Character tests/Go Away/AFK When Idle broken

No harm done.

And everyone knows the Northern California coast girls are the coolest on the grid!



Ooo Tegg, you must also have the special golden "membership of good fortune" (SGMoGF). Legend has it once all five SGMoGFs have been found, we can enter the Willy Wonka chocolate sim.

By definition, when you are logged onto SL you are using SL so that is a distinction without a difference. However, I'm inferring from your comment that you are placing greater value on what some people are doing online as opposed to others and many if not the overwhelming majority of people who go afk for hours at a time are probably camping. As much as a I dislike AFK campers, they have just as much a right to be logged on as anyone else. They are not hurting the grid stability anymore than anyone else that is logged in and there is nothing objectively less legitimate with what they are doing than what you or I may be doing when we are logged. We are going to be travelling down a very precarious road if we are going to place priorities on the legitimacy of what some players are doing when they are logged on as opposed to others and advocate inhibiting different kinds of conduct accordingly. It's also misguided to make the incredulous argument that any player should shoulder blame for grid stability issues by the mere act of being logged on. The blame for any problems with grid stability rests squarely on Linden Labs as it should. It's their servers, their coding, and their business priorities which are the source of any grid stability issues, and an unwarranted attack on character of members of the player community only serves to obfuscate that.

Here's how it works for me... I'm in SL, I need to hear the IM dings, but I might be in Photoshop/Paintshop working on textures for a build, I might be off checking linden balances or doing my bookkeeping, or I might be reading/posting here, or I might have gone to the restroom, gottten a drink of water, gotten distracted by the cat food bowls that need filling and oh, yeah, do their water while I'm at it.

If I had to relog every time I came back from one of those things, catch back up on IMs missed, etc, I suspect I'd use far more resources than simply idling in a corner somewhere, not to mention where my irritation factor would be.

Mind you, I work nearly all day long in SL and play there most evenings <G>, so ymmv.

Char

i use an 'orb of anti idle' when i go to a 'party' and we are dancing or at a function, and not really chatting much. then i don't diss my friends by not going to their event, but i don't have to actually sit at the keyboard and be bored out of my mind.

please don't tell anyone i said that.

P.S. i think i got mine for $1 at enkythings or some place like that. i hope i'm allowed to name positive businesses.

I believe I used the words "actually using". I apologize if my meaning was unclear so that you did not see the difference. The difference is that in one case a real live human is sitting at the computer looking at and actively participating in SL, or checking on it every few minutes for messages, or listening for incoming messages. The other has merely connected their computer to SL and left it, paying no attention to it whatsoever, often for hours or even days.



You have inferred correctly. I place a lesser value on what people are doing in SL when all they are doing is AFK camping.



I don't agree. That is my point. It is my opinion that AFK camping is bad.



The fact that LL included a standard procedure to log off AFK avs after a certain period of inactivity demonstrates that (a) they place a lower priority on AFK avs than they do on active avs, and (b) they inhibit this conduct accordingly.

Logging off AFK people is a fairly standard feature for online systems, so I don't feel LL is taking unusually restrictive measures by doing so. There is nothing precarious about this.



I never said they should shoulder the blame. The are not the whole problem, just part of it. The should bear SOME of the blame.



I agree that LL is responsible for maintaining the stability of the grid. Logging off players who have been AFK for an extended period of time is one of the things they do to reduce load on the grid, and by doing so, improve stability.



When a player takes advantage of a bug or uses special "stay-alive" software to prevent the standard automatic inactivity logoff, I feel they are doing a bad thing. It has a negative effect on system performance for active players.

So, to end with a snowclone:

If hating camping is wrong, I don't want to be right.

I stay logged in all the time other than when the sim im in, or grid goes down. I do this because I paid hundreds of dollars for my land and hundreds of dollars on tier every month plus a yearly membership. I've paid for the grid resources I use staying logged on 24/7 and I am not about to log off to free up resources for all the free loaders that don't pay anything to play this game. It's people like me that keep Linden Labs in business and it's their job to provide a platform to support my requirments, that is what I am paying them for.

This is excellent,"I pay to sit AFK, so restrict non paying active people from the grid"
How many of the the 28,000 on graveyard hours are afk's and bots, probably only 8000 active residents online ............

