What's your opinion on camping?

some time ago , when i first bought my first land and build a house, i found out that i couldn't enter the parcel most of the time. A casino was there with 36-41 avatars.
This was the first hard lesson to be learned. But at the beggining I heard that it's nice to choose a place where is increased traffic.

By the time , i learned more for SL and understand a bit more (I am still newbie I have to say). But I have decided that if I will face again the same problem to this extreme, the only way to fight is to do the same. If a casino business ruin our common region and I have accessing problems to my land, then the next day I will come back with the same tactic, not of course to support camping but for ruin their business so they can understand.

It's hard to be said, but I don't buy the fact that by just owing 1/8 or 1/16 of a sim you can grab the maximum capacity of avatars and that happens only by accident. The owners of these places (some of them of course not all, only those who overdoing this) know but they do it. So they show no respect for all the others.That explains a bit my hardway position.If negotiations can find a positive ground in between then it will be ok

In any case i strongly believe that there should be a more balanced approach by Linden.

my proposal?
A mechanism that allow a maximum number of avatars regarding the owned land. That means that 4096 sq.m of land in a region of 65536 sq.m , will not be available to occupy more than 50-75% of the total capacity of the region. Even though it's difficult , it might be a justified measure for all residents and business. Something like maximum prims per parcel.
or
if this faces technical problems , then Linden should handle more seriously the situation by exercising some kind of authority they do have.

(changed the subject a bit to consequences by camping)

The problem isn't just with people using campers though. There are also people out there that use fake av's created just for the purpose of creating fake traffic. Perfect example is the neighbor I have that has the alts hiding way up in the sky to do this. None of these alts are getting paid, they are not sitting on camping machines. This person is trying to hide 11 fake people up in the sky so that people can't see them.

Getting rid of the incentives to camp will certainly make things better but there are always going to be people like this. LL needs to do something about people creating this many multiple accounts. They need to find a way to keep someone from logging on this many people at once.

Again Heather, if LL changes the way that parcels are ranked, there will be no reason for your neighbor to have alts hiding up in the sky. This is really just a variation of the camping chair exploit - except that he is controlling and not paying the campers.

Speaking of campers way up in the sky..

Everyone knows that the max number of avs a regular sim can hold is somewhere around 30-40.

Island owners can do a few more tricks to increase that number to upwards of 100. This is with LL's assistance of course. For sake of this discussion I'm going to call these kinds of island sims, "super sims".

With the way popularity rankings work now, an island owner that wanted to be ranked highest on the popularity ratings could crank up a "super sim", set up 50 camping chairs, and still have enough resources left over for 50 more avatars to wander in.

That sort of skews the numbers a bit, doesn't it?

Camping, in the right places, has it's good sides also. Do I camp? Not anymore. Have I before? Yep. But I also followed a few consideration rules too.

I didn't camp in stores.
I didn't camp during peak hours
I stuck with areas that seemed to be set up for camping, and paid accordingly. For example, a particular bird head island (not allowed to mention names) that pays 5L for every 10 minutes. (I think that's the amount, if I recall correctly.) They also had dancing and Slingo and encouraged people to stay active. I made over 300L camping there overnight and during a work shift.

Lastly, I *do* something with that money. I don't just spend it on new clothes or whatever. In this case, I took it to slingo solo machines and rolled it over a few times. By the time I was done, I had 20K. It took a few days, but it was worth it.

Now I'm gainfully employed at a job that pays very well, and don't need that. But when somebody comes in asking how to get money, I explain how I did it and tell them where to go so that they aren't impeding other people's pleasure.

Camping, if used as a stepping stone, is a great thing. Camping, if used as a permanent source of income sucks bull's rocks.

I'd like to see most incentives for camping to be taken out. But at the same time, there should still be smaller incentives so that bigger islands will give the struggling newbie a start in their SL economic lives.

As a last note, I see a lot of people that put out chairs, but none of them explain how to turn the money they get from camping into more. They create a dependency on the camping process.

One more example. I have a gambling problem..probably spend most of my sl earnings at the casino. There's one in particular I go to a lot but cannot get there many days because the sim is full of campers. They don't spend the money they earn there and if I can't get there, the owner probably just lost out on 1k-5kL. For what? I makes no sense to me. I like the owner, he loves to tease me about my habit but I will never understand why anyone would give up their earnings to accomodate for people who will never spend a dime in their establishment and are only there to earn thier $10L/hr. Might as well just hand them your cash at the door and make them leave so real customers can come in and spend money they actually earned

Camping is what killed dwell to start with.

