David - I’ll go back and see if I can find a few, I haven’t seen anything blatant for a while. It has calmed down quite a bit, and our biggest series this time of year doesn’t have categorization.
MTA: Because race organizers don’t have access to the data behind cat enforcement, for anything borderline all I could do was leave it there, it was only a few very blatant cases that were DQ’d
Thanks! Given the note below, I think definitely not in the immediate future.
“* Scoring & Categorization: allow scored results to influence overall ranking progression - In Discovery”
It’s nonsense to suggest that ZP cats with pen enforcement is better than CE. Come on guys.
There may have been much better ways to have developed this, from the start, and with a much more effective outcome, but don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.
I think the issue and source of frustration for folks may be not really whether than ZP with pen enforcement or CE is better, but the optics or perception that a lot of time and energy has been spent on developing CE when it was known all along that that really wouldn’t solve the core problem.
It just seems to bystanders that it would have been better to put resources into the final appropriate solution. Now, as outsiders, maybe we misunderstand how much time was really put into this and it hasn’t been that labor intensive but if it has it’s a little like watching someone trying to hammer a nail with a screwdriver, and then continue to try to solve the problem by buying more expensive screwdrivers instead of just getting a hammer.
There I fixed it.
Yes I agree CE is way better than ZP. I would like if Zwift would enforce CE for all events. Make a clean sweep so people don’t get confused. And remove the Category on the Zwift power website.
Category Enforcement is great.
Are categories based on CP better than categories based 95% of best 20 min?
I don’t know.
I’m not sure about FTP, zFTP, CP, zZP or W.
Now there’s to be a zWt.
Using critical power lead me to Intervals that has changed the way I approach training.
This is why I said Zwift only need to show the assigned Category no need for all the confusing data.
At a technical level I quite a agree CE is better than ZP.
But the way it’s been delivered and not enforced on all events we have ended up with a 2 (3 if you want to count wtrl) cat system which has been causing confusion for months. And continues to with these extra metrics so in my view i don’t see it being any better than what ZP with pen enforcement would of been.
I’d like to see Zwift enforce CE on all events including ZRL and for it to be shown on ZP that would bring some real progress if the ranking idea is a long way off.
The thing that is most frustrating, and I really like Zwift, is the missed opportunities.
Racing stats - zwiftPower
Ride info- Strava
World/route choice - ZwiftPref
Map of worlds- Zwift map
Training info- Intervals.
Why is Zwift letting all these opportunities to improve the experience go ignored?
The graphics settings should be secondary instead of crashing top rigs.
I agree and this is something which took me some time to realize
IMHO the quickest way to improving the Zwift racing experience for all Zwifters is not a total new system, but directly targeting the Zwift riders which are disadvantaged in the current categories (because these riders are not close to the cat limits). Hence the idea of creating the new customized Zwift categories for Mad Monday, using the similar measurements (95% of best 20 minute w/kg) but then setting the limits differently.
Now all we need is permission from Zwift HQ to allow the TFC Mad Monday series to implement pen enforcement. In the past 2 weeks @DavidP has been a great help to explore ways to implement pen enforcement for customized categories and I think we are close to getting there. 
So from my point of view Zwift is doing its best to help Zwift racing improve, regardless of what happened in the past.
Honestly @Gio_Hoeberigs - I don’t think much of the “½ category” systems - I’m currently sitting as a C, and I did some mad monday races in low B - but I should have been in the top of B when I did them. It’s why I was podium in a good chunk of them. It’s just a bad way to do categories. Results should be better - but we don’t have that yet, and it’s not great for new racers.
It would be better within the power categories if the boundaries moved a bit - either give organizers the ability to set the boundary in w/kg for each cat, or have the official cat boundary move periodically. There’s a very odd statistical anomaly where a very large number of racers are close to the top of the category limit.
Don’t mean to go off-topic too much, so a short reply:
What you are writing is exactly what we are doing now: we are moving the boundaries: we have
new “organizer defined” (as you call it) boundaries. No other event has the same cat boundaries.
