I just asked on the update thread as well; see my comment, is this what you experienced?
I was very much tail gunning the pace partners and it just felt tough. started with Coco, dropped to Marie and again couldn’t tail gun or hold the position. Holding Marie shouldn’t be that much of a challenge, z2 pace etc.
Just felt off.
What about if you ride in front of the group? I didn’t try the France world groups as they didn’t seem interesting.
You can join with a couple of other riders and put just enough power to always stay in front of the group and even mess with the pace of the group (such as with Yumi on Tempus at the moment), making others complain why is it so fast and surging.
Yumi does seem to zoom through the pack however with ease that I didn’t expect.
Maybe this needs a rethink - if you don’t do more w/kg than the rider ahead, you cannot overtake or you get sticky draft (aka slowing you down). 
Then the surging experience can be for all riders.
This is PD4 blocking in a nutshell; this has been the case for the past entire year.
Not auto-braking (which does still exist), but… blocking.
Or as another term; pass checking.
But it’s not exactly watts, and it’s not exactly w/kg, but somewhere in the middle, where you’re allowed to get the pass check and go around someone. In a scenario where you do a sprint behind someone it’s pretty much guaranteed, but if only doing just slightly more, you’ll get blocked in.
It’s extremely apparent for us lightweight people; but, as said, this is an aspect of PD4. It was lightened up a bit through the slight revisions, but, it’s still very much a feature.
Zwift Insider referred to it as “wasted watts;” which, is also what it is; sitting behind someone, wasting power, and unable to go around until you ramp power.
Group surging normally happens on rolling terrain, where people will smash even a 1% incline.
But, yes if you put down enough power you can sit out front, and tow a RP faster than the pace they’d be going. Get enough people, and you end up with a slower power RP going faster than a higher power RP.
Again this is why I wish more people would just go to a faster RP sometime; because towing a RP 24/7 means you very likely can go to the next higher up RP and sit with them just fine… but, I’ve beaten that topic to death plenty of times.
Front of blobs will be higher power, but consistent (~0.2/0.3w/kg above pace)
Mid blob, depending how you go, should be the set pace, 0.1ish w/kg differential (you can ruin this by wasted watts, or moving around blob too much)
Rear of blob is always the least consistent, and always surgey; just as it can be IRL. You can put out the least watts, but your normalized power will be significantly higher than say it would be if sitting mid, and sometimes even front.
I wonder how much of the pass checking, wasted watts etc would be solved, or at least helped, by adjusting trainer resistance for draft.
It should be possible, it’s just maths, and indievelo includes it. Obviously it requires a controllable trainer.
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The problem is that in Zwift we have no collisions with other riders possible in those big groups either in races or events.
If braking and steering and collisions were a thing then all the group speed talk would be very different. It’s tricky to manage this.
Zwift was supposedly always to have constant resistance and no easier rolling in draft because they want it to be a workout (according to a Zwift Insider post).
The last time this was suggested in the chat, the well known riders said:
“no”
“we enjoy doing this and will try to make it even faster”
with multiple LOLs from their friends. 
What could prevent that is an invisible barrier in front of the robopacer that people joining the group cannot go past. Or increase the resistance for them.
The other thing would be a maximum speed the robopacer will go to, perhaps it will top out at 42km/h and go no faster on the flat, even if there is a draft. Then the folks ahead of it can either slow down or ride away on their own, or more likely join a robopacer more fitting their abilities.
Just put the pace partners on TT bikes. They tried removing draft from the bots before but left them on road bikes, so they just went way too slow. Give them a custom tron trial bike with aero stats necessary to carry them at typical group speeds for a road bike and problem solved. You can draft the bot, but their speeds won’t be affected by the behavior of the group.
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That was suggested before but met with a wall of absolute silence.
I think a lot of folks would be unhappy they’d need to go up to the faster group. But it will keep things more balanced.
The best robopacer groups are the smaller ones with everyone staying behind the robot.
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Simple ideas to dramatically improve features are ignored by ZHQ almost all of the time. I think in large part because nobody there actually uses Zwift.
The exception seems to be what’s coming with PD5, implementing the “force advancement on the outside of the pack” idea I suggested at the start of PD4 development. Hopefully it’s executed well.
Making people overtake on outside is a no brainer. They shouldn’t be able to just push people aside and blast through.
Alternatively the pace pushing people in front of the robot could be automatically teleported to a private group ride with Big Mig (brought out of retirement).
It’s Watts / CdA …the system checks if you are faster at current Watts with 0 draft than a rider infront of you with 0 draft. This is why you can have Wasted Watts as many are pushing way to close to the rider infront. Ideal place is when close gap shows 2m.
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What’s funny is that’s also what they added in PD4; which was basically a “avoid” hoola hoop space around avatars, if I recall, specifically “so it appears more natural,” which this was all during a lot of livestreaming events… aka, someone who has a say, must’ve said it looked silly that all of the riders were going through each other like ghosts on PD3.
… However …
PD4 + Steering enabled means you can go inside other avatars again just like it was in PD3.
Disable steering, and you get shoved back outside their hoolahoop space
Something is still very very broken with steering and PD in Zwift.
You saw my post on the 1.72 thread right?
I’m surprised there’s been no official response, but at least over the weekend, something was definitely up with the PD.
I dont think they have already enabled it on any world because James from Zwift said that they would do test group rides before releasing it to everyone.
ZHQ however is very well known for enabling or changing things in the background either on purpose or on accident or accipurposely.
I would also argue that when you have 1/5th of a group ride mention “something feels wrong”
And myself who puts a lot of time in understanding the quirks of PD for the sake of personal advantage, far more than anyone else I’ve ever run into at least, I would argue I would know if something has changed if drastic enough.
But as said; when 1/5th of a ride of over 50 people point out that something is weird… and I go into the blob and start prodding things, and can state that something for sure is different…
Something for sure is [was on that ride in particular] different.
We know that things like PD are in the code blocks and enabled server side, among many other aspects; this is nothing new; and absolutely possible, and not something that would’ve required an update.
ZHQ already said once in the past 60 days that they accidentally enabled a PD/Steering feature and had to disable it.