We all know it - there is always the one thing you’re currently working on in Zwift, and you try to do it as optimal as possible. From a design choice, the most recent challenge which tracked wkg was perfect in that sense, it literally didnt matter what activity you pursued, all wkgh were equal (I didnt like the cap tho…)
I am currently working on earning the drops upgrade / buy Halo Bikes. That turns out to be a quite cumbersome job, as it requires a lot of drops. The obvious way to accelerate progress here is to ride with pace partners as they provide a 2.5x multiplier on drops, so I’d say Zwift is incentivizing me to ride with them. I really really don’t enjoy the pace partners and would prefer not to ride with them, I dont enjoy their dynamic pacing, especially on the faster bots its horrible.
As I don’t think it’s bad practice to balance things by taking away something good my feature request would be, that Zwift added a Drop Multiplicator to incentivize for other activities, than riding with a pacer partner, not limited to, but including:
Current Gradient: The steeper the climb, the faster your earn rate. This bonus kicks in at 3% gradients, but scales up as the gradient increases. Bike Frame: Upgrade an entry-level or mid-range bike frame to a high enough stage and it will earn 5% more Drops whenever you ride it
A Drops bonus if you complete the Ventoux KOM and the prize spinner lands on something you already own (example: 15,000 Drops for the helmet or gloves)
So, the trick is to do Ventox repeats on a low level bike (this way you also get the XP bonus)
But as the ZI article states, riding with a bot yields more drops. It would be nice if it was on par with other options.
As @Rich said, they added the bonus to incentivize riding with bots. And then told everyone who didnt like the dynamic pacing to ride on their own. Now even more people will ride with the bots as its the most efficient way to gain drops.
Not aiming to take the bonus away from pace bots, but making other options as viable would be appreciated.
I agree, wish there were more ways to get bonus drops, but you always need more drops.
Maybe things like completing workout plans or for longer plans completing each week’s activities with extra bonus for actually getting them all done within the week. Or give both drops and XP for the weekly ride streak, with more drops for every 5 weeks of the streak.
There has to be ways to reward consistent use of Zwift that can’t be easily gamed (ie min of 2hrs of riding per week for the streak to count, etc) that balance the exclusivity of things like halo bikes without it taking 4yrs of riding to get the reward.
I’d put in a change to give sim mode riders on ADZ and Ventop some more drops than workout mode, just to incentivise sim mode in those climbs, get more people to use it because it’s rare now. If incentives for robopacers are okay, then incentives elsewhere shouldn’t be an issue.
if people want extra drops, the option would be there for them. Not taking anything away from them - but realise this is extremely controversial! How dare anyone propose giving some folks more drops!
Also riding with robopacers on the flat does get a lot more drops than riding on the climbs - there are 300 people huge groups there giving ride ons, while you get less on the climbs (less people there).
How do you stop people using apps that give fake power gaming the robopacer groups and 2.5x multiplier for hours and hours each day? They just sit around doing nothing and ride all day at 300-400 watts.
This happens on the climbs too, but they don’t earn as many drops (less ride-ons) and they don’t get a nice looping route they can leave unattended. In some cases, like in NY the poor folks end up with very sore hands from all that mouse clicking…
It is funny how before the bike upgrades, people were complaining about having too many meaningless drops.
Now people are complaining about not having enough drops.
And it was described as a “problem” that had to be solved. How to deprive people of their drops… What to do about those whales with 200,000,000 drops…
Maybe the Tron bike needs monthly servicing for its high tech but fickle components - 1,000,000 drops per month service fees. Without that it slows down.
While the old fashioned traditional bikes with chains and chainrings just keep going.
