I keep reading that if you can put out a certain watts or W/kg you can do it again within the 60 day or 90 day period.
So if you can race at a certain 60 or 90 day kg weight you can do it again within the same 60 day or 90 day period.
Use best watts and lowest kg over whatever period is chosen to calculate CE.
IMHO It is clear this will make very little difference to honest racers but will have an impact on those trying to manipulate weight to their advantage.
I get your point but this isn’t a thread about category enforcement, it’s a a request to limit the amount and frequency by which someone can adjust their Zwift weight.
Yes but did you raise it because CE calculation/allocation isn’t doing quite the job it should be doing?
No! I raised it because there have been lots of discussions around weight manipulation being the unpolicable elephant in the room regardless of what category, ranking, performance system etc is in place. We started a bit of brainstorm to see if there is any way at all to improve the situation at community level and that included things like 3rd party validation, smart bikes that automatically weigh you, etc - but this seemed like the most implementable solution that also seeks to promote a positive message around weight management.
Then Zwift should police weight manipulation as opposed to restrict honest racers from entering their correct body weight.
I ‘accidently’ (*1) added 80lbs to my weight to move from CE B cat to C cat before remembering to correct it to my proper weight before taking part in the C cat race I had now been allowed to enter. This is what Zwift needs to stop.
*1 - The only accident was my miscalculation by a few lbs as I had really been hoping to enter a D cat race.
Makes sense to me they do something to limit moving weight around in ways that are both unnatural and also help give people a clear in-game advantage. Not sure if 2kg is the right number, but I think any major changes to weight and height should be discouraged somehow by actual game code.
I’ve heard before that people do this to enable them to keep up on certain group rides, personally I think it’s not the right way to go, but if that’s a real scenario maybe the physics allow it for events that are not leaderboard events, but if you join a race you go back to your weight that is no more than ‘x’ kg lower/higher in the last 7 days etc… The game probably should also not let you get achievements (such as the 100km/hr achievement) if your weight was changed significantly above some rolling threshold recently too etc… But that’s less of a problem than messing with peoples races I would imagine.
Anyhow, they could definitely make weight and height a bit less easy to completely mess around with while keeping legitimate weight gains and losses within reasonable thresholds.
I got the flu the last couple weeks, I wouldn’t meet this criteria.
What, you mean exactly like the feature request suggests?
To police weight whilst allowing ‘honest’ riders to do what they want would require zwift to have an understanding of someone’s intentions, which is, of course, ludicrous. How would you suggest it is tackled as an alternative?
While I sympathise to some extent with the idea, forcing (some) people to ride at an incorrect weight, and prohibiting the correction of genuine mistakes, is not likely to end well. Furthermore, weight doping is a widely accepted way of modifying group rides to suit a rider’s performance and intention. I’ve done it myself in the past, occasionally. I don’t see why this should be considered illegitimate.
I admire your opening of a thread with, probably, the intention of pushing Zwift to do something about weight manipulation.
I sense your frustration
and don’t really wish to add further to those frustrations. I immediately supported your suggestion but have since read and considered the points raised by others.
In answer to the second to last question you asked me:
NO not EXACTLY like the feature request suggests, but certainly for Zwift to put something in place, which may be more of a monitoring weight change rather than prohibiting weight movement above set values.
I don’t have the answers but hope I can make some ‘rational and reasonable’ points for consideration::
I don’t now agree with a figure of 2kg - I believe a flat %age ( I don’t know what I’m not a nutritionist or medical person) would be more logical and fairer to all. A 2kg weight loss on a 50kg rider is 4% whereas on a 100kg rider is only 2%. Do we want lighter riders being beaten further with a new ‘lightweight advantage’ stick?
Should 2kg be used ( or a flat %age ) then I’m not sure this should be used week on week on week ad infinitum. Take you for example, your weight has only moved a total span of 4kg in the past 4 years or so. I’m sure most regular racers have a fairly standard race weight which might just move a few kilos over a short period but in the main stays very consistent. So if you were to lower your weight by 2kg in week one I have no problem. If you were to lower it again by 2kg week two my eyebrows would be raised but nothing said. Reduce it a third week and a red flag would start to be waived. Clearly someone who is new to Zwift might have joined up with the intention of losing weight and they may easily be able to lose 2kg (or more) safely a week for several weeks. I suppose what I’m trying to suggest in this section is that regular racers may need to be limited to a maximum weight change over a set period which might be the 60 day CE window.
