Game of Homes - What they don't want you knowing.. =)

[Augusta Rain]

Opening this topic because it is past time that the second life population has a fair chance at getting a nice home instead of the same few keeping everything for themselves.

 

A. They sell out the so called ''theme' they want to target, which at the moment seems to be Stilts Homes on Land, Stilt Homes on Water, Stilt Homes on Pier, Victorians, & Log Cabins, which is why you haven't been able to find on the landpage in general.

B.  Handy dandy tool they are all using to figure out what is on the market and what is for sale.! https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/ti-Land-Survey-HUD/6775289

C.  You never seem to see any sort of coastal victorian going because they seem to be passing them around amongst the buddies and so called friendly parties.  (thats how they are swapping which is making the theme sell out.  You can do that when the theme is sold out then keep refreshing the sold out page so that you can grab the house before anyone else can get it.

D.  This works for any theme in general except the chalets/campers which seem to never sell out however you can do it when the themes are completely sold out otherwise this is why certain ''peeps'' seem to always roll the best of the best on new regions which has been discussed ad naseum on this forum.  She isn't the only one doing this kind of thing, others are doing it as well and you just haven't seemed to grasp the concept that they are present and accounted for.

E.  So with that said, you can easily swap your linden houses between accounts, you can grab other linden houses, and you can certainly backroll any theme you like once you make a dozen or so pages when you see avaliable ones on the landpage. (Accept one after you know its off the land page and then make a ''SOLD OUT'' page the yellow one! --

F.  Always wondered how they are doing it?  This is what they are doing and how they are doing it.  

Hugs!

Edited June 14, 2021 by Augusta Rain
Punctuation

[Mollymews]

18 minutes ago, Augusta Rain said:

F.  Always wondered how they are doing it this is what they are doing and how they are doing it.

you kinda answered your own question really

is all about timing at the moment.  Person says I am going to abandon this home at this time.  Other person starts hammering the Linden Homes web page and hopes they get it before anyone else

Linden could make it so that there is some long random time delay between a home being abandoned and it becoming available for the next person.  Long meaning some time in the next 6, 12, 24, ? hours

Edited June 14, 2021 by Mollymews
typs

[Augusta Rain]

1 hour ago, Mollymews said:

you kinda answered your own question really

is all about timing at the moment.  Person says I am going to abandon this home at this time.  Other person starts hammering the Linden Homes web page and hopes they get it before anyone else

Linden could make it so that there is some long random time delay between a home being abandoned and it becoming available for the next person.  Long meaning some time in the next 6, 12, 24, ? hours

Needs to be over a week and a random number thrown in to make it an unknown quantity

[Sparkle Bunny]

9 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

Linden could make it so that there is some long random time delay between a home being abandoned and it becoming available for the next person.  Long meaning some time in the next 6, 12, 24, ? hours

then you just get everyone whining that there are homes available but we're not able to claim them and it's not fair etc. 

That said, I am kind of jaded right now after catching the same place three times, so I would very much welcome some kind of mechanism which reduced the chance of your getting a home you'd already abandoned within a 24-hour period.

[Augusta Rain]

Depends on how fast you abandon it in which region.  I've been playing with abandons in the various regions and realize if you abandon and roll straight away that it will give you the same home back again.  Wasting rolls seems to be a built in mechanism to the whole entire system which sadly shouldn't be the case.  I hope you have better luck.  I'd be happy to help you if you need that pesky house picked up and held for a while so you can get something different.

