It’s kind of a unwinnable (is that actually a word? Anyway) arguement as the longer the power period used to rank riders, the less 30 second power comes into play.
Essentially the closer the power profiles, the more 30 seconds or sprint power is the most import part of the curve.
The wider the power profile across the race the less a part it plays.
Far to many riders as evidenced by this forum think they are some esports low category god as they gamed a broken CE system. Ask those riders to actually put some effort in or actually race hard and be dropped and the toys have gone out of the pram.
The only sensible option at the moment if 30 seconds is not to be used it to have wider bands of power with variable boundaries race by race or week by week. People will get to experience both being strong in a race and hanging on for dear life.
Keeping static bands shows nothing was learned from CE and we head straight back into the same issues.
The scoring system is also broken, but that a different discussion, we have still not got past seed and categorisation of users as it’s such a poor deployment.
how often do scores change after races? did a race last night score dropped from 445 to 422 immediately after the race then when checking an hour or so later it had gone up to 435
They change every time someone crosses the finish line. For that sort of change you were likely the last finisher when you first checked, then some time later someone else has finished.
There seems to be a big drop for being the last finisher - possibly as an offset to the podium bonus to stop average scores creeping up.
What about the swingers, riding zrs on the corners between pens?? If (my pen) over 520, they do one race very slow, and being back again in my pen. To CE times, the were promoted for 90days. Nowadays, if one or two 4+riders move out, the next are coming down?
After 4weeks of almost all community races, it becomes boring.
In addition, the dump trainer problem is still there, when people with 4+ having HR rates around 120, their wbal(ZS) is by close 20% in full gas climbs… following their strava profiles and found ebikers with 10km best times in IRL by around 30min.!!!
I fully respect my rivals capacity and a lost in a race, if their data are true.
Not saying they need to let the sandbaggers write the whole thing but when someone smart tells them their data analysis is irreparably broken then maybe they should consider that.
Not sure I’m going to do more Inox ZRS races, the one I did last week they DQ’d me for w/kg even though it was a ZRS race, and put my time in the B pen later. They seem to be applying ZRS and CE together for some reason in that event.
In my case it was not a sprint race, but I just don’t see why Inox would run a ZRS race and DQ (then move me to B) for wkg. This was the event which was listed with ZRS cats: ZwiftPower - Full Gas Experience - Team INOX
Can Zwift consider adding the points increase/decrease information to all event results that impact ZRS? Many events like Ladder races and FRR racing results are changing our ZRS scores but the event results don’t give us the ZRS information. Without a tracking mechanism and not having ZRS data in the event results it is getting a bit tough to know what your ZRS is doing. It also creates allot of confusion when ZRS changes but you didn’t join a ZRS listed race. If the information was in the results it would be a bit clearer that it impacted ZRS.
Oh interesting. I had brought this one up with Shooj who talked to the events team and they said told him it was not a bug, but up to the event organizer. Good to know this is a known issue.
For the particular case you mentioned the Team INOX race series, it is up to the event organizer. They might not be aware of the issue since the introduction of ZRS. We’ll have to either push a bigger warning or forcefully change certain series.
More mechanisms to protect against sandbagging
One of the main goals of introducing ZRS is to make virtual racing as fair and fun as possible. We realize there will always be ways to game the system, but we’re committed to continuing to add measures to prevent it. Next week we’re targeting to enable a mechanism that prevents scores from dropping if we detect a much lower than usual effort from a racer. This is a similar mechanism to what ZwiftRacing.app has in place. Indicators in the race results for when this mechanism kicks in will follow. We’ll also continue evaluating other measures that can be added to minimize cheating.*
By the flip side, what about keeping these folks from affecting racing scores of other riders? Raced the 520-690 pen this morning (my score at the time was 521), gave an honest effort, and got dropped about seven minutes in. Finished six and a half minutes behind the leaders and initially had my score drop back into the 490s. There was, however, an A rider with no HR monitor and a score a fair bit higher than mine who just lollygagged the whole race. He finished ten minutes even further behind me, which then bumped my score back up to 507, even though he clearly wasn’t trying.
Will there be any way to hopefully weed these people out to keep them from artificially affecting others’ scores?
My main issue is with the current banding system. I aim to finish in the top 10% of a C race, but the C band now ranges from 350 to 530. In today’s race, I finished four minutes behind the leader, who had a racing score of 500 compared to my 365. To make it more competitive, the bands should be narrower. In this C race, 60% of the participants were closer to B racers, which makes it feel more like a survival game than a fair competition. Racing should be enjoyable and competitive for everyone, not just about avoiding last place.
Yeah, I mean it wasn’t competitive for everyone in the CE cats either. Folks at the bottom of a band couldn’t compete with folks at the top there (particularly when the folks at the top were managing power/weight to stay in their band).
Hopefully they eventually use variable categories for their races, and open up more bands for the larger events, if they maintain consistent 4 or 5 bands it’s hard to really ensure the folks at the bottom are competitive with the folks at the top regardless of how they split it.
I used to be a regular at the 7:10 a.m. race, always aiming for a top 10 finish. Although I never won or placed, I’d often finish within 10 seconds of the winner, riding with a group of similar-level riders. Lately, though, I’m finding myself dropped within the first few minutes. Its just no fun.
