Count Burks
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Posts posted by Count Burks
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2 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:
How do you suggest they do that?
I have been thinking about this earlier today. A good start to filter between actual users and NPC's with a goal to increase user retention with new residents would be to add the following requirement to get your sim or location listed in the Second Life destination guide.
-. In order to get your parcel listed in the Second Life destination guide any Non Player Character you have in your region or parcel must be marked as scripted agent or NPC where appropriate.
This measure alone can help filter the search results for any Destination in world by excluding every single bot and NPC. This alone will cause new people who join the platform and wish to explore Second Life after they leave the "new user experience" location, to find actual people to interact with instead of landing at desolated locations populated by greeter bots and NPC's.
Also filter the listings of the destination guide based on actual visitors so the most active places show up first.
Good example, just visited and checked.
According to the Destination Guide one of the popular places shoved into my face is Dullahan Manor with and I will find 7 people there. I am supposed to find 7 actual people there.
I visit, I land in a mainland skybox on a parcel of 4096 meters. The building is there, where are the 7 people which are supposed to be there? Not a single person is there. Keep in mind I am in a skybox at 1700 meters height which is the entire experience being offered.
My experience gets better as I try to see who the actual avatars in the region are? Maybe the Destination Guide told me that there were 7 people not at the actual experience as advertised but that these 7 people are for the entire region. Could that be it?
In my search to track the 7 "people" I teleport to the ground on the mainland. The 7 people are supposed to be at this building which is a clothing store:
Entering the store I try to find the 7 people. Look I found them:
They are inside this box named Deviant Behavior.
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What's in the box?
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Dear Resident,
Available for rentย is a residential corner island locationย on a high-performanceย simย without any lag. This beautiful, green garden areaย comes withย 1250 primsย to build your home, and a size ofย 4096 metersย with full terraforming capabilities.
This is a landscaped island where everything is already in place for you in terms of plants, trees, shrubs, rocks and waterfalls etc....
This island allows you to just place your house on your terrain and you are ready to enjoy your new home in Second Life on your very own private property.ย Thisย corner island location with sunset views is the ideal spot to build your home with plenty of prims to decorate your island.
This beautiful cornerย island withย unspoiled ocean views will provide you a stableย environment for your house in the Second Life virtual world. When you need a larger parcel or more prims that is possible as well. You can speak to Count Burks directly and we will look for a solution.
The island is located on the Dreamworld islands in Second Life which is a high quality group of islands founded by Count Burks Estates and providing a home for many Second Life residents for years.
To visit the island do click the Teleport link: ย CLICK HERE TO TELEPORT
The rent for the island can be paid per week or per month as you desire to the tier meter which is located in the corner of the island. The rent for this super property is extremely affordable. The tier details for this island are displayed on the land itself.
When you have any questions IM Count Burks directly in world.
You can also visit Count Burks on the Second Life Marketplace:ย CLICK HERE FOR THE MARKETPLACE
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I am looking forward to meetingย you in world.
ย
Count Burks
Count Burks Estates - Excellent Land For A Modest Price
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5 minutes ago, Flea Yatsenko said:
People who are in SL don't focus on it like they used to. They log in, make their AV look good, then go do something else while they wait for an IM. As others noted it's difficult to tell who is a bot and who is just AFK. And most people are just chatting in Discord now. Heck there's even a thread about wanting SL group chat to show up in Discord. Why? Because they're using Discord as their main chat program.
That said, there are lots of places that fill their sims with bots and TPing there with aspirations of exploring and meeting people is massively disappointing.
SL has definitely changed in the last few years, it's not what it used to be, at all. The scene of meeting people at random hangouts and just searching for interests and being social is more or less over.
SL also feels completely empty because the hardcore users just want to make stuff, either content to upload or to make hang outs and in world builds. The ratio of content creator to user in SL skews heavily towards content creators. Usually social internet things are backwards, not enough content creators. But the whole bot thing and faking traffic is a common problem with starting social things on the internet. No one wants to show up if there's no content and people, and there's no content or people without people showing up in the first place.
