Racing Score updates [July 8 2024]

You don’t.

Score will change straight away from doing a ZRS race

Great how rapidly Zwift develops these days and a new Racing Score Categorization is a must to keep it challenging. I read Tim Hanson from ZwiftRacing.app is consulted and that’s great news as me and my team is fan of the categorization of this app. We do ride the Dirt Racing Series and Club Ladder. I think this Racing Score is a step in the good direction. I think it has great potential and after testing it should replace the A,B,C,D categories to keep racing attractive within Zwift. Good job to all and looking forward further developments.

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I assume your seed score will always be calculated from your best efforts in the previous 90 days. So power records going out of that window would lower your seed score.
I further assume that when your seed score drops your current score wouldn’t immediately drop, but it could be dropped by performing poorly in races or through the inactivity degradation mechanic they’ve built.

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As far as I understand your seed score will only change when your 90 days power records change. So when your 90 days 10 minute or 30s record expires and gets replaced it should calculate a new seed score for you. In those caes it should go down.

And when you get a new 10 min or 30s high it should recalculate when that happens and will go up.

Looking at the positive side:
The new system removes watt floors (or ceilings) and the artificially low categorization of really light weight riders.

I’m not Zwifting in the Summer.
Are the ZRS races hardware enforced?
Maybe a few races should be open season just to see what affect those riders have.

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Are you referring to yourself?
You would not be considered a new racer placed in a low cat.
You are quite experienced and near the cat dividing line and the goofy cat system kept bouncing you back and forth.

Were there truly new racers in 1/2 the races?
There may be but considering racers are said to represent 10% of users, I haven’t seen the numbers increase to suggest new racers are common.

Your comment raises an interesting and common phenomenon with Zwift racing.
For better or worse.
You state you do on the order of 250 races a year
That’s 5 races a week.
That’s common in Zwift, Zwift racing is fun.
But, is that good?
Is that best practice?
Are we really racing that much.
I don’t think anyone races 5 times a week IRL , 52 weeks a year.
Just an observation.

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most community races as well as zwift own series are now hardware enforced. I wouldn’t even give the zpower users the time of day to complicate things there are so few of them now.

Whilst Tiny races should be considered as 1 race, there is 4 races in an hour.

Would be probably good for the system if these could be somehow bound into a single race. Ie. Some new race type - you finish one and you’re teleported to new start grid. Would help with zp stats, and make velo calculation easier. As tiny races sometimes bug out things due to individual race results being delayed etc.

Not really for this topic but … :stuck_out_tongue:

There’s no pure Watt floors/ceilings for pens, but the seeding is being done on pure Watts, which will result in many lightweight relatively high W/Kg racers being in the low pens and dominating virtually all races that aren’t flat (or have a climb that will take approx 2mins+, such as Petit KOM on the Casse-Pattes route).

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Well I just had a look on Zwiftpower and saw that I did a little over 500 races so far. I am about two years on Zwift now, so that is 250 a year.
Is that a lot, sure it is, but I really like it. Certainly the ZRaces. But also do consider that the tiny races are already 4 in one hour.

I am basicly on Zwift to have a good time. Racing is fun for me. Training isnt so I hardly do that. I dont think I have done 20 workouts in those 2 years. Do I get better by just racing, sure. Could it be better or quicker if I would train. Also sure, but I am not in it to get the best out of me. I am here to have fun. And that is also one of the problems of Zwift Racing. Not everyone has the same goals or the same intention. That is perhaps only the case in ZRL where you are part of a team. If people want to zone 2 or dnf in a race there is no stopping them. You cant force people to ride at their max.

And I never compare Zwift to outside riding. It is completely different. I never have powerups outside, cant go through corners with 80km/h and on Zwift there is no wind and I dont have flats.

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Supposedly it is a modified compound score, which factors in both Watts and weight.

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Partially. I had major injuries and was sufficiently recovered to race about the time my prior efforts dropped off at 90 days. C races were mostly easy to dominate and there was nothing to push me back to B through the races. Often there would be someone even stronger dropping in, blowing up the race, and getting moved to B after. Only after doing a handful of mass start races am I back in the B ranges. Had I not done those I could’ve sat in C crushing it forever.

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But this is only partially true. If I am overseeded because of a strong sprint but only have a mediocre long power my score does NOT go down to find my place among similar abilities - my racing score is stuck at my (inflated) seed score.

That is a great suggestion to solve the issue. Anything that would use race results to better determine appropriate grouping, especially during this testing process, would add greater validity than power alone.

2 things

  1. 10 minutes is NOT long power.
  2. The seed is off of 90 day metrics so it can go down when your high 30s expires.

If there’s only one score for all route profiles, it’s inevitable that racing score will promote horses for courses more than CE categories did, partly because sprint power was removed from CE calculations and now it’s back. Whether or not that’s a good thing is a matter of opinion. It does seem a bit more like what you would expect from IRL racing though, where sprinty riders become unwanted baggage on routes with hills.

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What defines over seeded?

Please dont tell me getting dropped or not winning?

Its like all of the issues with Zwift racing is being laid out in one thread.

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Hot take: vastly underseeded A and riders blowing up races against against heavyweight C riders is no different than having zpower riders blowing up any other race. :slight_smile:

(to be clear - I’m arguing against the current, hopefully soon-to-be-former, seed score calculations. Not arguing on behalf of zpower riders)