I’m not sure if I can get the working aero socks before 2026.
But if I do, look out for the vortex behind my level 5 Dogma. It will be sucking up everything in its path apparently. Especially in December, that ugly sweater always gets me way ahead on group rides.
Now if I could just get my hands on one of those giant time trial helmets.
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Summer is coming.. maybe a few unpaid interns could be given something to do?
Just get someone else to ride on your account while you are sleeping or working.
Rumours are that happens already with some riders (who shall not be named).
One of those riders has been noticed to struggle with lower speed robopacer groups then next day will be smashing it with a much faster group and has effortless low heart rate. The differences in performance are “interesting” to say the least.
The differences in heart rate point to a different person who is heavier and riding at low power very easily versus the account owner who is very much lighter and has to work harder to ride with slower robopacer groups.
The bigger issue new riders have is that they suck at racing and waste watts on (a) doing too much, (b) not drafting well, (c) shoddy tactics. ZRS is actually not terrible on this because a rider who used to A cat can now start in C cat 520ish zrs and get easier racing early.
Even your strawman 30-40w can be overcome with skill pretty easily.
This is so true. In my early days of Zwift racing, I’d typically lose to folk who’d averaged 0.3w/kg less than me. Now my w/kg are generally closely matched to those around me at the finish. It’s taken a long time to optimise staying in the draft vs staying near the front to avoid being on the wrong side of a split. Doesn’t help that I don’t have steering and am at the mercy of “pack dynamics” to steer me into the draft. But it’s all part of the game!
You get to purchase the Aeroad at lvl 10, and you reach that within a very short amount of time.
The difference between that bike and any high end bike is negligible compared to other factors, so you are simply wrong
+1
So obviously the upgrades affect how fast you go for a given wattage relative to those you’re riding with, but in practical terms, does it matter on things like robopacer rides? Depending on how tired I am, I choose a pacer in the 2.6 to 3.2 range, and then modify how I ride in that group depending on how fast it’s going, which is generally a function of size. Sometimes I skulk at the back, other times I ride at the front. Sometimes I even switch pacers mid ride.
I guess it depends on objectives. I ride for the training effect (and drops via the multiplier) so if I’m aiming for circa 200 watts average, it doesn’t matter whether I’m grovelling at the back of Jacque’s group, leading Coco’s group or riding alongside just yumi. If someone wants the kudos from being able to ride with a particular pacer for an amount of time then bike differences do count.
There was at least one rider who admitted it on these forums, complaining that his new super-socks didn’t work right. He and his wife were sharing the account
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Oh I was thinking of someone else. That’s all I’ll say.
Must be adressed to me amongst others. Here is my view on all this :
Teleporting and going down - Not cheating
Changing weight before going up or down - Cheating
Using a script to get upgrades - Cheating
Any use of an automatic bot (ant+ simulator, a powerdrill in your cranks etc) - Cheating
Sharing an acount to get upgrades - Cheating
And I think that since we now are entering the 7th week into this we can conclude that Zwift thinks the same. The TT Frame bug was solved in the next update in two weeks and after that nothing has been done. To the point now that the normal frames dont given much of an advantage anymore since a lot of riders will have level 5 frames now or are close to that.
And Zwift has reached some of the goals I think they had behind this all:
Drain drops from acounts 
Make people spend (more) time on their platform (either now getting the upgrades or later when they run out of drops).
This with other new updates stop people from cancelling during the summer.
As mentioned before, I would have loved a better approach and system for the upgrades but it is what it is and despite people pointing to the TOS it doesnt look like Zwift agrees.
Only problem I have at the moment is that the three road frame Halo bikes are too good. They need a little nerve to lets say like equal to the 5th best frame so that they are usable but not too good.
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You forgot:
Get more people in Zwift forums. 
I broadly agree with this but would say the teleport thing is a loophole that should be closed.
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Dont really think so. It are the same 5 people over and over and those are very vocal in expressing their concerns, thoughts and opinions in this topic. But there arent a lot of people more than usual in the forums due to this.
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Of course!
Otherwise threads like this wouldn’t exist:
Or really any other ongoing discussion / topic about bots being on Tri bikes so paces day to day / hour to hour are less irregular.
And those topics go back.. for a very, very, very long time.
Granted my argument for those has altered, as has Zwift’s actual statement on them; they aren’t “pacers” anymore, they’re “24/7 group ride partners”
Regardless, an increased range / variability in effort is generally not what folks look for when joining something that’s supposed to be a specific pace.
Based on the statement from James on Facebook last week I think that sums it up Peter.
Teleporting is the cheap way out / unfair, but it alone is not “abuse.”
Meanwhile, Coffee Break has a 30 minute cooldown on it… how angry would the userbase be if teleporting had a cooldown timer on it? (I guess there are still ways around this though, ie ending a ride, starting a new one).
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This could work - only being able to teleport every 30 mins. I like to bot hop though and often do Bot ramps and bot pyramids so that would scupper that but I would live with that if it stopped teleporting abuse.
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I’d just go with a timer after each teleport for something like 5 minutes of active pedalling, before your virtual ride counts towards XP, drops and challenges.
@Crazy-Cat I also like to bot-hop, but on the extreme off-chance that Zwift does implement a restriction on teleporting, hopefully it won’t apply to the pacer bot groups.
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You’d need a lengthy cooldown timer for it - people would still just end up doing 20-30 12km descent rides.
One simpler solution would be that descent kms do not count for bike upgrade progress. That would of course affect us folks who ride uphill a lot, but it will stop the teleport abuse once and for all. I’ll give away the descent I earned by riding uphill with the mountain bike to stop the cheating.
A solution that they could have implemented on day 1, but is useless now.
Upgrades from this program can only be purchased with drops earned on the bike in question. That would have killed the “parked TT bikes” and downhill only “riders”. They would have had to ensured that it was possible to earn enough drops for the upgrades when the rest of the requirements were met. The banked drops (for those with xx million floating around) could still be used to purchase the actual halo bikes, just not upgrade them.