Players with numbers for their username

Terra1111 (US1)

Removing Fake Players

We just had a player with the name "Player#########" join the coop (it had miscellaneous numbers after Player) and start a 13 hour challenge and then leave.  So obviously going around starting problems for coops.  Obviously they shouldn't have been accepted into the coop. We have been having issues with these players with numbers after Player since May, when are they going to be removed? 

 I just went onto the Farmer's league and looked through, I saw 100 "Player######...." (miscellaneous numbers) in the bottom rankings (they have 1 gold or 2 gold, or 3 gold and that's it).  I got tired of counting after hitting 100.  So obviously there are probably thousands of these fake accounts or bots out there.  When is support going to filter through and remove them?  They're obviously fake, they don't even have Flower Farms and they are always low level.

ijrosh (US1)

they are not all fake.when you sign up through the Facebook link it does not let you choose a username. it just automatically gives them the player with numbers. i have 2 of them in my coop and they are amazing players.both of which took my advise and messaged support and told them they had signed up through Facebook and got there user name changed. so i am not saying that random players are not starting extra accounts through Facebook to cause problems because they very well could be. just thought you should know not every person with the name player and numbers are trouble they have no choice when they sign up.

also they are all low level because the Facebook link just came out a few months ago. so they are all stating out. so of course a low level player wont have many gold medals.they are hard to get especially for new farmers. and flower farm unlocks at level 40 so again if they just started the account through the facebook link they would not be level 40 yet.

Summer (SKN1)

Could it also, besides being honest new sign-ups, be an oppurtunity for players to get an additional account with the sole intent of joining co-ops that are threatening or that are hard to beat and ruin their chances by starting 13+ hour challenges? Would think so tbh. And that would make it hard for any to trust applicants with Facebook sign-up names  

As ijrosh (US1) writes, advise any we come across with a Facebook name to submitt a ticket and get Support to change their name to one that they prefer.

Terra1111 (US1)

Thanks for the FB input.  I had no idea BF was giving out names like that.  All I know is we have had two big problems with the Player#####....  people in the past few months.  One of them hacked into one of our coop member's accounts and it took her days to get it back.  Then today one joined our coop and immediately started a 13 hour challenge and then left the coop as soon as that was started.  So it might be honest BF FB accounts, or it could also be an easy way for people to start up new BF accounts through FB and use those for other than legit purposes.  It's hard to keep track of the troublesome ones when the names are almost identical, just a digit or two off on the names.

matt14696 (US1)

It is worrying that there are saboteurs out there joining coops for the purpose of wrecking their chances. Once we could recognise players by their name but no one takes notice of a whole bunch of numbers.

An easy fix would be to only allow leaders and deputies to start challenges. 

artful (US1)

matt14696 (US1) said:

It is worrying that there are saboteurs out there joining coops for the purpose of wrecking their chances. Once we could recognise players by their name but no one takes notice of a whole bunch of numbers.

An easy fix would be to only allow leaders and deputies to start challenges. 

The thing would come to a screeching halt if we did that... better solution is to limit challenges by regular players to just 30 min.

Bennet Drake (US1)

artful (US1) said:

The thing would come to a screeching halt if we did that... better solution is to limit challenges by regular players to just 30 min.

Now that is a great idea! We've had newbies start the long ones, not out of spite or malice, but just because they didn't know better and didn't "educate" themselves first. Limiting members to 30 minute challenges would prevent that kind of headache and prevent anger from the higher level members.

Summer (SKN1)

And it would prevent sneaky players just joining a co-op to ruin that co-ops chances at the ranking list by starting a 13+ hour challenge.

MRG1 (US1)

We have been asking for this (allowing only 30 minute challenges for players except Leader and Deputy) since the very first Village Fair. 

Summer (SKN1)

MRG1 (US1) said:

We have been asking for this (allowing only 30 minute challenges for players except Leader and Deputy) since the very first Village Fair. 

