Full sims - queue?

[Orwar]

   Full sims occur quite frequently these days, the shopping events in particular can be soul-crushingly tedious to get into, and quickly breaks the teleportation function prompting occasional re-logins to try again if you're too pushy. So I'm wondering why SL doesn't have a queue system for full sims - instead of having hundreds of people trying to bash their way into there (often with TP hammers and such), which I can't imagine is good for the servers' performance; you get assigned a number, have a little box on your screen that tells you how many are in front of you in the queue - maybe even a simple ETA counter - that once it reaches your turn will offer you to teleport to the sim, and if you don't take the teleport within say 30-60 seconds, you'll lose your place in the queue - have it make a little sound when it 'pops' so that you can alt-tab and watch some clips or read some articles whilst you're waiting. It's a feature present in tons of online games, so I would ignorantly assume that implementing it can't be very difficult - but then again, my script-savvy extends to occasionally being successful in following instructions for how to set a price in a pre-made vendor script.

   Just a thought. So that one doesn't have to spend 13 hours (!!) of pushing a button, having a loading screen, getting an error message saying the sim is either full or that the server didn't respond in a 'timely fashion' to try and grab that event-exclusive gift/new release from one's favourite creators. Of course whilst your friends (and presumably other people) luck out and get in there moments after logging on because they just so happened to do it the instant another person left the sim. I'd rather be spending my time in SL enjoying myself (and having a premium account appears to do just about nothing to help, despite supposedly giving me 'priority'.).

[Qie Niangao]

21 minutes ago, Orwar said:

 (and having a premium account appears to do just about nothing to help, despite supposedly giving me 'priority'.).

The queuing thing makes sense to me. I'm not sure it would be that easy to implement though, because if I were doing it, the queues would be managed completely externally to the regions being entered, which would offload processing from already busy sims. That's probably a little more complicated (and a bigger change) than just managing the entry queue in the sim itself, and even that seems a little tricky. For example, either way, one would presumably want to remove agents from the queue if their login session ends, and that would use Presence information that's not needed to simply accept or reject repeated entry attempts. Anticipating superstition, I'd remove the earlier queue entry when an agent tries to queue more than once. Also maybe a little logic complexity because of the Premium "priority pass" thing, although it seems simple enough at first glance. 

I can attest that Premium members do get that priority. At some multi-region shopping events I've watched non-Premium avatars stacked up at both sides of the border while Premiums waltzed merrily between regions. (Presumably the same queuing approach would apply when trying to enter from neighboring regions as by teleport; getting the queue countdown might be a little unintuitive when just walking along, but I guess bumping against an invisible wall is pretty unintuitive, too.)

 

[Whirly Fizzle]

This has been requested a couple of times on the JIRA but LL didn't import either issue.

BUG-7945 - Teleport Queue system for access to especially busy regions

BUG-11100 - Teleport Queing

[MirandaBowers]

Hmm, I wonder why they wouldn't implement such a thing yet but who knows.

[Ethan Paslong]

or limit time for being on those events in the first days. After, for example, 10/15 minutes you get kicked out and temp banned for 24 hours   ... it will remove the afk'ers and others needless hanging around at those sims.
With sites used as Seraphim it's not needed to hang and look for hours...

 

oo... and never said enough... keep your pets, blings, followers and so on... IN your inventory!

Edited December 18, 2018 by Ethan Paslong

[LittleMe Jewell]

10 minutes ago, Ethan Paslong said:

or limit time for being on those events in the first days. After, for example, 10/15 minutes you get kicked out and temp banned for 24 hours   ... it will remove the afk'ers and others needless hanging around at those sims.
With sites used as Seraphim it's not needed to hang and look for hours...

 

Unlike you poor guys, women actually have tons of individual stalls to shop at those events.  If there's going to be any sort of time limit, it would need to be quite a bit longer - at least for some of the larger events, like the hair fair and skin fair to name a few.  Even knowing what you want ahead of time, with lag and general navigation of some of those events, it can take quite a bit more than 15 minutes to get the shopping done.  

[MBeatrix]

3 hours ago, Ethan Paslong said:

or limit time for being on those events in the first days. After, for example, 10/15 minutes you get kicked out and temp banned for 24 hours   ... it will remove the afk'ers and others needless hanging around at those sims.
With sites used as Seraphim it's not needed to hang and look for hours...

