You might be paying only for XP and levels, but some people pay Zwift for other aspects of Zwift regardless of XP or levels.
In the greater ecosystem that is online gaming Zwift is considered a ālive service gameā. Someone in my life is intimately familiar with the live service game world and so I brought this issue up with them.
Oh my goodness.
I will distill their responses:
āYeah thatās just an age old dilemma in all of gaming, balancing the new player experience alongside keeping veteran players happy. Itās an impossible task. A lot of times developers veer towards new players, because they give them more money, they buy the game etc. And it can be frustrating as a long time player. The reality is you kinda just have to get over it.ā
Welcome to the world of online gaming. Proving once again no one on line cares about you or your thoughts on anything , they just want your money.
Ride on.
Zwift growing its business is good for them and good for us. Customer growth involves adding new customers while limiting churn of old customers. If additional new customers > loss of old customers, that is winning. As the customer base grows, some of that revenue goes toward things we want them to work on, and some of it goes into their pocket. As an existing customer itās better for me if the business grows. If it shrinks thatās a big problem.
I agree. Iām just trying to cut through the ācorporate speakā and add clarity where Zwift refuses to comment. And they wonāt, none of them do. From my perspective itās all about managing expectations. Corporations suck at managing expectations and Zwift fell into that trap. Itās all good. Reading the tea leaves Zwift seems healthy enough, buying their rivals, continuing to support irl cycling etc. They are in no danger of going away any time soon. Unless they decide to sell out and take their money to Cayman. Oh, it has happened before!
I am grateful this discourse is allowed to happen and thank you Paul for dealing with us! At the end of the day I am grateful for all that Zwift has brought me and I hope is sticks around. If not? Oh well. There are lots of really smart people who would bring it back with a better gaming engineā¦
Iām glad to see what level I have reached (170) and accelerated to 195.
Iāll be celebrating late 2028 when I hit 200.
It would be nice to earn a free month of Rouvy. Yes?
Youāve already earned a free month of Rouvy if you use an affiliate discount code like JDIROM for the monthly standard plan. You can find others on YouTube if you want.
I subscribe, I saw they added a few Ironman routes including a long course of New Zealand Ironman 70.
Looks beautiful.
Training Peaks Virtual has entered the conversation.
Appreciate all the responses to this thread. The core issue for me is about system integrity.
Every unit of measure that drives user experience should be fixed. Mileage, elevation, watts, time, weight, cadence, speed, etc.
If you sign up for a 6 mile crit, it would be nuts to have some people ride 6.0, others 6.3, 6.5, etc. depending on when they joined the platform.
Everyone understands that would be indefensible.
The same integrity should apply to Levels. Each level should have a fixed XP requirement.
System integrity should be the highest core principle and absolutely, positively, non-negotiable.
The problem is that horse has already bolted. You canāt fix the past.
With the various level changes its not always been the same xp to reach levels add to that all the extra bonus xp handed out for various events made it super easy to level up at certain points.
Personally iām ok with the accelerated levelling. Previous upgrades it was only 2x which was rather slow but hopefully with 4x if can bring people back to a level playing field in a better time.
If you want the same integrity on levels what should we base it on, time? distance? No bonus XP?
You can still fix it to prevent unrealistic level up efforts, excessive XP gain within 24 hours?
yep if there are still easy ways to gain xp then they would need looked at
Is the real reason behind this accelerated levelling mess simply that there is a non-trivial number of users with a level (perhaps significantly) higher than what the current default XP thresholds would give them, from the interim period when levelling up was really easy? If that is the case, it seems like strange reason to make things much more confusing for everybody else who has been around for a while. You could just as well simply give those people a permanent āXP rebateā while keeping the thresholds in principle the same for everybody regardless of time of joining and current progress.
Never asked Zwift to fix the past. I recommend correcting it now (once and forever) so that going forward the system can operate with integrity in the user experience.
For example, if someone has 807K XP, then they should be Level 100, or whatever is appropriate based on the XP they have earned.
No magic time machine required.
If my understanding of the current scheme is correct, when everyone has used up their banked XP and finished their accelerated levelling that will be the situation.
There will be a handful of people who will take a long time to get through that bank, and at the end of it they will have much higher levels than everyone else.
that is the tricky part and i get that some people want to jump straight to the earned levels but others like to tick through the levels at an accelerated rate.
I quite like the idea of jumping through levels fairly quickly
Problem is you then get people cheating the system because they are forced to spend a very long time to go through the accelerated level up and they donāt want to do that, so they use loopholes or other methods to avoid it.
I donāt get why it wasnāt possible to let both camps have what they want, let the people who want to crawl through the levels do that, let the others go straight to the level they earned already.
Previous rounds of accelerated levelling up have ended up giving everybody their very special unique individual level thresholds, surely the latest one will do that as well.
possibly but the levelling up is at least 4x this time which hopefully will start to balance things out a bit better to burn through that banked xp.
2x last time was too sloooooow
Accelerated leveling does NOT stay on until you use up all your banked XP UNLESS you have already achieved Level 100. The new release turns it back on for people already at Level 100, but it made no apparent changes for people below Level 100.
In my situation, I am at Level 90 and accelerated leveling will turn off at Level 93. However, I will still have 82K banked XP when it turns off.
Fun factā¦ when accelerated leveling turns off for me, I will have 807,000 XP, just coincidentally, the number officially required for Level 100. BUT I will only be at Level 93. Coincidence or a bug?
Tying back to my analogy from a prior postingā¦ the 6.0 mile crit race ends up being a 6.6 mile race for me. Game integrity requires all units of measure to be the same for everyone. Full Stop.
Perhaps accelerated leveling will turn back on for me at Level 100, allowing me to burn down my banked XP? But I doubt it. I suspect any banked XP I have when accelerated leveling turns off will be permanently stuck in the bank.