NextUP and other Gacha Replacements are still Gacha

[Rowan Amore]

7 minutes ago, Zia Underwood said:

Youre still not seeing D.  or E or F or G etc.

So what?  You're still not.purchasing an unknown.

Your argument should be that the new machines are more of a scam not that they are against the rules.  Anyone who buys an item or ten, they do not want to receive one they do is certainly being taken advantage of.  Not saying they aren't.  The ONLY thing LL has abolished is the actual purchasing of an UNKNOWN item.  

[Finite]

3 minutes ago, Zia Underwood said:

But Im chancing a guess you Finite and the others defending this tripe are profiting off of it.  

Hmm you're more than welcome to check out my gacha store. I never claimed to profit from gacha and I kind of doubt anyone actually did just from my own experience. I recouped a very small % of what I spent sure. But most of my extras are either still in my inventory or were given or traded away to friends or other gacha players trying to complete sets. I'm not a creator or a merchant. I am a consumer.

[LittleMe Jewell]

Yes, it is

No, is isn't

Yes, it is

No, is isn't

Yes, it is

No, is isn't

Yes, it is

No, is isn't

Yes, it is

No, is isn't

Yes, it is

No, is isn't

Yes, it is

No, is isn't

Yes, it is

No, is isn't

Yes, it is

No, is isn't

Yes, it is

No, is isn't

[Rowan Amore]

8 minutes ago, Chris Nova said:

NO, its NOT known. You want the black shirt. What is being shown is the red shirt but you have no idea what is next. You are making purchases on what you want, not what is being shown. Even in a conveyor style gacha machine, if youre number isnt in the list of numbers being shown, you have no idea what is next because its randomized. Youre still buying randomized stuff for the stuff you actually want and theres always a chance what you want won't even show. Its a gacha and always will be a gacha. You're being fooled.

People played gacha machines (before the ban) the same way. You played for what you wanted and the items were randomized. Even if you can see what the next item was, you would still play for the stuff you wanted. Thats the whole concept behind a gacha: The randomization of purchases...which still exists in these new machines because people will always play them for what they want, not what is being shown. If you're playing for the black shirt and you get 3 reds, 4 green, 1 blue, 1 purple, 5 orange, 2 browns before finally getting the black shirt...that is a randomization of purchases.

How is what you have purchased, unknown?  THAT is the only thing that matters.  No more selling unknown items.  Period.  You WILL know what is next when it shows up.  It's not forcing you to purchase it.  HOW you choose to play is irrelevant to LL.

What you are failing to understand is that LL doesn't care about you or your gambling addiction.  If you play it the way you say, they don't care.  As.long as their rule says you have to know what you are paying for, that's all that matters to them.  Even if what you want doesn't come up for 3 days, they don't care.

The only thing you can do as a consumer, is not purchase things from those machines.

There is a merchant I'd occasionally buy a gatcha from.  They did cute little animesh critters you wore.  Adorable!  I never cared which one I got.  I saw them recently at an event and they were using one of the new machines instead of just selling me the item like normal merchants.  Didn't even bother looking to see exactly what it was.  I will never use the new machines. 

[Rowan Amore]

I'm NOT defending this new machine in any way.  I rarely played gachas and I never resold.  I think this machine is worse than gachas.

The machines are a scam but not illegal in the eyes of LL.

[Blaise Glendevon]

45 minutes ago, Zia Underwood said:

Youre still not seeing D.  or E or F or G etc.

So? 

[Dyna Mole]

Step back from the keyboards, please, and take a few really deep breaths.   It's good to have a hearty discussion, but please remember that we are expected to avoid personal attacks.  You are encouraged to review the Community Guidelines.

[Robin Kiyori]

On 10/4/2021 at 1:58 PM, Solar Legion said:

Robin, not all ND types are going to agree with you. Some may even bristle at what you're doing.

Count this as at least one, doing both.

Could.. you explain what you believe I am doing? I am not speaking for all people that are ND,   just the ones that like me have things that make us more susceptible to forming addictive patterns.

 

Also..what is there to agree/disagree on? my point was that as a specturm.. no two peoples' needs are going to be the same..

[Zia Underwood]

18 hours ago, Jordan Whitt said:

I agree with what @Sammy Huntsman said about addictions existing and do realise that it can be hard to fight against them.  After all, I am a ex-smoker and drinker who beat those addiction years ago.  I also have kept pumping lindens into a gacha machine telling myself "2 more pulls and then I will stop" and then "just 2 more" until I have spent thousands in the pursuit of an item I never got.  But that was my fault.  I chose to keep putting money in and pulling worthless items I did not want.  I only had myself to blame for it.  It was not the creator's fault that I chose not to stop sooner.  

