Did anyone have trouble with the Pace Partners disappearing from their rides today?

I joined Coco on a ride today. Midway through my ride, Coco seemed to vanish both from my own screen and from the minimap. I started my ride around 9am Central US time, and the disappearance happened well before 11:30 CST - I recall that Zwift said that the pace partners may take a break at 9:30 am PDT. Coco gave no warning in chat before disappearing.

Later on chat, I believe someone remarked that Bowie had also disappeared. I did ride with Bowie briefly during the same activity, but later dropped off. I can’t remember what time that was. I did see Bowie a few times around the map, and I think that Coco may have said something in chat after I thought she disappeared. It was pretty crowded today. It’s not clear to me if my device just stopped rendering Coco due to too many riders, or if they actually disappeared. And as a side note, it seemed pretty difficult to maintain the correct distance from Coco today, possibly due to the sheer number of riders in her group.

Has anyone else had trouble?

I’ve tried four times this week to join Coco and she’s never around. Sometimes, none of the pacebots were riding.

I did a ride the other day where the Whole Field disappeared. All the other riders!! On the PC screen and on the companion. Then they came back. It might have been a group ride or it might have been with with Coco. Nobody mentioned it though. Weird.

Yeah it’s weird. I lost CC earlier today too.

I rode with the B group today at about 5 PM CST and everything seemed ok.
There was a brief spell lasting about 10 sec where everyone in the group disappeared.
I figured it was a local internet drop and I just kept riding and everyone popped back up after 10 secs and there were no further issues.

To update, I continued to experience these issues with Coco over the next 3 days. On chat, several other riders reported the same.

I believe the issue was that Zwift only renders 100 riders simultaneously, and the group with Coco was very big. Lots of people (including me) trying to complete the Festive 500 as easily as possible. If this was the root cause, then the app periodically chose not to render Coco and her position. Again, there were multiple times in a ride when Coco simply vanished from my view, usually when I had got a bit ahead of her. When this happened, the drops multiplier bar vanished. However, when I looked at my drops counter, the pace partner symbol was flashing even if Coco was not on my screen. I believe my Drops were accumulating at a boosted rate even if Coco wasn’t being rendered. Also, when Coco reappeared, it did seem like my drops multiplier bar started back where it left off, instead of at 1.0x. This was true even if I had got a bit separated from Coco.

I sort of got used to this, but it was not trivial to pin down Coco’s position in the pack. It made for a rather annoying experience. I was not the only person complaining.

Separately, I think at least one other person on chat complained that they could not find the pace partners on their start menu at all. This didn’t happen to me, but again, I believe someone said it on chat.

@shooj consider moving this post to the Futureworks or the Bug Reports part of the forum as appropriate. I should have posted there to begin with. I thought I would double check with others in case I had misperceived events or something.

@Weiwen_Ng
I flagged up the reports of Coco going missing a couple days ago, and subsequently heard back that she had returned. A deeper investigation is under way.

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Hey. Yes she kept disappearing and reappearing both yesterday and today. Around 1am - 2am EST

Any idea why there were no pace partners this morning at 05:35 South African time? I selected the Sand and Sequoias loop, and did in reverse to try and catch a pace partner from the front, but I didnt find B or C from 5:35 till I quite at 7

@Marius_Boshoff
The Pace Partners reset daily at 5 - 6am UTC, or 7 - 8 am SAST. They’re not available during that one hour window, so I’m not sure why you wouldn’t have seen any of them

While you can try and catch a Pace Partner on the fly for fun, the easier way is to select Watopia at the drop-in screen, then choose the one you’d like to ride with. You’ll be teleported to that bot where it might be at the moment.

Issue happened today for me as well. (Experienced it in the past as well).

I have an Apple TV (non 4K) version. My hunch is the same as previous commenter that Zwift only renders a certain number of riders in the proximity. I keep seeing riders appearing and disappearing and it happens with the pace partner as well.

It just makes it a subpar experience when you are trying to farm for drops and maintain a degree of concentration on the rides.

I have had this same issue two of the last three days. Today was particularly bad. She disappeared at least a dozen times over two hours sometimes for as long as 5 minutes. I noticed her flag at the bottom of the screen would start pulsing on and off before she disappeared. Distance did not seem to matter. Sometimes she disappeared when 3 meters away. It was difficult to concentrate on the ride with this issue. I am not sure how my drops multiplier was affected but I did notice once she dropped off when I was 1.0 and came back quickly at 1.6.

Yesterday at around 17:00 SAST there was again no pace partners to choose from. I have the latest app version, and its not my first time joining them, so its not that I don’t know how to do that. Besides that, what is the reason that they need to be reset once a day, and why an hour delay?

today joined at 15:30 london time no pace partners too be seen

Same here today, 17:19 in Norway.

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