Does LL want to fix SL

[Klytyna]

37 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

@Klytyna  Do you mean...

First of all, I didn't say anything about where such encounters take place, I gave a hypothetical, and comic interpretation of an all too common event, with made up character names to indicate the typical nature of the participants.

YOU incorrectly assumed I was claiming this only happens on the Madlands.

...

Secondly, I specifically didn't mention the actual name of the place in question, I was trying to be nice... but since you let the cat out of the bag, I can say that if staff on that place are trained, it must be a new policy, because back 5+ years ago, generally, once you excluded the people with landgroup tags who were vendor rentals, or house rentals, you ended up with...

The Gang of Five - own the place

5-10 Actual support senior middle management, like S** C***, who help keep the place running with techy stuff

5-10 sim managers - actual middle management who actually do stuff, like L*** L***

60 ish Honorary Executive Middle Managers without Portfolio and Honorary Middle Managers without Portfolio - Do naff all, and most ofthem would need extensive retraining to be upgraded to "Useless Wastes of Skin"

30 Missing in action enlisted personnel - never show up

20 Actual staff, mostly ignored by management, often treated like crap, often 'recruited from the better noobs'

They tried recruiting me... I said no way in hell, but that was because I'd seen one staff member who worked damn hard publicly insulted by two members of the Gang of 5,  to the point where they quit and got a better job as a club manager elsewhere, and because I'd seen the kind of replacements found by TWO of those Worthless useless honorary senior executive middle managers without portfolio.

Honorary CEO "Noman McMoron" recruited a faux dom who refused to greet anyone except sub females, who he only greeted with "*nadu *grab *menu"

Honarary CEO "Musty Gallbladder", recruited ... A guy who had no connection with the bdsm scene, and whose groups list made it plain what he did know about...

"Early Spring for Late Winter, Naive Schoolgirls for Twisted Granpas, Lolita was too old, Just 15 - barely illegal, Fuzzbusters of SL"

This 'carefully trained staff member made a habit of im'ing female arrivals and asking them to rp the just 15 thing, and if they said no, he'd use his staff powers to eject them from the sim, the regulars started logging his activities, and complained to the sim manager, eventually he was suspended and ejected from the land group, but not before one of the Gang of 5 publicly defended him against the 'aggressive regulars'.

...

Thirdly, you are the conflater here, I said NOTHING regarding the comparative avatar density of Madlands vs Islands, I SAID self entitled madlanders from long ago, tend to be unwelcoming of new residents... In point of fact... Most of the green dots are apparently over on... Zindra, or at shopping event sims.

...

You have once again IGNORED the clear statement that this isn't about WHERE anti noob "go away and die" statements are made, it's about WHO makes them, and WHAT they say. Read the OP and subsequent posts, talk about how LL need to FIX SL, by ignoring new people and concentrate on appeasing an ever decreasing pool of self entitled "members" from the Madlands.

 

Edited November 21, 2017 by Klytyna

[ChinRey]

46 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

A staff member certainly shouldn't have behaved that way (and they are trained)

Yes they shouldn't but...

This is a bit off on a tangent but a while ago we had a discussion here about the "What's Hot Now" category in the Destination GUide being filled up with locations without a single avatar in them (it seems LL has fixed that problem now). One of the official helpers at the Firestorm welcome center was very proud to tell us of her solution: she sent the newcomers she was supposed to help to those places to make them seem more popular. I always wondered what she had smoked to get that idea into her head.

I can't imagine that person is an official helper anymore, at least not unless she's been thoroughly retrained, and it was a completely different welcome center than the one Klytyna suffered from of course. But even so, although I'm sure nearly all volunteers at all help center really mean well and the vast majority do a good job, there are exceptions.

Edited November 21, 2017 by ChinRey

[Innula Zenovka]

1 hour ago, Klytyna said:

 

Thirdly, you are the conflater here, I said NOTHING regarding the comparative avatar density of Madlands vs Islands, I SAID self entitled madlanders from long ago, tend to be unwelcoming of new residents... In point of fact... Most of the green dots are apparently over on... Zindra, or at shopping event sims.
 

So why were you going on about "Madlanders" and premium members in your original post?   That's what's confusing me. 

Unless you're saying that people who live on the mainland or people who are premium members are more likely to be unpleasant to new accounts than are others (and how you'd know whether or not that's the case is not wholly clear to me), I don't see what "Madlanders" or "Premi-Nazi Party" or whatever have to do with anything.

 

[Tari Landar]

8 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

Unless you're saying that people who live on the mainland or people who are premium members are more likely to be unpleasant to new accounts than are others (and how you'd know whether or not that's the case is not wholly clear to me), I don't see what "Madlanders" or "Premi-Nazi Party" or whatever have to do with anything.

