So does anyone know what the implication/roadmap of this is .
Are the used numbers and the resulting category metrics going to be
Hidden as now going forward (only known when you enter an event )
Instantiated and shared in a new platform
Added to the Zwiftpower platform
Option 1 appears incompatible with any vision of allowing decentralised event use of pen enforcement
and the basic requirement for any normal satisfactory and feasible competiton entry system.
So is the future 2 or 3 … or something else ( e.g. open up the data for proper decentralised event management)
Zwift can clearly identify if the pen enforcement part of the trial is working, obviously.
You’re also well aware of how the category is calculated, you’re just playing devil’s advocate, but a really annoying one that keeps poking you with a stick.
Is there anything on the roadmap for showing your MAP/CP values in game? Or if not those values… maybe a more easily accessible power chart which shows various important power/wpkg values for the last 60 days, and maybe which efforts contributed to each etc…
With ZP you could always see 95% of the average of your top 3 20 min efforts to know why they slot you into a category. Now, I think you have to go sign-in to intervals.icu as the easiest way to see various CP values. So what’s shown on ZP is no longer what people will need - and might actually be confusing.
Basically… I imagine when this gets rolled out to all races people will want an easy to understand reason they can’t get into ‘insert category here’, or alternatively what they should be working on to best get to the next category. It would take someone a lot of digging to figure it out as it is today without anything in game to help guide them.
I’m in favor of the secret recipe, remaining secret. Besides, if pen cutoffs are able to be easily and commonly moved by organizers, how much would knowing how the formulas all work really help you day to day? Though it is why I suggested that Zwift consider a new common ‘language’ that might translate their formula to a number rating for each individual (eg. value of 1-100 or 1-60 or whatever).
I didn’t mean to say the formula would need to be shown, I expect that to be tweaked, and I expect different races eventually to use different cut-offs too.
But… Now that your category is dependent on your power curve rather than 95% of your top 3 20 min times, it would be good to have some UX (either in ZP or the main game) to show key values of that curve. Maybe it can even tell you where you’re strong, maybe even suggest the types of races you might be strongest at based on your curve etc…
For instance what you today get from intervals.icu is not the exact formula for how they categorize people in zwift (which is some combination of CP and MAP that intervals.icu knows nothing about), but it helps you understand why you are categorized where you are.
Yep understood. AFAIK we have no immediate plans but our first goal is to get through the test phase using measures we believe will work and review the overall feedback for these.
This is no different to the current way of doing things, I don’t see that the new categories are any more or less likely to see riders upgraded part way through the season.
The only slight difficulty I could forsee would be implementation of the so called “4 race rule” since the current system would block riders entering below their category, but my guess would be the WTRL race pass could over ride this anyway.
Is the goal of this testing to fine-tune your new performance metric-based categorization mechanism and find out whether the playerbase accepts it as a good enough improvement over the existing system to be used as the only available categorization, or to verify that the pen enforcement mechanism works and is able to support multiple possible categorization mechanisms?
Both really. We want to ensure that the measures we have in place are fair whilst also getting feedback from the racing community to see if they feel that this is an improvement.
The feedback from the current round of testing is that 60% felt it offered an improvement and I suspect out of the 40% it may have seemed perfectly normal to them for a good chunk of them.
This testing period is about testing the single on/off variable for pen enforcement. We are not at this stage (doesn’t mean we won’t) creating the ability for organisers to create their own custom category limits.
If you “tag” me as “and co” I don’t actually get notified.
You should be able to use @Watopia-Wayfinders (I think, not 100% sure if that notifies or not - and now looking at it, it’s several more people than I thought, so maybe not the best after all )
My wife is also allowed in C again. Which she’ll be close to the front of, but as a non-sprinter, unlikely to win anything that doesn’t have a hill top finish.
(I think, not 100% sure if that notifies or not - and now looking at it, it’s several more people than I thought, so maybe not the best after all 
)