2020 year in review? (comparing to 2019)

As someone who joined in April 2020, I just discovered this 2019 Zwift year in review:

Highlights:

  • new Watopia routes
  • Fuego Flats expansion
  • Titan’s Grove expansion
  • Repack Ridge
  • Crit City world
  • Yorkshire Worlds world
  • Bologna time trial world
  • Watopia running track
  • a few new bikes and wheels

Here was what was projected for 2020:

  • Club functionality (allowing teams to organize events, etc)
  • UI Redesign
  • New world launch (Eric Min said, “we are heading east…”)
  • Better automatic race rules enforcement

There was a new world launch, but it wasn’t “east”… and race rules enforcement is still to rare too count it as implemented.

Summary of what I can identify for 2020 so far:

  • a few new bikes and wheels
  • France world
  • Paris world
  • steering support (not catching on, clearly)
  • pace partners
  • enhanced broadcast tools

Anything else?

France and Paris are great, but it seems like a big scaling back from 2019 progress.

Upgraded infrastructure to handle over 50000 riders.
Steering
Boostmode
Pace bots
New powerups
Teams
Ride organizer tools

Also 2019 people were working in the office, 2020 is not a normal year.
We are also paying the same as in 2018.

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I had steering and pace bots. Teams? I’m unaware of teams in the current release.

True – there’s the anchor and tractor power-ups. They’ve had no effect on any of my events, so I forgot them. And I’ve not done any events with boost mode: they seem rare.

I’ve been more productive this year, not needing to commute at all, and not having much reason to take vacations.

I’m not complaining: it’s just observation.

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I should have said Clubs. Sorry for that. You should have some invites to clubs on the companion app.

Missed a few things that I can recall:

  • World choice was increased to two guest worlds plus Watopia always available
  • Meetup increased from 50 to 100 participants
  • lots of other Meetup improvements, messaging, all worlds available, race mode, late join, etc.
  • new training plans and workouts
  • updated feather and burrito power up
  • weight and height restrictions for junior riders
  • Richmond refresh
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This is a good list. But if I’m going to credit these things to 2020, then I should also credit to 2019:

  • ghost (cloaking) power-up
  • burrito power-up
  • new training plans happen every year.

meetup size increase and increasing server capacity aren’t feature expansions (changing a number of a variable from 50 to 100 in the meetup code?), although the race-mode for meetups is a welcome feature. RGT allows paying users to create their own races, and this is sort of a step in that direction. Weight and height restrictions for juniors is another minor, if very welcome tweak: one line of code (probably more, but could be done in one line). I wasn’t around for the old Richmond, but enhancing existing worlds is a good investment, I think, especially adding roads as was done with London in 2018.

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Just a reminder that when the price was raised to $15/month it was with the promise that it would help fund additional features. So I wouldn’t have expected it to increase.

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I cant celebrate achievements when the overwhelming theme is that Zwift are breaking things and not supporting customers. Take the pace partners, worked well for a bit but now hit by the same stupid drafting bug that makes it easier to ride on your own. 5 times in I have had to repair my trainer as hills are easy and decents are hard, photos arent being included etc etc, and Zwift are now notably absent from forums despite adding a forum manager. and then they take over Zwiftpower and break it. FFS.

Sorry, but my review gets 1/10 . Support your product Zwift.

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That’s only available to people in Club Jarvis, isn’t it? Not to most of us.

No @Steve_Hammatt I got invited to several clubs.

Ok, it’s just me being unpopular then, clearly. :rofl:

Actually I suspect you are overestimating the number of people being invited into clubs.

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Regarding the infrastructure, do you recall seeing any architectural documentation on how it works, is it a collection of clusters where you get handed over to another cluster at crossroads so from your viewpoint the worlds just exists in your own neighborhood?

According to Zwift insider as of last month, it was a “closed β feature”, accessible by 25 specific clubs – I wouldn’t count that as a general feature, but that’s just my perception. There were 550 thousand Zwift accounts in January 2018, according to Wikipedia, so if that’s a million now, that would be 40 thousand riders per club, if everyone got one club invitation.

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@_Erlkonig

Ask you club if they are sending out invitations. some bigger clubs has a big backlog to send invites.

With the release 1.0.58982 on 23 November, maybe add

  • 2020 UCI E-Sports world championships

to this list.

That’s not a feature, it’s an event.

A big chunk of the things on the 2020 list are beta, and unknown or inaccessible to the majority of Zwifters. (Clubs, steering, boost mode, experience mode). The backend upgrade to support a large number of Zwifters was 2019.

2019 looks like a great year in comparison, yet note that the general community feeling was that 2019 pace has slowed considerably, which Eric Min directly recognized during his annual Minterview podcast chat with Zwiftcast. In comparison 2020 has ground to a halt.

That fact we pay the same now as 2 years ago is also a moot point. That’s not how a subscription model works.

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