In the past few months, riders have been observing some changes in Zwift’s pack dynamics (PD), particularly in Watopia during free rides. The current game-wide version of PD is referred to as 4.1, and the new PD is being referred to as version 5.
In this post, I look at what changes Zwift is looking to implement with PD5, and what some riders are observing in PD5, including a few observations by myself.
Let’s begin with a long forum reply from Jon Mayfield himself, Zwift’s co-founder. This was posted just last week as a reply in a long thread regarding the 1.80 game release.
Quite a few comments about pack dynamics in here! I can share a bit of information about it.
The latest batch of tuning (which some call pack dynamics 5) has a few goals:
- make faster riders coming up on slower riders steer around them, vs plowing right through them. In a pack, we still will plow through, but single riders vs single riders should be much nicer now.
- Increase “draft seeking” behavior. The avatars will more actively steer to get behind somebody, within reason. I’ve not seen any instances of this seeking drafting behind a runner myself, but we’ll look into that. This does also mean you might get a few pacelines of riders as some will seek over to draft the rider who’s popped out (or steered out) to the left or right of the main pack.
- Increase collision between riders. We’re not trying to eliminate interpenetrations between avatars, but we do want to improve the situation by increasing the collision bounds a little.
- Similarly, we wanted to make it so you can’t steer through people as easily. This does mean you need to speed up or slow down if you want to get on the other side of somebody. You shouldn’t be able to just steer through avatars as easily as before.
- Ignore draft seeking behind avatars that have a large speed delta from you. Again if people are seeing your avatar seek runners, it could be you didn’t have the new code on in that case, it could be the runner and the cyclist were going similar speeds, or it could be simply a bug.
- For people who have steering inputs, make auto-steering gradually blend back on over time. For users who are actively steering they retain full control, but for those who stop using steering we’ll try to keep them in a draft after some amount of time has passed (say, half a minute)
As for how we’ve been testing it:
- All employees have been riding with it for 4-5 months
- We started turning this on for the public on October 15, sometimes only for a few hours, to see how it worked at larger scale with non-synthetic riders…real humans! We made 3 or 4 changes during late October.
- It finally got turned on and stayed on about 50 days ago for Watopia, excluding all events
- We turned it on in Makuri 40 days ago, again excluding all events
- We turned it on for group rides, and accidentally turned it on for TTT events Dec 12.
- Just after new years we turned it off for scheduled non-race group rides and TTT, because as it turns out TTT’s were considered group rides in the code we use for our switch. This will be fixed later in Jan, at which time we’ll re-enable it for scheduled non-race group rides.
So this is where we’re at today. We didn’t announce these changes as we’ve found with pack dynamics we often get lots of false positives when we announce we’ve changed anything, and we were actively changing and improving (and often disabling) the code throughout the fall. The plan was to announce and get more specific feedback once it comes time to start trying it in public races, which is where we’re getting to soon.
Next changes coming later in January:
- Fix the toggle so we can re-enable for group rides but leave it disabled in TTT.
- We’ve reduced the amount other people plowing through packs can push you around. Right now if somebody rams you from behind both avatars end up moving. We think the aggressor should be doing the moving left/right so the people minding their own business don’t have to move as much.
Beyond:
- Widen the draft seeking angle so that a steering user can’t just hug the center line and have a non-steering user not go seek their draft. This was demonstrated in the great video a Zwifter posted above that. Right now auto-steering is looking at maybe 70% of the road width.
- Turn on for all worlds, in scheduled non-race events
- Start limited testing in specific racing and time trial type events with those events labelled as PD5 enabled races.
- Change supertuck criteria as it feels annoying right now as soon as somebody gets in front of you
The tuning of our pack dynamics is a much more continuous thing than I think people realize…and I’m sure will continue for years to come. Sometimes we specifically test with a smaller group of Zwifters, sometimes we just want to start with robopacer groups and general riders in the world, and sometimes we’ll reach out to a race organizer to see if they’re up for testing something with us. Apologies for having it enabled in the TTT’s before we’d announced it – that was definitely not intentional.
This very thorough reply from Jon does a good job of outlining Zwift’s goals for PD5, clarifying how Zwift has been testing PD5 (and their reasons for approaching testing the way they did), and looking ahead to what changes will be coming to PD in the future.
