What sort of people are the camp site operators?

I think the issue most people have with campgrounds is that it's usually unfair (and frequently very unfair) to other residents on the same sim.

I have a few friends that own 1/4th of a mainland sim between them - decent sized, non-comercial area for like-minded people to hang out. A new resident recently set up a campground on 1/64th of that same sim but has placed 20 camping devices there. When that place is full, his 1/64th of the sim is consuming 1/2 of the sim resources.

If he had instead bought a private island, he would own the whole sim - he wouldn't be hogging his neighbors resources because he wouldn't have any neighbors.

Yes I can, and many others do too.

Although the problem of 'resource hogging' is alleviated because the landowner is then only responsible for screwing up the use of their own land, it still doesn't get over the problem of what camping teaches.

Camping teaches laziness, and the welfare state instead of self support.

Remember the old saying "give a man a fish, he eats for a day; teach him to fish, he eats for life"?

If people would only go to some of the many, many free classes there are in SL and learn how to do something (which in effect is being paid anyway if they aren't paying for the class) then they would realise that much of what they want the money to buy, they could actually make themselves with really very little effort.

What sounds more rewarding? "I built this myself" or "I sat in a camping chair for 3 weeks so I could buy it" - when they'd probably have learnt much of the skills in that 3 weeks anyway.

People come to SL with no understanding of what it is. They think it's like other games where you have to have money to buy better weapons and armour, but you can get by in SL without spending one of whatever the currency in your country is. Your avatar doesn't need 20 outfits, looks, hair, weapons, attachments, huds or whatever. There is absolutely no need whatsoever to have any money, therefore there is no need to camp.

The simplest solution is to just scrap the "Popular Places" listing. Then there's no reason to cheat the system to pretend that you are actually providing a quality experience for those that visit, instead of the lagfest that you really are providing. It might also encourage people to branch out from the mall/casino/dance club tedium (to compete with other popular places) and actually provide something different and prove that there is more to SL than just making money.

Broccoli

I think it is time for Linden Labs to stop calculating traffic. It no longer serves any useful purpose with so many people gaming the system. Eliminating it would solve about 16 zillion problems.

I don't necessarily have a problem with traffic - although of course it doesnt measure actual activity and certainly doesn't necessarily indicate quality - and it's helpful to see that people are actually visiting our land. Keep it on profile, but dump "Popular Places" is probably the best solution until at least a new method of traffic calculation is introduced.

Broccoli

Absolutley, Broccoli! I always compliment and encourage new residents for their creations no matter how lumpy and awkward they may appear to the more jaded/spoilt eye for exactly the reasons you quoted above. I have witnessed many players come into SL and build their own little world and avatars. Whenever possible I do whatever I can to give them a few tips and pass on what little advice and tools I have to help them on their way. Today's newbie with that awkward-looking avatar and misshapen home with mismatched textures could well be tomorrow's 'must-have' content creator. I've seen it happen over and over and it's one of the things that gives me heart about SL in spite of all the negative goings-on.

What I'd like to see is two or three number so I can judge traffic for myself. One would be the number of overall visitors in a 24 hr period. Next it could show the number of visits per an hour and then it can show an average of the amount of time spent in the area, using X average amount of time spent by one visitor. Or that can be a separate number.

Actually, this would be great, because it would give instructors and business owners a better clue of what to aim for.

There is a reverse economy which drives the existence of camping chairs. Or, as the economists would call it: unrealized externalities.

The camping chair owner wants a higher spot on the traffic list, and accomplishes this by getting zombies to populate the parcel. There is little cost to the chair owner, but a larger cost to the system which is externalized to all active players.

This is identical to a company that wants to produce and sell widgets and can do so in a more expensive way with less pollution, or a cheaper way with more pollution. The company does not bear the impact of the pollution, its neighbors do.

The only feasible way to stop camping chairs is to abolish traffic numbers as - following the polluter analogy - numbers are what the chair owner wants to "produce".

