Less worlds: Retire the UCI worlds

I can see Makuri joining Watopia as a permanent worlds, too much investment not too tbh.
France, New York & London as the 3rd & 4th choice, UCI routes as the 4th (rotated as if one world).
I’d argue France should be expanded to make a 3rd permanent world, it is as popular as Makuri & Watopia.
maybe chuck Crit City and Bolonga in with the UCI worlds rotation.
But the mix will need to balance “I want to be around others” with “I want to be alone”, analytics FTW !

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There is, of course, the solution that will make everyone happy and one that’s been on the table for over six years: merge all the worlds together.

If it bothers Strava, just put the real-world courses in the Pacific, next to Watopia.

It will also keep IRL riders happy, I’m sure they love all those Zwifters stealing their real KoMs by riding in central London at 50kph with no traffic… :smirk:

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I find this an interesting proposal. This puts more emphasis on the better game-designed worlds and would still allow Zwift to do these collaborations with UCI without the UCI worlds starting to clutter the selection.

I agree on the low numbers.

I’m in NZ too :grin:

I guess I’m one of those, ‘couldn’t care if there are people riding around when I’m just training chaps’. In fact the people kinda annoy me. I get stuck on them with sticky draft. For some reason it annoys me. First world problems…

I am concerned with race numbers. The sheer number of races and poor selection of quality races in our time zone is not ideal. We need better races, with less overall volume of options, to increase participation.

And category enforcement!

I think some other commenters have solved the issue. It’s just a presentation issue. A ‘Today’s Worlds’, say 2 choices on the main page. Then after a few presses, all worlds are available for the soloists. Maybe, with a note that they may be empty.

Something like that would keep us all happy.

Or bots, they’d work for people who need to be around others. Definitely, with the option to turn them off.

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There is a lot of people replying here who are racing; and that’s fine, people use Zwift in the manner they want. I don’t race. I want to ride with other people, not bots. Hence world-sprawl is a concern, in particular world-sprawl of low-quality / not-game-designed worlds: The locations weren’t chosen by the UCI because they were marvelous cycling destinations - they were chosen because those cities were able to host the races.

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I think we understand and are supportive of what you really want.

But this thread , is not about improving the situation and as such its only got 1 vote , its just not going to happen .

The latest request for example for a change to Innsbruck has already got 50 votes (Still may never happen as who knows how much attention is actually paid at ZHQ to votes cast) . and if you read the thread you will see far from it being low quality world more people consider it of the highest quality.

Positive feature requests on how to improve the more virtualized worlds to get the requirements and features wanted much more support and votes.

Similarly improving all worlds including the UCI ones would meet the stated requirements too so having routes possible in all worlds that met what you wanted seems as previously mentioned the inclusive way to get improvement for all . The idea that one world is for one set of users and one world for another , is not very appealing I suspect to the vast majority of people. Although I know it is a advocated philosophy not limited to the virtual world of Zwift these days.

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The UCI worlds provide an interesting and varied set of race courses. IF maintenance is a major drain on resources it might make sense to retire some of them, but if that’s not the case (and no-one has said it is, beyond some idle speculation) then I would certainly prefer to see them remain. 3x up the Innsbruck KOM is something everyone should do once in their lives (but once only)!

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I can’t see that they would need maintenance, as such. Digital assets don’t really degrade over time.

I suppose Richmond getting its update a while back counts as maintenance, but as far as I know no other map has had that sort of face lift.

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It is about improving the situation, by proposing a different approach to reduce sprawl and a strategy to limit it long-term.

This thread has a high number of views and is #3 in the Feedback category based on number of replies and has been regularly replied to since I posted it months ago. And the replies have been varied; some are against my proposal, others have proposed similar strategies.

Sometimes people don’t realise that “less is more”.

They do. They degrade in comparison to newer worlds and assets that have been based on more game design experience and worked to higher fidelity, and they degrade directly when new technology is added (e.g. in the case of graphics; newer shaders or moving to DX12).

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That’s not a degradation. That’s more stagnation.

But there’s no absolute requirement to update those things. Look at WoW for example. Vanilla zones look very dated and low fidelity compared to Shadowlands.

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The way Zwift software dev appears to work, I’d rather them not touch anything. They’re bound to break something if they try to delete Bologna or some other less-used map.

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Not really applicable. I’m talking more about textures and 3D models rather than code quality or functionality.

Heheh. Maybe I’ve worked with better PMs, although I don’t really understand your joke that well. It doesn’t seem like a “PM thing” to me. =)

Depreciation might be a more apt term but feel we are going off topic.

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I was just sending Zwift a note on this very topic. Why do they offer only offer 3 Worlds at a time? I really love France, New York and the Makuri Islands and am not a fan of London, Richmond and Innsbruck. I have been riding with Zwift for over 5 years and would really like to have more variety when choosing my route. Since there are so many people Zwifting now, it seems to me that they could have more routes available and still have plenty of players on the road to keep it interesting.

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You can ride any world you want!

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Well, the point of Zwift is to ride surrounded by other people, not alone. In the Zwiftverse.

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I believe you will not be alone - there are many using the hack. But not sure - I personally do not use it :grin:

Rode Makuri last night (just created a meet-up for myself) and it was busy enough that I didn’t ever feel alone but also not too busy. I think the point though is why not just open it up so we don’t have to use the hacks. If people want to be surrounded by others they’ll gravitate to the busier worlds/routes.

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