Disturbing tendency comparing cat A race data to cat B-D

Cruising would be difficult for legitimate D racers.

Yes, legitimate D’s are the only ones that can’t cruise and the ones that get shafted all the time by everyone, A’s to C’s. D are the punching bags of Zwift. It truly sucks to be in D, the entry point for many new subscribers at that. That’s not the way to take good care of a new subscriber.

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@rue, this is all obvious to you. That’s good. It’s not obvious to everyone though. You have the “Duhh, you need to sign up to ZP dude, ZP is the REAL results” mob. They don’t understand yet. Neither do the A’s since they are self-proclaimed experts on how racing in Zwift works and don’t take advice, plus they have no experience of what is going on in B-D, and neither do they care. But the objective of this thread is not even to reach any of these groups, not to me. They probably find threads like these too wordy or too difficult to understand anyway. No, the whole point to me is to have unappetizing threads like this one appear and stay on the forum. Because I know Zwift reads the forum. Pesky subscribers doing their job for them since they don’t do it themselves. I can’t do much more than that, but I can do that at least, stir up a little well-deserved bad publicity.

I’m not sure, but I don’t think how to set the categories has to be much of an issue. It’s not really different from setting the current categories (which are quite arbitrary but probably make sense somehow from a cat size perspective, or used to at least). Like I have said before, you could do an initial seeding based on the W/kg cats and go from there. As long as an equal number of people get demoted as are getting promoted, then you’re OK.

The tricky bit is the other issue you bring up. The speed at which you can rise through a category. You don’t want high volatility and you don’t want stagnation. And working with fixed seasons like in other sports might be a no-go in Zwift. That stuff needs to be tweaked of course. But there is likely a sweet spot on average/for most and you just need to get close enough to it. People will race.

Don’t forget what we are competing with. We’re not aiming to create the best ranking system ever created. We are just throwing out something really bad and replacing it with something that makes more sense. It doesn’t have to be perfect in the beginning, not as long as Zwift is willing to take ownership over it, which means active maintenance. It will still be better than something that is just bad. Compare Zwift to online esports games. Those developers tweak the match making all the time. You can do that, it’s fine.

Why would a switch of cat system make Zwift better? Because it will insta-kill two types of cheating unique to Zwift, which also happen to be the most common types (if we disregard the dating site weights people report that we can’t get to anyway). And that’s good enough for me. If they have higher ambition than that, like establishing virtual cycling as in Zwift as default platform as a new sport beside road, track, etc, then they will have to be better still and aim for near-perfect. But they can’t avoid the initial switch, that’s the first step, and they know it.

Also don’t forget we would be moving away from a race categorization that, if we disregard cheating, is no longer directly tied to fitness and fitness alone. Going up a cat no longer means “wow, I’m getting fitter!” Rather it just means “wow, I’m getting better at this!” whatever better means. It means a lot of things. I think people will then perceive the categories a little different and hence also how they perceive moving between categories.

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I think having race points system will be the best stepping stone to e-sports.

So much Zwift can do if they had a points system.

Buy I don’t know if this will ever happen. Looking at how much effort went in to the green cone and still B,C and D are stuck competing with cruisers and sandbaggers and those that just do what they want.

Currently all (most) races use mass start because that’s the only way to sort of limit the impact of the weeds.

It is sad to see organizers put in so much effort to make events and series. But the racers don’t get the racing feel because the races is skewed by the system.

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Most zwifter dont know what real mean of sandbagging is, let start there, then move on. if you train at 3.6w/kg race at 3.2w/kg your sandbagger if you train at 3.0 race at 3.0w/kg your good for the C racing.and if you win just like in boxing you are the King. Pro Cat C

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I just race for fun to push myself a little harder, so I wonder. Do any of you have an idea of which races on Zwift should count? The next 24 hours, there are 70+ races on Zwift. One only have 2 participants signed up.

Why even have levelling up? If everyone was in one ranking system (like tennis and golf for example) your motivation would be to maximise your world ranking rather than to top an artificial category.

@Bath_Salts: I agree that categories need to be enforced. And that they could do tomorrow. It would be such an easy fix. Just make it impossible to join a lower category. Should be very easy programming. I’m fine with them doing that while working on a new cat system, because at least it will remove the sandbaggers (although not the cruisers).

But it’s not like boxing. W/kg is not like weight classes in boxing. W/kg would be like how many punches you are allowed to throw in a boxing match or how fast your footwork is. And you can’t obstruct someone’s performance in competitions - people need to be allowed to be as good as they are.

