-dot- names in Zwift segments...what are they?

Hey all, quick question. I’ve noticed that, while Zwifting, a lot of the segments (in Watopia at least, I haven’t noticed in other worlds) will have a top time by a name that is just a period, a quote mark, a ) or something similar with times that are something like 50% faster than the current Strava KOM. They eventually disappear.
Anyone know what those are? I’m curious why they appear and disappear relatively frequently. Cheers!
…also, entirely NOT bitter that one of those kept me from getting the TT jersey the other day. Nope, not at all :wink:

I know exactly what you’re talking about, I often just ride the standard hilly route and there’s a user with a period holding a high w/kg and had already logged 150miles on the ride. Definitely dodgy users

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I don’t think I’ve actually seen the . names just riding (could be wrong), just after the fact.
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cheaters that zwift “removed”? maybe.

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Probably bot users farming levels and drops to sell the accounts on eBay and trying to avoid detection by changing their name frequently or something like that.

Super common in most games.

Maybe I should market my account I’m a level 50 with 21million drops. All that extra stuff in game is useless to me, I earned the tron bike long ago and never used it lol

I always assumed that was a name in another language that doesn’t use english character (i.e. Chinese, Japanese, etc). :man_shrugging:

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Is this actually a thing?!

Lol, I guess Twinks are a thing even in cycling…
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I think that is correct…I have seen a number of people on group rides who have a “.” and their name box be blank.

That makes sense, but doesn’t explain that those names are always at the top of leaderboards with unrealistic times :stuck_out_tongue:

It does if the bots are programmed to be “fast”.

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yeah, they are probably sending that power input artificially, so just fast enough to be fast, but perhaps not be caught.

I’m sure there are lots of ways to do this programmatically rather than this hack, but it shows that people are trying.

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