We all know about height and weight doping and believe the majority of people consider that if this is purposely done then its cheating and I’m sure things are under way to improve this, but what about mile doping?
People using simulators to get better virtual hardware to race with…I’ve seen people with several billion drops and jump multiple levels over night. You can spot people doing this on their Youtube channels. They then use this better virtual hardware to race with.
So getting virtual hardware in the game by ill means… a blurry line, is this cheating? To me any levelling up in game not earned only has one word.
What is Zwift doing about this? Surely it must be easy to spot and penalise users that do this. I am one person and I can see it. Like someone said, when high sums of money get involved, things get ugly very fast and we wouldn’t want to taint eSports would we.
I’ve seen this happen in top races already…I have already lost faith in eSports. So I don’t expect Zwift to do anything as it would create negative press. You are already sliding down the slope of credibility.
Cheating is cheating, its black and white, no excuses.
You’re over thinking this. Check out the tests of various bikes and their relative speed. While there is some difference it’s negligible if you’re in a race.
More of an issue is Zwift doing nothing about people on inaccurate / badly calibrated smart trainers. For example how can be fair me using a power meter competing against someone using a Tacx Vortex and getting extra watts for free?
Maybe overthinking it but if its negligible, then I do ask myself why do people do it.
Do agree that there are far greater issues when comparing hardware and bad calibration… the list gets bigger!
I leave it to the experts to try and solve and police. Doesn’t stop me thinking that they should sort the easy stuff first and show they take any game cheat advantage, no matter how small, seriously. This may even stop some moving on to the bigger gains knowing that steps are being taken.
Until then I’ll continue my Zwifting, even do some races, but I won’t be supporting any live/broadcasted eSport racing… feels all wrong to me at the moment.
I suspect that those with the inclination to cheat at Zwift won’t have the commitment required to train to the highest level for competition.
After all, cheating by it’s very nature is taking a shortcut. Those persons are unlikely to be doing lots of hours of dedicated training, eating correctly, recovering well etc.
When it gets towards the pointy end of competition, when money, prizes and fame are being handed out, those that have cheated to get there will be handed their ass on a plate by those with the talent, commitment and desire.
eSports is young but with governing body involvement will be subject to the same physical testing measures as IRL racing plus additional rules specific to the platform.
Those that cheat will slip back down to flying off the front of E class group rides or ‘winning’ grand fondo events.
Hi,
Talking of levelling up.
I came across a rider putting out a perfect 200 Watts.
Absolutely no movement. 200 dead.
Checking some of their other rides, there were a number
of rides exactly the same. On each of those rides there was
no heart rate data but on other “normal” rides there was.
I’m sure Zwift could scan for such riders and if they thought
something was wrong abort the unusual looking rides if they
wanted. Not sure why they don’t.