 

oo... and never said enough... keep your pets, blings, followers and so on... IN your inventory!

Yes, kicking AFK'ers would help too, but I think that a ban would be taking it too far.

Anyway, you're lucky enough to get in, and then what? You will barely be able to move, vendors will not deliver your shopping, etc. What would really help would be hardware servers not running at the limit of their capacity. Either less sim servers per hardware or less avatars allowed per region.

The lag at Hop & Shop is just ridiculous, and it only gives a poor idea of what SL is to all those newcomers (if there still are newcomers.)

Note: to kick AFK'ers, the system has to check first if they aren't at their home region, in case the rule code is applied grid-wide.

Edited December 18, 2018 by MBeatrix
note added

[Ethan Paslong]

6 minutes ago, MBeatrix said:

Anyway, you're lucky enough to get in, and then what? You will barely be able to move, vendors will not deliver your shopping, etc. What would really help would be hardware servers not running at the limit of their capacity. Either less sim servers per hardware or less avatars allowed per region.

The lag at Hop & Shop is just ridiculous, and it only gives a poor idea of what SL is to all those newcomers (if there still are newcomers.)

if the visitors limit their script use there will most likely be plenty of time for the vendors to do their job, but no, all, mainly women, come in full attire with hubby on their neck, bling/badly textured jewelry stuff in every possible bodypart en if possible holding pets in every arm and another dozen as followers. ( i know.. lightly overdone, but you get my point   )

Edited December 18, 2018 by Ethan Paslong

[MBeatrix]

Just now, Ethan Paslong said:

if the visitors limit their script use there will most likely be plenty of time for the vendors to do their job, but no, all, mainly women, comein full attire with hubby on their neck, bling stuff in every possible bodypart en if possible holding pets in every arm and another dozen as followers. ( i know.. lightly overdone, but you get my point   )

Yes, I agree with that. I can't really understand why people who have been in SL for years still go to events loaded with scripts. But as you know, there are script checkers available for a reasonable price, so why aren't they used at events to keep out all those who don't comply to a certain limit? Not long ago, some events used to kick out all those avatars with a complexity level above a certain limit. So why not do the same for scripts? And why does LL prefer providing an horrible experience to all those who get in to Hop & Shop than setup something like that?

I know that we, humans, are basically stupid, but there should be a limit for that too. 😛

[Ethan Paslong]

3 minutes ago, MBeatrix said:

Yes, I agree with that. I can't really understand why people who have been in SL for years still go to events loaded with scripts. But as you know, there are script checkers available for a reasonable price, so why aren't they used at events to keep out all those who don't comply to a certain limit? Not long ago, some events used to kick out all those avatars with a complexity level above a certain limit. So why not do the same for scripts? And why does LL prefer providing an horrible experience to all those who get in to Hop & Shop than setup something like that?

I know that we, humans, are basically stupid, but there should be a limit for that too. 😛

as far i heared, i'm no scripter, those counters don't work right, they count all of a certain type (?) as one value, even when it's a lot larger, so using such device would keep lot of users in that still lag the place.
complexety is also such difficult value, many counters give false, or accurate results, while the numbers in the viewer tell something different.
This could mean a very concious resident works hard on getting low, and still ends kicked out, while the real lagmonsters keep shopping
Perhaps it's partly LL to question, but as you said... we'r humans, if we can stretch the elastic cord till one meter... we want it 1 meter +10 cm.

[Qie Niangao]

29 minutes ago, MBeatrix said:

But as you know, there are script checkers available for a reasonable price, so why aren't they used at events to keep out all those who don't comply to a certain limit?

Because intially they do more damage than good. I don't mean the overhead of running the script checker (which is non-zero, but not the big problem). The reason is that the very worst thing for sim script performance is the first few seconds after arrival while scripts are loading up. Once they're running, yeah, the sheer number of them can be a problem, but really nothing like the performance dive that occurs when a script-laden avatar first arrives in the sim. Unfortunately there's no mechanism for screening out those over-scripted avatars before the sim has already incurred the worst of their effects.

Now that said, if it were possible for every busy event to agree to do this and keep doing it, despite the initial pain, it might train users to always reduce scripts before trying to enter such events.