Of course new people should be encouraged to give creating content a try, but we can't just assume that it will automatically scale to everyone. SL is a social game, and just like in real life, the social perception of quality matters.

How would you feel if you had to go out in real life nowadays, wearing rags? But a medieval peasant wouldn't have felt that way about. What changed? Better clothes become available to everyone. The same applies in SL. It only takes a few talented content creators, possibly with 3D experience, moving into a market to push everything anyone else could create down to "rags" status. Please understand that this isn't a complaint - it would be ridiculous to suggest that people shouldn't create good things because it would make the things everyone else was creating look worse - it's just a natural process of evolution, and is beneficial to everyone, since everyone gets better content. But that doesn't allow us to ignore the down side.

Also, of course, the better the content already is, the steeper the learning curve for a new user is before they can create anything that good. Many people just don't want to embark on something like that! You can say to them that they are lazy or falsely entitled or similar - but then don't be surprised when they choose not to listen to you, but to listen to the campsite operators who say to them "Welcome, have some free money. Don't worry, it's what all the normal people do."



Who says they want to "get by"? They're trying out Second Life for the first time. What's the incentive for them to log in to a virtual world where they can "get by" as opposed to one where they can be a mighty warrior?

Although I wouldn't mind seeing traffic get a major overhaul or even go away, it still leaves the problem of small-parcel-land-owners eating large parts of a regions capacity.

Capping an avie's traffic contribution might help and might actually return some meaning to "popular".

If after 2 to 4 hours an avie's traffic would stop counting you'd have an impact on both the camper and the camping chair owner.

It wouldn't be that trivial for the owner to keep track of hundreds of visitors and record how long they've on the parcel/sim, but if they wouldn't they'd be paying out for camping that doesn't actually increase their rating and keeping someone who's traffic contribution has maxed out camping, means someone who could contribute can't because the camp chairs are all taken, or the parcel/sim is full so they'll go elsewhere.

From the camper's side - assuming someone does manage a system to deal with the problems above - it would require a much greater amount of interactivity. No more playing zombie overnight and getting 6-8 hours' worth, it would be 2-4 hours' worth, which means that it becomes far less profitable to camp and a whole lot more bothersome since they would need to find a new location with free chairs every few hours.

Right now it doesn't matter if 50 people spend 2 hours somewhere, or 5 people spend 20 hours somewhere, it's 100 hours worth of traffic in both cases, even though the first is argueably more popular (it has more unique visitors). In order to continue to game the traffic system, parcel owners would need to actually make their parcel attractive for people to come visit so that they get a steady stream of active, new residents throughout the day in which case a high traffic rating would actually be deserved.

A sliding scale might work as well: the longer you're in the same place, the less traffic you still contribute.

Well, not really, but.

LL already ties land area to server capacity by limiting the number of prims to land area.

They could do the same, somehow, with the rest of server resources.

I wouldn't propose hard limits, but I would use web hosts as a model. If you have a web hosting service, you pay a flat fee, but you have a bandwidth limit. If you go above that bandwidth limit, either your site gets blocked, or you have to pay extra. For most people, until they get slashdotted, the bandwidth limit is more than adequate.

LL could do the same with land. Figure out some sort of "server resource" limit. Use the traffic number to figure out number of avatar-hours spent on the land. Do something additionally with scripts running on that land (be they by objects owned by the land, or avatars visting the land. I would *not* include objects left on the land, because that would be a HUGE griefer loophole.)

There is no penalty for anybody whose daily "server resource" usage stays below the limit for their parcel. Bigger parcels have bigger limits. However, when somebody goes over it, either the parcel gets banned to all, or the owner gets a bill.

Perhaps it makes sense to average over a week or a month rather than a day, so that if somebody has a house party one day, but otherwise leaves their land idle, they don't get nailed.

