As a new father, my time is limited. I typically can find ~30 minutes each day to ride, though. The problem is, there are relatively few routes with short routes, and so my options become repetitive.
I’m also someone who likes to finish what he starts. So, although I could choose a long route and just ride 30 minutes worth of it, a) that leaves me unsatisfied because I left it unfinished, and b) that doesn’t usually give enough variation in route climbing etc.
Oftentimes, events are quite long, too. Due to my limited availability, I am often unavailable to compete because the event requires 60-90 minutes of time when I only have 30 minutes.
Conversely, if we had more short routes to pick from, say 5 miles or less, that would allow more people to enjoy what Zwift has to offer.
Have you used the My List feature in Companion? It lets you view available routes and queue them up. They then appear on the For You section of the game home screen even if the world they’re in is not on the calendar, so you would get access to more short route options and you could reduce the time spent choosing a route when you get on the bike.
Perhaps but I, like many, have cycled outside for a decade or more on what is effectively the same route. I make a few twists and turns along the way and I can turn that one route from anything from a ‘ride around the block’ that’s a couple of km which takes a few minutes, to an 80km route that takes several hours. But it’s always the same road outside my house and the route is basically the same relatively small set of roads.
What is perhaps less easy to build in zwift is a sense of spatial awareness and where things are, i.e I’ve ridden volcano circuit in both directions and tempus fugit, but I don’t have a good sense of where they are relative to each other or where I might end up if I hit the button to turn in a particular direction rather than following the route I selected. Whereas IRL I know where I’m going (and garmin does a better job of navigating me around when I don’t) - perhaps that’s what they need? A satnav in game.
I guess there’s a strong motive to ride back home to finish a ride rather than quitting at a random point that means all the rides have a start and a finish.
But that makes me think the fundamental problem with cycling indoors isn’t really a lack of routes. Because there are tons more cyclists riding the same roads over and over, week in, week out outside. What keeps them interested and why don’t they need badges?
Whatever is missing when we’re indoors must be something else. Perhaps zwift tried to replace that with the idea of ‘route completion’ and getting a badge but that idea can never be sated. We’d need ever more and more routes and more and more badges ad infinitum.
But, what most sports and games do have is variety provided by playing it I suppose. Otherwise chess and football would have to keep coming up with gimmicks, a different colour scheme for the board, different chess piece shapes etc. That they don’t suggests the designers thought about the game itself and making that fun.
Anyway, that’s food for zwift’s thought.
If you can be fooled into thinking you’ve completed something by having a workout that starts and completes after 30 minutes then you could create a workout that’s just 30 minutes free ride? Then you can select any world or route in zwift and after 30 minutes it’ll ‘complete’?
I think the climbing portal routes all seem on the long side when I glance at them so I’d perhaps agree they could maybe do with some shorter ones. In the UK if I went to climb it would generally be a hill that takes 5 minutes to climb and I’d cycle up and down 6 times. More or less vo2max intervals. I didn’t climb anything that at my pace would take 90 minutes - the point here being that at that length of time you’re z2/z3 and may as well ride on the flat anyway.
But I do think the solution is something else even though, yeah, a few extra routes would sate you for a week or 3…and then they’d need more. Although, TBH I think most people using zwift who want to cycle around for whatever free time they have will just join something and quit at the end of 30 minutes. e.g following a robopacer for a bit, joining an event group ride, or just riding part of a route.
Maybe if they had a feature where you could drop a waypoint where you quit the game, and teleport back to it next time you ride that would give more of a sense of completing a route even if it took a few goes for the longer ones (even if without a badge) that would avoid having to repeat the start of every longer route.
The original topic was my first post ever on Zwift. I am pleasantly surprised by the level of engagement by this community. Thank you for all of your responses. I’ll try to be more open-minded about starting events and then just dropping out after 30 minutes.
Some additional info:
I don’t like to use companion mode. I like to hop on my bike, ride with some variation of effort and scenery, and focus what little I have left of my drained attention at the end of the day when everyone else is sleeping on a podcast while I pedal. That said, thank you @Paul_Southworth for your recommendation! I will try the My List feature moving forward.
It turns out there are currently 36 routes available that are 6.0 miles or less and not limited to events or running only. Of course, not all 36 are available to choose from at any single time, but that’s still more than I thought. If the Zwift developers could maybe just consider adding a few more sub-6.0 mile routes the next time route expansion is considered, that would be appreciated.