Just in passing, there's some technical challenge, too. Besides being a real performance hit on the sim, the first few seconds while scripts are loading are also difficult to measure properly. Any scripts at all can make an avatar use most of the sim's script resources for a while, so it's hard to accurately identify the worst offenders. The script count will be accurate, though, so that's a possibly useful clue to use, while waiting for the script time measurements to reflect the avatar's actual impact.

[ETA: Couple things I forgot to mention. First, the reason the script checkers would initially be worse than nothing is that the avatars kicked out of the sim would presumably be allowed to try again after a few minutes, having perhaps removed some scripts; the problem is the sim has to take the script performance hit again when they come back. Second, the real way to make this work smoothly would require Lab development to pre-screen teleports according to criteria specified by the destination; this would avoid imposing that initial hit on the busy sim, as well as allow measurement of the avatar's steady-state script load rather than the unrepresentative peak observed at arrival.]

Edited December 18, 2018 by Qie Niangao

[Fionalein]

9 hours ago, MirandaBowers said:

Hmm, I wonder why they wouldn't implement such a thing yet but who knows.

the premium perk would not sell

... not that it even works at the really busy events at all ...

 

[MBeatrix]

28 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

[ETA: Couple things I forgot to mention. First, the reason the script checkers would initially be worse than nothing is that the avatars kicked out of the sim would presumably be allowed to try again after a few minutes, having perhaps removed some scripts; the problem is the sim has to take the script performance hit again when they come back. Second, the real way to make this work smoothly would require Lab development to pre-screen teleports according to criteria specified by the destination; this would avoid imposing that initial hit on the busy sim, as well as allow measurement of the avatar's steady-state script load rather than the unrepresentative peak observed at arrival.]

Only quoting the part above, but all you wrote makes perfect sense to me.

I know by experience how it is on the first few seconds when entering a sim — SL sailing experience — and that's why the more scripts avatars and their vehicles carry, the more difficult will be the transition between regions. And yes, the script time is also what needs to be checked, not only the scripts count.

Here we've been discussing teleporting. If avatars walk into a region that is contiguous to the one where they were, then they had already been checked. For events, might be an idea having a sort of a lobby for checking scripts, and having no teleports allowed to the sales sims. I know that people could add scripted stuff once they passed the "lobby" — and they would need to do that to try demos (I know, they could do the same I do and try them at home, but you know that many won't do it) — but then it might be easier to check them more accurately.

Anyway, I'm sure that the whole thing would be quite difficult to implement together with the existing code if done on LL's side. So I'll stick to what I wrote above: less sims per hardware server or less avatars per sim.

Kicking AFK'ers sounds a lot more simple to me.

I'm not sure how complicated to implement a queuing system would be, but if it ever comes alive it needs to check first if avatars are trying to TP to their home region or not. If they are, they should be given priority.

[Klytyna]

8 hours ago, MBeatrix said:

I know by experience how it is on the first few seconds when entering a sim — SL sailing experience — and that's why the more scripts avatars and their vehicles carry, the more difficult will be the transition between regions. And yes, the script time is also what needs to be checked, not only the scripts count.

Realistically, NO.

See, when an agent arrives in a region, their scripts start up, during this initial 30-60 seconds, the REPORTED script cpu time can be 900% higher than the regular steady state time reported once they have finished loading and starting up.

"Thank you for visiting Tech-Fails of SL Shopping Village! None of our merchants want your money because some cretin set the cpu-time kicker to boot people for exceeding an arbitary number during the first ONE SECOND on the region! KTHXBAI!" 

Script count isn't much better, are 10 low lag scripts worse than one ancient lag tech script? Script memory is useless, as the system can't tell lsl from mono, and mono scripts always report as 64kb, even when they actually use a lot less, AND mono scripts use that "Multiple Requester" thing where several people with the SAME mono script use LESS actual region memory than a similar number of people using the same lsl script.

8 hours ago, MBeatrix said:

Kicking AFK'ers sounds a lot more simple to me.

Define AFK...

How do you decide who is AFK, that agent over there who hasn't moved or spoken in 20 minutes... And who has cammed 57 stalls and picked up gifts, demo and made purchases at 46 of them...

Or that agent over here, who was moaning about lag in local 301 seconds ago, while staggeringaround wearing her new LagTech Industries "Animesh SpamBot Real-Boyfriend (tm)"...

