I am going to step on toes....

There's nothing earth shattering in what I am about to say and for the longest time I tried not to say it but it's starting to bother me that I am witholding this information. So here it is, it is going to step on many regular's toes, and I do not mean ANY of this personally. People in the forums have been ultra nice to me despite my provocative written language and I appreciate that.

Linden Labs wants to increase the userbase, we all know that. They want this because well to all businesses have investors and financial backers. Investors want to see growth which they translate in their heads to immediate or pending future revenue -- a return on their investments. So far so good, our beloved SL is at the end of the day no different than AOL, it's a service offered by a for profit company with investors. Now stay with me, there will be much stating the obvious to follow but this is all here for a reason.

Next, to achieve the explicit outcome of significant growth, Linden Labs has set membership number goals for this year and next. These numbers whether they're public or not are the homework Linden labs must complete to achieve the approval and further backing of its investors. Nothing wrong with that. To achieve this goal, registration has been recently changed much to many users' dismay. Also they're using a lot of opportunities for publicity through the media. Nothing wrong with that either.

It also does not hurt to market Second Life, the product as a game because there is a big gaming community out there and we do want their business and their money eventually. But guys and gals, come on, be honest is SL really a game by the true meaning of the word? Is it really? Well that's a whole Oprah episode we will not go into for the sake of brevity.

New users have started pouring in. Now the main argument has been whether or not these users are underage. This is a very important pivotal issue no doubt. No doubt. But for this post, I want you to think past this issue, and assume that all users coming in are of legal age for SL. Great, lots of users coming in.... wow SL is growing like crazy.

So we move on. Most of the users SL is recruiting are from the gaming world. Now this is a generalization yes, there are many other incoming people of various backgrounds. But you must admit, the majority has got to be the gamers.

What do gamers do in games? Well, that's hard to answer, there are so many games out there. What are the most popular games? Come on you can do it, just say it: Shoot em Ups! Yes bingo, you win a Linden bear. Shoot them ups.

We put these incomers through the orientation island, which I am sure more than half of them skip (if they don't we have the lowest IQ on the new set of users coming in). I know this because of the questions that are asked to me when I run into new users.

Most of them are clueless as to what a combat sim is, what a sandbox sim is, what a residential sim is. They have no clue, and most of them do not even want to learn. They want to PLAY THE GAME. They think, the game is just like any of the ones out there, get a gun, get some gear, get some shields, join a group of people, and shoot the hell out of anyone that's not in your group. Simple right? I am sure this simple blueprint has served them well in many games before. Lovely, except for one thing, SL IS NOT A SHOOT THEM UP! Wow this is a problem.

And a problem it is because so far not enough has been done to educate, retrain, limit the freedom of, the incoming droves of people. They just come in like it's 2003, but it's 2006 guys and gals. It's 2006, and our registration system has them pouring in by the hundreds.

I have successfully talked tens of newbies into going to Rausch to do their combat. They come back and report to me that Rausch kills them the moment they arrive. I see one of us here has thought, how funny it will be if I put a griefer object in raush so that everyone teleporting in gets insta-killed. Well arent you the smart one?

So we have only one official combat sim, it is either down, or griefed, or otherwise unusuable every time I send someone there. Where are these people supposed to shoot their guns which let's face it is why they came into this "game" in the first place?

Freebie lots are crawling with guns, explosives, push objects and scripts. We send the newbies to Yadni's (whose freebie lot is awesome to say the least) and to other sims with freebie lots. These new users not knowing better, arm themselves up with all these gadgets and anything they can get their hands on.

I could be wrong but the availability of explosives, griefer objects and guns has increased since we got more users coming in. Now I know the newbies are not making these freebies--at least not most of them. So who could be benefitting from giving freebie guns, explosives, griefer objects to newbies... Dont think too long, it will hurt -- it's the manufacturers of guns, explosives, shield and protection systems, orbitters etc. Sorry guys, I don't mean to rat out on you but seriously by placing all these freebies everywhere you're arming the newbies and then turn around and tell the rest of us to buy every protection gun, shield, push, orbit thing you make. And we are so scared that we will be shot (I dunno why, it's SUCH a big deal at the end of the day- and no please don't send the mafia after me to prove that it is a big deal), we end up buying all this junk. Shields create more powerful guns, more powerful guns create shields, no fly zones, surveillance crap, and bounce scripts and insane people. Insane people, yes.