True, we have. But reminders like this might reach GGS and finally make them implement it. 

artful (US1)

Bennet Drake (US1) said:

artful (US1) said:

The thing would come to a screeching halt if we did that... better solution is to limit challenges by regular players to just 30 min.

Now that is a great idea! We've had newbies start the long ones, not out of spite or malice, but just because they didn't know better and didn't "educate" themselves first. Limiting members to 30 minute challenges would prevent that kind of headache and prevent anger from the higher level members.

Like MRG posted below, we have been asking for this for a very long time.

matt14696 (US1)

artful (US1) said:

matt14696 (US1) said:

It is worrying that there are saboteurs out there joining coops for the purpose of wrecking their chances. Once we could recognise players by their name but no one takes notice of a whole bunch of numbers.

An easy fix would be to only allow leaders and deputies to start challenges. 

The thing would come to a screeching halt if we did that... better solution is to limit challenges by regular players to just 30 min.

I thought my idea was a good one BUT your suggestion is significantly better. Fully agree with the above msgs. I hope there is a moderator out there reading this thread

ninjahuman (AU1)

I don't really see the point of restricting members to only starting challenges of certain time lengths. Either allow members to start a challenge of any time length after a certain period of time or only allow them to be started by deputies or leaders.

ijrosh (US1)

that is the problem any member can start any challenge after like 15min and they are just starting the first one they see and it starts with the 13 hour ones. if they make it so that only leaders and deputy start it some players in some coops will be forced to leave there coops. some coop leaders or deputy go days with out getting on or they just dont care to start them. that is not fair to the ones who do want to play and like it were they are. however waiting the 15min but then only letting them start a 30min one does not hurt anything or anyone. they can still get points but the coop would not be stuck with a 13hour one. i for one do not see a down side to letting anyone after 15min only start 30min to 1 hour ones.

ninjahuman (AU1)

ijrosh (US1) said:

that is the problem any member can start any challenge after like 15min and they are just starting the first one they see and it starts with the 13 hour ones. if they make it so that only leaders and deputy start it some players in some coops will be forced to leave there coops. some coop leaders or deputy go days with out getting on or they just dont care to start them. that is not fair to the ones who do want to play and like it were they are. however waiting the 15min but then only letting them start a 30min one does not hurt anything or anyone. they can still get points but the coop would not be stuck with a 13hour one. i for one do not see a down side to letting anyone after 15min only start 30min to 1 hour ones.

Well, from that view point it can still affect players in other ways, such as not being able to collect a larger amount of booster percentage. The amount of time that the unwanted challenge is running is shorter with the 30 minute challenges though but it is still 30 minutes that could have been used in a better way. Perhaps giving the leader the ability to cancel a challenge for a limited number of times in the village fair could work well to solve those issues.

iron maiden (INT1)

Why not send every V-F a coop msg. Please do start the challenges in coorporation with your fellow players.
On that way there is no problem. However when a player starts a long challenge and leaves after he or she started that challenge. Just KICK them out of the coop.
Not to difficult. But mark the name of that player. And when that player joins another coop just a msg to the leader of that coop to inform them. On that way that spy,s or whatever you call them are out of order very fast. It is a game,not a screwing eachother contest.

artful (US1)

iron maiden (INT1) said:

Why not send every V-F a coop msg. Please do start the challenges in coorporation with your fellow players.
On that way there is no problem. However when a player starts a long challenge and leaves after he or she started that challenge. Just KICK them out of the coop.
Not to difficult. But mark the name of that player. And when that player joins another coop just a msg to the leader of that coop to inform them. On that way that spy,s or whatever you call them are out of order very fast. It is a game,not a screwing eachother contest.

1-We all send out messages not to start long challenges ... trust me, we do.
2-If a player starts a long challenge by accident, we really don't want to boot them, but the damage already has been done.
3-Same for those who start one and then leave. You can't boot them, because they already are gone.
4-Many don't have the time or inclination to go chasing after "bad apples" so we can bad mouth them to their new coop leaders -- who knows, the long challenge could have been a one-time thing and they left out of embarrassment.

