Drop shop: Bikes and wheels too cheap?

Feature Requests
1

On the drop shop, do we think that:

  • New bikes and wheels are too cheap, and should be more expensive

OR

  • New bikes and wheels are too expensive, people are having to do drops farming and other hacks to be able to afford anything new in a reasonable time.

I can see both sides of the equation, there are drops “whales” with hundreds of millions of drops, they never buy anything, but could do so if they wish. Is that a problem that needs to be solved with more expensive bikes and wheels?

While others don’t have enough drops and had to use bots/teleporting in the big spin events recently to try and farm drops quickly in order to afford new bikes/wheels.

2

I’m OK with how they are. There are good choices for people who don’t accumulate a lot of drops, and good choices for people who want to work toward something harder to get.

3

The biggest issue these days it’s not just the inflated prices of the frames and wheels, but the cost of playing the silly upgrades game to neutralise marginal or even major gains in races/TTs.

4

Bikes are fairly cheap, Upgrades are way out of control, but necessary if you are racing.

I would like a halo bike, but I would never spend the time or money to upgrade it. So, it just becomes a piece of jewelry. I rarely ride my Tron. And the good thing is, nobody knows if it is level 0 or level 5. The halo time trial bike looks cool but it is quite slow, plus I don’t see why I have to get three bikes up to level 5 just to purchase for ten million? Just make the halo bike at level 5 when you buy it. Who is the ‘brains’ behind these crazy ideas?

5

The good thing is there are no climbing halo bikes (not yet anyway).

I suppose having said that, there now will be (eventually) and everyone doing ADZ or Ventop will be frantically spending and upgrading them as fast as possible to reduce any disadvantage in lap times.

On Ventop and ADZ the current halo bikes are really slow. Among the folks doing genuine 40min or less lap times on ADZ every little bit is important. There are some who really do have that speed.

6

Some frames are a bit overpriced I think. And the upgrades certainly are. Not for those who already have those millions of drops but for those starting a having spend a few here and there it is a lot to have to gain 1.750.000 drops for a frame and than have to upgrade it.

If you just ride Tempus alone and in a zone 2 pace you get around 30k drops an hour.

Thats a lot of riding to get those 3.6M drops needed to buy and upgrade one frame …

7

Zwift could make everything a lot cheaper.. very simple. Take two zeros off of everyone’s drops balance, and same on the price of everything, while also reducing the earn rate as well to 1% of it’s current speed..

8

Yikes this is.. a big block of text, but fear not, it’s mostly just numbers you can skip over until the bottom.

I think I summed it up pretty clearly on the last dropshop update page that the prices are absurd.

The fact that the better of the two new Van Rysel road bikes is more expensive, and despite having the same star ratings as bikes that were in the 700,000 :droplet: range but cost 1,500,000 :droplet: is plenty of enough explanation.

All of the new bikes take quite literally 2x or more time to unlock for the same :star: ratings.

The schema has been thrown out the window.
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Let’s dig a little deeper though and actually look at some really basic math. :shovel:
I’ll use the same comparison I did on the VR bikes on that thread since I’m familiar.

The new Van Rysel RCR-F dropped on 1.113 with a double :star: :star: :star: rating.
The older Giant Propel and TCR match the RCR-F also with a double 3 star rating.
(Previously I only compared the TCR, Propel will make sense in a second).

Based on the useless :star: rating, but seeing how these 3 bikes match, let’s compare prices.
Giant TCR SL 2021: 566,100 :droplet:
Giant Propel SL Disc (circa 2018): 1,102,900 :sweat_droplets:
Van Rysel RCR-F: 1,500,000 :umbrella_with_rain_drops:

Pinarello Dogma F 2021: 1,350,000 :sweat_droplets:
but wait, this is a :star: :star: :star: :star: bike! (4 and 3 technically)

Seems quite lopsided already.
Really rough stats comparison, the old TCR is kind of rubbish. The old Giant Propel is not terribly far behind on aero, but considerably more heavy.
The old Dogma 2021 however… is extremely similar in stats (we’re talking… Insider test, 2 seconds difference climbing, 4 seconds flat.. over the hour. Where the Propel is same flat, but 16s slower on climb)