What has happened to the good samaritan spirit of this place I ask you? Is your land tier fees so bad that you would rather sacrifice the wellness and happiness of everyone else in second life so that you can keep your castle or army base or whatever? Are we truly this selfish? Ask yourself, is it worth it. Go ahead. No don't write me and tell me I am a turd, ask yourself and answer to yourself. I do not judge you, it's not my place, I want you to judge yourself.

Linden Labs, if you're gonna market this place as a game, and invite everyone and their push gun toting grand mother, PLEASE do the following:
1-Create a combat island. No, not one more sim, I am talking about 10-20 sims entirely composed of combat capabilities and builds.
2-Please put auto return on all combat sims
3-Please create more scripted and unscripted sandboxes
4-Challenge your coders to figure out a way that identifies an object as a weapon. As in instead of turning all scripting in a sim, turn off "llPush" or whatever that pushes the people over the edge and beyond.
5-Put people in sandboxes for help and surveillance
6-Make the orientation island mandatory
7-Add more information about which sim is for what and about the expectations of the community.

Weapons Manufacturers, if you love this place:
1-please stop handing out freebie stuff that is very powerful. If they want guns they can pay for them by buying lindens. That is what we all want them to do in the end, buy lindens, own land and get progressively addicted to this place like we all are.
2-Please no more push stuff, please no more grief stuff, please no more shields -- I am tired of it all. Until we get a true combat island we do not have an arena where we can use all these works of great scripting and ingenuity -- they just end up hurting everyone including yes eventually you.

Finally a message to newcomers:
Our home is your home but good manners bring people together, please remember that. Please remember that you are our guest when you're talking to a user that's been here since 2003, 2004. We all want to help you explore, learn, build, have fun and even be the pranksters you wanna be. But there's a time and place for everything and having fun at the expense of others is just not socially acceptable behavior.

Befriend people, learn from them, and soon you will find your place in this amazing new place. You will see that not only can you play games here but do so much more.

Don't take my words personally, I beg you. As I said before, I just want to reach out and relate what I have been observing here lately.

I hope this helped.

Thanks for listening

Troy Vogel

Very well thought out. I don't say anything I can specifically disagree with.

Ditto. In fact much that I agree with.

Sorry I can't go into too many details here, the entire project will be completed and unveiled a the SLCC, but I am adding two combat sims to SL. A total of four maps (and for you non-shooter fans out there this means parcels in SL each with a different design) available with a custom system that the gamers will be used to (as in instead of dying and going home they "respawn" at one of the map's respawn points) and supporting many of the modes they love, including DeathMatch, Team DeathMatch, Capture the Flag and others depending on how many can be fully tested and documented vefore the conference.

Yes, I did say documented, as in an web site with full instructions on joining Second Life, playing the "game", and using the rest of the beauty of Second Life as the ultimate "chat lobby". It will also discuss SL's economic system, how SL is in many ways the ultimate "map editor" and ways they could enter the gming industry as artists and "level designers" by taking advantage of SL, texture design and uploading, prims and land ownership to construct living examples they could show prospective employers.

Currently "Carnage Island" is under construction as our "full size map", although it won't be truly full-size, we're leaving an observation area specifically for people to get a taste while chatting and the others are having fun gunning each other down. Kyran Nyak has been doing a great job on this first map, an icy walled arena full of partially destroyed buildings, a road system and local water/drainage system to vary the landscape.

Thanks to Anshe Chung's island rental program we're adding a second region next week which will be divided into three parcels for different maps, one half of the sim, the other two one quarter size. We'll be adding possibly a futuristic map and an indoor map, final decisions will be made when designers are hired for those parcels.

Our scripter, Fred Extraordinaire, has a number of excellent ideas beyond the gameplay modes most are used to in games such as Counter-Stike and Battlefield 2 and I hope we move further into development beyond the SLCC and find other SL residents who can find a way to use this system to host land and arenas and pay their tier with it.

I hope by providing a live demo of these technologies to some Lindens at the conference will inspire desire for some of the requests you are making Troy, or in altering the current combat system to use the technologies we've developed. There is a lot of potential to aid in use retention through classic gaming metaphors and simultaneously selling these "gamers" on the greater idea of Second Life. Not a bait and switch in the classic meaning, but it certainly is bait. This is the subject of my discussion group Sunday at the conference, "User Retention through Gaming".