Edited June 14, 2021 by Augusta Rain

[Mollymews]

41 minutes ago, Augusta Rain said:

Needs to be over a week and a random number thrown in to make it an unknown quantity

a week is a bit long I think at the moment. LDPW still haven't produced enough homes yet to meet current demand, and there are still 1000s of people in the old Linden Homes which have yet to be catered for also

the LDPW has been pretty good overall I think, in terms of how they have gone about the building and release processes. Adapting the processes as the building programme has progressed

 

15 minutes ago, Augusta Rain said:

I've been playing with abandons in the various regions and realize if you abandon and roll straight away that it will give you the same home back again

that could be an adaptation that Linden could look at

it could be that there is a minimum time between Abandon and Allocate.  For example: allocation_available = abandon_time + 2.0 hours + random(10 hours)

so that the abandoned home will be next available in not less than 2 hours and not greater than 12 hours

which gives the abandoner a 2 hour window in which the home abandoned will not be reallocated to them (the abandoner)

[Augusta Rain]

37 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

 

 

37 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

a week is a bit long I think at the moment. LDPW still haven't produced enough homes yet to meet current demand, and there are still 1000s of people in the old Linden Homes which have yet to be catered for also

the LDPW has been pretty good overall I think, in terms of how they have gone about the building and release processes. Adapting the processes as the building programme has progressed

 

that could be an adaptation that Linden could look at

it could be that there is a minimum time between Abandon and Allocate.  For example: allocation_available = abandon_time + 2.0 hours + random(10 hours)

so that the abandoned home will be next available in not less than 2 hours and not greater than 12 hours

which gives the abandoner a 2 hour window in which the home abandoned will not be reallocated to them (the abandoner)

At the moment no current minimium is avaliable on them that is why people get abandons they just gave away unless they wait for it to get taken.  Then they can try rolling again, it seems in the chalet regions if you roll again straight away you get the same house.  However, by playing with it on a few different days in which I logged out of the land page, then logged all the way back in I seemed to not hit the same house again.  Not sure about other regions I kept getting same crappy thing over and over.  Interesting that a mechanism might be in the system but its an unknown quantity unless you do extensive testing on abandonment and recatching over and over with the same avatar which I will do in the coming days.

Edited June 14, 2021 by Augusta Rain
Added a few things.

[Chloe Bunny]

1 hour ago, Augusta Rain said:

I kept getting same crappy thing over and over

There aint no crappy thing 

[Marianne Little]

6 hours ago, Augusta Rain said:

Opening this topic because it is past time that the second life population has a fair chance at getting a nice home instead of the same few keeping everything for themselves.

 

A. They sell out the so called ''theme' they want to target, which at the moment seems to be Stilts Homes on Land, Stilt Homes on Water, Stilt Homes on Pier, Victorians, & Log Cabins, which is why you haven't been able to find on the landpage in general.

B.  Handy dandy tool they are all using to figure out what is on the market and what is for sale.! https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/ti-Land-Survey-HUD/6775289

C.  You never seem to see any sort of coastal victorian going because they seem to be passing them around amongst the buddies and so called friendly parties.  (thats how they are swapping which is making the theme sell out.  You can do that when the theme is sold out then keep refreshing the sold out page so that you can grab the house before anyone else can get it.

D.  This works for any theme in general except the chalets/campers which seem to never sell out however you can do it when the themes are completely sold out otherwise this is why certain ''peeps'' seem to always roll the best of the best on new regions which has been discussed ad naseum on this forum.  She isn't the only one doing this kind of thing, others are doing it as well and you just haven't seemed to grasp the concept that they are present and accounted for.

E.  So with that said, you can easily swap your linden houses between accounts, you can grab other linden houses, and you can certainly backroll any theme you like once you make a dozen or so pages when you see avaliable ones on the landpage. (Accept one after you know its off the land page and then make a ''SOLD OUT'' page the yellow one! --

F.  Always wondered how they are doing it?  This is what they are doing and how they are doing it.  

Hugs!

I really have problems understanding. Why not sit and talk direct to the friend and say "I abandon it when you are ready?"

Or how can that tool help someone to pass a house to a friend? The tool work for the region the person wearing it, is that not so? It is no way to see if random house is abandoned the same time in another region, and the friend clicking the land page get that instead.

The post may have some hidden information that I don't get.

[Matthieu Quander]

10 hours ago, Augusta Rain said:

Opening this topic because it is past time that the second life population has a fair chance at getting a nice home instead of the same few keeping everything for themselves.

