I really don’t see a real purpose of the differing road surfaces and different resistance but it is part of zwift and I was ok with it.
It never made sense to me that the mountain bikes were faster than the gravel bikes on the gravel road.
Zwift needs to try a different approach to make Road / Gravel / MTB different.
Yep, the A bot these days has turned into a flat-lander. Dislikes the jungle and especially hills.
It was hard work back in those days as the bot was very fast in the jungle, it never really slowed much anywhere, especially over the tops of crests it would take off, especially over that wooden bridge.
Maybe for MTB in Zwift you need routes with obstacles that cannot be passed by a normal bike? It seems a bit convoluted with MTB being the fast option in the jungle.
The gravel section is only 9 minutes in zone 2 are you saying you will be going double the speed in a paved road
The whole jungle route is only a few minutes slower.
The whole route is 17 seconds slower!!! People’s perceptions of the difference are completely out of wack from reality.
I have said before but I’d much prefer gravel if it actual increased resistance.
Going up gradients feels harder in real life and feel harder in game, cycling on gravel feels harder in real life and should feel harder in game.
I don’t really mind if it makes you go slower or not.
Thanks @Arend_teRaa
I did not know the exact number and I did not want to be called a lair for getting it wrong by 2 seconds.
So we know how people feel about gravel.
Is there any consensus on DUST?
In a real jungle, that is very humid and wet, there would never be dust… just mud
Bear in mind that’s at a steady 300W though, and a lot of us are far slower than that. The slower you are, the more time you lose vs the optimal bike choice, so it will be way more than 17 seconds if you do significantly less watta.
I liked the jungle’s previous rolling resistance though, due to it being very different. So I personally wasn’t keen on the latest CRR changes for the jungle.
A gravel road is a paved road.
Even if it is 1 minute slower does it really matter?
It all goes back to the old Strava distance and avr speed bragging rights.
For me the issue is… It’s slower, but it doesn’t add anything at all to the experience. So if the choice is to go on tarmac, and go faster, or go on a brown surface and go slower with no real other difference in experience then I don’t understand the point of it.
It’s like if there was a setting in your options to increase your Crr in general, and nothing else about the experience changed except the road colors turned brown and you go slower. How many people would go and increase that Crr value themselves proactively on purpose?
For a race where changing bikes can be a strategy I do see how it adds a new element: One I don’t care to use since I don’t personally want to stop biking in the middle of a race to change bikes, but I can understand how some like that aspect of it.
But it does it gives you the opportunity to use a different bike and change it up a bit, it also changes the ride dynamics, you need more power but weight factor differently than on tarmac.
I feel like I get penalized more on gravel because of my weight therefore I need to pay more attention when approaching a gravel section that charges the game a lot.
would you be happy if gradient changes weren’t felt in game? it just changed the ride dynamics in game?
How is going from tarmac to gravel different to that?
No, I enjoy gradient in the game. You get more drops, you build up your m climbed, you get to fly down a hill later. A gradient is not just a different colored road.
Edit: Also you work on different pedaling cadences as a result of hills which adds a dynamic that brown road with a higher Crr doesn’t.
that was what i was getting at.
I think gravel should increase the resistance you feel on the trainer.
I agree with that. Right now gravel doesn’t add any value, it just adds Crr with no other dynamic change - literally just slows you down without any other metric to make it a more interesting experience to ride (outside of bike swap in races which I discussed above - and don’t care for personally). If it “felt” a lot different and added a different dynamic that would be a different story.
Edit: Though I think you should get more drops for riding on a higher resistance surface similar to climbing actually (or something like that).
yeah, that was kind of the point i was trying to make above - people wouldn’t be happy if hills weren’t felt with resistance change so why is it okay for surface changes not to be felt? (road feel aside but that doesn’t actually change how hard/easy the resistance is)
the drops point seems fair but to be honest i already have way too many of them so not massively bothered either way!
Maybe this is why I don’t care. Zwift speed/distance are 100% fake so there’s no point in even looking at those numbers. Time and power are the only things that matter because those are the only metrics that have proper measurement in the game. (Power sometimes questionable, but with decent equipment it’s at least in the ballpark.) I engage with the game as it is, not based on the fakery of Strava records.
Not to me it doesn’t, which I thought I made clear.