When I am upgrading a distance-based bike the progress bar includes kilometers above the level up and it practically starts the next level at like “20km of 200km”. However, climbing-based bikes have progress bars set to “0m of 2000m” and always start at 0 only from the moment on, the upgrade was paid.
Hi @Thomas_Neugebauer1, welcome to the Forums! I’m Francisco from Zwift Support.
Thanks for pointing this out. What you’ve noticed is expected; the upgrade requirements depend on the type of frame:
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Climbing frames unlock by riding a set amount of elevation, and progress always resets to 0m once you purchase the upgrade.
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Standard road/race frames unlock by riding a set distance, and any extra kilometers you ride beyond the requirement will carry over into the next stage.
Once you hit the requirement for your current stage, it’s best to purchase the upgrade right away. That way, any extra distance, elevation, or time you rack up in that same ride will roll over into the next stage. If you wait until your next ride to buy the upgrade, progress will reset, and you’ll be starting that stage from zero.
That’s how the current system is designed, and it matches what’s outlined in our Bike Upgrades FAQ and the Zwift Insider guides.
Ride On.
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Has the behavior for standard frames been changed recently? It seems now that you have to purchase the upgrade to earn progress in a next phase, like with the climbing bikes. I cannot find anything about it in the change logs of the recent releases.
You’ve always had to buy the just-earned upgrade for non-climbing frames before you save the ride, otherwise you lose the progress towards the next upgrade. If that’s what you mean?
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It must have been changed recently then. During a group ride last Saturday I reached upgrade 3 for the Specialized Aethos climbing bike. I was not able to stop to instantly apply the upgrade and had to ride another 213 meters of elevation during the ride. I bought the upgrade at the end of the ride before saving the ride. Next ride it started with 213 m of elevation already earned for the next upgrade level.
What has changed? Its exactly how it was described and like it was from the beginning.
The statements above imply that upgrade procedures behave differently for climbing bikes and distance based bikes, implying that for climbing bikes the counter always resets to zero when applying the upgrade. If this would have been true (which would have seemed odd), I assumed, that it must have been changed then, because it is not the behavior I noticed two days ago.
Thanks Steve, you’re correct. When upgrading the bike before saving the activity, the progress is used for the next phase.
I tested this a couple of days ago with the Zwift MTB on the Alpe.
I reached a point during the ride where I earned the next upgrade.
I made a mental note of the elevation gain at that point.
I continued on with the ride without purchasing the upgrade.
When I finished at the top, I purchased the upgrade, and the elevation applied to the next level was the difference between what I currently had minus what it was when the notification was shown.
In other words - the elevation gained carried over - it was not reset to zero.