That's interesting Porky, you stay logged on even when you're sleeping in RL? We've heard some good reasons to stay logged on, such as checking business periodically, or being notified of incoming IMs (presumably someone busy enough to run into IM caps, so email isn't an option).

What are the requirements you are paying LL to support that involve being logged in while you are asleep?

I don't mean to be contrary to you. I'm just interested to learn other reasons people stay on while AFK.

And I apologize if I incorrectly assumed that you sleep.

I think that the camper bots that are used to rack up L$ to cash out in USA$ are not a good thing. "Poor" residents camping for L$ who will then spend said funds inworld are part of the economy.

If LL didn't allow people to cash out for real money, some of the problems with bots of all kind, land barons, etc. might go away.

Before I get jumped on, this is just an idle thought. I am sure I will hear a great many reasons why L$ earned should be cashed out instead of invested back in world.

I use a idle device myself. I use it at my store because alot of times I might be watching tv or something in the same room as my computer and this way I can be logged in and hear when somebody IM's me for customer service or something. I think its a major pain in the butt to have to move my damn mouse every 5 fricking minutes to stay alive. I understand they do this to control the work load on the servers but still its a pain. So the point is, idle devices can be used for alot of good as well.

Sure, I stay logged on when i'm sleeping, saves me logging in when I get up in the morning. I like to get my moneys worth. if i buy a can of coke i drink all the coke. If I buy a chicken (dead) I'll cook it, eat the flesh and use the bones and gibblets for stock. If I buy a condom, i'll use it, wash it out. blow dry it and pop it back in the bed side drawer for that next special moment. So in summary, i pay for SL, my cable connection my PC and I will get my moneys worth if it kills me and pooo to the rest of you.

**note to self, do not post on the forum when under the influence.

bwahahaha Porky

There is nothing unclear about it. There is also no distinction to saying "using" and "actually using." If you want to argue that afk camping should not be allowed in SL because you hate it then just say so instead of asserting that afk campers are not using or "actually" using SL.

All that demonstrates is that SL has an autologoff feature. Logging off AFK people from online systems is not a "fairly standard" procedure. I have encountered few online systems which log off AFK users and none that do not have an option to disable the feature. MMORPG's that I have played do not do it, nor do the dozens of chat servers I have been on, nor do free accounts for online website services such as Yahoo, or Youtube. In point of fact, normally SL doesn't do it either. As pointed out in the OP, SL has a built in feature to disable autologoff. No one needs to take advantage of a bug. That contradicts your conclusion that SL has the autologoff feature because it places lower priority on AFK accounts. All I have (or had ) to do is check off a feature in a pull down menu and I get the same priority as everyone else if I go afk to work on textures but want to stay logged on in case people IM me or I am waiting to get an IM from someone.

Getting back to the point of the OP, since that feature is now broken, they should fix it as they should with any bug. Even if you don't like campers, there are plenty of other reasons other than afk camping as to why players should have the ability to disable autologoffs.

I think even afk campers hate camping. It's the $L they like.

^^ What she said! ^^

**Pounces on Jannae**

I'm not sure what you mean by being invested back in world. $L's being cashed out ARE being invested back into the ingame economy. When a person purchases $L on the SL or Linden Exchange those are $L that are coming from other players selling on the Exchange. The $L never actually leave the ingame economy in this method.

That aside I get it. You are wondering if SL did not allow players to cash out whether we would not have people in SL that are here simply or primarily to make money rather than to build, explore, socialize, etc., i.e. the infamous bots of both the land buying and camping variety. The short answer is no.

Even if LL took out the Exchange, people could still cash out $L the same way they do in MMORPG's. There are lots of third party companies that would be more than happy to set up camping bots in SL and sell $L through their own sites rather than through the SL Exchange. (I wouldn't be surprised if such companies are not the ones with much of the camping bots and land bots in SL right now.) You cannot block cashing out as long as people can exchange $L in game. People will simply pay the third party company through their website as they do in MMORPG's like WoW and then logon to SL to receive their $L ingame from a company run avatar.