Total upgrade path cost + frame:
Giant TCR SL 2021: 1,316,100 :droplet:
Giant Propel SL Disc (circa 2018): 3,002,900 :sweat_droplets:
Pinarello Dogma F 2021: 3,250,000 :sweat_droplets:
Van Rysel RCR-F: 3,400,000 :umbrella_with_rain_drops:

Note that gap with the old TCR. Actually I haven’t done this math so the Propel takes my by surprise that it’s a high-end. Let’s put that into time though; drop numbers are IMO pretty meaningless until we look at the actual time gaps. :watch:

I agree with Peter, the 30k range an hour is close enough to what I experience as well.
Giant TCR SL 2021: 19 hours
Giant Propel SL Disc (circa 2018): 37 hours
Pinarello Dogma F 2021: 45 hours
Van Rysel RCR-F: 50 hours

upgrades:
Giant TCR SL 2021: 43 hours
Giant Propel SL Disc (circa 2018): 100 hours
Pinarello Dogma F 2021: 108 hours
Van Rysel RCR-F: 113 hours
Zwift Entry full upgrade 0-5: 13 hours
Thought that last one would be fun to add.

Purchase + Upgrade:
Giant TCR SL 2021: 62 hours
Giant Propel SL Disc (circa 2018): 137 hours
Pinarello Dogma F 2021: 153 hours
Van Rysel RCR-F: 163 hours

Concept: 667 hours

I think just knowing that it takes 33 hours to produce 1 million drops is all one really needs to know… and how many weeks that takes the average user.

What did we learn?
Probably more of what we knew; the star system is a junk rating system and either needs reviewing or replacing to 5 stars. We also learned a former generation bike and a Zwift bike can be fully upgraded in the time it takes to upgrade a newer frame due to the increase in cost.

10 more hours though even for a bike that’s been around as a previous generation and nearly matches the abilities is still significant; for most people that’s easily another full week of riding, or a lot more depending on the user.

What’s really worth noting again is that the TCR listed is the same 3 star rating, and it’s 100 hours less. I guess if anything, it just proves again that the star rating needs an overhaul; and if it doesn’t go to 5 stars, perhaps a logarithmic system or curved would be far more useful…

These are still massively high numbers; the concepts for sure are for the dedicated, that much can be stated.

9

Not just that, but upgrades as well - for the most part they are all skewed towards distance.

Great if you ride around in robopacer groups on flat courses all the time. 100-160km per day some folks do, they get the upgrades fast.

I’m doing 50km and 2100m+ per day, less great. I eventually got the Project 74 to level 5, The Cannondale R4000 is at level 1, progressing very slowly to level 2.

Good thing is I’m earning enough drops to pay for the costly upgrades.

It’s already looking like everyone thinks the bikes are too expensive.

10

It probably doesn’t matter for most people, though.
The “serious” ones will go look at ZI to find the speed tests and go with the one that is ranked best for either climbing or flat. That’s the one that will be purchased and upgraded.

11

Correct; or the only other reason why someone buys anything, because they have it or like it.
So yes the majority of the shop can be fluff but, with those also in mind… we all want something the drop shop doesn’t have.

I will note though; since the release of the upgrade system and new bikes, while there’s plenty of Tronbikes around, the rest of the populace is all over the map.

It’s not a sea of grey anymore… races mostly relegated to seas of some white, but fields are usually full of all sorts of bikes now.

@Chris_D9 I’ve got a slew of probably like 8 or so bikes if not more right now that are level 4 waiting on the upgrade to level 5… but without drops I have no reason to upgrade them; I can’t afford a halo bike, and if I bought up all the upgrades I would be even further away.

The expensive bikes are basically a 1:1 ride to upgrade cost, so you net zero all the way out to Level 5. So if you care enough you’re stuck there riding anything until you can afford something else if you wish to.

