Tbh James, when you get to level 60, the unlocks really dont mean much anymore…unless its something really standout like a white Tron bike or something so forget the unlocks, just let the XP roll
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I think it’s horses for courses, but I’m with you on that from a personal standing.
I’m on Zwift for many years now and I never got bored (not even when I did the PRL Full which took me more than 7 hours that time). When I had all the route badges, I invested in the social part. I became an active member of a large club, lead group rides now for a while, made new friends, got inspired to start racing, need to train for races now by doing workouts, etc. My problem is, that I never have enough time to do everything I would like to do on Zwift.
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Good discussion here on the wrap podcast, by Anna is particular.
There’s a genuine question being posed - have Zwift left it too long to address the fundamentals? Maybe they simply can’t do racing and what that really requires in terms of dynamics, and they would be better placed dropping it completely and focussing on the community riding side of things.
I would guess that will be the end of Zwift as we know it. I think the Racing community are the really passionate ones that keep up the Zwift hype.
I don’t completely disagree, but IndieVelo shows that the racing experience can quickly be spun up to be 10x better than Zwift (I’m talking mechanics… obviously it doesn’t have the critical mass right now).
- server side positioning
- trainer resistance for draft and wind
- fully in-built anti-cheat mechanisms
- race format support - points races, elimination, full customisation
- in-built rankings
- matchmaking, no cats
- API provision
And that’s on beta day 1 - because all of this stuff was understood as critical at the start.
That leaves Zwift in a precarious position. Bare in mind they have disbanded ZADA, which is practically admission that they can’t manage elite racing. They need to hack and bodge the current platform to improve it as best possible, but it’s that… a hack and a bodge. See pack dynamics, all race formats being managed outside of the platform itself, Sauce, ZwiftRacing.app. It not like they have a choice - the platform and underlying mechanics are so fundamentally flawed. The alternative is a complete rewrite, a Zwift V2, and it doesn’t feel like that is going to happen.
So what do you do, keep rolling the turd in glitter and hope that one day it’s not a turd any more?
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Looks promising. The beauty of competition is that is forces improvement.
I’m pretty keen on the ELO matchmaking. I played iRacing (driving sim) which did exactly this. End result was you always had drivers that were your level (assuming high participation). Worked really well.
The race formats seem great too. Would definitely try out an elimination one. Already requested to try beta.
With RGT, not tried it yet, but keen on the Magic Roads more than anything. To choose a real local route and compare against the real thing…
But at the same time, Zwift is popular for good reason. Many routes over many areas. Huge participation. Fundamentally good racing, group rides, official and community led, it works well. For me, looks pretty, interesting landscapes and seems to make improvements every month.
I enjoy the racing, but have recently just been doing different routes (my resolution was to do every route by the end of the year).
But my partner loves the workouts rather than the racing. She hasn’t tried a steady ride whilst watching a movie, but its on her to-do list lol.
Only bought my Wahoo Kickr last year and hadn’t ridden a bike for 30 years until last year too. But great to see many options available … can only assume this hobby is going to grow.
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IndieVelo looks certanly promissing from what I have seen.
The wind effect and also the visability of the draft effect (in the HUD), etc. looks great.
In my opinion it comes closer to outside riding than all the other platforms.
The greatest downfall at this stage is that the app needs a grapical boost.
But it is still a free Beta program, so much can change over the comming months.
I still can not believe that Zwift has not upgraded their HUD after all the requests and complaints they have gotten in the last years. In my opinion it seems a not that big of a programming job and it makes Sause for Zwift obsolete(for a lot of people).
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How about surveying customers? I’d venture to guess most people stop caring about unlocks after they’ve been zwifting for years.
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My guess is generic unlocks such as generic helmet or kit are things most people don’t care much about, but something that is very unique and visible (such as fire socks - or different tron items/bikes/colors maybe) will be more interesting to people. That’s at least the way it is for me, I’m leveling up to get fire socks, don’t care about the other unlocks.
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Sure, but no need to overthink this. Just do one special unlock every 10 or 15 levels after level 50. Most people’s garages are overflowing with stuff they never use once they get past level 30 or so.
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Maybe the ‘unlock’ at levels 60, and above, could be to select one item to have removed from your garage.
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If it took level 60 to be able to remove junk from my garage, I may have to hook up an ANT+ simulator to get there. 
I was interested in trying out the beta, but then noticed they only support PC and Mac at the moment (I’m on iPad). They are implemented in Unity from what I recall, so pushing out an iPad version (and messing around with their visuals) is probably not crazy difficult, but I do expect development will become more time consuming for them as they do expand their support matrix and work to solidify their platform. It’s always much easier to spin out an early beta with a core set of enthusiastic users than it is to release and maintain a final product that people are paying for. I’ll be watching them closely because it’s great to see more experiences built to help people get into indoor cycling/racing.
For them a huge challenge will be to get a critical mass of riders to enable the platform to be something you can rely on for a well-attended race whenever you happen to want to race, in whatever timezone works for you.
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Is the ‘gripe’ with Zwift, and the related appeal of something like IndieVelo, strictly related to racing, or does the ‘better physics’ transcend to just JRA and/or workouts? I have to say that I really don’t do much racing on Zwift (perhaps I should), but mostly workouts and JRA (with an occasional group ride). I can’t say that I pay a lot of attention to the game physics (especially since the workouts are really just power-based), but I certainly think that the more realistic the better.
I think my biggest ‘game physics’ gripe has been with the road surfaces, and how rider speed changes even with the same gear and cadence. I’m fine with a dirt surface being slower than tarmac, but make me feel that it’s harder, don’t just slow me down.
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I don’t really care about the dynamics when just free riding to be honest, although improvements are nice. It’s critical for racing though.
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Pookiebutt streamed it so if you want to know what is about …
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Visibility of draft could be sorted out by Zwift enabling people to view the draft (option to turn on or off).
Indievelo I just had a look at (spectactor only as I’m unwell) and it does seem interesting, the wind simulation seems interesting.
It’s also interesting that the major key functions are identical to Zwift. 
I didn’t think the graphics were all that great - they didn’t look that beautiful (not terrible either) but the frame rates didn’t seem anything special - consider I checked it on a 3.2ghz 16 Core Intel Xeon and Radeon Pro W6800X 32GB machine running MacOS Sonoma 14.0, this machine is powerful enough to run Asobo’s Microsoft Flight Simulator at highest detail levels with decent frame rates.
While Indievelo is interesting, it’s got a way to go.
I’m giving it a test run today.
Especially whilst its free to use, I’m keen to try out the elimination race format. But also to get in a short ride and see how the resistance and overall feeling is like compared to Zwift (Wahoo Kickr).
Fundamentally, as a customer, I’m glad that there is competition. Pushes everyone to step up their game and the people who benefit are the customers.
But Zwift has got mass appeal and for good reason. Many routes, for me it just always works. Can race any time I want. Much to do (not even tried workouts since getting my bike in Oct 22) so I’m fairly new to it all and loving it.
Right now, part way through trying to complete every route before end of the year. But not done anything over about 50km yet!!
Considering you haven’t experienced the basic ride dynamics, I’d suggest you haven’t tested it at all. Unless you are judging a platform on its graphics, which is A. Odd and B. Indievelo is using basically stock unity assets for now until they can get some graphics personnel on board. Mechanics first, as it should be. Graphics on unity is a relatively easy thing to sort later.
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