Wasting Watts on Zwift with Pack Dynamics 4.1 - Yumi RoboPacer Example
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 ส.ค. 2023
- For more on this topic, read zwiftinsider.com/wasting-watt...
Follow up (Oct 4, 2023): Pack Dynamics 4.1.1 effectively removes the watt wasting issue: • Zwift Pack Dynamics 4.... - เกม
The whole phraseology of “wasting watts” is wrong - it’s shifting the blame to the rider, when this is a Zwift flaw. If I put out 40w more and don’t move faster then that’s just plain unrealistic and wrong. Attempting to phrase it as “wasting watts” is not helpful - the rider is putting out useful power but Zwift is simply discarding them. Insane.
Thanks for this information. All I can say is I've stopped doing the group rides anymore it's just not worth the hassle for me. I found myself either not peddling and Bernie is still falling behind or peddling like hell and not able to catch up Just no rhyme, no reason to it. Just took all the fun and enjoyment, out of it, so I just stick to to free riding and doing my own thing. To be honest at 70 years of age, I'm not looking to break any records. I'm just on there to really enjoy myself..
That's so odd, because the RoboPacer experience really hasn't changed for me with PD4.1. I suppose if you liked to dangle off the back PD4.1 would be noticeable (draft drops off faster). But staying near the front doesn't feel any harder... just slower.
I agree.. even in Recovery ride Z2, has become a up and down affair of wattages that it’s made me consider going solo. Also I noticed using TT bike like say on Tempus, I did a worse time result putting out 4wkg or just above than sitting in with robo 2.9wkg. There certainly needs to be some adjustment to the dynamics otherwise some Zwifters will jump ship. I mean the whole idea behind the game, it’s social group rides without having to push especially on recovery days
I would love if they would just let you use Erg mode with the Robopacer. I'm sure there are 1000 people who will tell me this is idiotic, but I really don't enjoy the constant whiplash of a group of 100 riders, it does feel way more bursty than it would be in reality.
You can do that - just join the RoboPacer, then pull up your workout and start it. But my guess is you'll end up dropping the group, or getting dropped, since you need to modulate your power in order to hang with the pack...
@@adamrobertson7215
@@ZwiftInsiderNice! Will try it out! I'd imagine that the bias setting should come in handy there, just tick it up or down as the situation changes?
Welcome to real life folks. Zwift has long made it easy to do far too little in the draft. The people I see griping about this most are the folks barely over the limit on w/kg, but due mostly to a low kg. That’s real life. On the flats watts matter a lot more than Zwift would have had us believe. This seems an attempt to address that and as a big dude who’s been brought back from a break while doing 400 watts by guys and gals doing 250 but a higher w/kg I applaud this fix.
An interesting video would be to show what happens on the same course in the same size group when you actually try to minimize your watt output to stay in the same position in the bunch. Without any visual indicators of the ‘quality’ of your draft, what I have noticed is that it can be rather difficult to do, maintain position in the pack and not fall back in the pack after just a few minutes time. My experience with 4.1 dynamics is that over time, trying to conserve watts or even keep a steady advertised pace at or slightly even above the robopacer will typically end up with you slowly dropping in the larger packs and eventually getting spit out the back of the group. This was not the case with the previous pack dynamics. It makes trying to ride at a steady state (ie. zone 2 training) in a robopacer large group ride much more difficult in terms of paying attention to your wattage output and adjustments than it ever was in the past. Steering does help the situation somewhat. But, I find that the robopacer rides are essentially useless at this point if you are looking for steady state riding at or around a specific pace.
The issue here is that to avoid gapping in the race you now have to be up near the front so you can see what is going on. Also it wrecks the ride for a lot of riders that are low watts high w/kg in their cat. Take a C cat race with a 100kg rider, a 70 kg rider is likely to be at near ftp just sitting in the pack at Cat limit, just to move up in the pack the lighter rider will have to go well over his threshold if he can by finding an extra 30w or so. If there is a gap at all in the line it is near impossible now to close it as he would be out of draft and massively below the watts been pushed at the front of the pack. His riding will improve but he will be bumped straight into B cat if he manages to go with the first C group on the road. ( There will be no enjoyment in racing in B cat for at least a year) Not putting out the most watts, sitting in the draft, never come close to winning a race and putting out a TSS of 100/hr. Mr 100kg sits at 3.2wkg 320w wins every race and never gets upgraded. The last version was better. I know they are trying to promote break-aways... but this seems to have screwed it for a lot of riders.
As a 100kg rider, I can tell you that it got way harder. Last year my FTP was 335 at the end of the Zwift Season and I won a lot of C races. Now its just torture. My cadence is pretty low as I like to push big numbers and coast a little. All climbs were done out of the saddle until failure because thats the only war to get high w/kg . Whitout a steady pace you get fucked two ways: First you get Auto-Braked after overtaking someone and catching a breath, then you need even more Watts to come back. My conclusion is, that the average 80kg rider with steady cadence and good mix of aerobic and anaerobic power got the biggest advantage out of PD4. The other extremes, light rider with high w/kg and heavy rider with max watt focus lose a lot.
