As someone who has led (literally) hundreds of Zwift rides over the years, I’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. In fact, we’ve published some posts to help ride leaders do an amazing job:
How to Lead A Zwift Group Ride – Friday Pacific Sprintapalooza
Behind the Scenes of a Group Ride
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how Zwift could improve the experience for ride leaders and, by extension, improve the overall “product” these leaders create. Here are my top 7 ideas…
#1: More Event Customization Options
Today, event organizers are quite limited in what they can directly modify when setting up their events. You can’t change the title or description text, for example. You can’t create an actual race that uses Zwift Racing Score and/or shows up on ZwiftPower. You can’t modify your event banner, the mix of powerups, place riders on a particular bike or wheelset or in a particular kit… and the list goes on.
Yes, you can email Zwift’s events team or submit a change request to get these changes done. But that just introduces delays into the process, thus reducing creativity on the platform.
I get it: Zwift doesn’t want to let just anyone upload their own event banner or change their event title to something naughty. But certainly Zwift could build a process to handle this safely and efficiently.
#2: Improved Route Picker/Customizer
Zwift does let event organizers choose from a long list of routes, and set their event length based on total distance, total time, or number of laps.
The route-picking tools could be improved, though. For example, they don’t tell me how much climbing you’ll be doing if you set up a 100km ride on Waisted 8 like I did last week for the Thursday Pizza Burner.
They also don’t show where the finish line will be if you set a custom distance on any particular route, which is what I do for almost every Tiny Race. Right now, I have to test-ride routes in order to figure out what event distance to key in so the finish banner is located at the right place.
One last little niggle when it comes to precise event lengths – and I know I’m getting into the weeds here. If I input a 2 or 3-digit distance, which I often do for Tiny Races, that distance gets saved into the system, but the system rounds it to 1 decimal place if I go back to edit the race. Annoying. Round it on the frontend, that’s fine. But please don’t confuse me further when editing!
#3: Beacons Always In Rider List
The longer a ride is, and the more hilly the route, the more chance there is that the group will get spread out. Anything Zwift can do to help riders find a group would be welcome.
It would be really nice if the rider list always showed the location of the yellow and red beacons. Show the time gaps to these riders, too. This would let participants see if they should work to re-catch the beacon or ease up and rejoin a beacon group, giving everyone much better visibility of the location of key groups in the ride.
#4: Chat Visibility Improvements
First, I’d love to see fewer blank messages on Zwift (see image above). As far as I can tell, these happen when people send emojis via the Companion app, or message in a non-English character set (Japanese was used above). It seems like adding emojis would be an easy win for Zwift. As for other languages – certainly we could show non-English characters? Or (this would be amazing) – auto-translate messages into each rider’s native language. How cool would that be?
Next, let’s talk about who sees which messages in group rides. Rider leaders have it pretty good: they get to see all riders’ messages, and everyone in the event can see the leaders’ messages as well.
It’s easy to forget, as a ride leader, that this isn’t everyone else’s experience. Event chat is actually proximity-based for everyone else in the ride, meaning you only see other riders’ messages if you’re nearby. So as the ride spreads out, you end up with weird situations where, for example, someone asks the leader a question, but only a portion of the group sees the question. Then the leader messages the answer, and everyone on the ride sees that!
It’s not ideal. It’s confusing and reduces the amount of conversation and connection happening on community rides.
I’d love to see all riders able to see all chat, with proximity-based messaging perhaps automatically enabled for rare, massive events of 500 riders or more.
(Zwift could even get really fancy and enable some sort of smart proximity-based messaging happening if the number of messages gets too high. Maybe the game monitors the rate of messages, and if it’s more than, say, 1 per second for 10+ seconds, the game switches to proximity-based chat mode until the rate comes down. A simple indicator in the message composer could indicate whether you’re in proximity-based mode or not.)
#5: Post-Ride Stats
As the ride leader, I’d love to get some stats once my event finishes:
- Count of riders who joined the event
- Count of riders who finished the event
- Finish rate (Joined/Finished)
- Number of Ride Ons received in event
- Number of chat messages sent
- Total distance covered by all participants
- Total elevation climbed by all participants
I’d love to get these stats via an automated email, but they could also be made available, much like race results, in the Companion app and at zwift.com, so there’s a historical record of each event’s stats.
#6: Post-Ride Feedback
I’d love it if Zwift would pop up a simple survey at the end of each group ride, inviting riders to give feedback to the ride organizers. Maybe just a 1-5 star rating, with a space for comments?
A simple survey, perhaps different from a finisher’s survey, could even pop up for people who decide to duck out early. Maybe it just has a few options so Zwift and the ride organizer can understand why you left early?
- Ride is harder than expected
- My schedule doesn’t leave me enough time to finish
- Pace not as advertised
- Other
Like the event stats idea above, I’d love to see all this feedback in an email, along with access via Companion and the web.
An additional benefit from these survey results is that they could be used to help Zwifters pick events in the future, as repeating events could build up a reputation with their star ratings or other feedback. Zwift could summarize this feedback in game and Companion, and could even create special lists of top-rated events. For example, rides rated in the top 10% of all group rides could be on their own list and receive a simple visual indicator so they stand out from the crowd and get more participation.
