I actually think there’s something in this. I am used to hiding at the back of the bot groups saving as many watts as I can. Right now I’m getting ‘stuck’ by riders not pushing enough power and have to surge over and under to stay in my position at the back. Multiple times I decided to see what it was like at the front of the group and found myself in breakaways with less power, when there was someone on the front pushing more than the bot.
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This is exactly my experience and what I had yesterday. I would have to surge way over 6.0w/kg at times to get past the people blocking me. I wasn’t letting off the power either, but I’d just get parked behind them.
As soon as I’d steer away from them I’d easily go past. I’m also very good at following wheels and “learned to save watts” after my 2022 crash since I don’t have as much peak power, so it’s not like I’m doing anything wrong.
It’s broken IMO.
Show me the details. Where are the posts that approve of what’s going on now?
reinstalling Zwift could help
[quote=“Chris, post:121, topic:640742, username:Chris_D9”]It’s needed for racing
it’s needed for racing
needed for racing
[/quote]
It seems you don’t race, think you know what racers want, and blame racers for things they have nothing to do with.
No one likes what’s been done and as always communication from ZHQ would go a long way.
So how did we get away from smoother PD3 behaviour where these blocking and steering faults didn’t occur?
And remember all the requests about pack speeds in racing being too fast, solo breaks couldn’t succeed?
There must be a way to achieve those aims with a smoother approach that doesn’t end up with people feeling they are blocked / stuck.
You have valid feedback about how PD5 is working even if you don’t try to identify people who are trying to victimize you. That extra effort to identify the opposition only reduces the impact of your feedback which can stand on its own. I respect the feedback and I have to try to ignore the rest as not helpful when trying to understand the problem.
2 Likes
I also feel the sticky of slower riders when doing any kind of pack riding. In the last two days it seems to have gotten worse…
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This is the real issue of PD5 right here.
I’m going to safely assume what’s happening here is some rider gets chucked out the side and out of draft (or significantly less draft), and your avatar likes to go towards this person for… whatever unknown reason instead (and those without steering… they have no choice anyways so it doesn’t matter).
As soon as that front runner gets slapped with wind, when they aren’t expecting it (why should they???), the whole pod behind them now goes slower, kicking people out of whatever group they were with, and now everyone behind them as well (this is the issue we’re having in group rides)
Avatars should always lean into a value of higher draft.
In no instance, should they leave a high draft value for a low draft value;
EXCEPT: in the case perhaps of a sprint. If a user sprints, and exits all draft, they should steer away from the last lane, to reduce the benefit of any behind. That would be a more ultimate PD.
But it seems, something is buggy in the code that is allowing this to happen, where folks just… steer out of the draft for an unknown reason.
If PD5 wasn’t broken in this sense, I think it might be reasonably better than PD4…
But I also don’t know what’s really different, other than steering users no longer being able to go inside other users ala PD3 (non steering users were no longer allowed to with PD4)
But whatever is causing avatars to swerve away from the pack is truly a serious problem with the update.
3 Likes
PD3 was smooth and predictable but made large groups comically fast, it was bad for racing but it was also just silly for group rides, pace partners, etc.
PD4.1.1 or wherever we got to was a pretty good balance. Maybe not perfect but I’m not sure perfect is even possible with something like Zwift.
No one knows what PD5 attempts to address because ZHQ has implemented it semi-secretly with literally zero communication to the community about its functionality, plus nobody likes it including racers.
4 Likes
could be just a bug and not a mystical pd5
PD5 is garbage! It tries to throw me off onto the shoulder away from the draft for no good reason. Sometimes, a non-steering rider seems to get “stuck” to the side of my avatar, and then literally pushes BOTH of us far away from the group. The only thing I can do is STOP pedalling, let the other rider continue cycling on the side of the road ahead of me, and then steer myself back into the rear of the group again. Strange and annoying PD5. It also seems to “bounce” me off riders with too much force causing my avatar to go the OPPOSITE direction! Revert back to PD4 while you fix PD5 please.
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It’s so irritating. It really sucks when other riders can push you out of the draft. 
It’s a constant battle. I’m doing race 5 tomorrow. Should be interesting
Nope it’s PD5, which is also a bug that’s being intentionally implemented (kind of like the 5w workout rounding, how many years will that take to fix @shooj ?). What is going on here? In my recovery erg blocks I kept ending up pinned to the centerline, and during hard efforts would be more generally mid-lane.
Also wondering if there was a quiet change to erg target functionality, maybe I’m just riding badly but my numbers are all over the place compared to usual. @evan-zwift
Also the second effort in an interval block still shows a blue arch/circle regardless of difficulty. Today it was a zone 5 effort getting a blue arch.
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Had that happen to me too this afternoon. Very irritating.
Also I could’ve sworn the power trace at the bottom of the screen covered 10 minutes but it’s only 9 right now, and it’s off-centered. 5 minutes on the left half and 4 on the right.
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Not sure if this is new to 1.8 or how long this has been happening; but first lap around Crit City, and all some following laps, this area circled in orange there seems to be a very unusual echo sound effect that’s happening.
That first lap I did last night on course though was like the old New York sounds where there was constant iterations of echoes (this bug is from a year ago or more and was fixed), just comparing it.
Regardless; something audio wise is awry on Crit City.
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Puhh, it seems to get worse and worse with each update. The graph was ten minutes, I’ll keep an eye on this and will let you know. I’m quite sure the graph was still ten minutes on my last workout which I did on v1.80 already.
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Anyone else notice the weird mechanics of leaving the pens?
Where everyone seems to instantaneously get shoved to the edge of the pen under the banner and centralized?
It’s … rather [motion] sickening the further back you are
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I saw that yesterday on the Rapha 500 ride. I joined 3 minutes before the start, so I was way in the back. It was rather abrupt.
Coming from the Volcano to the Italian Village, after the Dirty Sorpresa Climb, at the intersection where a left would go to the sprint, everyone jerked quite a bit as well. Even the dots on the mini-map started towards the sprint, then jerked to the correct route.