She's actually not all that far off, at least, on the bolded part, which is all I'll address. We've seen enough evidence of precisely this, right here on the forums, and inworld, it's way worse. Whether or not they are from or own mainland, is irrelevant, premium members are, generally, a lot more rude to non-premium members, and the OP(not Klytyna) is most definitely not an exception(this is where posting history comes into play though...so you'd have to be someone that reads the forums frequently to know this). A LOT of premium members (notall) have very, nasty, attitudes towards non-premium members. Of course, the same can be said for a lot of other environments, and there are always those that don't "go with the grain"-for lack of better terminology on my part (oh nyquil I love you), and don't treat non-premiums as if they are lesser residents that don't matter, or whose opinions, desires, concerns, don't matter. But, she's not wrong, all you have to do is read the forums to see it.  Sad part is non-premium residents outweigh the premium accounts(never forget the o in that) by one hell of a lot, but they still get treated as if they are some kind of minority rather than vice versa. 

Edited November 22, 2017 by Tari Landar

[Aethelwine]

I would argue the opposite is true. The only way I think you could come to the conclusion that mainlanders are more insular and anti-social would be from the occasional threads that crop up where someone frustrated with repeated griefing suggests LL should insist on payment info on file. These people aren't only premium and the issue is different. 

The whole point of living on mainland is to be a part of a community space, to be able to welcome people off the roads and river ways to enjoy the public spaces, their builds, their clubs their marinas, airports and shops. A minority on mainland setup their parcels, with unwelcoming banking lines, but they are a small minority. This attitude contrasts with the tendency and attraction of isolation on private estates. Even where private estates on the face of it seem welcoming like with the North Sea scratch the surface and it is little more than a gated community who's attraction to their residents is the exclusion not the inclusion of visitors

[Prokofy Neva]

There's a famous saying once said by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin that every Russian knows:

"We wanted it to be better, but it turned out the way it always does."

Maybe this is funnier in Russian, but it sort of fits SL. I think the Lindens DO want to make SL better. If you look at their Liner Notes on each patch, they are doing all kinds of little things to fix it, you know, like avatar foot shadows and and and they fixed " LLVertexBuffer::mapVertexBuffer: memory allocation for vertex data failed." -- whatever that is.

But seriously, they fixed this: Blocked residents can pay 1L$ to Blocker and use pay message to avoid block -- hooray.

And this: Note cards will fullperms inside other notecards with full perms refuse to copy into inventory when being looked at inside an object.

That was a nuisance.

OK it's not big picture. But I think they have people on big picture too. For example, they gave us 90 day transaction history. That should have been put in long ago! 

I think there could be several issues -- I have no knowledge of Lindens "returning from Sansar" and "finding SL changed" -- how do you find things like that out?

For one, I think they overplayed Sansar. I, for one, simply cannot justify one more minute there. It was just way too hard and too many problems and I will simply let it perk awhile longer before returning. I also think the problems I had aren't of interest because it isn't meant for amateurs like me, but was meant for creators. The Lindens endlessly chase after creators and never seem to want to build that Customer Service State for the ordinary guy that most people want.

For another, I think the problems of trying to make a 3-d virtual constantly dynamic world work are real and hard and they can't fix them so easily.

For yet another, I think they just have different priorities than we do. These are opaque to me sometimes. But reading the Release Notes lets you know what their geeks are consumed with anyway.

What the board of trustees wants I have no idea. It's been a long time since any kind of State of the Union address.

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

For yet another, I think they just have different priorities than we do. These are opaque to me sometimes. But reading the Release Notes lets you know what their geeks are consumed with anyway.

The release notes make scant literature these days. That's particularly true server-side, I think because so much server development time is now devoted to patching-over the worst griefer exploits and crashers, and to shoring-up resale of no-copy gacha items as a viable business model even though no-copy has never, ever, been a safe setting for SL content. (For example, oldbies have painful memories of why animations are now almost universally sold copy-permissive -- it wasn't always that way!)

The features that are getting developed are promising but I, too, might quibble with the priorities. To me, bakes-on-mesh and the environment-enhancement project (Windlight redux) are way more important to SL's future viability than Animesh, which seems a nice-to-have mostly targeting a small group of creators. (And a tiresomely bitchy batch of creators, at that, fussing that they won't be sufficiently profit-"incentivized" to painlessly tweak their creations if, god forbid, their customers might tweak those same purchased creations. Such "creativity"!)

