A few times I’ve unashamedly used the Coffee Break button on an uphill section. The behavior has always been very erratic. Once it just turned itself off immediately. Other times, instead of maintaining something akin to my kilowatts prior, it slows more and more and then stops. Most times it is herky-jerky and I’ll suddenly go extremely fast and pass Zwifters around me, then just as suddenly slow to a crawl - all this repeatedly until the break ends.
Are you near another Zwifter when activating your Coffee Stop? The Coffee Stop isn’t a free pass, you need to be close enough to another Zwifter to ‘attach’ to them. Additionally, if they stop, or teleport, or (I think) swerve back and forth across the road a bit, I think you lose the connection. On my ride a few days ago some poor soul attached to me just as I was finishing my ride. He probably returned to his bike to find his avatar standing on the side of the road.
Aha, I assumed that Coffee would simply continue at roughly the kw/pace that I was going just before pressing. I hadn’t intentionally tried to attach to another rider.
The coffee break needs to be dropped for everything except the pacer rides.
Pacer rides you don’t really care, its just random riders and random times and distances with no route badge completion goal or anything, its pure training pace usually. Riders that latch onto you on the biggest hills on the route is just annoying.
You can just rest your legs for 30 seconds and watch them storm off at 6w/kg. Or they get caught out by the bad language checks on the chat….
There was a good suggestion that it should be a request system, the other person “accepts” the request or declines it.
I haven’t been using the coffee stops, but from what I’ve seen of people who have used them on ADZ they seem to work normally without sudden slow downs or also sudden speeding up.
Thank you for the clarification. User error on my part - I hadn’t realized (until I just read the FAQ) that Coffee Stop was only for group riders. But now I have a different request - don’t individual riders have to pee on long rides as well??
Sure, but if you’re riding by yourself you can just stop, and then start again when you get back on the bike (just like IRL). Alternatively, time it so that you take your break when on a decent, and ‘finish your business’ before your avatar gets to the bottom.
Yup. Slapping forehead!
Coffee stop isn’t only for group rides
If I need to do something else off the bike, I just stop and come back.
Yes and no. It’s probably more useful if you are trying to stay with a group, but the groups I’ve ridden with if someone needs to stop for a minute or two, they would all just stop.
People still use it when they are riding on their own, typically watching for someone to come along and tow them along.
In social group rides, the type with a leader, coffee breaks are widely accepted. On free rides it will work if anyone is nearby, but you may find some individuals who resent it.
People resent it because others are smashing that button every 30 minutes on the dot.
Its not being used for its intended purpose. Even approaching 60 I can ride for hours without needing a bathroom break, the whole thing should be limited to one coffee break per ride or else you have to do what the pro’s do….
It’s not my goal to dictate how other people ride or take breaks. If they want me to give them a tow, I am happy to do that. I understand that some people don’t like it for whatever reason, I don’t care about that part.
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People getting annoyed because other people only want to ride 30 out of every 33 minutes are funny.
It literally makes no difference to me. I’ve got my own **** to worry about.
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Once again, the coffee stop would be a lot less annoying if the avatar taking the break would simply become invisible for everyone else for the duration of the break.
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Fine just give everyone the option on a slider on/off to prevent others from getting a tow. I notice that there are plenty of people that don’t even like you drafting off the back of them on solo route rides unless you are prepared to get out front 50% of the time, or for me because I’m heavy I get out front on the downhills, don’t have a problem with that. Drafting is just part of the tactics, the coffee break button is NOT part of the tactics. Anyone turning off the coffee break slider should also not be able to take coffee breaks, lets keep it fair.
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And again, that does not work for some of the scenarios it’s used for such as a ride sweeper pulling someone back to the group.
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Sure whatever if you care about that. I don’t so I’m not proposing any change. I also happily tow someone around for an hour so I’m not the target demographic for those changes.
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I don’t get it; if someone is using coffee break like this, surely they will be stuck to the sweeper just the same whether the sweeper sees them or not.
In the case of the sweeper how do they know the person they’re sweeping hasn’t had a connection timeout and is no longer attached? (not everyone has chat enabled - or they actually had to go to the bathroom etc.) How do they know some other issue with coffee stop hasn’t shown up etc? The idea is it’s helpful to know if the person you’re towing … is there.
Other scenarios which this feature actually makes sense also benefits from the people seeing the person they are pulling. For instance if you are with a friend (or anyone you are trading turns with) and they are pulling you while you’re out getting whatever you need you might latch on to someone else at some point etc, there wouldn’t be any great feedback for whether or not you’re still together. Three minutes later you might show up somewhere else entirely, attached to someone else.
So, for multiple of the cases where this was likely actually designed (i.e. staying with a group that cares about you), it benefits from that group seeing you.
The feature itself is just not designed well, which is why the vast majority of the time you see it used, it’s to just take a break on a hill. There are no real disincentives to doing that, so that’s what people do. There’s no incentive to not end your pacer ride with 3 mins of free km/xp, there’s no game incentive to not use it on each lap of the PRL Full while you take a break, there’s no in-game incentive to not use it on every climb regardless if you know the people you are with etc. So, that’s how it’s used.
There’s no point in getting upset with the people using it this way, it’s just a poorly designed feature from a game incentive perspective.