Anti sandbagging and other areas that need development and communication

sure… after our race…

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Hahaha! :rofl:

Wouldn’t have prevented our devastating tactical genius. :grin:

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My usual complaint, which everybody always says is a given, but just in case, people need to be able opt into high categories if they want.

I don’t like the sound of having to get promoted through lots of easy races just because I sensibly took a base season.

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I have a feeling that was a little bit of British humour. I suspect you might find Steve is somewhere within the range he suggests and is looking for every advantage he can get.

If you support race ranking have a look and help put forward some positive ideas

Thanks

Need to be a genius to comprehend what you have suggested but if you think race ranking is a possibility please contribute here:

Last time I was fairly sure of that I walked out of the reassessment 2 cm short.

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See you deleted a post on Race Ranking thread.

Seriously agree with you that racers with the ability to ride up should definitely be permitted or in fact encouraged to ride up.

I also believe that a very weak, poor racer riding just because coming last will increase their Race Ranking should not be encouraged to race up as it usually/possibly affects the Race Ranking of those riding in their correct ability category.

I believe Race Ranking systems work best when applied to racers racing against others of a similar ability and, in the perfect world, of a similar race ranking.

I believe that a Power Metric allows an honest racer, with little or no race history, to understand the level at which they should probably enter racing.

I believe a Race Ranking correlates better against race performance/results the higher the level of racing.

I am not against either and am in favour of trying to integrate both into one category boundary criteria system.

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I LOVE it, I think that we need a system similar to that.

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Read your post again this morning and picked up what you wrote in regards to trending in one direction or another. Can see great benefits of that:

Two riders have exactly same wkg, right on the boundary line for example, both might even have exactly the same Race Ranking score but one could be -

Trending UP - Race in category Up.
Trending DOWN - Race in the lower category.

I don’t think it only has to apply to those on the Boundary criteria line but wonder if it may have more impact there.

It has been pointed out elsewhere (AT) that if you have a strong opinion on a Forum thread it is often lost amongst thousands of old posts. If you have an opinion on Race Ranking, as I believe you post suggests, please do use the new Race Ranking - Will it Work thread, the more feedback, positive if possible !, the better.

The suggested promotion/relegation system is only relevant if categories are going to be based on performance metrics. In that case, there has to be a mechanism that corrects the limitations in the system that don’t take consistent winning and losing into consideration.

I don’t think it should be used if categories are split by race ranking. The race ranking system has this mechanism built-in, and categories can be split at some more or less arbitrary ranking numbers. There has to be some rules preventing people on the borderline from constantly jumping between categories though.

@OleKristian You could theoretically use performance metrics to detect repeated intentional downgrades in a ranked, results-based system. The only time performance metrics should be used other than when seeding newcomers into racing, if you ask me. It’s hard to actually prove such ranking exploits though. Maybe they had an infection or some other valid reason for suddenly performing worse. But if there is a repeated pattern of below-power-curve-performance as soon as a certain guy gets upgraded, then sure… (As a comparison, I have seen examples of cruisers going on a 3 month cooldown from monitored activities, more than once, as soon as they accidentally get upgraded - there will always be some people who will stop at nothing to be able to keep exploiting).

However, I think it’s better to just let them go. This is as far as I am willing to go when it comes to the subscriber freedom Min (I can only guess it’s him, his wish) so stubbornly defends at any cost (us). It stops there in my book.

So if someone wants to yoyo up and down, let him. He can’t keep winning forever in the lower cat in a results-based system (unlike today’s exploiters) and while underperforming in the next cat he is not really hurting anyone.

Or at least try that approach and keep a backup plan. If it then turns out these yoyo’s become an all too common problem, that basically every race has yoyo’s in them in the same way every race today has sandbaggers and almost every race has cruisers, then there is a clear need for some kind of enforcement, then you need to act somehow.

But like Ian suggests, please do visit the other thread. Don’t let your ideas get buried in this mass grave.

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Whoa! Only five paragraphs and four of them are short! The Apocalypse is upon us!

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It’s all about posting frequency. Now that I start to slowly approach the frequency of the rest of you, the number of paragraphs dwindle. The more often you post, the less you have in store to say each time.

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If you have a good ranking system, then really the only reason to split people into different categories really is to keep the overall size of each start to a reasonable size.

If you have a race that will attract hundreds of people, really just want to split it roughly 35-30-25-20 to get four reasonable starts. You can incentivize (or disincentivize) people to race in their “proper” cat by making it more likely that you will be successful (because you won’t get dropped at the gun) thereby likely improving your rank and still allow people to race up a cat if they want to race with their buddies etc.

If anyone wishes to see a race ranking results based system introduced and would like to contribute to how it might work please post here Race ranking discussion

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Regardless of how Zwift judges our race efforts, whether that is by pure performance metrics or by finishing position, allowing racers who aren’t registered on Zwiftpower to compete in races and allowing racers to quit before the race end with no consequences makes a complete mockery of the racing. Even moreso in league events held over a number of races.

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Have a missed a post?
I thought even those who are not signed upto Zwiftpower will be impacted by cat enforcement?

If people don’t want to be on zwiftpower that’s upto them (I’m of the opinion zwift should auto enrol everyone) but I expect them to have to race in the correct category.

On the non ZP users not showing in zwift power, I’m not sure I agree with the reasons given even for that… Dont want to publish their data without consent, all their data is published in the companion app and anyone can view it there? It’s the same people viewing it via the web interface so what’s the difference. The companion app is not locked down to active users only.

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You are 100% correct.

The dilemma is that if people make activities/profile private in Zwift/CA they cant make them private in ZP.

Cant block paying customers from racing but Zwift have no choice re privacy rights. Gets challenging if Zwift were going to use ZP for displaying new CP/MP and Ranking.