Ach well, onwards to April 
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Another update… another month of little progress and more issues off the back of the release.
@Mark_Cote your obviously not holding people to account with the amount of issues that fall out of the back of every update… Is there no pride there anymore, or have people given up on getting things right?
As customers, we have every right to hold you to account…
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Yes, same old, same old: NOTHING in the March update either.
I couldn’t care less that running shoe color is not saved when exiting the client. ROI anyone?
They need to SLAY that ugly old dragon W/kg race categories. It is undermining the whole brand. But I’m not holding my breath.
Working on a solution? Takes time to implement? There already is a solution implemented. ZP once stole the USCF ranking model. It’s there already. Use it if you can’t come up with something better. Steal their points system too, they work in conjunction. It worked OK for USCF. How hard can it be? But they don’t, and they won’t.
Here we go again, I’m as persistent as they are resistant, the final solution to racing (that every other sport already adheres to):
- Enforce categories
- Remove the performance ceilings in cat B-D and stop disqualifying racers allowed into a race.
- Results-based categories (and bury the W/kg cats DEEP with a wooden stake through the heart)
And you get the urge to quote the mantra of old US Postal director Thom Weisel here for some reason…
But they could have done this years ago. They haven’t. So exactly why should we believe they will now? Because “Categorization, Ranking, and Results are some of the MOST talked about things on a daily basis at Zwift”? Because we are “very much listened to”? LOL (Made me laugh at least, I needed that.)
I wasn’t born toxic. I didn’t sign up toxic. I wasn’t toxic when I first joined in the discussions, much like the newcomers joining in today, but those discussions were old already back then. No, it came later.
And I remember someone in here giving me friendly advice early on, telling me he admired my optimism and commitment but warned me that I would lose faith eventually, just like them, the oldtimers back then. I didn’t want him to be right. I would keep faith in change, I told myself. But he was right.
Kindest regards,
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You do realise that the w/kg ranges that everyone assumes are “categories” are just what one organiser used as a guide in 2014? Nothing to do with Zwift at all, just organisers blindly following each other.
I agree with you on enforcement: without that, any system is doomed to fail. But the A-E groups can be anything an organiser wants them to be. In the past, I’ve even used course PBs to allocate riders to the correct group. But nobody ever seems to read event descriptions, so it became chaotic once Zwift came out of Beta.
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It will be awesome if Zwift could enforce all these rules that the organizer specify before the Race start.
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It would indeed! Especially if we can specify pace, e.g., PB on a route, previous TT times, ranking, age, etc
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I’m pretty new to Zwift having just joined this past October when all my other fitness and sporting options were taken away through it being too cold to go out cycling and the pandemic closing down gyms and indoor sports facilities. It was my first experience of indoor cycling at home, previous winters I made do with spin classes at the gym to keep my cycling legs going. I only started racing on Zwift in January after spending the first few months doing a workout plan and just exploring the virtual world of Zwift.
I didn’t plan on racing when I started, but tried it after getting bored of just riding every day and now love mixing up my week with some free rides, training, trying to get PB’s and a race or two.
After the first few races in which everything was new and exciting I’ve found I would much prefer to just race hard against others of similar ability and Zwift is not making this very easy with all the issues being very well known and also known about for years it would seem.
Despite what has been said in this thread by people from Zwift it would seem that they don’t really care about these issues at a high level in the company or presumably something would have been done by now.
It is a shame for me because despite racing being the last thing on my mind when I joined it is probably the only thing that would stop be from cancelling in a month or two when the weather warms up and I can go outside again regularly. If I could be assured of being able to find a good race once or twice a week I may well keep my subscription going through the summer to substitute an outdoor ride for a Zwift race, but as things stand now I’ll happily cancel and just ride outside for the summer.
Come next winter I have no doubt I’ll be back cycling indoors again, but it will be a perfect time to look and try other platforms and if any of them are better for me than Zwift then I’ll head there.
I suspect (but hope I’m wrong) that Zwift will not do anything about these issues until enough people start cancelling their subscriptions and Zwift deems the poor racing organization to be at least partly responsible.
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Could you explain what you mean by wanting the performance ceilings removed?
I agree ,cat enforcement is paramount but not sure W/KG is the demon.
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My presumption is that you cant outperform a cat once you have entered - So upgrades happen post race - It kind of makes sense if you cannot race down a cat and this is accurate from the outset.
So you enter B with a 3.9/4Wkg PB, you perform well, gain a PB and have a 4.3wkg performance, that remains as is, but post race you get your bump to A Cat.
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Yes. I realize that. It’s like with anything else of significance that isn’t low-level platform matters in Zwift, like the latest change, that we now don’t have to quit the application to start a new activity. (It’s a relief, yes, it’s worth more than running shoe color, yes, but I’m still not applauding because it should have and could have been done years ago.) Really significant things, key drivers behind the Zwift success, things like categorizing races, ZP, WTRL, group ride customs, etc etc, it all sprouted from the community. Then Zwift assimilated them.
