Question about Confetti sock RideOns.
If I am at level 100 AND my in game avatar wears the confetti socks, do riders that I give a RideOn to from the Companion App (while I’m NOT actually riding) get the confetti and the 2XP?
Thanks.
You’d have to test it, but I suspect that if you’re not in-game and wearing the socks then you’re not wearing the socks.
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Thanks, but that’s an “I don’t know.”
Still looking for someone that might know the answer.
It would be good to have more concrete details on what this autobraking mechanism works on - does it work on raw watts, ie, put X amount more watts than the rider in front and you can pass or does it work on w/kg? Unless you do 2w/kg more than the rider ahead you can stay blocked behind them. I also have seen similar and often have to put down a big sprint otherwise I get parked behind riders.
I think we know well that is never going to happen and if it looked like changing there would be a massive uproar about those light riders getting too much advantage.
As far as have gathered it’s not simply more raw watts or higher w/kg. To pass the rider in front you need to be producing enough power that you would be going faster if they weren’t there. It’s dependent on all the same factors as the rest of the physics model, and momentum does seem to come into it.
The issue I believe stems from pack speeds still being unrealistically high compared to solo riders. For a rider to get through the front of a pack, or to get around someone trailing off the back of the pack, they need to be riding hard enough that their solo speed would be faster than the pack speed. For a light rider this is a big jump in intensity.
Until pack speeds get slowed down this issue will remain. And pack speeds won’t get slowed down because people seem to want to finish their 40km route in under an hour while riding in zone 2 and watching Netflix on their other screen.
I believe it’s a mixture of w/kg and watts.
We have a guy who likes to do sweeps with me on my rides, and he’s much larger, 22kg to be precise, than me, along with about 100w higher average on our rides; he also has a … unique sweeping style of waiting until the last second and sprinting; which is catastrophic at times.
But despite being “same speed” at the moment, as he accelerates, I get braked, every time, and have to chase immediately thereafter to get back onto his draft.
As Tom stated, there is some momentum involved, but if your avatar doesn’t begin “avoiding” the rider in front of you, in my specific scenario, you do get brake checked. If your avatar begins to steer around (assuming this is a momentum check / avoidance), it won’t occur.
Packs wise, it’s rare to be brake checked, because it’s… not common for folks to randomly dump high power in a pack at any given moment (shy of a segment or climb coming), but generally you’ll hit a wall and have to increase power to get through. You won’t be braked, but it simply won’t let you pass.
As a scenario, my Saturday ride we do C pace, 2.7ish, so 160w or so for me at 60kg.
Reviewing previous data, if I can be lazy and sit in the back the whole time I can survive down to about 150w, 2.5w/kg, while sitting off the back (this ride usually has anywhere from 50-100 riders, down to 50ish now in summer, but this point still remains).
If I want to sit mid pack, it requires in the range of 170w; so 2.8-2.9
If I want to sit at the front, it requires 185-190w, so closer to 3.2w/kg; always using the same bike/wheel setup.
Again, I’m at 5’8 and 60kg; and I’ve tested these numbers generally every week, or at least twice a month, to see if any changes occur. So, a litmus test, quite literally.
Once all lanes are taken up across the road width, brake checking only really occurs when you have momentum, and come off the power and are sliding into the pack; at which point you’ll be braked. Assuming you keep the power up, you will push through.
But as you can see; quite the variance in power.
I get it a lot if I’m trying to go through a pack - my actual power is a much less than others in the pack even though my watts/kg is higher. So it ends up that I can be blocked behind someone doing 2.5-3.0w/kg when I’m doing 4.0w/kg.
So more recently I’ve been making sure I stay 3-5m in front of the robopacer at all times and pushing more w/kg. The other riders probably hate the extra power needed to not get dropped. At least I don’t get the autobraking…
To do that I’m usually doing average 230w (at 59kg).
You could probably go up a RP and experience the same thing if sitting out the back; but more on that down at the bottom, middle.
Worth noting that the higher up RPs see way less riders, so they’re FAR more consistent than say Coco and Maria, who at least in my experience can vary upwards of 20w on my end (0.3w/kg), depending on the size and amount of pace pushers.
