Gaming the Dwell System - Redux

Pardon for the extra thread, but some resorted to attacks, which isn't what this is about. The point here is a system that is abused to the extent where you have people posting about it in external websites.

The summary is:

Club Elite management admit using/permitting anti-idle tech to increase dwell.

Club Elite management admit to formulating then enforcing policies to maximize dwell outside of permitted event scheduling.

Club Elite management admit to creating jobs for the sole purpose of 'harvesting' newcomers at the 'newbie area' or more commonly known as the 'Welcome' area.

My questions to Linden Lab are:

1) If you weren't aware of this before, and are aware of complaints, what is your proposed course of action?

2) Is dwell ultimately going to be examined more closely as a metric for judging contributions/payouts?

3) Is technology developed for the purpose of 'gaming' or maximizing dwell in a non-conventional, TOS-like manner allowed in SL?

Remember, this isn't about who's club is best, or what I think of clubs in general. It is about dwell system abuse.

Comments? (non-personal, please.)

<personal>
Your mother.
</personal>

All kidding aside, important points, these are.

LF

Maxx .edited to delete personal attack

They know we don't do that and they know elite always got ppl don't take much work to look on map and count the ppl

*SNERK*

I think I just got my new sig. Sorry, BJJ, but the grammatical structure of your sentences is a great source of amusement to many.[/i]

quote edited to delete personal attack

I don't think the anti idle point is valid....it only takes 5 minutes to dwell enough for 24 hours as long as they went no other places.

The other points do raise concern. Recruitment at the welcome area has pissed me off for a long time and Elite isn't the only place to use that tactic. Every newb I see is wearing one of three tags. Personally I don't think anyone on free trial should be allowed to join a group and I think there should be a waiting period of 2 weeks before a new mwmber can join a group.

Any way you cut it there will always be a way to game dwell unless the Lindens change it to something completely different. No one should be rewarded for hoarding avatars like cattle to their space and keeping them there as long as they can...its not creative and its not worthy of linden dollars much less real dollars. There are people who have created very nice places that do draw people even without events. There has to be a way to appreciate creative efforts as well. There needs to be incentive for everyone that belongs to second life not just those who know how to game the system.

Again, since this is proving to be a difficult concept for some people, personal attacks aren't what I'm looking for here.

Thanks again.

this is crossposted from hiro's exploitation thread because it better addresses these questions.

i've listened to good, potentially developer [i use that term seriously, not as it's lldefined()] newbies complain about:

vehicle border lag
video (card) problems
there being nothing to do
the lack of building & scripting manuals
high land prices/the usd cost of owning land

often to the point of deciding to not play second life at all.

i've never not once heard one complain, in any way, about the malls or clubs. it seems that most of the population are inworld either to make money selling items & services, or to puchase those items & services. i consistently wander through wonderful builds and cry for the ugliness of vendors plastered all over the walls. but it's the state of our world. it's what the populous demands.

is it a bad reflection on second life? it is in my opinion. but then, i'm a minority outcast for having that opinion. so my answers are:

1) nothing. ll have consistenty named these people the lead developers of second life. what am i gonna propose?

2) no, it isn't. that's obvious after all this time.

3) yes, it is. ll are not idiots. they must keep tabs on the system, especially the projects that the company pays usd to support every month. so the behaviour is de facto condoned unless they say otherwise. now put yourself in their shoes. would you say otherwise? would you say anything?

No, it is a valid point.

Example:

I went to Serenity today to see the 'desert' look Azrazael has created (actually I just wanted to see my fireflies for real). I flew around for five minutes, exploring. Az showed up then. We talked for a bit. Then another avatar arrived on what had been an empty island to start. Then another. And another.

One green dot attracts more green dots. It's a quite simple concept. It's "false" popularity that is created when it looks like there's always someone there, even if those people are idle.

Another point - the payouts from L$ via dwell and Developer Incentives aren't the problem here, just the methods some people are using to achieve them. I wonder what the number 11th person in dwell thinks about someone gaming the system ahead of them, denying them the opportunity to compete with the others in the developer incentive lists.

Deny others for the sake of yourself? Is this what SL has come to?

(1) Elite aren't the only ones doing this. I think BigJohn & co. feel attacked, because they are the oldest, biggest, and easiest target as far as the dwell question goes. Let's be fair here, they're not the only ones cheating the system.

(2) That said, the proof is in the pudding. As mentioned, new players tend to have one of two or three group tags and be members or two or three groups. This kind of spamming is offensive to me, just like people farming the web for unsuspecting peoples' email addresses to spam. Elite and others deny teleporting new players through IM relays between established players, and tagging new players with groups... but I've witnessed this happen with Elite and others over and over. On the Herald site / comments section, this has been admitted... as well as the discussion and admission of using anti-idle applications. Add intimidation tactics, even in SL, to this mix and this is what I have a problem with, not having fun or building a club or any of the people involved. This is however, quite circumstantial evidence.

(3) Solutions?

- I really like the idea of new players not being able to join a group or buy land, other than land for the landless, for the first few weeks they play. Its very easy to be overly excited as a new player and impressionable for the "new frontier". There's something to be said for easing people into the community. This would eliminate problems of unsavory citizens abusing new players for their spam lists and land purchase / sales needs.

- I've heard many complaints about the dwell system - myself as well - but can anyone come up with a metric system or formula that would work better? I don't think a "Linden Panel of Judges" would work, ever, due to accusations of favoritism. If it was voted on by citizens, people would just say its a popularity contest (as has been seen in the past). I believe the developer awards need to be calculated by formula somehow or the cries of favoritism will ring loudly.

