But that’s my point. You can say whatever you want in your event description; but it won’t align with ZwiftPower, so there can’t be any automatic disqualification/results validation based on those limits.
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I think many “sandbaggers” are just unaware of which category they belong to.
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Yup. I’d wager a large proportion of racers have no clue about Zwiftpower.
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Yes this was so odd! The actual update was the usual damp squib followed by a fair bit of abuse. If this had been the headline fix as it should have been, the positive PR would have far outweighed the moans.
Humans will be humans. That’s why the ‘system’ has to look after itself. It has to be part of the core client, it has to be consistent (applied to all races, or at least all ‘ranked’ races) and it has to reward best efforts.
Apart from the intricacies of the maths for the ranking model itself (there are plenty of examples that can be adopted, iRacing being the stand out one for me) is anyone actually against a rankings based matchmaking system as I previously outlined?
Are we all agreeing?
If this was at my IRL workplace it would be JFDI time.
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I think it was feature toggling gone wrong.
Certainly there is close to 100% agreement in terms of the racing community I’d say.
It does feel like a real watershed moment for Zwift - if it’s the same old same old come Autumn 2021, then there will be a lot of racers cancelling subscriptions I’d say.
(On the assumption there is a viable alternative).
@MRBaldi_T-ZHR, how can you say Zwift has not assimilated the W/kg cats? Go have a look at the presentation of e.g. any Crit City race. There are the W/kg cats in plaintext in the race description as an encouragement to follow them (not that you are forced to follow them, and exactly why is beyond me). Or better yet, take a look at the Beta Crits with their stupid, inefficient anti-sandbagging measures to try to enforce the W/kg cats from the backdoor end sort of (which is why they fail). And then they even took over ZP. If they own and manage ZP, they own the W/kg cats that ZP promotes.
Sure, as an event leader you can run your own categories (almost) anyway you’d like to define them. I am aware of that. But Zwift is responsible for community management around their own product and only they can change the racing paradigm and support it through software. You really think they shouldn’t take a firmer grip on this and improve things?
The WTRL rule set, as an example, is designed to circumvent the problems of the W/kg cats. In fact, it is very much in line with the solution I have proposed myself (my 3-point mantra I keep repeating over and over). I like it a lot. But I didn’t like how, again, Zwift started an assimilation process of the concept through ZRL to defer a remedy to racing, and I wrote about it months ago. I like the rule set, as opposed to ZP’s, but on a higher level Zwift’s way of letting the community create in-game core features for them and how they then manage those, once assimilated, is problematic in my opinion. To mention just one problematic consequence, they outsource customer satisfaction to the customers, or rather to a select set of favored customers, and then, much like you, refuse to see that they have any responsibility in the matter. And as a paying subscriber I can’t contact customer support and complain about it? (As a remote comparison, Zuckerberg’s early response to critique comes to mind – if FB is full of violent extremist propaganda or intelligence service manipulations, it’s not their responsibility? I beg to differ.)
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I make it simple: no in-game results. Other organisers would do well to do the same but, years later, I think ZHR is still the only series to do so.
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ZP aligns with whatever we want the rules to be. I have 10 age groups for the Masters. I have weight categories for the Clydesdale. And so on. All an organiser has to do is make the effort to set them up.
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Matchmaking as a concept is great. It could be used even with multiple category schemes. Age, gender, ranking, W/kg, previous placing etc.
I think we have had this conversation before .
Those sort of events are absolutely fine and should continue to be supported , work and flourish if there are those who wish and choose to take part in them if they service a user base which I am sure they will
The vast majority even might prefer to go there , they are the ones who don’t mind about anything that the views expressed here do. Or if they do mind find those events socially or otherwise fun enough to participant in them knowing the parameters . I for one want more control but I still for example would like to take part in more more sporting level races if it appealed and I wanted to , your events for example.
All that we would ask is that there is an open way to understand what level of governance is in place ( which to a certain extent is already there but needs improving and extending) . and that this governance happens BEFORE the race itself. If the race is an open race no rules we know that is the case before we enter and no rules are applied , Business as usual …
This thread is for the user base who want more structured racing and are looking for race events with a higher level of governance and control to it , much more aligned to real life racing organizations not to replace events but to run alongside them.
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I didn’t realize that was even an option. (I only use the in-game results to give ride ons if I remember.)
The number of non-Zwiftpower racers varies a lot depending on the race. Most of the ones I do myself send to have just the odd one every now and then, whereas in the big ones promoted by ZHQ it can be something close to half the field.
