Title! But to expand on that…
It seems like free-ridable routes have associated badges but event only routes don’t. How does Zwift decide which routes to make free-ridable?
What piqued my curiosity was the recent addition of several “Rebel” route badges for the Tour of Watopia (TOW).
Conversely, “Watopia’s Waistband” is another rebel route being offered as a Category A ride in TOW Stage 2, but it doesn’t seem to get its own badge.
Anyone at HQ care to weigh in?
I think the overall idea was to only have badges for routes that you can actually ride, rather than having to have to join an event in order to do so.
Having said that, someone will probably point out an event only route that I couldn’t remember 
Neokyo crit
Show-off 
I don’t really know why that’s still an event-only course in honesty. We’ve been having a chat (read as James had a moan) about whether or not event-only routes should exist without a good reason (eg: UCI Worlds).
I’ll try and pick that up again. And see if we can get the badges too…
Nice!
Not having inside knowledge, I don’t know how difficult it is to add routes. If it’s not difficult, it seems like a great opportunity for adding content.
Users love certain rebel-routes. Being able to select them and auto-navigate would be awesome, and the extra badge is one more reason to ride.
I’ve been Zwifting in earnest since the fall and only have 8 routes left to do - I’ll feel a bit sad with no new content to explore.
And why is the badge XP so wonky? 380 for Tempus Fugit, but only 420 for Ven-Top?!?
Distance based. That’s the only consideration for XP bonus.
I get the mechanic of that: it’s distance-based, not altitude. I’ve heard it explained you get more Drops for climbs so that’s the trade-off for shorter, steeper routes like Ven-Top.
Yes, but you don’t get a drops bonus with the route badge.
The XP bonus for route is usually equal to the XP for the route. So it’s like getting the XP for riding it twice, when you do it for the first time.
@Jim_Mattson & @Steve_Hammatt…
It’d be nice to see route completion bonus XP (for the first time finishing a route) take into account altitude gain as well as distance. Doesn’t seem game-breaking since it’s a one-off but would be a nice extra reward for those epic climbing routes.
I’d prefer to see a prize wheel or similar at the top of Ven-Top, to reward the effort to complete that epic climb.
Good call. And maybe some of the other intermediate climbs, too. It’s always seemed odd to me that the Radio Tower summit doesn’t even have an arch.
Let’s not forget that route badges and the associated XP are one-off gains. If people are looking for extra XP on a regular basis, the AdZ is very interesting. Once we’ve won any of the three items once, the spinner gives a guaranteed 250 XP each further time for the gloves and helmet respectively, and a whopping 1000 XP for the wheels coming up again.
I like that it has nothing. When I see people up there I think of rule #5 … just doing it is the motivation.
And once you have the wheels, they seem to come up about half the time.
The new Watopia route badges that are being featured in the Tour of Watopia - are they Event Only? They aren’t in the Route list yet.
Yes, those five new cycling badge routes are currently Event Only, according to Zwift Insider’s listing.
It’s reasonable to imagine that Zwift wanted people to discover them during the ToW and not before. An added incentive for people to join the ToW, I suppose.
I predict that those routes will change from Event Only to Standard routes at some point in the not-too-distant future when this ToW is done.
At the risk of being shadow banned, I’ll point out that PC and Mac users can ride those routes whenever they want (and get the badges).
The ToW routes that have badges may be released as free ride routes afterwards.
This is almost certainly correct given Zwift went to the trouble of creating route badges for these. Pre-launching the badges definitely generates interest.
* cries in iPad/AppleTV *