Is there a way to report weight dopers?
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You can report on the Zwiftpower forum.
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Andreas_Traff said FTP category system is soo bad, ranking system is good.
But loosers is too strong and should be banished?
Ranking system allows losers.
That’s the system you want.
No, @Blue1, a ranking system allows everyone. But you can no longer hide your strength and still win. And you will no longer have people winning and winning and winning and winning through cheating. If someone is very much stronger than everyone else and wins a lot, then that is not cheating in a ranked system. It’s a good thing. But then that person is moved to the next category, so he can’t keep winning forever. If he instead tried to hide his strength, then he would not be moved to a new category, but he would also not win. A radical, controversial idea? Not at all.
Because that is how divisions in football work. That is how tennis works. That is how golf works. That is how cross-country skiing works. That is how real-life cycling works. That is how all real sports work. So are you saying all other sports are wrong and broken and Zwift is right? Maybe we should have W/kg divisions in football too? Only Premiere League is allowed to play without restrictions without risking a DQ?
The W/kg categories are just so incredibly dumb. Try this: Pretend that you are serious and tell your friends that you think it’s about time that FIFA put a limit on how many goals you are allowed to score in a football game, and a limit on how fast a football player is allowed to run. Then come back here and amuse me by telling me how they reacted. I want quotes and facial expressions described. That’s the same principle as the W/kg system. Embarrassingly dumb.
But some people are so protective of the W/kg system just because it’s all they know (they forget about real life sports). The thought of leaving the system for something new scares them. The kind of people who are scared of change in general.
Here is a prediction (remember this!):
Zwift will change the system sooner or later, whether you like it or not. I just want them to speed it up. They have to change it if Zwift is to have any credibility as a real esports platform in the long run and to not die to the competition from other racing platforms that won’t make the same mistake. And once that happens no one will miss the old system (except the cheaters). After a short while people will still bicker on the forum and brag about how long they’ve been zwifting, as always, and they will also laugh about the old system. No one will admit to having defended it.
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Speaking of very short, have you ever seen a match sprint on the track? If your argument were valid, every start would look something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDMmPNuO0Bo (hint: they don’t).
I’m not sure how the analogy works. In the linked match sprint, one rider only has to mark one other rider (sometimes as many as three). Particularly in a one-vs-one event, the two can play cat and mouse as much as they want, since they only have to mark a single opponent. In a bike race, if you and I play cat and mouse, the rest of the peloton is going to leave us for dead. Rohan Dennis can TT a start-to-finish win in the shorter one-hour virtual races, which he would never be able to do in a real road race (since he can’t maintain that power level over 3-4 hrs, and the power of the bunch would reel him back).
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Underrstand. Understand.
I cannot promote when I do not meet a condition.
For example
1, Total 10 Wins.
2, Three consecutive victories.
3, Five consecutive three consecutive victories
4, Zwift power race point under 250
It is too strong in category B.
No prove.No promotion.
Yes prove.Yes promotion.
This is ranking system.
But I’m not prove.
In other words, you must root for my Challenge.
My victory in category B.
In the first place My FTP 236W is zwiftpower category B. rofl
I’m confused; Zwift came up with a bad idea of having the categories, then Zwift Power came along to try and make a bad idea less bad? Why didn’t Zwift Classifier (my made up third party) come along and overlay on Zwift with a classification system not based on power but results?
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No: This is not true. The Zwift community started racing (Zwift did not even have start pens or events when we started racing) and used w/kg as a cat because it looked like a good idea and they did not have other tools.
If zwift made a API that could filter who gets into what Pen then Zwiftpower would have had ranking 4 years ago.
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So the Zwift community did something that turned out not to be good idea, Zwift tried to help in good faith, and are now getting blasted for not fixing the mess fast enough?
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No it was a very good idea, the community did not have the tools to do anything better. And it worked because it was small and all of us entered the correct Cat. No one was cruising because we all went for the win no matter what.
But time has come for a better system and we need Zwift to help with that.
Even if Zwift only auto assign race categories it would solve 90% of all the frustration.
@DanielS: You can look at people in Zwiftpower they are ranked at one lavel but keep racing in lower levels. (ie B cat racing in C or C cat racing in D)
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I appreciate then that the community went down the power categorisation route, but isn’t it time to ditch it and move to a results classification system for racing (like in real life)? It seems that pushing Zwift to “auto assign race categories” is a backwards step if they could implement results classification instead? Seems like they have limited development resource/budget, so why not spend it on something that promotes fair esports? If I understand @Andreas_Traff on this thread, then categorisation is not going to be fair ever, and making it 90% fixed still means there are going to be unhappy people (and some happy “cruisers”).
