New Gacha Policy Discussion

[Maryanne Solo]

Is this the all time record "hot" thread for the forums? (duration of time vs number of posts?)😃
Congrats to all for keeping it nice enough.

A word on digital "rares" if I may.
I stopped creating in SL before mesh came in. I didn't understand prims and I didn't like them for some reason..🤪👀
*woodywoodpeckerlaugh
So I started teaching myself 3d mesh in real life.
Now I can have "rares" as real world physical products, sourced from the mesh files I created.

I would say to skilled gacha content creators don't be too upset by this worldwide decision.
You can keep enhancing and developing your skills using SL as the test platform for real world stuff.
It's not easy to move from one world to the other I assure you. But it can be done.
It is an incredible opportunity SL & LL provide which cannot be sneezed at.
Then SL will be purely for shopping and dress-ups ❤️
Thank you yet again LL.

[Dorientje Woller]

1 hour ago, KrystalKandy said:

.

If the vendor locks for that one person to buy the chosen item. Then you end up with a possible queue of people waiting to access that machine. What happens when someone standing there clicks it then goes afk for an hour (we all know this happens constantly in sl lol). Are we going to actually consider implementing virtual waiting lines like we have in rl, when we shop? 

Isn't it possible that after the click a timer pops up, giving the "player" a certain amount of time to make the transaction? Once the time is up ... bad luck ... next.

Edited August 6, 2021 by Dorientje Woller

[Sukubia Scarmon]

So... basically the difference between a regular gacha and conveyor belt style gacha is that with the later you know the first purchase (and that it'll always be a common item, since nobody would leave the machine when it's something more worth than the pullprice)

I'm pretty dissapointed.
In the same way I was dissapointed when I saw that a game I used to play, that has an extremely predatory itemshop, now featured a way to earn their stuff ingame. Didn't figure out that implemented that due to the new legislation around lootboxes and stuff. The thing is, they made the rates at wich you earn the credits so abysmal low, you gotta be extremely patient. Cheapest stuff to buy starts at 2000 - which are the commons nobody wants, and you can earn up to ....60 a day.
I hate this, this is obviously just the barerst of minimum, just to be on the safe side. But it's a big fat middlefinger to the spirit of the law, and says a lot about what they think of their users.

[So Whimsy]

Good morning, just got up, did I miss anything?

[Alwin Alcott]

11 minutes ago, So Whimsy said:

Good morning, just got up, did I miss anything?

 

ehm.. not really...still need loads of popcorn

[Skell Dagger]

Since the 'roller script' as per the example created by Nadi Vemo has been given the thumbs-up in the FAQ, then all concerns about unscrupulous use of such scripts ("Of course you have a chance of getting that ultra-rare; we set it at 0.01% chance!") could be nixed completely by one thing:

A single, Linden-approved script.

• Have it created by a special Linden account with an obvious name (ApprovedRollerScript Linden, for example)
• Available for free on the official Second Life store on Marketplace
• Permissions: Copy and NO MODIFY

The NO MODIFY would be critical to the success of this. The script must not be editable directly, and would only have certain configurable parameters, accessible only when inserted into an object and clicked to bring up a configuration menu.

Configuration menu options could include:

• number of total items in the vendor
• number of common items in the vendor
• number of uncommon items in the vendor
• number of rare items in the vendor
• cost of each pull of the vendor

From there it could go one of two ways. I'm no scripter, so I'm not sure which of these would be possible, but I'm putting both out there anyway:

• the machine could automatically set - based on the input numbers of commons, uncommons, and rares - a fair and acceptable percentage rate for each of those

OR

• the percentage rate for each type (common, uncommon, rare) can be set by the vendor owner, but only using preset button percentage options such as 5, 10, 25, 50, 75 (this would mean even the rare could not be set lower than a specific percentage such as 5% or 10%)

Finally, the script must be placed in the vendor in such a way that the player can right-click the vendor and inspect the contents, see the script, and check that the creator name is ApprovedRollerScript Linden. No invisible prims covering the vendor or the 'pay here' section, containing non-approved roller scripts.

If a roller vendor is found that is not using the approved script created by ApprovedRollerScript Linden, it can be AR'd (new AR category - non-approved roller vendor script?)

