I don’t think I need to go to great lengths to make the case that ZRS is a load of rubbish. Even the w/kg model was fairer. I was just about to do a race and signed up for B based on my ZRS, then had a look at the field on ZwiftPower and lost all motivation.
And it’s the same across all categories. vELO isn’t perfect either, but vELO2 takes another step in the right direction and, at the end of the day, it results in more balanced fields and racing remains fun. ZRS-based races, on the other hand, have become completely irrelevant to me.
What’s stopping you at Zwift from using the vELO rating? It would also make things easier for many race organisers or series, and they wouldn’t have to carry out parallel categorisation based on that. ECRO and FRR use it and are popular because they’re fair.
Zwift had the opportunity to use vELO, and instead decided to make their own thing. Not sure why, but they haven’t done a lot of iteration on ZRS, and any solution they decide to use needs some amount of iteration as people adapt and try to work around the new system.
So I think it’s a combination of “not invented here” and a lack of desire to put the iteration effort in to adapt to feedback on ZRS with their other competing priorities.
While Zwift continues to treat Zwift as a “Game” everyone should do the same. No amount of vELO or anything else will fix the problems unless Zwift introduces some expensive hardware to fix the major underlying problem that everyone who races already knows exists.
Personally I don’t bother going off and try stalking upcoming “Race” participants, I just get on and ride.
From my point of view in reading very old posts on this forum, Zwift has only made things worse over the years for people who try and take racing seriously. The rider dynamics for heavy riders is just way off on the flat for starters.
They of course won’t require all new hardware required for everyone just for general racing, but that does not mean they can’t do better. They absolutely can do better, and there are a lot of suggestions on how they can.
Pretty simple if you are that serious about racing you buy the hardware to verify the final result.
Races would be set-up for only those who have the hardware.
Only then will we see just how many people take the racing seriously enough to go out and spend the money, I suspect not that many, however from a psychological perspective getting “Verified” will greatly improve your chances of a podium finish with both fairer racing and way less riders in the starting pen.
Zwift will not do it, bad look from a consumer perspective and people moaning about not being able to join verified racing. You cannot win really, always someone is going to be annoyed.
Requiring everyone to buy new hardware just to make racing more fair is not ‘simple’, nor is it something that would make sense for Zwift to do. There are a lot of changes in software they can do that would make things a lot better and not require new hardware investments from the entire player base.
I am not following why hardware has anything to do with the method used to determine categories.
If someone’s hardware is over reporting power output (or if they are under reporting their weight, or some other manipulation) it doesn’t really matter - they just need to be assigned to the category that matches their performance.
Verifying accurate performance is an entirely different question.
The request in this post is very simple: Use vELO to assign categories.
Its all about hardware and until you are riding on a bike that’s mounted on an intelligent weight platform, no amount of software tweaks are going to work.
Its really simple your bike and rider needs to be mounted on what is effectively a large set of rectangular scales about 1000mmx2000mm as you ride.
No end of benefits actually right down to minor stuff like your avatar coming out of the seat for hills at the right time when you are actually out of the seat and not still seated to totally revolutionising the racing on Zwift.
In the meantime riders that want actual fair racing will have to continue to bang their heads on the wall.
While I agree that weight doping etc. are likely widespread that has nothing to do with how categories are defined. Please keep the discussion relevant to the stated topic.
Completely agree. Accurate power, weight, height, and whatever else is a separate topic. The overlap is how easily they can be changed to manipulate the categorisation. I don’t know or care how tall, heavy or powerful someone really is, I just want the system to be able to put their avatar into an appropriate category.
ZRS does a terrible job of this, vELO does it much better.
Even if zwift want to keep the core of ZRS, they could at least look at the differences between the systems to understand why vELO works better and drive their continuous improvement.
This is purely about categorisation. You’ll always have cheaters and fakers in a computer game, but they should still be better classified, and the current system with ZRS isn’t up to scratch. And races using vELO show that there is a better way.
At the end of the day its the only way to 100% fix the problem, BUT how many people are going to front up the cash at the end of the day ? What percentage of the total Zwift subscribers would buy it ? 0.1%, 0.01% its’s going to be tiny most people don’t even bother to race, however how many people would start to race if the playing field was level ? Let’s be honest there is a far bigger market for a Zwift Ride in terms of hardware. I don’t want to brag here but my Zwift set-up is worth NZD$15K, most people are trying to use Zwift on a PC or some device that is not even up to the job and thats before you even look at the bike. People in general are simply not going to throw money on a weight platform even if its the ultimate solution.
I don’t see how taking a great idea and still making it a bit of optional hardware would be a problem. Personally I think the steering controller in Zwift is a total waste of time and no way I would waste money on that, but hey if you want to buy one and swerve all over the screen and ride through the sides of buildings, be my guest, it would add nothing to my Zwift experience.
My main point is that you think it is a good idea. A lot of other paying customers might think differently and have their own ideas that they think are great. Why should they listen and implement your idea over anyone elses ?
Sure Zwift can be improved, but changing something just because some send an email isnt the best option imho. And you have to remember it is a business for them while we look completly different to their product. It would not surprise if most of our suggestions get dismissed by the CFO because it is not worth it for Zwift.
Sorry but pretty much everyone would think its a great idea. I doubt from a purely business point of view its worth implementing and I’m looking at the really big picture here. For starters it would be a bad look for Zwift users to suddenly have the only races they can enter without the right hardware to be basically automatically reclassified as “fake”. Big enough problems as it is riding with a decent power source and a heartrate monitor. I get it, some people would love to take the racing seriously but I’m now heading to age 60 next year and Zwift will not even implement age category racing so you simply cannot take it that seriously, its great if you get a win its a buzz but the focus just needs to move to your personal performance.
