I have to say that, although for understandable reasons, it is unfortunate that the forum discussion had to be closed. I haven’t followed the thread in great length, but I have picked up a few pointers. Primarily about racers being classified correctly according to their underlying algorithm, which I think is a great step in the right direction worth acknowledging. While the most optimal category boundaries may or may not require further fiddling, there was also mention of the relative ease to add results based promotion and relegation on top of whichever algorithm used. If the current ‘core’ seems ready for it, then adding this step would seem an effective way to take care of those racers that end up in a too easy or too difficult category to provide them with fair racing also.
What I’m mostly interested in is the following @xflintx : is there anything that can be disclosed with regards to the progression of this project? Will there be a continuation/prolongation of auto-cat races during peak season (alongside duathlon, the team-based ZRL series and TTT) in one way or another? Or, bluntly said, does it end here for the time being and will you first need to go through a cycle of data processing, reflection and development before anything new can be shared?
Do you know what the funniest thing about boost mode was? That about half the entrants in the race would never use the power ups (perhaps they didn’t have easy access to a keyboard or weren’t using the Companion App so they couldn’t deploy pickups). I entered a handful of those races and they were my best results in B cat racing probably because I was one of the 50% who would actually use the boost power ups.
Do you want to hear something even funnier? A week or two I entered a Zwift Steering test race. Guess how many people had steering active? I’ll give you a hint. It was somewhere between none and diddly squat.
For all this talk about 8% of Zwifters who race I wonder what percentage use steering. I bet it’s less than 1%.
I got the Sterzo pretty early on, used it a couple of times, haven’t even updated the firmware yet. Doesn’t add much to the experience in my opinion and at least mine makes an annoying creaking sound especially when riding hands off.
I could see the advantage for racing (if only to avoid getting stuck in the sticky draft), but there were so few races where it is enabled and the ones that did only had a handful of participants so I stopped paying attention.
Development on gamification elements, like Power-ups and Boost mode, would make sense in the context of a push to create an unpretentious “Mario Cart” race type. If the race is announced as a gamified race and all racers are sitting in their trikes, it would make sense to have plenty of power-ups and boost mode enabled. The problem comes when they try to mix these elements in races that are taken seriously. There becomes an expectation mismatch.
There has to be an overall plan for these new features, otherwise, they are just a waste of precious development time.
I’m not even against boost mode per se - if the underlying race system was mature enough in the first place. It’s just a smack in the face when they say there is no available resource to get all of the basic stuff done, and then that appears. A quick list of things that would have made more sense than boost mode:
Pen enforcement
Rankings system
Elimination races
TTT races (conveyors, draft only team mates, etc)
Points races, with points shown in game
Primes within the UI
Clubs, as originally envisioned not just for big events organisers
New UI
Team only (or nearby riders) comms system
Draft mechanics to fix race dynamics (proper draft, proper breakaways)
Route progress bar
Customisable companion app dashboard (e.g. average power etc)
Chase races
Post-race ‘coffee shop’
Cornering and downhill mechanics
Levels above 50
However, as @Anna_Ronkainen rightly points out, maybe boost mode was the last hurrah of the old establishment, and the quiet period we have seen is Zwift reorganising to start delivering properly. No doubt about it, there have been shoots of hope this year. World of Zwift is good to preview the upcoming monthly release. There are some attempts at engaging with the community. Racing is being looked at. I have heard lots of mentions of there being progress on some awesome big projects - a social platform within the game, tied in to the clubs idea, is possibly one of them. @Eric mentioned working on ‘systems’ - racing is surely the ultimate candidate for a complete system development, so it is certainly disappointing that a team are not given this as a responsibility but there we go.
Oh, I’m not against boost mode at all, quite the opposite: I think it sounds like a decent approximation of the physics of going up and down the banking of a velodrome. Operative terms being “sounds like”, since I have never got around to trying one of those beta races either, for the same reasons as steering, no races at suitable times with more than a handful of participants.
Fully agree that it made little sense in terms of development priorities, though.
Thanks all for continuing the conversation.
Although you have an unfair advantage with the time zones it took me forever to catch up.
Regarding feed back for Autocategorization Test Events: I will setup a topic each week so that we can discuss the particular week’s race pre and post race.
We can keep al the general racing ideas suggestions and comments here.
I was on a long ride today which made me think of this. I took a break halfway through it and thought it would be cool if I could stop at some sort of hangout. A place where people can gather. Maybe this could become the new starting point instead of starting on the side of the road.
Yeah I think this would be a great idea. Even just to quickly say thanks for the race and well done to the guy who outsprinted me. As it is, you just get dumped into the crowd (which may be huge if it’s a busy world) and any messages are quickly lost…
OTOH it sounds like quite a significant additional feature.
Oh I get that idea. Yeah, it works really well on another platform. As each event is on its own server, you just hang out after the finish line until you decide to exit. Always a good bit of chat, thanks to the organisers, well dones etc.
Perhaps on Zwift they could have it so that you don’t get dumped back into the free for all world until you click on on results and they could have a chat box to the side like when you are in the pens.
This will be awesome, having the results and a chat box. And you can only communicate with those in the event. And your avatar ride in the open world while you cool down or even if it put you back in the pen (but then they need to save the training in the pen as well either as separate or part of the event)
This could also be a helpful place to give Zwift Race feedback. This could be something like !ZHQ this was fun
Then that get sent to HQ for feedback.
This is a bad idea before we fix the sand-bagging issue. Frustrated people will gang on sand-baggers and it won’t be a chill experience as we all want. After sand-bagging is fixed, this is a brilliant suggestion.
I think it was fair to close that one — but it should’ve been with a move to an ‘official’ thread in which discussion can continue on the various topics. Which, I guess, is this one by default now.
It does also illustrate the problem with communication. Martin did communicate in that thread, no? But with comms overall being a bit spotty, and the style of communication leaving something to be desired, things get messy quick.
Overall, I think we’re doing better. But fundamentally here, too, quicker iteration combined with more transparency would help keep comms fruitful.
Riders don’t need to know what ZwiftPower is in terms of it being used for ranking. Zwift owns ZwiftPower, so they can automatically enroll everyone into it. ZP calculates ranking based on results, so no action is required from riders. The signup page can show which category is suggested (and potentially why).
It would be, yes, very good to be able to view that info somewhere more easily. This can be as simple as a new page on zwift.com that pulls data in from ZP.
But once again, it’s not required for a testable minimal increment.
And player comms is important, you’re absolutely right. Fortunately building the signup frontend is once again something that can be done separately just like it’s been done for ZRL and invitationals. Testing will go through event series like this (while ranking can in the background be calculated from all races) This gives time to rework the game client interface and content copy.
I don’t think I said it last time but props for writing up the proposal. I favor a slightly different approach, but it’s great work nonetheless.
I also thought about this, but I think the problem is ZP is not made for that many users, it will have to be scaled up by a lot.
But Zwift do keep track of your 1,5 and 20 min best. If they add some fields to track average of top 3 1,5 and 20min power they can use that as a starting point. Maybe that is what WTRL was testing and using, but who knows.