I get it - but I consider private events an unacceptable compromise that basically only serves those of us who are all the way down the rabbit hole of Zwift racing, and is not very accessible.
That functionality needs to be in Category Enforcement, so that it can be used in public events as well.
Well, that’s fine if you only look at one data point.
If only someone had a list of all the Zwift riders, their currently recorded/entered FTPs and their newly-fashioned zFTPS in order to make a comparison based on a larger sample…
Agreed, but it’s not what was said so I called it out.
Yep you know I agree with you on this!
Not a problem to us. Look at every single social media discussion of zFTP, the average zwifter is super confused. Do I even care? Not really, it doesn’t affect me, but for the greater zwift good it’s worth pointing it out.
Hi. I have a few questions and suggestions and assumptions.
I assume the whole purpose of category enforcement is to improve racing for a users of zwift and now that you cant enter a lower cat for a ‘recovery’ race that has solved 1 part of the problem. I’m hoping that part 2 is to stop the habitual winners/sandbaggers at the top of D, C and to some degree B. On that part the current CE is failing (for now).
Question 1: is CE still be iterated or is this the final version as a ranking system is being worked on?
I guess if this is it all the other question are irrelevant.
Question 2: if its still being worked on would it be better that zFTP is calculated using 30s, 5m, 8m and 10m max as these are the factors that win a Zwift race, hardly anyone targeted with CE (to move up) will ever do a max 20 min effort let alone 30-40 minutes. Including these Z2 efforts just drags it down?
Question 3: Looking at the facebook pages FTP vs zFTP is causing confusion and there are riders below, equal and above their FTP and not sure which is correct, both as they are calculated differently. As this metric is being used for CE why not call zCE as that’s what it really relates to and it’s not a training number? I’m sure now it’s out there you don’t want to change it, but with clear messaging it wouldn’t be so bad.
Question 1: is CE still be iterated or is this the final version as a ranking system is being worked on?
I guess if this is it all the other question are irrelevant.
I guess the answer is it depends. If it’s something we can change or fix without a significant amount of effort, we will. If not, we prioritize the ranking system.
Question 2: if its still being worked on would it be better that zFTP is calculated using 30s, 5m, 8m and 10m max as these are the factors that win a Zwift race, hardly anyone targeted with CE (to move up) will ever do a max 20 min effort let alone 30-40 minutes. Including these Z2 efforts just drags it down?
Once again this is a wrong assumption. Just because I gave that example above of the power tests, it doesn’t mean that ONLY those durations impact zFTP. Those are like the baseline test to establish the power profile. Also, CE is not dependent only on zFTP. Just like you mentioned about the short duration efforts, that’s why we use the other metric zMAP to give us an estimate of the Zwifter’s capability in short duration efforts within the 3 to 6 min. range.
Question 3: Looking at the facebook pages FTP vs zFTP is causing confusion and there are riders below, equal and above their FTP and not sure which is correct, both as they are calculated differently. As this metric is being used for CE why not call zCE as that’s what it really relates to and it’s not a training number? I’m sure now it’s out there you don’t want to change it, but with clear messaging it wouldn’t be so bad.
Maybe we introduced confusion to some folks with the FTP vs. zFTP debate. Like I said multiple times, we introduced the term simply because of consistency with other softwares that use the same kind of notation. We will try to put out some documentation explaining the differences and “educate” the community. I think coming up with some random terms also won’t help.
Besides metrics like zFTP that we are calculating in the background were not created solely for CE.
To be honest, and to be scientifically correct, I wanted to introduce zFTP as a zone and not as a single number, because the experts out there should know that FTP is more of a zone and not a single number where everything changes. That would be even more shocking, and therefore was not done that way. So for me discussing if zFTP=250w and eFTP=253w which one is correct, etc. etc… is just a waste of time. In case the differences are larger, clearly one of them doesn’t have the best data.
But like I said, we hope to put out documentation to help settle down these debates.