#7: Encourage Repeat Signups
Speaking of building a reputation and encouraging signups, I’d love it if Zwift would make it easier for people to sign up for next week’s edition of an event immediately after they finish this week’s.
Right now, weekly events are re-created automatically via a nightly process that runs once every 24 hours. So after you complete a weekly event, doesn’t yet exist on the calendar. You have to wait until the following day to sign up.
What if instead, next week’s event was created 30 minutes after this week’s event began?
What if people could click to “subscribe” to an event and be automatically signed up for it each week?
Or what if, when you finish the event, a simple UI popped up asking if you want to sign up for next week’s event right now?
Your Thoughts
Those are my top ideas as a ride leader. But I’m sure other ride leaders will have other great ideas. Do you have any to add to my list? Share below!
I rode tiny race 1 and 2 on the weekend… As you say it would’ve been good to see the terrain/km climbed in advance.
There needs to be more ZRS categories. A is for (formerly) A+ & A’s. B is for A’s and strong B’s. C is for B’s. D is for B’s who haven’t raced enough to get ZRS scores and strong C’s. If your a mid C or a D, racing is ruined for you essentially and you come in last every time. I’m constantly competing with racers that have 1+ w/kg 20 minute power or more than me. Races are more than 20 minutes. It’s waste of my time to even enter them to compete.
It would be helpful if the messages from the Red Beacon could be in the centre of the screen just like the ones from yellow as they can sometimes get lost in the general chat.
That’s an event config option that can be set (but only on Zwift’s side, not by ride organizers).
Thanks Eric, I didn’t know that was an option. As you’ve already mentioned above it would be nice if we could set these things ourselves when updating our club events instead of having to submit requests all the time.
Agreed on basically all fronts; Zwift’s UI/UX as a general whole, proves to … not improve (either at all, or somehow has only become worse over the years),
I made a comment about emoji support in the last patchnotes, and Evan replied saying it’s “in the works”:
https://forums.zwift.com/t/game-update-v-1-81-january-2025/642249/122
Do not allow everyone to see all the messages. The message function is totally in disarray but to see all the chat from those people who just love to hear themselves talk would only make it worse. Improve chat for sure. Like allowing us to mute those chatty people who think everything they say, everyone wants to hear.
😂
So true
Proximity chat – limit it to 100 riders – just like the displayed amount of riders on screen in the big rides. 500 is too high, the majority of big popular community rides are over 100 but usually less than 200. Rate limit is a nice idea, but make it client side so riders could ‘mark’ spammers they don’t want to see when they post a lot (that’s me gone lol). While always displaying Beacons and friends+clubmate comments
Not directly related to racing, but event organizers should be able to allow people to rejoin an event past the 30-minute late join. On Saturdays, BMTR 100 MI RIDE, an individual had a power failure in their home at the 41min mark. That person should be able to rejoin the ride.
I agree. This has happened to me multiple times.
More for sweeps than leaders, but some way of riders indicating “please sweep” or “please don’t sweep” without messaging, as some riders are oblivious to or won’t respond to messages.
That would be so helpful Curtis, as it can get really frustrating at the back. I’ve been caught out by thinking I was helping someone for them to then take off at the speed of sound leaving me way off the back 😠
That’s happened to every sweep since the beginning of Zwift
I’ve always been curious if it would help ride leaders to have the same proximity-based points multiplier as the pace bots do? It seems like it might help with the flyers, without needing to have a fence.
During a ride in the Companion app and on the Zwifters (riders) screen, I would like it not to auto-refresh the rider list. Often, I am just about to click on a particular rider to give them a ride-on or look at their Bio and the list of riders has refreshed and the rider is “lost”. Be good to have a Refresh button somewhere on the same screen so you control it. If people like the auto-refresh then also have a toggle button to say whether you want to turn the auto refresh on or off. If On the “refresh” button is greyed out.
All good points there Eric.
Had no idea about #1 and #2! And a big Yes to #3. Big Yes on #6.
6 and 7 are absolutely great ideas!
Midscreen messages from red beacon and “transport” to yellow beacon in group rides too.
I think a teleport to yellow would be a great option
Considering many events got shoved into clubs – it’d be amazing if club rides got the same tools as rides on the public events calendar like the fence, more workout options/custom workouts, etc. Tools were limited before but after the events cull I think the tools should be given to those running club events as well.
I’d love an option to disable the mid-screen messages. A lot of ride leaders have full-blown conversations throughout the ride, I don’t need to see that in the middle of my screen constantly.
It’s called the H key
It would be great if there were some seniors only rides. Like 70+. There are women only ride…
Great idea. I am not age 70+ but I noticed a 78 year old man in my group ride who weighs 45.6 kg (183 cm). I weigh 49 kg and am female and it is rare for anyone to weigh less than me, let alone a man, so I investigated. Dude went from 79kg to 45.6 kg in 1 week, went from averaging 1.5 w/kg to almost 3 w/kg. Only he knows the reason why he is cheating but I can’t help but think if there were more slower paced rides for men his age, he wouldn’t cheat in the first place.
