This post is to let you know that starting today, 12 Sep 2023 at 12pm PST we will disable the current iteration of Zwift Racing Score.
This means that you will no longer see the Zwift Racing Score section on your profiles across Zwift web, in the game client, on Zwift Companion, or ZwiftPower. You may need to restart your game, Companion app, or web browser to see this change take effect. No updates are required at this time, however.
This will not impact your categorization, limit, or otherwise disrupt your participation in any competitive events on Zwift, including Zwift Racing League.
We have turned Racing Score off for the time being while we work on improvements to the overall scoring mechanism, which is currently in development and targeting a release in the coming months, though we don’t have concrete details for you yet. Keep your eyes peeled in the coming weeks for some updates.
If you have additional feedback on your experience with Racing Score from the last couple of months, please fill out this survey.
If there is anything else constructive you’d like to contribute to the Racing Score discussion, please do so here.
We will be locking this post in 7 days’ time in order to keep feedback relevant and useful.
Someone has already built a model, with a peer led review meaning it gets better and better. Instead of engineers who dont know the game pottering off to come up with another inferior product, USE IT!!
Thank you for the update. I think the fundamental idea is good although making it work will be a complex task. But if you guys can pull it off well, I think you’ll make a lot of users very happy
If its back to the drawing board and a redesign or change of tact - Can you spend a little time fixing the current system that is currently live and being used. It could be weeks\months\years before you get the new solution whilst CE is by an large considered broke by many who use it.
I dont know if Zwiftracing app is the best long term solution, but its certainly better than anything Zwift HQ has put forward in multiple attempts or designs over many years - Bite the bullet, go cap in hand and see what you can do.
The new What’s On Zwift This Season press release links to the old ZRS FAQ (here Racing Score FAQ ), is this an issue of lack of communication between teams or is it really being rolled back out in two months?
I basically agree with Johan.
Trying to expand the scope: I think a racing score that levels you based on your races results is something that could work. However you have the risk to be “misranked” based on the type of races/routes you’re racing and the type of athlete you are (sprinter, rouleur, climber). I mean: if I’m a sprinter and I perform good on the flats but not so good on the rollings and very bad on hills/mountains, and I race very often on the flats, I’ll have a biased score that will put me in too hard races that are not good for me in the race types I’m not good at, and viceversa, not giving me the chance to test myself and being really motivated in getting better on that spots.
However, if you consider only the physical stats (FTP, VO2MAX and so on) you could have biased cats because, as an example, if you have very good anaerobic skills, they could “fake” your FTP stats (showing a better FTP than the real one) and it’ll put you in a wrong category: in that case, to keep up the pace with the front pack you’ll not do so with your “aerobic” reserve but you’ll access and empty your “anaerobic” reserve making you go to the final sprint with empty reservoir and so not being able to perform.
Then we all know that, as an example, sprinter athletes at top level have anyway good “aerobic” engines I would say “correctly scaled” to their category, so probably the key is to correctly manage the “scaling” of capabilites. Trying to make a real example, you could have a good sprinter with a “real” cat D FTP (so lower than 2.5 wpk) and so capable to keep the pace with cat D packs, but a high power output (more than 10 wpk) in sprints. Using the current metrics, Zwift will calculate the cat of this racer as “C” because maybe, trying to keep the pace with faster groups, the racer could access its own anaerobic reservoir, sort of “faking” the FTP calculation. That way, the racer will not be able to keep the pace of the C packs and so will never really compete for its own capabilities (to sprint at the end of the race). But since FTP will hardly decrease if you keep training, it’ll probably just end up with the racer not winning anymore a single race and never really compete because in the wrong category.
Yeah, I know. In ZwiftRacing.app (I think you’re talking about that), I was just promoted to Gold when Zwift moved me from cat D to cat C (because of that FTP stuff): the result is that I suddenly dropped to Silver (losing more than 100 pts) because of that cat jump (where I’m actually not able to compete as a sprinter). Nonsense.
I do love this notion, self proclaimed Sprinters should not have to race hard as they are Sprinters - therefore they should not get promoted as they wont be able to Sprint for the win anymore.
Whereas, other types of riders are told, improve your X/Y/Z metrics so you can compete when going up a category.
Race below your category anyone can be a Sprinter - I have shown this, I was a TT profile in B, Sprinter in C - Why, because I wasnt taxed throughout the race in C so I had plenty of energy to compete in the Sprint - Same athlete racing in B, I have had to work to stay with the pack and dont have the energy to compete in the Sprint.
Philosophically, what is the correct category for me?
if you keep winning, the people and level of racers you compete against should become harder. not, ive found my level as I can win every race - That’s a cowards way of racing.
true what i mean is for all zwift races very few are actually doing ZR.app based racing for categories so when you get a CE upgrade you effectively get pushed into a group with lots of people with high zr.app rank so are always likely to get pushed back down a little.