Controls need to be put in place. Right now, there are no controls.

iron maiden (INT1)

I meaned after starting the long challenge,go off-line. My formulation was not good on that. 
By accidents no problem but not 2 times the same accident.
And in that case i agree that those challenges only can be started by the jackets. 

MRG1 (US1)

ninjahuman (AU1) said:

I don't really see the point of restricting members to only starting challenges of certain time lengths. Either allow members to start a challenge of any time length after a certain period of time or only allow them to be started by deputies or leaders.

The problem happens when you get stuck on a 13 hr challenge with little/no chance of completing it.. If they only allowed 30 minute challenge, even if it is one that cannot be completed, you have another opportunity in 30 minutes to do a challenge that is manageable to complete. In our coop where members pop in and out, (and are not gold-crazy), the 30 minute challenges work much better than long ones.

ninjahuman (AU1)

MRG1 (US1) said:

The problem happens when you get stuck on a 13 hr challenge with little/no chance of completing it.. If they only allowed 30 minute challenge, even if it is one that cannot be completed, you have another opportunity in 30 minutes to do a challenge that is manageable to complete. In our coop where members pop in and out, (and are not gold-crazy), the 30 minute challenges work much better than long ones.

It's not always necessary to complete a challenge to get benefits from it. A really good strategy is to just do longer challenges the first two days and get players to collect the challenge support rewards to improve the boosters and then to do shorter challenges the next two days to get items that can produce high amounts of points quickly.

That's why some players that may have used this feature may not be able to use it anymore. So perhaps like I suggested in the previous post, the leader can have the ability to cancel a set number of challenges in the village fair to solve the issue if there is some miscommunication.

artful (US1)

ninjahuman (AU1) said:

MRG1 (US1) said:

The problem happens when you get stuck on a 13 hr challenge with little/no chance of completing it.. If they only allowed 30 minute challenge, even if it is one that cannot be completed, you have another opportunity in 30 minutes to do a challenge that is manageable to complete. In our coop where members pop in and out, (and are not gold-crazy), the 30 minute challenges work much better than long ones.

It's not always necessary to complete a challenge to get benefits from it. A really good strategy is to just do longer challenges the first two days and get players to collect the challenge support rewards to improve the boosters and then to do shorter challenges the next two days to get items that can produce high amounts of points quickly.

That's why some players that may have used this feature may not be able to use it anymore. So perhaps like I suggested in the previous post, the leader can have the ability to cancel a set number of challenges in the village fair to solve the issue if there is some miscommunication.

Ninja, you also have to consider the size of the coop, and the number of active players. Longer challenges are deadly for a good many coops -- that is why controls are necessary.  They wouldn't effect coops where longer challenges are welcome one little bit, but they would help everyone else out tremendously.

ninjahuman (AU1)

artful (US1) said:

Ninja, you also have to consider the size of the coop, and the number of active players. Longer challenges are deadly for a good many coops -- that is why controls are necessary.  They wouldn't effect coops where longer challenges are welcome one little bit, but they would help everyone else out tremendously.

The size of the cooperative doesn't make a difference in that situation because whether a player collects the challenge support rewards is dependent on their efforts, not the efforts of others. The number of active players doesn't make much of a difference for the same reason. The only thing that would affect that is the quality of the player's farms to be able to harvest enough to get a reasonable number of those challenge support rewards with the more difficult items.

If the leader doesn't give many players deputy then it can affect those cooperatives as well. I've been in a 30+ member cooperative where there have been no deputies online to start a challenge before.

That's why I made the suggestion above. It can be a problem if the leader is not active though. But I don't see why players that are not deputies should be restricted to start challenges based on their length of time because of how players outside of their cooperative feel about it.

Maybe what has to happen is that only deputies can start challenges since they are trusted members of the cooperative. That should avoid all of the issues mentioned above. Though it now creates the issue that when a deputy is not online, members are not able to participate in the event.