 

A. They sell out the so called ''theme' they want to target, which at the moment seems to be Stilts Homes on Land, Stilt Homes on Water, Stilt Homes on Pier, Victorians, & Log Cabins, which is why you haven't been able to find on the landpage in general.

B.  Handy dandy tool they are all using to figure out what is on the market and what is for sale.! https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/ti-Land-Survey-HUD/6775289

C.  You never seem to see any sort of coastal victorian going because they seem to be passing them around amongst the buddies and so called friendly parties.  (thats how they are swapping which is making the theme sell out.  You can do that when the theme is sold out then keep refreshing the sold out page so that you can grab the house before anyone else can get it.

D.  This works for any theme in general except the chalets/campers which seem to never sell out however you can do it when the themes are completely sold out otherwise this is why certain ''peeps'' seem to always roll the best of the best on new regions which has been discussed ad naseum on this forum.  She isn't the only one doing this kind of thing, others are doing it as well and you just haven't seemed to grasp the concept that they are present and accounted for.

E.  So with that said, you can easily swap your linden houses between accounts, you can grab other linden houses, and you can certainly backroll any theme you like once you make a dozen or so pages when you see avaliable ones on the landpage. (Accept one after you know its off the land page and then make a ''SOLD OUT'' page the yellow one! --

F.  Always wondered how they are doing it?  This is what they are doing and how they are doing it.  

Hugs!

I think most people who play the GoH with any frequency are already aware of all of this, but I suppose there's no harm in posting it.  I do take issue with the notion that it is easy to pass a home to an alt or friend when a theme is fully populated.  Yes, it is easier than when there is ample theme availability, but it is still risky.  I'm happy for you that you have had some success with it, but even those who have mastered the process still suffer the occasional loss, and for the average person it's a 50/50 proposition at best.  

If you are okay with losing a home and just want to give it a go, then by all means, roll the dice.  If you love your location, and losing it would be painful, then I would think twice before trying to pass it to an alt.  

[Devin Heartsong]

Honestly, I still don't understand the process they're using to game the system. How exactly do they target a new specific region with some tasty parcels on it?  (Which they do, quite successfully). 

I've given up on GOH because it's rigged in favor of the people who've figured out how to game the system. GOH is only "fun" when you feel you have an equal chance as everyone else of landing something really tasty. As it stands now, you only stand a chance of that if you get a lucky abandon in a very old region. You'll never get lucky in a brand new region that just released, because of the people who know how to game the system.

Edited June 14, 2021 by Devin Heartsong

[Eirynne Sieyes]

12 hours ago, Augusta Rain said:

 

B.  Handy dandy tool they are all using to figure out what is on the market and what is for sale.! https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/ti-Land-Survey-HUD/6775289

 

I just love the tool! But really, it won't help you get a home you want. It will help you easily find out how many parcels are on a region; the fewer the better!

One method to avoid getting the same home right after you abandon is to monitor the lot until your abandon is taken by someone else. while not foolproof, it helps with that first pass.

Edited June 14, 2021 by Eirynne Sieyes

[JustinAlternot]

While I think I know what the OP is trying to say, it is quite confusing as written.  I shall try to be a bit more clear so hopefully Linden Lab might be able to make changes to make it more difficult for some people to easily obtain the prime locations.

Quite a while ago some of us discovered that if we save the last page in the house claiming process, we can then go back later, click the box and claim a house that is sitting in maintenance but not showing on the webpage.  This technique makes it possible to move a house from one account to another with a better chance of success.  

One day I was doing this while my page refresher had been left on, so discovered that the sold out page can be refreshed without timing out!  This allows someone to grab an abandoned home in the category they are refreshing before it ever appears on the webpage and without watching the page constantly.  I used the word 'grab' because some people are trying to dominate certain prime areas and control who gets the houses in their chosen spots.  Other people must have made this discovery, too.

