second life mirrors

[Penny Patton]

On 4/4/2017 at 11:43 AM, Cube Republic said:

It's my belief that they treat the world this way because they need to be able to cater to the lowest common denominator. A lot of people make content as a hobby and perhaps don't have a background in creating video game assets. They wish for their builds to look good for them and don't consider the wider implications of texture bandwidth  . While I'm not condoning inefficient building practices, it is what it is. 

Well, that's precisely why LL's approach has been so disastrous.

SL should attract hobbyists who just want to have fun creating content. That is a good,expected thing! I'm not suggesting SL content creators need to be held to professional levels, I'm suggesting LL should have used a forgiving, simple system to curb the worst bad habits of amateur content creators.

They already have such a system, sort of. Land Impact! Every sim has a limited pool of points, and every asset you rez in a sim has a cost that takes points from that pool. It's not a perfect system, it's certainly not a system that holds people to professional levels, but it is an easy to understand system to keep detail in environments reasonable.

That's the perfect concept for LL to build on. All they needed to do to make it effective was

1. Include texture use in land impact calculations
2. Impose a similar point pool on avatar attachments

Done. Call it a day. SL for tablets comes out next year, alongside VR SL, all made possible by curbing the worst content creation bad habits without making things to strict or difficult for casual SL users to understand.

Compare that to what LL has done. Avatar Draw Weight is based on your individual computer's horsepower. So the Draw Weight you see is not the Draw Weight I see, so there can be no universal metric for the draw weight of attachments. Content creators cannot even advertise the draw weight of their creations because each customer will see a different number. Customers can't see that Draw Weight at all until AFTER they have purchased the item. How is that catering to the lowest common denominator? How is that any easier than what I describe?

I can name a dozen ways LL has pushed users away through obfuscating tools and features., providing users with confusing feedback and mixed messages, and baffling decisions regarding how features work. LL's approach is not working.

[Coby Foden]

Mirror, mirror..