XP systems are often used to incentivize the behavior devs want to see in people playing their game, and often differntiates between casual and intense players. In this case, the main drivers of XP are going to be km ridden and streaks (you get some for achievements, but that won’t be the main driver on the way to L100). It’s rational to me that they do some form of streak because ‘just ride’ is beneficial training advice for most cyclists that have many other commitments. So there the incentives line up with actual benefit to you as a cyclist.
So, you get a big bonus if you ride twice a week at any length over 2km, and levels are easy to get quickly with or without that bonus. The system is incentivizing riders who don’t ride much to just get on the bike and ride a bit, and they will see material levelling progress in a week.
That said, with how tight the levels are… for someone who rides every day… those do not feel like much of an accomplishment. It’s only 11k XP from level 99 to 100, that is the last level at the moment, and folks can do that in a week if they wanted to. Is there a big difference between a L99 rider in Zwift and L100? No, not at all. Was it an accomplishment to get that last level? Maybe, but nowhere near as much as going from L59 to L60 in the old system.
This does not get into at all the issue of banked XP even. The thing I’ve been pondering is how this system does seem good for folks who don’t ride much, but folks who do ride a ton are going to be at L100 very quickly with nothing to do with their 50k drops per level.
Am I really excited to get to L51? Not really. Why? Because it will happen in less than a week, might also get to L52 next week if I do a long ride. Before my next level was going to be a month of consistent riding away which felt more like an actual accomplishment.
Personally I am ok if the highest levels are a grind. That’s what I’m used to in the games I play. I understand why that might not be fun for folks who don’t ride a lot indoors.
Nice example. It took me over 200 weeks of riding to get the fire socks (probably the best level reward in the game), with a hell of a lot more than 4km/week.
This change really devalues my achievements. At the very least, the original fire socks should give off blue flames or something.
112 users here, some of them Zwift staff, not all complaining (but some frequent posters complaining more than once ). I didn’t count exactly, but there are maximum 100 complaints.
How many percent of the Zwift community is it? 0,01? I respect your opinion, but it is yours, not universal.
I feel like you still haven’t characterized my issue with the new system.
I don’t really care how others are progressing through the levels, great for them! Anyone getting on the bike is a good thing.
The level system is there at least partially to motivate. For it to function as motivation it needs to roughly make logical sense. If the level system is equivalent to a random number then no one is motivated by that and no one will care. So the logical consistency of the level system is absolutely key for it to serve a useful purpose.
For example, the amount of time you have to put in to achieve level 100 depends on if you created your zwift account before or after Dec 2023. So that achievement has two different levels of actual effort it takes to achieve. That doesn’t make sense.
Secondly, the new highest level is below the old highest level. That also doesn’t make sense. People have spent years to achieve the highest level, and now that achievement doesn’t even exist anymore! And there is nothing to replace it, they are already above the new max level. And it sounds like they are suggesting that level 100 is the absolute max that they will never increase, whereas before there was the implicit expectation (based on past zwift changes) that it would be increased over time. So there isn’t even hope for the future to have a new goal to strive for.
The frustration is that zwift could have done something that made sense for high XP users very easily. All they had to do was add enough new levels above 100 to at least reach the old level 60. Then at least there is a new achievement that you are going for. And they could have made the transition to the new system not put old and new accounts on different footings (ie XP == level).
When one signs up for school they plan to be there for a specific number of years from the beginning and their end goal is something else besides school.
With zwift you don’t sign up hoping to exit zwift in 4 years. And there isn’t really a goal outside/past zwift. Zwift is an ongoing thing. I can’t speak for everyone, but I think the most popular use case is to keep or improve fitness during times when the outside weather is bad. Fitness and bad weather outside are both ongoing things that aren’t going to end.
If you took a game like WoW for example, a week is a lifetime. In vanilla WoW (2004) it would take months to go from level 1 to 60 - more than a year for more casual players.
These days people can speedrun to the level cap in less than a day. It’s all about the endgame.
Thing is, Zwift has no endgame. It’s not that sort of MMO. So in the XP sense it’s all about the journey.
But the journey itself isn’t actually all that interesting. =)
In terms of gaining levels, maybe. In terms of clawing back stored XP, far less so.
I’m the opposite. I’m a lot less likely to bother aiming for something I think is a long way off; or at least I’ll enjoy the grind less. I hate grinding in games.
But if the journey itself is fun it isn’t a grind.
I got to a very high level in Overwatch for example because that game is so much fun to play I’m on it every day, often multiple sessions per day.
It also had a flat levelling structure – the new OW2 progression system is more exponential and does feel more of a slog, although I still play as much as ever because it’s fun.
This is better then having your XP reset to 500k (I was just over 1M at the time)
get to 750k XP for Level 60
XP stays frozern at 750k for months, “but it’s being calc’d in the background”, finally show us our “real” XP after months of complaining about it.
At least this time I get to keep my XP.
is the new XP ceiling good - no
does it look expandable - possibly, it does look better the older system and I look forward to the race to Level 200
Some people here have been thru the Level 25/50/60 changes, I tip my hat at these veterans, they’ve been through a lot.
I think it’s amusing when those who are happy with a change that some don’t like decide to roll out the argument of “but those complaining represent only a tiny proportion of Zwift users so they should be ignored!”.
On that basis Zwift should never take notice of any negative feedback on the forums. Would those people putting forth the former argument agree with fhe latter, I wonder? I guess that Zwift were wrong to take.note of the negative feedback on the Zwift Racing Score, right?
I was replying to someone suggesting 90% of people hated the change. I was just pointing out that it is probably nothing like that percentage of all users.
I’m also not happy with the change just trying to look for any positives and move on.
Well I, for one, aren’t saying that. I’m just pointing out that some folk are happy with the change and that it’s just as important to hear their voice.
making the jumps between levels more uniform makes sense, but making 100 far fewer XP than old level 60 makes zero sense to me and is the cause of most of the problems people seem to have with the new system.
If they had kept 60 at 750,000 and built up to 100 from there with new levels but made the XP needed from 1 to 60 less random everyone would have been about the correct level already and then just worked their way up to 100. only thing to think about would be people currently at 60 and how fast or not to accelerate them to 100 (or - crazy idea - let them choose!)
I was 60 and with the streak bonus and the smaller gaps between levels plus accelerated path I am leveling up pretty much every 2 or 3 rides and it is becoming completely meaningless and no sense of achievement in it. And given the streak bonus is added after the ride i often level up between rides and so don’t even notice it has happened!
I don’t know if you answer my post, but I never said anybody should be ignored. What I mean is nobody should claim that their opinion is the universal one.
I intentionally didn’t say whether I was happy with the changes or not.
But this said I need another 4,375 XP to get to level 47. That would mean I needed 4,489 XP in total to reach level 47, so I’ve actually had to get 89 XP more than I should have with the discount.
Even if my +114 XP was pro-rata’d at a 20% discount (91 XP) I should only need 4,309 XP to reach level 47.
This is the way it should have been reworked.
How in the world Zwift came up with blowing up the entire XP leveling system the way they did is astonishing.
Astonishingly bad.
). I didn’t count exactly, but there are maximum 100 complaints.