This will not impact normal users at all. The server resource limits could be set sufficiently high that most of us will have no problem with it. Those with legitimate reasons to want greater server resources will have to pay. People with camping chairs... will start having to pay, rather than using the community at large to support their habits the way they do right now.

Make sure that all land within one sim owned by a single owner goes into the same server resource quota pool (so that people can't get around it by subdividing their land hugely and playing a shell game).

What kind of resource limits am I talking about? Well, for scripts, I don't know enough about the load on the system. For avatar visitng time, though, a sim supports 40 avatars. That means in one day, there are 40*24=960 avatar-hours available. There is 65536 sqm in one sim. That means that each sqm can support 0.01465 avatar-hours. A 512sqm plot can support 7.5 avatar-hours in one day. That means, one avatar sitting there for 7.5 hours, or 7 avatars sitting there for one hour.

I'd multiply the whole thing by 2 or 3 so that there is comfortable room for normal usage. If you multiply by (just over 3), one person could sit on a 512m^2 parcel all day without trouble. In fact, why not just set your limit to 24 avatar-hours/512 m^2. Then, 6 fully utilized camping chairs would use up the parcel's avatar-hour resource quota in 4 hours.

This makes it expensive to keep camping chairs around (esp. if the costs for going over your resource limit don't scale linearly, but go up faster and faster as you get more and more above your limit). It means that people who want to use up server resources with camping chairs are going to have to pay for it.

It also means that somebody who wants to run a club is going to have to buy enough land to support the number of visitors he or she expects. This really isn't too onerous for things like live music events. If you have a 2-hour concert with 20 people present, you'll use up 40 avatar hours. Under my proposed scheme, you could fit that within a 1024 m^2 plot of land as long as you didn't do it more than once a day.

It *is* still possible for somebody to overuse system resources in this manner -- somebody owning a third of the sim could still have 40 avatars present without going over the resource quota limits. But they'd need a *third* of the *sim*, and could no longer play games in smaller areas the way that people with camping chairs do right now.

AND eliminate popular places, to further reduce the incentive for camping chairs. Everything above will also place limits on unforseen abuse; the point of all of that is to try to tie the costs of maintaining servers to those whose land is using up most of the resources of the servers.

-Rob

For those who are motivated by traffic numbers this would remove the motivation.

For those that were, for example, interested in having a packed club of non-zombies it would not remove the incentive, but then again, I don't know how you could in that case.

That's part of the irony.

Unless something has changed this is how traffic counting works: assume that you are logged in for five hours. The first parcel you visit will start accumulating traffic count for you. If you spend your day on that parcel, that parcel will receive your entire day's worth of "traffic". If you spend half your day somewhere else, both parcels would get half your "traffic" and so on. To avoid fly-by accounting, traffic counting doesn't start until you are on a parcel for five minutes.

Why then do camp chair owners want you there always? First, because many don't understand how it works. Second, if you spend an hour camping an 4 hours elsewhere they only get 1/5th of your "traffic".

The ideal traffic generator would log in, sit in a chair for 6 minutes, and log out for the day leaving the seat open for the next mini-camper. This is unlikely to ever happen.

It did (/327/66/157270/1.html#post1371911 for my experience with it), it's 1 point per avie per minute for as far as I can.

The old dwell system only worked because alt were hard to come by. If that's how it still worked, noone would need to have camp chairs, because like you said, they'd just need to log an army of alts in, idle 6 minutes and log off.

This depends on where you are in the world, a friend of mine here in New Zealand (We have 'data-limited' plans) has an Xtra Pro Plan with the local ISP XTRA. It is a standard 15 Gigabyte data cap, once he downloads 15GB he pays 2c a meg after that.

He decided to 'camp' like 10-15 hours a day in SL, and got a nice whopping NZ$434 Internet bill for 'over-cap' usage. SL is a HOG with data.. I have been on for 2 hours with my high speed, visiting areas and pulled down 350MB of data in that short time.