I am not a technical person, but wondered if there was something that could be done to prevent the unlimited refreshing of the sold out page?  This could help prevent people who know about this from claiming the prime locations before they appear on the webpage.  This practice is making it difficult for others to have a chance at claiming abandoned Linden Homes in the more desirable areas and unlike multiple accounts has no benefit to Linden Lab.

The above mentioned technique works only for claiming abandoned homes in a sold out category.  The ability for some people to claim many homes in one region during a new region release requires many accounts and multiple browsers along with the time to watch the region - if it is a region people are watching and ready to claim homes as soon as it is released.  The ability to claim multiple homes in a region is helped by something in the system that gives out more homes in the same region over and over.  Sometimes this is because there is only one region being released.  But in the case of the large rolling releases of new themes it can make it easier for one person to claim multiple homes in the same region - this also is what causes someone to get the same home over and over, even when there is plenty of inventory in a theme.  If there was some way the system could allow an IP address to claim no more than 2 or 3 homes per region in a 24 hour period, perhaps that would limit both issues.  Though I am certain someone would find a way around that, too!

I don't understand how the land hud mentioned in the OP assists in getting homes aside from the fact that it can tell you if homes named 'Linden Home' are in fact owned by Linden Lab or by someone who named their parcel 'Linden Home' without inspecting each individual home.  I also use it to count how many homes are in a region and how many are unclaimed.  Trying to claim a specific parcel in a specific region is quite difficult, but alt armies would be helpful just because you would have more chances.

 

 

 

[Matthieu Quander]

This is as good a time as any to remind everyone that having a premium account entitles you to claim a Linden home, subject to availability.  It does not entitle anyone to have a home of a particular theme or a specific parcel. 

The rules that are in place apply to everyone.  Those who seem to always get the "best" spots do so because they spend more time and money claiming homes.  Even so, they don't always get the parcels they want.    

I have said this before, but it warrants repeating.  I think people would enjoy their SLs more if they focused less on finding the perfect home, and more on making the home they have perfect.  While you all work on that, I'm going to go roll a couple of homes and see what the GoH gods have in store for me today.       

[Devin Heartsong]

1 hour ago, Matthieu Quander said:

...Those who seem to always get the "best" spots do so because they spend more time and money claiming homes....   

Translation: "time and money" = "army of alts". So if you have the money to own a large number of alts and the computing horsepower to have all those alts spam the land claim interface the moment a region is released, you have far better odds to squat the hot properties in the newly-released regions. And then you can trade those hot properties away afterward to "friends", using the technique described above, with a high degree of confidence.

This effectively creates a class system among Linden lands, especially Bellisseria.

You can argue that it's all "by the rules" and that "everyone has equal opportunity to do the same", but DO they?  Do they really?  (Spoiler: no, no they don't, really. Because very few people have the money to run dozens and dozens of alts and the time to run this kind of detailed, coordinated op, ready to act the moment a particularly desirable region releases.)

Everyone who knows about this game being played by the privileged few who can afford to are demotivated by it. I've seen it griped about constantly among my friends graph, and I myself am demotivated.

LL would be well-served to refactor their release/claim system to be truly truly randomized so that it cannot be gamed with hyper-predictable abandon-trading, and cannot be gamed with zerg tactics for new region releases. This would give the average person a more equal chance at the GOH slot machine rewards.

Ask yourself this question:  If there were no ability to predictably abandon-trade a nice parcel to a "friend", and no way to dramatically increase your odds of scoring many/most parcels in a highly-desirable new region by using zerg tactics, would we see the problems we've all been seeing clearly for the past half a year or more? Would the average account holder have a more equal chance at stumbling upon some of the nicer parcels?

Edited June 14, 2021 by Devin Heartsong

[Matthieu Quander]

4 minutes ago, Devin Heartsong said:

Translation: "time and money" = "army of alts". So if you have the money to own a large number of alts and the computing horsepower to have all those alts spam the land claim interface the moment a region is released, you have far better odds to squat the hot properties in the newly-release regions. And then you can trade/bargain those hot properties away afterward using the technique described above to transfer to "friends".

