Transparency is great and I think you’ve done a great job with it! It just needed a better description than braking. 
“We adjusted how your avatar responds to sudden increases in air resistance when going from a high draft to low draft situation”
Anyway, keep up the great work, I think this has been a great adjustment and I look forward to seeing how it changes things and how people adjust to the changes.
Communication has been great but as I mentioned months ago the “fix” was predetermined to be a brake applied when you reduce power. And that’s a bad solution. Please, bright red numbers showing how many watts you’re being penalized for trying to recover on a steep downhill.
I don’t think you need much of pedalling on a steep downhill from my experience 187cm and 80kg but sure depends on weight and bike setup.
Box Hill Descent
Fox Hill Descent
Petit KOM Descent
I’m doing only PDv4 events for over 2 months now and i still think there is too much washing machine effect with a Steady Group…if everyone is doing 2.5 to 2.7Wkg Pack is doing 41km/h and washing machine effect is happening non-stop because no one is autobraked.
The Slingshot effect going uphill is far to big also…you can jump from 30-50m behind to 1st Row if you have the power to use it.
I did some riding with Coco(?) at Makuri today. It was a huge group and I was mostly placed in the middle. I tried to slide to the back to see how it felt, but the back was pretty scattered and it was hard to find the “wall” we often have in races. Anyways, it felt right at the back and in the middle. I tried to accelerate and ease off before reaching the front but ended up reaching the front and taking some wind even if that was not the intention. I would have expected to be moderated before reaching the front.
I’m still open to discuss better (?) future solutions. What would be the solution from your perspective?
Braking was the “realistic” solution at this point in time. When I say realistic, I mean it was the solution to the problem that could be implemented in a reasonable amount of time and not disruptive enough to cause major problems. We have a million things to do, and not enough hands, so we need to find “realistic” solutions for the existing software and not think in pharaonic projects
Force advancement on the outside of the blob. Since zwift is such a pile of spaghetti that you can’t do that then manipulate draft numbers to accomplish the same while the program is being rewritten from scratch.
Assuming a vast majority still without manual steering, you would be basically blocking riders inside the group until they would slow down enough so they could be moved to the outside. I believe that is somewhat more aggressive than some light braking…
Or magically teleport them to the outside? 
I don’t think that fits into the category of “not very disruptive change”.
You’ve repeatedly said there’s no collision detection. Float people through others to the outside. I get you put a lot of work into PD4 and the churn and speed is a problem with PD3 but the fix is worse than the problem.
Just to verify, is getting spit out the back when resting at 60kph on a -7% downhill intended behavior?
I have a Deja vu feeling that we’ve had this conversation before.
Simply putting riders on the outside of the pack exposed to the wind won’t slow down the interior and center of the pack. Even Dejan, in a post above is saying that with braking it’s not being enough.
It won’t be enough ever in a steady group because there’s no reduction in power to trigger the brake. Bad metric to trigger the slowdown means it doesn’t take effect when it’s supposed to and does when it shouldn’t.
Is getting auto dropped when trying to rest in a fast downhill pack expected behavior?
I did a few of the Tiny Races this evening (2200 UTC) and got auto braked a lot. Never got shelled out the back (except when I covered an attack in race 2 and didn’t have the energy to cover the counter), and it was mostly when I was near the front and letting off power because I didn’t want to be on the front. Did exactly what I wanted and tucked me right back into the draft to save my matches. Managed to time race 1 pretty good, but botched race 2 and 3.
Cooldown with Coco was great. Much less churn and pretty smooth movement.
I also rode in that route with Coco. It was very easy and could get to the front no problems at all.
Jump back to Watopia Triple Flat loops with Jacques and endless series of 6.0w/kg surges to avoid getting dropped.
I would say don’t wait longer, roll out PD4 to Watopia as well.
I’ve done five races with PD4 and the last 2 felt great and I almost couldn’t tell it had PD4. Today I rode Makuri 40 and again it felt almost normal, so I don’t understand why people are having such a hard time.
Can you explain this Autodrop on downhills…i can free wheel with more than -5% and nothing will happen…i might even end up on the front of the group in supertuck.
Your weight and height?
Is your speed matching the group when you stop peddaling?
Totally agree. There’s always going to be dissenting voices who would prefer the status quo. If PD4 feedback is overwhelmingly negative once it becomes the default, then that’s the time for tinkering and tweeking.
Let’s remember, PD4 has to work for everyone on Zwift, not just (top-level) racing.
Exactly right. Racing is not very important (sorry racers) - the huge masses of people who just want to ride are the ones who need to be testing this and the biggest groups of those are on Watopia on the flat routes or Tempus Fugit where the speeds are high and it’s easy to compare against previous behaviour on the same routes.
The Makuri routes are not nearly as popular.
I want to see what this is like on familiar Watopia routes.
The introduction of PD4 would be an excellent topic for the RoboPacers to talk about in their chat. Just a few pointers and a suggestion to visit a FAQ or similar page.
You can turn it around and say that PD4 has to work for everyone on Zwift, not just the free riders/group riders 
Joke aside - I also think PD4 is ready to be released globally. I hope Zwift will still welcome and appreciate our constructive feedback, even after the launch to refine it even more.
I was riding with Coco yesterday. 76kg 178cm. 60kph, descending to urukazi area so -6, -7%. Matching group speed, near the front of the pack, stop pedaling, immediately start falling backwards through the pack.