This forum is now working like a support team. It used to be full of optimism, excitement and rumour of upcoming new features and roads. Now it’s just a venting site and forum about what is broken in the game.
This year has seen massive growth in numbers, huge investment from IC companies and yet with every update (which contain minimal new features or roads) more and more bugs are being introduced into the game.
Zero communication from ZHQ about what is going on.
So many people saying that zwift are taking their users for granted whilst putting all the effort into events for the pros.
Please zwift sort this out. We really couldn’t care about virtual tour de Frances or world championships… Hardly anyone watches them… Release the viewing figures if they are so big.
We want a game that works first and foremost, the features we were promised and new roads in watopia, not all the stupid different maps. It’s getting beyond a joke now.
Thanks for the feedback. Sorry that you want me to write a list when a quick scan down the forum is actually a list of all the issues. If you actually read my post it was a call on zwift to fix the issues that are documented in the forum.
Yup, you nailed it. As my original post quite clearly stated. I don’t want help, I just want zwift to fix this. Glad we cleared that up for you. Might be easier to just read the post properly next time?
You’ve immediately run into one of the biggest problems; lots and lots of people still consider Zwift a charity. An organisation they’re so relieved exists at all, that expecting basic functionality to work and solid improvement over time is deemed to be unreasonable. See also discussions around the pricing, when comparisons to other games or digital services are consistently ignored in favour of “It’s so cheap compared to the gym”. And the repeated justification of them doing absolutely nothing about cheating on the platform, and the fact they don’t have a family plan, and their ridiculously poor PR. And so on.
Zwift know all about this public goodwill and lean on it heavily, even going so far as to continually describe themselves as a start-up despite being valued at $1bn, five years in. Zwift don’t need to respond, because they know the customers will do it for them.
My main problem is that I pay £150+ a year to zwift, I have done for over 4 years now (it was a bit cheaper earlier on to be fair).
This is not an insignificant amount to me so I think it is reasonable to be a little annoyed when something that worked one day stops working the next after they force an update on people. If an update is likely to make the game not run on older machines make it optional. I don’t want to have to buy a new PC.
I would be happy to continue paying what I do if no new features were added but they spent 12 months making sure everything that needs fixing is fixed. I don’t care about new bikes, new kit, gimmicky features, just make the basics work and work well.
I think these forums are a blessing and a curse, they give people a place to air their issues and what they’d like to see but that gives them a hope that they may be fixed or introduced. What I have learned from many years of zwifting and using these forums is that zwift might read them but they don’t really use them as a way to prioritise what needs doing. Just look at the save without exit, how long has that been wanted and by basically everyone?
I think it may actually be beneficial to make this forum unofficial or close it because all it does is make people think zwift just take people’s money and run and don’t care about their paying users.
Sorry, mild rant over! I really really like zwift and have been with it from the days when there used to be the blue ghost riders because there weren’t enough “real” people to now when there are so many it makes my android devices crash! but there are small things that really annoy me about it!
Without knowing anything about the codebase behind Zwift, code rot and accumulating technical debt is not unheard of when there is a sudden interest in a particular piece of software and you start to pile on feature after feature.
I would not be surprised if they’re working on a from-scratch-written platform, designed from scratch with scalability and extensibility in mind. Of course, I might be wrong and the got everything right the first time
I would love that. As above, if be happy with no more new features but just did the bugs and the oldest features that everyone has been asking for. Save without exiting and stopping cheating in races. From what you try and piece together though (because zwift don’t like to inform their paying customers) is that a whole new code is unlikely. But if they want to future proof the game… Is say it is necessary. There has always been mild ranting about wanting new roads and features but I’ve never known so much animosity towards the platform than now for lack of fixing basic functionality and the features that people have been asking for for years. It seems like zwift are sticking two fingers up at their paying loyal subscribers and instead giving the pros their day in the limelight.
The “not broke don’t fix it” argument applies if one can show that most users care very much about new features and very little about the bugs, such that the bugs are not leading to the majority of users growing more and more discontented and likely to leave either to a competitor or just out of frustration. Forum participation is never a statistically-valid sample, so we (the forum users) can’t know if that is true; even Zwift may not know if they’re not asking their customers for feedback.
No sane investor would confuse a one-time massive growth opportunity due to short-term and time-limited circumstances (i.e. pandemic) with “wow, look, our product is so awesome that we’ve doubled our users in a year!”
Here is a question: anyone here that canceled their subscription and returned? Why/Why? Has there been any directed response by Zwift to cancelation?
As long as ZHQ objectives are met, no foreseeable change in course should be expected. ZHQ objectives seems to be user/subscriber count increase, and eSports.
Sad as it may sound, the small vocal group complaining has zero impact on ZHQ perceived ability to meet their objectives.
In that case, why bother doing anything? Why even bother responding?
Because the history of technology companies is littered with examples of those who took their market-leading position for granted, and then saw their business collapse when a competitor came along with a better offering.
This is what I don’t get… They seem focused on eSports but the game is absolutely rife with cheats. It’s so easy to cheat on zwift with zero consequences. How can Zwift eSports be taken seriously when it’s an absolute joke?
Eric said a couple of years ago they were developing a separate eSports platform. Where is that? He mentioned rowing in a few weeks… Where is that? He talks absolute nonsense. Over promising and failing to deliver.
Because it’s a lot easier for them to get rid of cheating when it’s only the top level that they seem to care about. There’s no sandbagging to worry about in A/A+ cat. They just get the top level riders to dual record, weigh themselves on video, etc, etc.
They don’t seem to care about having sensible controls for racing at the other levels. They’ve employed WTRL to run some racing for them where WTRL have to use a huge bunch of extra home-grown checks to weed out the cheaters, because Zwift don’t want to implement those themselves. WTRL are doing a great job, but they shouldn’t have to be doing any of these checks themselves.
