This is an excellent idea. The seeding should be defined on the fly for every race. Actually, the less everyone knows about the other participants in the race (before the end), the better.
Just like in real life (unless you are a pro).
And it might eliminate cheating to a large extent, as people would not know the “target function”.
Good to see nothing has changed. 
We wouldn’t want to rock the boat would we?
We should start a poll to see which problem will get fixed first.
@_Troy, we both know what the answer would be. Even I do, believe it or not, rabid as I may seem. The poll would lean heavily in one direction for at least two reasons.
First, the save thing affects everyone, whereas not everyone is invested in racing, especially not the subscribers in the early parts of the customer life cycle (and weights got shifted in that direction this spring). But this is the race forum, so the people showing up here should be invested enough at least .
Second, a lot of people don’t see it yet, whereas the save thing is very tangible. That the race rules are completely whacky isn’t immediately obvious to everyone. You could deduce it, but generally it takes time, some first-hand experience of racing and a bit of thinking to realize. And there has been a big increase in subscribers on top of that, a lot of new, inexperienced and initially very content people.
It wasn’t obvious to me either at first. You just keep riding because you like Zwift. Mindless fun. You’re completely in your body, so to speak, which is very rewarding in your complex everyday life. You’re still positively overwhelmed by Zwift and you don’t think too much. I have been there too.
Somewhat later the initial “whoooaahh, I gotta tell everyone I know!” turns into “what’s wrong with my racing tactics/fitness profile?” or “if it wasn’t for people joining the wrong cat then everything would be fine, damn you sandbaggers, Zwift should ban the sandbaggers ruining my customer experience!”
And you’re still not getting it.
But then I’m thinking, what’s stopping them from fixing both? I’m also thinking that getting results-based categories in place requires some work. Numbers work and PowerPoint work mostly. And you shouldn’t hurry a release (you should just hurry to commit to the project). But enforcing categories and stopping the over-limits DQ’ing, the other two necessary ingredients for a race cat system that isn’t a complete joke, is likely an easier fix for them tech wise than to fix the save thing. So if only they were looking for low-hanging fruit…
They probably are looking for low-hanging fruit though. People always are, that’s human nature. It’s perhaps just not the fruit we subscribers see. It’s the internal fruit. The “whose low-hanging fruit do I pick to get promoted so I can get a higher salary and buy that bike?” kind of fruit. I have yet to meet a company where customer service and customer experience management played quarterback.
I think Zwift should put you in charge of the changes that need to take place for the racing side of Zwift. Then it would become as good as I find the other side of Zwift.
Zwift has been a total game/life changer for me and I thank them for that. Incredible stuff Zwift, but there is room for improvement.
I would love to start at the bottom of a Zwift Cat system and work my way up. I wouldn’t expect to get very far for various reasons, but at least I would feel that it was a real reflection on my ability and on the amount of time that I would commit to the racing side of Zwift.
Keep up the good work Andreas.
Funny you’d say that, I have been thinking about that too. I think they need me. Monday morning standup meeting, me addressing the data scientists and the devs with my energetic management style:
Nah, they could do this. It’s just that they don’t. I know what it can be like sometimes. There are these things you know you should do. You just never get there. You get bogged down in maintenance, maintenance, maintenance and then one or two should-do-first(?) projects that seem to never end, just sucking up every bit of resources. But I think it’s more than that. It’s like… they resist? Like a 3 y.o. who has just discovered the power of “NO”.
They do themselves a disservice, not just us. They don’t look closely enough at the computer games industry because they don’t see themselves as belonging to it. And sure, they’re a unicorn, but there is just so much to learn from.
They would be so helped by establishing a credible racing platform. It’s just too good to pass up on. I’m truly happy they haven’t gone down some hardcore road, spoon feeding us intermittent reinforcement and other mechanisms to turn us all into Zwift junkies. They could, but they don’t and I’m grateful for that. But there’s just this golden opportunity that is just left sitting there.
It doesn’t matter that not every subscriber wants to race. It’s knowing that it’s there, that it’s a solid product, good enough to compete in even. That has customer value in itself, even if you don’t race. And now people have already stopped talking about Zwift as a virtual form of outdoor cycling, at least when it comes to competing. It’s a discipline in its own right, they say now. So use that! What are they waiting for?? There are so many stupid computer games out there with a pro scene that grew organically from within. Game A has that, game B doesn’t. Which one is the big seller? And then you get sponsor attention indirectly and suddenly you have become important to a neighbor industry. With games it’s usually hardware or peripherals. Guess what companies would come running to Zwift and Zwift-related events, even more so than before? There’s only so much money in sucking up to UCI (not a whole lot). Credibility, yeah, but only by proxy, through Zwift as a virtual form of outdoor cycling, i.e. Zwift pre-2020. Leave a mark. Establish a credible racing platform, let a pro scene grow from within (I don’t know if the Academy is a joke or an insult in this context), watch the subscriber figures rise by word of mouth, get the money on board, become more important to the neighbor industries and UCI will come suck up to you. And once they do, the remnants of the Tarmac Resistance Movement will surrender and sign up too, you know, “just for the winter months…”
But you need to start by reworking the race rules. It all starts there.