Guns on Help Island

Last night I spent 2 hours on help island and it seemed like every new citizen was asking for guns/weapons and when I kindly explained that Second Life was not a shooter game I was met with amazement not only from the new people but from one other mentor. What gives people the impression that Second Life is some sort of free for all cowboy town with gunslingers everywhere?

The particle guns and push guns get confused and when given to noobs set a president. Namely, "hey I was given a gun it must be ok to shoot it."

I don't think guns are a bad thing in SL, just that they not applied randomly to entering noobs!

One "strange" feature of SL is a sense of etiquette. While the Lindens set a written guide to conduct, it's ultimately the citizens (especially the first ones noobs meet) to set the right tone and behavior.

If someone asks me about guns I tell them about the combat island. I also make it abundantly clear that shooting at someone who is not participating in a willing gun-fight is good way to get banned!

I can't say I'm surprised by those who enter SL and see every moving object as a target. They just stand out to me in the face of so many kind people who say "sorry!" just for bumping me while walking.

Now as far as where they get the idea... I don't think SL ad's are devoid of images of guns or that SL can be a PVP game.

So, should LL stop issuing guns to newbies?

Or, if they do issue guns, they should be non-laggy, time-delay-firing guns only?

I have to admit I've met a few *making* guns... but most of them seem polite and aren't shooting other residents. Just tell them the rules and let them play.

How the hell do people like this become mentors?

There should be big signs up everywhere telling new people that if they shoot anyone without that person's permission, that they could be banned.

If this is the general attitude of new players, then I'm glad that we have a way to ban them from our land.

The trouble is that it's NOT the case that shooting people without permission is against the TOS, if you are in a damage enabled zone you've implicitly given permission whether you know it or not. Also if you shoot someone with a particle effect gun or similar (no damage, no push etc.) that's totally legal, at least until it is linked to stalking or other activities that change it from harmless to griefing.

So... we need to be pushing the news that in almost all of SL shooting people with physical bullets, things that cause damage and things that push people is against the TOS and may get them abuse reported and banned. Shooting your mates with permission to test a weapon is allowed, shooting in a damage enabled sim or parcel is allowed.

If they want to shoot people, warn them they can't do it normally, but point them to Rausch and Jesse, where if it moves they can shoot it. (You may also choose to warn them that if they go there with a linden gun as a complete n00b they WILL die if anyone else is there, quickly, messily, repeatedly and almost certainly never seeing their foe.)

SL isn't a good platform for FPS-players, but if that's what they want to do, warning them of the risks (banning and dying risks) but point them to places that they can do what they want too. That bit of the principles that says we should give accurate information and do so positively is worth considering.

For what it's worth I've had people ask about weapons on HI. Hmm, twice I think, and although I'm not there daily, I'm there quite often. Just because one doesn't like people that want to shoot things in SL doesn't mean there isn't a niche for them, and as a mentor one should point out how they can do what they want where it isn't against the TOS.

I had my nick registered around last year when initially trying out SL, and got back using it this year. As I now own a piece of land I wanted to go shopping.

In the last three days, I have encountered several people using weapons of me of several kind. Sandboxes are already unusable.

In order to do abuse reports, I started making screenshots of them and looking them up afterwards. Oh and of couse, both abuse reports I send in, I have not had an answer at all. So as it seems we need to talk where the money is. (and it would really help if the message I send it is copied in my acknowledement of the abuse report ...)

All of them where new residents, all of them where not willing to understand that this is not a shooting game, all of them where like "yeah fuck off i do what I want". To think that you can talk reason into them when they are clearly into exactly this . shooting people for the fun - is like expecting script kiddies to be in irc for talking and social exchange.

From what I see it those kids are the skript kiddies of SL. And they will become more andlook out for more "fun" if nothing is done against it. Yesterday I saw three whole pages on SL Echxhange about "great weapons" and alike.

I do not want to start having to look out for shields.

I do not want to be teleported away from a shopping spree or anywhere in a sandbox because some kiddies play wild west.

I have no interest in setting up my avatar again or ever try to build up my buildings or anything like it due to a shooting.

From a view of a skript kiddie, this must be heaven.

A new cool Egoshooter game where there are a lot of people as easy targets and more realistic guns than ever before. Just the bullets need some more work on. end of ironie.

Of course they do not stay in special zones - they never do. This is uncool.

People being attacked don't shop, don't explore. don't buy land. They don't play and especially don't tell their friends about using Second Life.

I already say about SL "this *was* a nice game, but now there are skript kiddie equivilents in there". This is out of hand and I am sorry: The real rush in of those has not even started.

Linden has to decide if they want to keep SL and evolve it or get it crashed by kids like that.

SL needs...
Oh, heck. SL had.
SL had some verification.

