Zoren Manray

Yes that is true.. but if perception of what is in SL was purely a reason for a ban I could thank of a bunch of other things that should be outright banned as regulators in some countries would perceive them as unfavorable. as I've even said some action was clearly needed but the outright ban with no clear reasoning is making a mess of it.

The more I look into the actual legality of all this the more annoying it get's about the vagueness from LL about why this is being done. Again yes I agree some controls were needed but outright ban? Seems the only Countries with strict anti loot crate laws on the books are Netherlands and Belgium, Then others with looser ones being Japan, China and Germany. And then the UK and US are making plans to implement some laws.. All these laws ban DEVELOPERS specifically though and take little to nothing into account for a user created marketplace. Also aside from Netherlands and Belgium the other laws are only seeming to ban lootboxes that effect gameplay not simply visual aspects. Take for instance the proposed us legislation Senate bill S. 1629 Specifically says in section 2 under exclusions: COSMETIC ALTERATIONS.—Such term shall not include an add-on transaction to an interactive digital entertainment product whose only effect is to alter a user's visual representation within the game provided that it does not, from the perspective of a reasonable user, provide the user with a competitive advantage over other users who do not make such transaction. ALL OF SL's gatcha are purely visual effects!! So what is the reason for this? Likely army of layers freaking out about growing legal trends and not caring to understand nuanced differences.. Oh well best ban it all then just to be safe.

I am somewhat mixed on this.. yes some controls needed to be put in place because some Gatcha machines had crazy low rates for rares and were quite predatory. For instance, there was one avatar I had to buy hundreds of to even get one rare that was crazy. But the simple concept of a prize machine that is stocked with a certain number of number of prizes that are dispensed isn't in itself considered gambling. Perhaps more transparency on the percentages, Progressive increase in chances required for the more bought and/or a requirement for the items to be sold for a reasonable individual cost outside of a Gacha would have made them come in compliance with the upcoming laws.. but no clearly that would have taken effort and working with the community.. so the quick and lazy option of an outright ban it is, and things are now likely going to be the worse for it.

Yeah, which would have been google play as I actually did pay for Lumia when it existed. But again as others have said that's not an option either as when it was delisted any further installs were blocked as well. all I was meaning with my comment was lamenting as well that no good mobile client for SL exists now.

Yeah, Lumia was great when it lasted and proved SL in limited but full 3D could run on a phone.. continues to be a shame that LL didn't/couldn't acquire the app to keep it going. As others have said it's not worth the risk trying to get it unless you can really trust the source at this point..

Some more good points brought up. I will comment that: land sales and land support tier are two separate but linked aspects. Not the same thing. Sure people need to have enough tier to buy that land but the sales are separate from that and as I already said it continues to complicate the tier issue as sometimes you cannot afford to buy enough land to fully fill the ever larger tier level. Also aside from auctions though LL again has shown they don't care that much about land sales revenue or they would price the sale of abandoned land more on a "current market price" model.. Heck if I could just on my one account buy 2 different tier sized blocks that would also somewhat solve this issue.. sure I'd be paying more per meter for the smaller block (although as stated above I'm already paying more per meter having a 1/4 region rather then 1/8) but in the end could pay just a little bit less in tier fees which then would likely be spent on other purchases in SL anyway..

To be clear: I was not talking about making it overall cheaper for land. just making the billing for it more proportional and fair. And the current system works barely for lower tier levels, It really only get's annoying when you start pushing over the 1/8 of a region tier. The current system is not affordable for existing community projects that just want to expand where they are as land becomes available. The higher tier levels are only affordable if you can acquire ALL the land to fill it. Unless you completely uproot and move to a region that has that spare land you almost NEVER can fill it as the rest of the land in a region is either owned by others or part of linden roads. So with the tier not all utilized, the cost per meter to rent to others get's more expensive, not less. And NO to compensate I don't want to be forced to acquire random cheep plots of land across the grid and rent them out for what I can get. there are plenty of people already doing that. Also, I'm not saying all this without some experience in the matter. I am part of a community project myself: Check out the Bedstraw Regional Railway, Route 45 Expressway, Hiraya Town and surrounding metro area if traveling through East Heterocera. It keeps slowly expanding in fact, despite the hurdles of Tier costs..

yeah agreed. a [Graduated Tier system / more you own the less you pay per sq. meter] was what I was what I was also trying to say with [Tier prorated with discounted levels] it would be a much fairer way to charge. And yep the current Tier system is indeed what leads to all the weird sized abandoned land parcels.. I've done it myself, as I've had to abandon land to avoid having to jump in tier level pricing. sucked to abandon the value of the land, but just made sense at the time rather then paying much more per month. And the alt donating tier to the group option is more of a logical workaround, rather then a solution that should be promoted as yeah it's silly to have to do that..

Well couldn't find a specific discussion related to this, and again it's affecting my decisions in SL land ownership. So might as well talk about it directly: Now that SL is in the cloud, tier levels are the silliest thing to keep. The lower steps aren't too bad. However, when you get to over 1/4 of a region price it get's expensive fast. Such is the conundrum I am facing now, and many others have faced before.. There's 2048m of land in my region for a good price, but to get it I'll have to increase my tier to US$112 which gives me half a region tier, that I will never be able to obtain enough land to fill. WHY???? The only other option that might stupidly be cheaper is I could pay for another premium account get tier on that pay for both separately and actually end up paying less per month. But WHY should I jump through that hoop?! Let's get Serious LL, with all the abandoned mainland out there it is clear; land tier is not your main income. It's clearly the marketplace, premium accounts, and Linden Exchange. If you just removed the arbitrary limits hampering land usage: Land tier and extra surcharge to cash out L$ to pay said tier to YOU. You would get more land usage. That means more content > more sales of content to fill land on marketplace > more buying L$ to spend on renting > MORE MONEY for LL!! This among a few other things you cling to from the past is actually COSTING the platform money! So come on do the sensible thing! Just make Tier prorated with discounted levels!!! Or maybe you are, and that might be a big announcement at this years SL Birthday? One can only hope... So, who else has similar stories / is of the same opinion on this?? Pretty sure there are quite a few of you out there..

This just happened to me and it seems the problem was indeed applying the Mirror transform in Blender. Why does that break everything? no idea really but now it means more processing to make a nice symmetrical set of objects. 😩

Well this is certainly a fun topic.. The first picture that I ever took on SL was actually in the begining orientation island of the time thus I didn't have many options to customize my avatar at that moment but I had made some adjustments nonetheless. I also had managed to sit on one of the notecard givers and had been quite amused by the mistake. Thanks to Orientation island public still existing I was able to recreate that moment: Possibly a more accurate comparison would be between a photo taken a few days later when I had the chance to buy and customize an avatar still though quite a difference as everything was limited to prims in 2004 and even sculpted objects didn't exist back then: It really is amazing how SL and my avatar have evolved over the years...