E67 | New ZRL Stage 6 Route | ZRS no good? | FRR Team Racing Series | Rate My Ride | Quiz + more

[@stevennorman3900]

I'm loving the Tour France on FRR. Awesome stuff from Rich

[@inthedrops]

Thanks Steven.. he does a fantastic job and we are really looking forward to the Fearless team racing and the Super6's

[@PunchyZwifter]

😂😂😂😂 Rob. That made me laugh out loud... Half go up, half go down 😂😂😂

[@zwifting]

A couple of months on Zwift is nothing in the big picture so I’m willing to reserve judgment until it all shakes out & we see where the cookie crumbles 🤷‍♂️ As a low B getting ass kicked since I got bumped over a year ago from C, I welcome some change. I could have sandbagged back to C (it’s just not me) in that time, BECAUSE we all know how the old system worked & how to manipulate it, so I’m not too bothered about anyone NOT being able to figure out the exact inner workings of the system as it prob leads to less routes to manipulation. Agree with many of Robs points, disagree with some. Personally the most enjoyable racing on Zwift for me has been TFC (split cats) FRR(more split cats & diff goals to aim for) & ZRL if your team gets an appropriate division(which we have this round, battling to hold 3rd by 1p) The biggest issue for me has always been to wide a margin for the pens 🤷‍♂️ Any series that narrowed the pens - split cats - seems to provide fun racing regardless of metric used to calculate riders.

[@mandaswin]

Interesting ZRS chat. Don't understand the ZRS score either but in my Tiny Races on the 12th there was variability in those going up or down, in the bottom half of riders. Though I am Group (E). 0-300. 🤷

[@inthedrops]

It does seem to be a bit perculiar doesn't? I guess we wil have to wait and see how they adjust it moving forward..

[@hllamasiv]

I’m right in between two racing scores, I race the lower one once and I get bumped up, and then I race the upper one and get bumped down, back and forth everytime.

[@inthedrops]

We expect that this is going to happen to lots of people and the border between two categories will balloon with racers jumping between the two.. lets see how it pans out..

[@mikebrooks215]

@@hllamasiv that’s one of the issues with this system. In the long run the power categories will be seen as being better. Currently the seed score calculation is completely wrong as it doesn’t take into account FTP only short efforts so being are in the wrong category and movement up is not guaranteed if they race smart a B rider can stay in C forever.

[@PeterMcMullan01]

At least if everyone goes up we might get a few more people in A cat. 😀

[@PunchyZwifter]

The really negative part of this though... is that clever riders will go up. But by racing well, they will stay in a category against unbelievably higher endurance riders and never go down to similar ability riders. In fact, they are likely to go up even higher in it. 🤦

[@SteakandChains]

50:11 they made the term friendly for the Americans, even though we use w/kg too

[@inthedrops]

Lol, we need to accomodate our American friends.. I did suggest that we add a "eagles to pounds" conversion in the production meeting, but I was shot down..

[@nikblyth8047]

Zwift could have simply graded riders based on WKG to start with. Cat D 0-300, Cat C 200-500, Cat B 400-700, Cat A 600-900 & Cat A+ 800-1000. Then the scores can be adjusted based on results. Currently the 180-350 bandwidth has riders from Cats D,C&B. 350-520 has riders from D,C,B&A. How is a Cat D rider supposed to complete against riders from Cat B or A? Zwift also need to change the bandwidths on a monthly basis.

[@hllamasiv]

I’m a D racer that’s pretty competitive in D races… I have been DFL in almost every ZRS event I’ve done and I’ve raced B and A racers in them… makes no sense

[@inthedrops]

Yes, good observations. I def think that Zwift will continue to make micro-adjustments moving forward. The big promise of ZRS is the elimination of Sandbagging, preventing those that can consistently win in a category without moving up because they can feather their power just enough), We shoudl see the groups start to even out as more races are completed and data is collected..

[@user-yw1fk2ec5p]

Did a race Saturday, 40 people in it, 26 went up and 14 down - Since Saturday i have already decayed by a point! ZRS is not the answer

[@inthedrops]

Yep, certainly lots of questions around it, but we are hopeful that Zwift can adjust as they get more and more data. Fingers crossed!

[@stevemayes]

For the people who are finding they are enjoying racing more with ZRS, how much of that is coming simply from us now having 5 categories rather than 4 I wonder...

[@Evaso_CC]

Agree! It has spread out the most populous categories - C and B - over 3 cats in reality. However I can still see riders doing easy / soft riding races to avoid getting promoted to the top category.

[@mikebrooks215]

Most events have pen E so low at 0-180 that almost no one is in it. I’d prefer they bin ZRS and go back to what they had but split B and C in half

[@MichaelThorne_za]

ChatGPT could've come up with a better formula. 😂

[@inthedrops]

hahaha maybe Michael..

[@timhanson302]

Hey guys! I can say for certain that ZRS doesn't give credit for people who DNF. :)

[@inthedrops]

Thanks Tim

[@mikebrooks215]

Thanks Tim, here’s a question for you. With your input and experience how did Zwift get this so wrong in comparison to ZRA and what’s your opinion if you are allowed to offer one?

[@timhanson302]

@@mikebrooks215 It’s early yet. Ask me in a couple months 😅

[@mikebrooks215]

@@timhanson302 I think the biggest issue is they haven’t taken into account 20min and 40min efforts or FTP. From my calculations there’s obvious errors in it.

[@ON3S3V3NTHR33]

Randi!!!