Currently, when you are riding on a route, you still have the option to make a turn off-route. Once you have taken a turn off-route there’s no easy way of getting back on route. When you combine this with the fact that some routes are really long (eg PRL, uber pretzel), the fact that it takes one miss-click on the pop-up menu to do a u-turn, the fact it takes one accidental click on the screen (ipad/iphone etc) to take a wrong turn (even sweat on the screen can do this) and you can lose literally hours of progress towards a route badge, or get dropped from a “pacer bot pack” hours into a ride.
It would be really useful if the user interface offered the option, either at route selection time, or from the pop-up menu, or both to “lock” the route (unless you went back into settings to “unlock” it again), locking you into the route, navigating automatically (as now) and not showing pop-up “turn signs” at junctions.
I’d say it’s at least four or five times now I’ve started a ride with the aim of completing a route, then about halfway round something has happened to take me off the route and all progress has been lost; I’ve had steering block input end up choosing a turnoff I didn’t need, I’ve had sweat drops dripping onto the app while I chose a powerup resulting in a U-turn - and on one occasion recently I’d done ~48/56km of a route, was head down for an effort, and when I looked back up I’m riding in the opposite direction because a sweat drop has triggered an about turn - that’s bad UX.
It would be handy if when choosing a route (or even just globally in the settings) I could choose to only ride that route:
I don’t want to take any turnoff unrelated to that route
I don’t want to perform any u-turns
I don’t want to be able to take any action which counts against the route badge I’m aiming for
This could be handled by either greying out the options and disabling steering-related-turning, or by creating a route mode wherein there are virtual barriers across irrelevant turns, somewhat like we have in races.
I don’t really mind what the actual mechanism is, the key thing is that I’d be locked to this “sticky route” going in one direction.
Happened yet again, this time I watched the dialogue pop up with the left turn (incorrectly) preselected, then it took me off course 17km into a 60km route.
At the very LEAST you should be indicating what direction out of the two options keeps you on-route, at the minute it’s a crapshoot of terrible UX decisions.
Thought I’d have a go on the lovely new routes - but it’s fairly pointless so long as the game takes regular steering inputs as direction changes.
This was another example of it taking a steering input before even showing the dialog, so when the dialog popped up it was already pre-selected and I had no way of knowing I was about to go off-route.
I’d be in favour of a route lock. I was riding the other night and was just thinking the same thing.
using camer zero was probably my issue and the inputs have been broken for a couple months i nearly went the wrong way while trying to complete a badge route. Somethign simple like route lock option when the direction choices appear would be great.
This happens to me on occasion with my Sterzo because of it’s sensitivity, and I have complained multiple times this year, it just happened this afternoon on Ocean Lava Cliffside Loop. But luckily for some reason, I was able to u-turn, I lost the mileage to completion bar, but was able to finish and complete the route for 40xp free ride.
A route lock would be nice, or at least if you are on a route, having to click twice to confirm a route change. Or another idea, clicking the route direction and having the direction indicators at the bottom of the screen DISAPPEAR after choosing,… and not having to “wait” to countdown and them disappear.
Yes, please implement a route locking feature. For a course like Neokyo it is virtually impossible for me to complete with steering. I can’t memorize all the turns and it invariably switches if a junction comes up while I’m steering into a turn or even worse, whenever a juction comes up I have to keep the steering straight while the junction is up to avoid going off course. This greatly reduces the steering experience.
Voted +1
it’s really annoying when you can’t complete the route properly because of making a wrong turn by mistake when steering with a Rizer especially. FYI: my case is described in this topic. It would be great to have a simple general setting to disable selecting turns with steering.
Zwift does not seem to want to acknowledge this is an issue for those of us with elite steering. A simple solution that would fix most of my problems would be a user setting to disable steering-based route changes.
Is there a way to properly lock the directions such that you can stay on the route you’ve selected, even with steering on? I selected Four Hoursemen today, and after 35 minutes, it accidentally took a wrong turn and dropped me out of the route. Let me just say that this totally spoiled the ride, as I wasn’t about to start over again one of the longest and hardest routes in Zwift because of a glitch. I’ve got an Elite Rizer which can do steering controls, and I suspect I involuntarily selected a different direction in one crossing.