Where To Find Pack Dynamics 5
PD5 is currently enabled for all non-event riding in Watopia and Makuri Islands. So free rides, individual workouts, Meetups, and RoboPacer rides in both Watopia and Makuri Islands will display PD5 behavior.
Observations
While a few community voices have been quite loud on the forums regarding their dislike of PD5, I think it’s safe to say the vast majority of Zwifts haven’t noticed the change, are ambivalent about changes they observed, or actually prefer PD5 over PD4.1.
I’m a part of the latter group. Overall, I think PD5 in its current state is better than PD4.1. The positives I’m seeing are:
- Less riding through other riders
- Smoother draft seeking with and without steering paired
- More natural-looking packs of riders
That’s not to say PD5 is perfect, though.
“Titanium Ben” Pitt has been publishing some top-notch Zwift nerd videos lately, and just posted one displaying some of the notable behavior he’s noticed with PD5. I won’t detail everything he observes, but there are definitely a few oddities Zwift will want to tune up:
One notable oddity is the “sluggish steering” behavior Ben notes here:
Another thing I want to call out is the tendency for steering-enabled riders to get pushed to the outside of the lane in large groups, even after purposely steering to the center line. This is a complaint I’ve seen from other steering riders, and I’ve seen it myself.
I made a quick video showing this behavior in the Coco group, and at the end, I show how it could negatively impact race performance when riders are moved to a position with decreased draft:
And while this isn’t a PD5-specific issue – rather, it’s a UI issue that has existed for years – can I just observe once more that the number of rider name plates needs to be reduced in large groups? In my video above, you can see how the name tags along the bottom are stacked several names deep, and the names of riders ahead are obscuring my view of the pack.
I’m not sure how Zwift’s logic works for displaying name tags, but I think it lacks a hard limit, something like “Display no more than 3 rider names at a time from behind, and 2 names up ahead.” Seems like a simple UI improvement Zwift could make, so I’m tagging it onto this post.
And with that, I’ll wrap this up. Ride on, everyone!
Your Thoughts
What do you think of PD5? Share your likes and/or dislikes below…
draft seeking is a nice feature for certain scenarios. but it sucks when free riding. when I steer I want to stay there as long as I steer again. draft seeking should be optional at least on free rides.
you can ride a tt bike on free rides, i do that when i dont want to get jerked around with various drafts and groups
good tip mike. however, over he last 3 days I have encountered some change in draft seeking. at higher speed difference and larger distances my avatar did not turn anymore. much better now.
Just a correction Eric, I’m Ben Pitt, not Ben Finesilver, although I’d love to claim his fitness atm 😆
And yes great point about the name tags of riders ahead, it’s one reason I hit the remove HUD key briefly in races just so I can what’s happening up ahead!
Rather have the option to turnm all the emoticons off. Coffeestop, Ride ons, waving, Power ups, name tags … they all cluthering ghe screen sometimes to a point you can not even see the front of the group and might miss an attack.
Gah! Fixed. The sad thing is, I knew this… but was bouncing between too many tasks.
You’re just checking I read the articles 😄
You passed the test. But don’t get too comfortable…
Typo: “above” instead of “about”.
First bullet point under “Beyond:”.
I’ll leave it, since it’s a quote…
Great that this is “beyond”
Racing is terrible now, especially ladder or in smaller packs. If you haven’t bought the controllers, you spend the whole race outside the pack and no draft. It’s too bad, because ladder races are usually so fun but they suck now when you have to put out so much more energy than everyone else just to keep up.
I found that over the last few weeks the game has been driving non steering riders back into the draft much faster then before. It’s a lot harder to knock somebody of the wheel now, or at least it feels like it.
It was a lot better on the London race this week but especially for the 2 Watopia races in the previous weeks steering felt like mostly useless.
Aka, they make hardware and the make it obsolete, I don’t get it.
How do you know they don’t have steering or play controllers?
In any ladder race in the last month, the few riders that don’t have the controllers are not able to stick with the pack even if those with play controllers aren’t actively steering.
Basically steering seems like a cluster f*&* for both sides right now.
