Playrix, PLEASE don’t allow new co op members to auto join Regatta

[cdosr]

Ok, there seems to be a common confusion going on here that's raising anxiety levels.

While they are related, "Opt-In" and "Marked as Racing" are two separate things.

• "Opt-In" is a user setting that is actually called "Take Part in Seasonal Regatta" (emphasis mine)
• The current value of that setting takes effect just prior to the start of a regular seasonal regatta (we can argue about if there is an exact time or if your team has to take a task first or whenever)
• When it "takes effect" we see the result as a little "ship's steering wheel" in the co-op member list meaning they are "marked as racing this week".
• The "Opt-In" setting can be changed as many times are the user wishes but once the race starts and you are "Marked as Racing" any change does not take effect until the next seasonal regatta.
• "Restrict from Regatta" affects that user setting and it must be changed back to "Opt-In" by the user themselves (we can argue about whether the restriction makes you skip at least one whole race or not)
• "Opt-In" has absolutely no effect during Interseasonal week. Everybody is listed as "Racing" for that relaxing / no pressure week. A players setting of "Opt-In" has not been changed for Interseasonal week and whatever it's set to will be what is used for the next seasonal regatta unless changed by the user (or they become restricted).
• What the value of "Opt-In" is set to when a player joins a new co-op is up for debate. It used to be that people had to make sure they were "Opted-In" after joining but some folks have claimed that this has been changed now.
• Whether "Restrict" applies to interseasonal week is also up for debate.

Sorry for the professorial tone but I see folks getting worried or upset about looking at the "Marked as Racing" and thinking that it means "Opted-In" and especially during Interseasonal Week which is the one time that the two concepts are not connected.

[Cuddz]

I agree with all that except ... my player was set to Opt Out..as in not racing, and had been fir the last 2 weeks.
Playrix as you say marked the player as racing fir Interseasonal week. This remained in place fir the start of the main Regatta, and was not changed back, so the player was still marked as racing.
We didn’t notice until the regatta had started, therefore we were down a player, and had no way of getting the points that player would have earned. As a result we were demoted from gold.
If this was done wrongly, then the wrong info was given from Playrix in reply to our report.

[cdosr]

I agree with all that except ... my player was set to Opt Out..as in not racing, and had been fir the last 2 weeks.
Playrix as you say marked the player as racing fir Interseasonal week. This remained in place fir the start of the main Regatta, and was not changed back, so the player was still marked as racing.
We didn’t notice until the regatta had started, therefore we were down a player, and had no way of getting the points that player would have earned. As a result we were demoted from gold.
If this was done wrongly, then the wrong info was given from Playrix in reply to our report.

And I will test that at the end of next week, the last week of Land of Snow and Ice season. I will "opt-out" on Thursday before week 4 ends and take screenshots of what happens for the start of interseasonal. I will also ask my team members who are already opted out of the last week to track the value of their "participate in seasonal regatta" setting to see if it is automatically set at the start of interseasonal and if so, track what happens at the start of the following season.

I have never experienced what you are reporting. I have a few players who rarely participate in seasons but do in the interseasonal. I have never seen them wrongly show up as racing in seasonal. However, I cannot say for sure if they had to reset their "opt-in" setting or not but I suspect they did not have to do that. But, as I say, experimentation will help. I encourage others who are interested in exactly how this all works to perform their own "controlled experiment" and report the results here.

[_DD_]

...I have never experienced what you are reporting. I have a few players who rarely participate in seasons but do in the interseasonal. I have never seen them wrongly show up as racing in seasonal. ...

As support for your plan: I recommend to read Anna's post here again (about NO change to the opted-in-setting in IS, it is purely visual in the Coop list only, she says), with the official statement.
She is also quoting your summary (from) there, Charlie, and confirms it as correct.

I'm not simply quoting it here, cos you'd best ALSO read Pink's post there (one above Anna's), where she describes that and how it did NOT work also for her baby town, with the opted out/in status.
Just as confirming input where to look at during your tests (and maybe one player could also test the leave-and-come back-variant).

[Cuddz]

I can’t ask the player yet as they are still not online. But reading Pinks post it seems it is a Facebook issue.
I do know the player is on Fb as we have a group on there. As soon as I can I will ask the player if in fact FB was mentioned in the reply from Playrix.
Nothing else I can do, but I do know we were demoted because that player was opted in when not even online.

[Mayfield]

Mayfield... sorry if I didn’t explain it properly so you could understand it, i was answering douglasnorths post which I thought was referring to Regatta and not interseasonal.
The player was opted in automatically by Playrix for Interseasonal, however as the player was not online the player remained opted in when the Regatta started the following week, was counted in and we obviously lost those points.