ONE thing that would reduce it, is if SL added a new land-flag, (no-push.)
And preferably, re-worked land so two parcels can have different settings, and still generate to the same stats. This has been mentioned for movie-theaters before.

In this way, a person who, say wanted a push elevator, could flag the land the elevator was on, 16 square meters in total, (4x4, the smallest parcel), push enabled, but turn it off everywhere else.

If they do this, however, they need to work it so the script AND the target have to be in push-enabled land.

Also, they'd need to flag all land push-disabled by default. Especially Linden owned land.

Something else that MIGHT help, would be if there was some method of decaying permissions. Perhaps a set of two radio buttons, or three. If a script acts on you, right now you are asked if you want to be acted on, (unless you're sitting on its container object.) Perhaps there should be three radio buttons in preferences, and a new type of permission call. If you click on an object with the new permission call, it should ask the machine, as normal, but if you've flagged it acceptible, or acceptible for group-member objects, allow it...for 30 seconds. You click on it, and for half a minute it can act upon you freely. Or you click on it, and if its is owned by a member of a group you're a member of, it can act upon you freely.... Or, it asks permission, just like any other script asking permission.


Frankly, the way most people are, few are going to have more than a handful of computers total, especially the immature who would do this for sport. SL needs to go back to some form of verification, even if it's not CC based. Then, they need to ban by machine, not by avatar. Yes, this will gravely impede playing SL from a library or internet cafe, to which I ask...how many of you can play SL from a library? Far eastern internet cafes would still be hurt. Perhaps some form of registration for public outlets with gaming capable PC's could be worked out, partially exempting those locations from being machine-banned. Partially, and giving the responsibility to police their patrons to the arcades.


Three ideas.

Reading, checking for responses, and noticed my horrible math. Corrected now.

I was very sad to see a newbie who I'd been helping out on HI get onto the mainland and immediately head off and buy a freebie gun because he believed that he needed them to defend himself - that getting attacked and repelling attackers was an intrinsic part of SL. I tried to assure him that it wasn't, that it was a breach of the TOS for anyone to do that kind of thing. And his response was basically equivalent to "So it's against the law, people do things against the law all the time, you can go to the police and hope, or fight - and I want to fight." Of course, when I told him that him fighting back would breach TOS too, he had a similar attitude.



I would strongly suggest that particle effect guns should not be considered "harmless", especially not on HI or any newbie helping area. After all, in most other worlds and games, how else does your avatar "die" other than seeing a picture of them dying on the screen? Ok, you're still standing there untouched afterwards but that happens elsewhere as well, and doesn't mean you didn't die; and besides, if someone does have an attachment to their avatar, seeing them getting hurt won't be pleasant even if they're aren't any programmed consequences.

I have yet to see a particle effect gun that makes you look dead - if you read the whole post I was saying a gun that does nothing except particles to point at you...

Despite that I'd agree that I wouldn't generally use one or encourage use on HI or any WA. There is a difference between legal (which a gun that just makes a particle stream come at you is in the absence of other aggrevating features) and always desirable. Buying cigarettes is legal in this country if you're 16, smoking is still an abominable habit in my opinion.

I'm not a huge fan of such codified standards as we've got now, they should say "Go forth, be friendly, be sensible" or something similar IMO. But although we probably need to discourage weapons of all types on HI, in the various WA etc. pointing out that in 95%+ of SL guns that cause damage and/or push are illegal, but there can be guns that solely cause a visual effect that, if used responsibly, are legal anywhere. It's part of that standard saying full and accurate information.

There are quite few computer games/online worlds where, when you "die", your avatar gets hard to see and a big explosion appears around it. Newbies could easily be applying the same value to SL.

I apologise thought that I didn't realise you meant particle guns which fired a trail to locate someone (I wouldn't have called those guns, personally) - I thought you meant ones that created a particle explosion or other effect under the target, such as the Flamebringer.

There are big signs like that up on Help Island.

Actually, if I may say so I'm not sure they're quite clear - they have a picture of someone getting pushed back by a shot, and a label saying "REPORT ABUSE!".

I'm not absolutely sure that this clearly would be taken to mean that shooting is abuse. Looking at it from the perspective of a completely raw newbie, it could be taken to mean " report abuse, such as shooting", but it could just as easily be taken to mean "report abuse and we'll shoot the abusers for you".

I don't recall seeing the "Weapons-Free Zone" signs around on HI - would they be a reasonable addition?

Joker, they're talking about Help Island.

This is the place where newbies can stay until they learn enough about how to interface with SL. IMO it's a highly inappropriate place for guns.

Hello Joker. I am not talking about guns in Second Life. I am talking about guns on Help Island. It never hurts to read the post before you respond.

It isn't.....

At any rate, I think we're generally in agreement. Thing is now, can we get LL to at least put up a sign?

