What's going on with ZwiftPower?

So when do you folks tell the masses that dont read Eric or these forums but do use ZP? EDIT: and thanks for the update

The notion of a long term vision for zwift development could be measured in decades. Let’s see where we are in a year.

1 Like

Hi Shuji,
I’m organizing events for DIRT and the German Cycling Federation (Academy) over on Zwiftpower and am quite active in the forum.

I guess a lot of communication is also going through ZPs facebook page, so you will need a solution for that as well. While there are some topics about general questions (like the ranking and ZPoint systems, segment times, how to organize events, scoring for some events and not uploading activities) most topics are either racers asking about why they have been dqd, asking for a clean slate after updating their equipment or racers and organizers reporting suspicious performances or sandbagging by intentionally staying inside of category limits.

So far those cases have been handled with a mix of experience and gut feeling I suppose. By taking over the forum all those cases would be on Zwifts (your) desk. So going forward you will need to decide how you will handle these now that Zwift and Zwiftpower are one. Stoping verification / permanent bans would be a big step in the wrong direction. At least longterm you can’t dq/ ban people on Zwiftpower while you let them continue to race on Zwift imo.

To handle all those cases you will need to have a solid ruleset in place, including the possibilty to appeal decisions. Whenever you will implement the anti-sandbagging code on Zwift it will inevitably send all bad setups up to A. I guess that will lead to even more reports about suspicious performances. You might need to think about different levels of general verifications / requirements of all racers going forward. Like only power meters / smart trainers in B and above, weigh in-videos if under a certain weight or above a certain w/kg threshold, some dual-recordings in A, full ZADA verification above certain w/kg thresholds for 1/5/20min. Crucial to strike the right balance between fun and rules, privacy and necessary verification.

I know that this won’t be implemented tomorrow but for the time being you will need to have some kind of basic idea of a ruleset in place and someone (read Zada) to be at hand to decide on reported suspicious racers / dqs and appeals / verification by those in question. Otherwise racing as a whole would take a big step back.

At the same time organizers who are set up on ZP have the power to dq people inside the rules they implement for “their” events themselves. If they could assess ZADAs verification database and capabilities that would be awesome. It would also be great to have a possibility for organizers to inform the racers in question or asking them to verify their performances in private. Often they have only private accounts on Zwift and no Strava linked.

Cheers Seb

6 Likes

Not a single word in the Zwift statement addressing Zpower setups and cheating (other than sandbagging). So I take that as a clear message that they will continue down their path of “as long as they pay their subscription, we dont care”. The ZP ranger pest will continue…

A huge thanks to glen, dave and james that made the zwift racing experience barable even though zwift makes everything they can to put sticks in our wheels and unmarked road furniture everywhere in our paths.

If Zwift doesnt clarify their intentions on making the racing experience “better”, then the second veloton launches, I’m off.

6 Likes

Not a single word in the Zwift statement addressing Zpower setups and cheating (other than sandbagging)

If Zwift moves to a results-based categorization (as mentioned in the announcement), that would go a long way to taking care of power-related cheating issues, wouldn’t it? Is a rider going to lose on purpose repeatedly below category… in order to remain below category… in order to win below category :thinking:

  1. No. It would just push up all faulty setups to the highest categories. The ones with the live feeds, the eSport teams and the outdoor pro-Racers were it would get all the publicity.
  2. It also says “long-term vision”. They always said that the short term solution would be their automatic anti-sandbagging system. They said “short-term” in january. So what do you think “long-term” means?
1 Like

@Seb_DIRT_GCA

  1. You can’t require all kinds of gadgetry for lower Cat folks, many of whom are really on Zwift to get some fitness and have fun, but who want to dabble in racing (as part of the fun). If their setup nets results, they move up (regardless of w/kg). If they keep moving up, they’ll have to get serious before entering Cat A. So then results-based categorization across the board + Cat A prerequisites (smart trainer + HR monitor + height/weight verification of some sort ?). Or Cat B and A prerequisites?

  2. “Two weeks”

2 Likes

Hi Salty,

nice example for the decisions and upcoming problems Zwift will have to deal with. Or as someone said in another forum - “Not heaven” hath no fury like an eRacer with dodgy data.

1 Like

Yep, exactly. No prob with categorization based on results as long as there’s more and more verification the closer you get to the top (just need a solution were to place new joiners. If everyone starts with the Ds of today it won’t help them). Like I said crucial to get the mix right. Power Meters instead of smart trainers work for some time as well. Don’t need a weight in video of someone weighing 80kg as long as he’s not putting out 400w. Step by step.

That is fairly easy to deal with - league system with lower division common, but as you rise through the ranks what division you end up in will depend on your kit. Cat 4 and Cat 3 for everyone (gender split possibly). Cat 2A and Cat 1A for those with HRM, power meters and a credible weight/height history and power output, cat 2B and 1B for those with out. Flyers, miscalibrated Z power and all the others tend to rise to the super human Cat 1B, while those who actually race fairly get to race with others who race fairly. No bans, no DQs. Maybe split the lower ranges in to continental or country leagues etc.