Thank you for clarifying. I see now you were referring to the first seasonal race after IS. I was reading "lost points" as something being subtracted, which isn't quite the case for seasonal either. But yes, racing against coops with one more active racer puts you in a huge hole right from the start. If you guys managed to stay in the same league racing one short, that was a great effort.

I agree with douglasnorth. Playrix should not change racing settings for IS. I thought the IS was set up to simply ignore the racing/non racing settings. If the software can't handle that, then they should apply the setting as is and let people stay out if that's what the player wants.

[_DD_]

... Playrix should not change racing settings for IS. I thought the IS was set up to simply ignore the racing/non racing settings. ....

If you look at Anna's post that I linked above, that IS the official statement we got here.
I'm inclined to believe that something else went wrong in Cuddz' Coop in that situation (incl. the CS answer), and we'll probably get more clarification after Charlie's test.

[kitty4715]

• Whether "Restrict" applies to interseasonal week is also up for debate.

Hey Charlie! Just wanted to add a an anecdote about your last point in case it helps anyone.

Midweek during last IS, a co-leader mistakenly restricted me. At that point, I could no longer access the task board, and I was in Spectator Mode. I could see the coop goals/rewards, but when my teammates completed a task to earn the reward, I did not receive anything. I tried leaving/rejoining the same coop, and it had no effect. I could, however, join ANY OTHER COOP and participate as usual doing tasks and earning rewards.

When IS ended, and the new racing season was about to start, I luckily looked at the regatta screen and saw that it showed me as Opted Out. I had completely forgotten about the "restricted" error at that point. So I went into my settings and re-checked "Participate in Seasonal Regatta" so that I could race that week.

[Pink]

I can’t ask the player yet as they are still not online. But reading Pinks post it seems it is a Facebook issue.
I do know the player is on Fb as we have a group on there. As soon as I can I will ask the player if in fact FB was mentioned in the reply from Playrix.
Nothing else I can do, but I do know we were demoted because that player was opted in when not even online.

Hi Cuddz, sorry, it's not a Facebook issue, just a badly worded phrase. What I meant by that was, that the issue or bug had been raised or noted on Facebook as some facebook users in my team were aware of this. I don't use facebook and up until that point, was not aware of the issue as I hadn't seen it raised here.

Re: restricting from Interseasonal, I have previously posted this :-

Support have stated that the interseasonal is included in the restriction too. The only way to take part once restricted, is to join another co-op.

I still think that IS should be treated in a different manner, with different terminology so that everybody is absolutely clear that we aren't racing because there is no race that week.

[cdosr]

Hey Charlie! Just wanted to add a an anecdote about your last point in case it helps anyone.

Midweek during last IS, a co-leader mistakenly restricted me. At that point, I could no longer access the task board, and I was in Spectator Mode. I could see the coop goals/rewards, but when my teammates completed a task to earn the reward, I did not receive anything. I tried leaving/rejoining the same coop, and it had no effect. I could, however, join ANY OTHER COOP and participate as usual doing tasks and earning rewards.

Interesting that the restriction "stuck" when you left and rejoined the same co-op but cleared when you joined another. Did you test the case when you eventually returned to the original co-op *after* being in another, could you do tasks again? That is, was the restriction lifted by joining an intermediate co-op?

As an experiment a while back on of our guys left and returned during IS and the one thing I noticed was his town was listed twice in the statistics, the earlier incarnation being grayed out and the newest one looked normal but had 0 tasks and 0 chests. That seems to say that it treated his return as a totally different town.

When IS ended, and the new racing season was about to start, I luckily looked at the regatta screen and saw that it showed me as Opted Out. I had completely forgotten about the "restricted" error at that point. So I went into my settings and re-checked "Participate in Seasonal Regatta" so that I could race that week.

Since the restrict function actually changes your "Participate in Seasonal Regatta" setting this seems to say that joining a co-op did not automatically set you to "participate" but preserved the setting as it was when you joined. At a minimum it confirms that joining a co-op does not automatically change your "Participate in Seasonal Regatta" setting. Nothing automatically sets you to "racing" except during IS of course when *everybody* is set to "racing".

In re-reading the OP I interpret the original problem as an "open" co-op having people join just prior to the start and not really committed to doing tasks. The fact that the time zone of the leader means that the race starts during their overnight hours compounds the problem for them. Changing the co-op settings to "Closed" or at least to "By Request" should eliminate the timing problem and give them a chance to better screen new members. The thread title seems to be more a request for a "cooling off period" when first joining before "Participate in Seasonal Regatta" is honored rather than implying that some sort of "game initiated status change" is happening.

Anyway, still another week of seasonal racing to go before we can try a few things.