Sit and do nothing waiting for things to turn out for the best by themselves? I have pretty bad experiences from that approach in general in life and try to avoid it if I can.
You see, from their communication in the recent past, which has been pretty vague (basically: we’ve got stuff cooking, just you wait and see) I can, with a little imagination, see two possibilities, something like:
A) They have taken the first logical step towards better, fairer racing by testing cat enforcement. They do also see the need to move to category definitions based on past race results rather than some Newtonian measures. But it’s a big transition, one where they have to reshape racing across the board, rally the company and ultimately involve the grass roots, the race organizers. This is obviously going to take time. We’re looking at a release earliest around the start of the next winter season.
So while they were at it, implementing a cat enforcement test as the first step, they decided to throw in a new temporary categorization that would ease the pain we’re in a little while they keep working on the real solution.
There were talks with representatives from USAC and FIS around Oct-Nov '21 to learn more about the experiences of the USAC points system and the FIS ranking in practice. They also invited TrueSkill and some other competitors for product demos of online ranking/matchmaking systems.
From what they learned they decided that even though a points system would be simple and intuitive, it posed a set of unforeseen problems. TrueSkill, although a much more expensive solution overall, seemed a better fit for the Zwift online environment and the diverse Zwift racing ecosystem.
They have been in negotiations with Microsoft both regarding a price tag for the license itself plus the adaptation of the model, which requires a joint effort between Zwift and Microsoft specialist consultants. Of course, because of the ongoing negotiations it has not been possible to talk openly in here about the shape of the solution.
But you should know that every drop of sweat you pour into the test races will come to good use as initial seeds in a preliminary calibration of the ranking system. So keep at it and be patient, please. It sounds cheezy and not very convincing, they know, but what can they say more than “Good things come to those who wait”? Just have faith, you’re gonna love this once it goes live!
B) Apart from adding more options to play with for race organizers (cat enforcement: ON/OFF), there are no further plans than this to reshape Zwift racing. Not at this moment. Maybe later. There are options, yes they realize that, but… We’ll see.
What do you think is more likely, A) or B)?
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