First time poster here…I contacted Zwift Support when I noticed that the orange progress bar had stopped moving after my accelerated progress was completed. I received this response:
“I was looking through your recent rides in Zwift and I think I’ve found what’s going on here. While XP is given out per mile ridden while in a SIM mode (e.g. free ride, race, or group ride), XP is earned differently when in workout mode. Since speed and distance aren’t metrics used in workout mode, XP in workouts is given when the workout is completed and scales based on the workout blocks rather than distance.
Looking at your ride history, it does appear that the majority of your rides where done in workout mode, so there is going to be a discrepancy when trying to convert your total miles into XP. Though you have properly received XP for the workouts that you have rode to completion.”
Good response but seems unfair. I wrote back:
“Thank you so much for all of your time and expertise. You explanation makes sense and I appreciate the detailed explanation.
That said, I wonder why Zwift has this policy? I am sure there is a good reason, but from a user’s perspective, my workouts are still miles ridden. Why not total them the same? I recently begun using a coach and most of the time, the sessions he assigned me are between an hour and an hour and a half. As a result, I do not complete the workout. Kind of feels like I am being punished for using a coach and structured workouts not offered by Zwift. Any chance this policy will change?
Thanks again for the awesome customer service.”
The response I received was gracious and encouraged me to post here.
What do you all think of this? Aren’t miles ridden miles ridden? Shouldn’t every mile count towards your progress to higher levels? Will Zwift be willing to change this policy?
Not sure what the issue is here. In sim mode you get XP points every km (20XP) or mile (30XP). In workout mode you get XP points at the end of the interval. Long intervals get more. From my experience the points are more or less the same. Now where you will get shafted is doing group workouts where the group speed is snail pace because you’re limited by the lowest rider.
To be honest unless you’re below level 12 I wouldn’t bother too much about XP points. A lot of the prizes are pretty crappy.
Thanks for your thoughts, Nigel. My issue is that I have received zero XP points and made no progress on the levels for the last 200 miles or so. All because I didn’t “finish” a workout. I totally get your comments on the prizes; honesty, that is not the issue for me. The issue is that there seems to me to be inequality in what kind of miles receive XP points.
When I’ve done a Zwift workout I got the XP points at the end of each interval. Even if you don’t finish you should be getting points for the completed intervals.
Reading between the lines it sounds like you might be doing custom workouts of long interval blocks where a block totals more than 1 or 1.5 hours in duration. Like say (6 x [10 min @ Z4 + 2 min @ Z2]) for a total of 72 minutes for the block. If you cut the block short then you wouldn’t get the xp for the block.
Instead you could create a custom workout where you separate each portion of the block into individual segments in order to earn the experience for each portion of it.
If I have misunderstood your approach to the workouts please let me know.
Yeah unfortunately you’ll have to finish the workout or divide the workout into smaller sections so that you’re only missing out on points if you skip the last section or two. I usually skip the cool down portion of my workouts.