Linden Realms Cheating

[OnoGrinds]

Linden Realms

Hello Forum Folk. I normally just browse the forums and don't write much, but I feel like the time has come to say something.

I expected that as the worst of the pandemic began to fade and people began returning to their RLs, that the number of residents seen in SL would naturally fade. Instead (in my experience anyway) there seem to be even more residents in SL. Many who came during their quarantining have stayed! That's a great thing and I'm glad for it, with one sad exception: even more residents cheating in Linden Realms.

Yes, I know, cheaters have always been a problem in Linden Realms, just as they are in nearly any game. Some of us who are gamers outside of SL look for exploits in Linden Realms just as we do in other games. Problem is, exploits stay within the rules while maybe bending them; it's a different thing to blatantly break the rules. Signs both at Portal Park and within the two Linden Realms locations warn against cheating, but because there is close to zero enforcement these signs are being ignored. Spend just five minutes in Linden Realms and you are likely to see residents using speed enhancers, animations that allow long jumps, followers, and other cheats. I take Linden Lab at their word and report cheaters now and then, but as we all know either nothing appears to change, or banned residents just create new avatars and resume their cheating. Even residents who I suspect have been given a "time out" from Linden Realms are later seen back doing the same cheats.

I'm not sure why LL hasn't added coding to the LR HUD that temporarily disables all other HUDS and temporarily disables third party animations. Granted, the movements of some avatars (animals for example) might be able to move only in human ways while in game. Nevertheless, I'd rather play with walking fish than selfish cheaters.

I suspect that all available moles are working on building housing rather than monitoring cheaters in Linden Realms, and that's understood. But it sure would be nice to see an end to cheaters speeding, long jumping, and flying past us and emptying regions of the crystals we all crave. I can report and block those residents, but that doesn't change their behaviors or the wider impacts of their behaviors.

I'm not sure what answers might be feasible, but would love to hear any and all ideas.

[Waiomao]

Welcome to the Forum OnoGrinds!

Yeah, I've seen more cheaters too, but there are as many reasons to cheat as there are cheaters. I worry that some residents may be struggling in RL and use Linden Realms and Paleo Quest for a little (very little) pocket money. Desperate times lead to desperate measures. Because the payout is so low (L25), such folks would need to create a lot of alts and push them all through their game of choice to get anything but a tiny payout. That scenario could explain what looks like an increase in cheaters. They bug me too (HEY! THAT WAS *MY* GREEN CRYSTAL!) but I try to have some compassion for whatever they're going through in RL that would lead to those behaviors in SL. .

[Jaylinbridges]

I am in the Linden Realms several days every week, for the last 4 years.  I have not seen any increase in "cheating" during my time collecting crystals. I have yet to see any followers in the last two years, since Patch had the signs put up.  I have yet to have anyone out run me, at the standard avatar run speed.  Of course  I have no HUDs attached, except the Linden HUD, that keeps detaching every game.  Most of the re-attach HUD terminals do not work.  You need to keep crossing region boundaries to wake up the re attach the LR Hud script.  I wish they could fix this bug in the game,.  It has been there since LR began.

Some players seem to think that all green crystals are theirs.  If I see a green crystal, I will run to it, at legal speed, and if I get there before you do, it means I was closer to it than you.  Newton's laws of motion still apply in the LR.

What you should be complaining about is that LL has reduced the Realms from six estates to one estate.  The number of crystals generated has not increased for one estate, but the number of players is now about triple what it was.  And, some players are just more experienced or have solid internet connections (zero lag) and will beat you to the high value crystals in a race.  Not cheating.

Edited February 7, 2023 by Jaylinbridges

[Unpronounceable1]

Hey OnoGrinds, I've seen all that too. Linden Realms has always been buggy, so ridiculously buggy that it could never stand alone as a game in RL (to be fair to LL, SL's building tools aren't designed for building games). I sometimes wonder though if Linden Labs has been purposely allowing Realms to fall apart in order to eventually eliminate the liability it represents. After all, what might they do with that money if it wasn't being paid to the likes of us? Most of us put that money back into the SL economy, but LL could use those funds for infrastructure projects. I've wondered the same about LL disallowing outside HUDs, etc.

Waiomao I had never considered people using Realms as a supplemental income; times are tough and there may well be a handful of folks doing this. But with such a small payout? Like you say, maybe with a hundred alts 🙂 We'll never know, but situations like poverty could drive people to do things they might not do normally. What things might any of us do to protect, house, or feed our families? If just a handful of Linden Dollars would help, to them I say go for it!