This effectively creates a class system among Linden lands, especially Bellisseria.

You can argue that it's all "by the rules" and that "everyone has equal opportunity to do the same", but DO they?  Do they really?  (Spoiler: no, no they don't, really.)

Everyone who knows about this game being played by some who can afford to are demotivated by it. I've seen it griped about constantly among my friends graph, and I myself am demotivated.

The opportunity is there for everyone to spend the time and money that others are spending, but you are correct that not everyone has the same amount of time and money to spend.  Does that mean that those who can afford it should not spend their time and money because not everyone can?    

I would love to live in a big fancy house with a swimming pool and drive a nice new Tesla to my three vacation homes in RL, but I can't afford that.  Should no one be allowed to do those things because I can't?

I guess that is an example of the class system of which you speak, but unlike RL, I can still get a really nice home, even if it may not be in the exact spot I want.  What I and many others have found is that we often end up liking those reclaimed abandon spots much more than those new releases on which we missed out. 

I struggle to see the problem.  There are plenty of absolutely lovely homes showing up in the queue every day.  It simply isn't feasible for any one person or group of people to perpetually own all the nicest spots.  It's true, the alt armies snatch up a lot of them when they are initially released, but to do that, they are releasing other nice spots that they previously claimed.  They aren't just adding more and more alts to their armies.  They have limits, just as you and I do.  Theirs just exceed ours.  

Is it really so important to be the first owner of a home?  It's not like unpleasant smells or piles of trash get left behind when homes are abandoned.  Your odds of catching an abandoned spot are the same as they would be for the new ones if the alt armies weren't grabbing so many of them.    

 

[Devin Heartsong]

8 minutes ago, Matthieu Quander said:

The opportunity is there for everyone to spend the time and money that others are spending, but you are correct that not everyone has the same amount of time and money to spend.  Does that mean that those who can afford it should not spend their time and money because not everyone can?    

I would love to live in a big fancy house with a swimming pool and drive a nice new Tesla to my three vacation homes in RL, but I can't afford that.  Should no one be allowed to do those things because I can't? ...

 

Let me put it this way: it's a simple thing for LL developers to fix the "rules" of the system so that the system is a bit more fair and equal for everyone involved.

It's another thing entirely to fix the RL economic system that enables some RL people to siphon money upward.

That said, if somebody could actually tackle the complex economic and political systems that allow for massive wealth inequality, then MORE people would be able to have a nice Tesla and maybe even a vacation home or two. Maybe even you! (And gee, maybe more people could actually eat and live under a roof and have some okay medical care).

Point being, I see your point but in this case I think it's a false equivalence. The problems with the Linden Land system today are small, contained, and easily fixable.

Edited June 14, 2021 by Devin Heartsong

[Sparkle Bunny]

6 minutes ago, Matthieu Quander said:

 Does that mean that those who can afford it should not spend their time and money because not everyone can?   

I'd argue that they probably should not spend their time and money because there are far better uses for both things than acquiring ALL THE HOUSES, but I realise this is a minority opinion on these forums.

[Alwin Alcott]

15 hours ago, Augusta Rain said:

I kept getting same crappy thing over and over

karma

to get a good location you need patience and lots of luck.

[Matthieu Quander]

1 hour ago, Sparkle Bunny said:

I'd argue that they probably should not spend their time and money because there are far better uses for both things than acquiring ALL THE HOUSES, but I realise this is a minority opinion on these forums.

I doubt this is a minority opinion, but what other people do with their money is their business.

Edited June 14, 2021 by Matthieu Quander

[Matthieu Quander]

1 hour ago, Devin Heartsong said:

Let me put it this way: it's a simple thing for LL developers to fix the "rules" of the system so that the system is a bit more fair and equal for everyone involved.

It's another thing entirely to fix the RL economic system that enables some RL people to siphon money upward.