LL don't even need to create the script themselves. There are many scripters who have been working in SL for years. Perhaps have a contest to submit scripts, and then LL would just need to spend a bit of time checking them over before picking one to be the 'approved' script (and perhaps working with the creator to tweak it if needs be), then the ApprovedRollerScript Linden account could create it, set the NO MODIFY permissions, and it could be uploaded to the official SecondLife Marketplace store.

Edited August 6, 2021 by Skell Dagger

[Chris Corvinus]

So the “conveyor belt” idea is allowable??? It goes from a game of chance to having to force people to cycle purchase until they get what they want? 

Edited August 6, 2021 by Chris Nova

[Adumelial Rothstein]

I was never addicted. I collect. I played maybe 3-5 vendors at the most. I buy from resellers. I thought it was a grand idea when it came out. I have not even tried to resell my "extras". I have many "sets" just because - well, I had to have them? I went out tonight and bought one last set and a few odds.

When I found out tonight my stomach just started behaving very badly? Like my stomach is sick all of a sudden badly?

Oh Lindens - are you sick? I must ask? Whatever is wrong with you? Why did you not put a stop to this at the beginning? What will you do when addicts go through withdrawals? I want to ask - what Mommy's CC got used out of whack? Why do we all have to go through this?

Is this going to effect the SL economy in anyway?

*tries not to vomit too much*

[bigmoe Whitfield]

Just now, Adumelial Rothstein said:

I was never addicted. I collect. I played maybe 3-5 vendors at the most. I buy from resellers. I thought it was a grand idea when it came out. I have not even tried to resell my "extras". I have many "sets" just because - well, I had to have them? I went out tonight and bought one last set and a few odds.

When I found out tonight my stomach just started behaving very badly? Like my stomach is sick all of a sudden badly?

Oh Lindens - are you sick? I must ask? Whatever is wrong with you? Why did you not put a stop to this at the beginning? What will you do when addicts go through withdrawals? I want to ask - what Mommy's CC got used out of whack? Why do we all have to go through this?

Is this going to effect the SL economy in anyway?

*tries not to vomit too much*

it's not going to affect any one I know personally, even the creators that I know whom were using it,  they will adapt and continue their businesses.

[Shuichi Shinji]

7 hours ago, Mollymews said:

bouncing of the HUD idea

we would mostly likely have to grant debit permission to these kinds of HUDs

And what's worse (maybe you meant that) is that the customer needs to give those permissions (since the HUD object is his own, so it doesn't make sense to pay the object like a normal vendor). And since there already are Gacha vendors that are not entirely trustworthy (a minority maybe, but nevertheless), would customers give them basically unlimited access to their L$ balance (at least the warning that pops up is very clear)?

Maybe no one will try that because their account is pretty much gone afterwards, but there are also script errors, bugs, lag, so it could theoretically happen accidentally. Would Gatcha creators take that risk to be accused of stealing in case of such an accident?

As for "taking the HUD home and play there", that someone mentioned: that could at least be scripted so the HUD works only on that particular place.

[Rosa Hexem]

56 minutes ago, Skell Dagger said:

Since the 'roller script' as per the example created by Nadi Vemo has been given the thumbs-up in the FAQ, then all concerns about unscrupulous use of such scripts ("Of course you have a chance of getting that ultra-rare; we set it at 0.01% chance!") could be nixed completely by one thing:

A single, Linden-approved script.

• Have it created by a special Linden account with an obvious name (ApprovedRollerScript Linden, for example)
• Available for free on the official Second Life store on Marketplace
• Permissions: Copy and NO MODIFY

The NO MODIFY would be critical to the success of this. The script must not be editable directly, and would only have certain configurable parameters, accessible only when inserted into an object and clicked to bring up a configuration menu.

Configuration menu options could include:

• number of total items in the vendor
• number of common items in the vendor
• number of uncommon items in the vendor
• number of rare items in the vendor
• cost of each pull of the vendor

From there it could go one of two ways. I'm no scripter, so I'm not sure which of these would be possible, but I'm putting both out there anyway:

• the machine could automatically set - based on the input numbers of commons, uncommons, and rares - a fair and acceptable percentage rate for each of those

OR

• the percentage rate for each type (common, uncommon, rare) can be set by the vendor owner, but only using preset button percentage options such as 5, 10, 25, 50, 75 (this would mean even the rare could not be set lower than a specific percentage such as 5% or 10%)

Finally, the script must be placed in the vendor in such a way that the player can right-click the vendor and inspect the contents, see the script, and check that the creator name is ApprovedRollerScript Linden. No invisible prims covering the vendor or the 'pay here' section, containing non-approved roller scripts.

If a roller vendor is found that is not using the approved script created by ApprovedRollerScript Linden, it can be AR'd (new AR category - non-approved roller vendor script?)

LL don't even need to create the script themselves. There are many scripters who have been working in SL for years. Perhaps have a contest to submit scripts, and then LL would just need to spend a bit of time checking them over before picking one to be the 'approved' script (and perhaps working with the creator to tweak it if needs be), then the ApprovedRollerScript Linden account could create it, set the NO MODIFY permissions, and it could be uploaded to the official SecondLife Marketplace store.

While I feel like certain measures here might be untenable such as making non Linden rollers a reportable offender (but skill games have to be approved so what do I know) I feel like overall this is a good solution to people worrying about rigged scripts. When they work based on a transparent and commonly understood set of mechanics in a tamper proof no-mod script then people could trust in the odds of a conveyor using these scripts.

As it happens, I feel like if LL doesn't choose to do this (I suspect they won't if only because maintaining a script forever where they also have to make it meet the demands of everyone would be more work than they are willing to do) then people running shopping events or selling conveyor vendors on the marketplace could do similar: making one commonly understood tamper proof conveyor script and having people use that. That would allow people to iterate on the script still to in case they want to try features like a rollover timer or showing what the next 3 items on the conveyor are and whatnot.

Apologies if this sounds overall disapproving of the concept though because I feel like this is definitely moving in the right direction.

[Shuichi Shinji]

7 hours ago, Mollymews said:

is a herd of shoes a shoe of shoes ?

😸

It's just pants!

[Rosa Hexem]

2 minutes ago, Shuichi Shinji said:

And what's worse (maybe you meant that) is that the customer needs to give those permissions (since the HUD object is his own, so it doesn't make sense to pay the object like a normal vendor). And since there already are Gacha vendors that are not entirely trustworthy (a minority maybe, but nevertheless), would customers give them basically unlimited access to their L$ balance (at least the warning that pops up is very clear)?

Maybe no one will try that because their account is pretty much gone afterwards, but there are also script errors, bugs, lag, so it could theoretically happen accidentally. Would Gatcha creators take that risk to be accused of stealing in case of such an accident?

As for "taking the HUD home and play there", that someone mentioned: that could at least be scripted so the HUD works only on that particular place.

Maybe you could just pay the not attached-to-hud element of the machine and that could relay to the hud element that you had paid. Maybe you could pay a non hud attached machine for conveyor-vouchers and then use those vouchers on the attatched HUD element so it never has to ask for access to your L$ directly.

[Dutch Mainsail]

A related scenario:

Suppose I'm hosting a sailing competition (or a car race or something similar). This competition is free to enter for anyone. All you have to do is show up *with your boat*. The winner of the competition is the one who sails the course the fastest.

Now to make the competition more interesting, I want to give the winner 1) a rare and unique trophy and 2) a free gif from the sponsors, like a watch or something.

Are these two prizes allowed? The gifts are known in advance, there's no fee to enter the race, anyone can enter. I would say there's no skilled gaming involved since it's free to enter the race. You won't lose more than your pride

Edited August 6, 2021 by Dutch Mainsail

[Cinos Field]

Ah, brilliant. So gachas were banned but actually gachas are allowed if we call them conveyors instead.

What was the point of this whole thing again? A very niche wording of a law somewhere?

Was it the word that got banned, specifically, then? The blog post definitely needs updating on what mechanic exactly is banned, because it clearly wasn't the randomness as a result of payment.

Edited August 6, 2021 by Cinos Field

[Rosa Hexem]

10 minutes ago, Dutch Mainsail said:

A related scenario:

Suppose I'm hosting a sailing competition (or a car race or something similar). This competition is free to enter for anyone. All you have to do is show up *with your boat*. The winner of the competition is the one who sails the course the fastest.

