National Championships (Survey)

[Gipfelstuermer]

The situation: No NC's since the end of flash, I believe. All National Champions have retired by now, I guess. So reason 1 was end of flash and not implemented in new version. Reason 2: Seems luques had no time or desire to put them online. Reason 3: Low participation. All of the reasons are still valid. But we'll be working at it. Once the react version is really playable, we can add fun features like NC, WC, or whatever... But it only makes sense to implement them in React, if people want them! Tell us your opinion!

My opinion: NCs were not popular because of too few participants, zero prize money and random times. Maybe we can solve the participation in the future... in the meantime, do we want NCs? In my point of view, we have the gap in the calendar and we want to race something. So why not do some sort of alternative NC?


Next NCs: This June NCs in reality go from 16.06. (Costa Rica) to 29.06. (Netherlands, Jamaica, Uzbekistan, Korea).

• We can ride National Championships as normal races.

• It could be 5 NCs per day on the 15 days. Or less days and less NCs of course... maybe choosing only countries that have at least X active riders?To be discussed if there is general interest.

• We can give prize money.

• We can distribute the jerseys manually in the database (Alk and I can do that, I think). So winners get their jersey not immediately, but maybe 1 day later or so... Obviously, the national champion has to come from that country. If somebody else wins, no jersey.

• We can do real profiles, but for that will need design help... or random profiles... or a mix if only few profiles are designed

Let me know if it's bullshit and you don't like NCs. Then we just ride fantasy races I guess. (but then I wonder if you don't like nationalities in general and we should scrap those? or you really just prefer any cat1 fantasy race over some sort of NC?).

[Weezel]

I don't like the idea of 5 per day.
When I have no rider from one of this five nation I cannot ride on this day?

[flockmastoR]

Right now it doesn't really make sense to ride NC as we did before, because of the low number of active managers and riders. I mean even in better times, there were NCs that were absolutely worthless races. But the national champion jerseys were a nice feature and there were some really interessting races as well.

Do I get it right, that your idea is, to make an open race, so for example I can participate at the British championship and let Schötensack and Nöbauer (AUT) pull Hinton (GBR) to the victory? There are things I don't like about this idea but it could also be nice. DON'T LIKE: replace a random fantasy cat 1 race with a random fantasy cat 1 race were the best of a randomly chosen nation gets a jersey. But I don't really have a better idea

[Gipfelstuermer]

Do I get it right, that your idea is, to make an open race, so for example I can participate at the British championship and let Schötensack and Nöbauer (AUT) pull Hinton (GBR) to the victory? There are things I don't like about this idea but it could also be nice. DON'T LIKE: replace a random fantasy cat 1 race with a random fantasy cat 1 race were the best of a randomly chosen nation gets a jersey. But I don't really have a better idea

Nearly correct. The idea would be to replace random fantasy cat 1 race with real profile real date (or close to real date) cat1 (or maybe even cat2/3?) races and the chance to get a jersey. So if Hinton wins British NC, he gets the jersey. But if an Austrian rider wins British NC, nobody gets the GBR-jersey.

Of course that would require some designing... and profiles may only be available for the big nations, don't know... but Germany, for example, we could easily get the profile and ride it on the real date or close to the real date. I suspect, for other big nations that's also possible.

[flockmastoR]

Do I get it right, that your idea is, to make an open race, so for example I can participate at the British championship and let Schötensack and Nöbauer (AUT) pull Hinton (GBR) to the victory? There are things I don't like about this idea but it could also be nice. DON'T LIKE: replace a random fantasy cat 1 race with a random fantasy cat 1 race were the best of a randomly chosen nation gets a jersey. But I don't really have a better idea

Nearly correct. The idea would be to replace random fantasy cat 1 race with real profile real date (or close to real date) cat1 (or maybe even cat2/3?) races and the chance to get a jersey. So if Hinton wins British NC, he gets the jersey. But if an Austrian rider wins British NC, nobody gets the GBR-jersey.