You can see if people have steering… there is a gidon/steer icon in the top left corner of the box with rider’s names.
The same place where it shows if people are linked with the companion app, or are in workout mode etc…
For the past couple of months, I have occasionally been driven out of the pack to the right by a non-steering rider. I wind up in the right-side gutter with a rider on my left overlapping me by about half a bike length. I can’t steer left through him and I am out of the draft. All I can do is stop pedalling, wait for the rider to pass, and steer left to join the pack.
Same here. Got kinda aggravating during F500.
This is a problem that’s been around for a while. It isn’t as bad as it was a year ago (at one point I abandoned steering because it would do this for users who had steering devices on in races where steering was disabled, so we’d get pushed out into the wind with no way to get back. Now, it only seems to happen to me when steering is enabled, but it does get annoying at times and makes me have to watch my positioning more than I do when I leave steering off. I like virtual shifting enough (just got it because I use Elite) that I leave my Plays on and deal with it though.
The new update requires you to have way too much trust in other Zwifters to hold the wheel towards the back of a pack. When you have no idea of anyone else’s intentions this is really annoying. They lose the wheel, you get stuck and have to surge hard to close the gap. It is easier at the front of a pack by a significant amount, but then once everyone knows this there will be fighting for that spot and watt wasting everywhere.
Pardon my ignorance with this, as I’ve never done a race outdoors, but this kind of sounds like how racing IRL would be. Granted, in Zwift, you don’t really have much control horizontally who you are drafting behind, but I think the point still stands.
What I do have a complaint about in the experience of what I think was PD5 is how blobs can get split off into two different sides of the road. During the Off the MAAP series (I think, can’t remember for sure), on more than one occasion, this happened where the main peloton inexplicably divided into a slightly smaller blob riding on one side, and a thin strung out line of single-file riders on the other, and nothing in the middle. This would carry on for anywhere from 200-500 meters before the groups joined back up. Not sure if this has been fixed already or not, but if it hasn’t, I think it needs to be.
I don’t want to count the times I’ve come off the front, and rolled back to the end of a pace line, only for the rider in front of me to drop off the line, more often than not I was “done” at that point. Sometimes it’s obvious that the behavior was intentional, I’ve seen riders surge back after creating a big enough gap to gutter the rider on their wheel, other times, it’s just hard riding
You’re right, but outside in a group ride I would say the people you’re riding with are far more likely to have the same intent as you. Its not possible to detect the purpose of all others on Zwift. I’ve probably been caught out by riders finishing their ride, free riding in the way, not strong enough, probably not watching their game, using coffee stops etc, etc. The back used to be a great place to practice craft, but has become alot harder (for me) at the moment. It hasn’t seemed quite as bad over the past week or two.
I find it incredibly frustrating when you’re pushed out of the group for whatever reason and have to fall to the very back to steer back into the draft. This happens repeatedly on robo pacer rides, whether it’s a big blob or the group gets inexplicably strung out. I don’t know how this works if you don’t have steering, but if you do then it’s become almost useless for navigating within packs – I don’t even bother anymore.
Exactly I’m Experiencing The Same Issues But Like Zwift Support Zwift Insider Isn’t Believing us pd5 is terrible I hold 3.3 in a beacon group where beacon is 2.6 yet constantly getting dropped since pd5 I’ll be stopping my subscription and going elsewhere it’s unrideable
Great changes and I like the way they have been tinkering to continuously improve PD.
Great article, glad pack dynamics is constantly evolving, especially the draft seeking aspect.
Has any testing been done on 5v5 races?
in some races one or two of us without steering are stuck out of the draft when the rest steer to another line.
Thanks,
I’ve been seeing “the tendency for steering-enabled riders to get pushed to the outside of the lane in large groups” too. Thanks for drawing attention to this.
Re your name plates for riders behind you on zwift rides, it’s annoying that when you use the power graph, as it flows across the bottom of the screen, all the names and the details of the Robo Pacer distance behind you, are obscured by the power graph.
It would be nicer of the graph was behind the names etc as it’s old data as it scrolls across the screen. 👍 👍 👍
All nice and pretty but why can’t zwift provide the draft counter for it’s paying customers? This is a missing feature that I cannot find a logical explanation.