I’d like ride leaders to have two chat options – one as the leader issuing instructions that everyone can see in the middle of the screen, another that is treated the same as the rest of the chat and shown on the side.
The ride leader instructions would also override the “hide chat” setting and be visible to everyone even if they’ve turned chat off.
My request belongs to #2, but it’s consequential after Zwift play order. I prefer self-determined routes on-the-fly. Especially in Neokyo. Since it’s fun I have organized meetups called Neokyo Maze. We start with a short route & proceed by manual steering, e.g., we keep always most right. It sounds easy, but thanks to teleporting we regroup after split up. A follow-feature would be nice. The leader steers as desired & all friends follow.
Teleport to yellow beacon during group rides would be a huge improvement to the continuity of a ride. Sweeps still useful for bringing back those that accidentally drift 5 – 10 seconds off the back.
Rule of thumb: Once you are more than 1-minute behind yellow beacon, teleport to to ride leader is enabled.
I agree Tris, this would be a great option
Just have ‘late join’ enabled for the entirety of Group Rides would do this. While always giving us an option to join those friends doing an epic multiple hour adventure, or to show easier support for riders doing 500km/12hour/24hour/vEverest/singles etc
as a ride leader, i would like more fence controls, rather than just 3 time limits and off or on, it would be nice to be able to customize the distance for things like hills, and then be able to slowly reign the fence back in. i would really like other options rather than just kicking them out of the group. how about something like their in game resistance gets harder and harder the longer and farther they are in front of the fence? or when they cross that 1 minute in front of the fence, instead of zapping them, put them at the tail end of the group.
re: chat
In big or chatty events, many messages pile up on top of each other. Sometimes a tiny of a fraction of a second apart. Makes it impossible to read most of them.
Sauce is of some help here — except when its chat window fails to appear at all. Which seems to happen frequently when moving from a warm up to the actual event.
How about do away with the fence as an option and have the drops multiplier available for every ordinary group ride. I only do group rides with the pacer bots, and I never hear any blob facists shouting “stay with the leader” or “let the fliers go.” Of course, the bots keep pace really well, so there’s that too. Maybe let group ride leaders ride in ERG mode at a set power with automatic +/- % on the hills. Or, come to think of it, just allow group ride organizers to create a pacer bot to lead their ride. Then make them run for 24 hours 7 days a week on selected routes. That would be the ultimate.
Agree with all the above. On number 6, send the feedback to the club leaders, not the actual leader… That way not only is it seen by some quality controller, it also protects any unwarranted criticism that might put some off; let the club leader decide whether it’s worth sharing.
Also for organisation; rider exclusion. Some (fortunately they’re very rare) riders will always come and complain or bully/intimidate other riders… Let rides have a ban list…. And in the same vein, let leaders have a kick button. It’s rare and having led 100s of rides I’ve only wanted it once, but would be good to have as a tool. (And if leaders abuse it, participation on their rides will drop; it’ll be natural selection).
And finally, let them upload workout sessions too.
An update zwift could make:
Would help a lot
Zwift needs definitively to improve the Event settings interface and allows organizers to have more power to speed up the process. Thanks for pointing this out.
Great suggestions Eric. I’d also like to see Ride Leaders being given access to both Sprint results as it stands I can’t see both male and female winners of sprints… Frustrating.
i’d also love to get custom club workouts, would be so much easier than inviting each and every member
I’m ok with races not necessarily providing all the information about climbing. I have pre-ridden race routes to familiarize myself with where to use powerups or where I was going to struggle or what strategy to attempt.
“Right now, I have to test-ride routes in order to figure out what event distance to key in so the finish banner is located at the right place.”
Can I introduce you to sauce route preview mod?
I lead multiple social rides each week. Idea numbers 3, 4 , and 7 would be great. I would add that it would be great if we had some way of identifying volunteer sweepers on the fly to make it easier to help weaker/newer riders.
Regarding the problem of not displaying chat messages in non-English, it’s obvious that there is an underlying technical problem with Zwift, which was not developed with an internationalisation mindset from the beginning, otherwise it would have been solved a long time ago.
Question: what does the button “POPULATE RULES” do? (picture point#1, on the right)
Thanks.
A slightly unrelated wish for me has been for the companion map screen to include the grade % with the other metrics, which would be great when you toggle off the GUI but still want to accurately pace your efforts.
That’s a fantastic update with some really great ideas.
I just started racing in the ZRL and was wondering if there’s a way to change the small yellow dots on the mini-map (top right corner) that represent each rider. Would it be possible to color-code them so that we can easily spot our teammates on the course or see where other teams are for competition purposes?
It would be great if there were an option to meet up in a virtual „cafe bar“ or „team garage“ after a Zwift race or group ride, for example, to watch the race results or final sprint replay together, or simply to have a quick chat with the people from the group. This would further emphasize the social aspect of Zwift compared to other platforms.
Gosh, I hadn’t realised what a kerfuffle you have to go through to set up a new Tiny route! Chapeau for doing so many.