Appreciate you explaining what's going on Eric. For me riding with the robots has become more difficult and less fun. Now I at least know why and I can avoid this pitfall of their new (and I see it as flawed) draft dynamic. Thanks again for the heads-up!
I'm a bit twisted on how to handle reactions from some folks on this. On one hand, I understand the frustration many have about how many watts can clearly be wasted when sitting in a pack. I hear their frustrations, and the solution we pushed for ZHQ to give us on the forums during the 4.1 tests was some sort of UI element to give us this knowledge.
In the meantime however while we haven't had a response on such an element... and now that we're less than 2 weeks from the start of ZRL... I see this aspect of PD4.1 a unique challenge.
PD4.1's wasted watt drafting zone is a new skillset that we will have to learn and manage.
Just as racers outdoors have to learn how to be able to turn quickly and efficiently, on Zwift we now have to better manage our power handling.
So personally, I almost hope we don't have such a UI element to inform us we're wasting watts, but in group rides I totally understand the sentiment....
But for the time being, it's a skillset.... which is fun in its own right.
Learn and adapt, or get dropped by trying too hard and not paying attention.
As a 68kg rider with no top end power I’m becoming increasingly frustrated with the direction of travel here. I’ve been upgraded into B three times, each off the back of a TT where my w/kg has hit 3.4 for 20 mins. Every B race I ride sees me spat off the back on the first climb when the pack hits 6 w/kg which is basically my sprint. I’m using B races as training rides whilst I wait to get downgraded into C again. What really confuses me is seeing people lining up for C races with 20min ftps of 3.7 w/kg and above. The early days of category enforcement seemed ok but it feels like something has changed. I’ve got no problem being upgraded to B but I’m never going to be competitive and my metrics in non TT races (particularly for 30 second to 2 minutes) are nowhere near good enough to make basic survival possible. I love Zwift and will keep racing, just feels like it’s a playing field unfairly biased against lighter riders with lower high end power.
I'm in the same position 65kg and zwift overclass me in B . I always finish my race in the 5 last position very frustrating 😡.
It's like real life. Unless you are a light weight rider who is 6 foot 5 and can output high power, you have no chance of competing for podiums.
@@roadcyclist1 precisely why zwift should change their ranking. Not normal for someone one class lower to outclass me with about 1.5w/kg less. zwift should consider normalized watts more than watts per kg.
@@job1713 no. Watts per kg is the most realistic by far.
@@roadcyclist1
more realistic for heavier riders in real racing I can compete with riders 10 kg heavier than me but in zwift we forget that. I just find that the power-to-weight ratio is too light for heavier riders. It's not very normal that I see riders 15 or even 20 kg heavier than a month pushing the same number of watts for the same speed.
I've been struggling with this in recent Zwift races. I often at the end of the race stats notice myself using more w/kg in comparison to other racers. When in the race I often feel like when I slow down a bit to use less watts I end up falling off the back and then I have to consistently surge to jump back in. I find it harder to ride at a consistent pace and maintain placing. I also dislike how they altered coasting for downhills but that's for another day.
I've been experiencing this too. Granted, I'm very new to Zwift racing, but while maintaining 3.2 w/kg in a no-draft race, I lost to someone doing 2.7. In a subsequent race (with draft), I went side-by-side into a sprint segment at the identical speed to another rider, dumped out 350 more watts (I was up to 700 vs his 350) than he did, but he still edged me out without breaking a sweat. I'm willing to chalk it up to my inexperience, but some things feel very broken in this game sometimes!
as a 60kg guy....so frustrated
Zwift don't like light Rider 😡. I'm in the same position , I Do always push 1.5w/kg more than other just for follow the last riders.
Awesome, thanks! Does moving into a gap with the Play controllers allow you to move up with less extra power? What about riding up the side?
If you do 40 lets say 50 more then there needs to be movement, to be harsh here this is bonkers, Zwift needs a fix here
So 40 extra watts (20% more power) and you don't move forwards in the pack. Is that what would happen in real life?
In real life you'd ride into the wheel ahead of you and crash. :)
To be clear, my rider did move up eventually. I think probably the "watt wasting window" is more like 20W wide...
Maybe there's something Zwift can do to improve it so we can move up in the group easier without wasting watts, but still reduce churn on the front? Not sure. But I think overall PD4.1 is a big improvement over PD4.
It’s hard to move up in real life when everyone is pressing on. You have to choose the right time. You can usually move up by carrying momentum into gaps or by riding harder to the sides.
Be interesting if using the Play controllers to move into space can reduce the power to move up.