There's no telling if this sort of thing would aid in griefing, after all it will only be two sims. Hopefully I'll be able to answer some more on that topic in the magazine I'm publishing for the conference (and which also will be available on the web in PDF form).

The Second Life Fan Kit has a banner ad about building an "FPS" in SL and then making money off of it. Damage mode is built into the land tools. Weapons are plentiful. Combat and gaming go hand-in-hand and by their current inclusion in basic SL systems so do gaming and Second Life. Let's try to take advantage of that as Linden Lab attempts to meet these user goals, let's turn that mostly frustrating group that many are afraid of into an advantage.

Let's give the gamers a game. But between rounds, instead of just chatting and awaiting the next game, show them that they can now build, design their own weapons and avatars, bring in their friends and show how cool it is to be the only "soldier" on the battlefield that looks like they do. And then send them back in guns-a-blazin'. Let's take all the power of SL and show how much fun it is to create and socialize as well as search and destroy.

I highly doubt arms manufacturers are arming nOObs. The fact that nOObs are armed to the teeth is because there is a huge surplus of free guns laying around.

Gun manufacturers should hate free guns... cuts into their sales.

Well it only takes one free free pushweapon that makes its way into a freebie pack to cause a problem (that C4 comes to mind offhand). Once a freebie is out there its going to behard to regulate it.

I like the idea of a "Shooting Island'. Gives you a way to play with your 'toys' without interferring with everyone else.

If you can corner a hardcore gamer market, heh, expect the L$ and $$ to come in.

I love my games. I love SL. As for now I have to leave the shooting behind when I come to SL. It'd be nice to be working, get frustrated & say "AH the hell with it!! I'm going to *shooting island name* and blow off some steam.

And it'd be neat to show these other gamers HOW to build their own stuff (or sell it to 'em)

one of the problem is that currently SL make it pretty hard for creators to make a true fps arena, yu can't push rules on the players really, example:

you nee to allow them to rez bullets, yet you dont want them to rez big cubes to protect themselve
you need to allow the scripts to run, yet it allow also every gadgets giving to a player an unfair advantage over another to run.


i have put a feature suggestion that would solve parts of the problem, yet nobody bothered to taker interest in it.

/13/9f/116308/1.html

the fact we have an unadapted built in system with numerous flaws and possibilities for a clever scripter to get very unfair advantages push the combat zones out of the dammage sims (the main use of pushguns and orbiters is to be able to make a negative effect on someone out of a combat sim)

Is it possible to make weapons in safe zones irrevelant.
So that a safe zone is a truly safe zone.

Would'nt it be great if an uninformed would-be griefer were
instantly teleported to the middle of the combat zone if they
tried to use or rez a weapon? hehe.

While you can't push rules currently, and it sucks to have to be vigilant, it's very likely having an arena will be enough to get people to try to play fair. Of course, perhaps that's just a pipe dream.

I wanted our initial system to use custom weapons then based on Linden reaction either hope for changes to the combat system that's built-in or release the "weapon protocol" like safe zone/laura/other systems do so author's could put in support.

Currently weapons are designed mostly to grief, heavy damage and often push. Many are designed with toggles for the effects. At the same time they are not "balanced" for fair play which is why I wanted the custom weapons. Because our scripter was already in progress on a system that used "current weapon damage based on velocity" that won't be in this first release. Ultimately though you need to balance damage/rate of fire/ammo capacity/reload time. I unfortunately had been using a manager for the project while I was focused on the other aspects of my SLCC presenttaion and the requirements weren't spelled out in detail. But what they have is excellent and hopefully we'll have a full sim beta-test in the coming days.

LL hands out mod copy guns. Use to at least.


-Take take free LL gun

-Open and mod script

-Insert twisty prim uber push bullet

-Go to club

-Test push effect

-Rinse and repeat

It's like a kit to teach people about the building and scripting features of SL while griefing.

I'd really like to see something like a tooltip that comes up when hovering one's mouse over an island on the world map, and that contains a short description of the island configurable by the estate owner. That would make island-hopping more pleasant, as there would be less risk of ending up in places where tourists are not welcome.

I agree with the guns issue. What needs to be done is education on how most of SL is not in 'fps mode.' Most of SLers don't want a 24/7 gunmatch. While SL meets my definition of game (I agree to disagree with those who say it isn't, and only back my opinion) it isn't a game for everyone. Even those whom is it always a game for are not always in the 'shooter' style game. Its alot like an open RPG to most gamers, where you can fight if you want, but you can also just socialize.

