I guess a lot of people love Power-Ups…personally I’d rather we didn’t have any. But at least could we lose the Ghost? I played Mario Kart with my son for years, so I don’t need Zwift to give me a reminder of how frustrating power-ups can be…especially the Ghost. Yes, they can liven up a race, but for me it’s way too artificial. If it must be kept, please at least make the duration shorter. It’s possible to make a break and reappear completely out of sight…which sometimes makes it impossible to react to. Generally I hope that Zwift does not go further down the gaming route…My impression is that your main demographic of users aren’t the type who would wish for more gimmicks - rather they’d prefer future improvements to make the experience more realistic…but that’s my view and I may be wrong!
Both preferences are common on Zwift. There are frequent requests for Mario Kart races, and there are people who like no powerups. You are not alone but I have no idea which is more popular. (And I don’t really care since I like no powerups and I refuse to change.)
There is a search filter available on ZwiftHacks that will let you search for no-powerups races, and there are a lot of them.
I personally like the power ups. Real racing outdoors is more dynamic than vanilla Zwift because there are more variables (like road quality and surface and weather conditions) and skills (bike handling being the primary) at play and while the power ups don’t mimic either of those two things, they do add an extra dimension to be thinking about as you race. Plus it means that you have to try out different race scenarios than just whatever your body/training is optimized for–I play a sprint differently if I have an aero vs. a draft van vs. a feather, which means that even two sprints on the same course from a similar sized group have to be played differently, keeping things more fresh.
I think the ghost is not that great a power up because it rarely works, but it’s at least interesting to try to use it tactically.