that’s on zwift who have marketed it as a game rather than a training tool, many people are more interested in gaming the game than actually improving their fitness
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BlockquoteHow far do you take that though? So it doesn’t matter how strong/heavy any of us are, and we can just run a bot and “have fun” with that?
Actually, yes, for me too that’s the case. I don’t care if the people I race against are weight doping, faulty trainer etc, couldn’t care less, so long as the power they are using puts them in the right pen and I’m competing on an equal basis. It’s about my fun, and the more riders in a race the better, and the more who finish roughly together to make it enjoyable, again the better.
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Not wanting to be pedantic, but if someone is “weight doping” to any material extent then they’ll likely end up in the wrong pen for their actual ability. And you wouldn’t be competing against them on an equal basis, as they’d have an un-natural and unfair advantage over you if they “doped” to go faster.
But obviously, what one wants out of a race is very personal. For me, if I could break away at the half way point and solo to victory unchallenged then I’d be ecstatic! (I’ve done this once in a Ladder race, and it felt very good indeed.) That the rest of the field finished a minute behind did not detract from my enjoyment at all.
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As long as the results don’t feed into any aspect of proper racing, I don’t see any harm in a type of event that aims to equalise folk as much as possible so they can enjoy a race-like situation, and get to play around with tactics.
Ten-pin bowling doesn’t seem to suffer from allowing families and groups of friends to play with the siderails up to save the duffers from repeatedly lobbing their ball straight into the gutter, even though “proper” ten-pin bowling wouldn’t allow such a thing.
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What I mean is, if their doping puts them at 2.8 w/kg and in the C pen (old CE world) then I’m competing with someone at C level. Whether they’re really A, B or D doesn’t effect me in the slightest. They’re riding at my ability and hence I’m personally getting a fun experience.
It’s ultimately a game. None of us really know who we’re riding against so I take it with a certain pinch of salt. So long as I get value for money, have fun, not be put in a pen where I’m dropped in 90 seconds, and have a few others around me for most of the race, then I’m a happy little bunny.
As for AdZ times, KoMs etc - I assume that they’re all fake. Only outdoor KoMs have any value, and even then some people cheat with eBikes to be a local hero lol. For PBs and KoMs etc, the only ones I’m interested in are my own and how I’m doing against myself.
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Haven’t looked, but I presume a lot of climbing segments on Zwift and Strava are dominated by ~28mph averages from the old small group rubberband (or keep together) bug.
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Cool. I understand your viewpoint re the race experience. It’s not the same as mine, but we’re all different!
I agree re KoMs etc. on Strava. Some are clearly works of fiction and/or considerable skullduggery. All I can try and do is improve my own performance, or realistically at my age, minimise the rate of decline.
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If their weight is consistent then maybe OK, but every time they lower their weight they get another free pass because their score won’t change immediately
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You can say the same for any virtual racing, it could be said the only thing that matters is putting the number on and fitting the timing chip and racing IRL.
Virtual segment times do matter to the person putting the effort in, he/she might have worked months to get that particular time and to have the fitness to achieve it, a bigger effort and result to someone bickering about the field in their D grade Tiny Race.
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That’s what I’m saying - it’s important to the person doing the effort, their own personal achievement, but it doesn’t mean anything to anyone else if it can’t be verified. I challenge myself for my own achievements, but they don’t mean anything to anyone else - so if I PB up AdZ that’s great for me, but who else cares? And If I cheat by lowering my weight, then I’m only cheating myself.
Zwift is a game with a training and fitness aspect. Given the numbers riding most times I go on, often as high as 10,000 riders, and yet so few racing, it seems very few Zwifters care about ZRS and racing. ZHQ push Zwift as a game and that’s how the majority treat it. For us racers it’s frustrating, but alas we are a minority still.
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In my view it’s because I see a lot of cheating in Zwift and then see the regular racing crowd on the forums praising it “provided it’s not in races” so why would you race? Can you really trust the results?
Where is the monitoring to catch out impossible / unrealistic power figures. It can’t be that difficult…
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For me “provided it’s not in races” includes segment leaderboards. People pushing world tour numbers should not be appearing on any sort of results list or leaderboard unless they are verified.
In racing it’s not feasible to verify every rider, but as long as they’re realistic enough that they’re not breaking the physics model and consistent enough that their performance gets them into the right pen it’s probably as good as we can get.
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Guess that is the problem of every game out there. I am pretty sure they can look up and ban most if not all cheaters. But banning a lot of players/riders wont do good in the financial department.
After all everyone on Zwift is a paying customer and they dont want to lose any.
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If they kept people out of races and leaderboards unless they were paying customers that’d go a long way to solving the problem.
I dare say a lot of the bots are being run on free trial accounts.
Exactly!
Mr and Mrs Dot in their 5th lap of ADZ in a row have no business being at the top of the leader board with their 30 minute times.
Same as Mrs L doing flat 1200w at 61km/h.
I’ve caught out more subtle cheaters as well. Flagging them seems to go nowhere.
If it wasn’t against protocol I’d just put screenshots and video on the forum here.
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Exactly so.
I’m not sure what this even means. How can you cheat in Zwift if you’re not doing a race that has rules? Do you mean segment times on free rides?
They don’t count for anything in my view. If someone wants to ride an ebike in free-riding, why would I care? I think it’s sad and pointless, but it does me no harm.
If someone does it in a race, that’s outright cheating - unless the race rules allow it.
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Yeah, weight doping, people with dubious high power levels, folks using bots, that’s all cheating.
if you tell me it isn’t I won’t believe you. This is typical response, provided it’s not in a race, let them do anything. 
If I went and made my weight 30kg instead of 59kg, would you say that’s not cheating, so long as it’s not in a race? Yes or no.
That is cheating. @Chris_D9
Cheating.