I do 50k with Constance a few days a week. There are always a few guys who show up via teleport, join for the free 50 seconds, then fall off - disrupting the draft and breaking up the group. Must have happened 10-12x today with the same guy. I’d love to see a limit on the number of teleports capped and even better would be limiting the # of people who teleport to a bot and just hit coffee break. It’s often more coffee breakers with Constance than people riding. It has made Zwift worse.
Are you reporting them?
I’m not sure in this case reporting would do much since they are just using in-game mechanics (teleporting to a pacer and hitting coffee stop). They aren’t technically cheating I guess - just using game elements that probably should have been designed better to get free distance/XP.
I notice this pretty often with the higher bots as well.
Teleport definitely needs some kind of limit on it much like coffee has.
But I can attest that when there are heavier people teleporting to bots and falling back, I do get shoved sometimes into the wind or PD braked by them and have to catch back on which is extremely frustrating.
I get it can happen if someone teleports and wants to grab a bottle…
But when someone is doing this non-stop for 10-15 minutes which is what I’ve experienced, it does get incredibly annoying.
I don’t care about the ‘cheating aspect’ so I too see no reason to report them for whatever, I just care that it’s affecting my ride.
Might be someone on vacation keeping his streak alive
I seen this quite a bit.
One person I noticed must of racked up 30k without ever peddling. Teleport - coffee - drop - teleport - Coffee - drop again and again and again
Once you notice them, you can’t un-notice them and I slowly starts to get on your nerves
Is this the “B” / “Bernie” guy again? He was doing this last year getting huge distances per day teleporting to Constance group. And alternating that with coffee breaks when they were available. Normally I wouldn’t name folks but since that’s just someone cheating for distance, it doesn’t matter. And they have probably change their name anyway.
On permanent vacation? This is a pretty shallow excuse and doesn’t really fit with these types who are just looking for free daily distance of 50-100km when they do it for weeks and weeks non stop.
They often use the hand-cycle and when the teleport into the robopacer group over and over it shoves everyone else out of the draft or whatever place they were in. That messes with the pack dynamics.
One “solution” is to let them teleport and coast over and over and ride alone (or in private events with friends) where these folks don’t cannot mess the experience up.
The better solution would be to not give riders any distance when they teleport to robopacers until after the teleport assist has finished and they start riding (cadence and power not 0). That would prevent this.
What if you teleported to a robopacer just before they hit the top of the Rooftop KOM in Makuri, and your assist expires as you pass the arch. That’s a good long descent - should that distance count?
As long as they start turning the pedals that should solve that.
The difference is the “pacer cheats” won’t do that, so they will be caught. The people who are on the bike and riding will turn the pedals and make some power and they’ll get their downhill distance.
I don’t know about others but on anything less than a very steep downhill I need to pedal otherwise I get dropped.
Thanks for taking the time to post this. I’ve noticed this often too.
Seems like there’s so much negative talk that can be linked back some way to coffee breaks that maybe a brainstorm to adjust the feature is warranted?
Coffee breakers negatively impact other riders by messing up the draft mechanics. They appear to get priority for draft, pushing legit riders to the side out of the draft, eventually making them struggle to keep up with the group. It’s also super hard to pass coffee breakers, group mechanics make you ride significantly harder than the guy in front of you to be able to pass him, which is alright, but for coffee breakers it is much much harder still. All this put together results in coffee breakers actually causing the group to break up in multiple smaller groups.
Coffee breakers are interfering with other’s rides even though they are not riding themselves!
And there’s lots of them! It’s not just your average guy getting of his bike for a toilet break or to pick up a dropped bottle. Coffee breakers are everywhere, getting free kilometers with robo pacers, getting a free lift up a climb, …
Here’s my suggestions
- Coffee breakers should not affect other riders in any way. They should not affect draft, … So instead of giving them draft priority, just turn them into ghosts, as in actually mostly transparent and not affecting other riders at all. Just let other riders ride through them.
- Coffee breakers should not get anything for the kilometers they are breaking. No XP, no drops, nothing, the kilometers shouldn’t even count since they are not cycling. Want to coffee break on a route you haven’t completed yet? Tough luck, you’re not getting the badge as the kilometers during the break don’t count. Want them to count? Just come to a full stop for your break and resume when you’re back, don’t use the coffee break for that.
That’s my two cents.
we found out this is by design, the coffee stoppers get bundled together in a line across the road… I can’t remember the reason for this, but I bet @Paul_Southworth does
My recollection of that discussion is that the coffee break feature keeps updating the rider’s speed to roughly the speed of the group they are with, so over time they converge. They are not allowed to overlap so they end up in a row, and anyone stuck behind the dam will have to give it a blast to get through it, an effect that is more noticeable as group speed increases because it’s harder to reach escape velocity.
Subject: Limit Coffee Breaks to Group Rides Only! 
I completely agree with the main post. The abuse of the Coffee Break feature is getting out of hand and messes up the draft for active riders. This needs to stop! My view is that the feature should only be allowed in official Group Events. For normal, free rides, it is completely unnecessary: if you need a bathroom break, just stop your bike and resume when you are back. You don’t lose anything. If you are riding with friends, just do what you do in real life and all stop together. Using coffee breaks to get free kilometers with Robo Pacers or a free lift up climbs is just cheating. Since this abuse actively disturbs the experience of others, Zwift needs to step in and restrict it.
you can just teleport back to a robopacer anyway, no need for a coffee stop with the added function of teleporting now
Yeah but you lose the drop bonus, that’s the bigger deal; though I find that more of a flaw of how the drop bonus feature works.
I can understand the purpose of coffee break in the open world; but.. perhaps a better ‘fix’ instead of outright removal would be:
Allow coffee break on group rides (obviously)
Allow coffee break near friends
Keep robo bonus when teleporting; and allow it to function bot to bot… so going from one bot to another gives more reason for people to jump up if they’re pushing the pace but perhaps want to keep their bonuses coming in.
I like your 2 cents. I have raised the coffee break issue in the General Discussions section with several alternatives/fixes. 1) an ON-OFF setting. If the rider turns OFF the coffee break setting, no one can coffee break on them and they cant coffee break on anyone else. 2) Coffee breaks where the users watts for the last 30 minutes are averaged and for their 3 minutes, they ride at that pace (so they are not using the watts of another rider) 3) the one who is pedaling earns double XP (and drops suggested by another commenter). Those double xp and drops are “paid” to the one pedaling from the xp and drops of the individual using the coffee break.
But that is the whole idea, and people find it fun to cheat, especially even better if it annoys others (eg, late join big spin events and coffee stop immediately - people would do it just to annoy others).
The fix would be to make coffee stops unlimited length, can be started at any time and with a variable speed control up to 59km/h - the current maximum speed i have seen coffee riders accelerate to on their own.
This would be very popular and used frequently. People would love to use it after their 45 minute ride to get a 3 hour “cool down”… (aka free kms)
Anyway, coffee stops will remain - people will get too upset about their free kms gone if they are removed.
I do now and just flag as harassment- guys who do it 10+ times an hour are really disruptive to the draft and for those who are pedaling.