I think the real sad pill for you will be realizing a lot of the internet is fake, AI articles, posts, etc. Admins using multiple accounts pretending to be different users. Reddit jump started itself this way, they even had a way for admins to toggle multiple accounts when making comments, and then they'd have conversations with themselves. I think it's just very obvious in SL, but if you look hard you will find a lot of the internet is fake. Fake votes, fake comments, fake articles, etc.
I really hope the SL mobile client is successful because all the phone users are a bunch of people who are only going to be able to consume content, it's going to be horrible to create anything for SL on a phone, and phones aren't very good at multi-tasking.
My hope is that something changes soon, because it definitely needs to. People are slowly trickling away from SL and they have been for a while.
Thanks for your post. The general consensus amongst people seems to shift towards agreement regarding erosion of the userbase and growth in fake avatars aka NPC's.
For a long time I am aware that bots, scripted agents etc.... were making up a certain percentage of the userbase. After recent attempts to explore and look what people are doing and into these days, the results were so underwhelming, I had a hard time to find the people and distinguish them from the NPC's.
I speak to many people in world every day, people enjoy being in world so there is an actual userbase in Second Life. However this is not taking anything away from the fact there is a massive growth in NPC usage to the point where this is frustrating current users and makes a really poor impression to new users who join the platform.
When I did join Second Life in 2007 there were real users everywhere engaging with each other. This gave a good impression to me. If I would join today and would see this mess of empty places populated by bots mostly without even being pointed or guided to where the actual people are I would not be likely to participate.
I am also very much aware how many people like to have their scripted agents for their games, roleplay or just to populate their sims. People can do that but filters must be put in place.
And user numbers need to be correct instead of being inflated by 100% at certain points during the day.
On a personal level I have little to gain from posting this, however without new people joining and sticking around and an increase in user retention the userbase erosion will continue because certain people are not doing their job.
How can Linden Lab keep proper track of their userbase numbers and platform health if they do not even control the difference between an NPC and an actual user?
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Island available. IM Count Burks directly in world today.
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Island available. IM Count Burks directly in world today.
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Island available. IM Count Burks directly in world today.
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Island available. IM Count Burks directly in world today.
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Island available. IM Count Burks directly in world today.
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34 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:
First of all, "bots" and "scripted agents" are the basically same thing, and secondly, "NPC's are usually neither of the first two labels. NPC's is a term usually used for non-user account basedย greeters, basically an in-world rezzed OBJECT, that moves and "speaks" via an LSL script, so your rant about flagging NPC's as pink dots not green is pointless, because NPC's are not map dots at all.
Just to clarify for you. I refer to any avatar in world who is not a normal regular user avatar controlled by a human as NPC. I deliberately choose the term Non Player Character to broadly categorize bots, Scripted Agents and avatars used to greet, camp or do anything as they see fit.
The reason for suggesting the description of NPC is because every gamer on the planet knows what a Non Player Character is. With the eye on user retention of new residents in Second Life using a term that will be able to understand clearly for everybody seems the most appropriate.ย
One could use the term NRC as in Non Resident Character but do you really want to confuse new players?ย
Putting a Status of Non Player Character into the user profile where it is adequate seems the most logical to me, especially towards new people.
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This topic is about the need to distinguish between the actual Second Life userbase or Residents in world versus the large amount of bots, scripted agents and NPC's which appear to have grown in large amounts and are making up for an increasing percentage number of the in-world population.
This topic is not a complaint thread about bots or to discuss bots. The focus of this thread is on NPC's which appear to be used more and more frequently by many land owners in world for a plethora of reasons.
Chapter 1: Inaccurate presentation of the product
During recent exploration in world I have never seen so many places populated with NPC's or scripted agents. Some are bots used to bump traffic on regions or parcels. You arrive at a sim with 45 people on it but the sim appears to be empty, upon further investigation where all he actual green dots are, you notice groups of avatars being stacked together in skyboxes or in holes under water just to drive up traffic numbers for that specific parcel or region.
