This tidbit may be universally known, except by me, and I’m stating the obvious, but just realized that whether your score goes up or down, depends on whether you finished in the top half or bottom half.
Looking at this just mostly completed event
ht tps://www.zwift.com/events/view/4525682
According to upper half of the race description.
A had 12 signups, Results – positions 1 thru 6 had increase in ZRS
B had 28 signups, Results – positions 1 thru 14 had an increase in ZRS
C had 54 signups, at least 1 DNF, Results (close to 50%) positions 1 thru 26 had increase in ZRS
D had 45 signups, at least 4 DNFs though, positions 1-20 had increase.
Note this falls apart in E, as there’s a lot of movement off of seed scores that were but 10point values beforehand.
So, am I off base in thinking that score changes were supposed to also take into account the relative scores of the racers surrounding you. Is it really as rudimentary as top half get bumped, bottom half get dropped?
As a pen E racer until the range dropped to 0-180 recently for most races, I hadn’t spotted such a simplistic formula as top half finishers get a score boost and lower half get a score drop.
I thought it was more about the balance of which racers with lower scores beat you and which races with higher scores you beat (plus podium bonuses and any 30sec or 10min power improvements).
It seemed with the few races I looked at … in general that anyone around top half got a score bump, everyone bottom half got a score drop with only a few exceptions - regardless of the ZRS of the people around them.
I have a hard time believing that’s the way it actually works, because that wouldn’t make any sense - it should be more about the ZRS of the people you beat or lose to rather than top/bottom half.
I’ve only looked through a few races though, but what I saw didn’t make a ton of sense to me.
I’m guessing that if nobody in a race sets a new PB at 30s or 10m, then it is as simple as 50/50 on +/- RS. The upper cats are more likely to have settled at or quite near these PBs. As you get to the low cats, it’s harder to confirm, as there are probably still much more frequently new PBs in the new racer crowd. Also hard to confirm as many beginner/new Zwifters aren’t in ZPower.
It’s possible - Yeah, this is how someone got promoted out of my category in my last race by just barely going over the top half of the field (their seed must have been close to the cat boundary to begin with - though that didn’t translate into a racing advantage in this case) while the folks who were actually attacking, dropping folks and eventually sitting on the podium were far from being promoted out of the cat.
I wonder how true this holds if you finish above the first half but loses to riders with points under you. Come in 7th out of 100 rider but loses to 1-6 that are 30 point less than you.
Look at any of these races. Here’s from the same event #4525682. Cat C (350-520).
Finishers 7 and 8 get a RS bump, despite everyone in front of them with lower scores. #7 looks like he’ll be in Cat B next time around
1st Place mind you… finished almost 1 minute in front, at +1 w/kg. Got a score bump, but remains in C.
This is what happened to the racer I am referring to in that thread I linked above. They were just under 520 ZRS before the race, they didn’t beat anybody at all who had a higher score than them, they did finish top half (I beat them at my ZRS of 360 as an example - I then moved up to 368, but everyone ahead of that rider except one had a lower ZRS than them), and they were promoted out of the category.
That rider beat absolutely nobody with a higher ZRS than them, they were not there for the final sprint, and did not contest a podium, but they were bumped up and out of this category to the 520-whatever cat.
That could be correct. I have generally not looked at non starters and DNF numbers so my view slightly different to yours. From what I see, limited numbers of races looked at, it appears to me that around 2/3rds of finishers gain points and 1/3 lose points.
This is what FAQ says:
“A higher finish against stronger competitors in races will increase your score more significantly.”
I initially read this to suggest an ELO based results system. I probably initially thought that as I have followed what ZRapp have been doing. I’m seeing absolutely no evidence of ELO scoring. I now think this reflects that the higher you finish the more points you get and it’s the size or value of those points that are based on the overall strength of the racers not whether you actually beat them or not.
Top pen gets more points for higher placing than points gained for similar placing in lowest pen.
It won’t be long before someone figure this out 100%. People will start tanking their scores. I won’t be surprised if there is a major rise in popularity to tiny race because you can tank it rapidly in 1 hour.
To be clear though, I have no idea how large any of these score movements are. Could be eg. 1 point or a fraction of a point. All we can see are the little up/down arrows. It does look though like 1st place gets you a 10 point increase.
I’m in the top category and it’s looking pretty empty at the moment. I’m hoping the new system quickly promotes a lot more riders up. The top category should be where the best racing is and people should want to be there, but similar to the old A it’s looking like more of a punishment at the moment!
It sounds like the new system will stop people from sprinting for a minor position. Only those who are in contention for the win are going to bother pushing over the line as you don’t want to risk getting promoted due to finishing in the ‘upper half’ of the middle.
I’d also imagine there will be quite a lot of ‘sitting up’ if riders get overtaken in a sprint. Say you time the sprint badly and go slightly too early, you get overtaken with 100 odd meters to go. Are you really going to push to the line and perhaps finish 5th or will you sit up roll to the line and get swamped by the pack, finishing 20th or so?
Just to provide a clear answer: it’s definitely not as simple as “top half gets an increase, lower half gets a decrease.” Looking at my recent ZRS events, I see up and down arrows intermixed.
Raced my first Racing Score event today - Community Races at Innsbruck. Speaking as someone who as a result of the paradigm shift went from a strong C to the bottom of the 520-670 category (racing score of 527), here’s my impressions and observations so far:
–I’m hoping that the interest in racing as a result of these changes hasn’t been killed off. For a series that would usually draw 70ish riders at the time I race, there were only 20 this morning.
–Either I was grossly overseeded with my initial score, or the pen allocations need to be narrowed a fair bit in scores. Granted, I’m at the bottom of my current category as mentioned above, but routinely finishing 2-4 minutes after the leaders do isn’t going to be much fun. Especially in a system purported to level the playing field some so more people have a chance.
–Directly after this race, my score was immediately dropped to around 515, but then a few hours later, it was bumped back up to 525. I took 13/17, and the bottom three weren’t even trying to get a good result at all, so I only placed ahead of one person actually competing. So my questions are why did it drop and then raise up again? And for placing so poorly, why only a net drop of 2 points?
These aren’t meant as complaints by any means - getting my ass handed to me is only going to make me a stronger cyclist in the end. But not everyone is likely going to have that attitude about it. And I also realize that the only way to get placed in the correct pen is to keep racing and let the algorithm do its thing, and for everyone else to do the same. I’m just hoping that the new system intended to improve on the old isn’t actually worse than what we had… Time will tell.
Maybe you can see something the rest of us can’t? It looks pretty darn close to 50/50 to me.
Looking at this TIny Race ht tps://www.zwift.com/events/view/4528237
Looking at the signup count in the top half of the listing, and then the results at the bottom for any pen, looks pretty much like even up/down arrows.
300-430 cat shows 38 signups. Positions 1-19 all have up arrows.
430-550 Cat shows 25 signups. 1st thru 11 have up arrows. Below that are all down arrows.
680-1000 cat shows 28 signups; positions 1-13, and #15 are all up arrows. So exactly 14 up arrows.
0-300 group in that event shows the best mix of arrows of any category in the event, I think.
Lastly, I’ll say this: there were some bugs early on in which arrows were being shown next to scores. As far as I know those were fixed. But I suppose it’s possible we’re seeing some that aren’t correct. (It’s a big pain to figure out if they’re incorrect, since the results don’t show the riders’ old score vs the new one.)
The direction of the arrow shows whether your score is higher or lower than it was after your previous race, not higher or lower than the start of the race.
It should be less of an issue now that almost every race counts for ZRS but will still show up for infrequent racers.
