ZRacing killing race variety

Hope you are kiding !
I’m just doing races on Zwift. If I got to pay each time I Zwift I will have to move to another plateform. I hope this will never happen !

I’m also not much of a fan of the ZRacing series.

I really miss the weekend, well attended Crit City races.

Also, does anyone know what happened to the 3R Racing races? Those mass start races were great for pushing your limits.

1 Like

3R redesigned their events not long ago

I’m happy to see ZRacing will be on some hilly courses this month so they won’t be as much of a short cruise-and-sprint fest full of people who don’t want to work. Upgrades galore.

1 Like

Thanks… bummer that they revised the schedule so much =/

Yeah. I looked at Flat is Fast and decided to do an extra workout each week in January rather than racing. I’ll do a couple of races this month.

Not kidding at all. The fee to race idea is that the most popular ZRacing series charges a nominal fee. Zwift can earn some revenue from these that would ideally be funneled back into supporting the racing platform development.

On the independent promoter side, a race entry fee would be completely optional, but the idea is that given a profit motive and possibly more tools for organizers to use on the platform (funded from the race fee revenue), organizers would have more incentive to create events that attract more users, whether because the events are more fun, more prestigious, more competitive, more unique, whatever…

And again, ideally, the developments here would filter down to the free races too. Not at all advocating that all racing come with an entrance fee, just that it’s an option, and the ZRacing fees could sort of set the bar being that they are the most popular series on the platform.

1 Like

I agree. The zRacing events are pulling all the top racers from other events. And they’re not even fun.

I did a bunch last year and a few this year. The GC placing by aggregate time turns every race into some weird group TT. There’s no strategy other than “go as fast as you can and try to hang onto the front group”.

They’ve also become magnets for cheaters/bots.

3 Likes

Sorry but this is one of the worst ideas I’ve heard so far.

*edited a typo

1 Like

That’s why it’s necessary to have automated checks to catch out cheaters and bots.

It must be possible with algorithms to catch out the common cheating methods - it won’t stop everyone but it will make things harder.

Another long running race organiser stopping, sad times. Races in a few of these over the years.

You know how the market works. Starting with the option… Then a larger part of the race organizers adopt it… Then most of them… And few month later, all races became fee-paying.

Fortunately, as long as there are competing gaming platforms, Zwift won’t be developing this option.

As far as the attractiveness of the races is concerned, the problem is mainly the staggered starts. I understand the logic behind the categories (even if it’s debatable). But when you’re racing in the A category, there are often only 4 or 5 competitors at the start. Not much fun. Similarly, if you’re at the bottom of the category, you can quickly find yourself isolated. If all categories start together (as was often the case in the past), a weak A will be able to form a pack with good Bs. A weak B, with good Cs, and so on.

1 Like

Races with same-time starts and all categories visible are on the schedule roughly once per hour. They don’t seem particularly popular. Good for A riders who are in a category that was gutted by CE but not particularly desirable for people further down in the category system. I’d prefer to see organizers given the tools to easily manage the shape of the start pens. I occasionally enter events like that, but mostly I avoid them. It’s a completely different race experience.

I don’t think these types of events are as common as you think – at the least for the more mainstream types of races. Seems to be a popular format with the climbing race types of events. Of course TdZ/TdW ‘rides’ (they’re not races!! :wink: ) are however of this format, though without cat enforcement, and also of course they are very popular.

I dunno man. That sounds like punishing people for wanting to take part in the big races. I get that boosting the attendence of community races is important but it’s a terrible customer experience to put the popular stuff behind a paywall. It’ll drive people off Zwift, not into the community races.

As a avid “C” racer who for years was ranked high. I find the new catagory system unfortunate. I mean the numbers for the A races are not fun im sure. So why setup a system where alot of the A’s became b’s b’s became c’s etc. Prior system if you went over 3.2 w/kg for 20 min u were dq. Most of those were won by people putting out 2.9-3.0w/kg 20min.
Now races im doing 40 to 50 people are putting out 3.4 w/kg plus for 20 min. Im finishing alot of these races like 120th place ( instead of third lol ) Im ok with that if system made sense but from what im reading here it sort of does not.

i remember you winning everything wholesale. i’ve never even been in C and you seem like an upright honest guy, so nothing to it, i just have a good memory. CE does make sense, the problem is it makes a lot less sense to most people than the old system did and the exact details are intentionally left unwritten. there’s some faqs and stuff about the basic principle that a couple zhq staff members put together in a sticky thread in this forum yesterday, if you wanna get your head around the basic idea.

the old 3x20 system, honestly, was much more BS in terms of what people got away with. me included, i can tell you that much.

i remember actually trying to become an A in the past, and it took 5 solid months, because being under the watt floor and even lighter than i am now i had to 1: do something stupid like 5wkg for 20, twice, in zp events. that’s hard as hell, totally unnecessary in just about any zwift race out there, A or B and 2: i was having such a problem hitting that number that efforts would expire before i could repeat them a second time. one time i actually did hit it, and the event didn’t count because zp glitched and didn’t count it

seeing other people with like, 5.7, 5.8 wkg for 5 etc in B and a super low 20 minute was a pretty common sight too. no doubt C had those types of guys around. What was nice, though, was that everyone knew the score.

I don’t know; I’ve had a very different experience.

These are my last 7 races, and I think the 6 Flat is Fast races are a good example, as they tended to have pretty good sized fields (and are ZRacing, so it fits the topic). The ZP Finishers for each was 30-50, and one was 100, which means the actual field was larger, since we know some people bail on the race near the end if they aren’t pleased with their position, and not everyone is on ZP. I just looked at each one, and with only 3 exceptions, all of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finishers were 3.2 w/kg or lower (most were a lot lower), and were lower than my w/kg. Apparently, I need to do less work, and race more efficiently if I want to move up the leaderboard, but that’s a different discussion.

I don’t think categorization is perfect, and look forward to some sort of results based categorization (do well, get promoted; clearly out of your league, get relegated). Until then, while not perfect, CE is better than the old system where obvious A and B riders could race with the C and D riders, and blow it all up.

EDIT - But I also just looked at some of your recent races, and you’re spot on; my bad. A lot of 3.4 & 3.5 riders in those fields with you. And yeah, that would be really frustrating. So yeah, CE’s totally not perfect.

Remmeber you too. This first time i looked at forum in couple years . Im fine with this system if it makes more sense for all. Be honest my tacx bike is old its likely losing watts. I ordered some power pedals. C if that helps a bit :slight_smile: seems most peeps who are serious use power pedals yes ?
I just always found it interesting that people i ride with outside on the flat terrain and are lighter then me can not hold my wheel when i pull but in zwift i cant hold their wheel on a flat terrain.

i can’t speak for other light people, and everything i hear from other light guys who aren’t fortunate enough to have a kick tells me that they have it rough so i don’t wanna say “light guys have it easy”, but i feel like i do. when you think about it, there’s no wind. like there’s “air”, but you don’t get a side wind, or a gust of wind, or a head wind or any of that. riding irl, i have to pay careful attention to the wind

i don’t think the source of power is too important, but i know neos aren’t very kind to sprinters. i’ve been through just about every trainer except for a neo though so i’m not sure if it’ll make all the difference. but it’s worth learning the principle behind the CE system, people sometimes end up getting shunted up a category purely because they’re missing some important data that zwift uses to calculate their category etc