Event Module Ideas

The Archives Archived: Feature Requests
1

Here are my suggested improvements to the event module and general ride/race ideas  I would like to see -

 

1). Reverse route selection. Variety is the spice of life and only being able to set up an event in the forward direction is a limitation.

2). Full event descriptions or a drop down tab to expand on short description of an event. Riders and racers need to know full descriptions of the events they’re participating in or else the event could pass in a blur and a bad experience may result. 

3). Automatic category tagging. When you select a ride/race you would like to take part in you will be presented with a simple category A/B/C/D choice. Once selected your name is edited with ride name (i.e BTW) and your category selected letter (i.e C).

4). Adding a category letter to your surname with brackets changes the background color where your name and statistics are shown in game.

Category (A) = Red

Category (B) = Orange

Category (C) = Green

Category (D) = Blue/Dark Blue

This can help group leaders get a quick visualization on participants ability and control the pace of the ride if necessary it also gives racers an idea of what level a rider is at that’s within there vicinity,especially useful if your on a small laptop and struggling to see the writing. 

5). Event world switching. The community is key to Zwift so if the idea of having a choice of worlds/courses from day to day isn’t a workable option then how about events that can use world selection.

So how would it work ?

You login as normal on the course calendar schedule and select the ride/race you’d like to participate in. Once your ready to join a selected event your ride is saved and your moved to the appropriate world/course to take part in the event.

Once the event has finished you get a timed window and once it expires your activity is saved and your placed back on the original course that’s scheduled.

 

 

2

We’ve been told that in-game race/event results tracking _is _coming, it’s just a matter of when they’ll drop that feature into the main branch. Adding that would help auto-categorize riders based on prior rides and results.

Like many features that started with the community, outside the game itself, the good ones are reincorporated and folded back into the main codebase for all to enjoy. Race results will be soon to hit that list.

We’ve talked about much of this at great length a year ago, well before the Events module was barely on the back of a napkin… Just like IRL, if you register for, and place in the top-10 finishes of in ‘n’ number of scheduled, classified events, you would move up the rankings (like real world Cat 5-1 works now), and then your overall results would put you in the correct performance level (D through A, respectively). 

Today, we glom those together and I’ve never personally agreed with that. IRL for example, we have an A/B ride every week that goes off with Cat 2 through 5 and recreational riders. When the first few miles are ticked off, the faster “A” riders (of which many Cat 2, 3, 4 riders are a part of) blast off the front, and those that remain, are in the “B” group. There are Cat 2, 3 4 riders in the “B” group as well. 

The two ARE different, and we should absolutely treat them as such. 

I have yet to be able to experience an official event so I can’t speak about the specifics of organizing or participating in events (because the current mobile app’s ability to join them is broken), so I just ride alongside those riders, or at my own pace.

Your other ideas are sound, so here’s an upvote! 

3

Another simple suggestion, if power-ups aren’t allowed, then they should be disabled for the duration of that race if you are in that event.

4
  1. Another suggestion I’d give is aimed mainly for social rides. Partially to help relieve the burden from ride leaders, as well as to make things easier in absence of a ride leader.

Mark not only the ride leader, but also mark the first rider of the ride both visually in the game world, as well as on the minimap. Do the same with the last rider. And display a continuous visible pacing message on the screen displaying how far you lag behind the first of the ride and are ahead of the last of the ride.

Once the lead of the ride’s distance exceeds 30 seconds of the mean’s group distance consider them as having left the social ride. Similar for the person at the tail of the ride.

This may make it easier to maintain position within the pack, especially when groups intermingle with a coinciding group and sometimes it’s not at all clear which riders to follow through with.

 

  1. Give riders a warning signal when they’re exceeding 2 s.d. from the mean group riders position in rides flagged as social rides. This too may help players in holding back or giving it that little extra whenever needed. Currently, especially in larger group rides, it simply remains a mess. Especially after a (small) climb.

  2. A configuration toggle for individual riders to make non-group riders have a certain level of opacity may most certainly help distinguish in who’s grouped up and who’s part of another group as well.

 

 

5

Agree very strongly that a very simple and massive improvement would be to allow organizers to select the reverse direction of routes - would make groups rides twice as interesting on average! :wink: