One for each category…will be riding 20 hours / day in Watopia and you can “drop in” on them form the Start Menu, like riding with a friend.
My first reaction was “That’s dumb…why would I want to ride with a bot?”…but they point out in the article that it will likely be a continual group ride, with people dropping and and joining in as they desire.
Could be kinda cool if your ride doesn’t line up with a scheduled ride or race and you want to ride with others.
I’m liking the idea. Even if not useful, it doesn’t hurt anything. But there are times when I want to do a recovery ride but can’t find any group rides. I think this will be helpful.
They did have bots in the earliest version of zwift. So the implementation of them isn’t foreign to zwift.
I like the idea. I jumped into the game real quick and it looked like there was a pretty good group riding along with one of the bots.
Not fair that she’s taking the jerseys, though. 
I think they’ll definitely need to make some changes to the algorithm to vary the wattage for climbs / descents as suggested in the article. Maybe nothing more than 10% up / down, but something to reflect more realistic riding.
A paced bot up the ADZ or Ventoux could be good.
That is a great point…unfortunately the bots will be limited to the same route continuously and be based on categories. So the higher the category, the more climbing and challenging the route will be. Don’t think anthing besides the A’s will be going up AdZ…and bots will only be in Watopia (at least for now).
Will you be able to join in wherever they are at the time? I could see that being useful to mix up the starting points for rides for a little more variety that way, when you’re not targeting a specific route.
Yeah, seem to be that way. They are rolling a specific course, and it’s like joining a friend wherever they are already on course.
I hope this new release has a lot of potential. I see that the bots are available only for a limited time, and not all courses on zwift can be ridden with bots. I really want to do some rides with a bot especially long ones which can maintain a steady wattage. I am curious to see what is next.
Interesting idea. Remember when the blue translucent bots outnumbered the actual people?
I’d like to see a bot that paces you through a workout. Plug in the workout and the bot maintains speed as if it were you, hitting all your numbers perfectly. Of course, there’d have to be +/- controls for those good or bad days. I think it’d be a lot more fun to hold the wheel of the bot than try and match numbers on your power meter. Plus, a lot more like an actual race situation.
Can see myself using them but wondered why I hadn’t seen them yet, apparently they are turned off four hours a day, Two of those hours are between 4:30pm and 6:30pm BST.
That happens to be in the majority of my normal Zwift/TR window! Maybe I’ll catch them one weekend before they disappear.
Wonder if they’d let you rent your own bot, and you can decide the pace/power. Bit like motorpacing.
