Originally Posted by
Sy Reene
The guess as to why Zwift defaults to 50% difficulty is that many smart trainers aren't capable of reproducing eg. 18% gradients.
I think its because it takes a certain amount of fitness and gearing to make it up a 16% grade with minimum cadence.
Not many people have the fitness AND grearing to do it. A 34x28 and 3.5 w/kg is about the minimum. Less w/kg and you better have a 34x32. More w/kg and maybe you can do it with a 39x28.
If they set difficulty to 100% by default, they would get many many people failing on Watopia mountain and just never trying zwift again.