Nothing quite breaks my immersion in the ride like a rider hitting the coffee stop function and latching onto my hip like an unneutered dog.
Now in general, I find the power-up icons, thumbs, and name badges too large and block too much of my view of the road ahead - especially on big group events like the Tour de Zwift. Mercifully, with most power-ups, the effect doesn’t last too long, but coffee stops go on for several minutes. Combine that with the fact that some users on group events abuse the coffee stop and use it like a free power-up to get towed up the big climbs, and we can end up getting stuck behind a mass of icons blocking most of the screen for most of the climb.
I would prefer if the coffee stop were not permitted in fondo-style events or anything with a leaderboard that lists your place out of the participants (e.g. 300th of 1000) at all. These events are only semi-competitive and not as serious as actual races, but I and many others are challenging ourselves to do the best time I can, and it is a bit disheartening to see others getting a free tow up the hill. It also devalues the gameplay mechanism for the feather power-up: I could luck out on the gantry roulette to get a 30 second small weight reduction, or I could just click the always available coffee option for 3 minutes of a free ride up the hill.
I know that these events are classified as group rides, not races, and these users getting a free ride up the climb are just cheating themselves. If Zwift HQ sees that there’s value in keeping the coffee stop feature in fondo-style events, I don’t entirely mind. I’m still happy that I’m getting my workout. My main complaint is on the effect it has on my immersion in the ride through the visual effects:
The icons are too big, too visible, and last too long
Other riders visibly coasting their way up the hill faster than I can push it when working hard
Coasters are pinned way too close to me when I’m selected as the speed match
Suggestion: Make the coffee stop rider invisible. You can leave them and their 0 w/kg in the leaderboard, but take them off the road - similar to the Invisibility power-up or if they had a network drop-out.
Just removing the icons would be a great start, there is too much stuff on screen already and we don’t need to know who is on a coffee break, it is none of my business who takes a break, I don’t need it advertised on the screen.
Where did these silly new icons come from, the thumbs up, red head sweating avatar and the like. Was there a mass influx of riders who wanted more of this crap?
It reminds me of paperboy from the 1980s.
The original PU icons were to large, but we all got used to them - Im not sure anyone was screaming for more things to take up real estate on the screen. It always leads back to the same question… Who the hell is signing off UX changes? Id genuinely love for them to come out and say why we have these awful visuals with every new aspect of zwift.
Next we’ll have no icon and people will feel ignored when they type something, because person is taking a 3mins coffee break after 30mins+ and you have no idea.
I agree that the screen clutter of the coffee break icon is too great. But one problem that would result from making coffee breakers completely invisible is that it would make it hard for sweeps in community rides to use the coffee break to bring back riders who have fallen off the back. Sweeps need to be able to see that the breakers are attached to their wheel. And that is not necessarily clear from the riders nearby list. I think the most pragmatic solution at the moment would be at least to make the icons much smaller.
Seeking to understand why it’s coffee stops that are breaking the realism of a ride when they have no actual impact on you, positive or negative. (Screen real estate aside).
Personally my issue with immersion is we have these two types of riders in every event. This guy has a middle finger icon as his profile and spends most of the event mocking chat.
This guy just constantly yoyos off the front of the pack making races pretty pointless. Since they apparently can’t complete 5 consecutive pedal revolutions, they don’t win races; they just mess with them.
Make it an option for each user to be able to hide the coffee stop riders in preferences.
Also make it possible to adjust the size of icons small/medium/large.
Someone (not me) previously suggested that after a coffee stop the rider gets a same time period of greater aero resistance or rolling resistance which could deter the coffee-stop sprint strategy some folks use on hotly contested events. That would add some fairness.
Alternatively for the ‘fairness’ concern, Zwift could push a couple of buttons and offer options for racing various events, alongside the group rides. That way anyone who wants to do TdZ and thinks coffee stops are a grand injustice could just do the TdZ races instead, where presumably coffee stop would be inactive
Every event is a race, unless someone puts a fence on or has keep together options.
I like the extra resistance idea, it’s not enough to stop people remaining in a group but will make the coffee stop / sprint finish with fresh legs harder to do.
That would solve most of the complaints.
I don’t ride in any events but see the complaints all the time in Zwift chat about the coffee break / sprint trick.
You still get your coffee break, just that you’ll have a bit more resistance afterwards for a short while so the coffee-stopped fresh-legs full-power sprint won’t be quite as fast.
The good people in the back most likely aren’t launching into a 1200w+ sprint at high speed.
Decent amount of tactics involved in Coffee stops. You don’t want to load up lactic acid then pop the coffee stop because it’s hard to flush it. You can’t risk using it when the group might split with you on the wrong side of it. Really effective at nullifying a small group attack.
If you coordinate 2-3 people you can hit warp speed uphill by all using it without being near other riders. However, if you hit a junction or downhill section you will go to 0 km/h.
There is more skill involved in it than most zwift aspects.
Every event is not a race in the sense that I have any sympathy for people complaining about coffee stops existing in them
Anyone complaining about coffee stops in an event that is not listed as a race and is clearly listed as having coffee stops available will get only a smile, laugh, or raised eyebrow from me.
“I know this event has this feature and it doesn’t add to anyone’s whiz-bang racing scores, but I want it to be treated like a race.” Not gonna get sympathy from me. If instead they simply added actually-listed-as-such races to the calendar, poof. Problem solved.
Now if Zwift were to include coffee stops in those, or people were to somehow hack the system and coffee stop on their own, and people complained, I would completely understand and wouldn’t gently mock them by triggering my own coffee stop the moment I see a coffee stop complaint
I agree that many people treat them as races. That’s not the same thing as them being races–in the sense of a) their event listing and b) their inclusion of coffee stop.
This fact–that many people treat them like races in the ‘competing with others’ sense–leads those people to want to complain about those other features that they knew existed when they signed up for the event.
I’m saying that, by simply creating events that are races in every sense of the word, those people could enter those events, and thereby everyone is made happy.
FWIW, I treat these big non-races like races in the ‘compete with others’ sense too. But I somehow magically am able to not be made upset by the non-race features that I know are included.
Isn’t the biggest problem with removing the coffee stop icon, is that another rider hits their coffee stop button while next to someone else who is already on a coffee stop but wouldn’t know it? Can 2 riders each coffee stop together and keep moving?
When it first rolled out they could, and they’d hit some very high speeds doing so.
But to me the question is why should they?
What is the point of the coffee stop? I understand that it’s so that one person can have a break and stay with whoever they were riding with, without the other person having to stop too.
But if everyone wants to have a break at the same time then why not have everyone just stop together? They’ll still be together when they get moving again.
There are still coffee stop bugs. In this edition of TdZ, I have been rocketed from 100m+ behind a bunch up to the bunch and right to the front. I got dropped from a bunch–didn’t care, they were going to drop me eventually anyway, I was just seeing how long I could hang on. But oddly, when they were 100+m ahead of me, and there were no other riders within 10sec behind me…the coffee stop button was still lit up.
So, being one for fun experiments, I hit it. And yeah, like a shot–sped up to I don’t know how fast, blasted right through the bunch ahead of me and hit the front. I turned coffee stop off at that point, but really I should have let it go to see what would happen. (The group dropped me at the next climb like they were always going to, and no one yelled at me on the chat anyway, so I don’t even know if anyone noticed. But it happened.)
