Camping for Cash

It's only getting worse IMHO. With the large and rapidly growing population of "No Payment Info On File" avatars it seems camping overnight and filling a sim is becoming a socially acceptable way to earn L$. I see sim after sim dying because 1 land owner has set up some huge camp for cash site (I found one today with 64 camp chairs! Do the people creating these places not even know the limits of the sims?!) I am fearful of the day when one of these places sets up on my sim and I wont be able to enjoy my own property and I feel for the people who already can't access their own land. At the moment I'm just venting, but once I calm down I would dearly like to help and solve this problem. I don't want to see the mainland become a wasteland and everyone go off to their own private islands with covenants blocking these antisocial activities. The ability to fly around the mainland and meet random interesting people and see interesting builds is a real win for LL, seeing that die and having to TP around to private islands all the time? That doesn't sound fun at all.

Would it be wrong to ask LL to put a covenant on all mainland forbidding unfair consumption of a sims resources (be it avatars, script time, etc) this would then require those that want to offer money for camping to either do it in moderation owning smaller amounts of land in more sims, find a private island willing to host them (good luck) or for them to buy their own sim. Does the TOS already sort of cover this...? maybe just ARing the owners of these mega camp sites is all that can be done?

OK I'm going to have some tea and calm down

yeah so im new...only three days old...

what is camping and camping chairs?

yep im a newbie too, just into my second week

camping takes form of either chairs or dance podiums, you either sit in one of the chars for or dance L$.

the ones ive found vary in payout from L$1 - L$3 for 10 mins some have an unlimited bonus multiplyer. you can gamble and earn multiplyers to earn more Money per block of time. All the ones ive found require you to enter a password every few blocks of time to prevent AFK camping and some even require you to spend x ammount before camping will start

It's sitting around or dancing on the spot, consuming sim resources to earn yourself about 1 cent an hour (if you're lucky to find a generous camp site owner ) that is costing you about 7 cents an hour in electricity while at the same making you one of the most hated residents in Second Life because you're blocking a land owners from getting to their own land or having guests over.

Not only money devices like chairs and pad. Theu are rapeing the money trees as well.....................

That's just so very wrong, on so many levels

Camping chairs don't have to generate much script lag - the script is quite simple and can be written in a non-lagging way.

Splitting avatars, though, is a huge problem! Each mainland sim can only hold 40 avatars, which means that if avatars were divided proportionally to land ownership, you could never fly onto your own First Land. If you wanted to have one guest, as well as yourself, you'd need to own at least 4096sqm.

Indeed. A First Land sim has 128 land owners, that's a bad contention ratio right there (and an issue for another thread ). I don't want to see hard avatar quotas based on percentage of sim owned, but I would like there to be some way for other residents of a sim to formally lodge a complaint if another resident is constantly using well and above their "fair share". One off events are cool, if my neighbours had a big party one night that meant I had to go explore, or queue up to get entry I would love that, it's social and it adds to Second Life. But if day after day I can't get to my own land because people are sat in a chair earning 1 cent an hour? well that's just saddening and has to be resolved.

So do the casino owners really make enough money from the gambling to make up for what they pay out to campers?

Yes. Getting a parcel into the "Popular Places" tab of "Search" is worth a lot of money to Casinos - all casino operators will admit this. Getting a high number of campers ensures a listing in "Popular Places". It's just a shame these places are always an eye sore and have no atmosphere.

Lets assume the next...

A camping chair gives 2$L per 10 minutes, that is 12$L per hour. Lets assume someone sits in a chair 10 hours. That gives a total of 120$L

Ermmm.... 120$L? I just checked. For 0.75 US$ you can buy 120$L. So don't buy a Burger at the Burgerking and you have more (okay, I have to be honest... I have no idea of the prices of Burgerking in the US.... but over here in The Netherlands a good burger is more then 0.75 US$).

A very clear picture for me it is...

Morwen.

As I pointed out in another thread I had my alt live the camping life for a week. One place I tried used (in my opinion) questionable tactics to entice people to gamble.

"Sorry, you didn't win" happened through a scripted IM (noone else can hear it), however winning was announced using regular chat.
Every so often someone would come along and win big 3 or 4 times in a row (winnings in the order of $10-40k total). It happened frequently enough to leave me with the impression it's a set-up.
You're encouraged to play a slot machine while you're camping for a chance to increase pay-out by L$ 1/10 minutes, or reduce the pay-out cycle by one minute. From what I could tell plenty gave it a go, meaning that at worst they'll probably break even on camping, if not actually gain from it since people are gambling with money they haven't even "earned" yet just to get that L$1 extra every 10 minutes.

I think there were about 20 camping chairs at the one casino I went to, and at any given time there were at least 3-7 people hanging around, just waiting for one of the chairs to become available.

Well I wish you were right love. But sad fact is alts are only here for tree picking.....The pick the trees cleans 24 hours aday. Tree farmers some pick 24 hours a day....
Factas are facts......... Biggest TRee Farmer groups are from China and Germany....... All they do 24 hours is pick trees.......

I saw a great money tree advertised in classifieds last night.

It's in a combat enabled area.

You can either come and make a run for the tree, to see if you can get any money.

Or sit and take pot shots at the newbies trying to get money.

Sounded like fun

Lewis

Lewis maybe Philip Linden should sit on a pot a shit for a Gold ticket. Then maybe the new island cost would not be so high.

