There is an ongoing loophole that allows riders who have signed up for future race events before upgrading to a new category to remain entered in those events. This undermines the intent of any category and pen enforcement model.
Event series such as the monthly Zwift Racing Series and the Zwift Games have all upcoming events for the series loaded in advance, meaning that a rider can foreseeably enter all rounds and perform beyond the bounds of the category in each of them. This is unfair and demotivating to other riders, not just within the specific race but the entire series considering the general classification rankings.
A check should be added at, or shortly before, the race start time that ensures riders are not starting a race in a category below their established minimum.
I was thinking of suggesting a similar thing: move all existing race entries to the new minimum category
Makes sense to me. Not sure why they do it this way to begin with.
I think it could be because - in real life or in computer code - it’s easier to put a “gate” which stops a person as they try to enter a group than it is to check an entire group and then move someone from one pen into another.
I’m not saying it can’t be done; I’m just giving a possible explanation for why they chose the route they did.
I wonder how many people get into the wrong cat this way. I can’t imagine it’s a high proportion.
it’s probably just historical zwift was never designed for racing really. In theory it would not be that hard to implement. run a script 35 mins before a race to check cats.
Just everything takes time and resource to do so depends what the priority at zwift is right now.
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I was thinking to have the process that updates their category trigger it
If they moved me from one cat to another, I’d like some kind of communication saying “well done! You’re awesome! You’ve moved up a cat!”
It’s a while since I changed category; does Zwift send out any kind of message when you move up, or do you only notice if you check your profile or try entering your old cat?
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There’s no communication about it. I agree with your suggestion. It should be framed as an earned thing.
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One other idea: pop up a banner in the game that tells the user that they have earned an Upgrade badge and give them a drops bonus so they can potentially get better equipment to help with their next race. Unlock the “Cat B” jersey - these already exist in the game for chase races. Do something, anything, to actually reward them.
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Love that idea, Paul. I’m not too worried about the original topic of this thread but I am a big believer that Zwift should shower us with ticker tape and make us feel good at every possible opportunity. Moving up a category should/could be a massive kudos moment.
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They have a popup banner when your FTP changes, could do the same with Cat up or down
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Hi Zwifters. Welcome to Forums. I appreciate all your comments. This is Juan from Zwift. I was carefully reading all your comments, and all your suggestions are great. Your feedback is valuable at the time to develop improvements.
Cheating has always been a widespread topic. It is really hard to identify when a rider is cheating. Hopefully the various controls that WTRL, Zwift and others are implementing at the top end will prevent any cheating that occurs from having an impact. I encourage you to take a look at Zwift Racing League website in the section Rules to learn more about it.
From my very personal point of view, the best thing is to use Zwift as a wonderful training platform and enjoy racing, its benefits and the performance improvements it brings.
This isn’t specifically about cheating. It’s about Zwift using category enforcement in a consistent way.
If category enforcement calculations say a person is B category based on their race performance today, then why can they still enter a C race tomorrow or next week if they had signed up for it in advance of today’s B category performance?
The feature reqest (or bug fix request) here is to use the racer’s current category on the day of the race to determine what category they are locked into, not the racer’s category from days or weeks ago when they signed up for the event.
I @SeattleSauve Got it! This is definitely a good idea, I will share it with my team to bear in mind. Thanks for your active participation on this thread.
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You can also try implementing something with weight dopers