"Thank you for visiting Tech-Fails of SL Shopping Village! None of our merchants want your money because some cretin set the AFK kicker to boot people for not meeting an arbitary definition of ACTIVE on the region! KTHXBAI!" 

9 hours ago, MBeatrix said:

Not long ago, some events used to kick out all those avatars with a complexity level above a certain limit

Even more pointless... RCI is "self reported" by the agent's viewer, and is based on the viewers estimation of the users RCI, so the figure reported isn't the figure you'll see for them estimated by your viewer. Then there's the whole "what is a reasonable RCI" debate, pick an arbitary number based on your viewer and PC, say you decide that 75k is "good", but their PC isn't as good as yours, and reports their RCI as 76k when you see them as 73k (one viewer uses radically different calculations to the others and reports figures about 5-10 times what everyone else sees you as).

"Thank you for visiting Tech-Fails of SL Shopping Village! None of our merchants want your money because some cretin set the RCI kicker to boot people for exceeding an arbitary number during the first ONE SECOND on the region! KTHXBAI!"

...

There is no "easy and accurate" way to auto-kick people from an event for failing to "follow the guidelines about lag. All you can do is TRY and educate people, go naked and alpha'd with no hair, use the cam-sims next door, sit don't stand/walk/run, etc.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

9 hours ago, Ethan Paslong said:

Perhaps it's partly LL to question, but as you said... we'r humans, if we can stretch the elastic cord till one meter... we want it 1 meter +10 cm.

 

[Blush Bravin]

I really get tired of the AFK blame being thrown around at people shopping busy events. I am NEVER afk at an event. Do I move once I've landed and walked off the landing point? NO! I am cam shopping as are 99% of those you are accusing of being AFK. Do you possibly think I can cam shop 3 regions of shops in 15 minutes? There is no possible way to even shop one region of shops in 15 minutes. It took me about an hour and a half to cam shop the center three regions at the Shop & Hop. Even at events that aren't as big such as C88 or Uber it takes me at least 30 to 45 minutes to shop those and they are very small and easily cammed.

Please stop accusing people who simply want to shop the effective way which is to stand in one spot and move your camera around the build.

[Love Zhaoying]

What’s the definition of AFK in this context? Those of us who disable the “no activity AWAY” feature will be happily running whatever stand / sit animation or AO, and our tag header won’t say “away”.  Will people think we are away/AFK merely because we aren’t moving?

[MBeatrix]

19 hours ago, Klytyna said:

Define AFK...

Do I really need to?

Standing on one spot and zooming around or talking in IM is not AFK. Viewer creators willing, the current Away feature could be replaced by an auto log off after a reasonable time of inactivity. Do I need to define what a reasonable time is too?

[EDIT] Or instead of an auto log off it could be an auto TP home.

Edited December 19, 2018 by MBeatrix
typo correction & more

[Solar Legion]

Or you could just accept that you're quite wrong.

See, here's my "reasonable" length of time for an automated Logout (which closes the client by the by) or an automated TP Home: Never.

Amusingly - unless Linden Lab changed this in their own client - there has always been an automatic log out function concerning being AFK. Preferences - General - bottom of the pane for many.This allows the user to determine if they get logged out when AFK after a certain length of time or if they ever report as AFK to begin with.

Both of those are user choices and should remain as such.

Patience - have some. You're not going to expire because you cannot get into a sim for some event. If the event is week long, try again at another time. If it isn't well then it's still not that big a deal.

Same with simply visiting a place: if it really is so popular that it fills up fast, try again another time.

Cripes, some people ...

[MBeatrix]

41 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Or you could just accept that you're quite wrong.

Or you.

So you decide to go for a shower and then breakfast, while a dozen people is trying to get to the place where you aren't doing anything. Is that fair? Unless you are actually a fair person and have set the Away feature properly. Or even better — you logged out.

[Solar Legion]

Except ... I'm not wrong.

"Fair" is in the eye of the beholder.

Life happens: A user may have to step away for a moment or two thanks to something quite beyond their control. Should they be forced offline or home? Rhetorical question - the only answer is that it is their choice to be marked as AFK and then either logged out or teleported home. That is why there are settings already in the Second Life client for this that the user sets.