This would be an extremely useful feature.

Personally, I don't bother to visit any islands anymore, unless I got there by tping from a store ad. There's no way to tell what the place is, what it's for, and if you're going to get harassed for just showing up or what.

Being able to see a few sentences about what the island is and what it's about would be *tremendously* useful.

Nice post Troy. Some great suggestions.

I completely agree that most people coming into Second Life have absolutely no idea what it's all about. Their first impulse is to arm themseleves to the teeth and start shooting innocent tinies, hipsters, furries, robots and sometimes even Lindens... their wrath has no bounds!

The best I can do is describe Second Life to them as a place. And then I tell them that shooting me won't help them level up, or gain points. Then, they shoot me, usually before I'm done explaining.

It would be great if we could tap into the combat market, but I'm not sure it's a great thing to target.

It seems to essentially wind up stuck between two stools:
a) system where not everyone is free to create weapons - SL's main advantage is lost, might as well play Quake (or Planetside?)
or
b) system where everyone is free to create weapons - best way to win is not to have skill at shooting people but to have skill at making powerful weapons which is totally different.

(The situation of b) applies to many other games within SL as well, such as the roleplay simulations where if you want to be Queen of a fantasy island, you have to get it by.. not roleplaying and levelling up, but by making money and learning to build.)

I'm not quite sure how this can be resolved, but I think some action by LL would be necessary. At the moment you can make a lovely custom combat system, with an open API, that ensures fair combat but it only takes one troublemaker to show up with a hyperorbiter or logout weapon and they can't be stopped.

... I want to make Touhou Bunkachou in SL now .. agh, too much stuff to do ...

Good stuff, Troy, your thoughts echo many of my own.


I play Xbox Live with my son sometimes. It can be extremely fun and dying is painless (and, for me, frequent) -- but nobody in Xbox Live is trying to build or script or visit with friends. Compared to Xbox Live, SL is not a game. I'm not saying that to restart the worn-out Game/not-a-game debate -- if LL wants to add tools for people to set up combat sims, they're going to have to give it a lot more deep thought than they have in the past. The current SL tools for gaming are inadequate (start with the clunky UI, move on to horrid latency). Woefully so. If I'm a shooter fan, SL is not on my list.

There might be a market there, but I think any attempt to adapt Second Life as it is to a shooter will either end up as a compromise that pisses everybody off (on both sides) or else a mediocre product that can't make a decision between the two.


We were discussing this a couple of weeks ago in another thread. Orientation Island needs a major workover. There should be simple, fun puzzles to solve (which involve grasping the UI) before the user is allowed to leave. Just easy stuff like using the camera, moving, and managing inventory.


They could - but then you're risking the possibility of drawing even MORE potential griefers into SL. Do you want to advertise SL as an open place to create, have fun and meet people -- or a place to firebomb newbies and entire clubs full of innocent people? Check a few of the gamers' clan websites around the net and think real carefully about the kind of gamers who would be attracted to "Second Shooter".

This is really the essential question -- how does Linden Lab want to define SL to its market? That definition determines everything that follows.


This is already scheduled for Wednesday's update. They will differentiate between distance push (weapons) and bumping into people, and the Distance Push will get auto-AR-report back. It will also be a land tools option that can be toggled off by parcel. This will automatically nerf the majority of the griefers.


The freebie stuff is already out there. You can buy a box of guns at Yadni's for $1L. I think I've bought maybe 2 guns in my year in SL, just for show, but I have dozens of weapons in inventory that I got bundled in freebie packs. (I'm using them now as examples to build my harmless watergun.)


It's the nature of open capitalism, which I am entirely in favor of - the shields have been a response to market demand. Make the guns useless by adding more land tools and the shields become irrelevant except for the combat simmers.


Well said Troy, but my own admittedly unscientific survey based on personal experience is as follows:

* Since the introduction of the unique computer ID hash tracking, griefer attacks still happen but they are not quite as frequent and they don't involve as many brand new unverified alts. (Most of those were just throwaways created simply to grief and their main account sent them the weapons and scripts - you can't get that much griefer gear without money.)

* A major percentage of griefers I've seen are almost, or at least a year old in SL. No longer are the unverified freebies the major source of nastiness.

* I'd say the vast majority of the unverified freebies are here for the same reason the rest of us are, but either can't get payment info or are reluctant to do so until they get hooked. They are curious, friendly, eager to explore and open to advice.