WascallyWabbit (FormerMod)

Hi Guys,

Please all spread the word about the players with the names like "Player0101010101" it has been mentioned on the forums a few times & these are genuine new players who have done nothing wrong, so it is very unfair for them to keep being called fake accounts, cheaters, hackers etc etc. they have just registered through FB & have no option to choose a player name. If you have one apply to your coop or already a member, let them know that they can get a real name by contacting support. We will ask again what is happening about changing the FB registration, but there will still be those that have already registered in the rankings. Thankyou

Regarding the VF challenges, we have asked several times about changing the system, it is not going to happen that they will change it to only allow leaders & deputies to start a challenge, because the team wish to allow any member to be able to start a challenge at times when there is no leader or deputy online. The best we can hope for is that they will increase the waiting time after a challenge has ended, before "anyone" who has been a member for 30 days or more, can start the next one,  so coops will need to make & enforce their own rules, as best they can, outside of that restriction.

Data King (US1)

WascallyWabbit said:

Hi Guys,

Please all spread the word about the players with the names like "Player0101010101" it has been mentioned on the forums a few times & these are genuine new players who have done nothing wrong, so it is very unfair for them to keep being called fake accounts, cheaters, hackers etc etc. they have just registered through FB & have no option to choose a player name. If you have one apply to your coop or already a member, let them know that they can get a real name by contacting support. We will ask again what is happening about changing the FB registration, but there will still be those that have already registered in the rankings. Thankyou

This will help put a lot of co ops at ease, knowing a player has the option to change their player name to some thing they would prefer. After all it not their fault how the FB is set up.

Regarding the VF challenges, we have asked several times about changing the system, it is not going to happen that they will change it to only allow leaders & deputies to start a challenge, because the team wish to allow any member to be able to start a challenge at times when there is no leader or deputy online. The best we can hope for is that they will increase the waiting time after a challenge has ended, before "anyone" who has been a member for 30 days or more, can start the next one,  so coops will need to make & enforce their own rules, as best they can, outside of that restriction.

At least with the 30 day waiting period for new members to be able to start a challenge is a huge step in the right direction to help co ops protect them selves from new players coming into a co op just to start a long challenges.

 Still think that any challenge over 30 mins should require a deputy or the co op leader to start it. Regular members could still start 30 minute challenges if a Deputy or the co op leader is not online.
Sounds like both sides would win

Tony P (GB1)

Why are there a lot of Player 1234567 (With numbers) now appearing.Are they playing via mobiles as opposed to computers and can they receive messages when playing in a Coop?
Thanks in advance for any answers.

Big Beck (US1)

Well this is obviously still an issue.  We had a player start a 14 hour challenge two days in a row.  The first time may be a mistake, the second time, no.  If members who are not Deps could only do 30 challenges this would solve the issue.  It really spoils the fun when someone can do this.  Please Mods, plead for change!

ijrosh (US1)

they are clicking the link through one of the facebook ads. for some reason when they join they are not given a chance to pick there username. they are just assigned a player followed by numbers. last i heard they were looking in to changing it. so if you have a member like that. let them know if they message support they will change there username for them. sense they were never given a choice. so yes they are just like any other player. they were just never able to choice the name they wanted.

Fallen (INT1)

The easiest and more simple solution to this whole nightmare is to not accept any applicant that has a Player??????? name.

WascallyWabbit said:

.......Regarding the VF challenges, we have asked several times about changing the system, it is not going to happen that they will change it to only allow leaders & deputies to start a challenge, because the team wish to allow any member to be able to start a challenge at times when there is no leader or deputy online.......

BFG in their "wisDUMB" have made it clear it's not going to happen so why must we expand there customer base for Player??????? to come and spoil our coop? Should the applicant be genuine they can change there username with Support and then reapply. I would rather have a slow-growing coop than put up with the tensions created by BFG.

artful (US1)

The easiest and simple solution is to limit challenge times to 30 minutes for regular players.  As for enforcing the rules as best you can, you can't enforce them at all can you? Your only option is to boot the player, but by that time, the damage has been done.