I visited places in the destination guide to look what people create. Upon arrival at certain locations, while the destination guide tells me there are 6 people at this specific region at the moment, when I arrive I find there are no actual people to be found who are in actualityย bots. Bots which have been put in place at the location by the owner. In this case to populate a nude beach with naked avatar bodies doing gymnastics on beach chairs.
Another region had avatars running around as police officers, at first they appeared as normal people who were doing things until you notice the pattern in how they navigate on the region. Again no actual Residents to engage with.
And the list goes on and on....
@Linden Labย when you advertise to your userbase there are currently 40000 logged in users but 20000 of those logged in users are not actual humans but NPC's in your game or virtual world you are committing to deceptive advertising. You must be the only game platform or virtual world on the planet who are calculating their in game NPC's as users and advertise these numbers to the public. "Look what a vibrant world we have there are 48000 people logged in" .ย
By doing so you create false expectations for your merchants, regular users, entrepreneurs but most importantly towards actual new players or users for your platform.
After thinking about the numbers of NPC's that are logged in I have a made rough estimation of 12000 to 18000. This is a total number for the collection of bots, scripted agents and NPC's. I came up with this number after teleporting around on the grid using the map, visiting destinations in the destination guide and other knowledge I have. This number also continues to grow and that is an issue which is my reason to post about this here.
Chapter 2: The main complaint
I find it abnormal when I explore in world and teleport to regions claiming to have a lot of visitors that I almost exclusively meet scripted agents or bots. This didn't provide me with a good impressionย @Linden Labย When I click on the map on a sim with plenty of green dots I expect to find a vibrant place with users, a place that has things to offer. Now think for a moment, when myself, a 17 year old account perceives this as negative to find these zombie populated places, what kind of impression is this giving to normal casual visitors or even worse to new users who visit Second Life for the first time?
I am not the only one to bring up the fact that users are having a hard time to find actual people in world, here is an example what people think about this:
Pay attention to the last sentences, where the user is unsure about the fact if there are even actual people or if they are just bots, scripted agents or NPC's. Pay attention how this fact spoils the user experience for this individual, and for thousands like him. While new players might meet some people on social island or help island, what comes after that for them? The Destination Guide filled with false statistics because @Linden Labย views a bot or scripted agent the same as an actual user?
It is strange that the head of product @Grumpity Lindenย is completely overlooking the fact how the product is perceived by the user, or this mess, where non player characters are just included within theย actual user numbers of the platform. This very fact spoils the new user experience for people who join the platform and absolutely nothing is being done to fix this.
When a new user walks into Second Life and views the virtual world as: "Second Life the fake world populated with fake bot avatars" this will of course lead to incredible low user retention.
New users in particular should be clearly notified through the destination guide and other resources such as the map or mini map where there are actual people whom they can interact with.
Bots or NPC's or Scripted Agents should vanish completely from every statistic relating to traffic or user numbers. Destination Guide locations should not mention false user number statistics anymore like it is the case today. Every single Non Player Character needs to be excluded from every statistic pertaining to user numbers or traffic numbers.
New Users should find it very easy to identify actual residents versus Non Player Characters.
New Users should not be mislead through the world map where the busy places are with actual people versus the bot infested traffic boosting places.
All Second Life users should be able to clearly distinguish a Resident from a Non Player Character with the click of a mouse if they are in doubt about the identity of an avatar.
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Such measures will lead to improved user satisfaction and will enhance the user experience for both current residents but also for new residents who join the platform as they will be able to identify and locate each other in world much better.ย
Chapter 3: Need for transparency and activation of workable solutions
"Well Count Burks you like to complain a lot so what can we do?"
While the measures and techniques described in this section will not completely solve the lack of user retention for Second Life it can and will be a first step which will drastically improve the ability for residents both new and old to locate and make connections with other users on the platform, and all of this this without affecting the usage of bots, scripted agents or Non Player Characters NPC's.
