I realize this has been brought up before, dating back to the beginning of the product, but the old threads are archived and it’s still a problem. I don’t care how far down I am on the KOM leaderboard, but I do care that the top of it is 100% fake. In this example, the #2 rider is a 57kg IRL bike racer with zFTP of 307W. Category A+ in Zwift. Perhaps not doing 100% effort (Big Spin ride) but not slacking to the tune of almost 3 minutes. This outcome is absurd and renders the leaderboard useless. So useless that it would be better to remove it entirely than leave it like this.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that first place rider is a bot. While ultimately Zwift need to get top of flagging and removing false results, your very good suggestion of simply removing zPower riders from leaderboards would make things better.
I was flogged on that hill yesterday by a 48kg rider doing 4.8w/kg with 130bpm HR. I at least had a real heart rate.
Totally fake, as are a lot of the Alpe du Zwift times I used to see daily. Little old Mrs Dot is not going to do 33 minutes up Alpe D’huez IRL nor is her husband Mr Dot going to do same time three laps in a row as he does in Zwift.
I got fed up with it and reduced the amount of riding I do on Zwift to the minimum.
It was more enjoyable to commute on a real bike to and from work with a long ride in the evening.
Yes, this irritates me because no matter how much we complain about it, nothing changes and even Zwift users on the forum here say “oh, it doesn’t matter if it isn’t racing, and they are having fun so….”
Ridding the leaderboards of Zpower riders (or give them separate leaderboards) would help, perhaps also taking out those with totally false power / cadence / heart rate readings too.
You can’t tell me 400 watts at 170 cadence and 125bpm for 2 hours is real…
It seems like things like this that date back to the beginning are also the things Zwift seemingly never touch despite almost a decade of suggestions, comments and/or complaints. I can’t help but wonder if they’re so baked into the game that touching them would break countless other things. But then again I’m not a programmer so have no real idea.