But the thing is, once they have assimilated a new “feature”, they own it. They are responsible. It’s on them to maintain and improve it for the subscribers to create and maintain customer value.
With the W/kg cats it was a badly thought through solution, maybe simple and convenient at the time, but once assimilated by Zwift and rolled out on a grand scale it has undermined racing completely. And it’s on them to fix it. It has been for years.
If you look at what I see as competitors or at least industry neighbors, a broader look, e-sports companies like Valve, Epic Games and many others, they take full responsibility for offering a solid platform to compete and have fun in. It’s still open enough for the community and external commercial stakeholders to make use of fairly freely and flexibly, but there is a solid infrastructure to support it all. And Zwift needs a stable and sensible racing platform as well.
Or you can take an extreme example such as Riot Games. They are totalitarian. It’s Valve-goes-Kim-Jong-Un, and I don’t particularly like that approach. But do they have a solid competition platform? Oh yes! And I cannot for my life understand why Zwift hasn’t already done this. If not for me or us, then at least in self-interest. From a gaming industry standpoint it’s a complete strategic nobrainer, even without real competition (they have no dangerous competitors atm). They will need it regardless. I think @David_Stark makes a very good point above about why. And that’s just one reason but there are more.
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Clearly you DON’T realise because you make the same error again: Zwift are not responsible for categories. They gave us the tools to host events, it’s down to organisers how to use them. If people assume that “C” means 2.5-3.2w/kg, that’s their ignorance and not Zwift’s fault. They have not “assimilated” the w/kg category system because It only exists in the minds of riders. Nor is it within their power - and nor should it - to make all organisers abide by set ranges, just because many are too lazy to read the description or to host races that bring something new to the platform.
If you want to blame Zwift for everything, go ahead. But if you actually want to change categorisation, talk to organisers. And educate riders that there are no “categories” by which all racers must abide. If I wished to do so, I could run events based on ranking; why don’t I? Because people are too lazy to read, enter the wrong pen, and cause havoc.
The one thing we should - and are - calling for is some form of enforcement to stop riders mindlessly joining the wrong pen.
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Is that entirely true? It’s a system that’s baked in to ZwiftPower as far as I know. Maybe it’s possible for ZwiftPower to use completely different power bands for specific race series, but if it is then it’s not widely known I think.
And whether we like it or not (I don’t), ZwiftPower is still the arbiter of “real results”, because it does at least try to enforce those bands. The “in game results” take no notice of whether a rider is hugely over-powered for the event, riding a badly calibrated zPower trainer, not wearing an HRM etc.
And that is all on Zwift.
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Consistent categories (whatever the basis) are at least reasonably easy to communicate and understand. I guess at least with automatic enforcement, organizer-specific categorization schemes can be made to work, but it will definitely get confusing if there are too many such schemes in circulation.
There is definitely the need for a full ground up rebuild on how racing works, how it is administered, and how it is controlled from a ‘fairness’ perspective. Perhaps that will come with the mythical Zwift 2.0, who knows.
But in the meantime, just giving the organisers the power to restrict entry based on current best w/kg would be a huge step forward for racers and for the legitimacy of racing on Zwift as a whole.
The in-game results are not results, everybody knows (or should know) that. They’re merely the order of finishing.
As for ZP, it is entirely possible to set whatever limits you want to each pen (NOT category!). I’ve used age, weight, course PB, etc., as well as w/kg but in a different way, e.g., 0-1, 1-1.5, 1.5-2.0, 2.0-2.5, 2.5-3.0 w/kg
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W/kg IS the demon. Believe me. Still don’t believe me? Then read the below.
Just like @Lee_H wrote, this is the way it must work in Zwift. You sign up to your race in your category and they let you in. If they let you in (think enforced categories), then you must always be allowed to do your very best, even if that performance are grounds for an upgrade after the race.
The ethos of Zwift racing right now is you need to be good to win, but you can’t be too good. Then you are a cheater and should be disqualified. I have likened it before to a football game where the team that scores the most goals win but if you score more than five goals then the team is disqualified. It doesn’t make sense on a general level and goes against the very nature of sports.