Wow Jaylinbridges, that's amazing. I'm also in Linden Realms regularly and regularly see all the things the OP mentioned. Maybe you are playing at times when the creeps are asleep. 🙂   Totally agree though about some players thinking that crystals "belong to them" and end up playing rudely, even if legally. And yup, agreed that fewer regions means fewer crystals, and more competition for what's left. The upside to this is that there are rarely crowds waiting in Portal Park for the next LR region to cycle around.

[Jaylinbridges]

6 hours ago, Unpronounceable1 said:

Maybe you are playing at times when the creeps are asleep.

Maybe   I usually don't go to the Realms between 8am SLT and 11pm SLT, because I am either sleeping or working on my businesses.  Those are American continent hours and European hours.  I see mostly foreign sounding names (to me) when American continent peeps are usually sleeping. Continent means North and South America and all in between of course. But still, followers are obvious to see, and before the signs and  the 50% cut in quest reward, I saw followers all the time.  I have not seen anyone with another avatar attached for several years.  That was the only kind of cheating that amounted to anything, especially when xyz001 to xyz100 was systematically running with 4 avatars attached thru the quests until they finished with xyz100.  Then they moved to Paleoquest and did the same thing.  They are all gone from what I have seen.

I see lots of tiny bugs and critters there, and some seem to think jumping gets them somewhere faster.  Of course it does not, but they probably never took a physics class, so they don't know any better.

About once a month I see someone using the gravity settings to "fly" over the rocks in the swamp and lava pit quests.  They get out of my way faster, and seldom collect crystals.  They also save about 30 seconds over legal jumping the rocks to the quest.  So if saving 30 seconds PER WEEK gives them a thrill, so be it.  Nothing to get concerned about.    Now I see single players with normal account names simply running through the quests and collecting crystals.  Most of the players have been in SL for 1000 to 5000 days too.  The 1 day old alts have also disappeared. And everyone I see has PIOF, which they need to cash in any crystals or quests.

I was there last night from 3am to 7am - saw no cheating, and collected about 100L in crystals plus completing the quests for next week.  Only reason I averaged 25L/hr was I caught a region right after the restart, and was the first one in.  I don't exactly need the lindens, they are about 0.1% of my SL income, but I do enjoy getting the stupid rock monsters to all collide with each other and explode.  I figure there is a Linden playing the monsters.

 

[Piikoi]

Aloha OnoGrinds, you must be in/from Hawai'i too 🙂

Yeah, I've been seeing more cheaters in Linden Realms for the past two or three months. Don't know what changed to cause or allow that, but yea, there *seem to be* plenty of them in there. What's weirder to me is that no matter when I log in, there are a handful of avatars I see in there EVERY TIME. It feels like there is a team behind the avatar taking the game in shifts. I imagine a laptop being passed from person to person in a retirement home somewhere 🙂 

Edited February 15, 2023 by Piikoi
misspelling

[Jaylinbridges]

On 2/15/2023 at 1:59 PM, Piikoi said:

What's weirder to me is that no matter when I log in, there are a handful of avatars I see in there EVERY TIME. It feels like there is a team behind the avatar taking the game in shifts. I imagine a laptop being passed from person to person in a retirement home somewhere 🙂 

With only one estate operating now, you will see the same players more often.  I have noticed avatars with different names but the same awful Linden library newbie outfits more often too because they all go to the same LR167 village region from the portal.  But they are only playing one avatar at a time and with different account names.  I don't call this cheating.  I have still not seen anyone using follower avatars for years.  What time of day do you see them?  Collecting crystals 24/7 is not cheating either.  And if there is a team effort in RL behind that, why would that be cheating?  I can see some school clubs, or even large families using the same computer and avatar, or multiple avatars, to play 24/7.  With some currency exchanges that might amount to enough income to buy groceries for a few days.  It is still not cheating.  Just poor people with nothing better to do.

What I do notice is too many players for only one Linden Realms estate.  I counted 30 avatars the other morning in the LR161 to LR172 regions , using the dot map to see them all.  Of the 12 regions, usually 3 have no players.  With 30 players using 9 regions it's easy for 2-3 players to clear all the crystals in a few minutes.  Major refreshes of crystals happen about every 25 mins.  It can't be that profitable for the "cheaters" either, if someone would define what a cheater really is, and how they are affecting your game?

