No come on Gerrie, you know better than that…
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Lol @gloscherrybomb
You know what I mean. Now how do I rephrase it? To much turkey.
Once you move up in any system you will be at the bottom or atleast close to it.
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are most of the top Cs not actually racing B? that’s the only way a B with good race rank can realistically get ranking points, by racing in A. collecting gold trophies for your zp profile or whatever is a different story, though
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Gold trophies 
? who would do that ?
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i think C has a unique problem compared to A or B. here’s the unfiltered C field from ZP from one of the oh crit races i did yesterday. A+B only had a couple of DQs, from backmarkers. if you’re a C and getting your legs ripped off, i think proper category enforcement from zwift would go a long way to helping you enjoy racing more
Problem with that image is, as bad as that is it doesn’t show those not signed up to Zwiftpower so in reality it is worse than that.
The Deeside race on Wednesday night C cat was won by someone pushing 5wkg for the entire race who wasnt in Zwiftpower.
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I thought everyone was auto enrolled now, as some profiles say ‘not registered with Zwiftpower’.
Not in the ZP results from an event.
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Two points. First it would be nice if zwiftpower had an option to let organizers allow for race ranking to be done across all categories in a mass start race instead of across each category separately. That would allow 3R type races to be much more effective at getting people ranked properly against all of the people they race against. Currently, we need to go single category E (e.g. Herd Winter Series) to achieve this. I may move EVR races to that.
Second, simply using zwiftpower ranking (or the much better improved hopefully Elo based ranking when it becomes available) would eliminate a lot of the issues WRT to moving up based on (for example) a good TT result when you can’t really compete well in your current category.
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autocat is back. wtrl made an announcement on their facebook page….maybe this is the new thing zwift itself talked about?!?!?!?!?!?!?
See above
WHAT IS AUTOCAT?
Instead of using the normal power-based categorization that you are used to seeing in Zwift or ZwiftPower, WTRL’s AutoCat system works a little differently. Your historical finishing times for courses based on a difficulty rating of 1-5 within the most recent 30 days. This will be used to pair you with racers that are most similar to you in performance on that same difficulty of course. You are then signed up directly to the corresponding pen/category to ensure you’re racing in a fair and fun event. Z Racing Chase Races will use up to 5 separate categories/pens.
I can’t imagine there will be very robust data for races across multiple course types in only 30 days - let alone the blatant flaws in the calculation method anyway. But as long as Zwift don’t think this is the answer, then hey - let WTRL experiment with different race formats as they wish. Especially for a chase race.
As many have said before, how about letting other race organisers determine how the pens are split as well, by their own logic. If WTRL’s approach is a bit rubbish, I’m sure others can come up with some great formats.
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Even the most ambitious of us seldom get more than 20 events in 30 days. And of those only, maybe, a half dozen or so are best efforts, with the rest being for training.
AutoCat might be better than the current situation. But only minally, and only available to organizers that can setup up the additional infrastructure needed to support private events etc.
Preventing people from entering pens based on their zwiftpower category, either the current w/kg version or the hoped-for results-based rank category will both be better, and available easily to all event organizers.
And, since this is all computerized(!) anyway, running the new ranking side by side with the old, and showing people two categories (w/kg and the new ranking), and letting organizers decide which category they want enforced, shouldn’t be too hard.
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I’m sorry I’m not going to be able to join you all for the upcoming Zracing Chase Race Series. Truly I am because if I could I wouldn’t be broken right now. And I would probably be decrying the crap scheduled start times or the fact I’m penned with a bunch or racers who can put down 450 watts for 20 minutes.
It will be VERY interesting to see if WTRL improves on the less than stellar AutoCat from the Zwift Classics. Since all I’m riding for the next coupla months is this keyboard, I’ll be following along with great interest. Do well.
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The WTRL Chase Race page is up now:
Signups will be live from Monday 29th Nov.
Just created a new thread for people’s feedback, so we don’t hijack this one …
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thanks makes sense, just frustrating that we are still going round in circles in this thread with no updates from Zwift while WTRL get all the access.
Guaranteed there will be more backlash at WTRL until Zwift provide a fair event platform for all organisers, cat enforcement could be done tomorrow.
Why is it not happening?
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In the Chase races (other thread to discuss nuances), you are auto added to the pen - no link to the web or companion app to join manually. This is a change from ZRL and other previous events.
Maybe one way to approach racing in the future would be to allow a race organiser to configure their race in a web portal using a list of ever-developing inputs. This would also be part of the Clubs functionality for non-public-calendar events e.g:
Number of pens: select from 1 to 6
Pen division logic: power, w/kg, age, autocat, ranking
Sub division logic: Key power metric (5 min, 20 min etc), Power band per pen, age band per pen, ranking band per pen etc
Every race then gets a single sign up link. This link could be used as part of the new in-game events portal, shared online, etc. The logic is applied based on the rider details Zwift stores.
That’s part one done and dusted - pen enforcement, dynamic race event types, power to the event organisers.
Part two then becomes developing a better ranking algorithm and making this ranking clear and understood in game (pretty easy - just display it in your profile and maybe a colour representation for different levels in-game)
These 2 in combination take racing to the next level in my opinion. Lots of race formats to choose from, no sandbagging, something for everyone, and a progression system that gives everyone something to play for.
Once that is completed, we can look at other race formats supported in-game - points races, elimination races, etc.
Just call me Mr. Roadmap.
Or call me Mr 2028.
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I agree but one thing I would prefer to see is signup from the companion app not from every event organizer website.
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I wrote:
Naturally it would be via the companion app events list as well.
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agreed but what it does show is Zwift right now are willing to put events in the public event calendar that have external signup methods.
This would be great for popular series like TFC Mad Monday and others than lose a lot of visibility due to having to use private links to control sandbaggers if they could remain onthe calendar but use external signup method.
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