More specifically, in a Zwift context, this in-race DQ’ing creates several problems or artifacts that nobody really wants. Three important gamebreakers are:
- Problems with races of varying lengths
- An unfair advantage for heavy riders
- Cruising
I’ll explain “briefly” and also refer you to a more detailed description of each respective problem:
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The W/kg limit for each cat is fixed regardless of race length. This doesn’t work because of the rider’s power curve. If you can stay close to limit in a 40 min cat C race and thus might be competitive in fighting for the podium, then you will not be able to perform at such a high W/kg in a longer race lasting, say, 1:15. But the podium will nevertheless be filled with riders who can. But wouldn’t they belong in cat B rather, if they raced a 40 min race? Yes, they would. And if you participate in a short sprint race and go hard because you want to podium, then you might get upgraded. Then if you join a 40 min race in your new category after the upgrade, you will perform below that category, because at that race distance you actually belong to your former category. It doesn’t make sense and real-life cycling handles races of varying lengths differently, better. For a fuller description of the problem, you can read this.
-
The common talk on forums like this one is that heavy riders are disadvantaged compared to light riders. Outdoors this is true in some situations, whereas in some other situations it is not true. In Zwift racing categories B-D a relatively heavy rider close to the performance ceiling in the respective cat always has the upper hand against a lighter rider also close to the performance ceiling on any course. And this is because of the performance ceilings (together with anatomy).
This gives rise to the Light Rider’s Curse, that a light rider will sooner get upgraded and become pack fodder in the next cat than seeing a podium. You can prove all of this easily with logics. And I have also confirmed the logics with statistical analysis of a large number of varying races in the cats A-D (it doesn’t apply to cat A which doesn’t have a performance ceiling). The Light Rider’s Curse is undisputable. You can read up on the details here.
- There is constant complaints over sandbagging. And for good reason. Since categories are not enforced there are sandbaggers in 99% of the races in Zwift cats B-D. Now, sandbagging can mean any number of things, but what people usually refer to is people belonging to, say, cat B joining a cat C race. They won’t win on ZP but they win in the ZHQ results and they disrupt races and ruin the experience for the cat C’s.
But there is also a less conspicuous but still very common form of sandbagging that was dubbed ‘cruising’ on this forum. Most well-attended races also contain cruisers. A cruiser is someone who really belongs in e.g. cat A but races in cat B, is categorized as B on ZP and intentionally makes sure never to go over the 4.0 W/kg limit of cat B.
A rider like that is constrained by the same performance ceiling as the legit rider, but he has clear advantages over any legit rider in cat B. He might be riding comfortably in HR zone 3 while other legit contenders are at VO2Max in upper zone 4, and he can drop them easily. Sometimes you find riders on ZP who have podiumed a majority of a large number of races. You must understand that this isn’t normal. That is a cruiser. And the performance ceiling is to blame again. Cruising is a phenomenon unique to Zwift and the W/kg categories. It created the cruiser much the same way the lack of enforced categories created the sandbagger. Don’t blame the cheaters. It’s pointless. Blame Zwift. Only they can stop it.
There is also a big grey area when it comes to cruising. Different people have different preferences. Some like to push themselves hard, some do not. And that’s fine. There is a place for everyone in Zwift. But what isn’t fine is that racers near the performance ceiling who don’t like to go hard always have an advantage over those who do. That also goes against the nature and ethics of sports, and it ruins races.
Most or the articles on my blog are devoted to the cruising phenomenon. Among other things, I have cruised myself (currently not cruising) just to replicate what I have seen as a previously legit rider in races, to prove that it can be done and how to do it. There are articles describing the “theory” behind the phenomenon, studies proving its existence statistically in everyday races in Zwift cats B-D (cruising can’t exist in cat A by definition because it doesn’t have a performance ceiling), as well as race reports from my own cruises where I podium an unfair amount of times and detail how I did it. There is also a Cheat School, where I teach you how to cruise if you would like to verify the existence and efficiency of cruising.
And none of this is news to the Zwift management.
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There should be one point-based system for ranking racers. The problem with categories based on different category schemes, is that it would be difficult to calculate points for the results from the different races that count towards this one point-based ranking. There must be an official category scheme that counts against the race ranking.
Alternatively, there could be one point-based ranking per category scheme.
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I think this is why it is doubly frustrating . We have all these Community projects delivering what we want and customers to Zwift and what do they do … stiffle Community created content , why no open API available for really allowing Community stuff to grow and be created . Then on the other foot assimilate and take over the community assets that have been allowed to grow and do absolutely nothing with them or put them into a place that just annoys the very community they serve . No one says its easy but what we do want is zwift probably to step back and deliver a solid platform perhaps and let Community build the rich diverse content on it which will as a result also protect and help zwift commercial progress .
More power to user created content goes hand in hand and should follow with the solid basis this thread is asking for.
Has anyone checked to see if all this has already been done . Who knows after the Save without Exit fix going in unannounced like it did . ZwiftHQ seem a little shy to get to praised for doing the right thing … 
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Everybody does not know that. As things are now, a new racer can remain oblivious about this whole parallel infrastructure for however long they please. You have to make an active effort one way or another to learn about Zwiftpower.
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