As a community, do we agree 100% that results based classification is the way forward, and stop trying to “fix” the power categorisation process that only benefits cruisers and Cat A racers (where there can be no cruising)?
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Of course we want the results based system that’s worked in real life for donkeys years. But zwift are incapable, don’t think it’s a good idea or can’t be botherd.
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But if ranking is going to take another 4 years then please just put every one where they belong in the current system.
This is not a new Idea @DanielS.
From 2016
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That was an invitation for somebody else to comment 
We’ve beat this dead horse enough haven’t we?
No, not 100%. The sandbaggers and cheaters don’t want this system, we will never be at 100% agreement on anything. Zwift just needs to do it already, rip the band-aid off!
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Hmm, I’m not quite sure I understand. But it’s true that even in a ranked system there will be winners and losers. Some might never win. That’s the hard reality of sports. But at least you don’t have so many cheaters on the podium. The guys on the podium will be the best in category and they will have worked hard. And if they didn’t work hard and still won, then they will be moved to the next category soon enough, where they will have to work much harder if they want to win. Then there will be many other riders who worked very hard but weren’t good enough, and they won’t win. But if you look at how US cycling works, if you do really badly a whole season, like coming in last over the finish line over and over, then you can get a downgrade to a lower category, where you will not be so bad and will have more fun.
And yes, if your FTP is 236W and you weigh 70 kg, then you belong to the bottom of B. Never much fun to be at the bottom of a category, but someone has to be there. At least in a ranked system, you don’t get punished so much for being light. Being lighter than the average weight in a race is always bad in Zwift unless you race up AdZ or Ven-Top. On any other race course you have a disadvantage. And that is because of the W/kg category system. Another reason why we shouldn’t have W/kg cats.
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GO TOP ZWIFTPOWER TOP PAGE.
ZwiftPower Historic Category
Average of best 3 races in last 90 days (4.1 + 3.9 + 3.8 = 3.9w/kg).
Riders may self-upgrade from their profile settings tab.
| Mixed | Women | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| A+ | 4.6 wkg and 300 w FTP | ||
| A | 4.0 wkg and 250 w FTP | A | 3.7 wkg |
| B | 3.2 wkg and 200 w FTP | B | 3.2 wkg |
| C | 2.5 wkg and 150 w FTP | C | 2.5 wkg |
You may enter a higher category than the one suggested.
Do you understand?
I have mixed feelings about the auto assign race categories suggestion (it was yours, right?). It worries me a bit because Zwift may lull subscribers or even themselves into believing that they’re on the right track and made a great step forward. That’s not on the right track because you’re still just trying to plaster the cracks on a castle made of sand and you are using dev resources that could have been spent on a complete cat revamp project.
However… the whole idea of a results-based cat system, if it’s going to work, rests on enforced categories. You can’t be eligible for a cat upgrade from winning enough or scoring enough points
and still be allowed to race in a lower cat. Then it’s just as bad as the current system. You shouldn’t be able to enter a lower cat, regardless of system. And so in that sense, enforced WPK cats IS a step forward, a step we need to take under all circumstances anyway. And perhaps it’s better to make people used to it ASAP.
But it’s just not a solution, because while it will stop the sandbaggers it still won’t stop the deliberate cruisers, nor the unfairness coming from… let’s call it unintentional cruising for lack of a better word. And it also won’t remove the light rider penalty. And those flaws are less visible and obvious than someone blasting through a cat C race at 5 W/kg and they require subscribers to really LOOK and THINK before they realize that something is very wrong beneath the surface and figure out what causes it.
It’s like with an employment, a relationship or whatever. It’s complex and it will likely take a year (of racing) before you start seeing how everything hangs together and where the underlying flaws are. And with corona Zwift is full of people newly in love. Frustrated in races, yes, but newly in love and still blind to the faults of their new date.
If they can fix enforced categories fast (and it REALLY shouldn’t be hard - sounds like something a single developer could pull off on a coffee break to me, unless I’m missing something), then I’m all for it, IF they also acknowledge that they can’t stop there and that they need to change tracks and soon. But it will be a soothing balm for sure while we wait for the BIG fix.
I will still be cruising though, and tell you all about it, until they won’t let me anymore. Then I’ll open up a bottle of champagne. Or maybe just join a race instead, and suffer as much as my ambition tells me to.