[Innula Zenovka]

8 hours ago, Tari Landar said:

She's actually not all that far off, at least, on the bolded part, which is all I'll address. We've seen enough evidence of precisely this, right here on the forums, and inworld, it's way worse. Whether or not they are from or own mainland, is irrelevant, premium members are, generally, a lot more rude to non-premium members, and the OP(not Klytyna) is most definitely not an exception(this is where posting history comes into play though...so you'd have to be someone that reads the forums frequently to know this). A LOT of premium members (notall) have very, nasty, attitudes towards non-premium members. Of course, the same can be said for a lot of other environments, and there are always those that don't "go with the grain"-for lack of better terminology on my part (oh nyquil I love you), and don't treat non-premiums as if they are lesser residents that don't matter, or whose opinions, desires, concerns, don't matter. But, she's not wrong, all you have to do is read the forums to see it.  Sad part is non-premium residents outweigh the premium accounts(never forget the o in that) by one hell of a lot, but they still get treated as if they are some kind of minority rather than vice versa. 

I understand that Klytyna is talking about a real issue when she discusses prejudice against new accounts.   It's a real issue not least because it's very easy to see how old an account is, and it's also very easy for scripts to detect that and exclude accounts from regions or parcels because they're too new.

How, though, do I tell that someone doesn't have a premium account?    I don't think I can, or not reliably, unless I'm LL.    I can use a script to detect if someone has Payment Info On File (in theory; in practice it's broken and all you can detect is Payment Info Used), and I can also use the land tools to exclude non-POIF/PIU accounts, so to the extent that someone who isn't PIOF/PIU can't be a Premium Member I can detect that.  If someone owns Mainland I know they're a Premium Member, but once that non-Premium member buys some L$ on Lindex, how do I distinguish her from a Premium Member, unless I ask her to meet me in a Premium sandbox or something?     I know LL can set regions to Premium Only, but I don't think residents can.

So how, other than by making nasty remarks in Forums, can prejudice against non-premium accounts manifest itself?   

 

 

 

Edited November 22, 2017 by Innula Zenovka

[Janet Voxel]

5 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

 

The features that are getting developed are promising but I, too, might quibble with the priorities. To me, bakes-on-mesh and the environment-enhancement project (Windlight redux) 

Where can I read up on bakes on mesh? That sounds pretty interesting.

[Qie Niangao]

31 minutes ago, janetosilio said:

Where can I read up on bakes on mesh? That sounds pretty interesting.

There may be a more official source, but I've gotten most (all?) I know about it from weekly updates from the Content Creator's user group in Inara Pey's blog (most recently this one).

[BilliJo Aldrin]

12 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

I would argue the opposite is true. The only way I think you could come to the conclusion that mainlanders are more insular and anti-social would be from the occasional threads that crop up where someone frustrated with repeated griefing suggests LL should insist on payment info on file. These people aren't only premium and the issue is different. 

The whole point of living on mainland is to be a part of a community space, to be able to welcome people off the roads and river ways to enjoy the public spaces, their builds, their clubs their marinas, airports and shops. A minority on mainland setup their parcels, with unwelcoming banking lines, but they are a small minority. This attitude contrasts with the tendency and attraction of isolation on private estates. Even where private estates on the face of it seem welcoming like with the North Sea scratch the surface and it is little more than a gated community who's attraction to their residents is the exclusion not the inclusion of visitors

I was standing in the main hall of my place that's located on a mainland road the other day when a couple walked in and said they were exploring and thought they'd drop in.

I thought it was great.

Many of those ban lines might be because residents of moderate sims are forced to exclude drop ins if they have any adult rated items on their property

Edited November 22, 2017 by BilliJo Aldrin
added a line

[Hintswen Guardian]

1 hour ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

I was standing in the main hall of my place that's located on a mainland road the other day when a couple walked in and said they were exploring and thought they'd drop in.

I thought it was great.

Many of those ban lines might be because residents of moderate sims are forced to exclude drop ins if they have any adult rated items on their property

I met one of my oldest SL friends like this. I was walking along one of the roads and he has a path from the road into his place. It looked public enough (it wasn't a house and there were a few people around) so I walked in and had a look. Back then I was looking for some.land to buy and there was a 512m for sale right next to his place.

I went back a few times until I finally found him standing there one day and asked if he would extend his path to the parcel that was for sale if I bought it and he did. I set up a small build I. The same style as his so it didn't look out of place and we became friends. When I got into 7Seas fishing I ended up buying everything needed to set up a fishing spot on his land as he wanted something to fill a gap he had.

I ended up becoming a VIP in his group but unfortunately he left SL a few years ago. He is still the first person that comes to mind when I think about SL friends. 

[Tari Landar]

17 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

So how, other than by making nasty remarks in Forums, can prejudice against non-premium accounts manifest itself?   

Beats me, I never said I understood how people come to the conclusions that they have, lol-in this case, whether or not a resident has a premium account. Though I doubt there is a way, other than having that info given to one by LL(which I really doubt would ever happen)

But, you can't deny the nasty things people say about those who don't have a premium account..I mean, come on, we ALL have seen it here, even if some folks have never seen people get all uppity about non-premium accounts inworld.

