So’s Monopoly, but no one likes people cheating at that either.
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“Picture with a license to show real weight”.
Incorrect. My license still shows me at 230lbs. I’m currently 203, will be around 185 during the outdoor cycling season. Showing my license would cause me greater than necessary difficulty, unless I went and paid to have my licence changed every time I lost or gained weight, which might be five or ten times a year.
I am very new to Zwift and felt a bit defeated at first trying to keep up to a group that was way above the agreed wattage, then I discovered group rides with a fence. Pretty cool. My question is this …
Can you start a group or team that hosts races and group rides only for their members? and if so, you could monitor your group for honesty?
you can create a meetup and invite all your friends, then line up at the start line, someone countdown and off you go.
This is how racing in Zwift started.
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Congratulations Jerry! Good call on the license idea. Keep up the good work and Ride On!
TdZ Stage 2 Race:
A winner: 3.8w/kg
B winner: 4.5w/kg
C winner: 4.6w/kg
D winner: 4.1w/kg
It’s all well and good to say that you shouldn’t ignore the cheaters but what’s the point of even having race categories when they are so messed up?
I think Zwift needs to do the following:
-
Introduce OPEN category races (no A,B,C,D cats). This is effectively what the TdZ group rides are like. If you finish 200th out 400 people then that’s where you finish. It’s impossible to sandbag. People doing 4w/kg can compete against people doing 4w/kg (even if they are lying about their weight). Actually, a lot of races are like this already, every cat starts together and can see everyone else, the leaderboard shows everyone and it’s only at the end of the race that you know where you finished in your cat. There’s no point in having categories in races orgranised like that.
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CATEGORY races. Should have separate start times and riders can only see other riders in their cat so you can’t draft of higher cats (do that in the OPEN races). This is what the TdZ races are like. Category limits should be enforced (use FTP or recent history of best 20 min power) so you can’t sign up to a lower cat. Also, split B cat into 2 categories. People who do 3.2w/kg can’t compete with the people doing 4w/kg, that’s why they are dropping down to C cat and messing that up. Maybe also introduce a beginner sub 2w/kg cat.
If someone wants to do an easy race or they are coming back from injury then they should enter the OPEN races where it doesn’t matter what cat you are in.
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Perfect, Zwift DO IT NOW!!!
On the bright side, the TdZ is bringing to light all the cheaters and problems with the current race category system to a much larger base than before. Tons of new people are trying racing for the first time, if Zwift wants to keep them racing to drive interest in their seemingly takeover of esports bike racing, then they had better make it a more fair competition.
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This doesn’t pertain to the TdZ, but it was something I thought was kind of weird. This morning riding NYC, a dude on a road bike came out of the woods, crossed in front of me, went into the woods on the other side, and came back onto the road way ahead when the curve bent back towards him. Anomaly, glitch, or a result of the new steering abilities in Zwift? If it’s the later, it definitely would up the ante on the ability to cheat!
Probably someone who hasn’t updated their Zwift app on iOS.
It’s like of like a IRL rally in that respect, though, isn’t it? If you start near the front, but a number of faster riders start afterward? It all sort of settles out in the end. You could, of course, just join a minute before the event starts and be placed near the back of the field, thereby mitigating part of the issue.
The thing about an event like TdZ, as opposed to a race, is that the categories are based around length (or perceived difficulty) as opposed to WKG. So, you have people off all abilities who might want to do the ‘hard’ event, or possibly the ‘easy event’.
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Aoi, I agree with your #1&2 points but your example of the TDZ stage 2 Race does not support your points.
TDZ cats are distance classifications, not w/kg.
I would assume all the races will be won by an A rider.
I’m doing the TDZ to get the hat so I will have another option to pick out my avatar in a crowd.
Hats and double points are the only reason I join these events but I’m enjoying the ride on my hard days.
It’s kind of an unstructured hard as opposed to a workout.
It’s interesting to see this thread from January 2020 rise back up on the forums a year later.
I think the problems listed above show why Zwift was probably right to not include races in the TdZ in 2021.
@Danny_Siggers1 I’m sorry if I’ve ever been one of those people blasting past. There have been a couple of TDZ rides when I had a mechanical right at the start, and spent the entire ride pushing to get back as high through the field as I could.
Today there was a guy who ran the 6.1km short course in 1 min 40 seconds in my group run.
Beware the necroposter.
Tim, my original post was from 12 months ago when TDZ had group rides and races. The races were w/kg cat based. This year (2021) there are no races so we can’t complain about the blatant sandbagging this year. There were two routes Zwift could have gone down this year, fix sandbagging or kill the races. They chose the easy option.
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You cannot waste even one moment worrying about cheating in Zwift. Of course people cheat. It is a video game. There is no way to know if people are lying about their gender or weight, there is NO consistency among measurement devices, just ride to have fun and push yourself hard.
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Sorry, but this is not not entirely correct - the most powermeters are within ±1%. Yes, it is still about ±36 sec in an one hour race, but do not forget tactics, drafting.
But I am with you - people chat and will chat in the future.