Bottom line isn't so much a plague of guns in SL -- it's a concentration of bad attitudes among a small minority of newbies plus the juicy targets presented by defenseless club patrons clustering together on their mini-map. The new land tool features will help immensely. So has the ID hashing. As soon as the hardcore shooter fans realize that they are not allowed to bring weapons on the grounds of most of the stores and clubs, and they don't work anyway, they'll either get the clue or go back to Xbox Live.

Cindy Claveau,

What a great response. Thank you for sharing this info with me. I did not know about the push/bump differentiation that's coming up in the update. That's great.

Also I will take to heart your view of the freebie guns, gun manufacturers and how they do not play as much as significant role as I hypothesized that they do. I can see your version of the story and I see how it can do just as good if not a better job of explaining what's happening.

Your reply deserves more than one read.

Thanks again,

Troy

PS. not to neglect the others who have responded, I also thank everyone else that has taken the time to read my post and send insightful responses.

Well, I have to say that I am a gamer. I mean really. -.- But I am not a moron that goes around shooting people in SL for the shear joy of it. So I do not think necessarly that anyone from the gaming community is going to come here for any length of time AT ALL. I even pulled teeth to get my buddies to get on here, they didn't last past an hour.. Well, i have so far... But my point is this its not fast paced, there aren't real challenges in shooting unarmed ppl. Those are more than likely kids that got on the adult area. Plain and simple.

But I really really would like some war sims here.. sniffle, I can only shop so much before I am completely bored.

Brilliant posting, Troy! Great brainwork! I agree to every sentence.

That's kind of my take on it, too. Using my teenage son as an example again, however, he played Sims for a long time and enjoyed building his own house. But his interest waned pretty quickly. Then he got an Xbox 360 for Christmas and XLive, and he hasn't touched it since.

I tried to show him Oblivion on the Xbox but for him, there just wasn't enough excitement. Crashing the gates of Hell wasn't enough for him I guess

*Stands up and applauds Troy's speech*

Well said. I couldn't agree more. Half the issue with the griefers is they want to play FPS games here, and there is nowhere 'appropriate' for them to do so. SL isn't Unreal Tournament. They need to understand that BEFORE they leave Orientation Island.

The availability of free, high-powered weapons is insane.

I made an alt a few weeks back, using completely bogus information. I didn't even TRY to make the account name, e-mail address and 'real name' look real.

As a test, I had him off of orientation island and set up with an innocuous looking free avatar and over 20 weapons in less than 10 minutes, from account creation to armed-to-the-teeth proto-terrorist. I didn't spend a single L$. I didn't accept an inventory transfer from any individual. I just picked a store that had a bunch of freebies earmarked for newbies, and loaded up on anything vaguely interesting.

10 minutes after creating the account, I had guns, missiles, C4 explosives, and a NUKE REZZER. There were lots of other things there that were useful only for griefing, as well, like slime drones and the like.

I cancelled that account a few days later, having decided that I wouldn't play the griefer's game, by having my own counterstrike unit ready to go.

I would call on all the people who offer freebies to newbies to take a serious look at what you give out free to any newbie that walks up to your location. Think hard about the message it sends to them. Why give out all these weapons, if you aren't expected to use them? Seriously consider REMOVING the items that are only useful for griefing, and the high-powered weapons. At the very least, if these jerks want to have high-powered weapons, MAKE THEM PAY FOR THEM.

It would be good to open up more combat sims.

But even then there will remain griefers. We can motivate the combat-oriented and trigger-happy to go to combat sims and they'll be happy and thankful. But real griefers live to cause grief, not slug it out in an arena, the motivation is totally different from that of soldiers/warriors.

We can't control the freebies, and even if we did, all the griefers need to do is get hold of a push weapon script and they'll be in business even with a 0.5x0.5x0.5 wood cube. In SL form has nothing to do with function where gadgets are concerned.

We can't change the griefer's motivation. We can't deprive them of the griefer items. So what's left?

We really need the anti-push controls. It's the ONLY solution that will work 100%.

Carnage Island - I like that!

coco

1-3) ok, but I doubt most gamers would use them.
4) they're working on this
5) Or... just disable push without consent in sandboxes - much less costly to LL.
6) Good idea, but there should be an exception for alts of known players
7) Yes, and it should pop up when you visit a sim for the first time. I'm just not sure how annoying it would be / how much DB space it would take up.