in a peloton that isn't way stronger.

[team fl]

I noticed there have been a few comeback teams and new comers lately, maybe it's time to bring back the low divison races div4-6? Maybe like once a month to test it at least.

It would help them get a chance to ride in a peloton that isn't way stronger.

Bring back? Have there been any at anytime? Short races have been a thing to learn the game mechanics though.

On one hand, it might be frustrating to ride against well established teams with strong line ups, on the other hand, it's part of the process. And they learn what's possible and how you ride on a certain terrain. I think you can get a competitive team, at least for one race type, in a (relative) short amount of time. And you can adapt your tactics. Have fun escaping, try to anticipate, be motivated to get a stronger team. i know you can do it, TAKA

[flockmastoR]

I noticed there have been a few comeback teams and new comers lately, maybe it's time to bring back the low divison races div4-6? Maybe like once a month to test it at least.

It would help them get a chance to ride in a peloton that isn't way stronger.

Bring back? Have there been any at anytime? Short races have been a thing to learn the game mechanics though.

On one hand, it might be frustrating to ride against well established teams with strong line ups, on the other hand, it's part of the process. And they learn what's possible and how you ride on a certain terrain. I think you can get a competitive team, at least for one race type, in a (relative) short amount of time. And you can adapt your tactics. Have fun escaping, try to anticipate, be motivated to get a stronger team. i know you can do it, TAKA

There were those kind of races available at some point (maybe like 10 years ago). I still think it would be a good idea to reintroduce that. With the unstoppable demand for more stage races, even offer some lower cat stage races for the newbie teams. One time, just ridable for lower division teams. I think it had different purposes: Restrict the very high category one day races to avoid noob tempo all the way and protect the newbies to give them some races with none dominant Division 1-3 teams

[team fl]

I remember, but that was only for days with high cat. one day races, right?

[Robyklebt]

No, was on other days too. On monument days (maybe cat 5 too?) we restricted the important race to cat 1-5, others had to race the "newcomers" race. On other days it was just an additional race.

In theory a good idea, in practice more difficult, would have to be D6+ if it's for newcomers, but do we really have enough people active there? Could have some d5+, d4+ maybe, test around a bit? The problem there of course is that ruthless managers like FL might simply destroy those poor newcomers.

With the unstoppable demand for more stage races, even offer some lower cat stage races for the newbie teams

Good idea, but good luck with that... Every attempt to restrict any shitty x.2 UCI race to newcomers was met by outraged D1 managers who demanded to be allowed to race that too, so in the end was never done.

[team fl]

The problem there of course is that ruthless managers like FL might simply destroy those poor newcomers.

Ha, found out that there's an expression for that in online gaming: smurfing!

[Gipfelstuermer]

Question is, how many active teams would we need for that? Because right now, if anything, this could work with an evening race (around prime time 20h/21h), but even there we don't have that many teams... it even feels like the morning/afternoon have been growing faster than the evening (kind of catching up with the evening in teams/race).

Over the last few months, we didn't lose too many teams throughout the off-season. Currently we have around 120 teams with points, around 100 teams logged in per day, around 75 teams racing per day. But there is no guarantee that there will be newcomers/comebackers during the season.

So before we can introduce this, I think we need some volunteers who do great marketing.

[Falcor CC]

From my experience in my first weeks I can say I don't think there will be too many people riding it... d6 maybe has 5 very active members maximum towards the end of the month. Right now it's only 3... It might be fun to win some races before going up to the real world but I'm learning a lot more from racing against experienced riders.

But once again, it would be fun to win some races, maybe a couple every month won't hurt :p. As FL mentioned, watch out for smurfs though

[Radunion]

You could try it and see if the low-div teams change their riding preferences for it. I would suggest it on a day without tour and maybe with a fantasy race (well, there is no such day in March). A better solution would be to get more teams and field splits, of course, but I have no plan how to achieve it.