Zwift know height, weight and age so with some medical input might be able to set markers as to what might or might not be reasonable weight changes.
I can see two obvious advantageous/gaming reasons for changing your weight:
Lowering your weight - with intention to gain a racing advantage through producing a higher in race w/kg. I think this will always be an issue no matter what categorisation system is used. ( So monitoring or prohibition of excessive weight loss is needed )
Increasing your weight - with intention of obtaining a lower category to race in. I think this can be dealt within the current CE calculation process and would probably not be an issue at all if a different, Race Ranking, categorisation system was in place which i believe is favoured by many, but probably not all.
I favour letting users change their weight to reflect their actual race weight, I’m sure the great many racing wish to accurately record their true weight.
IMO For most regular racers these changes will be minor and fairly inconsequential in the overall race outcome.
What I put forward to deal with those making quite large, and for gain, weight changes is the following.
Whilst we have the current CE categorisation system
Use a riders lowest 60 day racing weight to calculate their category.
Don’t allow a non race ride to be the activation point of a CE calculation change.
After a weight increase ensure a formal race is undertaken, the new weight recorded on ZP record, and only then should a new CE calculation be made.
If Zwift can do it ensure the weight increase used in CE calculation is the weight used in the race. ( Current system allows you to use one weight for CE calculation and then change it to a lower race weight without being moved to a higher category)
Once again I have written too much and I’m not sure that any of my suggestions are workable in ZWIFT.
I hope these suggestions are not counter-productive or delaying of the process by which Zwift needs to do something to monitor, reduce or prevent weight manipulation.
I’ve said this a few times in a few different posts and not heard a counter argument to it. I think Zwift just needs to re-enforce any pens after each weight change that would result in a higher pen.
Oh goodness, not this one again! We’re on a hiding to nowhere on this one, since Zwift staffers condone it, but it just blurs the lines massively…
This thread is a good example of why a feature request solutions shouldn’t be in a straight forward forum context . The best ones never are …
How it ideally should work , You post your feature . If you like it you vote for it , if you don’t you don’t . If you think of a better feature for the same or similar thing , or as is happening here , a completely different thing. Raise your own feature request. Forum channels like this do not foster that etiquette.
In the end the features that get looked at are the ones with the most votes.
Sometimes two similar features compete with each other and initially split the vote , but then true compromising can be made .
I want the weight limit to be 2 some one else wants it to be 3 . If they feel strongly about it . Create a new feature request … sooner or later we see what is the most popular . those who voted for the least popular have a choice … have nothing or vote for the more popular to boost its popularity ( and thus zwift know we want it ) . That is healthy community .voicing .
This is just another one of those threads which go on and on and on with no conclusion and I bet anyone looking at it as a feature request would be hard pressed to make head or tail now of what we actually want , and therefore run a mile .
Probably one very big reason why a lot of popular feature concepts are glacial in there adoption…
This feature request should maybe be authored in more general terms. We don’t need another FR for +/- 3kg. The feature request is to limit users to change weight unrealistically. The details and implementation could be discussed, but should ideally not be part of the FR.
Alternatively one could implement a racing system that doesn’t use arbitrary wkg boundaries, forcing some people to adjust their weight to compete near the top of their allocated category.
I think that has been suggested a couple of times before. Right now it is about filling the holes in the CE cat system until we have something better.
This particular hole would be trivially fixed by just doing the CP calculation directly in W/kg on day of performance rather than W with a subsequent conversion to W/kg with new weight.
(To be precise, it needs doing in both W and W/kg, for the absolute watts threshold too. This isn’t complicated, it is just what the zp site has been doing for ever…)
So why didnt you raise this better feature request then so we get a chance to vote on it ? Sitting as a comment in another feature request is of significantly less value .
or probably race either .and I wager when you were back to race fitness your weight was too .
This. Feature. Request. Is. Not. About. CE.
Stop twisting every conversation to promote your own (whoever ‘you’ happen to be) agenda. It’s not about CE. It’s not about a ranking or points system. It’s not a window to discuss the historical zwift speed of development.
It’s a feature request that is clearly described in the OP. As @Graham_Irvine_London says, either vote for it or don’t. If Zwift do something like this and open up the debate on the nuances great. I would imagine they currently take one look at a conversation like this and never look at it again. I’d imagine most of them avoid the forums completely as it has become so poisonous.