Event Chat Update [July 2021]

What's New? Zwift Game
1

Hi everyone,

We’ve made some updates to the way in-game chat works during events, and will be enabling it today.

  • When you’re in an event - you’ll see chat bubbles from anyone whose avatar you can see (and vice versa).
  • Depending on how the event is set up - you may be able to see chats from all categories (e.g. a chase race) of players nearby…
  • Also depending on event setup - you may see chat from free riders nearby who are not in your event.
  • Players will always see what the leaders and sweepers of that event are saying
  • Ride leaders and sweepers will see chat from all event participants regardless of their relative position

If you notice anything that’s not working great - let us know so we can continue to improve it.

3 Likes
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Hi @shooj,

I thought that was the part that was broken? Don’t we all want to see ALL the chat from others in the same event, now it is limited to the 100 avatars that are drawn in your vicinity? It is very strange and confusing seeing the ride leader respond to questions that you didn’t see asked. Many times I feel like I am missing out on the conversation or it is hard to follow. This will be really bad in large events.

Edit: or will the companion app show all the messages regardless of the avatar position?

This seems wrong too, why do we want to see chat from people not in the event? Will free riders see the chat from those in events as they go by too?

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I wonder whether its “see in mini-map”, “see in riders list”, or “see on-screen”?

I initially thought that this could be bad for the smaller rides too where the beacons are relaxed on not keeping groups tight but depends on interpretation - regardless, this is not what Group Chat Funkiness thread highlighted as being broken nor what was committed to being fixed. Disappointing after waiting 7 months for a proper fix.

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I just went back and read through some of that thread, at one point @Eric mentioned that the chat is limited by design and in certain situations that makes sense. If I am free riding in the jungle I probably shouldn’t see chat messages from someone in the dessert. However, in events I feel that it makes sense to see all the messages regardless of where you are.

Maybe that can be tweaked for the large events and tours where there might be 1,000’s of Zwifters and it could get real messy real fast. But you make a great point about smaller events that can get stretched out, we should still see each others messages.

For reference, the other thread and comments are here: Group ride chat funkiness---can only see some of the messages - #95 by Tony_Agee

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Will there be an option to turn off chat except for your own event? Will this be controllable in the Club event management features in Companion? Like others, I want to see all chat from my event participants and zero chat from people outside my event.

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Hi all - a quick update. We will be rolling this update to event chat soon.
UPDATE: At this time, we expect this to roll out Thursday Jul 29.

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What is the default setup and how do we request changes?

Personally for small events and for when I help sweep it’s nice to see all messages to keep involved in the ride.

Similarly for races the option to split or merge chat between cats how do we set that?
.

Thanks

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I agree with @Mike_Rowe1 on this one; I feel like the best answer is if we could see the “x” closest people doing the same activity as you (e.g. free riding or in a particular event, not both), where “x” is the number of people beyond where Zwift feels the chat tends to get too busy.

1 Like