XP and Gamifying Enhancements

You earn Drops at an accelerated rate while going up inclines of 3% or more, so I wouldn’t expect any addition XP for climbing. The Drop Shop has also filled the gap as far as customization is concerned.

More items will be added to the Drop Shop as time goes by so you will be able to customize your bike and avatar more in the future.

Some of us have been riding for years on Zwift and put on a lot of miles to get to level we are at and you’ll get there also with time Andy miles.

Ride On!

Yes, agree it would be cool to add some badges. Example: personal best budges. Lets say after 3 trials on some route you could earn personal best yearly badge. For each personal best time you gain xxxx points or drops as an example… Something similar exist in Garmin Connect.
Other examples could be taken from Strava or Garmin: ride between 4 and 5 in the morning and receive XXX badge, ride Sunday morning and receive xxxx, make 3 rides in the week and receive xxx points etc…

In the present state of the game, I do understand Dean, even with a new Drop Shop, there is no real incentive after let’s say lvl12-15, since most of the bikes or gear make not real difference than those of lvl 20-25, 25-30. Well, beside the Tron bike )), and Alpe wheels… The Tron bike actually a really good incentive, but I think that it could be improved even more, already wrote about it in another topic (for some additional climbing some additional features could be brought to the Tron bike, example: climb 50km receive a Tron, climb 80km - make it 250gr lighter, climb 125km receive Tron special aerodynamic jersey or helmet etc…

Hey, tron is already one of the best, especially if you are not in elite club owners super9 combo wheels) want a peloton of trons only? Me not. Currently i jumped from the tron to brand new scott foil, painted it as i want and enjoy riding it. But zwift insider speed tests say that it ~35 secs slower than tron on mixed terrain (volcano climb route) . Not sure if i want this gap to be increased. Huge one for 23km!
Would be good if every bike can be upgraded in some way, not concept z1 only.

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Just because you said this, the future expansions will be available when you reach level 51 on onwards. :upside_down_face:

Level 51 is a bit of a stretch (although I am almost there). My idea was to limit it to say level 14 but those that are on a higher level must do X km or reach the next level or X number of XP points.

But my idea does not seem that popular, I will just keep on chasing that Safety Bike, less than 1 million dropz to go. :wink:

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There are a huge number of things Zwift could do to enhance the gamification.

What they’ve got so far is almost the bare minimum required to make any claim to have gamified indoor cycling. OK, the Drop Shop does make it a bit more than bare minimum, but it’s still minimal.

And even then it’s lacking. We can’t display our badges to other riders; there’s no “Profile” screen in game/Companion that shows them for example.

There are few “Feats of Strength” - getting the Tron bike is one, are are doing AdZ 25 times, the Volcano loop 25 times, a Century ride and the like. Of those latter ones, only the Century rides are something you can show off (by wearing the reward jersey).

Even personal records disappear after 30 days.

There are all sorts of mini games that could be introduced. Ideas along those lines pop up now and again:

At all comes down to their priorities and what they think will grow the platform, generate revenue, etc. I think adding more gamification is relatively low on the priorities.

It does happen - we got the Alpe du Zwift prize wheel for example. That’s an idea that could itself be used in many more places; but in some respects the increased Drop rate kinda does the same thing.

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Thank you Daren, that’s exactly what I’m saying. There is so much room to add layers of gaming into Zwift, and if it’s not a priority for them, maybe it should be: I wonder how many Zwifters reach a point where the game just isn’t interesting or motivating enough to play anymore. I know my motivation has dropped, and I’m certainly not on Zwift for the sake of playing a game; I’m doing it to lose weight.

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Yeah, and I think this comes down to who they believe their core market are.

Is it “cyclists” who are training, for races etc.

Is it the general public who are interested in general fitness and losing weight.

If it’s the former, then training plans and on-platform racing are more important than small dopamine hits. If it’s the latter, then the gamification becomes far more important.

The gaming aspect of Zwift is 0% of why I do it, the current setup gives me zero extra motivation.

I mostly do it because I don’t like the riding around Phoenix and I have a solid group of friends in the IndoorSpecialist group, so that allows us to hang out and stay connected from all over the world.