I think mainly the reason why so many new people on HI ask for guns is from the amazement that you even have guns and shoot them. Ill explain further by what I first experienced on HI.

I first heard about SL on another forum, so I checked out the website to see if it was any good. I read about it an what I interpreted was I could do anything, own land, and they had an in game builder. What I was thinking was that allright, its kinda like other MMO's except I can own land, and they have a simple construction tool (like using prims and some resizing but thats it).

So I show up in HI and start to go through the basics, doing a little exploring. I ended up in the freebie shop, when I heard what sounded like Kefka's laugh from Final Fantasy (which it was). So I went out of the store really suprised and wondering how they got that in-game, thats when I learned that you could import sounds, textures and later animations. Immediately after that I saw someone holding a lightsaber and someone else shooting the popgun. This suprised me even further, because I wasnt expecting being able to hold weapons in my hand, nor being able to make scripts to turn them into weapons.

So what was the first thing I did? I started making my own weapons. After learning what the builder could do, what do I do next? Well I started making myself guns (Yep, Im one of the people that was making guns on HI , I only left like two days ago).

The reason I went immediatly to weapons and guns was that out of the amazement of what I could do, I wanted to make things that were interactive and I could wear, instead of a box house or something more plain. So I think for the most part, people get overwhelmed by what you can do, coming over from FPS's, RPG's or other games like WOW, that for the most part are pretty linear. So they either make them or beg for them.



P.S. (Corrected/edited [sorry mentors]), we are given the scripts we need to make normal guns (pistols and rifles) and rocket launchers. By taking some sounds from the fireworks and using the popgun script (and swapping the bullet model for something more realistic) I was able to make my pistol sound very close to a real gun. By taking the popgun script and splicing it with the fireworks, I was able to make a rocket launcher that exploded when it hit things. So if there are any rules put out for what mentors could give on HI, average people might not be able to get ahold of guns on HI, but anyone with a little ingenuity and modelling skills will be able to make them very easily and pass them out.

I thought those where the ones that told to keep your clothes on!

Ummm, guns are already on the no-go list for Mentors handing them out on Help Island, as far as I remember, and I have most certainly never seen any of my fellow mentors breaking that rule.

well, It was more of an assumption, Ive never seen it either. Personally, I never had any problems on HI, but a weapon or two would pop up that I doubt was creating on HI (in terms of scripting).

Spontaneous creation of stuff like guns on HI happens due to friends, or alternate accounts, passing stuff to the new residents from the mainland. There is nothing that can be done to stop it, sadly. All we can do is try to educate the rest of the people there not to do it themselves.

Griefing with guns on Help Island could be soooo easily solved by giving the Mentors the ability to freeze people... ;)

(sure, that can be abused, but I guess that Jeska & Kenny would be quite fast in replying to abuse done by Mentors & Greeters on HI!)

I have always a double standard about "guns in HI". There is a threshold of what one should tell newbies, and what you should avoid to mention. Lying, for instance, even with the best of the intentions, is the worst you can do — like saying "SL is no place for guns" or "there is no adult content in SL" :) On the other hand, is handing out push guns or BDSM outfits such a good idea? :)

I must admit that I'm mean :) When the newbies ask me for a gun, I tell them how to search for them in the Library; the reasoning being that Linden Lab, in their wisdom, has dropped a few guns and swords there for some good reason. I even have a few semi-functional items that look good but are mostly harmless; like a cool-looking light sabre that doesn't do anything else but... look good. Naturally enough, people ask me where they can get working ones, and the usual routine is to tell them about Jessie and Rausch for "hard-core" combat (isn't there a privately owned "Combat Sandbox" these days as well...?), or go to the Star Wars sims for good replicas of working light sabres. Then again, this once more borderlines on doing "advertising" — it's as har to avoid it as the plague, and usually I just tell them how to use the Search functions to look up the items they like...

Put into other words: placing the dividing line of what you should tell and what they can find in SL is not always easy. Being stern on newbies who insist that the Help Island is a fair shooting ground is a definitely must; but then again, if that's what they enjoy, they should be pointed to the "shooting communities" in SL, since it's clear they'll love those. If you don't tell them anything — for fear of over-encouraging them! — they'll naturally go to the Sandboxes and use them as shooting grounds. So it's not so easy. These days, I wonder why the Sandboxes still forbid shooting; it seems rather pointless to me, since it's never enforced anyway (people really, really interested in building things will quickly learn that it'll be better to buy or rent their own space for that...). On the other hand, disallowing shooting at the HI could be enforced very easily, all it would take is a tiny change ;) Perhaps with the next generation of group tools Jeska will be able to delegate some simple "policing" functions...

... which then raises the usual question of who'll watch over the watchers... :)

As with everything else in SL, it's hard to define rules, if there is no way to enforce them ;)