For sure this have been discussed here earlier but once again…
Coffee breaks… why oh why …I mean I totally understand the feature, but some sort of “penalty” would be nice from using those…
So what makes me write this is that yesterday there was an event:
Starting 2025 with a Bang ! … Achieving your Personal Best 100km!
Even I was not going to make firstly my pb and secondly even the distance I was a bit displeased when I was going hard to keep in group and then many riders uses ‘coffee break’… This happened immediately when those were availble and then again when those were available second time. Ahh, didn’t like that at all. And yep I know, it’s nothing away from me, but even though. Irritated me.
So what came to my mind was that should it be so that you wont f.ex accumulate your mileage in coffee breaks?
Kind of penalty since your time is rolling and speed average is going down but it still keeps you in the group which is the original idea isn’t it.
I think your beef is with the event organizer who chose to allow coffee breaks in the event. They could have chosen to disable that, if they agreed with you.
As for the penalty I don’t think I need to explain my opposition in order for it to not happen.
Personally, the biggest drawback “penalty” of taking a coffee break is that your average wattage drops. To be fair, Zwift miles are overstated—the only thing that truly matters is power over time—so I really hate losing momentum. But when I’ve got to go, I’ve got to go! I’d love to see how those who hit the “coffee break button” every 30 minutes hold up in real life.
As far as I know, the only races that allow coffee breaks are those part of the secret society that believe in racing group rides like the Tour De Zwift events, that start today in just over three hours.
Of course it’s not a real PB! And in Zwift even the segment times usually doesn’t tell a thing since I do not remember if I have done it in massive group or not. But the event (ride) name was advertising that with double draft and with fastest TT bikes on game, so…
But yep, not really complaining, just found it funny that I actually did irritate a bit
And if I do so, I’m pretty sure that more people do irritate much more
But if it is really so that event organizers could prevent use of coffee break, then it’s up to them how they see use of it.
Double draft on TT bikes?
Yeah, looks like that was organized rather messy, kind of like over lapping race categories.
Throw in the inaccuracies of virtual shifting plus all the usual cheating and I’m just going to try to improve myself.
IIRC there is one event that is set up as a race but has late join and coffee stop enabled.
Can’t remember the name, and it might not have survived the latest cull, but it is possible to configure an event to be a race and have coffee stops.
But you’re right, generally no coffee stops in races, and if there are coffee stops it’s not really a race.
I see where you’re coming from because in general I like it when game incentives are aligned with goals that I personally have, and in my riding I don’t personally like to be incentivized to stop for 3 mins to take a break on hills which is kinda what coffee break does.
The feature has a use case that makes sense: you might be riding with others and have an interruption, so this is a way to deal with real life stuff while you’re halfway through a ride. But my guess is the actual use case of “there’s a 3 min hill, and I’d like to stick with this fast group without killing myself” is probably the use case it’s more used for since there’s really no in-game reason not to use it at all.
I suggested this before, but maybe if they implemented it as a ‘donut break’ where you gain weight and cDA the longer you use it, and have to burn off the donut weight once you get back or something, at least there would be some in-game reason not to always use it for a climb. Of course it would have to not be an advantage on the descents otherwise that would be an entirely new tactic, ha.
Anyhow, as it is people can choose to use it whenever it’s available, and there’s no reason to get upset at them for doing so because that’s the game.
I find the Coffee Break is usually not useful to me as it is presently set up.
I generally don’t ride group rides where “teleport” is not an option so getting off is no big deal and most those rides are prerace warm ups so I don’t care about the group.
On the 2 group rides that mattered that I have done since Dec, I wanted to use a Coffee Break to redirect a fan that was bumped and to get my water bottle and in both cases, the coffee cup was greyed out.
I guess you have to use in the first 5 min or wait 25 min.
I eventually did use it in both cases but I was not pleased with the time limit.
I’m fine with one every 25 min but why block it early in the ride.
That’s when most people realize something needs to be adjusted.
I often wonder if I truly need to know when someone is taking a coffee break. Honestly, I think I’d rather not!
Additionally, I wish the graphic power-ups and coffee break notifications were reduced to a quarter of their current size. Even on a 50-inch ultra-high-definition screen, they take up way too much space and dominate the display.
I reckon each user could have the option to hide the emoji icons and coffee break icons if they want.
Some folk will want to see it, so they can be prepared for the coffee-break user sprinting full speed at the end of the event after using their energy saving power up.
I know it’s not a race but even well known racers treat some of those “tour” events as races.
Should it be renamed to reflect that and the icon changed to be a “sticky bottle”?
Agree with your thoughts on CDA penalties, perhaps even reduce the amount of draft a user gets to 25% of normal after they use the function for the equal amount of time.
! … Achieving your Personal Best 100km!
I was a bit displeased when I was going hard to keep in group and then many riders uses ‘coffee break’… This happened immediately when those were availble and then again when those were available second time. Ahh, didn’t like that at all. And yep I know, it’s nothing away from me, but even though. Irritated me.
