Maybe this has been done by now. This morning all of the off-Watopia RP’s were in France so we could Bot Jump without having to end rides and restart when we’re done warming up. A couple of days ago some were in France, some were in Paris (a different Zwift world from France), some were in New York (or Makuri, or somewhere else). Please keep all of the RP’s rotating off Watopia in one world. I don’t see a reason for them to be all over the place but if there is a good reason, please enlighten me…
Variety of options?
I suppose. The reason I bring this up is because most of the people I know on Zwift start off with one of the lower power RP’s and then escalate from there as they warm up. Until this morning, the only way to do that was in the Watopia group. The off Watopia bots were always dispersed between two or three worlds. And the only way to know that was if you knew the route names well enough to determine the world they were inhabiting (another little Zwift annoyance).
Next time you’re choosing the bot you want to ride with on the Zwift front page, note the rider numbers for each of the bots. Watopia bots almost always have 2x or more in their groups. The only time that’s not the case is when the Watopia bot is on something like Titans or something hilly. ZHQ should probably note that too…
Usually the wattopia bots are the flatter routes, which is likely why they are more popular, so it’s not necessarily because people like switching between bots in the same world.
Exactly so. Right now, Miguel is on Downtown Titans and he’s getting less riders than the Miguel in France. I can only point to my admittedly anecdotal evidence of “people I know” saying they’d ride with the off Watopia bots if they didn’t have to end rides to bot jump.
Probably for variety and keeping activity in the different worlds to improve the social aspect (aka, keeping everyone packed together).
I’ve made the team responsible for RoboPacer location aware of your feedback.
Thank you @James_Zwift
I support the request. No problem to change the non-Watopia world more frequently (say every 2-3 days), but at least keep all RP’s together. Another observation would be if there’s a reasonably popular zwift series in any given week (eg zracing etc) that’s not in watopia, useful to have the RP’s in that world. When you finish that ride, it’s convenient to go straight to a RP as a warm down or follow-on ride, and not have to end the ride and start again.
Yes, having the RP’s in the same world as big Zwift events would be great! Being able to go from warm-up to event without changing worlds makes things much easier. Well … easier…
I’m guessing there’s an issue if worlds are too small with too few routes. It’s a somewhat known issue that faster RP rides that pass through slower RP ride groups can cause havoc. How many larger worlds are there where there’d be little enough overlap? How much ride crashing would there be in Paris, London, Innsbruck, Scotland? Even some worlds with lots of routes, like NY now, there’s still a huge amount of overlap.
That used to happen a lot in Tempus Fugit and I don’t remember any havoc.
Sure you would see a few people in the slower groups trying to chase the faster group (and blowing up) or the two robopacers having a bit of race and people having a laugh about it.
It’s been a while, but maybe more of a problem when it was before teleporting existed. Riders would lose their draft, go off the front, or back. Instances where up to 3 RP groups would be passing each other at the same time.
Nonetheless, even if not a physical problem, perhaps a visual issue. Imagine 10 RP groups roaming the worlds that have few total miles of roads - Scotland and Yorkshire each has ~9 miles, Paris has 4, Innsbruck 14. Richmond 10. I like the idea of all RPs sitting in one world, but perhaps focus should first be adding more miles to some of the small existing worlds. Or, has been asked previously, connecting worlds (eg. Paris with France, etc).
Oh it would be a superb social experience. 
Everyone can be close together, feels busy, social, chatting, flamewars about cakes. That last one was in a morning coco pace partner group on Tempus in the easy old 65kg 2.5w days. That was a particularly heated discussion. 
Sometimes I like to mention on group rides that I like pineapple on pizza
This all raises an interesting question. RP rides are somewhat of a mix between a group ride and a free ride, having some characteristics of both. Group ride organizers though, almost universally, set up their rides so that you can only see other event riders, not everyone who is out riding in the same world/route. Free rides by default you can see everyone. So, question might be – if it were possible (but it probably isn’t for technical reasons), If RP rides had the characteristic that you could ONLY see other riders who joined the RP, would that be preferred or not to how it currently is? Vice versa, should group ride coordinators experiment more with setting their rides up to see everyone who’s out and about?
Some do this already, especially running groups (ed to add the chat might be a bit annoying especially for some rides where the opening half hour is saying hello to everyone you know)
Yeah, moreso I’m thinking of cycling. Zwifthacks eg over the next 7 days, shows only 23 events out of 1,897 rides having “see all riders” tag fwiw (1.2%).
Adding my support to this suggestion! Frequently I’ll do a half/half pacer ride (Genie/Jacques or Coco/Maria), and much of the time I’m stuck in Watopia because the pacers I want to ride with aren’t in the same other world.
Last week they were doing so well and then this morning, TheBots were spread around what could be a single world but Yorkshire and London are not in the same world so off to Watopia I go. There were 2-3x as many riders in all RP’s on Watopia than the off Watopia RP’s…