There is no method presently for scripts to fairly judge who is and who is not AFK.

There is no need for any further system in place concerning being AFK.

There's no argument or discussion to be had here - none.

You've had it put to you semi-politely, you've had it put to you very crudely and bluntly - deal with it and stop acting like not being able to get into a place is some major issue. It's not like you have a right to access any sim you wish, any time you wish.

[MBeatrix]

18 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

[...]

Life happens: A user may have to step away for a moment or two thanks to something quite beyond their control. Should they be forced offline or home? Rhetorical question - the only answer is that it is their choice to be marked as AFK and then either logged out or teleported home. That is why there are settings already in the Second Life client for this that the user sets.

There is no method presently for scripts to fairly judge who is and who is not AFK.

There is no need for any further system in place concerning being AFK.

There's no argument or discussion to be had here - none.

You've had it put to you semi-politely, you've had it put to you very crudely and bluntly - deal with it and stop acting like not being able to get into a place is some major issue. It's not like you have a right to access any sim you wish, any time you wish.

Indeed life happens. Another example: you are at the supermarket in a line to cash-out and suddenly you need to go to the loo. What's going to happen there? That tiny bit of the universe stops just because you had an urge to whatever? No, I don't think I have the right to get to any sim in SL. How about you? What makes you think you can do whatever just because you can, and then everyone has to agree with your behaviour?

Did I mention any scripting? The possible solution I pointed is on the client's side.

The need for any further development concerning being AFK is at least something we can discuss. You don't like the discussion? You can drop out anytime, or even better — don't join in. Again, who do you think you are to tell others what they can discuss or not?

Just to finish this, I had never had a problem getting anywhere thanks to the premium perk. I went to "Shop and Hop" a couple times and did what I had to do and what lag permitted.

(Previously, I wrote "Hop & Shop" on purpose, and I wonder why no one noticed... Possibly LL's idea is really shop and hop outta there.)

Edited December 19, 2018 by MBeatrix
typo correction

[Qie Niangao]

I'm no criminal mastermind* but I think I can imagine a rival Dastardly Event Operator filling the Do-Right Event region with non-shopping bots.

Do-Right wants to automate bot-shooing so programs a counter-bot to watch for users who arrive, park, and soon go AFK.

Dastardly responds by programming their bots to wander around the scene a bit.

Do-Right realizes the wanderers are bots, and programs counter-bot to watch the focus of everybody's camera, to again detect the bots.

Dastardly eventually determines that it's that fixed stare that's the "tell" doing in his bots, so he programs them to scan their cams from object to object in the sim.

This Turing test of simulated SL shopping behavior can get arbitrarily complex until ultimately the rivalry consumes more effort than the value of the events. 

Similar diminishing returns might also apply to removing naughty, non-bot shoppers.

__________
*as far as you know

[MBeatrix]

2 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I'm no criminal mastermind* but I think I can imagine a rival Dastardly Event Operator filling the Do-Right Event region with non-shopping bots.

Do-Right wants to automate bot-shooing so programs a counter-bot to watch for users who arrive, park, and soon go AFK.

Dastardly responds by programming their bots to wander around the scene a bit.

Do-Right realizes the wanderers are bots, and programs counter-bot to watch the focus of everybody's camera, to again detect the bots.

Dastardly eventually determines that it's that fixed stare that's the "tell" doing in his bots, so he programs them to scan their cams from object to object in the sim.

This Turing test of simulated SL shopping behavior can get arbitrarily complex until ultimately the rivalry consumes more effort than the value of the events. 

Similar diminishing returns might also apply to removing naughty, non-bot shoppers.

__________
*as far as you know

HAHA! True.

But doing it on the client's side would involve a more complicated process to trick the system. Something like an auto typer or whatever.

Good point, though.

[Solar Legion]

Your prior example ignored the fact that life happens. Your present "example" has no bearing on Second Life - at all.

The rest of your response is tripe.

Again: You've gotten a variety of responses explaining reality to you. You want to "discuss" something that already has settings within the client. Your suggested idea requires either a scripted solution or client developers to utterly ignore the user's wishes concerning those settings.

The former is simply not possible. The latter requires the removal of existing options that were put in quite a long time ago for the convenience of the end user.

Enjoy tilting at windmills.