Over a year ago, when SL still gave incentive bonuses and before camping chairs, I ran a club that had enough traffic to qualify for an incentive reward. Was one of the top 50 places in SL.

Then camping chairs came out and then they were the popular places. Even now as was stated in other posts there's nothing good about camping chairs, they've killed creativity, incentive and so on. Why should someone make a great looking plot, when they can just put a couple dozen camping chairs on empty land for traffic?

SL's motto is "Your World, Your Imagination". So, let us get back to being imaginative instead of using quick ways to get traffic.

Campers are parasites?

I know that I'm relatively new and not hella established like some of you, but gee - where do you think the money goes? Do you think they are hoarding it? Or do you think that the campers don't spend that money somewhere? If you have a store, especially a clothing/skin/hair store, don't you think that you have taken in lindens earned by someone camping somewhere?

I've camped a lot in my brief time here but I also spent a lot of that money on what is admittedly overpriced shizzle. Maybe even YOUR overpriced shizzle, all you people grousing in here.

Camping can be a draw for the store that implements it. Example: A certain new celestial night club has camping chairs that pay a crappy rate, as per the norm. But I've also looked at the store that is outside it and spent probably as many lindens as I've earned in that particular spot on some of the clothes because they are nice and I wanted it! And that is not the only place where I've shopped and spent my hard-earned camping dollars!

Not everyone has the time or inclination to learn how to build and sell things. And a lot of people are reticent to expend dollars/euro/whatever to buy lindens, although I know some do. Campers help make the SL world go 'round. A few nights of camping can make enough money to pay landowners some RENT... and maybe buy an outfit or two.

I do understand the sentiment about one establishment taking up too many resources. Linden Labs SHOULD do something about that. But camping in general? Some of you need an attitude adjustment.

And do you think camping in mainland sims would continue to exist if they did that? Where would you get your money then?
Gee Cristalle, first you complain about camping chairs paying "crappy rates" and then suggest people who complain about camping need an attitude adjustment. Could their attitude be because they're unable to reach the land they pay real US Dollars for because the sim is full of people who pay a big fat nothing?

You do realise that those "crappy rates" are being funded by another Second Life user's RL bank account don't you, Cristalle? Sheesh, I may disagree with camping chair operator's methods, but anybody dishing out free money deserves more gratitude than that.

Campers are parasites in a sense. They don't drain money, but instead bandwith. Camping by its definition means you are not playing SL, but instead are using its resources and contributing towards lag.

Camping still exists because there is still an incentive for shop owners to pay people to be zombies. Hopefully this incentive will be removed at some point.

In addition, I'd like to see a way for new players to earn some small amounts of lindens easier in a way that's actually fun to do.

You assume that "doing something about it" means eradication, which I don't think is the optimal solution. And LL probably agrees.



As someone who is also a premium member and owns land, I reiterate that while excessive use is a problem, I do not think that eliminating camping is the optimal solution to the problem.



I am not truly complaining about the crappy rates because it is for doing nothing. But if I earned more Lindens camping, I'd have more to spend on buying other people's overpriced (albeit pretty) stuff. And going back through my transaction history, I have actually spent more lindens at the example camping place than I have taken in. About 2 to 3 times more. THAT is why I suggest the attitude adjustment.

And the person who uses camping without having a suitable product around it worth buying probably deserves the money drain, if you ask me.

I think that camping is promotion of sales in a bit not so heroic way. Except if you create an event where you attract real people to dance for a competition, then that is healthy and normal promotion. But using slaves (machine zombies) as attractors is just cold hearted. Where the life is going, if you go to a dancing place and see nice looking women that talk about weather, but then you realize after a short conversation that those women are actually just bots.

You and the bots in the club. Feeling alone? Feeling abandoned? Feeling having fun with the bots, because any real people do not care about you? No, I would not want to feel anything like that, I would go search for real people. Unless they build a really intelligent bot, then I might talk with it a few lines. But until Data is born, I am looking everybody suspicously. Are you a bot? Or you, or...? Who can a man trust if not his pet bot ... I mean dog?

There is one easy solution to all that. Get rid off the 'Places'.

Until than there will always be non-creative totally ignorant crappy store/business owners who really think that normal people give a damn where their stores appear in 'places search'.