I want to move to use zwift on a tablet but I won’t because I’ll lose sauce in it. And after having tried sauce I can easily say it gives an advantage over not using it.
It really bugs me zwift doesn’t offer this. Particularly given the price increase they implemented last year
RGT had a nice draft indicator and BikeTerra (a browser-based game) has one now. They work well.
IRL when you’re drafting, you feel the resistance on the pedals drops. So you pedal the same cadence in the same gear and there’s less force against your feet. In Zwift, there is no change in resistance. So to keep the same cadence and the same speed you need to downshift. This doesn’t make any physical sense, but Zwift base the resistance only on the road grade and speed and perhaps on the road surface.
So the queue in real life you get from drafting is gone. You don’t feel the resistance drop. So you need to use a visual queue instead, for example that your avatar is moving faster. It would make more sense for Zwift to provide a visual cue of how much wind resistance has changed, since it’s unable to change trainer resistance quickly enough to keep up with variations in draft efficiency,
Whatever the solution, something should have been implemented by now. I find it astonishing that they did nothing in that regard.
To complicate things even further, they know there is a (paid) workaround that gives that info to some users (and not others – people using mobile OS systems can’t use it). This alone promotes unfair advantage between users.
At the least, give the damn number that sauce provides. It is that simple.
Eric I was reading one of your comments on r/zwift from a few months ago and thought I would come here. You mentioned you cant super tuck if you are drafting and that is a fairly recent change. This was implemented in PD 4.1.1 I believe, but was curious if there have been any further updates to supertuck/downhill drafting mechanics in subsequent updates? I noticed a few months ago downhills started to feel almost impossible for a group to stay together, do you know if anything changed that would cause this or if PD5 will have anything addressing this?
Far as I know supertuck hasn’t changed ever since they made the “non drafting” change when released PD4 in April 2023 (https://zwiftinsider.com/pd4-release/).
Thanks Eric! That’s what I thought as well. I hate to ask a million questions, but what about drafting if you’re 2nd wheel descending (I’ve read your articles that they had a few changes between like 24% and 29% drafting benefit and shifting some of the percentages if your 2nd, 3rd wheel, etc.). I feel the last few months I’ve had multiple races sitting second wheel on a descent blasting like 600 watts and getting dropped by someone supertucking in front of me.
I’ve noticed something like climb portal descents. Someone who was much slower than me going up the climb can do this super tuck thing to drop me on the descent. I’m guessing that person weighs much more than me.
Also, I can push 600 watts goin up hill, but not be able to do that going down hill or on flats.
Weight increases force downhill. But heavier riders are also larger, so have more wind resistance. But the wind resistance increases slower than the force increases, so net, the heavier rider is faster descending. On RGT, until they changed it (at my recommendation), wind resistance didn’t depend on body size at all, and I (56 kg) couldn’t even hold a wheel of a 100+ kg rider sprinting. On races which began with a descent, I had zero chance. They changed the wind resistance model to be closer to Zwift’s model and then I was able to at least avoid getting dropped, although I still had to pedal to stay on large riders’ wheels.
I really like the super-tuck in Zwift because it adds tactics to descending, which feels more like real life than if the game simply rewarded pedaling at all gradients. RGT did not have it, nor does BikeTerra (a current game) last I checked. IRL the position is generally banned but there are similar legal positions which provide reduced wind resistance at the cost of not being able to pedal effectively.
I think they have changed something. Months ago, a 4% grade was sufficient to maintain supertuck speed. It seems to require a steeper grade now.
Supertucking is one area in which I hope they don’t increase the auto-draft seeking. On long descents, when steering is enabled, I’ll steer to the other side of the road from the pack in the hopes of getting out of the draft to supertuck. I don’t want a long descent (e.g. Innsbruck) to have the system notice I haven’t steered for a while and seek the draft to pull me back into the pack (and out of supertuck).
Completely agree about the name plates. There don’t need to be so many, they don’t need a solid black background, and I don’t think they need to be floating above the riders.
There could be a user defined maximum number of plates visible, separate for riders ahead and behind.
They could even add a rider highlight, and an indicator on the riders nearby list, so that there is no need to have name plates at all.
