Well, there’s a lot to improve about racing, but racing certainly can be fun 
It’s not quite as fun for people who are bottom of a category, but those folks can race in events where all cats are visible etc. So definitely try racing and see what you think
Try some community races. The Zwift HQ races are the ones to avoid (my opinion).
Also they already released gamified racing so try that if you’re interested.
No it’s true, it definitely seems that way, doesn’t it?
One part is that people rarely post about having a grand time when nothing went wrong 
Another part is that for some people, racing is very competitive. And competition for some people frankly isn’t fun. It’s ‘rewarding’ if they do well, and something they’re driven to do, but not fun.
That said…for many people it is fun, even if they don’t place highly. And even if there’s some man-child cheater in the race. Because even then it can still be a turned-to-10 competition against other people, where you get some extra motivation to push yourself really hard. If you don’t place the primary, or only, value on how you place compared to others, racing can be a lot of fun.
I forgot a couple -
Remember sort order of routes on the route selection screen
Don’t show Ventop on the gradient graph in France if your route does not include Ventop
Put a 1 pixel wide border on the upcoming gradient - it gets lost in the dark background of Neokyo quite often
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nah, it’s cool. this probably goes for every aspect of zwift, but if what happened ingame all of the time really resembled the general sentiment on these forums then nobody would be doing any of it. people have an issue or two they feel some kind of strong way about, but on the whole they like it, probably. i do
this may very well be true - I don’t race either so have no skin in the game - but feedback is almost always artificially skewed towards the negative, people are far less likely to comment on stuff that went well/as expected than if something was below what they were expecting.
This is probably exaggerated when people have really pushed themselves in a race and are tired, aching and angry!
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If racers didn’t have fun doing it, then since it’s not their job they’d simply stop racing.
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Yes, it’s a forum on the internet. People are going to complain. It’s like the feedback on Apple TV. I’m sure many (most?) people on that platform have no problems. If a friend asked me what he should run Zwift on the number of complaints about ATV here would make me advise against it.
Anyway I’ll probably give racing a try in the new year. Who knows I might get bit by the racing bug.
I dunno. Places like Twitter and FB seem full of people who aren’t having any fun at all, but few of them are getting paid to be out there.
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Random (daily) changes of the CE Cat boundaries (unpublished) with pen allocation at start of each race.
Power/speed bias slider – allowing any rider to participate in any published ride event or RP ride (not races) that is less than their own ability, and exert up to whatever effort they want but stay with the group.
Interesting idea (for me - being bottom C most time) - but I believe this forum would explode with complaints…
- Customise HUD
- Ability to disable the “catch up to” banner
- Graphics upgrade for ATV
- Personal Robopacers
- Mt. Fuji
- Ultra Pretzel route
- Always sunny setting
- XP for elevation gain
- Design your own jersey
- White tron bike
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OK, srs bsns, apart from being put on my true level, here are some things I’d like in Zwift.
In no particular order.
- Prestige jersey effects - I started a feature request about this years ago, and I still think it’s a fine idea. Zwift has some things that show off achievement (the Zwift Concept bike, the 100mi jersey for example), but there’s loads of scope for adding more things that reflect how far people have ridden in one go or in total, or climbed, how many times up AdZ, how many up Ven-Top etc. How many races completed, how many events ridden. The sky’s the limit.
- Level up effects - OK, this one might not be as impressive as it used to be, but in most MMORPGs I’ve played, everyone in the vicinity sees some sort of toast when someone levels up. I’d like to see that in the game. OK, maybe it’s as simple as the “X just reached a weekly goal” things in Riders Nearby, but it’d be something. “Daren reached level 47” Nearby riders should see an orange Ride On thumb as well, like we do when someone reaches that weekly goal etc.
- Club jerseys - reduce the distance between the haves and have-nots, and make it much easier for a club to get a jersey in game. Put a form on the website that clubs can use to submit their design. Either a finished mock-up from someone like Nopinz, or a rough design that the in-house team can realise. Sure, maybe have some requirements such as n club members with active subs in-game or something, but it’s ridiculous that clubs who’ve had people in the game for 8 years still don’t have a jersey.
- Customisable HUD - for me, World of Warcraft is the gold standard here. Players can almost completely replace the default UI with something they prefer. It would be even better if this could be combined with a mod/plugin system. No need for Sauce as a separate thing; people could just display the data the game already has directly in the game with a plugin overlay.