@Ole_Jensen, It’s an important point. With a new results-based cat system you would have to introduce some kind of standards for races. They don’t have to be super rigid, but at least some standards. You couldn’t for example award the same points or impact on your rider rank from a 10 min sprint race as from a 1 hr race. Neither would it be fair to give too much weight to, say, a 180 km race only because that’s a common distance IRL - Zwift racing isn’t IRL. So instead maybe you set up some standards like sprint races need to be between X and Y km long, they give so and so many points, and these are the standard race rules. And maybe you have another race type of 20-40 km with a different points scale. And so on. And if you want to organize a race that will affect the participants categories or rating, then you need to adhere to these standards. But you could also organize a fun race on a quirky course (Uber Pretzel anyone?), use the categories but the race result will not impact the participants ranking. Something like that. And just like in US cycling, the size of the starting field would affect how much your ranking can increase - few participants = lower impact, too few participants = no impact even though the race rules follow the standard.

@Wattwell, I have thought about that too. It is an option. Two things might speak against it though.

First, a tennis/golf/chess-like ranking system needs to be really good and balanced and fair. They are pretty damn good IRL, but could you recreate something equally good in Zwift easily on your first attempt? It’s a bit risky. The US cycling cat system is pretty crude, but it still works way better than our categories. Something like that might be good enough but doesn’t take that much fine tuning…

Secondly, I think people may want Zwift to mimic road racing as much as possible, and that they also like having a half-decent chance of crossing the finish line first every once in a while. In a uni-cat system everyone can improve their ranking but only the A’s will ever win a race. In the lower end you are minutes away from even seeing the finish from a distance. I think uni-cats work better in a 1-on-1 or team-vs-team sport or game, and less so in mass start races. Also, individual ranking works best when everyone is active and race frequently. Then the ranking is what matters, not the race results. But someone who races infrequently might have more fun when the focus is on a particular race rather than a whole season. Just my opinion, not saying you are wrong.

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People are referring to the riders that, despite 95% of their best 3 20minute power putting.them in cat a, b or c… They race in D, destroy the field by 5-10 minutes and don’t care about zwiftpower results - challenge them and they get really shirty about it.

There were 40-50 of these in every cat D race in the Off The Maap series. Ruined it for those of us who are genuinely cat D.

Whether the w/kg system is appropriate or not, it’s still MUCH better than the un-policed free for all that it is now.

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Everything you’ve said is true–but it’s also clear that (unfortunately, for some reason) it takes Zwift a long time to implement any changes like these, so I think some people want each change to move us definitively in the direction of results-based categorization; making changes to the existing w/kg categorization (e.g. enforcing the existing rules) would be beneficial, just as you say, but that is a change that doesn’t move the game definitively in the direction of results-based categorization, and so it delays the end-goal. I totally agree that it’s a mess as-is.

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I would think some of that can be used for result-based cats. Like how zwift handle filtering riders into the correct cat also How they keep track of FTP would be the same as tracking race result rank.

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Thanks for the reply. I wasn’t thinking of a “new” system as such. Maybe the existing system but everyone scores points in one large group rather than simply against the category they’ve entered.

I get the point about the thrill of winning but I think over time this would naturally evolve since different races would carry more prestige and attract stronger fields while weaker racers could seek out events without the big stars. This happens in real life with tennis and golf.

Also I agree with your point about racing to win vs racing for ranking points. This is true of any system is it better to be world number 1 or win big events? Everyone has their own view on this and no one is wrong.

Good debate.

@Wattwell, that’s actually a third option to me. Trickier to get right than a simple system but highly desirable. I mean to have a rank score that runs through all categories and even defines the categories. As in “currently the cutoff between cat C and B is rank score 2048 - get there and you get into B”. That would actually be ideal. Best of both worlds, sort of.

And then you can move the cutoffs if needed, if the cat sizes get too skewed. Which is when some will get angry and others happy but overall people will be better off. (The alternative is a system with a high risk of score inflation or deflation, and nobody wants that, happens in online games from time to time.)

I would abolish categories. They serve no purpose.

I might make some race entries conditional on having a certain race ranking higher high or low but that’s as far as I would go.

All categories do at the moment is create artificial boundaries.

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I think we need categories, mass start events is for running not for cycling, runners compare times cycling have tactics and smarts. In fact in big events we need more than 4.

