Blockquote Zwift CEO and Co-Founder Eric Min added: “We’re delighted to finally be able to unveil the plans for the first UCI Cycling Esports World Championships. 2020 has been a big year for esports as it has helped fill the gap left by traditional sport. Moving forward we look forward to establishing this as a new discipline of the sport – not one to plug gaps, but one that’s truly complementary to other disciplines, whether that be road, cyclo-cross or mountain bike. There’s a huge opportunity to grow the sport with esports and I’m proud that together with the UCI, we are able to lead the way.”
I understand the gripes about it not being (apparently) open to the pure Zwift teams, but on the other hand it’s a UCI sanctioned event so it makes sense it’d only be for UCI-registered teams and riders.
No one can just rock up to a World Championship road race and expect to get a ride.
That would be nice, however, we all benefit from the focus on getting these pro races and classic events too. Without the tour de France we wouldn’t have the France and Paris worlds, without the UCI world championship deal we wouldn’t have Innsbruck, yorkshire and looks like Switzerland is up next. The Olympics will also bring new worlds and roads to ride.
So, what happens to Switzerland Zwift? Shelved?
I’m sure we all will get some level of racing the same courses as the pros will. But, Zwift Insider says it will be Watopia courses, not Switzerland as was previously planned. I was training for September 20-27 week. Now what?
Another nail in the coffin of the Zwift community and another middle finger to all the regular Zwifters who give life to the platform.
Zwift have shown that they can’t do two things at once so their focus on professional esports means that everything and everyone else takes a back seat.
The argument that it benefits the broader community is BS. So we got a few kilometres of road and a big hill out of the virtual TdF. Big deal. Start fixing things that have been issues for 5 years and show some damn respect to the clubs and community rides that provide a never ending stream of unpaid content.
Simple solution… install RGT or Rouvy or Fulgaz or whatever and give Zwift some competition to sharpen their minds.
It’s true, but the tie-ins with those events is an incentive; Zwift can promote themselves through the spotlight events.
Without the event tie-ins, I do think there’s less incentive for Zwift to add as many new roads. On the other hand, if it means all the new roads they do add are on Watopia, I’m all for it.
People working on those subsystems very likely aren’t 3D modellers or map builders. They’d be a different team, or several teams. Even the UI teams are more likely to be 2D artists and UX designers, rather than 3D mappers.
Maybe when Zwift was young with a handful of developers, that sort of thinking might have held water. But they’ve many developers now, and there’s much less likelihood they’re saying to someone “hey, rather than work on fixing sandbagging, go away and make some new maps.”
It would seem the reality is the development priorities of Zwift don’t align with the priorities of its users.
This is unfortunately a common mistake young companies make - they pursue the whims of leadership and ignore the community of users that made them successful.
Another nail in the coffin of the Zwift community and another middle finger to all the regular Zwifters who give life to the platform.
It would seem the reality is the development priorities of Zwift don’t align with the priorities of its users.
I often see that there are folks on here who are frustrated about not getting frequently requested features implemented, and yet… I feel like I’m a “regular Zwifter” and I’m just not having the negative experience that I see described. For me, it’s as simple as 1. fire up Zwift, 2. choose a route (and, often, a workout), 3. enjoy/suffer (as the case may be). Utterly simple. I’ve only been around since April, but I honestly can not think of a day when I concluded that this or that missing feature fundamentally spoiled my experience. I may as well add that I’m thrilled to have new routes. According to ZC, there are “8561 Zwifting Now.” Do we have a confirmed metric for knowing what percentage of these are the real regular Zwifters/users who give life to the platform, as compared to those who (apparently) aren’t?
Hi Xavier. I totally understand your perspective - that’s how I felt for the first year or so I used Zwift. But the more miles I rode - and the more months I paid my subscription fee- the more irksome details started bothering me and I wondered why they had gone unfixed.
With every new release, I was hopeful that some of the issues would get fixed but instead it always seemed some random niche feature was introduced instead. The more I used Zwift the more I started to explore group rides and races. I quickly grew frustrated by races that obviously weren’t fair.
Maybe you will never be bothered by some of the long standing issues folks in these forums often raise. I hope you aren’t. But I suspect as you use Zwift long enough you will start to feel the same.
