Can you allow Watopia to be an option to ride every day? I love Zwift and think the product is awesome! It is absolutely one of my favorite training programs. You have managed to do what I once thought was impossible, make riding inside for more than 2+ hours fun.
I find myself getting frustrated with the course selection when London and Richmond are on the calendar. The course options aren’t nearly as immersive, nor offer the unique amount of course options that Watopia offers.
I’ve seen some posts asking for all of the routes to be open, but the developers have chosen to limit the selection due to their desire to promote the social experience over the value of training selection.
I understand there is a fairly large user segment that enjoys using Zwift for its social components; however, that isn’t my first priority when I look at why I’m a member. We all have to juggle life, work, travel, racing, etc. and then hoping that all lines up with the course calendar can be frustrating if you miss it. Having to have to wait 4-5 days for London to be over when your training plan or desire is to do a long climb or an achievement ride is challenging.
Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy the social component and it is super cool to ride with other people. It’s engaging to draft with a group or hold a wheel on a climb, but the reality of why I Zwift is that it is an amazing indoor training tool. I’m okay with only seeing a handful of people on the course if it meant that I was able to do the ride/workout that I wanted. Heck- you can even put up a disclaimer where you can ask people if they want a social experience in <world> or if they are okay riding solo or not seeing a lot of people to move forward. The social aspect will always have people logging in regardless of the course because their priority/aim is to ride with a team/group/friends or to do a race. Your retention rates for those that prioritize being able to do the ride they want might improve if they had a second option. Having Watopia open daily and/or another course offered at times seems to be a happy medium to cover both user-bases.
The Richmond and London courses are great, but forcing people to do old content when you have better more immersive experiences seems counterintuitive. You put a lot of hard work and effort into a new patch but then limit the consumption. If a second option was available, you would be able to get direct imperial data and see where the users were choosing to log in and then give that feedback to the dev team for future content patches.
I have read the forum posts about going into the program files and changing the <world>, but I don’t know if that is a violation of the ToS and quite frankly it seems a bit odd to have to edit a program file instead of offering multiple options. I appreciate the nostalgia that London and Richmond offer, but the romanticism dies swiftly after looking at the different course routes in comparison to Watopia.
This request isn’t meant to be negative whatsoever, just an honest albeit possibly small opinion about your awesome product. In fact, you’ve done so well with Watopia that it makes the other courses feel like a letdown, even though if they were on their own, they would be really cool. Thanks for listening and thank you for all your hard work.
Ride On.
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