So many UI options…
On PD5, a few things they’ve tried don’t seem to be working but with the on/off nature of the testing it’s hard to identify. Great that they’re still trying to improve it. Hopefully it results in slightly slower pack speeds, which will improve the experience for everyone (except those who like their inflated numbers).
I’d really like to try PD5 in ladder races, that’s where the steering vs non-steering issue is the worst in my experience, and the negative of being pushed sideways out of the pack shouldn’t be so bad with the small field.
Jumping on the tags discussion, it would be great if the rider behind tags didn’t stack. For ladder and TTT events knowing the distance of riders behind is perhaps as important as what you see ahead. When they are stacked it is very difficult to know if you are dropping someone. Yes, just like real life but without a “quick look back” feature (ahem) it is not easily accomplished.
Ive noticed for weeks that the front of groups were splitting into 2 pacelines resembling lead out trains for sprints IRL.
In the past, when you came through the pack, you would gravitate to the center of the road. Now, you were being put on the side of the road (usually left). Then another pace line would form on the other side.
This went away (thankfully) ith the upgrade last week. I was really interested in how today’s TTT was going to work with that odd drafting dynamic. I was picturing problems with holding a single pace line and not splitting at times. Thankfully, that odd dynamic seems to be gone
Steering has been driving me up the wall recently – almost every pacer ride I do I get pushed out the draft by draft seeking riders and then have no way to get back in the draft without breaking as they almost body me. Not sure if this is intended but sure hope they’ve done something to fix it here 🙂
Yeah, this seems to be a problem. Then I fight harder than I expected to stick to the pack and end up not doing the ride (in terms of level of effort) I was planning on doing (unless I drop all the way to the back where there are fewer riders to push me out – but then somebody ahead of me gets gapped and I have to work harder to catch back on again).
I’ve started to just drop back and then use the teleport feature to join the group again when it becomes obvious that I would have to push hard for 30+ seconds to get back into the pack.
Also started doing more Z2 rides in workout mode again instead of doing them with the pacer.
I think it’s impressive how much pack dynamics have evolved over the last few years. The look and flow of the pack is so much more natural than it was when I started on Zwift. And I’m glad to see it’s an area of continued focus!
I would prefer a toggle to just turn off name plates and/or power ups. In many cases, in big bunch sprints you can’t really see ahead anymore, drastically affecting decision making.
I 100% agree re the rider labels, some attacks could occur and not be seen. How about make the labels translucent and well as limit the number?
Jumping on the tags discussion, it would be great if the rider behind tags didn’t stack. For ladder and TTT events knowing the distance of riders behind is perhaps as important as what you see ahead. When they are stacked it is very difficult to know if you are dropping someone. Yes, just like real life but without a “quick look back” feature (ahem) it is not easily accomplished
The only thing I’ve obviously noticed is that when doing Rob-Pacer rides on Watopia (which is my normal go to warm-up) I often tend to start far left of the large pack behind one or two riders that are separated from the main pack, which is a bit weird, possibly to do with how Zwift is dealing with ‘new riders joining’ Robo-Pacers when teleported to them.
I agree with Eric that the number of names shown is often too many in larger rides, also my OCD really really hates that in the ones that show at the bottom of the screen (people behind) there appears to be a transparent “scratch” missing from the black or coloured (for robo-pacers) box as if that shape wasn’t ‘filled’ when it was created but was manually painted and someone missed a bit, I know it’s a tiny tiny thing but I hate it!!
I am not sure if this is a pack dynamic or a game feature. I wish they would increase the number of people shown around you. Right now I think it is 100 riders. This seems to manifest itself during the Tour De Zwift. If I am in the back of a large group, riders keep popping up into existence and then disappearing. Further more, there are times I am in front of the large group and I can’t see any riders or groups ahead of me, even though I am at position say 250. I would like to put a dig in and try and catch a group ahead and I don’t know how far they are.
Thanks Eric, just complaining and my two cents.
Have you asked how many employees were actively testing, and how many hours/km they rode in relevant testing conditions (do not solo erg workouts for example)?
Not long after starting with Zwift during Covid I purchased the Elite Sterzo steering unit but could never get on with it so just used Zwift and relied on it for drafting. I very rarely found myself in the draft on rides which was very frustrating during events like ToW and TdZ.
