During all this discussion, I took a closer look at Zwift training plans/workouts.
There is no Zwift web portal. You have to be in the app to view/add a training plan or workouts. Since I use Apple TV for Zwift, that’s a no-go for me.
There doesn’t appear to be a way to modify or change a training plan. TR makes that super easy.
The TR plan builder is far superior to just choosing standalone training blocks.
I don’t build my own workouts because TR library is extensive enough that I can pretty easily find something that appeals to me in the event that I am doing a workout outside of plan.
Zwift makes it difficult (impossible?) to look back at my history of workouts/training, compare seasons/workouts, etc. If it’s there, its clunky.
Some of the most successful food chains have very minimalist menus, and it’s really no different in many other types of businesses.
If Zwift were to deviate from gaming/racing, or if Peloton were to deviate from “fitness class”, either of them could lose more than they gain by overcomplicating their interface.
The most frustrating thing about Zwift workouts is the fact you don’t get any indication of average power while doing workouts or riding in general for that matter. I find this really annoying, especially when racing. I really don’t know why they would omit this as a feature.
@Supermurph19, do you use a bike computer when riding inside? I use my Garmin primarily so that I can have the rides in their ecosystem along with all of the analyses that you can’t get by importing them from an outside source. If so, then you can setup a screen that shows average power and any other data you want. It’s one more step and not integrated in Zwift, but could be a work around.
Like with a lot of things Zwift related, a third party has had to pull up the slack for Zwift’s shortcomings–check out: Zwift workouts and training plans | What's on Zwift? That will help with at least the viewing plans/workouts ahead of time, but I think you’d still be stuck with adding them within the game.
Your activity feed is on the website and within the companion app, but not within the game. It’s just a feed with no comparisons or calendar layout though.
It’s funny to me. Zwift seems to parallel a lot of my MicroSoft experience. They make and offer a tool that fulfills the bare minimum of function to make a claim that “they have X application”. But it falls so short of something actually useful in practices that it is effectively worthless. This happens in a number of areas within the Z world.
It goes to the similar comments where people say (I among them) that Z is trying to cover too many angles. Well short of a “Jack of all trades” to be kind, and most certainly not a master of anything. The number of separate apps and sights needed to pick up where Zwift falls short is not a small one.
Agreed. I suspect it’s because the majority of their community / users keep pushing for more new worlds / routes and that is where their development focus has been from the outset. Everything else is ancillary.
Maybe. But they are at a company size, with many more employees on hand, where they should be able to do concurrent development on multiple features and such. It is likely about priorities of course. But considering the sad state of their promised and undelivered features, I have no real idea where the hell they are spending their time (and our money)
Certainly the “vocal minority” that complains about new routes and the lack of new/fixed features every time a new world/route comes out wouldn’t agree with that.
They’d need to work on the interface for training library etc. I tried a couple of workouts (I don’t think the companion app is better than the TR offering either), and ended up searching a 3rd party website to find a workout to sub for my TR one.
Then you have scheduling, which I believe is just next up, compared to TR where I can easily swap workouts around the days on Calendar.
I listened to that podcast @mcneese.chad posted (I think), and the focus was all about the game really from both the panel and Eric Min. If not that one, definitely the follow up one, where the panel at least was all about zwift 2.0.
It’s a game as advertised during The Vulta. Wonder how much of the investment was blown sponsoring. I’m pretty sure most viewers have already made up their mind on the value of the application. (It was a pretty selective group that follows in stateside as opposed to the tour or has that changed.)