These little adjustments inside of the viewer combined with the filtering of scripted agents and subtracting those numbers from the logged in user statistics, and also deducting these numbers from the Destination Guide statistics will vastly enhance the accuracy and ability to find other people in world.ย
This will lead to enhanced user satisfaction where the amount of frustration and confusion for residents decreases as they will be able to identify other players clearly and distinguish them from the many Non Player Characters active in world and who continue to rise in numbers month after month.
1. User Versus Non Player Character: The World Map
Bots, Scripted Agents and NPC's are in essence all viewed as Scripted Agents by @Linden Labย and per Linden Lab their policy must be registered as a Scripted Agent.
Having this status makes it easy for Linden Lab to identify any NPC in world. The very first step is to identify any NPC character in world on the main grid map. This will allow any platform user to easily filter between actual people in a location versus locations where bots are gathering.
For example: A certain Resident mainly likes to be in Second Life for its social aspect, this resident will be interested to find actual people to talk with. Making it easy for this person to find and discover active places where he can talk to others by using the main map will significantly reduce his frustration in not finding people in world, therefor this measure will enhance his user experience and level of satisfaction with the platform. This will lead to more frequent visits and participation in the Second Life world.
The image below provides an example of a sim populated with 21 bots versus 3 real users. Bots are being used to boost traffic mostly. A casual user might click on this region as he is curious about the people there but find a mostly dead place which will frustrate the user as his time has been wasted visiting this place.ย
By clearly distinguishing between users and Non Player Characters a Resident is less likely to visit this region after viewing all the pink dots on the map. The resident will just skip the region and look for other regions with more green dots. No frustration, no time wasting, no negative experience as it should be. The user is no longer misled by false expectations of finding a vibrant active region where he can interact and find other Residents to talk to in his search for social contact.ย
This is easy to program for Linden Lab, has a low cost to implement and will improve the Second Life experience for everybody.
ย 2. User Versus Non Player Character: The Mini Map
Just as with the main map, the mini map will also assist residents in better navigation in world. By implementing this same feature on the mini map a user who is active on a Roleplay sim will find this feature useful when he needs to locate NPC characters on the sim instead of his fellow players. Seeing a clear difference between users versus Non Player Characters will again assist platform users in avoiding frustration. People who like to explore the mainland and use the mini map in doing so, will again be spared from bot gathering places or fake traffic places where they waste time and become frustrated by the lack of human interaction and log out because of this. Again this is an easy and low cost measure for @Linden Labย to implement.
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1. User Versus Non Player Character: The Profile Window
As I wrote above there is a need to clearly identify users versus Non Player Characters, especially for newer residents in world. The increase of NPC's in world causes confusion with people.
For example a new Resident comes from the Help Island or the Social Island. This user put his Credit Card in the system as he would like to go shopping to buy items for his avatar.
The user visits a store and notices an avatar with the Group tag of the store. The user would like to ask for more information so he IM's that particular avatar who is nothing more than an NPC being placed by the store owner within their shop. Instead of getting an answer nothing happens. The user is not very impressed with the lack of response so he teleports away not understanding why he got ignored.ย
Making users aware of Non Player Characters and allow anyone to identify a Non Player Character with the click of a mouse will make it more transparent for residents to see what they are dealing with. A small adjustment in the Profile Window will assist residents to clearly distinguish between a human controlled avatar versus a bot or NPC. Again removing frustration and confusion for new players, in particular newer residents.
As in the image below, setting a specific status for the NPC or Scripted Agent inside of the profile is again a low cost and easy to implement measure to enhance transparency between users and Non Player Characters as to remove any confusion about the identity of an avatar. It is there so use it. A simple pink icon in this case is all what is needed to properly inform anyone about the status of an avatar in world.
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SUMMARY
ย @Linden Labย years of complaints by users about "Where are all the people?" Complaints about the many bots who have been replacing your user base little by little. A higher amount of fake user statistics that is being presented to your customers and user base. It is time, well more than time that you take active steps to filter between all the fake NPC's which you are calculating and presenting as your userbase to the outside world and your actual users in world.