Its not.  You look into the psychology of skinner boxes and wallace loot boxes so you actually understand whats going on in your brain when you engage with these mechanics.  Our brains behave in certain ways and these evolutionary developments can and are exploited. 

I dont see why anyone finds it a hard strectch to believe that in a system that places profits before people that abusing explotive techniques to get more money wouldnt be used.

I would be fine with gacha remaining on the grid if it were heavily regulated and treated as gambling.  But it cannot be effectively regulated so it should be removed.

[Blaise Glendevon]

2 minutes ago, Zia Underwood said:

I would be fine with gacha remaining on the grid if it were heavily regulated and treated as gambling.  But it cannot be effectively regulated so it should be removed.

Are you going to quit playing Second Life if the new adaptations of the game aren't removed? I don't understand what this desperate last stand is about. The new machines do not violate TOS. Stores are free to conduct themselves any way they want, as long as they abide by the terms of service. Sims are free to host whatever they like, as long as they similarly abide by the codes. 

I am failing to see the point of going any farther after you've had it explained that the Lindens have declared the new boxes street legal and ready to launch.

[Zia Underwood]

15 minutes ago, Blaise Glendevon said:

Are you going to quit playing Second Life if the new adaptations of the game aren't removed? I don't understand what this desperate last stand is about. The new machines do not violate TOS. Stores are free to conduct themselves any way they want, as long as they abide by the terms of service. Sims are free to host whatever they like, as long as they similarly abide by the codes. 

I am failing to see the point of going any farther after you've had it explained that the Lindens have declared the new boxes street legal and ready to launch.

Linden labs allowing the exploitation of a loop hole in their own loosely defined TOS isnt proof that they arent gacha and they arent gambling.   Its only proof that Linden Labs commitment was to avoiding legal hurdles that are coming their way.  Not the health and safety of their customers.  The fights not over but Ill continue to do the work of calling my politicians and raising awareness on this subject wherever it arises.  Becuse I feel its important.  I feel that gacha only lines pockets and adds no value to anything it touches.  Its a way to artificially inflate profit margins through the explotation of brain chemistry.

It's immoral to not consider the economic impact of those who are taken by these scams.   And its irresponsible to not offer regulation and protections.  I personally believe in communities watching out for one another.  Not an every person for themself world view.  Thats the core of this whole disagreement.  That and the money the content creators and in turn LL rake in by using it.

Edited October 5, 2021 by Zia Underwood

[Polenth Yue]

The debate reminds me of people who'd get angry about churches having raffles at fundraisers for roof repairs. Gambling was always completely evil in all ways, so there was no room to see a difference between the roof repair raffle where you could win a box of chocolates and betting your life savings on the horses.

Second Life's issue is that we have no way to split between the trivial random-pet-rock games and the more extreme examples. It was down to how the machines were used, so the ban ended up taking them all out. It may have unintended impacts on things like 7Seas in the future, despite the fish being token prizes.

Basically, this is about banning gumball machines for having multiple flavours, because some other system took someone's life savings. It doesn't help to brand the gumballs as the problem, which is what happens if you take the stance that random prizes are totally evil in all ways and context never matters.

[Blaise Glendevon]

Just now, Zia Underwood said:

That and the money the content creators and in turn LL rake in by using it.

This is the funniest part of the whole discussion. There are very few content creators who "rake it in." In fact, Gacha was seen as a way to break even in volume even if the pull price is lower than a regularly priced item of the same quality. If creators charged what things cost in time and skill and training to make, I'm reasonably sure some of y'all would complain about that as well. Secondhand gacha and individual pull purchases were an excellent way to get good items for cheap. 

[Finite]

1 minute ago, Blaise Glendevon said:

This is the funniest part of the whole discussion. There are very few content creators who "rake it in." In fact, Gacha was seen as a way to break even in volume even if the pull price is lower than a regularly priced item of the same quality. If creators charged what things cost in time and skill and training to make, I'm reasonably sure some of y'all would complain about that as well. Secondhand gacha and individual pull purchases were an excellent way to get good items for cheap. 

Just look at 3d sites like turbosquid and cgtrader to get a sense of what 3d products are typically sold for. Let alone of the extra work needed to get them to function in secondlife.

[Zia Underwood]

5 minutes ago, Polenth Yue said:

The debate reminds me of people who'd get angry about churches having raffles at fundraisers for roof repairs. Gambling was always completely evil in all ways, so there was no room to see a difference between the roof repair raffle where you could win a box of chocolates and betting your life savings on the horses.

Second Life's issue is that we have no way to split between the trivial random-pet-rock games and the more extreme examples. It was down to how the machines were used, so the ban ended up taking them all out. It may have unintended impacts on things like 7Seas in the future, despite the fish being token prizes.