We need to make people feel like racing for a reason. Even computer games know people need a goal that can be in reach. Fortnite introduced player rankings and they group players of similar ability together, because new players could not compete against the pros and it was no fun.

I take my racing day very serious. I eat different for a race I warm up different, I treat it as my main event for the week. I study the course and my competitors. If I do all the effort I would at least expect to have a fair race.

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The developers have completely removed the SBMM system Fortnite, for Squads.

And Valve’s matchmaking in DotA 2 and CS has NOT caused massive dissent. Plus a lot of the criticism is not relevant for Zwift at all. Long queue times for top players? Not really relevant. Not possible to game with friends with varying skill levels? Not relevant for Zwift, not even for Valve.

Fortnite is mainly a kid’s game. They have special needs. Zwift is simulating sports for mainly a mature user base. Different.

But yes, you can of course screw up any cat system if you fail to understand the purpose it’s going to serve and the users’ needs. Just like Zwift failed. Or Fortnite. Only they failed in very different ways. Fortnite failed to be fun. Zwift failed to be logical and fair. You need both of course. But I don’t really see the risk of losing the fun by making Zwift fair.

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I agree with you Gerrie. It happened to me in all the MAAP races.

Bob

Same here.

With the current system I think the best short term solution is to simply add more cats.
Like, split them into B and B+.
B 3.2-3.7 B+ 3.7-4.2.
For now, should be done fast and easy (Im no programmer tho)

If you look at my ZP you see Im a strong B rider, but not strong enough for A cat.
I do some Crits with the A for the fun/thrill/training of it, but races in B cause thats where I belong for now.

I guess Im the definition of the Cruiser.
And its just good/lucky for me that the current system benefits me (for now)

I see more cats as the only quick fix.

@Anders_Jonsson_SZ, I don’t see it as a working solution even short term unfortunately. There are two problems with it.

First, our calendar is quite saturated. The supply of races meets demand and then some, I would say. Everybody should be able to organize their own races. It’s healthy for Zwift (and in stark contrast with dictatorship style games like League of Legends, where the producer controls EVERYTHING). But then that also means that many races have quite few participants. So by doubling categories we dilute the already thin starting fields in each cat. I have a feeling Zwift wouldn’t like the idea. I don’t think you can do more than 4 or 5 cats right now.

Second, it doesn’t stop cruising at all. How shall I put this, it’s like your solution takes the non-cruiser’s perspective, like it’s aimed at giving the fair racer better chances of ever seeing a podium by making the categories less deep. But if you try take the cruiser perspective instead - I have first-hand experience of deliberate cruising - then you see it doesn’t really help.

Assume you are a deliberate cruiser in B, i.e. you clearly belonged in A or even A+ but wanted to pwn the suckers in B and win some races. Then you would just have two different B categories to choose between instead of one. Pick any, it makes no difference really. Not even with “unintentional cruising”, i.e. some people naturally racing less hard than others (perfectly fine) and who get rewarded for it just because of how the system is designed (weird, unfair).

I think a better quick fix is enforced categories. It doesn’t stop cruising but it removes the sandbaggers at least.

UPDATE:
Thought about it a little. The following would be an OK solution to me, although it screws light riders, while we wait for something better (i.e. a results based categorization) and then I’d be more patient too waiting:

1. Enforced categories
You should not be able to enter a lower category than what you are classified as. And here I actually think Zwift should be tough and track all activities of the user, even FTP tests, solo WO’s and free rides. That’s the price you need to pay to have this stupid categorization - full transparency, no Chinese walls between different activities. If W/kg is to be the only thing that matters in races, then you need to go all the way. And Zwift should do this policing themselves, not some 3rd party(?) site. Bye-bye sandbaggers!

2. Never EVER disqualify a rider for going over cat limits in a race
(Unless he’s a proven doper or hacker.) The DQ’ing was a huge mistake by ZP, very counter-productive. It should be removed. The race effort still counts toward your ZP style 90 days three best efforts average and could cause an upgrade.

This way you can at least theoretically beat a cruiser by forcing him into the choice of letting you win or drop you when he is over the limit rather than on the limit. Today there is no point for him to go over limits as he will get DQ’d and not get a podium anyway and he knows you can’t go over limits either. If you are both forced to stay on the limit to not get DQ’d then he will always have the upper hand. With the DQ removed, however, if you’re strong enough, you can force him to choose to either race harder or to be a loser cruiser who doesn’t get podiums. This doesn’t stop cruising since few can challenge a cruiser in a certain cat, it just makes it somewhat harder to cruise successfully.

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