Anti sandbagging and other areas that need development and communication

Again, this is just like my experience with the Zwift Classic, even more so. The riders at the pointy end of the fields thought Autocat was the best thing since sliced bread; the riders at the back end of the fields were pretty sure the bread was moldy. When we posted up in the feedback thread, the front end riders said, “You’re overstating things and Autocat is great.”

When I started posting up the Zpowa results for my C3 and C2 events with the wide disparity in w/kg and watt numbers then they saw the problem. You’re doing the same thing here, Ole. Start times are great for you so “What’s the problem? WTRL must have a good reason for not accommodating the morning North American riders.”

There are what? 15 time slots? Many of them an hour apart. And a 7 hour gap in the middle of them. There can be no valid reason for it except WTRL doesn’t want be told what to do. Just like the Zwift Classic.

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Seems an odd response when you are requesting about a zone for west coast riders.

As you say this is totally off topic one final point comparing to the Thursday TTT which now has a zone at 7.20am est it is still pretty quiet with 16 teams (across all cats). That might work for TTT but if similar numbers appeared for ZRL it would not be enough to make a league out of.

I’d fully support more zones if there is teams/riders available so i’d suggest feedback to Zwift.

Hey who would do that to D group racing. i do some TTV of D group racing.

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Putting some money where their mouth is?

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2571812857

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Good news…

Another example of the disproportionate amount of status and importance WTRL events hold within Zwift racing:

Don’t get me wrong, this absolutely will not affect me personally. :rofl: But it doesn’t sit right with me that you must be registered with a third party company to participate in this. I started reading that article excitedly wondering if it was going to be some sort of community knockout competition that everyone on Zwift could take part in, in one way or another. Nope, same closed shop.

Will everyone affected by registered already? Almost certainly. This is an easy solution for Zwift. But again it sends the message that all other events aren’t really worth bothering with.

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“The ideal candidate has extensive experience designing PvP”

Zwift deathmatch inc! I hope they add Capture the Flag. :smiley:

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I’m with you generally on this however in this one I’m sure registering an account with WTRL will be the least of anyone’s worries given how onerous the requirements for registering for a UCI event are likely to be.

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Nah I agree, and I’m not saying it’s not necessary to have those very strict controls etc. It’s more that once again it basically says ‘WTRL/autocat = legit’, which denigrates everything else. It shouldn’t be necessary for paying customers to give their details to a completely separate company to ensure fairness on the platform, nor should their events be the only ones deemed suitable.

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Indeed, I find i odd that you have to be auto-catted via some obscure formula in order to be able to compete. Why not have it as a free for all. Surely those not strong enough won’t last the distance anyway.

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Be interesting to hear what @Eric_Schlange_ZwftIn had to say about the use of the term “auto categorised” in the story but the way I read it was just that it was only open to A category riders, per the existing A-D terminology and boundaries, not that it had anything to do with the Auto Cat experiment. Apart from anything else there was no “A category” in Auto cat.

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Perhaps you’ll be able to use a chainsaw or nailgun on sandbaggers.

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I can think of a few reasons:

  • WTRL are the only ones capable of doing all of the processing after the race to determine who can progress
  • WTRL have the system in place to manage sign up via the private links
  • An open race would have thousands of riders - races of this type are a shambles - you need to be in the pen the second it opens, group are split apart by dumb trainer riders, etc

I’m not saying it should be this way, but the fact is racing ‘normally’ in the client is too much of a ■■■■ show for it to be of any use for a UCI sanctioned event.

Well WTRL do their own calculation which disagrees with zwiftpower, for reasons that have never been clear. You can see WTRL’s assessment in your ZRL team management page (for those in ZRL!). Eg I’m currently 3.71 on the ZRL page and 3.9 on zwiftpower - the latter is correct based on their stated algorithm. The former is … just wrong, frankly. I don’t know what it is supposed to represent.

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I just ignore it to be honest! Though maybe you’re right, we’ll need to know what that number actually represents if it’s to be used for anything meaningful.

Me and the eldest were playing Road Rash on a Mega Drive emulator last night… :rofl:

It’s obviously good they are putting some resources into this. A bit disappointing that this is the mark of their current progress though!

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Yeah, it is probably the right thing to do - have someone experienced dedicated to it - but this is clearly a couple of years away. It would have been good if this was clocked as important some time ago. At least all of the wording is promising that they ‘get’ it. Next up : someone to head up the design of ‘Clubs’ functionality.

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It’s come a long way since the very first (non-UCI) National Championships. Shame it’s in the wrong direction and will lead to a dead-end. I’m sure next year will see yet another different way of organising it.

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I keep forgetting about the lack of anything happening with Clubs. How long ago was the initial roll out now?

Zwift’s biggest asset is the community that drives it, and the many things that the different communities have been able to bring to the party without any help from Zwift HQ using manual work arounds etc. that have really added value to the wider community is amazing. Giving these guys a few more tools to do things is a huge no brainer.

One of the many many baffling no brainers on the list…

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