Might be worth noting as well that with the higher pace ones, there’s obviously far more resistance once you get out in front of them. I can’t say it’s very often I see people pace pushing Genie and Constance pretty much ever.
The reality though is, it shouldn’t matter; like a group ride, let your avatar do whatever it wants; there’s no reason to sit in front of the RP and alter the pace, although I realize you aren’t going to be the only one doing this. Chances are if you sat at the same power in the pack, you’d end up in the same place, out the front; which once again just proves you could probably go up to the next RP without any consequences.
In a pack like those, you aren’t being “braked”, just blocked, until you come off the power completely that is; full on braking still gets the red flashy watts. “Lost” watts / blocked however, just makes your avatar hold position; but things shimmy around over time regardless.
Granted; if you’ve gone up to a higher RP and end up having less of a balanced ride, then yeah, makes sense.
From all of my testing this basically every other weekend, which has remained consistently true since 4.1.1, front of packs is always more consistent, and at least as stated, in my experience, at +10%, sitting at the back, which will not at all be consistent, but will average to -10%; for me in particular, 60ish kg range.
I have no data on how much that power % range changes for heavier, higher wattage, riders, but I can greatly assume the consistency of power will be the same. Where sitting in the front of a perfectly paced [large] group can almost be ERG mode, where sitting out the back sucking the draft looks like a mountain range.
What Ciclistabella mentioned though about heavier riders pushing smaller riders back; when we get into a paceline, yes, that’s indeed how the PD works.
You can either brake yourself (sensor select or if you have controllers), and gain momentum to get around them; or, put in a little sprinting effort.
Technically, even us lighter folks if we can get just in front of them again, and then sprint… we can brake them too. But… usually not worth the effort.
This is nothing new and has been around almost a full year come two months; personally for me it’s just “part of the game.”
Just as getting over rollers efficiently, to me, this is what makes someone a good racer vs a bad racer in Zwift; it’s not always about pure power. Results boards on ZP have shown that for over half a decade.
It’s very frequent at the times of day I’m on there with Constance group.
Depending on the day. Monday usually a slow pack - everyone appears to have wrecked legs from a big previous week of riding. Tuesdays and Wednesdays the same folk are pushing.
It definitely is better to not be at the back of those groups. It ends up being a series of sprints, more so if one or two at the front push the pace.
Strange; yeah very look around my peak, after work, times.
Constance I never see has anyone, maybe one. Genie might have 4 or 5, but never more than 10, through the weekdays, that I’ve ever really noticed.
Always funny to me how differently things are treated around the world in the game.
But yes, what you experienced is pretty much how it is; assuming everyone does a good job of keeping gaps closed, you can get away with some seriously low power behind a road-wide group. But as soon as those gaps open (and they will eventually), a smooth pace goes completely out the window. Still average low, but NP will certainly begin to scale.
Hilarious that you see the same thing I’ve begun to experience; worse off legs going into the start of the week, before ramping up through the week to do it all over again 
, whose idea was this anyway??
Had 30 people with Constance today - it was a brutal group with some of the people at the back getting dropped by the surges of up to 50km/h+. It’s mostly the same people every day - a strong group of riders, most of them are pretty good IRL riders, even one national champion today.
I’m not pushing the pace as much right at the moment with my achilles tendon pain giving grief. It is strapped up which is helping and it is getting better.
There are 25 right at the moment with Constance, Genie has 15.
There are usually a good group with Constance on Watopia. Less on Makuri because those routes are usually slower.
That’s so wild to me, I never see that.
I really wish we could see the data Zwift has on us; like where the strongest riders are from, what country has the highest endurance riders and how long in hours that is on any given week.
They’ve got that data, I wish they would package that up as a neatly year in review, would be really interesting see those data points.
And same with what you brought up; I’d be curious to know the average riders per day with each of the RP’s, and if it changes upwards to higher pace bots by the ends of the weeks.
Definitely off topic for whatever remained.
Wonder how many RP’s will find themselves climbing parts of The Grade after this week’s update 