4th time ever on Zwift for Mac and this is the first time i’ve seen the AI Bots.
What’s the point of them? To motivate you? How can they do that if I have no idea how hard they are working? I can’t pace off them if I don’t know what they’re effort level is.
Keep them off the leaderboards. The whole point of this online concept is the compete against other online riders. Putting me 20th behind 5 other Bots on the KOM does nothing for my motivation.
What’s with the traffic going in the opposite direction? They serve no purpose except for clogging up my video card. If they aren’t relevant to my ride, ditch them. The visuals are already spectacular with the great landscape you’ve created. Don’t pollute them with quick flashes of blue blobs running in the opposite direction.
I would rather see a Ghost Bot of my fastest session lap that resets after every lap. That way I can chase myself…I’m prove my efforts and time. Chasing AI is arbitrary.
The AI’s serve plenty of purpose during the off hours. Once the weekend rush starts they’ll go away again. When usage numbers are low, they come back. Either way sometimes we leave them on during crowded times and other times we don’t, and part of that is convenience and part is experimentation of learning what people like and network load tests.
AIs will not be on the leaderboards starting in a few weeks.
To be fair, almost nothing is relevant to your ride. A rider going the other way is probably as relevant as grass on the side of the road, but we’ll not be shutting that off any time soon. I wouldn’t worry about it.
Thanks for the quick reply. Reading my question again after a post-ride shower I realize that it may have come off harsh. Let me be clear, what you guys are doing is fantastic and I’m truly grateful for being invited to the beta test. I hope you took my feedback as constructive and nothing more.
For the opposite direction thing - I guess I would rephrase - if they are other riders online doing the clockwise course - all good. But I hardly see the point of seeing the AI’s.
The idea of an AI that is a ghost bot of a riders prior session or lap is a good idea.
Otherwise, kill the AI bots. OR, make it a user option at sign to not show them. And let me keep it checked, like the hopefully soon to come ‘keep me logged in’ option.
If the AI riders had more interesting behavior I would warm up to them but with so many live riders they tend to take me out of the zone. As an example yesterday, I was pacing with a few of them and then on the downhill they suddenly gapped me by 10 seconds. I was pushing 4.2 w/kg and was dropped hard going downhill. It just didn’t make sense.
I don’t mind them, but I hope their behaviour becomes a little more helpful, especially as I don’t have as many riders in my time zone and often tend to be on the island with not many others around.
In those circumstances I would appreciate having some AIs just doing steady pacing, not gapping me on the downhills or when I catch them suddenly upping the pace.
It would be good to have a mix of some erratic and some steady AIs and maybe display their ‘tendency’ so if I want to join a steady group of bots then I can or if I want some random behaviour then I can know that’s what I’m in for.
What might be nice with AI is that they be broken down to a specific speed or w/kg rating. When I have tried to use them to pace me, I find that works for about a minute, and then they just ride off. Perhaps a couple of different w/kg ratings, so you can find one in your particular band (or close enough to be workable)? Give them different colors to designate the band? Most people that are working a trainer and have made the rather expensive purchase of a power meter have made specific training a priority- it would be nice to have an option to use instead of just the hammerfest of the KOM/GC/Sprint sections (Which are awesome, just limited).
While we’re throwing out ideas of how bots could be used. I think a future purpose for bots would be to create your own “training partner” that would pace out various intervals. I program my bot to do a particular training set using my personal power profile and then follow him around the course. I will also admit to playing around with the configuration settings to see if I can turn them off.