- Introductary notecards. How about a notecard warning a new player about teleports the first three times they receive offers? Explaining how in SL you "vote with your feet", and that players will sometimes try to increase their locations popularity just by having you there, and not because they're really altruistic and interested in getting to know some one new? Maybe a "Its a good policy to only accept teleports from someone you have had several conversations with" type notecard should be triggered.

- How about the same for joining groups? A notecard explaining that groups can be used to send spam throughout SL, and that in effect, you are "opting in" just as you would to an email list in many cases. And again, a message to the effect of "only accepting group offers from someone you know" would be a good idea.

Okay, those are my ideas for now. I think they can all be implemented without a new client and what not. What do you guys think?

Regards,

-Flip

Hell, when I was a newbie I WAS one of those newbies that was roped into visiting Club Elite.

Thanks for the constructive post, Flip. This is of course aimed at not only the top dwell-holder, but anyone else who uses these methods to achieve high ranking. And for the record, I was roped into the Elite group when I was new. I recall it being an offer to join, without anyone talking to me. I left the group soon after, once I understood them better from the orientation classes, not to mention the continual IM interruption chatter from group notices that began to annoy me.

But that isn't the point here, the main point is dwell being abused, and to date - the lack of any guidance on the matter.

When I was a newbie, there was no Club Elite...
But I was forced out of Federal by the constand noise, flashing lights and lag...

Flipper, I really like the thoughts on the notecards. It would help new people a great deal.

A persons first introduction to SL can be very overwhelming, they always ask... "what do I do now?" Trying to mentor them while they are at the Welcome Area is hard enough. Trying to explain all the details of SL takes awhile and the notecards would be a good help during this learning process.

My thoughts on Development Awards would be to do away with it completely. The people who wish to help others and make SL a special place wont leave or be upset. Only those who want it for the money will be upset.

i wasn't recruited because i turned down several dozen offers the first few weeks. being a semi-experienced gamer, i was under the impression that joining a group was a singular event that tied me to a specific project. knowing very little about the world at first, i didn't want to link into a group until i had explored the options. that little bit of caution served me very well.

ergo i like flipper's idea to educate newbies about group participation and the existance of, and differences between building project, social, mall (shop owners) and club (employee) groups. i suppose that notecard spam at the welcome center is the only way to balance invite and tp spams at the welcome center. that might just add to the newbie nightmare though. and it is a lot easier to click a couple of dialog buttons than it is to stop and read a notecard. perhaps the exploiters have won by default.

*edited for clarification. people are posting faster than i can type ha ha ha

got ya. I didn't even think of it that way.

Look, you [edited] we have this thing, almost as revolutionary as Second Life, called "syntax." I suggest you use it. I'm tired of translating Troll-to-English for Khamon.


[edited to remove personal attack]

khamon who? be careful jarod. times you attack ppl always then them was good were there enemies and turn on you to be bad for rappin heads.

and thank you for the lessons. how am i doing?

OMGWTFLMAO

Lets try to stay on track here. I'm not going to make another thread if nobody can restrain themselves here.

I still maintain dwell abuse is wrong, and I'd love to be proven wrong in this case, but the self-admissions elsewhere don't help any. At this point I'm doubting that LL will try to weigh in at all, so we're just stuck with the same thing.

*sigh*

Not to stick my foot in boiling drhama, but...

Tell me if I am guilty:

I run two apartment buildings for new players. The rooms are free for as long as the tenants want to stay and follow the simple rules. The main rule is they have to use the apartment. If they aren't using it, I take that to mean the don't need/want it, and clear it for use for a new player. To track their usage, I track their "dwell"... Or as near as I can code a script to track it. Each apartment has a dwell percentage display over the door by their name. So far, I've been using a <1% 7-day average as the cut-off to eviction. One percent of their online time each week seems fair enough, I thought. That cut-off isn't in the rules, however, so I am free to change it in the future if neccessary. Since new players don't have much L$, I thought letting them pay for their rooms with time -- time they'd spend in their apartment anyway -- was a good deal.

So am I guilty of something bad?

There's a little thing called patience. Since I haven't seen a Linden on the boards since mid-evening yesterday, I'm not sure you can really say this is a "lack of response". More like a lack of presence.

Tiger, given that you are trying to maintain the apartments are used - I would say on the face of it no. If you were instead trying to be number one in the dwell chart by demanding a given 'stay' of each resident through the same thing, then I'd be more inclined to say 'yes'.

You're right Mole, I should be patient, that is why I started this second thread so the first could crash and burn, and I'd still get my questions answered hopefully.

Hmmm. Good question.

On the one hand, you are providing what is arguably an admirable service. Your trade involves, solely on its face time for dwell. And your rate of exchange is so low as to not seriously impact most resident's SL experience in terms of time investment by each individual resident.

On the other, part of my (and every other paying resident) monthly fees are essentially paying you (through the dwelloper incentive) to provide this "residential service" which we have not been asked about/to agree to --- Also note that no one is paying any portion of my land tier so that I may have a "home" except for me. (I could argue that my home provides a "visual treat service" but don't want to twist this thread that way at all.....)

Finally, in absolute terms of exploitation - I do not think you are exploiting the residents living in your apartments at all. They have a choice to live there according to your rules/requirements or not. And they even have the opportunity to attempt to negotiate different terms with you if they like the location but don't like your current terms.

However, in an "absolute" sense, I feel that you ARE gaming the dwelloper system to an extent.

Would I change my current mode of operation if I were you? Probably not. Had I known about your apartments when I first joined (and if I ever decide to drop down land tier wise) I might have taken you up on your apartment for my time deal. There are lots less ethical ways to game this system than your violating a strict, "letter of the law" interpretation of gaming the system.

I think the Lindens should just keep there money remove dwell and ratings and all that garbage so people will actually use second life the way it was meant to be used, as a social sim not an AFK sim or whatever. I think dwell incentives are retarded.