Really curious what effects racing you think will be a problem.
The only thing I see as a problem are ITT and TTT. Thats a bug and needs fixing.
I dont see the upgrades being a real problem in races where racecraft, groupspeed and draft are way more important.
So curious what problems you are so afraid of.
The upgrades give quite a benefit. And of course lots of teams immediately rushed to get the upgrades as fast as possible or theyâd be left behind, or thought so. So it became an arms race - who could upgrade faster.
Which just makes the whole thing silly. People spend more time at the keyboard engineering their hacking strategies than riding. One lady did 500km of descending on ADZ. 
and she was silly enough to load it on Strava - until loads of angry people commented. Then she hid all her descent rides, or deleted them?
Might as well just give everyone all maximum upgrades and the halo bikes just let them be purchased straight away.
Then the distance doping/weight doping for climbs and time loopholes all go away forever.
And people go back to normal riding again.
They do when you ride alone with your face in the wind.
Are there numbers known that you cant draft a level 5 frame on your level 2 frame ?
All we have are numbers from a bot on a steady pace all alone riding for an hour.
Those situations will never happen in a race.
No, but clearly a frame with less aero upgrades than maximum is going to mean that a rider using that frame who is drafting is using more energy than they would have been if they had more aero upgrades.
Breakaways? as a quick example?
But you are trying to say on the one hand we dont know if there will be in any significant improvement whilst saying there wont be any impact to racing. Its an unknown - that will come out in time, but you are trying to downplay this at every turn.
If I was a guessing man id suggest you are known to be happy to game the system for a little gold cup here & there. so would likely lose out if there was a clamp down on these activities.
Because I think a lot of you are over exaggerating the effects this will have in a race.
Examples? I dont think anyone has have they?
They have said there is a potential advantage to gaining these bikes, no one has made any claims beyond the press releases that there is an benefit.
he was named further up, cam jeffers and yes he was given a 6 month british cycling ban for it, the reason for it
The charge relates to manipulation of data before the finals,â said Chris Snook, senior PR manager at Zwift. âJeffers used a bot to ride on multiple occasions at 2000 watts for distances of over 200km with a weight of 45kg. The âbottingâ helped Jeffers unlock the Zwift Concept Z1 bike (commonly referred to as the Tron bike). It was deemed by British Cycling as an attempt to gain unfair advantage and was in breach of clause 5 of their disciplinary code
sounds vaguely familiar but because it wasnât community racing something had to be done to protect the integrity of the platform for sponsorsâŚ
I would much rather the upgrades were cool cosmetic effects rather than marginal performance improvements, yes. Particularly if races are going to trend towards neutralised bikes anyway.
Visual indicators are preferable to me. I like the fire socks. Iâm after the lightning socks. Iâve long advocated some sort of prestige jersey system (e.g. an AdZ jersey that has the number of times youâve climbed it on the back). Iâm aiming for the Project '74 because it looks different, even if itâs not optimal in terms of performance.
There are plenty of ways they could do things like this though. Even just having a fully upgraded Atomic Cruiser available as a red option rather than blue, for example.
I guess that will only be temporarely. Riders like Cat who do 1000 kilometers a week will have fully upgraded frames by now. And every day people will upgrade theirs and make the gap smaller till there comes a turning point where neutralizing bikes isnt needed anymore.
Even so, the benefits are marginal. Iâd rather upgrading be more visual.
A while ago ZHQ said they were not always allowed by frame manufactorers to even change the color of a frame ingame.
Yeah, itâs annoying. But the upgrade effects donât need to be âon the bikeâ as such. Maybe a fully upgraded SL8 lays a rainbow trail behind it when the riderâs doing 2xFTP, for example.
The Atomic Cruiser doesnât fit into that box, at least, so that can still be blue. =)
So I canât ride TT with RoboPacer? I was confused by the offer to switch to Zwift carbon, I only have Z1 Tron and I canât upgrade it yet!
When you joined did you possibly click the wrong button when it says:
âYouâre on the wrong bike! Would you like to change?â
And it added distance up on say something like the Zwift Carbon/Aero?
So I canât ride TT with RoboPacer? I was confused by the offer to switch to Zwift carbon, I only have Z1 Tron and I canât upgrade it yet![quote=âAndrew, post:546, topic:650496, full:true, username:Andrew_Nuseâ]
When you joined did you possibly click the wrong button when it says:
âYouâre on the wrong bike! Would you like to change?â
And it added distance up on say something like the Zwift Carbon/Aero?
[/quote]
I am at almost at level 5 for the Venge and Aethos as I have been upgrading 2 bike concurrently. I will then move to the SL8 which I guess will take less than 2 weeks as I wonât be swapping it out when climbing. Will I then bother with the Project 74 Halo, I donât know? It was meant to be a bike for prestige and recognition of alot of effort which itâs now not
You can! But you should be getting a little popup when you join them telling you âyouâre on the wrong bikeâ that offers to change it.
Which, can be annoying when you do want to ride with a robo on a TT, but it should come up instantly. Just worth keeping an eye out for.
Follow up for Cat; you know itâs a bad thing when the two of us agree that the most important change that came to Zwift for the entire year has already left a sour taste to both of us lol
Upgrade update took us from 100-0 faster than the old sensor select screen used to make us stop! 
I understand now! Thank you very much