Camping: why?

As an afterthought, you COULD, however, create a device that orbits anyone who gets NEAR a camping chair, to keep them from getting a chance to sit on it.

If you're going to camp, pick up my camping chair TShirts for only $9 at SL Humor Tees
"King of the Camping Zombies"
"Queen of the Camping Zombies"
if you're gonna camp, camp in style

)

Or you could make chairs that invite people to camp that actually orbit people.

Just kidding.

Campchairs are where people park alts.

It makes you wonder if these people realize electricity costs money.
It would probably be cheaper to buy L$ then to leave there computer on all day.

I leave my computer on all day, it really doesn't cost anything more noticeable on my bill.... it's the other 5 computers i keep on that do..

I actually calculated it up once out of curiosity, electricity is pretty cheap, at least in most places. You still come out ahead camping, assuming that you don't wear out any physical hardware in your machine, but it ain't by much. After a year of 24/7 camping you might be able to buy a nice video card from it.

Edit: About what you could make working minimum wage for a few weeks.

This was my thought too.. You can get over $200L for 1 US$ these days, and who doesn't have a buck? However, it does mean you have to provide payment information, and I know some people who don't want to do that. My suggestion to those people has been to find a friend who DOES provide payment information, and give them a buck in exchange for the Lindens

Too bad Paypal takes such a bite out of it though, if that's how you choose to pay the friend. It would help if the friend was local and you could just give them the $1

I've done this a few times for people who had hit their monthly limit on LindeX. I like it cause my PayPal account doesn't take a percent cut of it. Mmm, no selling fees. Of course, that only works if you keep a basic paypal account handy and the other person has the right kind of paypal account to pay you with, but so far it's worked out. I'm not sure exactly what the difference is, I think if they try to pay you with a credit card through paypal you have to upgrade. If they pay you with a standing balance or attached bank account you don't.

On that note, the L$ sure is looking up suddenly. Woooo!

BINGO

OMG, I'm just amazed how few realize this. You know that working just 2 days a week at minimum wage (16 hours) can pay tier for an entire sim and still put extra money in your pocket on top of what you make in SL!

Just a thought...

Some of us (Like me) don't have credit cards. I don't, because quite frankly I am still paying off the last one, and I have learned I am rather irresponcible with the things.

So, while I would like to play, and build things, and hang with freinds, I have no payment options available to increase spendable L$. While camping isn't my idea of fun (And I have yet to do it), I can see people who, like me, need the money to create objects.

To be completely honest, I don't understand why all the stipend, both the creativity bonuses, and the small free money given to new users was really removed. There is something I am missing there. Wouldn't the idea of encouraging people to create more be worthwhile? Is there a way to get money back from the game, which creates a completely different economic issue?

Right now, I pay 30 dollars a month for other MMOG's, that offer time cards as a payment option. I enjoy my games. While I would consider paying a little to improve my charecter in this game, I see very little incentive to pay a monthly fee for what is basicly a 3D graphical MUD with what seems to be a lot less player interaction.

While I find creating objects and clothes fun, I do not feel I should pay much for the privlige to do so, and if they really want my money, they should provide me with another option to get it.

While others may not have the same lines and reasonings, camping makes playing with the game possible. For free accounts with no access or desire to access credit cards, being able to build has become impossible.

Just my 2 l$ worth.

I see a few references to long camping periods. How do people stop SL from logging out after 30 minutes of inactivity? Mine will log out (and unfailingly crash) after 30 minutes.

Sarha,

The free account stipend was removed, in part, to stop the creation of new money into the economy. The $L value was sinking rapidly as often happens when governments create new money.

The so-called creativity bonus, I'm trying really hard not to fall off my chair laughing here, was probably originally intended for just that, but was being 'earned' by the folks that live and die by the camping chair traffic numbers. In other words, it was rewarding folks paying other folks to sit on the arses, not paying folks with the most creative, imaginituve worth visiting builds.

We have a situation now where we have folks coming in to play for free. They can now contribute to SL by either buying Lindens and supporting the content creators by purchasing things or renting land (either way, encouraging folks that own or rent land, which ultimately supports LL), or they can become content creators and end up owning or renting land to sell. Add in all the other myriad things like buying and selling land, etc.

I understand your position of not wanting to do the credit card thing. Been there, done that, have the tshirt and wore it out. You can use paypal tied to your checking account and be responsible with it to buy Lindens and you should be able to use your checking account debit card. Maybe they need to explore more payment forms.

