What keeps you at Zwift? Have you tried anything else?

For me Zwift was a great way to gamify indoor cycling in the first few years. Exploring all the routes, riding with friends, racing, and the big events like TdZ. As time has gone on and I’ve completed all of those things, the lack of innovation and improvement has made me fatigued with indoor riding in general. I’m left generally only riding for 2 reasons - workouts, and racing. If I am going to freeride I will now always choose outdoors.

Workouts are pretty much the same on any platform - what is happening with the avatar in the background is really irrelevant. I end up either focussing on the intervals or watching youtube or netflix. A platform needs to really innovate in the workout space - there’s a lot of riders that only really do workouts, and there are so many things that could be done to make workouts more involved/interesting/gamified.

Racing - pack dynamics improvements aside, which I admit are key, racing has not developed on Zwift AT ALL in the 5 years I’ve been on the platform. In 9 months IndieVelo has added pretty much everything I’ve wanted Zwift to add. Matchmaking, no categories, fully in-built race organiser tools available to everyone, custom kit available to everyone, in-game points, in-game team racing support, proper server-side positioning, elimination and kierin formats, real draft dynamics including trainer resistence control, etc etc.

Due to this I canned my Zwift sub in January. My overall indoor trainer usage has declined significantly, I do most of my structured workouts outdoors unless the weather is bad and then I watch netflix and use IndieVelo, which actually has better workout functionality than Zwift already (ERG smoothing, better display of upcoming intervals) despite not actually developing workout functionality properly yet). For racing it is a no-brainer to use IndieVelo even though the community events and numbers are not there yet. Even with (surprisingly smart) bots the race proposition is so much better.

This isn’t a shill for iV, or even bitterness towards Zwift, it’s just the truth. Once you’ve done the fun stuff on Zwift, the serious side is severely lacking for me, sample size of one. Zwift is focussing on the more casual rider who is happy to ride up and down fuego flats all day using a speed sensor to give them 400w with a big grin on their face. And that’s OK. The casual market is big. For me now I’m looking for a platform that can nail training and racing. Ideally that would also look great and have lots of fun modes, but not at the expensive of the core functionality.

7 Likes

These are two different things.

Been on Zwift since nearly the start it was launched
When you’ve invested so many years into a platform, the rival would have to offer something extraordinary for me to leave Zwift.
Even Mywoosh being free, isnt even anough to entice me as i love Zwift still too much
Its my indoor cycling home

Home is where the heart is

2 Likes

This is likely the genuine reason why so many stick with Zwift.

I also got huge motivation from completing all the routes for the first time, ticking off the route badges (don’t care about other badges). My weekly time on the platform went down quite a bit after that. To me the biggest problem with Zwift is the lack of new roads and routes, especially 40km+ routes (I hate laps in free rides). It seems clear that the road development process is much too expensive for the company, and to me climb portal is not the solution because it doesn’t have the appearance that makes me enjoy long sessions indoors. I’ve tried a few competing products but the lack of community on them is something I can’t get over. I hate bots and that’s pretty much all they have. I regularly play with other riders at random by finding someone at a similar pace and “sweeping” them on a free ride just for the hell of it.

I think the fact I don’t free ride means the community is less relevant - although a vibrant racing community on iV would be good - for me as an EMEA evening racer.

Arguably it’s a better proposition for your West Coast US D rider - who currently can’t race in fields bigger than 2 on Zwift, but on iV can have rewarding races with full fields (even if the riders aren’t ‘real’).

Maybe it’s a thinly veiled reference to all the unity devs moving to Unreal after the latest Unity pricing model change fiasco :wink:

In terms of what keeps me on Zwift, I enjoy the amount of events that can be joined with real people (group rides, races, group workouts etc.) at any time during the day I would normally ride. I do like the gamification of it (route badges, achievements etc.), but I think they can do a lot more there of course.

I have built my own custom workouts already in Zwift, so I have the workouts I want all there. I do use the pace partners every week even though they are not perfect for my use case. I don’t tend to just free-ride around the world (now that I have all the route badges), I either do a custom workout, ride with a pace partner, or join an event.

I would actually really interested to try IV, but they don’t yet support iPad Pro which is what I use Zwift on today. So that is another positive of Zwift, they do support a lot of platforms.

If you’re fed up riding the same roads repeatedly in Zwift then IndieVelo is going to be a real disappointment.

1 Like

I seem to remember Zwift started with Jarvis…

Feel free to sweep me if you see I’m doing a workout. Extra km ftw!

1 Like

I tried Rolla because a Mac version is available these days.

It works but is complicated. The no connection is likely due to two firewall ports needing to be opened for communication. I had troubles getting the Rolla iOS app to communicate to desktop (display) app until I did that.

That said it is lacking in some areas:

Controlling game functions only through mobile app: this is annoying, functions like tweaking the avatar or changing bike not possible during a ride.

Limited view controls - not able to zoom or rotate the view as far as I can see.

Always forgets the screen resolution.

That said it looks great even on my old 2010 Mac Pro running an 8GB RX6600XT graphics card and 6 core Xeon:

On the hill village loop the buildings look amazing. Colours and light also nice.

In terms of avatar you can customise a bit more than Zwift - avatar can wear mix and match kit, eg running singlet while riding - suppose some of the triathlon types would use that instead of sticking (Tri) tags in their name. But the default bikes do look ugly, they look like bulky e-bikes.

I treated myself to a new Tacx Neo 2T and have 7 months of free Tacx subscription as a result. I’m actually enjoying the videos of real places. It’s completely different to Zwift, not having any game features, nor any community feel. It feels much more like “real” riding though - the sort of stuff where you either go out of your door and ride, or visit some exotic location to do so.

It’s the group rides and the racing. Every race unfolds a bit differently and that keeps things really interesting. I also work harder in races than I would with most other types of exercises, so that is hard to replicate.

3 Likes

Not insignificant to my staying with Zwift is their support of women’s racing.

It wouldn’t be the only factor if the product was bad, but it’s an important factor.