That said, if somebody could actually tackle the complex economic and political systems that allow for massive wealth inequality, then MORE people would be able to have a nice Tesla and maybe even a vacation home or two. Maybe even you! (And gee, maybe more people could actually eat and live under a roof and have some okay medical care).

Point being, I see your point but in this case I think it's a false equivalence. The problems with the Linden Land system today are small, contained, and easily fixable.

I definitely agree there are much bigger issues in RL, and comparisons to them likely aren't relevant, so you can ignore all of that.

None of us knows how simple it would be to change the way the home claims system functions.  It may seem easy on the surface, but it may be more difficult to implement than you think.

Also, changing the process to make it more equitable may have consequences. For example, what if they change the number of claims for each avatar from 5 per day to 1 per week?  That would likely solve the land rush issue, while completely killing GoH at the same time.  I don't think most of us would like that, but it would certainly make things more fair.  

The other thing you have to consider is the financial impact of making a change.  There is the cost involved to do the work.  There is also the long term impact on company income.  Would making a change have a positive or negative effect on cashflow?  Obviously keeping customers happy is part of the equation, but what is the trade off between one group's happiness over another's?  In the end, SL is a business, and decisions to make changes are always going to be made with that in mind.  

Edited June 14, 2021 by Matthieu Quander

[yestothis]

Threads like these are so divisive. Is it necessary to keep beating a dead horse? 

21 hours ago, Augusta Rain said:

Opening this topic because it is past time that the second life population has a fair chance at getting a nice home instead of the same few keeping everything for themselves.

 

A. They sell out the so called ''theme' they want to target, which at the moment seems to be Stilts Homes on Land, Stilt Homes on Water, Stilt Homes on Pier, Victorians, & Log Cabins, which is why you haven't been able to find on the landpage in general.

B.  Handy dandy tool they are all using to figure out what is on the market and what is for sale.! https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/ti-Land-Survey-HUD/6775289

C.  You never seem to see any sort of coastal victorian going because they seem to be passing them around amongst the buddies and so called friendly parties.  (thats how they are swapping which is making the theme sell out.  You can do that when the theme is sold out then keep refreshing the sold out page so that you can grab the house before anyone else can get it.

D.  This works for any theme in general except the chalets/campers which seem to never sell out however you can do it when the themes are completely sold out otherwise this is why certain ''peeps'' seem to always roll the best of the best on new regions which has been discussed ad naseum on this forum.  She isn't the only one doing this kind of thing, others are doing it as well and you just haven't seemed to grasp the concept that they are present and accounted for.

E.  So with that said, you can easily swap your linden houses between accounts, you can grab other linden houses, and you can certainly backroll any theme you like once you make a dozen or so pages when you see avaliable ones on the landpage. (Accept one after you know its off the land page and then make a ''SOLD OUT'' page the yellow one! --

F.  Always wondered how they are doing it?  This is what they are doing and how they are doing it.  

Hugs!

Good to know some people think they have the solutions to GOH inequality but won’t comment as their main account. Your tips are confusing. Do they even work for you? 

Edited June 14, 2021 by yestothis

[Sparkle Bunny]

1 hour ago, yestothis said:

Good to know some people think they have the solutions to GOH inequality but won’t comment as their main account.

Quick forum tip: don't run round calling out other posters as alts when you have a flashing neon sign above your head saying 'I AM AN ALT'.

You're welcome.

[Rabid Cheetah]

Beating a dead horse is bad.  Beating off a dead horse is worse.

[Maitimo]

On 6/14/2021 at 3:03 AM, Sparkle Bunny said:

then you just get everyone whining that there are homes available but we're not able to claim them and it's not fair etc. 

That said, I am kind of jaded right now after catching the same place three times, so I would very much welcome some kind of mechanism which reduced the chance of your getting a home you'd already abandoned within a 24-hour period.

The only way I've found to prevent this from happening is to use an alt to claim the house you just abandoned, then try again on your main, and then release the unwanted one from the alt. However I then generally find that there are no further houses available for that theme, which means the one you caught and abandoned is currently the only single one in circulation.