Couldn’t agree more. I tried zwift and it was agony.
I don’t play video games anymore but… I do wish EA Sports would buy Zwift. An Madden version of cycling sounds amazing to me.
I want to race the Paris-Robaix as Eddy Merckx in 1970. Or be an owner and put together a dream team to race agains Jumbo. Hop on my trainer let the AI adjust to my ability and let me compete in a season.
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Ditto, I want to workout and push to the maximum and I don’t want to be thinking about pushing buttons to steer or activate game powerups. I totally found the Zwift championships totally boring as it seemed to be more about the gamified powerups than the rider.
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I really don’t get how you do indoor training without watching either bike races or other entertainment if the efforts in the Endurance / Tempo area, if I have that I can do 2-3h indoors. For harder efforts Music really helps or podcasts and switching to movies if it gets really hard.
I prefer to do my longer rides outside and also my hard efforts (I can just put out more power on the road for VO2 max and above compared to indoor). But if the weather is bad it takes to much time to dress up and clean everything after the rides. The other problem is I’m mostly training after the kids sleep and I don’t like it when it is cold and dark, so I will keep it indoors until we have daylight until 8-9 o’clock and the temps don’t dip towards 0 C in the night.
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Agreed. The graphics are pretty weak. I tried zwift and loving gamification I thought it would be amazing. However, I was more bored than TR.
I like just picking something to watch and riding.
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I can do Zwift if I’m doing hill repeats or something where I can chase somebody (ie group ride/workout/race). I can’t just pedal around fake worlds exploring.
Yeah I guess games aren’t for everyone.
As a long time World of Warcraft player, cruising a virtual world full of people that I ‘could’ interact with but likely won’t unless I’m doing something very specific fits pretty solidly into my background.
Why, just the other day during my workout someone came up behind me and started drafting, I have the zwift play thing (so I can drive the interface as I don’t have a desk). I was locked into erg, but he’d step up the pace a bit, and I would slide into his draft. After a bit, he would drift back and I’d be in the lead for a while. We both were cutting the corners on the road (which does make you faster) You can imagine a TTT, or trading pulls in a race. I’ve tried to do that in a race…but typically people are just lazy and sit behind you…imagine that.
Pretty entertaining all in all.
More so than a cursor blooping it’s way through blue bars. But again, I get it, it’s not for everyone.
When I’m doing workouts I’m rarely watching the zwift screen, just checking occasionally for something interesting while I’m watching the giant TV in front of me, except vo2 intervals, I’m either eyes shut and glancing every now and then praying for it to end, or slowly watching the time tick down praying for time to speed up. For a race I’m typically pretty locked into the interface the whole time. As one might expect.
I’ve yet to compete in a TR race. 
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I tried Zwift years ago. Hated it. Couldn’t get into the fake world, group riding or racing. There is something about TRs simple layout, colours and calendar which is appealing to me. After a couple years of training with a coach I’m back on TR and loving it. Training is going well and I enjoy trying the new features. I’m good with boring.
I run TR on my phone and watch TV or long format media when training. It’s the only time I watch anything. Now I’ve noticed that I want to get on the trainer just to relax, turn my brain off and watch something. The exceptions are hard sessions where I need music and race footage to watch.
Boring isn’t how I would describe TR because it’s not my primary source of entertainment while on the bike. Boring is watching an avatar ride in a virtual world.
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