Should bots be allowed?

That answer does not fit the question. In fact, in that situation of buying low and holding the land until prices rose, you could have received your "nice profits" from a real person, too. The bot was simply faster. Your question should have been: "Destroying my personal enjoyment of SL?"

As for destroying the place, it is helping to destroy players' satisfaction with the game. One comes here thinking Sl is about expressing your life the way you choose, and it turns out to be New Jersey at its greediest.

It is destroying customer retention. Four million unique accounts have tried the game, possibly 450,000 accounts still play. LL's lack of response to this bot issue is another example of how it has no interest in retaining customers. Possibly because the founders are trying to sell off SL. Or maybe they believe SL is going to become a collaborative communication tool for businesses and educators and the mainland is a cash cow they will simply milk until it runs dry.

It is destroying fun. I can't believe I'm writing a lengthy rant here because the "game" I joined last year is worse than work. It's work that breaks your heart every day.



What's good for the goose... I welcome zoning and building restrictions. The truly creative people will come up with greater innovations BECAUSE of the added parameters. Zoning will create "districts" and businesses in those districts can feed off each other's success. Build your RL restaurant next to a popular one. You'll get the overflow business simply because you're within eyesight. Why do bars and clubs in RL choose the same streets and neighborhoods? People like to visit more than one and if they are nearby, they are more likely to wander in. Zoning can actually create greater land values, not lower them. A piece of land that is zoned residential will get more buyers bidding for it, because they know that the value will not fall because a casino or ad farm cannot spring up next to it someday.

Frankly, I do not get LL's attitude. The company built this wonderful garden and then lets weeds and vermin take over. Meanwhile, those of us who want to tend to the garden are not given the tools to control the greeds and rabbots.

No

No, I would not have made the nice profit from a person, because the land was pretty much worthless, but a bot snapped it up.

It was not my question, it was a statement made by another poster. If landbots can destroy SL, then the foundation wasn't very strong to begin with.

That is right, zoning pushes land prices out of reach of the average player/buyer. Just like in RL where govenment controls lead to people being homeless.

Instead of allowing the free market to work, and you buying what ever land you want to protect, you want to use force against those who have a different vision than you.

Reitsuki, you just made laugh so hard I drooled!

Unfortunately, puters tend to be better at deciphering plain CAPTCHAs than humans.

If "you techies" feel you have a responsibility towards us non-techies, why haven't any of you yet written a freebie landbot so that we can level the playing field? It is clear that landbots are not going to be banned; so why not make it possible for any resident to automate the process of purchasing bargain-priced land, eliminating the speed penalty when only an elite few have the technology?

I like bots, they do the most thankless tasks and never ask anything in return or complain.

How about if land sales go completely Manual?
That is to say, you can advertise any time, anywhere, any price, but the actual Transaction Has to be made person to person using a Land sales Window. Designated Seller, Designated buyer, Designated amount. No chance for a Bot intervention because the specific Buyers name has to be entered in the transaction Window By the Seller, then the buyer accepts.r rejects transaction. If he accepts, the money, and the land swap simultaniously.

Just a thought.
Angel.

sorry terrible idea im afraid. i havnt got time to sit about waiting for someone in another timezone to come online for me to buy a plot.

there is nothing worng with the buying and selling of land process currently inplace.

WHY IS IT ALWAYS THE ONES THAT ARE STUPID ENOUGH TO SET THERE LAND FOR SALE TO ANYONE AT SILLY PRICES AND END UP LOOSING THEIR MONEY THAT TRY AND RUIN IT FOR EVERYONE ELSE. IF YOU DONT LIKE THE GAME GO MAKE YOUR OWN ONE.

SECOND LIFE IS A FANTASTIC GAME AND I LOVE EVERY ASPECT OF IT!!!!!!!! IF YOU CANTAKE THE HEAT GET OUT THE KITCHEN!

People lose land to landbots simply because the land appears in the Land Search immediately it is set for sale, and it is through the Land Search that landbots can find low priced plots so quickly anywhere on the grid.

If there was a delay (even 5 or 10 minutes) between setting the land for sale, and it appearing in search, I believe 90+% of the landbot issues would go away.

Matthew

I agree, good point Matthew!

Mandy C

i agree to a certain extent too. but if you rmemeber, we used to have a delay of anything upto 6 hours on the search page, and people still lots their land as they wouldnt notice there errors until someone actually made a purchase. all that did was delay the inevitable.

there are 2 types of people here who are against landbots as i see it.

1: stupid people that dont follow clear instructions and end up loosing their land

2: people that used to make money out of stupid people, but no longer can as the bots are quicker than them.

im sorry but niether have a valid case to change to process already in place

It isn't just user error that results in mispriced land - lag and software bugs cause this too. A classic example was when someone was dividing a small parcel of land from a larger plot intending to sell of the small parcel. Lag resulted in the client and the sim being out of sim, with the client thinking the parcel had been divided but this not being reflected in the sim. Even though the seller got a confirmation dialog that he was only setting the small plot for sale from the client, when he clicked OK, the entire larger plot was put up for sale (and snapped up by a landbot) - the details in the confirmation dialog being not worth the pixels it was displayed in!