I know it has been the same for others but since getting a set of Zwift Play controllers I am finding it much easier to stay in the draft and not waste energy trying to stay with it. I will never be in the lead groups but instead of continually being shoved into the gutter or the other side I can at least make a better go of it now.
Thank you for the Heads Up Eric… I’m Riding tonight
and will look to see how I’m effected while riding with
the Pack… I “Have” always noticed that when riding
Solo, that my Avatar always moves towards the back
of the fastest moving rider that passes me without any
input to the Steering from me?
I don’t like the way that large groups often string out in long lines down one side of the road. It seems somewhat artificial to string riders out like this (not sure how it’s decided) and that could be irritating and potentially negative in a race.
I can’t say I had much of a problem with phasing through riders. Zwift isn’t hyper realistic, so it’s always been a bit of a funny mix of what’s realistic and what’s not. This stuff just happens to fall in the “realism that I don’t really care about” side of things.
These dynamics are only for group rides, not races. After doing a few races with the old dynamics and then coming back to group rides, you really get a feel for how much better the race dynamics are.
I’d be happy for rider name tags to be turned off entirely. They often obscure your view of the front in a race.
Kind of agree. Maybe a setting would be nice to choose. Group rides I prefer to have it on.
Steering is incredible outside of packs but is quite a hindrance in them. There is something very wrong with that that needs to be addressed. Pretty tired of getting “curbed” every time I have steering enabled in a large group by the non-steering riders. I also completely disagree with increasing clipping as it just bounces everyone around more (and makes steering more difficult) in limited space with very little added benefit to “realism”.
TTT is Team Time Trialing. Never done this activity, so I had to look it up. 😅
Steering seems really weird to me. It worked better when it first came out than it does now. Perhaps my steering is broken. But all the other game controller buttons seem to work correctly. Add the steering buttons work for turns. 🙄
Exactly I’m Experiencing The Same Issues But Like Zwift Support Zwift Insider Isn’t Believing us pd5 is terrible I hold 3.3 in a beacon group where beacon is 2.6 yet constantly getting dropped since pd5 I’ll be stopping my subscription and going elsewhere it’s unrideable
Yet another fail. So I’ve commented a few times over the years re pack dynamics, in particular the ‘draft effect’ – or lack there of to be more precise! Racing a points race on ZRL just today, both proves and highlights how unrealistic the draft effect actually is. The maximum power output for all categories in my time zone was just over 10 w/kg. This is not a high number. Given it was a points race with 4 distinct sprint points. The rest of the race was done at TT type effort just to keep up – even on the downhills?! I know Zwift isn’t ‘real’, I just never wanted to accept that. Anyone newer to cycling or Zwift may be unaware of this lack of draft dynamics issue, but I’m sure they find zwift racing extremely difficult – well this is why. The reality that we are further away from some degree of realism than ever before is so disappointing. The numbers on zwiftpower from today don’t lie, and they show that draft dynamics are manipulated to favour sustained efforts and heavier riders. I have plenty of IRL racing to compare with, where riders who manage to burn me off on Zwift cant hold my wheel when we’re outdoors. Stupid me for thinking Zwift would actually address this. No wonder the UCI went to another platform for E sports World Champs.
I have to be honest, when this was first released and I saw the impact, I actually thought we would get a patch update within a day or two because it was so bad. I don’t complain much (other than categorization topics), but I cannot beleive we still have these pack dynamics for months. Nobody seems to like them, especially sweepers. And after competing mostly in races recently (where the old dynamics occur), you really see how bad it is now that I returned to group rides again.
On large group rides, as long as you are blobbed from one side of the road to the other, you are ok, but on the more challenging group rides where people stretch the group, the silliness begins. Aside from people shifting out to the sides to create their own pacelines, the constant swimming around is simply annoying and irritating.
It is at the point where I’m simply going to stop riding them. It is that bad.
I’ve read the intent of these pack dynamics and just do not see the benefit especially with the downside. Does anyone really prefer these group dynamics over the race dynamics? I bet if you polled Zwifters, I couldn’t imagine anyone siding with the new group dynamics.