Anti sandbagging and other areas that need development and communication

@Charlie_Issendorf I won’t go over everything again, but worth a good read of the majority of the thread.

TL;DR:

  • Autocat misses the point
  • Start with basic pen enforcement
  • Allow race organisers to chose how the pens are determined so there is more variety (i.e. not always the strongest or weakest in the pen. This ends sandbagging)
  • Build a ranking system in the background
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Well done for putting your hand up and fronting up to it… As race director it’s kind of the cardinal sin of zwift racing is it not :flushed:

I hope this is a spur to kick things on and put the quick fix in place of locked cat entry.

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@Charlie, that’s exactly the language we hear all the time from people who don’t compete fairly (“got dropped… [when I entered the right cat]”) the point is most people should get dropped, only one person can win, everybody else should expect not to and there’s no automatic right to ride in the front group. It’s people feeling entitled to be in the front group and gaming the system to make it happen that creates the feedback loop that creates such big (and important to their experience) front groups.

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I was in that race. Two thirds of the B pack got dropped on the first climb. Charlie still finished in the top half of the field.

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The W/kg categorization is not perfect, but it is the best we currently have. @Charlie_Issendorf, you can change this, so everyone has to sign up to their assigned category - a category that is right for them. Lead by example!

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So the reason they don’t do cat enforcement is that they know the cat system is crap. And the reason they don’t do anything better is…probably much the same as all the other zwift bugs that have been floating around for years.

Ok people please refrain from personal attacks.

Let’s keep this positive and move on.

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As others will no doubt respond .

We apprecaite that there might have been something of value to be obtained from the classic series , but it was hopefully just to discount that particular avenue as neither likely to solve any of the stated challenges or any of the non stated ones with any velocity at all ( that much is evident as 6 months later it pretty much came to naught , and all the changes that should have been progressed got sidelined and mothballed hence you we are still here exactly where we were last year. Best we can say is at least we know one possible way of how not to do it

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In an anti-sandbagging thread, the zwift race director sandbagging is a fairly significant item that is going to be discussed till the cows come home (And rightly so).

Your wrong to ask people to move on…

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I know it’s pretty low on the Zwift bugs list but the Two Bridges Loop from today’s DADurday race actually has 3 bridges.

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At least it has some bridges. All but one of next Tuesday’s ZRL races currently appear to be on Two Village Loop instead of Two Bridges Loop… (Probably could use some development and/or communication.)

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Who is going to try telling them :rofl:

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Do or do not. There is not try…

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I don’t believe anybody has been attacked, I hope my point isn’t taken as an attack, feedback is a gift. It just happens to be an important example.

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Dear pointless subforum,

It feels good to be back to my old self again.

So the roadmap for the season 2021/22 was made public for a change. Clubs isn’t really racing, not if you still don’t have the tools as an event maker whether in a club or not. So what about racing in the new season now that they divulged that the number of racers has swollen to 20% of the Zwift population and, one would assume with this mature product, keeps growing?

Well, not to worry. We are covered this season because Mark Cote was quoted as saying:
“There’s a lot of things to do, both in terms of digital elements - is it fair? Is there any cheating? - all the way down to ‘did we understand the athlete and put them into the right category’? Just know that it’s a top priority, it’s a very hard problem to solve, and it’s a core focus of ours.”

How comforting! Fair racing remains their core focus for the winter 2021/22! Just as it was throughout corona up til now. Phew! It’s good to know that they think about us up there as we are getting cheated by the race rules, again and again, in basically any and every race we participate in. It makes all the difference, doesn’t it?

There’s no theodicy problem in Zwift. Blasphemers! There is The Managment. I believe in them. I believe they exist. And they want all the best for us. Even when we are miserable they still think about us, like really hard. There. Have faith, you sinners!

But I just heard Moolman-Pasio was to, I didn’t quite get it, head some team or be some kind of patron for racing women in Zwift? And that had me worried. Zwift really shouldn’t tie real-life pros too closely to Zwift racing, not if the pros’ commitment is to extend down the gutter beyond cat A. I mean, no offense but while they are all great cyclists some of them aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. They could easily get the wrong impressions if they are not under strict guidance. What if they e.g. started to question tenets such as the infallibility of WKG as the great divider in racing? The last thing Zwift needs right now is more people like us in here but with celebrity status, ones that people outside this subforum actually listen to.

With love,

Zwiftcruiser

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Coming back to the thread over 7 months later it’s discouraging to see the same issues remain (having only entered one race since then), and to cap it all this latest bombshell.
Not holding out any hope Zwift will take racing seriously, which is staggering.

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Fear not , if they dont , horror vacui . Something will be along soon enough.

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My main worry or negative assumption is that the majority of what has been announced will just be a damp squib, with little that is tangible in relation to this thread and us thirsty b@stards.

This is the scenario where I’ll be pretty disappointed, and feel like Little Mo again.

  • UI / front end improvements: It looks like these all seem to be at the front end, which while much required, are far down my list of ‘must haves’, and are the sort of change that will become invisible because they were so obvious and overdue that they become the norm quickly. I didn’t see any mention of being able to change your own HUD data feeds when riding, which should surely be a piece of piss.

  • Clubs being rolled out: Correct me if I am wrong, but I did not see too much other than rolling out what has been in beta since the Jurassic period, which will basically mean slightly better meet ups. No integration with WTRL or Zwiftpower teams eh.

  • New roads: They look nice and will add some new Crit variety hopefully. Be cool if it’s not just the new roads though - some sort of additional racing gamification would be amazing.

And nothing done in terms of enforcing existing cats / sandbagging, a rankings system, live points races, other cool racing / competitive gamification, overhauling TTTs.

This is my worse case scenario to be clear.

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Nope I’m pretty sure that’s exactly the situation.

Hopefully at least some of those things are foundational work to get some functionality improvements one day.

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My tainted view based on recent releases is that your worse case is probably closer to my best case likely scenario. :cry:

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