Of course that would require some designing... and profiles may only be available for the big nations, don't know... but Germany, for example, we could easily get the profile and ride it on the real date or close to the real date. I suspect, for other big nations that's also possible.

Ok, now I get it. So a national champion needs to be a champion (winner). So for example you want to race on the 26th, the Belgian NC in the morning, the French NC in the afternoon and the Slovakian NC in the evening? Teams can just participate in one race? If teams can race more than one, what about length of the real races (rather long), points and money? But riding the more important NC for a start in 2022 would be possible I think.

[Gipfelstuermer]

Ok, now I get it. So a national champion needs to be a champion (winner). So for example you want to race on the 26th, the Belgian NC in the morning, the French NC in the afternoon and the Slovakian NC in the evening? Teams can just participate in one race? If teams can race more than one, what about length of the real races (rather long), points and money? But riding the more important NC for a start in 2022 would be possible I think.

That's how it could work. Teams can just participate in one race, because that's how the game works with normal races (and we won't be able to implement something different from that in time, and probably it's not a priority anyway).

An alternative to 4 different NCs per day would be, we only take the important countries, then each day a different NC but multiple editions. Would make designing easier, but risks having more than 1 national champion per country... but maybe that's not even a problem... imagine 4x German NC on one day... how likely is it that we have only German riders winning it? And even if... we also have 4 Giro champions in the end, right? I'd say both ways are possible IF there is interest to have NCs at all... maybe the second alternative is actually better when I think about it, because it's less design work. Just 1 design per day (as usual).

[Weezel]

What about giving the jersey to the best placed rider from the nation this race was planed? It's also the same with for example open austrian championsships in skiing (of course nobody else is strong enough to beat the Austrians.)

[Robyklebt]

Somehow nothing fits for me in the survey, that seems to be for the long term NCs anyway?

Anyway, no prize money makes for better races. Unless we have 500 active teams.

What made many NCs boring was 1 dominant team, easy win. The rest does only need to show up at km 1, try to see if the dominator is off, attack, if he's on, get caught, go look for another NC.

With money in the equation that would get worse. Yes, once we have a really big number of users, 100+ riders with an online manager in the race, then yes, then the money probably wouldn't hurt anymore. But before that, as long as we have a high number of races with very few active riders, then it would just encourage managers to select one country as their money project. Or right now even 2-3 seems easily possible.

For me NCs as they used to be would be absolutely ok again. But down to either once a year, real dates, or twice a year, June+November. With 3 times per year (June-October-February) or 4 times per year (June-Sept-Jan-March) it was often a big problem to find the open spot for the NCs in the calendar. And if not on a weekend there were often complaints (I didn't mind really, but ok) So for me:

1) NCs like before, but once or twice a year.
2) No NCs for nations with less than 20 riders from at least 5 teams with current points.
3) Make it possible to open different tabs on NC day, instead of having to open the game in 700 tabs, click on a NC race it opens a new tab.

For me long term that's good.

Short term.... I see no real need for NCs, jerseys or anything. Especially not designing NCs... to me seems a waste of resources when we don't really have enough designers for our usual program. But ok, if others want to design them, have fun, I personally won't join that designing spree.
But if there's designs, or pure fantasy ones, robot, whatever, with that system, then offer that 4 per day, not 5. For decent groups. And everybody can ride only one race a day. Germany-Tuvalu-Greece-Romania one day, Italy-Canada-Jamaica-Senegal the next, (just examples...) And as sad as it is, the main NC should then always be offered in the evening. So if we did 10 days with 4 each, only top 40, then the evening should always get the most important one. From Germany to Portugal right now.
But as I said, short term I don't really care either way. (But a decision before the 25th would be nice, that's our unofficial and almost never kept deadline for calendar decisions for the coming month)

[team fl]

For me it's clearly no prize money and no points. The "flag" counts, that's it. I participate, when I have time. Otherwise, I don't care that much.

[Mangahn]

Sex sales. And if its not sex, it should be money.