Even before I got the steering controls on, I do recall having weird issues like this happening once in a while which I could never explain. Yes, the “correct” choice is always selected by default, but it’s just too easy to accidentally change it, and by the time you notice it, it’s already too late, you have to start over again from the start. Why does Zwift even suggest alternative directions when following a given route? I will disable steering controls entirely for now because it’s just too easy to make mistakes with it, but ideally, I’d just like a way to lock my directions such that I could keep using steering controls knowing it won’t randomly cancel my current route by taking a wrong turn.
I recently got an Elite Rizer and turned steering controls on, only to hit this issue 35 minutes into Four Horsemen.
I don’t understand why route locking is not already there: losing your current route you’re putting hours into completely ruins the Zwift experience. Why make it so easy to lose your current progress? This is a major user experience failure in my mind. I was all pumped up to try Four Horsemen for the first time, with my wife and the dogs watching to support me, and then this happened. I just gave up on it for that day, I wasn’t about to try again one of the hardest routes in the game right after doing the Volcano KOM a first time. At least it wasn’t after the Alpe du Zwift KOM, otherwise I would have been super mad.
Here is my list of issues I think ought to be fixed:
Visual indicator of current route on the mini map. Think like Google Maps navigation. If it’s there, I’ve missed it despite looking for it in both main and companion apps.
Visual indicator of pre-selected route choice: yes, the correct choice is pre-selected, but if you accidentally change it, you have no way to tell if you’re about to go the wrong way.
Lack of good controls for currently selected route or robopacer: it is only shown in the top bar and nowhere else that I could find. It sometimes temporarily goes away, and that’s stressful.
Prominence of U-Turn button in main Zwift and companion Zwift apps: seriously, put it at the very end of the list, after the buttons to take screenshots and videos. Nobody wants to hit that button by mistake.
Here are my recommendations to fix this:
Add a lock/unlock button! Locking would ensure that whatever route or robopacer you’re following, it will keep making the right choices to stick with it. Unlocking is required to change this.
Unlocked mode: show an unlocked icon above pre-selected choices, making it easy to tell if you’re going off-route, yet requiring no explicit unlock action if you choose to do so.
Locked mode: show a locked icon above the pre-selected choices, making it easy to tell you’re locked into that choice, and that an explicit unlock action is required to go off-route.
The locked mode really is all about making locked choices, ignoring all user choices unless explicitly unlocked. I wish to start Four Horsemen or follow a robopacer without having to worry about my choice being changed by accident and losing all my progress toward that goal. It’s okay that Zwift suggests other choices, but to go off-route, I would rather prefer to explicitly unlock my current goal to go off-route. This way, we can have the peace of mind and flexibility of changing our mind.
Absolutely agree with all of that, and I’m somewhat relieved to see others are experiencing the same disappointment when using steering on Zwift.
Annoyingly this never used to be the case and I was happily using Sterzo steering for months before they coded this change in, if they can add it they can surely add a toggle for those of us who have their Zwift experienced ruined by it.
I also don’t use the steering anymore and it feels like I paid a lot of money to have an expensive front wheel block.
A minimal change would be to just have an indicator on the junction options for the option that keeps you on course. A course lock would be better but … baby steps. The system obviously knows the right option because as soon as you take the wrong one all the stats for the current and remaining parts of the ride disappear. As I said above, it is impossible to get through the Neokyo course now. It ruins the experience so much because if you’re steering into a turn and a junction appears it switches to the other option so fast you don’t know which one is correct and you never know how close to the junction you have to be before the options appear and possibly switch on you. Please Zwift, do something about this! This is ruining the steering experience!
As I was in the middle of the Uber Pretzel, my sweat dripped and hit the u-turn button on my phone, therefore turning me around mid Alp and cancelling the entire route that I had been at for 4 hours. So pissed! There needs to be some sort of confirmation that pops up on the screen if you’re in the middle of the route. That would have allowed me to disregard the u-turn and continue on.
How is this not implemented yet? It makes me unwilling to use steering because sometimes a turn in the road happens right as route choice pops up and makes you chose the wrong turn an lose all progress.