Basically, this is about banning gumball machines for having multiple flavours, because some other system took someone's life savings. It doesn't help to brand the gumballs as the problem, which is what happens if you take the stance that random prizes are totally evil in all ways and context never matters.

funny you mention that because a lot of online gambling sites got around the laws of the land by using the laws that protected the church raffle and the home poker match.

Edited October 5, 2021 by Zia Underwood

[Blaise Glendevon]

5 minutes ago, Finite said:

Just look at 3d sites like turbosquid and cgtrader to get a sense of what 3d products are typically sold for. Let alone of the extra work needed to get them to function in secondlife.

Rigging for each of the major mesh bodies or paying a rigger to modify them if you're a shop that caters to a wide variety is a full-time job by itself.

[Finite]

1 minute ago, Blaise Glendevon said:

Rigging for each of the major mesh bodies or paying a rigger to modify them if you're a shop that caters to a wide variety is a full-time job by itself.

Yes and scripting can be expensive and time consuming too. My friend who scripts got paid 25k lindens to script something for a creator.

[Polenth Yue]

4 minutes ago, Zia Underwood said:

funny you mention that because a lot of online gambling sites got around the laws of the land by using the laws that protected the church raffle and the home poker match.

The online gambling sites are to blame for that and are the extreme examples. The church that needs a new roof is not to blame for that and is a trivial example. That's what I mean when I say that context matters. You don't show any signs of seeing that. Everything is binary. Good or bad. Right or wrong. But the world (and Second Life) really doesn't work like that.

[Rowan Amore]

10 minutes ago, Zia Underwood said:

Its only proof that Linden Labs commitment was to avoiding legal hurdles that are coming their way.  Not the health and safety of their customers.

That's what we've been telling you.  LL, as with almost every business, doesn't care about you.  In any way.  Ever.  The ban was for their protection, not yours.  If they cared about anyone's gambling addiction, we wouldn't have skilled gaming regions.

Shouting your point over and over again to residents will get you nowhere. 

 

[Blaise Glendevon]

1 minute ago, Finite said:

Yes and scripting can be expensive and time consuming too. My friend who scripts got paid 25k lindens to script something for a creator.

That's $105 USD. If you assume a low-to-middling $15 an hour, that's pay for about 7 hours of work. 

[Finite]

1 minute ago, Blaise Glendevon said:

That's $105 USD. If you assume a low-to-middling $15 an hour, that's pay for about 7 hours of work. 

It's actually about 2 hours. Generally this kind of labor is $50-$60 per hour and up depending on who you are working with.

[Zia Underwood]

2 minutes ago, Blaise Glendevon said:

Rigging for each of the major mesh bodies or paying a rigger to modify them if you're a shop that caters to a wide variety is a full-time job by itself.

Ya I did content creation for SL as did a bunch of my friends and I made quite a lot of money.  And lets not pretend like all these creators are out their making custom stuff.  Plenty of it is asset store purchases retextured.

Also hillarious way to admit that content creators had to trick people into spending more money to get paid.  Though I never hit an event that isnt packed to the brim immediately upon launching.  Guess everyone is spam tping to window shop.

[Blaise Glendevon]

5 minutes ago, Finite said:

It's actually about 2 hours. Generally this kind of labor is $50-$60 per hour and up depending on who you are working with.

I'm glad these people are valuing their labor, finally!

[Zia Underwood]

8 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

That's what we've been telling you.  LL, as with almost every business, doesn't care about you.  In any way.  Ever.  The ban was for their protection, not yours.  If they cared about anyone's gambling addiction, we wouldn't have skilled gaming regions.

Shouting your point over and over again to residents will get you nowhere. 

 

Now youre being disingenuous.  In the post above this one youre launching another defense of the NextUp styled systems. 

Let me ask you why are you here 4 day's in adamently defending them?

[Sammy Huntsman]

5 minutes ago, Zia Underwood said:

Ya I did content creation for SL as did a bunch of my friends and I made quite a lot of money.  And lets not pretend like all these creators are out their making custom stuff.  Plenty of it is asset store purchases retextured.

Do you have proof that it is asset store purchases retextured or you just blatantly and wrongly accusing something with no evidence to back it? 

6 minutes ago, Zia Underwood said:

Also hillarious way to admit that content creators had to trick people into spending more money to get paid.  Though I never hit an event that isnt packed to the brim immediately upon launching.  Guess everyone is spam tping to window shop.

Also no one is being tricked to spend more money, I mean we do have brains of our own and well we can decide what we want and don't want. 

You have been making baseless claim, borderlining character attacks and this needs to stop. Unless you have the proof that this system is the same and not going about making baseless claims. I think you need to stop slandering.