In a few hours, Zwift will flip the switch on a swath of RoboPacer changes. Here’s the new schedule, which is planned to go live at 9am PT/12pm ET/4pm UTC:
What’s Changing?
Zwift is rolling out several changes at once:
- New RoboPacers: 4 bots are being added, bringing us to 14 active bots. The first 10 bots are evenly spaced from 0.8 to 2.6 W/kg in 0.2 W/kg increments, while the final 4 bots are spaced a bit further apart. New RoboPacers:
- Cruz (1.2 W/kg)
- Mochi (1.4 W/kg)
- Dani (2.0 W/kg)
- Betty (2.4 W/kg)
- Modified RoboPacers: Taylor is being adjusted from 1.1 to 1.0 W/kg, while Bernie is being adjusted from 1.5 to 1.6 W/kg.
- Watopia Only: RoboPacers will no longer be available on the scheduled “guest world”. They will only be in Watopia.
- Flatter Routes: Since flatter routes make it easier for groups to stay together, RoboPacers will be on these routes:
- Changing Twice a Week: Instead of changing every day or two, routes will stay the same Monday-Thursday, then rotate to a new schedule for Friday-Sunday.
Monday-Thursday, September 21-24
Here’s the schedule for the next four days:
To see the schedule for the coming weeks, visit our RoboPacer Schedule >
What Do You Think?
Do you like the changes Zwift is rolling out today? Will this lead to you riding with RoboPacers more, or less?
Share your feedback below (decision-makers at Zwift are watching)!
I like the look of the changes. I’ll most probably use the bots more often>
Thanks
I hope this is not the “(On top of that, there are other features and changes coming, some of them quite big, which Zwift didn’t mention at all. I can’t talk about those yet, but will of course spill the tea as soon as possible.)” mentioned in the other post 🙂
Definitely not.
Boring routes only then. Massive downgrade.
While I agree with this sentiment, the masses only used the flat routes only. With watt lock eliminated the need for unused pacers the change makes sense.
Great news, well done zwift
I do appreciate the smaller jumps between pacers, but I think they should rotate the routes more frequently. That’s a long time if you get a route you’re bored with.
I think a 5W/kg robopacer might be popular as a lot more riders are racing at in excess of 4W/kg which is all that would be required to draft behind a 5W pacer. Slightly hilly courses would still be welcome based on the numbers of people that have been choosing those. Swiching the routes more often rather than less often would still be nice to keep. And final thoughts, Zwift is still incredible and thanks and well done to the team for everything that you do. And you Eric ! Big time !
I agree that we could use robo pacers that are a bit faster than Constance. I’ve done 48 rides with Constance so far, and my average power with her is 3.45 W/kg. For me that’s on the zone 2 – zone 3 border.
I am so jealous you call that Z2!
The drops you gain are equal for every robopacer? 1.1kw same as 2.4? Im new to zwift.
Drops depend on calories burned… more or less… so the harder you go, more drops you gain. But it’s in general, regardless of robopacers. the robopacer multiplier is the same at both w/kg
Welcome Mateo!
Read all about Drops here: https://zwiftinsider.com/how-drops-work/
Definitely welcome the smaller deviations between the bots. The same route for 4 days is a bit stale. I would think 2 days is a better option. Allowing riders to switch between bots and keep multiplier would be nice. It takes me +/- 15 minutes to warm up, so to ride that with a slower bot and then move up to a faster one after warm up, I lose the multiplier from those 15 minutes.
Shame about limiting the bots to flat routes. Lumpy routes can act like interval training sessions so you get more out of a bot ride.
I don’t like this at all, at least have a few robopacers ride outside of Watopia on routes with a bit of climbing. These routes are downright boring. Only one route goes through Titans Grove, and not one route on the Southern Coast road.
All are reasonable changes, but why are they still using Volcano circuit? It’s way too short, the volcano interior is pretty meh, and there’s no segments on it. Doing an hour on that is ten laps of tedium. And they’re doing it in both directions!
For the badges
This makes a lot of sense as the hills make staying with robos require a bit more focus and take you away from your conversation or video.
I doubt they will be popular but I think there should be some specific climbing robos at most levels, perhaps one yellow, green and blue. Can’t imagine a red climbing robo will get much company.
I think this is a good idea, especially to provide a carrot on the biggest climbs. Ven Top is agonizing solo. AdZ less so because of the hairpins and shorter segments, but I imagine such bots would be popular there. Especially a 3.2 / sub-60 bot 🏔
The new pacers are great, one thing that would be nice is if Zwift would stop some users from absolutely spamming the pacer bots. There are some especially on the higher power pacers like Constance that will just spam rejoin every minute or so for hours at a time, once I saw someone rejoin over 100 times during a session while racking up a huge distance doing 0W. Beyond being a nuisance, it just seems like a disservice to so many others who are actually putting in the time and effort.
One RoboPacer-related change that I’d like to see – rather than listing the pacers in ascending power order on the home screen, allow the user to specify which pacers should be shown first. Most of my pacer rides are with Yumi (and occasionally with Coco/Jacques), and it is a little bit annoying to have to scroll through around a dozen other pacers to find the one that I want. (Having only pacers on Watopia (and so only one of each pacer) will help with this, but doesn’t do anything about the underlying issue.)
Is this a major issue? Of course not, but it’s something that would make the user experience better and should be quick/easy to implement.
I like the more incremental nature of the bots since it could be intimidating to jump up to the next one. I wish they’d kept a second version of each bot on another world for variety. It’s nice to have an option to jump to a pacer once finishing a free ride to allow an easy cool down. Now that’s only possible in Watopia.
Yeah, like the fact there are more Pacers at different levels now.
Not so keen on only using Watopia though.
The French ones were great routes and the hills were just lumps in reality, not massive climbs which I find harder being old n fat 😉
Would be a good idea to have one from each grade on a more hillier route / world and why not use the Southern Coast, it’s a great rolling road to ride and ok, the jungle is the other end, but you can do just the lower half and head back, or carry on if it’s a stronger Pacer.
But keep it up zwift. 👍👍
So strange they don’t add one faster than Constance but adding many lower speed. I want Big Mig!
I love the bots. I have been using them since they were beta. My only complaint was the gaps. This is an awesome change. And flatter routes is better as well. Well done Zwift.