Its a physiological response centered around 1 type of way to trigger it. If you love biking and won't get burned out on it, then it can be a viable tool to help create a calorie deficit through energy expenditure. The other adaptations will largely be local to the muscles trained. You can trigger the same response in a hundred different ways, you just wont have the metrics right there in front of you on a screen, so the worth of the machine comes down to how hard can you push yourself without the screen telling you what to do vs you just doing it yourself. Other than that, the machine doesn't do anything you cannot do yourself with say....sprints, battle ropes, your own bike, a rower, etc...