After being an avid Zwift loyalist for 5 years, It’s sadly time to say goodby… but why?
NO RACES: It’s your singular strength and point of difference in a broadening field of competitors. Why on earth have races dwindled to next to nothing? More than this, what races do exist are mostly <20kms. Most racers want at a minimum a solid ~1hr hard race, which Swift used to have back-to-back. Now in my timezone (Syd, Australia) there are next to no races in key morning/evening times and what there is aren’t worth putting the boots on for. Also… every race is now on…
MAKURI ISLANDS: This world simply sucks in every way imaginable. It is dark, dull, dizzying and for the most part I’d rather ride my IRL bike through a thunderstorm that spend one more second on it. If your Zwift setup is in a sunny/well lit area it is completely unusable. You have to turn your brightness up to Trinity test levels and because the world constantly changes between dark and dull… yea… Im done with it. Why does it now seem to be the default / 80% of races?!
BLOCKED FUNCTIONALITY: So… there are no races, and what there are are on the train wreck level of Makuri… so I’ll just challenge myself on that cool new climb portal they just launched. NOPE. It’s now on a ridiculous block/one climb rotation at a time… so if I really like the Tormulet as it fits my time, difficulty or it’s the level I want to beat - too bad… you just have to wait for it to rotate. What is the point of this? You have made the code, why not strengthen your product by making it available.
TECH ISSUES: My Tax Neo just ‘Disconnects’ midway through an event and I have to STOP then reconnect it in the settings. I’ve sought help, and have had some generous community support - but no-one who actually works for Zwift cares. It makes trying to challenge/win/beat your time pointless.
I’m sorry - as much as I used to LOVE Zwift, it’s now a basket case for these reasons above. I know these are shared by others. I just can’t justify it anymore.
I think your event availability might go up soon as the northern hemisphere enters fall/winter. More riders= more activity.
I’m curious- where in Makuri Islands do you think is dark? (apart from Neokyo).
The participation numbers don’t lie: most racers want short events. I wish it weren’t true (I prefer longer) but the field sizes show that the masses prefer short. As we get into peak Zwift season I’m hopeful that more of the longer events will start attracting more participation.
Makuri is not used for a large proportion of races. I’m scanning the calendar and that’s simply not the case. In the next 24 hours (from right now) there are 12 races in Makuri. There are 24 in London, 36 in Watopia, 12 in Richmond, 7 in Innsbruck, 11 in New York, 11 in Crit City, 11 in France, 6 in Scotland. If you saw too many Makuri events at a certain time, that’s just bad luck on a given day, not a pattern of preferring that world.
The limited climb portal options are by design. They want to force people onto a given climb so there are more people visible on the climb. That’s the “why”. Many people disagree with the choice but that’s what they did.
Your trainer problems sound super annoying and it would be interesting to find out if it works reliably with other apps. That’s probably the best reason to try another program. Also based on your comments over on that thread, if you do decide to use Zwift again, or if you have connection instability with other apps, I would second the suggestion to try connecting via ANT+. My US$19 ANT+ adapter (including extension cable) is quite reliable and pairs quickly (also using macOS).
Good luck with your trainer and enjoy exploring some new ways to ride indoors. Nothing wrong with doing all the free trials and finding out if you like one of them better.
So Zwift doest care about southern hemisphere/non USA timezones and is content only being a robust platform for 6 months of the year. Cool approach to a global virtual platform.
There’s 19 events between 7pm and 8pm today. 4 of them are Zwift HQ events. 11 are races. 2 of the races are over 20km long.
Of those races a grand total of 3 people are signed up for A cat on ZwiftPower right now. There’s a whole 13 people signed up for the B cat races.
Mind you, tomorrow morning between 6am and 7am there’s 4 races. Between 7am and 8am only 3 races.
I’m just going to throw in my RoboRacers idea again. For 6 months of the year Zwift racing is spread way too thin. Too many races (or barely any at times that aren’t around the Euro prime times), not enough racers. Now, imagine if you could quickly setup your own race against some bots instead of having to wait for a scheduled event which usually isn’t the distance you want to do.
Sounds like there’s simply not enough folk racing to make it worthwhile. Other than the RoboRacers idea, that’s not really in Zwifts control. I mean, I’m sure they’d love lots of new members in the Southern hemisphere but I don’t know what you’d like them to do about it.
Replacing static categories with matchmaking to split the entries more evenly across pens would help a bit with the problem of having almost no As and almost no Ds in many races. Most races have a distribution with most of the entries in B and C.
The short races thing seems to be a bit of self fulfilling prophecy.
Short races are popular, no doubt about it - But that means more short races get put on the calendar and less people then migrate to or race longer races. Thus resulting in lower turn out & then fewer longer races on the calendar.
You inherently build a culture of short racing.
Essentially Zwift has to take some ownership and say, we will provide the alternative that the community doesnt so we atleast offer all types of races - Every hour or 2, there probably should be a hour length races, a hilly type race and then try to encourage sign ups for different things each month.
Does zwift need to promote short races (Get rolling etc) that decimate community racing when there are already plenty of short community races - I say this as someone who races those events as it fits my timeframe of availability but they are always popular and full etc
Apart from the attention seeking, the OP seems to have setup issues and like everyone has preferences.
I like neokyo and makuri as a whole, but it’s not for everyone, which is why we have so many worlds to choose from.
Find what you enjoy and do that, but don’t make it out to be an “everyone” problem when it’s just you
Successfully attracting a significant field for club events is not easy. It’s possible but requires hundreds of members who want to race at your preferred time, who are happy with small mass start events, without pen enforcement, etc. Plus the headwinds affecting field sizes at relatively unpopular race times will affect the club events as well.