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Is iRacing a good model? I’d have thought fatigue or a “power curve” doesn’t play as much a role in a sim racing game. A 10 lap sprint race doesn’t take much less effort than a 50 lap race does it? A “hilly circuit” is still a player sitting on their sofa or racing seat setup, and it’s no more taxing than a flat race. Player weight has no impact either.
But in Zwift racing distance/duration and terrain make a big difference, especially combined with real world weight.
Someone who’s great at flat crit racing might struggle at hilly races, and vice versa. Any ranking system has to take these into account. It’s not much use being ranked highly on the basis of crit results only to be hugely outgunned if you enter a hilly race. Ideally, riders would have different categories for different types of race, IMO.
I know nothing about iRacing - would their ranking be able to account for those sorts of things?
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Ah, that’s good to hear. I’ve never set up a race on ZwiftPower - and all I ever see is the standard categories as you’ve described.
Bitching to Zwift about volunteer organisers’ events is a waste of breath. We set the rules, Zwift isn’t even consulted.
As I said, you want something different? Talk to organisers. May you can get them to do what I’ve been doing since 2015.
But surely if you had better tools to enforce whatever categories you want to set that can only be a good thing? And having restricted entry as a baseline for any even with racing categories is surely a no brainer?
I said that earlier: enforcement is much more important than complaining about w/kg categories - the latter is anyway purely down to organisers.
I hope that such enforcement will NOT be for the bog-standard w/kg categories, which some are pushing for all events that want to appear on the schedule, but also allow for whatever rules organisers wish to impose. We know it can be done, as men are blocked from entering Ladies-Only events, so it’s just a case of making it work for age, weight, ranking, etc.
iRacing does indeed take account of 4 different race types, I believe.
I don’t think a Zwift rankings system should be looking at power data, whether that’s w/kg or across a whole power curve. As soon as you do that, it is not a performance based rankings system. Good performances can (and do) come from race craft.
Personally I think as a starting point you can just have a single ranking system - if that means you typically do badly in hilly races, so be it - like real life! It could be developed further down the line to be more granular - e.g. profiles for crits, TTs, endurance and hilly races.
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@MRBaldi_T-ZHR, I think you are sidetracking the point.
Sure, I could campain against race organizers instead of “bitching to Zwift” about the W/kg system. To little use. Most of them don’t understand that W/kg is the devil. I can explain, I can prove it, but they still won’t get it and it won’t change their particular Tuesday night league. Or I could start my own league. I’m not the right person to do it (would you join my races? probably not), but that is not what I am after anyway.
All I want is for the average Joe/Jane, the silent majority of Zwifters, to be able to realize that tonight there’s room for a race after all once the chores are done, could be fun, and to sign up to some race on tonight’s menu on a whim without the need for close scrutiny, and to feel confident that the race will be fair enough and a pleasant experience. And Zwift can make this happen, not just for a certain race in a certain league once per week at an inconvenient time, but for all or most races (while still leaving room for organizers to stage an age league or whatever, of course!)
It’s not a fantasy or begging too much. All major e-sports publishers do this already, did so from the get-go. Real-life sports federations in any country provide the support to do this with a fair-enough rule set. They worry about rules, fairness and promotion of the sport, we worry about making events happen, and they will even support us there when we fall short. And if you want to arrange some oddball football/soccer games with a square ball or 20-man teams, then it’s not a mortal sin but FIFA rules don’t apply, otherwise you can always fall back on those. That’s why football grew so popular at the grassroot level. It’s accessible to so many and the game is fair-enough and thus fun.
I just cannot understand why Zwift wouldn’t want to be the FIFA or UCI of their own product. It’s in their best interest. How could it not be? I’d like to take a close look at the arguments against. They have the opportunity to extend it beyond their product even and set standards in this new form of e-sports, tie closer relations with UCI if they like (they’re already trying), reach higher acceptance within the sports community (they’re already trying) directly influencing their sales.
Look at padel, this… ridiculous sport (sorry, padel lovers). How come it suddenly boomed? Think it was a coincidence? Of course not. There was money in it. And smart people behind it. Oh, and an accessible and balanced game with a fair-enough rule set. Who wouldn’t want to be one of the smart people behind a success like that, if you had the chance? And here is an open goal!
I just cannot understand… “Nah, we’ll leave racing to the community. It’s just a fringe thing in Zwift anyway… even though it fills 80% of the weekly calendar…” What a complete waste!
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