Is There an Effect on Performance from All the Merchant Packing Clutter?

[Prokofy Neva]

This is something I HAVE to wonder.

There is an enormous amount of packing garbage in SL now.

It's common now for virtually every merchant to put their item in a box so that they can add notecards and landmarks.

And now with gatchas, they can come in yet ANOTHER box, as they are in various promotional gimmicks that enable you to collect points to get a freebie or a special prize. That first box tells you to chose between keep and redeem, the second box has the actual thing.

And there is a new generation of total annoyances for oldbies, that were designed to solve the perennial problem of "newbie with box on head".

Now many items come not in a box but a purse or bag or board or something with an animation in it that enables you to "hold" it -- you immediately click or drag it from inventory on to your avatar, and then from there, you fight off first an automated invite to the group, then you unpack it -- unless it downloads automatically on you, then tells you "all of my contents are empty."

If you bat away the animation, you get this error:

Script trying to stop animations but PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION permission not set

 

The bane of SL existence.

You bat away the group of course -- didn't you just come from that store where you could have joined the group THERE, or aren't you ALREADY a member and it "doesn't know that"?

Honestly, these packages are just an insane nuisance. I don't know if they really help newbies.

I asked a very knowledgeable and seasoned Linden if packing clutter lagged the server. He said no. I pressed, saying wouldn't it cause not just the asset server but the individual log-in with a large inventory problems? Doesn't it "take up space"? Doesn't all that deleting done now -- there is so much more of it, now that so many things are copy but not transfer. Again, he said no.

But I should have thought to ask what the effect is of first thousands of group invitations and animations to "hold" firing constantly on the servers have...and then the Script trying to stop animations but PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION permission not set trigginer, and so on. Maybe THAT has an effect?

Another annoyance is the way some vendors send you a landmark to the store a minute after each purchase, as if you need to rush back, although you were just there...and they do that for every single item you purchase.

It's a welter of space junk.

[Nova Convair]

The animation script error is easily avoidable. Looks like a bad free script here.

There is no way for a script to check your groups. It's only possible to see if you wear the same group tag as the scripted object. Most scripts don't even check that. You need to run and maintain your own database of your customers and you need a bot that constantly keeps the database updated (to catch entry's and exits). Way too much for most merchants. Same applies to the LM giver - usually a simple free script and no database behind it.

Keep in mind that the merchants are no professional organisations and are usually not able to handle this stuff and if they can they don't want to.

Sending boxes instead of a folder is annoying for everybody I think, but only this way the merchant can pop up all the garbage and info that we have to click away.

For the traffic: I'm pretty sure that LL's expensive servers can handle that little extra traffic with ease.

[Perrie Juran]

29 minutes ago, Nova Convair said:

<snip>

Sending boxes instead of a folder is annoying for everybody I think, but only this way the merchant can pop up all the garbage and info that we have to click away.

</snip>

We've had the boxes versus folders debate in times past on the Forums.

An issue of personal preference.

Many like me generally prefer Boxes.

[Whirly Fizzle]

(boxes vs folders)  ~  (tabs vs spaces)

[Klytyna]

4 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

[snip] And there is a new generation of total annoyances for oldbies, that were designed to solve the perennial problem of "newbie with box on head".

Now many items come not in a box but a purse or bag or board or something with an animation in it that enables you to "hold" it -- you immediately click or drag it from inventory on to your avatar, and then from there, you fight off first an automated invite to the group, then you unpack it -- unless it downloads automatically on you, then tells you "all of my contents are empty." [snip]

 

I'm sure these easy-to-unpack boxes are very annoying... To Madlander Property Tycoons, angered that we landless no-premium types don't need to pay rent to mainland slum lords just to unpack our shopping...
 

[Prokofy Neva]

@Klytyna I'm not a tycoon by any stretch of the imagination. I have a small rentals business on the Mainland. And even the people with hundreds of private islands aren't tycoons, they are often people who struggle in RL. And even if they *were* tycoons, that's fine, they get to be tycoons in a normal free and democratic society that isn't ruled by socialism, communism or some other authoritarian system. People crying "landless poor" in SL are often geeks with six-figure computer programming jobs, so I really remain sanguine about this complaint. Most people who buy things also want to rent or buy land to display them. The packaging today isn't aimed at the "landless poor" but at the "clueless newbie" or simple ordinary user who doesn't want to be bothered with dragging from inventory on to land and then going into "contents" and selecting what goes into inventory where -- but wants to drag on to their avatar and have it pop into inventory, or even dress them right away (some do that). 

Of course, the "landless poor" can always go to a public sandbox, they don't have to pay rent at all. 

The over-packaging also encourages poor inventory hygiene, so that people then don't sort their stuff into folders.

@Nova Convair - I don't think merchants harassing you with a group invite, either as spam greeting at a store (which I don't allow at my rentals) or with a spam push at you when you unpack their box make any sales. I've never in my life either gone back to a store because they pushed a landmark or group on site or after unpacking. I go to a store based on an ad on a blog, or serendipity, or searching for something specific in inworld search or the MP then going to the store. I think most people are like that. 60 group slots may seem like a lot but they go fast and you need to keep the VIP ones you paid for, not take every random one. I think most of this frenetic activity only annoys and doesn't help make sales. There's a deep-seated belief that it does, however, and it's also part of an overwhelming need to be like everybody else.

Edited April 1, 2017 by Prokofy Neva

[Qie Niangao]

The vast majority of landmarks in my Inventory were out of date long before I ever tried to use them, so I'm not sure why I don't just trash them all on receipt.

I'll guess that the delayed sending of a landmark, notecard, etc. is an effect of the sender trying to avoid triggering a throttle on some scripting operation. The llGiveInventory() function, for example, is limited by owner in a region, so if they're sending out other stuff to subscribers, say, plus deliver from scripted vendors, plus from greeter scripts, etc., they need to carefully manage that finite capacity. 

Presumably the point of the wear-to-unpack things is that they'll work on no-rez land -- such as most stores -- although I'd prefer a simple folder myself, and that requires neither rezzing nor attaching. On the other hand, I'm reluctant to criticize anybody's product packaging given that I seem incapable of getting permissions correct on the first try even just for simple stuff I'm trying to give away full-perm. If a merchant's distribution process involves boxes and it works for them, I can live with it. (On the other hand, if they've been distributing the same way for a while and it still generates an animation permissions error, ever, there's really no excuse for that.)

I doubt performance is a credible line of attack here -- except maybe those group invitations. I seem to recall a steep performance cliff if the total number of group memberships across all residents and all groups were to exceed some design ceiling. (Personally, my 60 are full-up, mostly obligatory, so stores are delusional to imagine themselves worthy of a slot. If everyone always had all their group slots filled, though, stores sending out yet more futile invitations couldn't have much effect on performance, so I'm a bad one to sample.)

Edited April 2, 2017 by Qie Niangao