I love TTs and HCs because I’m lighter with little/no interest (ability?) in sprinting. I think we all agree this style is the minority. Hence the short crits and other flat races.
I’ve been Zwift racing for a few years and my primary goal is to get a workout. However, most people have the “work smarter, not harder” mentality and want to practice draft tactics even though it does little to improve their fitness.
I’ve probably got 1 foot in each camp - zwift is there to improve my actual real world riding, but part of that is the competitive nature of a race is great motivation, and I want to do aswell as possible as motivation.
I’m just of the opinion, the updated physics that got rolled back made for good racing and tactical racing - tactical racing doesn’t mean sitting in, if you commit to the break that will mean having to put down an effort to make it stick - now, it’s not sticking the vast majority of the time so no need to do it. (This comes from someone who won a break away in Glasgow Crit that ended up being a ftp test - it’s a rarity, not an often occurrence)
Hi Aly,
Sorry about this experience. Are you always doing the same race events every week? If yes, then maybe try new events.
I own the Zwift club “Epic Run Crew”. We are primarily a running club but we have two weekly races (with plans for more). Our bike races are branded as “Epic Racing”. They are on Friday at 3:20 PM Pacific and Sunday at 9:45 AM Pacific.
I recently enabled the rules “power meter required” and “heart rate monitor required” and I’m super happy with the results. No bots anymore and the races are very competitive. We have lots of attacks, counterattacks, drops and bridges. Some attacks stick and some don’t, but at least our participants are willing to try frequently. Today’s race on the Libby Hill After Party route is a good example. There were probably at least 10 good attacks at the front, with successful drops and bridges. I felt like a yo-yo. Anyone who wanted to stay with the front could not take a nap.
I change the routes for each race frequently, and try to pick fairly flat routes but with some good spots to attack.
I also disabled powerups so that people have to work harder for victory.
Another suggestion is to get to know the regular attendees at your favourite races and then form alliances with them. Then you can use private messages during a race to time your attacks with your alliance.
Alt, I agree. The last race I did was a few laps around London with Fox hill at the end. For the B group I averaged 2.3w/kg for the whole race. A few attempts at a break away but the group would close the gaps fast. Then it was just a zone one trot until Fox hill, then all the A race sandbaggers burst up the hill at 5-6w/kg and I was out the front. ( although I did place 5th). I would rather be paced/ride with Constants for an actual workout and not feel like I just wasted my hour of time in zone 1 for 50+ min…
Then why not do that with a TT bike?
You’ll find Constance isn’t always the workout you are after either. Sometimes the lower groups are harder with 100+ people instead of 5 and usual folks pacing off the front at 4.0w/kg.
Alternatively join me on ADZ daily for laps between 46 and 50 minutes if it’s a workout you want.
The easy run to the hill makes me think everyone was saving themselves for that hill but some sandbagging folk had other ideas so everyone else was finished.
IRL racing is sometimes very easy at times too, even A will roll along easily. But when they attack, it will be fast.
IMO fairly flat routes favour the sit in and sprint crowd. They can use their sprint power to shutdown attacks, bigger climbs would make them have to work for their sprint. But they’d switch to another flat race because there are so many options. And these folk appear to be the majority.
I agree races are becoming predictable / boring…the chance to get a break stick is 1 in a million in categories with upper boundaries. The big groups now will swallow riders like nothing.
The previous version was much more breakaway friendly but NONE RACERS that just do RoboPacer Group Rides were pushing @DavidP and Zwift to change it cause they were pushing to much watts in Group and not moving forward for free 
You are twisting things there.
If you are in a big group in real life , you do not need to do big accelerations to stay there, except when coming out of a corner. You can just soft pedal or roll along while occasionally feathering the brakes to not run into the rider ahead.
In Zwift what is happening for lighter riders is that if we even slightly let off the power we immediately lose the momentum we had (by 3-4km/h) from some sort of auto braking then end up spat out the back and having to do big accelerations to get back through. You can see it happening, you watch the speed ticking down when it shouldn’t.
While if I use steering I zoom past the lot (100 riders or more) with less effort needed. 
What’s lacking is collision detection, brakes, steering and crashes to moderate the pack speed and make the racing interesting.
nothing holy or good will come from giving me that kind of ability
Nascar here we come
This is not only for light riders…for everyone it’s the same. Virtual and IRL riding is very different so you don’t have the luxury of Coasting at 45km/h like IRL when you are drafting a big group.
My point is riders were pushing more watts than needed to stay in group…now cause of the last change we again have this free acceleration and groups are faster.
yeah sounds as though zwift are trying to mimic things such as the snore de france where things like whose going to wear which jersey are decided in a committee room before anyone has got on a bike 
IMO compared to IRL racing there are three big components that contribute to zwift breakaways failing (and therefore rarely forming in the first place):
perfect information. You can see exactly how many seconds away a break is and how hard they are trying. i.e. less cat and mouse.
no one knows each other. IRL, you may work with someone you know to be strong, but in Zwift it’s a total crapshoot. You don’t even know if the other racer is 50kg or 100kg until after the ride.
lots of people treating it as a workout (obviously, that’s primarily what it is). This means they don’t care about their result and will chase a break just for the sake of it. Again, less cat and mouse.
Does this make racing more boring though? I admit when doing short and mostly flat races, sometimes I just try to cause chaos without a care about my placing. Not so much to get a workout as to inflict maximum pain on the cruise-and-sprint crowd. If I work, they work. Like team riding but there’s no teammate. I figured this makes the race more exciting, am I wrong about that? I mean I suppose some people hate it but AITA?
A value judgment, obviously, so that’s up to you.
But when I’m playing Settlers of Catan and one person doesn’t care so they just play irrationally, yeah that does detract from the experience.
It’s not 100% free watts to roll up front. There is about 5-10 watts of sticky draft preventing you from pushing pass the rider in front.
Sure there is some extra watts you need to push but this is what riders do they push to get to the front and then they fall back and repeat. It’s a washing machine style they learned from previous PDs.
The bigger the group…more watts riders will push to be at the front the faster the group will go.
Is this sticky draft amount relative to the size of the rider or on watts/kg?
true, all of it
Would you say that Zwift should take away all the perfect information so you don’t know how far the break is ahead (ie, can’t see it, won’t chase as much
Should weight and height be shown again? Weight I have no idea what the point of removing that was given you can do simple mathematics to work it out. Maybe not in racing, but certainly in normal riding.