Cheating Detection.

Make somme test with simulant+ : Power 2400 Watts.

How would you determine that the player is cheating ?

The determination is that 2400 watts is a scientific impossibility. Everyone who is cheating knows they are and also knows that nobody believes them. In a couple of weeks I have already started to identify the riders who are actually legitimate and view them as real competition to benchmark against. Just ignore the riders who are not seeing the potential they could unlock in themselves if they were using real numbers.

 

Problem cheating is very easy in zwift!

 - use simulant+
 - Change your weight
 - Zpower pick another trainer.
    
     kinectic Road Machine : 45km/h = 500 watts
     Elite Qubo Fluid           : 45km/h = 1000 watts

well, my friend as they say Cheaters are gonna Cheat. I am confident ZWIFT will find a solution before they bring real competition and a reward framework in to the game. I look at it this way. The ZWIFT team needs the cheaters in the game in the test phase in order to figure out how to remove that component of the game once it goes live. That is what BETA testing is all about. Sure, the rest of us have to be content with top 5 at best in the jersey competitions and an occasional orange jersey (I was able to achieve that and wear the jersey for exactly 4 seconds) for a while but it will get fixed. Just laugh at them for now and call them out during the game in a humorous way. This adds a fun element to the idiot-ocrasy.

One more thing. I work on this type of thing in my job. If it were me I would have people given the responsibility to figure this out. And, I would tell no one using the game this was going on. Gamers that find ways to cheat explore all the options and do it quickly. This spreads quickly to other individuals behaving the same way in the community. Ironically, they help clear the path to ensure all these possibilities are prevented in the future.

Hi everyone,

Yes, we are aware that people can easily increase their wattage output. We are working on several ways to catch this as many riders are not doing so intentionally. Additionally, we are working on a way for other riders to flag rides for review but we want to make sure it doesn’t get abused.

Long story short: we are working on it. Welcome to beta :slight_smile:

\o/

I’m glad that Zwift is going to work on this!  I do the best I can to stay motivated but it’s tough when, at the drop of a hat, a cheating rider can invalidate the whole jersey competition game. 

I think we need a tryout day with all of the pros.  If you can beat Jens around the island, you are cheating!  Lord knows I just want to try.  And it would be very humbling to watch his turn into a little speck on the horizon.

I suspect that most of the “cheating” that you see is simply user error and naive misunderstanding.  If you haven’t embraced training by power and the jargon that goes with it would be very easy to overlook entirely that something is fishy about your performance in the game.  Suppose a person rides their local multi use trail and they regularly pass a bunch of people.  They do the same in Zwift (while gunning away at 7w/kg) and think nothing of it.

 

Zwift should definitely try to catch out anomalies but I think it gives too much intent and agency to call it cheating.

 

Someone up thread made the point about how they have gradually come to learn about people who are near their ability and they ride well with.  I think anything Zwift can do to help you find similarly mated riders will go a long way to defusing this issue, whether it is cheating or user error.  By definition it is hard to hook up with similarly paced riders because if you don’t start at the same time they are somewhere else on the course and will be approximately the same distance from you the whole time.  The people you may want to ride with are the least accessible.  This is a situation begging for a novel solution.

@Duane - Agreed. Especially as we continue to dial in zPower (trainers are weird and trying to anticipate how people ride is hard). 

I see everyone’s point on this. I agree it is nice to give everyone a benefit of the doubt but, when people are going in to their profile and setting their weight heavier for downhills then changing it again to make themselves lighter for the Sprint and KOM every lap that is way past user error and not something that could be replicated in life. I mean, sure you can leave a bag of cinder blocks in a backpack at the top of each climb in your next race, but do you really think the right thing to do is pull over and strap it to your back? When everyone sets up their profile it says as clear as day that it is important the body weight you enter is accurate. Watts + Weight = Speed. The whole premise of the game. Call it cheating or dont call it cheating, it does not really matter. Just keep it LEGIT and let ZWIFT sort everything else.

As mentioned before, anomalies can and do happen. When the battery in my power meter was on it’s last legs, I would get crazy power spikes of way over 1K (which I know I’m not doing in the small ring). Once I changed the battery, everything was right with the world. Sure, I’d send a message saying “power spike errors”, but not everyone is going to see the message if they are just logging in or look away from the screen. 

I do agree, the true cheaters need to be weeded out. 

Maybe there should be a douche file for those who seem to be purposefully out there zipping past everyone. There pretty much has not been a ride lately without one or two guys. Last night C. Brady putting out 15.9w/kg consecutively and zipping around with all the jerseys. Just lame.

 

I’m a newbie on Zwift and I don’t get why people cheats! it’s like cheating at a game of Golf, seriously! Why?