I really love the idea of equipment selection being part of your race strategy. It is now worth investigating to swap from your roadbike to a mountainbike midrace when you go through gravelsections.
The downside is that this involves quickly coming to a stop and swap as soon as possible. So it involves getting rid of sweat on your clumsy hands and quickly clicking the right bike/wheels… which is not what racing should be about in my opinion.
It would be nice if you can select 2 bike setups prior to a race and swap them on the fly via an ingame command or hotkey. Ofcourse you will get a time penalty for that so youre forced to stand still for an x amount of time and start powering from 0watts. Perhaps some animation would load that shows you going to the side of the road and an ingame mechanic comes running with your spare/alternate bike and give you a little push or something.
This would spice up racing a lot in my opinion. In some situations you could benefit of a bikeswap other times it isnt worth losing the draft of the group youre in.
What is the sense behind it?
I push a button 2 times in a race? just to be able to maintain speed?
Serious?
The more material get’s magically hyped ingame the more it will be unattractive.
It just like IRL TT with climbing. Like last Giro, some riders chose to swap to their roadbike for the climbing, others didn’t. Or switch to a bike with different tires/pressure when cobble sections show up.
And how do your competitors react when you make the swap? Do they increase the tempo to make you work for closing that gap? Because you swap bikes to get benefit for a certain section at the cost of losing time and losing the draft of the group. If the group works well together it isnt worth losing the draft, but if they are all trying to do as little effort as possible you will be able to get back on your own and profit of your swap by either dropping them or saving way more energy.
Hi,
I don’t watch that much cycling on the TV, but when was the last time anybody watched a cyclist mid race change form a Road bike to a Mountain bike?
The idea of road surface affecting speed could be ok if Zwift gave us the correct equipment to deal with the conditions, i.e. a choice of tyres, but as it is, its a bit unrealistic to change to the MTB as many will not have the MTB and possibly no way to obtain it ( try using rollers and steer the MTB section) and part of the idea behind the differing road surface was to increase realism rather than decrease it, surely?
Switching to a MTB mid ride, I think, is a bit unrealistic.
no offense but did you ever road race?
like said above you swap bikes in a road race because your bike is unable to race any further …
even if it will come like this the jungle and i wont be friends again …
One of the race organizers has already banned bike changes. I think a lot of people don’t want the switch option available. If I could switch to Alp wheels on the fly, well then that would sell me. But, you lose a lot of time to stop and restart. I don’t like it when I see it being done in major races. Are gravel bikes going to be part of races? Does it add excitement or just sponsorship opportunities? (like a way to sell more gravel bikes would be to add a long gravel climb to the Giro or is it really to challenge the racers?) Are Zwifters going to option 'jump off the bike and run over an obstacle like cross? Will we add a (phone app) shooting skills to a mountain bike course? Lots of options but it doesn’t look like we get a vote beforehand.
No offense taken, but did you ever race bikes with neon rims through tunnels underneath the sea?
It is the gamification of cycling. Not a single irl road race let’s you apply constant power on your pedals like zwift does. Irl you can freewheel way more. But this topic isn’t about that. Zwift is introducing aspects about the road surface and equipment, I am requesting a new feature which enables new tactics and pregame strategies to be used. I think this might be a interesting feature, but I also know I might be the only one.
It is possible to do that in races already by the way, and people are already doing it. Perhaps race organizers could/should prohibit bike changes during races, or zwift can make it impossible if this is not a good feature.
That’s true but you don’t get any advantage beacause of the neon glitter glammer effect.
The map desgin is weird and futuristic like in some kind of sience fiction movies. reminds me on atlantis or some island with a lost high tech civilisation. its intelligent and creative although when seeing the beautiful maps the game mechanics and overall settings and options to turn on/off things even the layout all lack updates for years now!
Point is zwift does it in existing maps.
Tactics? Just push more watts over gravel parts? Wow
Instead of pushing race modes and group modes, new HUDs, and so on those little time waster pop up and get hyped as a new wheel fabrication …
I think zwift did a poor job messing up the Jungle. I haven’t heard any positive feedback on the new semi mandatory mountain bike gameplay.
If you don’t switch you are dead in the water. Makes no sense to me
And haven’t visited the jungle since. If they would make it another loop in the jungle, I’d say great idea and everybody who feels the need can go there and kick ass on a MTB.
For now: changing bikes smooth would solve a lot of troubles too. See if zwift can prioritize: more digital carrots, hairstyles or debug the game, listen to the community ;D.
Don’t want to sound sour or frustrated, don’t get me wrong I love all this, just some friendly advice.
Have a look at the volcano KOM that’s been a mess
For ages now…
I for one like it a lot. The MTB steering is very cool.
This is on point of this feature request. Bike swapping in a race should either be very easy or it should not be possible. People with different Zwift setups will have different times to bike swap, and that does not seem fair.
I think bike swapping in races should not be allowed.
Why not it is still fun to ride, just a bit harder work.
The MTB steering looks very cool but that’s not the issue with the jungle… as far as I know there is no steering in the jungle, you might be steering but thats Not impacting your direction hahahahahah.
Keep the steering off-road (and out of group rides and races).
I love the MTB course idea just don’t make people go this much slower in the jungle. It’s impacting races and rides negatively in many ways.
Have you seen the races in the jungle? It looks like a total mess…
If you ride it alone, as you may do, it’s no problem obviously. Its all about the workout and working harder or going slower does not concern me at all. From a group ride and race perspective I cannot conclude other than its not well implemented.
And a set bike or disabling the switch would have been a nice starting point (when this update was implemented).
Either way ride on Already regret posting anything here.
This is not because of the rolling resistance or the bikes. It is because people did not update there Zwift application, once they are all on the current version it will be back to normal, just a bit slower. The issue is version control. and that need attention.
Please don’t stop posting.
we are having a conversation/debate here. This is all to make Zwift a better place.
