For our second devblog on TDF23, we're going to take a look at Challenges of the Moment. Having appeared last year as Race of the Moment, the aim of this mode is to regularly offer you new events to refresh objectives and challenges. In line with this, the mode is being expanded with Downhill Challenges.
Some of you were disappointed that they disappeared for a few years, but they are back this year! While the goal is still to ride down a hill as quickly as possible, these challenges are now only available for a limited time. In the same way that the objective of Race Challenges is to achieve the best position possible in a given leaderboard with a predefined team, in Downhill Challenges you need to get down hills as quickly as possible to place well in online leaderboards. For this type of challenge, it's not strategy and tactics you need but rather dexterity and speed!
You will need to be adaptable because every downhill must be raced with a particular rider, and as explained in the previous devblog (insert link), the Agility rating will greatly influence the way you ride downhill. You can't approach bends in the same way with an A+ rider and a D rider. A ghost of your best downhill will help you improve throughout your attempts. At the end of each challenge, your best time will unlock new badges and earn points towards your progression in the online leaderboards.
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As for Race of the Moment, it is also changing with the introduction of a new type of ranking proposed by the community during the 2022 beta: ranking based on time difference. During these events, the objective is to win the event with as big a lead as possible over the next person in the overall classification.
The bigger the time difference, the better your result in the race. In situations where the predefined team means winning the race is impossible, the goal is to finish as close as possible to the winner. In this case, the smaller the time difference between you and the winner, the better your result for the online leaderboard.
New strategic options have also been added with the introduction of condition boosts. These consumables give a boost to race-day condition for the whole team. You can use a maximum of two of them before each stage (and thus reach exceptional condition for your whole team), but use them wisely because there are only a limited number of them available.
It's up to you to decide whether to spread them out over the entire race or save them up for particular stages. In the online leaderboards, you can see the stages where other players have used their condition boosts.
So, these are the changes for Challenge of the Moment mode. In the next TDF devblog, we'll look at the different historic game modes and various other topics. Till next time!