Entertaining and educational, it's win/win

But seriously if people are fighting for money from money trees as well as queueing up for camping devices things are a little worse than I first thought

Anyome thats has/had a money tree on their land knows how bad it can get......Whats worse now is no matter if you let them lm they land those mencing new money tree have a homing device the tracks buildt in. ( not huds like we where promised).....All they do is pick every min of the day. giving away money is not a problem. But feeding the chinese tree farms is not why i put the tree out.And since dwelling bit the philip linden big one a few months back. Dwelling and money tree and for that sake Money chairs etc are not worth putting out anymore. So jeb to answer your q.........Yes there are too mnay non paying accounts stressing and lagging the sims and game.....And its high time to LLabs to put a STOP to it!

Usagi, take your money tree bashing somewhere else. I know you have some kind of strange personal vendetta going against them. There is nothing threatening or sinister about money trees. And don't lump money trees in with camping chairs. They are two distinctly different types of systems. The idea behind a money tree is to help new users not pay them to sit on your land. And what the hell is up with your spelling?

I can see non paying accounts being a win for Second Life (notice I don't say Linden Labs ) so I'm not advocating stopping them, I can see them bringing a lot of variety to the world. I think of the "No Payment Info On File" avatars as tourists to our world, those of us paying for a premium account are tax paying citizens of Second Life, and we should be proud of that citizenship, Second Life is an amazing place because of us. I also think a lot of the tourists enjoy their time and become citizens, but some citizens are taking advantage of the tourists simply because they can (and I fear the tourists that do get taken for rides like sitting in a chair for 12 hours a day aren't enjoying their time, and certainly aren't getting fair compensation, nor are likely to become citizens because they are not seeing the fun side). It's those citizens, the camping site owners, that really need to be educated, and if education won't work then perhaps make it impossible for them to pay their campers (that will quickly stop the practice).

I think we should be welcoming the L$ poor tourists and I don't see any problem with them exploring and playing to their hearts content using any and all the free stuffs out there but like most nations maybe we shouldn't let our tourists earn any money inside our country, if you're on a tourist visa you aren't allowed to work or sell goods, and you certainly aren't allowed to beg be it via sitting on a chair like an obedient puppy, dancing for your supper or just asking people for money in welcome areas.

Perhaps in-world monetary transfers should only be allowed to be done *to* tax paying citizens? (i.e. premium account holders). Non-premium account holders can charge up their account via the LindeX and pay money to any tax paying citizen for goods or services but they can't themselves earn any lindens in-world. If after that a citizen feels their only option to make ends meet is to rape money trees and camp, then perhaps we need a Second Life Oxfam.

For most people, the refusal to buy L$ is nothing to do with poverty. It's more likely to do with one or more of:

* Anonymity;
* Fear regarding the database hack; (Unfortunately, the hack was widely publicised, but the news that the hack wasn't actually very serious wasn't..)
* Refusal to conflate real and virtual money and goods; or
* Desire to play the "game" of getting as much as possible for free.

No-one likes to pay money for something and then be told by someone else that they get the same or better thing for free and that can easily happen rather a lot in SL.

Pre-paid game cards solve anonymity and database hack fears. If a person has an issue putting real world currency into a virtual one then perhaps they really shouldn't be in Second Life at all And those that want to treat Second Life as a game about getting as much for free as possible..? Well I think that's true of RL as much as SL and people should be allowed to play that, but they still need to pay tax The more time I spend thinking of this issue the more it seems very solvable and that the issues we're facing in Second Life have all been faced in RL before, just that they are presenting themselves in new and interesting ways that we hadn't thought of before.

As with many social problem, it's solvable, but the solution has negative ramifications.

Free accounts were created to allow people to try out Second Life at no risk. There was no time limit imposed because there is no finite time in which you can be sure to have tried everything in Second Life (it's constantly expanding). If people choose to offer camping chairs, then it's very hard to formulate a policy to get rid of them.

Yes, I agree. But with almost 500,000 active visitors to Second Life we need to be solving the issues, our world isn't scaling well. It is frustrating that it's tax paying citizens that are doing this, we make the camping devices and setup the sites and are denying fellow citizens access to their property by abusing the tourists. What's more frustrating is we can't fix it alone, I have tried educating the tourists and those I do talk to seem to understand and change their ways, but there's no way I/we can keep up with the influx of visitors and even then they are not at fault and so we're only treating the symptom...

1.) I am not bashing hun.I support your products a long time and even the trees

2.) You are now trying to focus the blame on other people other then the system.

3.) I never said tree was a not waste, I always told newbies about tree and the ablity to make more.

4.) I don`t know why you even started with me since ONE you dont know me TWO you assumed the wrong way. I understand that you been dumped on but people inthe past. But you totally misunderstood totaly. I like you try to deal with english not being your native languge like.Thanks for the nice treatment after supporting and refering newbies to your products and money trees....... have a great liife!

You remarks are very well understood. I can understand why al/sap are so upset. The game has changed so much with such quickness. People don`t know the helpful people from those that have supported them for years.

I always said newbies are important the growth of sl, but many have not agreed.
Maybe we need need some kind of tax for these account that are being made left and right.
People are just going around these days and assuming the wrong issues and remarks. The game is that stresses.

peace be with all