Now to make the competition more interesting, I want to give the winner 1) a rare and unique trophy and 2) a free gif from the sponsors, like a watch or something.

Are these two prizes allowed? The gifts are known in advance, there's no fee to enter the race, anyone can enter. I would say there's no skilled gaming involved since it's free to enter the race. You won't lose more than your pride

As far as I can tell not only is this based on skill but it's also free meaning no money is being exchanged for goods. I think you're completely safe on this one 👍

[Romy Writer]

Hopefully the conveyor idea doesn't catch on, it sounds like a terrible way to shop. Pretty sure I will avoid this method no matter who is using it or what they are selling. Either way I suspect it will be interesting to see how things unravel going forward.

[So Whimsy]

Just now, Romy Writer said:

Hopefully the conveyor idea doesn't catch on, it sounds like a terrible way to shop. Pretty sure I will avoid this method no matter who is using it or what they are selling. Either way I suspect it will be interesting to see how things unravel going forward.

100% agree. It doesn't sound appealing at all.

[Shuichi Shinji]

1 hour ago, Skell Dagger said:

Since the 'roller script' as per the example created by Nadi Vemo has been given the thumbs-up in the FAQ, then all concerns about unscrupulous use of such scripts ("Of course you have a chance of getting that ultra-rare; we set it at 0.01% chance!") could be nixed completely by one thing:

A single, Linden-approved script.

In my opinion, LL should not interfere with anything that is or can be created by inworld content creators, in this case scripters (even if one scripter wins the contest and provides the scipt for all to use, it would not result in the same earnings). I know, this is just one script and I can see the benefit of the idea, but I fear it would just open a can of worms...

[Cinos Field]

I seriously have to imagine the lawyers misunderstood the question.

[VergilISparda]

2 hours ago, Romy Writer said:

Hopefully the conveyor idea doesn't catch on, it sounds like a terrible way to shop. Pretty sure I will avoid this method no matter who is using it or what they are selling. Either way I suspect it will be interesting to see how things unravel going forward.

Some will do it. They will then find out that nobody wants to play that (Assuming). They will lose their time, and then maybe abandon the idea, hopefully.

Edited August 6, 2021 by VergilISparda

[Dorientje Woller]

1 minute ago, Shuichi Shinji said:

In my opinion, LL should not interfere with anything that is or can be created by inworld content creators, in this case scripters (even if one scripter wins the contest and provides the scipt for all to use, it would not result in the same earnings). I know, this is just one script and I can see the benefit of the idea, but I fear it would just open a can of worms...

In fact, LL has already given everybody a script: Remove Gachas before the 31st of August. And instead of trying to find ways around the ban, wasting your time in complaining, maybe, just maybe creators and store owners should have started to follow the advice given by Linden Labs: remove gachas, unpack them and sell those items through the conventional means. Even the excuse of it's too much work doesn't hold in this case as Linden Labs did not specified a period in which those as previous known gacha items should be re-uploaded. 

[Cinos Field]

I am also noticing that the conveyor system must unlock between buyers which means sniping will be possible.

The ways of the lindens truly are mysterious.

[Shuichi Shinji]

21 minutes ago, Viche Hexem said:

Maybe you could just pay the not attached-to-hud element of the machine and that could relay to the hud element that you had paid. Maybe you could pay a non hud attached machine for conveyor-vouchers and then use those vouchers on the attatched HUD element so it never has to ask for access to your L$ directly.

Yes, that could work. The vendor wouldn't even need to talk to the HUD regarding payments - the HUD could just be for displaying the next item, everything else can stay in the vendor (payment and delivery)... even a simple IM from the vendor would be enough in theory. It would also allow multiple users to use the vendor - the next item for each user that is displayed on their HUD would just stay as it is and not change, no matter how many others are also playing, so they would always get what they see.

If this concept is an interesting enough replacement for Gacha, I don't know...

[Leigh Tharnaby]

No fairy tale this time.

The gacha model of sales is done. Creators who used it to be exploitative killed it. Stop trying to save it.

No one wants tier vendors where you have to buy a bunch of stuff you don't want to get the one thing you do.

No one wants to waste their life away in front of a conveyor belt waiting for someone to buy the common so they can snag the rare behind it.

Greed killed it. Let it die. Stop trying to point fingers at other things and go "ban them too". It's done.