So, should we all just use bots to get uphill and then do descents from our computer while relaxing on the lounge?
Or teleport to an account parked at the top of a descent over and over? Or sitting stationary in a timed event for 9 hours to upgrade TT bikes? (Which was also a loophole until it was stopped).
Can you tell me with a straight face that any of those are honest and correct?
One thing I don’t get, is, let’s say, let’s carefully suppose, that someone is riding downhill 300km a day or 500 or even 1000, to upgrade the bikes.
But the bike upgrade includes not only the necessary mileage, but also the drops.
So even if someone rides downhill 3000km a day or eve 50 000 km a day, that doesn’t change anything besides just mileage stats, since in order to make each bike upgrade+ Halo bike purchase, one still need to ride same amount of mileage by putting the power on the pedals.
Am I wrong here?
Did you?
Nah…..riding a saris H3, a wheel on, weight doping powerpedals on 210mm crank
That’d be cheating. Enjoy your virtual bikes 
…….and aero socks
Had a couple of thoughts while slowly dying leading Octane on the Zwift Carbon bike this morning:
When Zwift launched the new levels 60-100 which was based on XP, I don’t recall seeing any of this dropping mountains behaviour. But now the behaviour is widespread, I am sure any new levels would be subject to the same abuse bike upgrades are.
The solution suggested much earlier in this thread to use some form of kilojoules / calories (adjusted for weight) would be open to abuse too. Calorie burn is not based on HR but on power in relation to your FTP. So people would simply lower their FTP to something tiny to maximise a fake calorie burn
Zwift take note!!
Dropping not so much, I suppose because these folks just didn’t think about it.
But one of the most active people doing this teleport and dropping was doing loads of impossibly high powered portal climbs with his Zpower trainer, while for racing had a perfectly normal smart trainer.
That was the rush to get level 100.
Just got another bike upgraded to level 5 by honest hard work.
If only the upgrade challenge requirements could be changed in a fortnightly patch, reset all progress made under these exploit rules and then apply the new challenge metric…
Did artificial dumbness decide a mountain bike upgrade needs climbing, because the bike type name includes the word “mountain?”
Oh that is a brilliant idea. And while at it…Every progress must be done with calibrated trainer/pm and verified weight. No Zpower
Not stupid at all. Would make everyone happy
They won’t do this. I’ve encouraged this for years. Also given the seasonality of cycling, it would be super easy to do a new “season”.
Since Drops were introduced several years ago there was very little need to “spend” them, so many people have accumulated millions of Drops. The effort spent accumulating Drops has already been done.
I can tell you with a straight face that I am honest and correct, I can’t speak for anyone else. But I don’t like to judge about others.
I can (and I do) fight for things being important for me, but I can’t save the world and I don’t fight against windmills.
Meh. Honestly, the bike upgrades aren’t as much a huge deal as we make out. I’ve won a race each of the last two weekends on the BMX bike.
Having just done the latest zRacing event it finishes and drops you onto Ventop, its incredibly easy to see who is doing this in a couple of minutes of cool down.
The quickest way for the community to do this is to starting calling out the Teams of users who are doing it - As most teams want to be seen as playing by the rules they will for the most part police themselves if their name becomes involved in something public I find.. Also, just mentioning there appears to be nothing in the community guidelines about calling out Teams or entities, only individuals.
The point is that it affects pace of rides. All rides.
Not just races, all rides.
So the statement earlier from Zee about how upgraded equipment “ONLY” affecting races, is completely false.
That’s all I was pointing out.
As I’ve mentioned multiple times in here already, 10+ watt advantage is a 10+ watt advantage, it doesn’t matter where you are, it doesn’t have to be a race.
Those 10+ watts hanging on the front of a Robo Partner make the group experience that much more ground speed; and folks now trying to upgrade slower bikes with MASSIVELY worse aero, experience, far more of a difference in speed than ever before.
Take a note that the rough difference between a Buffalo / Safety bike on Classics, vs a fully upgraded say SL8, is now upwards of 18w difference over an hour.
To say near 20w for any average rider “ONLY” matters during a race, is ignorance to everyone else you ride near. Whether that be a group ride, robo partner, etc.
I have seen lots of teams that have their people doing it and proof. But I know some of them are all in on the practice. It’s at all levels, from the lower level riders to the very high level / elite riders.
Other teams have tried to stop their people (good on them and thanks) but it ends in an ugly confrontation.
Just now one of them who was confronted is in a recent ride near 340km in 5.5 hours. The calling out from his team did nothing, though they tried.
So it needs the loopholes stopped quick smart.
I’m not calling out team names.
That’s pretty impressive.
Unless my maths is wrong it’s 10 million to buy each Halo and 10 million to fully upgrade each halo so you need 80 million in drops to have all 4 (I am calling the Tron a halo here). I have 265 million drops but I am an outlier - these people who want all the upgraded halos with no riding surely won’t have enough drops.
That’s not counting the drops to buy the 3 bike upgrades along the way jsut to get the chance to upgrade the halo bike.
I’m not a prolific Zwifter, and I’ve spent quite a few drops over the years, and I have just over 8 million drops.
Not very with context. My FTP and ZRS have both tanked, I entered to add some numbers to a race series for the club, and they were both very small fields. Both basically 1v1 match races for basically the whole race.