But wait! There's more! **pouncey pounces on Jannae again**

Further even if LL could control cashing out, if they took out the sell side and left in the buy side of the Exchange it would mean that either every month if not every week millions of freshly minted $L would flow into the economy, or the availability of $L for purchase would be severely limited, perhaps to the $L that LL gets from land fees minus what they payout in stipends. The former would almost certainly cause severe inflation as it has in MMORPG economies and the latter would relegate new players to depending almost solely on stipends and camping to get $L, probably drastically increase afk camping and consequently load on the server (or on the flip side the game simply would not have the same appeal to new players and the player population would atrophy), and/or generally reduce the amount of $L being spent on player goods and services.

No distinction? You left out the part where I explained the difference as I see it.

Most people can easily distinguish between (a) the act of sitting at your computer paying attention to SL and (b) not sitting at your computer paying attention to SL. That is what one would call a distinction.



Well, you got me there. Possibly, at least.

I was under the impression that this feature was to keep you from flopping all AFK, but that the anti-logoff effect was unintentional. I mean, why else would people pay good money for an anti-idle device if the feature was a normal part of the SL viewer? If this was the case, it being unintentional, then what has just happened would be a fix, not a bug.

But in searching the Knowledge Base, I can't find any definite information regarding what this option is supposed to do. The only time I find it mentioned is specifically referring to it preventing auto-logoff for a computer broadcasting a live event. So even if it wasn't the intended purpose, it seems LL has acknowledged it and even recommended it in one case. But then again, if it WAS intended, why isn't it called something like "log off when idle"?

So I acknowledge that preventing auto-logoff has legitimate uses, and that there is a feature in the viewer that might have been added specifically for that purpose.

But try as you may, you will not change my mind about AFK camping. It's certainly not the worst thing on the grid, but it is one of the bad things.

Time for dinner... Porky, could I get some of that chicken stock?

You pounce pretty hard. I will give this more thought when my brain is not a little fogged by some RL tequila. (It's Saturday night here in Northern CA).

I actually found out about this feature when I did a search on the forums about anti-idling devices. One response in a thread about recommended anti-idling devices basically asked the very same question as it disclosed this feature.

Like Porky Gorky I pay hundreds of dollars in land tier every month to live on a private 9 sim south pacific island estate. If I want to stay logged in 24/7 I pay for that. Prior to the bugged feature I used an anti-idle device to do that. It was a pain in the butt to remember to wear that device every night when I went to sleep in RL while my avie was asleep on my fantasy dream home. Sometimes I would forget and get logged off during the night. Did it kill me? no. But when this feature was introduced I could uncheck the option and never worry about the anti-idle device ever again. Eventually I deleted the device since inventory control is a problem for most residents who have been in the game more than 1 year. I was irritated when the bug appeared and started this thread, I have again an anti-idle device so can stay logged in 24/7. If some people don't like me using the resources of SL to do that feel free to visit the Tiki Lounge in Vella Gulf and just tip the bartender, I will get the money and when I have collected the L$ 243,375 I need every month to pay tier I will gladly log off at night when I'm sleeping in RL. Until that time I will continue to stay logged in 24/7. I don't care if you don't like campers I'm not responsible for them, LL is, I'm just living my dream and paying lots of money to LL to do that.

Well as long as you are ok with it when 20 other people PAYING to play second life start standing around in YOUR sim AFK without logging out. Think of the traffic...........

After 3 seperate purchases of anti-idle devices and some complaints and a little testing it turns out that the Character tests/Go Away/AFK When Idle option only works if you leave your SL window on full screen which is the same claim made by all the anti-idle devices. The bottom line is all you need is the menu item unchecked to stay logged on and can save the expense of any anti-idle device.

Svar, this does not work. once you minimize, you go AFK, and after the time limit that you have set in preferences runs out (max 600), you are logged off.

what are you doing different than that, that allows you to NOT be logged off, or appear AFK?

Well you can always Relogin unlike years ago. When you crash it took forever to login again.......Doesnt makes sence sorry...................

That post you quoted was over a month (and several viewer changes) ago. At that time people were having problems with that viewer version connecting to the client.

Since when does corrections mean anything here? ..................never mine..........
Well Not every had connections issues?

Was not needed to be replied to don`t you think?