"But Count Burks Second Life always has had the bots included in the user stats for many years."
That might be the case but those bots did not make up such a large percentage of users like they are at the moment. Hence the reason to filter them out of the user statistics, destination guide statistics and filter them from the main world map and mini map.
It is perfectly achievable for Linden Lab to do this as each scripted agent is identified or is supposed to identify itself. Every bot farmer who offers bots knows he needs to register his bots and is doing so.
When you put up a statistic that there are currently 48000 users logged in while you in fact have 30000 users logged in does not help you and creates false expectations.ย
As a social platform people expect to find and meet, interact with other people, yet you make it incredible hard for this to happen, this leads to your userbase eroding a little at the time, frustrations with your customers and statements like "Second Life is a ghost town" or "I think they were bots".
@Linden Labย it is perfectly within your options to fix this and will benefit you and hopefully for you increase the user retention on your platform. The fact that your staff does not think about implementing this, or that your staff is not taking measures to reduce user frustration with the platform causing them not the return and lacks taking steps to find solutions for this issue will not do your company any good.
@Grumpity Lindenย head of product, your product userbase is eroding, people do speak about their frustrations with your product but you do not seem to listen much, let alone come up with solutions and implement them. As head of product you are responsible to fix issues with the product, clear visible issues you should handle.
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The reason I am posting this here is that I am curious to hear from other platform users are thinking about this.
As a Second Life user would you like to see this implemented in the viewer?
Would it benefit you in navigating the world?
Would it help you in not wasting time teleporting to regions you would otherwise avoid?
Would you find it good if you can just right click an avatar and see via its profile status if it is a bot or an actual user?
Do you think this will increase user retention especially with new people who come to Second Life?
Do you have anything else you wish to add?
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*To the usual trolls, do not litter the thread, do not post idiotic comments or other garbage and smiley faces. To the forum dragons, no drama and spitting venom. If you have useful things to add you can.
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Island available. IM Count Burks directly in world today.
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Island available. IM Count Burks directly in world today.
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Island available. IM Count Burks directly in world today.
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Island available. IM Count Burks directly in world today.
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Island available for autumn season . IM Count Burks directly in world today.
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Island available. IM Count Burks directly in world today.
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Island available. IM Count Burks directly in world today.
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Island available. IM Count Burks directly in world today.
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Island available. IM Count Burks directly in world today.
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Dear Resident,
Available for rent is a beautiful corner island located on a calm residential island.ย This parcel is 1/4th of a sim in size which is 16384 Mยฒ.ย The property is located on a fast Class 8 sim that has plenty of resources available. Theย island will provide you with a land impact capacity ofย 7500 primsย to build.
The surface of the terrainย is 128 by 128 metersย large in size. This particular property can be usedย as commercial or residential land. This island also comes with full terraforming permissions so that you can adjust the terrain of the island to match your environment for your home.You can IM Count Burks directly in world with all your questions that you might have and to speak about your specific requirements in terms of buildings and structures that you would like to place on your land. You can directly teleport to the island by clicking on the link below.๏ปฟ
Do not hesitate to IM Count Burks directly in world.
You can also visit Count Burks on theย Second Life Marketplaceย for more land listings.
ย
Count Burks
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Count Burks Estates - Excellentย Land For A Modest Price
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Island available. IM Count Burks directly in world today.
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Beautiful beach island availavble. IM Count Burks directly in world today.
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Island available. IM Count Burks directly in world today.
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Island available. IM Count Burks directly in world today.
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๐ LindenLab ๐ : The Strong Need For Differentiation Between Actual Residents Versus Bots, Scripted Agents And NPC's In Second Life
in General Discussion Forum
Posted · Edited by Count Burks
Well they are bots, NPC's models for the store.
You do not believe me? Here is your SLURLย http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Imperial/159/91/52
This is the user experience Linden Lab provided me with using their Destination guide. I was supposed to find a location with 7 people, one of the more busy destinations.