What happened to alpha key menu access? No T or A menus anymore?

Hey Zwift
After the update yesterday (or day before) I noticed that menus previously accessed with T or A (pairing) are no longer available.

In the past user customization was not allowed once ride was started, so now I have to start my ride before I can make changes? This seems to be really backwards.

Generally, you would start a program which leads to a menu, which would lead to choices from that menu, like world and then route and then user customization, and then the natural progression would be to ride. As it is in Zwift you start the ride and then make decisions about pairing and customization? Are you kidding me?

I guess I have to ask why the improvements seem to always mean taking some functionality away from users? It would have been nice to know you were going to do this before you did itā€¦

Honestly, I would like the alpha key menus back, at least they helped to maintain some form of rationality with the program, now itā€™s completely backwardsā€¦

Same here

Iā€™m really glad, the A key is gone.
Too many times I forgot to press m and write a text with ā€œaā€ and got dropped of the group, cause fricking pairing screen.
In Zwift you pair your devices before you start!

And of course you can customize your avatar in the starting pen of a event. I did it yesterday.

During a ride, the ā€˜aā€™ key behaves as it always has. It just no longer does anything before you click ā€˜ride.ā€™

Damn, I really hoped it is gone after I read this post :frowning:
Who needs pairing within the game?

Me when leading a group ride if primary power source dies.

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If Iā€™d live in a country where power dies often, Iā€™d buy a USV.

Primary criticism here is that program functionality was modified without any notice and no explanation following the changes. The program is already completely backwards in terms of user control. Selecting ā€˜Rideā€™ should be the last thing done before the ride, not somewhere in the middle, but thatā€™s a topic for another day.

Pairing window can be activated again pre-ride at the ride/route/riders menu by clicking on the center where the pairings are listed, but again the fact that a change was made without any notice and without explanation is the biggest criticism here besides the initial loss of functionality.

I will say though that there are reasons to pair devices during a ride, as posted by S_ticky for instance if the battery in your PM fails and you stop to replace it, and yes it does happen.

For those who criticize the alpha menus because they made mistakes by not pressing the M to do group message and instead pressed A, messaging is allegedly better via the companion app where you can also do voice to text and not have to deal with keys at all. And then thereā€™s the whole issue of why zwift should be modified because you goofed and made a mistakeā€¦

@Bench, When S_ticky says primary power failure I believe he means primary power METER failure, not power supply.

Alpha menus are easy for people to use, discarding the complaint about messaging above, but to remove the functionality without notice or explanation is bad practice.

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Good luck with that when leading a group ride. text to speech is not reliable enough for leading rides, and even harder if you have an accent. After a few years of leading you get used to pressing M before you type, but sometimes you just donā€™t press it hard enough and suddenly you are on the paring screen. It will be nice to have these keys as a Alt+" key".