After using Zwift for a few weeks, I really like it, but here’s the best advice I can give anyone picking it up: if you are taller than 5’7" and/or weigh over 75kg, then lie about your height & weight. Otherwise, it won’t feel like your actual cycling performance. You’ll be so sandbagged that the game feels very frustrating, which about had me ready to quit, despite the game’s achievements and milestones trying to entertain & entice me onto my bike.
The penalties in Zwift’s algorithm are severe for anyone larger than Zwift’s base size rider (which I believe is 75kg weight, 165cm height). Plus, the penalties are not linear, so the taller and heavier you get, the faster the penalties increase. There’s a YouTube video where a guy created four avatars with heights between 120cm (lowest possible) and 200cm, then rode the same 12km course with identical equipment on each one, maintaining the same power output. The 120cm avatar beat the 200cm avatar by about two minutes & forty seconds. I’m 194cm tall, so I get screwed by the algorithm’s wind resistance calculation.
The weight penalty is equally nuts. I’m about 95kg, and up a 4% grade the game sandbags me down to less than walking speed, 3-4 kph. Gear and energy output don’t matter, as I can stand on the pedals & crank past 500 watts, but the algorithm caps me at about 6 kph, and even lower on steeper hills (on a stretch of 15% grade, it had me doing 1-2 kph with an sustained output of ~250 watts at ~80 pedal rpm - IRL that’s when you get off the bike and run it up the hill). We have a road near our house I have ridden many times that has a 600-meter 4-5% grade, so I know I’m not that slow of a climber IRL.
I really hated how different the performance felt from actual riding, and I’m not in shape to be entering any races (even the C-class riders smoke me, I’m usually DFL in group rides), so I decided to give in & give the game false info to better re-create how actual riding felt. I put my avatar on a crash diet & shortening program, dropping down to 75kg & 170cm tall (I was that tall & about 70kg in Junior High). Suddenly the game felt much more like my actual road performance! I did a circuit last week that took about an hour & forty minutes when I had my actual height & weight listed. I did it again last night after reducing my height & weight, and I did it in 57 minutes. I also noticed that my fastest downhill speed went from 66kph to 79 - another example of the exaggerated wind resistance for tall riders. If I were entering races, I’d call this cheating. Since I’m trying to avoid frustration and get myself onto the bike, I’m calling it accurizing.
Another bit of advice: set the game to use metric units. You gain 20 experience points for every kilometer traveled, or 30 for every mile. That works out to 7.3% more xp using metric instead of Imperial units over the same distance. Unlock those gear upgrades more quickly in metric! You still have to buy bike upgrades with the in-game currency you earn, called “Drops”, but earning enough for that sweet wheel set can be a new goal for you.
Drops bring up another issue in the game. I noticed there are more female riders than I’ve ever seen IRL. Then I found out it is mostly because female avatars get a 10% bonus on earning Drops. Your watts/kg while pedaling plays a large role in calculating the rate at which you earn Drops (you’ll need millions to upgrade your gear along the way and at the level 50 cap). Since on average, men generate higher w/kg, Zwift evens this up for female users with the 10% bonus. But there’s no verification, so a lot of men say they are women to gain the bonus. So big guys, don’t feel bad when a four-foot tall woman blasts by you holding 4.5 - 5 w/kg.* Those riders are affectionately known as Hobbits. Ignore them, become one, just keep going!
*In case you are wondering what real top-end cyclists do, it isn’t much more than that. The most recent numbers I could find were for 2017, but the Women’s World Cycling Champion could maintain 5.7 w/kg over 20 minutes, and the Men’s World Champ could do 6.6 w/kg. If you see players with sustained power over that, they’re cheating, or the algorithm is sucking.
