It seems more and more riders are having a hard time electing to go from the front of their current group to the middle/back of the one they are clearly instructed to choose.
As it stands now, Zwift suggests when my FTP might need an update, but I can ignore this. I understand why someone who uses the workout mode might want to ignore/override this suggestion. But, what if there were two FTP stored by Zwift - the one we have now that can be user defined for workouts, and another that cannot be input by the user but is set by Zwift for group events. (I guess it would make sense for the rider to be able to reset this value, in case it gets a goofy reading or the rider takes a break for a few months, or whatever)
This would allow an option in ZEM for the organizer to automatically classify riders to the appropriate A/B/C/D group based on Zwift in game FTP/kg values.
That might be difficult as riders tend to have different FTPs throughout the year, depending upon where they are in their training year. To tie them to some past great performance wouldn’t be good. I get the frustration, but you’d have to use some sort of rolling average of recent rides for it to work.
Sure, FTPs change, but using a rider’s last FTP test, or a rolling average of recent rides, although less than perfect, would be far better than having people self-select their classification.
I think so too, Steve. It seems it wouldn’t be too tricky to implement this in a way which would identify recent hard efforts and calculate an average. Also there should be an option for the user to reset this value - so a rider wouldn’t be tied to a past great performance, an outdated level of fitness, or a software/hardware glitch. The system could be gamed of course, but mostly I think racing in the slower divisions would be more interesting without the pace always being set by guys in the wrong division.