I was a bit late to the game and wasn’t able to join the group. I tried to find his name in initial “who to ride with” list but with 160 names, wasn’t able to have enough control with my mouse on the list box or the patience. Even just having keyboard control would have helped or a simple name search.
Maybe for an event like this having a special button to join the special group.
It also would have been helpful to have periodically mentioned where the peloton was to know if I should ease up or push hard. Maybe the island could also use mile/km markers like along US highways.
On the other hand, it was great to see so many people riding and the search for the peloton made time go really fast.
Casey Schumm was actually announcing landmarks most of the ride. The problem is you can only see those chat messages when you’re within a certain distance of the rider.
One thing that might be easier to implement than the special group is a special marker on the profile for the guest of honor. This way you would know where the rider is.
The other thing is that the “join” button doesn’t work well for rides like this because the group is going so fast that you get left behind by the time you get in game. It probably should drop you 300m in front of the person you’re trying to join or something like that.
Another thing that might be helpful is to have a special icon show on the profile map where a group like this is. That would have let me know if I needed to push hard or ease up.
Those messages would have been handy, but as you said, I didn’t see any of them since I ended up being about half way around the island.
Another possibility would be add a feature to the phone app to “transport” to someone. But there too, with so many riders, not everyone was listed.
Lastly, maybe a jump ahead or fall back a mile with a key stroke would help get within a decent range when trying to find someone.
I like the idea about dropping in 300m ahead of the person because I too have found it to not work well joining if someone is cruising quickly at that moment.
My pie in the sky hope would be that Zwift would have an interface for people to create group rides, make it simple when starting a ride to see that one is in progress and jump in and finally make it visually clear with the active rider list who is part of the group. I also like the idea above about a marker for the guest rider, which could also apply to group ride organizer.