I get the temptation to compare power or wpk and feel that’s how we should group riders but that is a poor metric.
IRL racers are not in categories or tours based on how much power they have, they are grouped by their ability to finish with their team or the other teams or their ability to use their skills to help the rest of the team to finish with other teams.
People will grouped by their ability to finish the race in a given time regardless of power.
Strong rider with poor race craft may finish with a smarter rider with less power.
We may need to change our expectations.
The racing will be harder and folks may not be able to race 4-5 times per week for extended periods.
The miscalculated 12 yo, will move up because he is outside of the he is outside of the limits of accuracy for the game. He is an unsupported rider because of wt, just like z power, but he moves up until he loses.
AFAIK exactly one person thinks that. 100% safe to ignore. I feel no need to respond to dead end ideas anyway. An utterly pointless suggestion that will be ignored.
That was me, and was meant a bit tongue in cheek. That said, if you want the perpetual arguments to go away, this would solve the problem. I don’t advocate this though, just saying that this would remove about 5 years’ worth of posts suggesting different solutions to solve the problems inherent in weight, height, short-term vs long-term power, hilly vs flat courses, etc… The fact remains today that with only 5 pens hoping to solve the vast spread of differing aerobic and anaerobic ability and physical characteristics, it’s a losing battle. Neutralizing weight and height doesn’t solve this issue, it would only eliminate arguments about why some other system isn’t fair to one sub-group vs another.
Most of those arguments can be as easily ignored as making it purely a power game with nothing else about a rider being considered. You can substitute one argument for another but you can’t get rid of those arguments that everyone has an unfair advantage except for me.
As another thought exercise… what if a perfect system was developed – super advanced AI and predictive capability. And, it could tell you with 98% accuracy what place you’ll come in and the time you’ll take to cross the finish line. Would that be fun racing? I read a thread the other day about how ZR is ‘eerily’ (I think this was the word) predictive. If you knew it was fairly certain you were going to come in 14th place in a field of 16, 1’20" behind a pack in front of you, and the riders behind you were 30" or so back, would you still race?
Under a pure results system, there are many more pens than 5.
In a recent race I held on to lead group, I think we had about 20 then in last 3 miles or so we formed a group 2 but managed to sweep up 2 riders that dropped off the lead group.
There was a sprint finish and I was 3rd of 7.
Of course 13 riders had finished.
My pen became those 7 riders.
If I was willing to hurt more than the others, maybe I could have stayed with the lead and grouped up with the 2 that we swept up and held off the G2.
It’s fun racing.
The cats are not worthless but they don’t define my race.
No, if the entire system was predicated solely on power, and not meant to replicate real life predictive ability, there’d be no doping. It would be very simple system based on pure wattage. Not exactly the same, but in the same vein as a handicapped horse race?
Why not just put everyone in A+ (or elite) category and let everyone try their best to win.
That stops the category arguments as well. Sure some folk may end up cannon-fodder for the fast people and miles back, but let’s not let that get in the way of a little tongue-in-cheek devils advocate fun.
@Ryy i have to agree with this…I think the best would be to start everyone from Seed from Friday when you changed to v3 and before that we need to:
look at changing how new PB movements are done
Example 1: don’t move riders with new PB above 10% to floor move them to Seed
Example 2: riders with less than 10% PB should get this new % PB improvement included in the score move and not be move to floor if the % of points is higher.
changing floor to a fixed number (75pts) because % doesn’t work for Low ZRS and it gives High ZRS a good Sandbagging option.
If you allowed lighter riders a higher W/kg in each pen that would be fairer but the light rider with the same 2.9 W/kg finishing 5 minutes behind will always be in the same position, you can’t change that unless you change in game software.
Could you take a period off racing and do a training regime to try and get back to your July power readings? Obviously “Father Time” waits for no-one and those readings may turn out to be the high point before the inevitable decline, but you could surely get back close to those with a couple of months of concerted effort. Probably an easier way of realigning your ZRS and race day capabilities than hoping Zwift will rejig the ZRS methodology in a way that happens to better suit your current circumstances!
ce was significantly fairer than any of the ZRS iterations that have been attempted so far. There are very few totally flat courses so at 2.9 w/kg you should have been fine in the majority of C races - if you can’t sprint then you’ll never win, but you should always have been at the pointy end.
What we’ve had since V1 of ZRS has been a shambles, with Bs pushing B numbers in races against Ds and Cs.
What if we had an Arcade mode where everyone is “neutralized” in to the same category (or two) by adjustment of weight/height etc. Then the level of “neutralization” done is your category. Less “neutralized” you are, the greater rider you are. That would solve empty pens also.
One of the problems of CE were those flat races we had every time. If we look at the ZRaces since I started them. We had flat to most rolling from October 2023 till August 2024.
Never had it so easy as in those months in CE.
