Make the Blue Guys Useful! (Race Yourself)

I LOVE Zwift, mostly as a motivation or training tool.  It does what no other indoor software has ever done well.

The famed “blue guys” who appear on the circuit when it isn’t busy are neat, but for many of us, they seem pretty useless.  We either fly right past them or they by us.  They don’t react like real-life riders, and you can’t pop on chat and ask one of them to ride with you for a little motivation.

What if, instead, the ‘blue guys’ were user deployable and controllable?  I see two scenarios where this might work really well.  The first of which, is to deploy a bot to repeat a previous saved lap.  Whether in the same session, or a previous session.  It’s one thing to ‘beat the clock’, knowing your previous time; but having a virtual representation of your own efforts would be totally cool!

The second might be a bit more complex, from a technical perspective.  However, being able to select how fast the blue guys are!  If I could deploy one of the blue bots and, say, select a time that’s a minute faster than my best ever attempt and try to hang on to their wheel as much as possible; that would make them so much more useful than merely a random odd-looking road user.  Alternatively (or additionally!) being able to set them to a fixed wattage would be super cool, too.  

In this utopia where the blue guys are our private riding buddies, they’d disappear when we log off or deselect them.  

Whadya say, Zwift Team?  Could it happen?

I like the idea of riding a against at bot riding my own personal best on that course.  For the second option, perhaps taking a previous performance and adding a select number of watts to it as a challenge

yes please - sounds like a great idea

This is a no brainer surely.  Great idea

Please vote up the existing threads before creating a new one. There are already about 5 requests for this.

Nobody goes through all the old threads, the mere fact that there have been 5 threads for this feature and it is one of the better voted for ideas shows Zwift who clearly read this forum that it is a much wanted idea, they know how many times ideas are put up so frankly i dont see the importance of constantly trawling through old pages to see if “your” idea has been added before.

Re the idea, yes this is needed, and frankly i would also be much happier if they were not transparent blue, i would rather see them in full Zwift team kit appearing normally, i just dont bother reacting to blue riders anymore, if they were like us i can see me pushing harder when i see them in front as i would not know if it was a real person or ghost.

+1 

Along the same lines I thought it would be good motivation if you could choose to race bots of varying difficulties. For instance, being able to race a bot that varies from 200-230 watts to keep you on your toes.  Maybe beating this one unlocks the next one so on…

 

This is probably just the nerdy gamer in me talking but it would sure help keep me motivated.

I found a blue guy a few days ago, who was going at just the right speed where I could hang in his draft, but only just. It was awesome! Being able to request it would be great. Also, why don’t they all wear a jersey that shows their current watts/kg?

I would love the facility to set up a blue dude with set power or time and then chase and hang on - I always outperform my best when I’m chasing someone better …and this would be just like that!!

Soon Zwift will be so crowded that the “blue dudes” will vanish.!!!

I read somewhere that you are able to draft behind them and if thats the case, no thanks. Then a lot of people will start use that to improve their time slightly again and again…being paced and if thats the case then soon there will be request for being able to make a “Nibali” as well :wink:

Learn to pace yourself if you have a problem with that. :wink:

If its because you want to be drafted to better times, get a stronger friend on board and let him lead you round the course, get stronger or just ride on :wink:

Another thing is that it will be a lot of effort for the programmers, think a new course with some serious mountains would be better. Maybe a course for each country in Europe, especially Italy, France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Austria, Schweiz, Spain.

Why not have ghosts with different capabilities in different colours?

Blue for cold and slow through various colours to red hot for example.

BKool uses a system like that were you have various abilities of bots and can see who they are to plan your own behaviour to adjust. Some are very strong attackers/sprinters, other are slow but very consistent, others again are very pushy and take a dim view of being overtaken. You come across them or they come across you and you can adjust your riding and go with them or just let them go.

Great bots!

Anyway, have my vote (now it s round 50)!

This is a great idea. I’d love a blue guy “rabbit” to follow during workouts or an FTP test. Set your goal and that’s the guy you have to follow to hit it.

This would be an excellent motivator. Please add this to the development roadmap!