Yeah, I wasn’t suggesting those are the only two groups of people on Zwift. Just illustrating that gamification is more or less important depending upon whom Zwift want to court.

Seems like they have at least some interest in reaching more users, since they opened the game up to runners.

I would think if you could court or retain a segment of users by making relatively small and minor additions to what you already have (XP, badges, a leveling system, etc), it’s probably well worth doing.

But there’s still the question of who’s on Zwift and what their goals are. Maybe Zwift should ask riders that (optional) question and tell them it helps them make Zwift better.

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I’m not saying you were narrowing it down to only those two. I’m just saying the current “gaming” setup doesn’t inspire me to ride more on Zwift.

Actually the most inspiration that I’ve had for zwift was when ZwiftPower.com was giving big points for fast KOM times. A group of us were having a lot of fun smashing those in races and we all worked our way into the top 10 ZPoints spots. Since then they changed their ranking systems, I’ve lost interest and I think I’ve fallen down to around the 150th mark.

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This similar drop in motivation happened to me, just for a different reason.

Personally, I’m on Zwift to lose weight by cycling during the winter months when it’s miserable in Pennsylvania. Cycling on Zwift was instrumental in keeping my motivation up when it came to restricting calories and doing what I needed to do to lose weight.

I lost 15 lbs and was doing great. But then it became less interesting. Then I kind of lost my rhythm and motivation. Then the weight loss stagnated.

Not saying this is Zwift’s fault, but the market of people looking for fun and motivating ways to lose weight is ENORMOUS, and it aligns very nicely with what Zwift is already doing.

Some small improvements could really help to keep people interested and motivated while they’re losing weight. Cause let’s be honest: everybody knows that indoor cardio while you’re staring at a wall is awful. I imagine that alone attracts some people to Zwift. Not everyone on there is training for racing.

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I would venture to say that the majority of Zwifters are people who are intrinsically motivated to ride and stay fit. They did not join Zwift to play a game. They joined Zwift to lose weight, stay fit, train for Fondos, prepare for races, avoid unsafe outdoor conditions, etc…

As for Zwift being a game, I do not make the connection. I would never say to a friend, “You have to check out this game called Zwift.” While it may look cartoonish like a video game, it’s not remotely close to anything I would call a “game”. While nice, the level unlocks and avatar customizations hardly qualify as “gamification”.

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Well, yes, this could be any* bike.

    • but, it could be that for any real life copy bike (beside the virtual Zwift’s ones) there are some plans to make all the specs closer to reality.

That is very useful info. Although I enjoy climbing, I have been avoiding it because of earning XP at a much slower rate.
So for someone who would probably turn about 1.8 w/K what would be a good workout plan? I never got credit for my HIIT workouts because the power that I needed to hit my target HR in the beginning (700-800) was much more than the power I could generate on the last couple of 30 seconds sprints (500-600) and it would fail me - thus ZERO XP, even though the workout was exactly what I wanted it to be with all sets max effort.

I really like the Build Me Up training plan. It starts out fairly mild but gets to be quite intense towards the end. The workouts are generally in the 1 to 1.5 hour duration so while riding up the Alpe I could usually get to switchback 6 or sometimes 4 by the end of the workout, and then the free ride to the top from there is not terribly challenging. I missed a fair amount of workouts due to the Tour de Zwift in January and my schedule allowing only 3 to 4 rides per week, but my FTP still improved from 220 to 250.

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I really like zwift.

But I hate every single gamification feature. I hate levels. I hate boosts. I could care less about the shop.

What I really hate as when the game interferes with my training. Route locking is one of these! (I’ll admit though I want to unlock routes, but wish i didn’t have to!)

It should be obvious by now that people use zwift to train. Not as a replacement for Mario kart. That and many of us prefer to do our miles outside where possible, sadly those miles don’t count :wink:

You’re wrong. People use Zwift for a whole host of reasons. Not just training.

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Perhaps. But mostly to train, sometimes to race, other times for social rides. They should focus on those experiences, as a game it is pretty boring in my opinion!

There is also limited info display space and much of it is taken up with game related info while things like a route profile miss out (please let someone fix this one day!).

Sure it’s just my opinion but I imagine I’m far from alone.

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