Okay Graciella, let's do the math here. You left your PC on, consuming electricity, connected to the internet, consuming bandwidth, running SL and connected to the grid, consuming part of the resources of a sim, for ten or more hours, and earned the equivant of just slightly more than one dollar, US.

Going to the Lindex and spending $1 on a few hundred L$1 is a great thing and a better use of your time and resources. Advising new residents to use camping as a "stepping stone" is NOT good advice.

Where the money goes is irrelevant. The same argument can be made to support people who rob banks.

Again, this isn't relevant. A lot of people are reticent to work to earn money. Doesn't make robbing banks a viable alternative.

When a venue has a lot of camping chairs out and they are occupied, they contribute heavily to lag in the sim they're in - to the point where second life is virtually unplayable in that region. It destroys the useful value we get out of owning the land - whether for recreation, socializing with friends, or running a business - because someone else is consuming all the resources, making the area unstable for everyone else.

There is also a hard limit of 40 avatars per sim (for the most part). If I cannot use my home, or if customers cannot visit my place of business (either because they cannot enter the sim or because they leave out of frustration) that is a serious detriment to my enjoyment of Second Life.

So yes, you are being parasites, as well as the "business owner" who is artificially inflating their ranking in the hopes of getting more people to notice and spend money at their establishment. The money you make from camping has a very real cost to the residents of the sim who have paid money to own land (around $30/512 sm plot at current rates) and are paying monthly tier charges which average in the $5-$25 range for most land owners.

Yet those same people have no problem paying their electricity bill and ISP bill, or spend money on their puter to make it run better. Hypocritical much?

Take a look at the monthly spending by amount statistics on http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php and you'll see just how insignificant the amounts campers are spending is compared to overall spending.

Camping has both an effect on the sim level and the grid-wide level so what you just said doesn't really make a lot of sense. The way SL works you can't simply dump those thousands upon thousands of camping zombies onto private sims and expect that the rest of the grid won't experience some additional lag because of it.

Yep, sure did. A sim that wasn't shared with any other businesses or homes. A sim where no one else at all is bothered by my presence whether I'm there or AFK.



That isn't for you to decide though. It's for me to decide how I spend my rl money and how I decide to get money within any environment whether it be rl or sl. You can like it or not like it but it is my choice as to what is a better use of my time and rescources. Whether or not you think I'm giving good advice is also a matter of opinion. Yours.

Camping can be a good thing when it's done right, and with consideration to others. It can be a good thing when something is actually done with that money to help secure a full time income. There is a middle ground. It doesn't have to be "camping is bad-you're a parasite" or "camping is oh so wonderful, it's the best thing on earth!" I've already acknowledged the bad points of camping and things that could be changed about it. I've also presented good points about camping too. So where's that leave me?

Oh yeah. The middle ground.

When I take a break from doing cool stuff, I like to go infohub hoping, just to listen to people, and watch the craziness for a few minutes. Inevitably, there is a crowd of new people asking, "How do I play this game? What's the point? How do I make money?" And just as inevitably, there is an enthusiastic and "helpful," slightly less new person handing out weapons, fart sounds, and landmarks to strip clubs/casinos with camping chairs.

There is a self-replicating principle in action here: As more and more people come in to SL and are "advised" that SL is about camping, escorts, weapons, gambling, and fart noises, we get more people who think this is, in fact, what SL is all about.

I find myself hesitating to give out landmarks to some of my most precious places, out if fear that they will just become over-run with the things mentioned above. I think this is sad.

expecting to get something for nothing because you refuse to pay for it isn't really a good phylosophy, proof of it its the one used by scammers and bank robbers

Actually, you haven't presented a single "going point" about camping yet. Just because you fail to value your own time and resources - and those of others - as much of the rest of us does not justify your behavior - which at the very least is raising the ranking of a parcel and artificially boosting its popularity at the expense of others who work hard to provide a truely valuable product, service or experience. Again, advising others to do the same thing is NOT good advice.

this thread started out straddling whether it was proper for this forum or not, since then it has devolved into a discussion not really meant for this forum

i am locking this thread and submitting to Linden Review.

from there it will be up to a Linden as to whether or not it should be re-opened.


Torley Linden:
Hi! I'm not re-opening this — Resident Answers is to earnestly ask help from fellow Residents, not complaining about those you disagree with. You can let them know, privately.

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