Why do people just noodling around even care about pack churn?
But I acknowledge my feedback is pointless. The decision of how it will work was made months ago despite “nothing has been determined” and now that it’s in public testing on Makuri it’s done being tweaked and it’s just in the “get people used to it” phase. Sad that despite such thorough communication efforts the execution is mediocre and based on a bad metric.
That Descent to Urukazi is only 1.5km at 3.4% avg and Gravel on some places. I did this Descent 2x with Coco on Thursday.
Through the cave it goes -6 to -7%. Literally within seconds of your timestamp it hits -5%. “Average of -3.4% over 1.5km” ignores what actually happens just like every other “this hill averages X% for Ykm” comment. You realize that descent actually goes to +4% for portions?
You should have it relatively easy on a descent I’m only 3cm shorter than you and a lot lighter and I had no troubles staying with the pack.
I only have about 500w max power and FTP isn’t that high due to my injuries (and recovery process).
This is me riding with Coco yesterday in that section. I’m 78kg, 183cm. Zero watts for 14 seconds and if I remember correctly, I essentially held position in the pack. I just haven’t experienced any issues with descending at all.
i also have same problem when i stop pedaling on descents few seconds i lose too much speed compared to the group
Yeah I feel the same way. This whole feedback thing looks more like getting a confirmation that they did the right thing than anything else. The attitude is very much: “We think this is the best solution, don’t you as well?”. And if we point out the issues such as auto braking, choppy riding in the pack, etc. we get the “But it’s better than PD3” response.
I am sorry to break this to you guys, this is not better than PD3, it is DIFFERENT than PD3. The movement through the pack is still choppy in a different way. Yes, the pack speed is slower, which gives the advantage to wkg riders in ALL courses, not just hilly ones.
This weekend, in Tiny Race series, people who has the highest wkg for 1-5 min won the races. It was the flattest race series ever created. These people would have no business contesting a race that’s 7km pan flat with their abysmal sprints. But thanks to PD4, they could solo the last 2km to victory with their massive wkg.
In my opinion, PD4 largely benefits wkg riders in ANY terrain, leaving no advantage for heavier sprinters, even on downhill sections since supertuck is being removed. There was some sort of balance about who has advantage on what course before. That balance is shifted massively favoring wkg riders with PD4.
I can’t suggest any solutions for the problems I notice with PD4, because I don’t know all the details on how it works and interacts with other features of the game (Draft cones, power ups, pack size, etc.). I understand that to control the speed of the pack, the relative speed of riders should be taken into account, as opposed to each riders speed being calculated in isolation. It looks like that relative speed calculation is done a bit too much, which I think is the reason zwift had to rely on double draft to curb the choppiness of riding in the pack.
Do what you wish with this feedback, but just be aware that some of us are not entirely convinced that this is much better than PD3.
That being said, I appreciate the level of communication that @DavidP has maintained and the countless hours the development team must have spent on this. Thanks for giving us a voice.
The response is also “well our system is such a mess it can’t deal with any appropriate mechanisms to fix so what else should we do about it.” I repeatedly suggested testing using 0w descending bots to find something that works but I’m pretty sure that was completely ignored in favor of sticking to the “ease up on power by 3% => autodrop” algorithm.
I haven’t really tried out PD4 much recently, but I would still suggest that some/many of the issues raised with PD4 are also there in PD3 but just masked by other PD3 stuff (and whatever differences in rider behaviour it elicits).
And yes, moving riders towards the edges as they start overtaking others makes sense to me, with the end result that they’ll be all the way to the outside of the pack pretty soon. (Looking forward to them hitting the grass shoulder and turning into a bowling ball (see the men’s Ronde today) in PD6…)
@DavidP I wonder if any of the auto-braking/moderation mechanisms are based on a percentage or relative to the riders watts somehow. In that case, heavy riders who produce more watts will be punished more compare to lighter riders (ability to produce watts is not linear to weight).
The issues people are having with auto braking whether it’s trying to sprint coast back in the the pack or sprint coast downhill is down to their pedalling style. It’s been explained many times how to autobraking is applied. If you sprint to the back of the pack and stop pedalling and expect to ghost to the front then tough, that doesn’t work anymore. no more effort is really required to get in but you just have to ease off the power rather than abruptly sopping pedalling. Same type of riding will get you shot out the back on a descent.
I did 2 hours today with robopacers 1 hr each with 2 different ones. On shallow descents -3% 90w was enough to easily hold position. With a steeper descent I actually got off my bike to pick up a dropped bottle and all was fine and stayed in place. BUT if I had sprinted, stopped and jumped off I would have been autobraked and dropped.
PD4 is different to PD3 thats the whole point, some tactics will have to change, some riding styles will have to adapt, that doesn’t mean it’s crap just that an individuals MO doesn’t work with it. Seems to mainly be cruisers that sprint that don’t like it. #hottake
But that is not natural, is it? That is not how it works IRL.
Most riders are just sitting in or getting dropped and sprint as well as they can for the finish. That makes us all cruisers.
I wonder if different types of trainers are reporting power in a different way and Autobraking is not the reason they are getting dropped…when i stop pedalling at 40km/h my rider stops after 200m. Some are reporting they are stoped the second they stop pedalling.
I’m using Neo2T or Stages Gen 3 Left sided PM and to me both times it’s the same.
Could it be the Platform that is the reason…i’m on PC version.
If the sprint-coast approach to riding isn’t as effective with PD4, then maybe one of the added benefits Of PD4 is to negate the sticky watts and/or microbursting phenomena found with certain set-ups?
I assume you mean the conscious riding technique called micro bursting, and not the situations in a ride where you really have to do micro bursts of power for positioning, etc.?
done one on a saris h3 and one on a kickr v5 and didn’t notice a difference. maybe the quality of the connection might make a difference, but my wifi isn’t super fast or anything either.
It could be because of different latencies to communicate with the Zwift servers.
But IRL that’s exactly what the high watts - high w/kg riders with no sprint would attempt to do in a 7km pan flat race - burn it up hot and ride the sprinters off the wheels. Would take team work to control them and keep things on for the sprinters.
Yes, I mean the anomolous type of microbursting that Zwift doesn’t believe exists 
That was be a great outcome