On a laughable topic,
It is kind of funny to think of what your “yearly income” of drops is. Mine is 23,400,000 roughly.

12

I don’t think the “whales” issue is something that needs to (or feasibly can) be solved. I’m an “in-betweener” as once I finish leveling up my SP74 I’ll have enough drops once I upgrade Zwift frames that I’ll be able to buy a Tron…but not sure if I will because it’ll wipe me out. There’ll be new frames and new Halos coming this fall, maybe I’ll go for one of those but TBD of course.

The real issue is newer users though. They can go read all about the exciting top-performing new frames on ZI and then…realize they’re looking at several months of riding before they can even afford one, at which point there’ll be new better frames that might have even more inflated prices that they can’t afford. It’s not public data so this is a total WAG, but I’m betting the “average active user” is putting in fewer than 5 hours per week on the platform. And then we get new wheels that are actually pretty mid that cost a cool million and a half drops.

I don’t think inflating the accrual rate is worth even considering, but bringing down the prices and adding some way to sell off old frames and wheels for drops would make the in-game economy a lot more interesting and engaging for the non-whale users.

13

If I’m Zwift and I see that users will need to stay on the platform even longer and keep paying the annual/monthly fee… what incentive do I have to lower drops prices? Higher prices = longer subscription

14

There’s a balance. If it’s going to take effort but it’s reasonably attainable, that’ll drive engagement. If it’s so high that it seems impossible, that’ll discourage users. I think six+ months of riding to get a base-level frame and fancy set of wheels is excessive. Adding a trade-in mechanism would (at least partially) address this as well as all the poor-garage-UX issues.

Forza Horizon games go the opposite direction to the “too much money” issue, they bury you in cars and money but it’s well-organized and there’s always something worth buying even if it’s just for fun. The garage is clean and easy to navigate. You can tweak appearance and performance aspects of each car. And there’s rarely any stress about “shoot I wasted all my money on this,” because keep at it and you’ll have enough for the next shiny object before long.

It’s nice to get away from the stress of the real world by getting on Zwift. I don’t want to be reminded that everything is unaffordably expensive here too.

15

A Forza style paint editor would be pretty awesome to see in Zwift but I don’t see that coming. It seems the decision on liveries on bikes is pretty locked down to a bare minimum… even the paint slider is starting to be pushed off to the side, almost as if the devs wished it was never added in the first place.

But yeah, the hourly rate is a big deal.

For a new user wanting one of these newer bikes since ZHQ continues to remove frames from the garage for unknown reasons; they might only be putting in 3-5 hours a week tops.

To buy say that new RCR-F for a new user?
Just to purchase the bike is going to take someone 2.5-4 months.

So they better stick with it, or simply not care.
Which I think is what most will end up doing; it’s a feature of this program, but they aren’t really allowed to be part of it without sinking a significant amount of time into.

Does make you wonder how many people become addicted in an unhealthy way to see how much stuff they can unlock.

16

I agree with you on that, I mentioned it only because I noticed a while back someone else brought it up as some negative thing.

I am not that wealthy with drops either, I have 20mil of them. I have the bikes that are most suitable for the riding I do.

They do, and use bots to do it (or other dubious means like sprinting/coasting or performance manipulation). Fortunately it looks like this might be on the way out.

Hopefully before the next batch of halo bikes has everyone doing 2500km/week riding on Ventop like the last time.

17

All the new bikes today are between 1.7 and 1.8 million.

18

Stoneway Sprint inflation effect? :joy:

19

I figure they just roughly say 1 drop = $0.01 USD. In which case it works out roughly, except the $18,000 World Tour team bikes have wheels on them, while we have to pay another $6,000 for a wheelset.

20

OK but how hard is it to get the drops to buy bikes compared to dollars? In Zwift I can accumulate a ton of drops with regular riding without doing anything crazy and easily buy a top shelf bike. I’ll never buy a WorldTour level bike with dollars if I live forever. It’s a fantasy marketplace and it kind of has to be that way. In my mind I completely disconnect the dollar value of the bike from what I have to do to get it in Zwift.