Possilble a precondition of setting an FTP into the lower tiers t the right level (if Cat 4 is being won with 3.5W/kg or there abouts then a newbie with 4W/kg gets put into Cat 3a and so on).

Really depend on what they are aiming for - I’d aim for racing that everyone can take part in, people race against their peers as much as is reasonable, and people of bad faith aren’t banned but just get to race with others of like mind.

5 Likes

There has got to be room for races that exclude zpower riders despite not wanting to prohibit any paying member of Zwift for the most part. They can schedule any number of events in a given day. Also, hopefully long term means something like next year for a points based system.

Does that come before or after the full release of club functionality? And maybe they’ll bring the fence back too? Maybe when Eric said March for the UI he really meant March 2021 :thinking:

5 Likes

Easy solution. Just use the club functionality to create a race event just for invited users. If you don’t invite people on bad equipment they can’t ruin the race. See it’s all fixed and good.

4 Likes

Apart from the people who maintained and developed it… no longer maintaining and developing it. But fair enough, plans are to follow. It’ll be good to hear what they are.

In the meantime, how does one report a bug, or request a feature, or find out how something works? Who’s the point of contact now? Is Dave being retained and employed to keep running the forum and administering the results/teams/leagues? He does a ton of what is now customer support work on behalf of Zwift.

Still a number of unanswered questions.

8 Likes

That’s could work, but it might be easier for Zwift to restrict those proper races to people with acceptable equipment. They already know what we are pairing to use Zwift.

First of all, massive thanks to @Glen_Knight, @James_Hodges_KRT and of course @S_ticky_KRT
Without you, Zwift racing would be simply non existent and I can’t stress enough how much is your time and effort valued in this community. It is frankly sad to find out that whatever happened recently seems to be far from perfect transition. I for one don’t understand at all, why you wouldn’t be the most important sought after assets for the new “integrated solution”. Unless of course it was your choice, rather than Zwift’s. Or the reasons were as trivial as your locality.

Now to be completely honest, I’m mildly worried. In many ways Zwift Power and Zwift itself are polar opposites in the way how they deal with everything - from attention to detail, via access to data, to user support and development. It would be frankly heartbreaking to see such a great tool being assimilated into Zwift and gradually dumbed down to the same cartoonish level as the rest of the product.

They really can’t be more different. The vastly simplified childish outdated Zwift UI, versus the detailed stats and data rich heaven that’s ZP. The amount of data and available analysis and comparisons in ZP vs Zwift’s results table with position and time. The community oriented and easily accessible ZP team vs largely distant Zwift HQ (to put it mildly).

I really don’t know what’s the grand plan here. I can’t see Zwift suddenly transforming part of its functionality into such a complex tool as ZP is. And keeping it frozen in time while making it more seamlessly integrated with Zwift is also hardly a rosy future. So what are we going to get?

  1. Will ZP stay as it is, frozen in time, not developed anymore, just integrated with Zwift with one login, while staying as still largely two separate entities?
  2. Will Zwift change it spots (finally) and become more serious data rich and engaging complex (for those who want it to be) racing platform, rather than just a game?
  3. Is Zwift working on some complete uber racing overhaul and ZP’s ideas will just be taken as an inspiration and re-developed into the new Zwift?
  4. Will Zwift integrate ZP’s powerful tools and data analytics, but use it just internally and we will still just get this useless leaderboard in Zwift Companion app?
  5. And why were the guys responsible for such a great tool sidetracked?

Please Zwift, don’t let this disappear into oblivion. You have a chance to transform into something quite unique. Integrate and expand on what ZP is for all of us. And you absolutely should involve the original team in your discussions, planning, development and future.

just my 2c

15 Likes

I have to say, this is something I’m not keen on happening. Not just in terms of the data that might be available, but explicitly the way it’s presented. In many respects, “RaceView” that was soft launched with the virtual Tour de France was great. It emulated aspects of the ZwiftPower LIVE view, for example.

The data might be great. The numbers perfect. The functionality second to none. But the visual design language of Zwift’s recent website developments doesn’t say “serious” to me. Same with the activities feed. I dare say there’s a reason for this (most likely that it’s designed for a mobile phone or tablet), but I use a desktop PC with a large screen and I prefer interfaces that are designed for that and make the most of the screen space available.

5 Likes

Hi @shooj, who do we contact for support for issues related to ZwiftPower? For example, the listed segments on ZP are missing all France sprints, some KOMs, and none of the Paris segments. This raises a concern, as will be doing a points race on the Paris map soon, and wondering if the segments will be available for doing the points.

Looking at two events on ZwiftPower, the Primes tab shows no segment data, e.g., ZwiftPower - Login & ZwiftPower - Login

3 Likes

The course profiles are missing too.

@shooj Yea would like to know that too, we have league coming up and who to contact getting logo and stream link up running on the event?
Klaus

1 Like