Landbots have ruined things for more people than those who have asked for something to be done about Landbots.

Apart from those who have suffered large losses of money to landbots either through error or bugs (as above), some of whom have left SL never to return as a result:

Landbots have forced the market prices for land to artificial highs, causing everyone to pay more for land than they would have done had landbots not been around!

LL's answer to the artificially high inflation of land, which has been to oversaturate the market, has resulted in many people having negative equity in the land they currently own, and will have impacted the profit margins (or even put out of business) the mainland real estate businesses who do not use landbots!

Landbots were the cause of the withdrawal of the firstland program (automated alts grabbing land before the real newbies it was intended for even knew it was available) - that has spoilt things for newcomers to SL!

Matthew

The issue here is that the "bargain-priced land" can be priced that way because the SL user interface clearly does not do enough to assist users to avoid a common and costly mistake. Anyone buying such land should be prepared to give it back to the seller at the same price.


One could have a whitehat landbot that only bought land that appeared to be 'too good to be true'. This could be used to buy such land, set it for sale back to the seller at the same price, and IM the seller.
That *might* get in before other landbots, or it might not. No guarantees.
However, there would be downsides.
The bot operator would have to bear the costs of buying land and paying tier on whatever maximum area they had in a billing period.
The bot operator would have the overhead of running the bot 24/7.
In fact, the bot operator would have to run a number of instances of the bot in order to compete with the predatory bots. A number of instances have to be run to work around LL's throttling of database searches by an individual 'user'.


A blanket ban on bots in general would not be a good thing. Note: bots in general as opposed to landbots.
Curbing the activity of bots that have a negative impact on the community would be a good thing. This is especially so if the bots are clustered.

From what I have learned about how LL appear to operate, I'd guess that getting them to improve the land sale interface would be easier than getting them to slap down activity that is disapproved of by some/many.

True

but I'd guess that 70% of losses are people setting land for sale at L$1 intended to exchange it there and then with someone on the parcel or to reclaim group owned land. Ironically setting it for sale at L$0 is actually safer in such circumstances since the software will not allow you to sell land at L$0 UNLESS it is explicitly set to sell to an individual.

About 20% are mistyped prices by people who would have checked the price in About land before leaving the plot had the landbot not already bought it.

5% are due to bugs/lag causing parcels to be mispriced despite what the confirmation box said.

And 5% would still be caught by the landbots.

Matthew

Me tries to fit into one of the "two types of people here who against landbots"
-Fails.

So: I must actually be for landbots then?
Or maybe there's something wrong with the the way you see it.

Thank you for sharing.

lol i find that hard to beleive. i think you need to open up to yourself. be honest with your feelings. it wont hurt

well thats about 0.01% of the time and is down to system issues and not landbots. in these cases LL will refund you. ( i Know this because it has happend to me).

so you have no case here either lol

Love it!
KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid

A delay would be excellent, particularly given the issues raise here of correct intentions being borked by laggy conditions.
If during the delay, something were to warn about landbots and encourage the user to review the sale actually set up, then that would be even better.

gosh have you not read the comments above, as ive already said, we have had delays in the past on seach page and all it does is delay the inevitable (and remeber how many complaints would be made as a result of the search delays???).

plus alot of land bots dont work via the search page. they actualy scan the sim for plots for sale.

but i guess you'l choose to ignore this post aswell and continue with your ignorant claims as to why second life should be controlled by big brother

But it is the landbots taking advantage of such system issues.

LL do not always refund in such cases - here is a high profile one where LL did not help: /327/7a/176533/1.html ("Linden Lab's response is that they don't interfere in resident transactions. They haven't really done much to reduce risk for residents in this regard - and they haven't responded to the loss of 2000 *real* dollars"

I recall at least two other similar instances reported in the forums in the last few months where likewise LL just said they didn't interfere in resident transactions (which means that it certainly accounts for >0.01% of the reports of people being ripped off by landbots on the forums!)

So my case still stands.

Matthew

The opinion of a 16m plot ad farmer/price extorter/troll is not worth doggie doodoo.

Only the greedy suppport the greedy.

What have you done for SL lately, other than ruin the landscape, overprice ad plots and make endless stupid posts?

No wonder it's all going to hell in handbasket.

I doubt a 15 minute delay would cause many complaints - I certainly cannot see a 5-10 minute delay causing as many complaints as landbots cause (apart from some vocal landbot owners perhaps).

As I said, the delay will not eliminate "land grabs" due to mispriced land but it would certinaly cut back the occurence by at least one if not two orders of magnitude.

Matthew

lol another silly response from a typical communist believer

i beleive in capitalism, and unlucky for you (but lucky for the majority of SL residense), so do LL

thats because that case has nothing to do with lag. it was pure stupidity so im afraid your case is thrown out on appeal .