- Consolidate worlds - OK, maybe we’ll never get the ability to ride everywhere, but as others note there are too many tiny “worlds”. At least add London, Yorkshire and Scotland together (and something in Wales). Add Innsbruck to France. Maybe Richmond too.
- Climbing XP - now that I have to re-earn my XP for all intents and purposes, I feel even more that I’m losing out when I decide to go up a mountain. I’m supposed to be going to the Alps in June. I want to train on the virtual hills. But I feel like I’m missing out when I do.
- Kit organisation - again, something others have asked for, unsurprisingly. I have too many jerseys, it’s hard to find the few I regularly use. I want to be able to favourite them. I want to be able to set up sets of kit that go together. Maybe I like to wear a TT helmet on my TT bike, and no helmet at other times. It should be a case of clicking “Kit set 1” or “Kit set 2” etc.
- Velodrome - yes, I went there. I understand that some people aren’t interested. But I think it has huge potential for some really fun game modes - particularly with steering being added. Heck, I’d even consider collision detection for the velodrome to spice things up.
I’m sure there are more, but my tea’s ready.
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Why…I mean what business is it to other riders what level I’m at?
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All that would happen is a torrent of abuse - look at what happens here to folk with Level 60, everyone ruthlessly mocks them. So I think this feature wouldn’t go well.
Velodrome needs some kind of trainer device that can simulate fixed gear, so you must keep turning the pedals or it tries to throw you off.
There is now an Alpe du Zwift jersey which is an unlock (I think level 70 or 72) - but it has no relation to people doing AdZ at all. Any “how many times ADZ or Ventop” type jerseys would be fairly pointless because of all the types who do 7 vEverests per week at constant 4.0w/kg. So that means the rest of us that might have a 100x ADZ jersey must also be questionable.
It’s not necessarily knowing which level someone has attained, just the fact they’ve gained a level. As I noted, it’s probably much less notable now. It could be every 5th level or 10th levels that’s notable.
You might not care for it but the question was about changes I’d like to see, so if you don’t agree fair enough. 
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The answer to that is Zwift should crack down on anyone using a simulator. Holding a constant power for more than a few pedal strokes is pretty sus I think, let alone more than a minute, so they should be simple enough to detect, no?
I suppose workouts might not be as straightforward, if it’s the trainer that’s setting the power? I’m not entirely sure how that works.
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Good point, if the trainer is setting the power (rather than being in a Zwift workout) maybe tricky but I’m sure the cadence would still vary, unlike our bot friends zooming up ADZ at 160rpm cadence.
They should crack down on that, but we’ve been critical for a long time and still nothing we know of happening yet.
Should be easy enough to not check when Zwift is using ERG mode. After all, it’s Zwift that’s telling the trainer to use ERG and giving it a power target.
I’m using Zwift with a PC, smart trainer and Zwift Play. Try to avoid the companion app wherever possible. Not because I think it is a bad effort, just because I don’t see any benefit in a setup that is by it’s nature stationary.
- For me the first and most important thing would be feature parity between Zwift and the app
- Include all-time leader boards and rider stats
- Integrate audio communication in meet-ups. I think the idea was there to allow third-party music players at some point (at least I was asked about that a lot in the software). Just do something like that.
Other than that, I’m almost fine with stuff. I’ve found my way to do and enjoy what I want to do with Zwift. I’ve given up on racing on Zwift (for good). I think it is at an okay price point. No need to add non-important stuff just to increase cost. That being said, a few really minor things come to mind:
- Climb portal design: Make that tunnels, with a few design features rather than voyages into the void. Visual cues for gradient and a bit of optical candy here and there. I think I can live with “simple”, but currently it is “empty”. Motivation is to go for the badges, nothing else. Maybe pick a real-climb once a year if it is actually being raced on TV. But probably it won’t be available in the schedule then, so maybe not.
- Consistency in route progress bar, elevation profile, and route map. These widgets are all over the place (with regard to screen position) in climb mode, workout mode, free ride mode. Also they almost ever are either covering too much or too less area around you. They should probably scale to context (with regard to map locations).
- Improve work with the community. Acknowledge bug reports, give (estimated) release targets, apologize when these are missed and celebrate when they arrive in time. This has gotten a LOT better in terms of quality over this summer (I feel), but it still feels like there would be work in this regard for a few job openings.
Can’t think of many more…
Well, maybe the join workflow. Ideally I’d want to select a route, a workout, and a meetup before putting my avatar on the road. And I’d like to start on the home screen, not on the pairing screen.