 

Edited February 17, 2023 by Jaylinbridges

[Rick Nightingale]

I never understood how people could cheat with speed enhancers and the like in the Realms. The few times I bothered to play there, I would get chucked out on a regular basis - just by normal running and jumping around. Jump over a rock - get chucked out. Slide down a mountain... get chucked out. Just be mid running... find myself back home yet again. I never used or did anything to cheat. So how on Earth do cheaters manage?

It got on my nerves so much I gave up. Besides, there are other 'games' which seem far more lucrative for less stress, not that I bother.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Rick Daylight said:

I never understood how people could cheat with speed enhancers and the like in the Realms. The few times I bothered to play there, I would get chucked out on a regular basis - just by normal running and jumping around. Jump over a rock - get chucked out. Slide down a mountain... get chucked out. Just be mid running... find myself back home yet again. I never used or did anything to cheat. So how on Earth do cheaters manage?

It got on my nerves so much I gave up. Besides, there are other 'games' which seem far more lucrative for less stress, not that I bother.

Perhaps they have scripts that limit their exploits to a certain max velocity, etc.?

Could stay under the radar that way.

[Rick Nightingale]

Could be. Maybe the system was more sensitive when I happened to try it years ago, or I was just unlucky. No matter - I was only seeing what it was.

[Jaylinbridges]

12 hours ago, Rick Daylight said:

The few times I bothered to play there, I would get chucked out on a regular basis - just by normal running and jumping around. Jump over a rock - get chucked out.

This is the way PaleoQuest still is today.  Jump 1 meter too high when you need to jump over a rock or small cliff, and it boots you back to the start zone.  There is really no way to control the height of a jump.  Hold down the Page Up key 1 ms too long and you shoot up like a rocket, beyond your control.  It takes a really light touch to avoid this crappy program's safeguards. Then the warning says, you are being ejected either because you were standing still, or flying, or your hair is a mess today.  

Linden Realms has eliminated most of the traps.  It is after all a running and jumping game.  There are many invisible physics prims hanging around at cliffs, where you must jump to continue the game.  In a few spots, I jump as normal, and can either go up 2 meters or 30 meters, sometimes jumping over the tallest tree.  This just wastes my time, since there are no crystals in the sky, or in the trees.  At least this random jump behaviour does not trigger their eject algorithm anymore.

What they have instead is the evil green mist.  You can trigger it in a few regions by entering a region before you have completed the quest for that region.  The swamp is the best example.  It also happens in the upper forest, where the heart tree is, if you get eaten by a rock monster, and sent back to the recovery tank.  You land in the tank, and then get hit with the green mist. Double whammy.  This can crash some video cards, always removes your game HUD, and wastes another 60 seconds.  I immediately attempt to TP back to the safe village region.  But interestingly, while the village is supposed to be safe, since there is no game inside, the green mist can strike you again in the safe village.  In which case I just TP home and log out, because such aggravation is not worth the time.  I guess that was their plan anyway.  

Edited February 22, 2023 by Jaylinbridges

[Charolotte Caxton]

3 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

This is the way PaleoQuest still is today.  Jump 1 meter too high when you need to jump over a rock or small cliff, and it boots you back to the start zone.  There is really no way to control the height of a jump.  Hold down the Page Up key 1 ms too long and you shoot up like a rocket, beyond your control.  It takes a really light touch to avoid this crappy program's safeguards. Then the warning says, you are being ejected either because you were standing still, or flying, or your hair is a mess today.  

Linden Realms has eliminated most of the traps.  It is after all a running and jumping game.  There are many invisible physics prims hanging around at cliffs, where you must jump to continue the game.  In a few spots, I jump as normal, and can either go up 2 meters or 30 meters, sometimes jumping over the tallest tree.  This just wastes my time, since there are no crystals in the sky, or in the trees.  At least this random jump behaviour does not trigger their eject algorithm anymore.

What they have instead is the evil green mist.  You can trigger it in a few regions by entering a region before you have completed the quest for that region.  The swamp is the best example.  It also happens in the upper forest, where the heart tree is, if you get eaten by a rock monster, and sent back to the recovery tank.  You land in the tank, and then get hit with the green mist. Double whammy.  This can crash some video cards, always removes your game HUD, and wastes another 60 seconds.  I immediately attempt to TP back to the safe village region.  But interestingly, while the village is supposed to be safe, since there is no game inside, the green mist can strike you again in the safe village.  In which case I just TP home and log out, because such aggravation is not worth the time.  I guess that was their plan anyway.  

Linden Realms always felt to me like they didn't want me to be there. Get killed over crystals that do nothing. I didn't come to Second Life to die.