So camping can cost you A LOT more than its worth, I don't understand casino owners that pay out hundreds in US Dollars per month just to support a bunch of linden leechers. I would think there would be a lot better ways to advertise than that, and why the leechers are there sucking down free money, its one less possible PAYING person that could be there.

To each his own, I run a casino and I removed all the camp chairs and dance pads..It was getting ridiculous, my traffic has dropped to ZERO but so has my payout for nothing to leeches. I am reopening as a place for serious gamblers, no chairs, no pads. Its will be a place for GAMBLERS not leeches. I hope the other casinos in my sim do the same..

If it turns out there are no gamblers out there only leeches, I'm a good builder and scriptor you can always rip up land and do something else.. (Well, hopefully you can if it doesn't crash every 5 minutes like its been doing)

Cheers

Yes, they don't get the optimal traffic. But they do get the benefit of a constant number of green dots on the map.

Gaming the map is the other reason why altering traffic calculations won't be fully effective.

"Sorry, I'm mixing up my terms a bit. When I say "no payment info on file" I mean people not paying subscription (i.e. basic accounts), so you can have payment info on file and you can have used it but you aren't a subscription payer that makes you a "tourist" for the sake of my document"

I'm not a tourist, I'm just not stupid enough to pay monthly fees for land which is not available (First Land) or is too expensive to buy. I have bought lindens. I have provided services. I have never "camped" save the first coupld days in SL when I didn't know better. I am a member of a community. I am in the position of many many SL users. We are not the problem. The problem, again, is traffic, and that is also where the solution must lie.

That's well represented, both by those who choose not to become premium, as well as those who have no option to become premium.

Ultimately it serves no purpose to pay campers unless some cash is coming in. Why else are there so many failed clubs and casinos? I camp and I spend, as well as other activities. The camping cash is minimal, but hey, it's free cash. And if it helps me pay for something around it, then it's done its job.

I'm an idiot who went Premium, although in my defense, I think it was reasonable to assume that there should be some benefit from having a paid account.

I did that before playing the game and finding out the exchange rate is such that I could buy more Lindens from the exchange than I receive as a paying account. And that my "opportunity" to buy first land is worthless, since it's so rare, and I'm competing against old-timers who simply create a new Premium account to claim that prize. Which is something I could do, too.

Aside from First Land, the price of owning land vs. renting is way too high unless you're sure you're gonna be around for awhile, which I'm not sure is the case.

So I'll be dropping my Premium account soon, and become a "Tourist". The ability to camp or not has no effect on that decision (I do camp, but the benefit I gain from it is less than I spend on a soda). So I agree with what Sweet Primrose implied - that discriminating between Basic and Premium accounts would probably have no effect.

My guess is that those who have "no option" are very, very much in the minority.

Broccoli

Believe me, Prospero, there have been many campaigns to link script performance to land in the past and all have been studiously ignored by Linden Labs. I like your suggested plan tieing traffic bandwidth to land area. I hold a 1 to 2-hour event once or twice a week on my land as well as siting my store which sees a steady trickle of customers: not a major system impact or resource hog in the greater scheme of things. However the camping casino that has just opened in my sim will likely kill everything (the owner has a similar camping casino in the neighbouring sim that has 40 zombies 24/7, effectively killing the sim for the rest of the residents).

Prospero, please turn your suggestion into a proposition in the 'Features Voting' section and I'll put as many votes as I can behind it.

Related question: has the "feature voting" system any purpose nowadays? I've been wondering about it for a while now... Someone can shed some light?

The feature voting was added as a possibly well-intentioned but rather ill-conceived method for setting development priorities.

As The Phil has publicly noted, the way actual development priorities are decided has more to do with what the developer thinks would be "fun" than anything else.

So, from its inception, the only function of feature voting was as a sop to customers who wanted LL to improve the product. There were a few cases where a vote happened to coincide with what LL wanted to do anyway but these were rarities.