However, I do not support the position that a stipend should be in place for the free accounts. You generally get what you pay for. You can come in and socialize and explore and even build in a sandbox without ever spending a penny, you just can't own a home or have nice clothes or get a decent haircut (seen anyone homeless rl lately?). That's an amazing amount of something for nothing, in my book. If you want something more, if you want a good skin or something more than freebie clothes, then you're going to have to play zombie in the evil incarnate camping chairs, gather what you may from a money tree, figure out how to create and sell or you're going to have to buy $L. Its fair, its practical and above all else, its realistic.

Char

Chronic, there is at least one script out there that works client side to keep SL active, probably more than one, regardless of inactivity.

Char

The timeout is there for a reason.

Presumably, people overriding the timeout would be a violation of the ToS, as it is in several other games I play?

If so, why is nothing being done?

If not, why not?

Lewis

Futility and ridiculousness? Hardly.

The comp I use to play SL needs to be on all the time. If I don't really need to use it to actively do something else, why bother logging out?

I had the same concerns, so I did some research on my own.

1. It's not a violation of the TOS.

2. You can keep yourself logged in entirely via LSL.

1) Additional avatars create lag, if they're not actually actively playing then they are affecting others negatively. Dance pads are even worse.

2) Camping avatars take up avatar slots on the regions, potentially blocking out real players.

3) It's consuming bandwidth, which if you are on a basic account, other people are paying for.

4) It is a lame way of making a place look more popular than it actually is. 10 real visitors a day is more genuine than 100 zombies during the day. Traffic cannot be relied upon as an indication of quality.

5) I have watched Sims Online die a slow painful death for over 2 years as the 'payout' culture took over, with more and more people resorting to these bribes to get people to visit, and those who preferred to actually rely on quality end up dropping down the list even though they may have had a better, more attentive experience. In TSO, this need for money to giveaway fuelled people cheating to get the money, and the amount of "dirty money" splashing around meant that rare objects became priced out of the market for the average player - which, in turn, lead to more cheating and scamming to get money to obtain them. A rare pet costing §10,000,000 would have, during normal gameplay, have taken the average player 1,904 hours of continuous uninterrupted gameplay to gain legitimately. I see SL also dying in a similar manner as it is almost impossible to compete with popular places without offering camping or dancepads, thus creative players and quality builds get sidelined in place of prefab clubs all playing the same Shoutcast stream.

6) New players are mistakenly lead to believe that the only way to get success in game is to pay other people to sit on your property, because that's what they see everyone else doing.

7) Campers miss out on so much that SL has to offer. Simply spending $10 on Lindex will get you the equivalent spending money that around 241 hours of camping will pay, on the average of L$2/10 minutes.

Therefore, camping is not only futile, it also damages honest players new and old.

Lewis

Inactivity timeout is an integral part of other games, so SL should implement this as soon as possible.

After all, what's the point of having a timeout if they aren't actually going to have a reason for it being there?

The benefits are clear. See my previous post for some of them.

Lewis

I camp so I can be close to Lewis Nerd, he's so cute.

Lewis, I use an anti-idler / anti-timeout gadget to keep my av from being logged out when I do live music performances. It's not really practical for me to keep checking the SL client when I do a show. Would you rather my av was logged out part way through a set? That happened to me the first time I did a set at Luskwood.

I know I am, but I'd rather you used your main account and tell me that.

Lewis

Thing is, you aren't "idle"... you are there, actively playing and doing something productive (yes I enjoyed last nights concert by the way).

I know theres not an easy way to tell between "legitimate" idle (such as what you were doing) or "camping" idle though.

I wonder sometimes if I'm the only player who doesn't have an anti-idler.

Lewis

Lewis, I doubt if there's any way for the servers to differentiate between a 'camper' and a 'legitimate' application of an anti-idler. As with so many tools, it's down to the person using them rather than the tool itself.

I'm glad you enjoyed my show. I think I spotted you there on one occasion when I toggled over to my SL client. I have to run Cubase (for my backing tracks) and the SL client on the same computer. They're both total system hogs. Switching between them is painfully slow, so I try not to unless it's totally neccessary.

Time for a second computer and a router?

I was there at the early part when you mentioned about your bandwidth chopping issues and lowering the bitrate. Felt a bit odd surrounded by furries, I think there were only a couple of human av's there.

Lewis