It’s been a month give or take since Zwift HQ took over responsibility for the operation of ZwifPower.com, and we wanted to check in with our racing community. This thread outlines how things have changed in that time.
For inquiries about the ZwiftPower site, you should now email us at zwiftpower@zwift.com for reasons like:
Questions about your own race results.
Reporting someone else’s questionable performance. Do not accuse someone of cheating here on forums.zwift.com
Problems getting your ZwiftPower account to sync up. This Support Hub article covers the how-to, but if you’re having issues, our specialists can help.
Sanctions against those who violated rules remain in place for reasons already communicated to the racer.
Changes we’ve made already:
ZwiftPower’s Facebook group and private messaging function have been disabled. Please reach us via email instead.
Additional personnel have been added at Zwift HQ to serve the racing community. This specialized team is best able to help you, and can be emailed directly at zwiftpower@zwift.com
Short-term changes coming to ZwiftPower (September 2020 ETA)
Adding course profiles for France and Paris maps
Adding Sprint and KOM segments for France and Paris maps
Long-term changes (timing TBD)
Better race data-crunching integrated natively within Zwift
“Better” means different things depending on your POV across a broad spectrum of interests as a race organizer, club owner, and/or racer. As you add your comments, please provide that context for how you use ZwiftPower.
Thanks for the update. If you are looking for suggestions on your last point:
Allow race organisers to limit category sign ups to the user’s ZP category (i.e. proper category enforcement). This category should be displayed next to the rider’s name at all times (maybe a badge or colour coding or something, or it could be a colour coded race number on the riders back)
Use all rides to determine a rider’s category, not just races. e.g. if they do a free ride or a workout and produce category A numbers, they should be in category A. This stops riders entering a low category, cruising, and then dominating the sprint finish avoiding an upgrade.
Display filtered results after a race (i.e. don’t count the position of anyone that has been disqualified for whatever reason)
I put this in my Zwift Insider ‘What’s Next’ article, but after a race or group ride it would be great if you could go to a virtual coffee shop, where you can digest the race results and chat with fellow competitors
Integrate race series or leagues within the native client
Allow for additional race formats (such as the TTT, handicap races, points races, elimination races) to be visible to the rider within the zwift client without needing zwiftpower open on a separate screen. For example, in a points race there should be a current points total displayed. (maybe where KOM/Sprint standings are currently displayed? - it should also be possible to hide or show this whilst you are riding)
Of course the pièce de résistance would be a multi-tiered category structure that is based on performances as opposed to a w/kg calculation.
N.B. Answered as a zwift racer, but I will also hopefully be a club owner and event organiser when this functionality is released.
3 of the best things about zwift power are the ability to find and target specific races or leagues/series, ability to validate own and other performances, and to see my racing progression over time (as opposed to just training data). The absolute best thing about it is Sticky though; having someone who understands racing acting as a voice of reason in debates about performance and cleaning up bad data manually.
Where zwift power lacks is “ranking over time” (and rankings in general), history of league participation/results, and the recent loss of the live tab functionality.
If you plan to do light touch development on it then I’d like to see those 3 things addressed since 2 are just views of historic data and the other seems to have been turned off by choice.
If you have real development bandwidth for racing then I don’t see why it is necessary; there should be an integrated solution for race organization, admin, and results, baked into zwift web and mobile apps. This should include better solutions for invite only and public races, full control over settings to the admins, better visualization of settings to riders (embedded in filters), clubs functionality and club rankings, KIT DESIGN as a community tool (with a profanity filter by zwift).
Ranking changes; Team ranking should be based on top 5 riders + depth of riders (maybe 2 separate riders). Team rankings should be based on results for the team not based on the current collection of riders. Rankings should be reviewed based on a WIDE set of input from the community. Current flaws; beating a rider who isn’t trying gets a ranking boost, being dq’d can acquire points and affect others, rankings fluctuate as people leave and come back to the platform (seasonality), B’s racing in A can get more points than racing in B, a not insignificant amount of people quit to reduce the overall strength of field late in races.