Since they did the 4.1, the fact you can do 200 Watts and will remain in same position is kinda a problem in itself, saving 0.2wkg in a pack that size 🤔, In real world of the front was doing 2.9 wkg you would be saving alot more than 0.2, when you do 40more Watts and takes that long to slowly move up 😂 feel like zwift made a mistake, to fix less churning, if I was doing 4wkg 265watts and somone want sat in my wheel on flat doing 245 3.8kwg 🤯, they should be doing like 3.2 so there saving now you just fly out the back, since the 4.1 TTT you just recover anymore I'll be doing simular Watts in 8th wheel as I would in 3rd if I drop less I'm just going backwards, hopefully they fix this so you can save more Watts if drafting a few ridings rather than basically riding the same Watts behind them 😂
@@EmrysJones addressing the first part of your comment… the front of the pack wasn’t doing 2.9. Yumi was. And Yumi was in the pack.
@@ZwiftInsider Yeah people forget that they're drafting off someone else who is also drafting. The only people not drafting are in the front, and they slow down and get swamped by the people behind them so basically everyone in the pack rides at the same watts. :)
@Eric... @Zwift insider...
I am the rider 30 more watts / that made a comment back when Zwift introduced 4.1.
You perfectly illustrated my point.
Now with ZD 4.1 it's a lot harder to stay inside the pack at said wattage, but very easy actually once you get to the front to stay off the front or make a breakaway.
And while that maybe good for racing... it is NOT for pacers or group rides.
A lot of people including me use the pacer rides for endurance, tempo, etc. But it is not consistent anymore.
Zwift needs to fix that for races and group/pacer rides separately...IMO
I really don't understand the point of the red numbers at this point. If they meant anything, surely they should have been showing up when the bot was doing 240 at the back of the pack but not moving any faster for it.
The logic of sticky draft makes literally zero sense. You put more power in but you don't move up at all ?? in what universe does that make any sense ? Zwift should indicate braking if they don't want you to slam into the rider in front...
Wow. This is huge. Thanks for this and all the rest of what you do to keep us Zwifters in the know!
so the morale of the story is if you're riding mid-pack drop 20 watts and see if you stay in the same place?
Pretty much!
@@ZwiftInsider I suppose you could look at the riders around you on the screen and see what they're doing for power and adjust as needed
Much like the draft, I really feel like Zwift need to make it more obvious to us users when we are putting out too many watts. The red numbers don’t appear to be applied consistently
Thank you so much for this information!! It has helped me the last two races (at least) perform a bit better. It seems to me that things have moved from "Fast blob" (and you had better be in that blob or you are done for) to sort of a slower sticky snake. Personally, I have found the races to thus far to be more nuanced and dynamic. My only fear is that the fast blob used to consume its fair share of weight dopers and sandbaggers (those folks just couldn't get away without it being obvious that they were cheating). Now they can. Still, I welcome the dynamics. Oh, and Zwift should consider nerfing the robopacers a bit!
Sticky snek! 🤣
cool, thanks. I had chosen to ride something other than the Tron and experienced this. I thought it was the bike.
When you were doing 199 watts, the bunch was much tighter. When you started bumping up the watts, the group was more strung out and you likely had less draft. Can that be part of it as well? There is now a bigger difference between sitting in a tight bunch and sitting in a loose bunch.
Hard to get a perfect example on video, due to the dynamic nature of the RoboPacer packs. But yeah, you make a good point.
Based on messing around with the bot for an hour or so, I'm quite confident at these pack speeds there's at least a 20W "window" of power where your rider will just say in the same position in the pack. So you want to be at the bottom of that window (say, 200) instead of the top (220W) if you want to ride efficiently.
Likely the window can be more like 30-40W, though.
@@ZwiftInsider Hard to know the exact formula they use to calculate draft, but I've definitely noticed a larger difference between being just off the pack and being truly in the pack. I feel like it used to be the same and now it's definitely different.
As always, very informative. Thank you.
Thank You Eric! But what is the answer? Be in front?
Only if you want to lose. :-) The answer is to stay in the wheels, and reduce your power until you start moving backward. That tells you the minimum watts needed to hold position. Just takes a bit of practice.
Awesome info.
Zwift is very dangerously betting on the gamification of the platform. They need to be aware that most of the people who pay have at least some interest in some real feeling and take their efforts seriously. They should not make the platform in such a way that upping the effort 20 watts has no effect on the position in the pack. This is dumb, frustrating and goes against both reality and merit. Just do things as they are IRL. I pedal harder, i go upfront. I don't care about the pack and i did not sign in to make rides more comfortable for other riders. Create specific events with fences and limited power output if you want to help people... Oh... wait!!! IT ALREADY EXISTS!!!
Zwift´s draft has never been anywhere naar real life. I can hold 45km/h easily behind a speed pedelec. I´m 57kg, when i´m behind a peloton in real life it feels completely different than on zwift.
More realistic.
Similar to an outdoor group ride.
Teleporting between pacers, using the play controllers is fantastic, when riding Zone 2, DFA alpha 1 rides.
Thanks for sharing
I don't find this realistic at all. It is just unrealistic in another way. Try freewheeling in a pack on Zwift, you get placed on the conveyor belt straight off the back. Try putting an extra 40watts in a bunch outside, you'd need to brake before hitting the wheel in front of you.
This new pack dynamisc is totally idiotic!