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Ok, NOW it's time to stop offering afternoon tours.
Giro and Tour both with less than 10, I think you shouldn' offer Vuelta, Andes and Dec tour in the afternoon. Giro and Tour both with less than 10? Cut the afternoon.

And the same for the morning. 9 at the tour, I think it was 10 for the Giro, but one that made an inscription mistake... same thing.
Don't offer the Vuelta, the Andes and hte dec tour in the morning either.

Both morning and afternoon have clearly shown that they are not ready to ride big tours. So cut them. And cut all parallel tours too, so no tours, long, short, whatever, before 17h during the Vuelta, Andes and Dectour.

Robyklebt wrote:And the same for the morning. 9 at the tour, I think it was 10 for the Giro, but one that made an inscription mistake... same thing.
Don't offer the Vuelta, the Andes and hte dec tour in the morning either.

Both morning and afternoon have clearly shown that they are not ready to ride big tours. So cut them. And cut all parallel tours too, so no tours, long, short, whatever, before 17h during the Vuelta, Andes and Dectour.

Ok the morning part i do not discuss, there is no Alk so they would be in 10 and with Brath even 11!

About the 15h tour, next time maybe is better to start at 16h, eliminate the h18 and anticipate of one hour the one at 20... but i know that every person has different hours and maybe is busy so what about a survey .

I think that the short race bug may have influenced too, some non paying users who want to play the tour could have played all the day to get race point but i have to admit that the racepoint required was very low...

Otherwise force all Div 1-2 teams to play the Tours and Classics, they are the best why they should prefer solidarnosc and not Tour ? ok i am joking... more or less...

I say just cut it. Now the afternoon showed in the 2 most important stage races of the year it can't get a decent group. Cut it.
Same or the morning, with Alk, with Brath, in the end it was only 9 (I thin) at the Giro too.

Eheh this robyklebt doesn't seem to like the shades of grey.

I don't think we can really compare Giro to TdF, Giro needed 50racepoints and no time to get them, TdF less and much more time to get...

The problem of low participation is quite simple imo:

1) TdF starts in July, many people have holidays, and stay with family or anyway not much addicted to the game and prefer the sea to the race
2) Parallel tours: there are some kind of managers that prefer play little tours with 3-4 teams to make money instead of playing a big tour, my last proposal was not so much a joke, why a div 1-2 should play a minor tour and not the TdF? Just say that little tours are for little teams, otherwise you have the one day races, but ok this would be bad on those who don't want play the tour because they can't assure to be present...
3) Competition, ok this is a minor problem but i heard also this, i don't play at time xx:xx because the managers there are too strong; i don't know how this can be solved.

Moreover, why we don't get a better organization. I mean actually leso give some hours and some people of the forum discuss about it and tell for me it's ok without telling what hour they will play/if they will play, why simply making a survey of how many will be at hour xx, how many at hour xy and how many at hour yy? I know that many of the players are not active in the forum but at least you make an idea and shift the hours based on that idea or cancelling the tour based on that idea...

Moreover, i think that one of the big problem is also that bug about end of tour money when less than 10 teams... but correcting an error with another error (which for me is eliminating at all the tours in the first part of the day) is just another error! And in the morning today have played 9(solid)+8beja+9tour, so 26 not bad at all.
In the afternoon 5(solid)+9beja+9tour, 24; for such a strange reason at 18, 7(solid), 6beja, 14 tour, 27 not many more than the morning or the afternoon but concentrated on the tour!

The simple point though really is that the afternoon has had absolutely horrible participation in GTs this year. It used to be ok, never BIG groups, but always 12-15 or so? But now?
5 "big" tours per year
Vuelta 12: 15 teams, all ok
Andes 12: 7 teams.... not enough, but it is the Andes, very specialized terrain, here kind of understandeable
Dectour 12: 10 teams limit, limit
Giro 13: 9 not enough
Tour 13: 9 not enough

So... 3 of 5 RSF GTs in the afternoon with not enough participation, 1 just barely ok.
To me now cutting the afternoon seems an acceptable solution. Look, it seems we're not numerous enough at this time to make the races worthwhile. Cut the afternoon GTs AND cut the parallel tours too in those times, just let us ride one day races during the GTs.

The idea of forcing teams to ride certain times... yes. But remember a time where Sibiu was 2.2 and we almost had leso forbidding participation for D1-4.... big outcry... no chance.

Looks like you're still mad about that vuelta 1992 you could not ride

Anyhow, why do you want to ppunish the regular GT riders. It appears to me that a lot of those 9 guys (at least 4 or 5?) are riding all the GTs in the afternoon. Don't punish them!
The issue is the people that DONT ride the GTs and focus on shitraces with their big teams and their weak opponents. If anything has to be cut, let it be the little tours from the afternoon, and then we'll see if people prefer to ride shitraces or GTs !

Punish? It's a punishment to ride a GT in a small group.

Maybe can be nice to have only one group for morning + afternoon

Robyklebt wrote:Punish? It's a punishment to ride a GT in a small group.

Also depends how active teams which ride are? You can have 12teams pelOton with 8 super active teams which are online every stage and 8 team pelOton with all of them being super active. I would prefer the 2nd pelOton for sure. So smaller pelOton doesnt mean there will be less active teams, worse fight etc. But ofcourse probability of more active teams is always in bigger pelOton.

Do some promotion for this game and we have no problem here.

Team Eponistan wrote:Do some promotion for this game and we have no problem here.

good idea

do it and send your promotion ideas

lesossies wrote:

Team Eponistan wrote:Do some promotion for this game and we have no problem here.

good idea

do it and send your promotion ideas

Not like we've never done that before...

In the meantime we could cut the afternoon GTs
For a great slogan for the Vuelta The vuelta at cycling4freaks: More realistic than real life, we have a siesta too.
Anyway, ape is tired of the mini groups for GTs. For the 3 day stage race "Tour of the money grabbers" a 3 team group.. who cares. But a GT? Argh.

One of the main problems: the parallel program offers too many incentives compared with the Tour de France and other GTs. For most teams, the GTs are money wasting machines. And most teams do not ride the GTs just because... it's a GT.

So I think, if you don't change the incentives to ride a GT compared with the parallel program, nothing will happen about that. Esp. about morning and afternoon.

And one obvious reason: Many people spend their vacations in June/July/August. As simple as that.

team fl wrote:For most teams, the GTs are money wasting machines.

Yes, and that's why we have to change to whole salary-cap per race thing, as I suggested like 1 year ago.


Someone who makes a team for a climber on a GT has to pay MINIMUM 480k.
(talking about a decent team means: 1 climber(100), 2 classics(150), 2 60-80s(100) and 4 helpers(130) = 490k).
Average money earning of what... I'd say 40k each day (without final money), makes it 75k wasted everyday. Multiplied by 20 (or 21), that makes 1.5 mio lost. How many teams will get that back by the final prizes ? Not everyone, that's for sure. Especially not people with an average climber and average classics (unless they get the mountain prize, perhaps).

So it's basically a choice between a loss of 500k-1M in 3 weeks, or an average earning on other races of 1 (or even 2) millions during the same period. Most people will take the second choice.

Which leaves us with some superteams who will have a safe win, some weaker, naive or idealistic challengers who dont challenge anything, and an empty peloton besides them. Instead of having ~10 average climbers who can have different tactics.

Yes, the NoPIk idea is so brilliant that Buh might actually go for it. After destroying sprints lets destroy the rest

I'm a perfectionnist, never go for a job half done !

Edit: but more easily, just suspend the afternoon shit tours if you want more people at the GT.