I would like to see Zwiftpower as defult for all users, that being all racers will be on Zwift power.
The live tab is also very useful - we use the live Tab to see who are the people in the wrong cat and we don’t chase them we also don’t race people that are not on ZwiftPower because we don’t know if they are even racing the correct cat.
I’d like to see that as well but will require a lot more man power to deal with all the flagged riders. Sticky does a great job just now but imagine what will happen when you double? the amount or riders appearing on zwiftpower results.
Agree though no reason why we can’t get everyone on zwift power now seems obvious next step.
It would be great to have some more masters/handicapped/women’s races. As a light rider when riding in B grade for mixed it’s really hard to compete with strong males,particularly on the many flat rides. If there were more masters events ( like there are IRL ) it would encourage more people to race. As you get older it’s harder to do regular smashfests!
@Matt, assuming that riders who aren’t trying don’t finish in the top 10 (or top 5 when the field is small), they won’t influence the points that get distributed. It also seems difficult to define what constitutes “trying”, or to deprive someone of points when his competitor that is usually stronger happens to have a bad day.
Thanks for the info, good to hear you are planning to use this invaluable source of data to improve upon the system.
My 2 cents:
*Most importantly, the categorization system needs to get rid of the FTP based threshold, and needs to introduce a point based classification system. It makes no sense to define categories based on 1 of many characteristics needed to win races. It leads to perverse incentives wrt training/diet, and sandbagging. An intelligent point based classification system, with a pre-defined period after which riders promote/demote, will improve the dynamics in all race categories.
*The A cat is too broad as it stands now, with FTP ranges from 4.0 to 6.0… that’s an insane difference in ability (ie, PRO vs full time job people who train 5-6 hours per week). It’s fun to race a pro, once… it gets annoying if you constantly have to race pros (or people who race with pro-level wkg, virtually )
*Race organisers should have the option to exclude riders to enter into a category different than the one assigned by ZP.
Fix these three things and you’d have a vastly improved racing system.
The FTP/M power system predicts how riders do long climbs. It’s good for L’Alpe races, VenTop, and La Reine. It can be revised to better represent ability over a range of courses and effort durations. It’s also preferential to heavy and, to a lesser extent, very light riders, but unfair to moderately light riders. I proposed some ideas here. (Actually I think most riders don’t even understand there’s a minimum maximum power for each category, as an alternative to W/kg)
to enter a race, you should need to be on Zwift Power (or whatever it’s called). It’s nuts when there’s multiple results, even multiply entry lists, for the same event. “I finished 4th” – “Was that on the companion app or ZP, and filtered or unfiltered results?” – “WTF???”
the rider ranking score is cool, but implementation is obscure (I have a hard time understanding the UI and am normally good at this sort of thing)… For example, I only just realized that I’m not getting points for races where there were < 5 finishers on ZP in my category. I wonder what fraction of Zwifter racers understand results points. In fact, it’s really hard even finding where points are described: it’s here, then click FAQ.
lots of great input, highlighting James and W’s contribution. I’d be interested to learn more about product management for Zwift and if there is a roadmap specific to racing functionality. Some of the systemic problems have existed for years and getting this person connected with the community and taking advantage of this solid input would be very valuable. I’d like to add a request for the conveyor belt function for TTT. WTRL has built a great event which would be complimented by a registration function allowing for use of the conveyor.
I want to reiterate the importance of Sticky and the role he plays in the forums. It would be hard to understate what an impact losing that responsiveness, no-nonsense approach and in-depth understanding of racing (IRL and eRacing) would have.
What about setting up a user group to represent the interests of racers across various skill levels, geographic locations and racing preferences? We’d be happy to contribute a representative from Team AHDR - we race across all grades right up to the elite level (men and women), all over the world, host our own events, compete in regular races, series, major events and the TTTs. A few members from major teams like this could represent a vast range of opinions to help guide this development.
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