I'm fairly certain nasty comments are enough proof that plenty of folks look down on those they consider "freeloaders" and whatever else they want to attach as a defining characteristic for folks that don't have premium.  But..we've probably been 'round this old chestnut often enough that we've worn a pattern in the floor. 

[Phil Deakins]

2 hours ago, Tari Landar said:

I'm fairly certain nasty comments are enough proof that plenty of folks look down on those they consider "freeloaders"

I was going to mention that but then I saw you say it. I've been in the forum for many years, and I've never been aware of any prejudice against non-premium users. What I have noticed a lot is (unjustified) prejudice against those who don't put money in - the freeloaders, as they are called here. I think you are mistakenly thinking of them as the same, but they are not the same. They are not even similar.

ETA: A note about 'freeloaders'. I think it's remarkable how some people can happily criticise those who don't put money into SL, calling them 'freeloaders' and being very negative about them, whilst, at the same time, applauding those who take money out and make an RL living from SL. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Edited November 23, 2017 by Phil Deakins

[Chase01]

It depends on how you want to define "dying" ... SL is of course past its peak, and has been for some time now, but make no mistake, it is still a very viable commercial product and will be for many years to come. Even if LL wanted to look beyond SL, they can't simply ignore it. I'd also suspect that VR has not developed perhaps as quickly as they thought it would have, and that Sansar is still a long ways away from returning their cost to develop it. Right now SL is the hand that feeds, and you know how the rest of that should go

[Tari Landar]

34 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

I was going to mention that but then I saw you say it. I've been in the forum for many years, and I've never been aware of any prejudice against non-premium users. What I have noticed a lot is (unjustified) prejudice against those who don't put money in - the freeloaders, as they are called here. I think you are mistakenly thinking of them as the same, but they are not the same. They are not even similar.

ETA: A note about 'freeloaders'. I think it's remarkable how some people can happily criticise those who don't put money into SL, calling them 'freeloaders' and being very negative about them, whilst, at the same time, applauding those who take money out and make an RL living from SL. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Oh, *I* don't think of them as the same, I have seem both USED by others to mean the same  (and I never agree with that thought process). So, nope, *I* don't confuse anything, lol. It's others that have weird judgments about people, premium, free accounts, people that never put money in themselves, and whatever else.

I say, the more the merrier, premium, free, never putting money in, only taking money out...they're all welcome in my book, neither better, or worse, than another. 

I also rarely ever understand those arguments, any of them, I've just seen them countless times over the years, not just here, but also inworld. I'll never pretend to understand them, I just shake my head in.."wth" mode when I see them. 

[Phil Deakins]

Ah, ok. You wrote about the two as being the same in your previous post. That's all I'd read.

I'll say this again, though. In all my years in the forum, I have never been aware of any prejudice against non-premium SL users. Unfortunately, there is often prejudice against those who don't put money in, but not against non-premium users.

Edited November 23, 2017 by Phil Deakins

[BilliJo Aldrin]

1 hour ago, Phil Deakins said:

Ah, ok. You wrote about the two as being the same in your previous post. That's all I'd read.

I'll say this again, though. In all my years in the forum, I have never been aware of any prejudice against non-premium SL users. Unfortunately, there is often prejudice against those who don't put money in, but not against non-premium users.

I'm only prejudiced against the ones that brag about never having spent a penny on this "game", calling anyone that invests money in SL idiots.

If we were all like that, SL would have folded years ago

Edited November 23, 2017 by BilliJo Aldrin
took out a word

[BilliJo Aldrin]

3 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

I was going to mention that but then I saw you say it. I've been in the forum for many years, and I've never been aware of any prejudice against non-premium users. What I have noticed a lot is (unjustified) prejudice against those who don't put money in - the freeloaders, as they are called here. I think you are mistakenly thinking of them as the same, but they are not the same. They are not even similar.

ETA: A note about 'freeloaders'. I think it's remarkable how some people can happily criticise those who don't put money into SL, calling them 'freeloaders' and being very negative about them, whilst, at the same time, applauding those who take money out and make an RL living from SL. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

If anyone takes money out of second life, its because someone else put money into second life in the first place.

Its called contributing to the second life economy, something freeloaders DON'T do 

If LL banned cashing out, second life would die in weeks.

Edited November 23, 2017 by BilliJo Aldrin
added a line

[Phil Deakins]

Yes, of course money can only be taken out as long as money is put in. But the point I was making is that those who don't put money in and don't take money out are criticised here in the forum, whereas those who don't put money in but do take money out are applauded for being a success in SL. That makes no sense at all, and that's what I made the point about.

 

1 hour ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Its called contributing to the second life economy, something freeloaders DON'T do 

I see it differently. Those who don't put in but DO take out also don't contibute to SL's economy. They do just the opposite. And yet they aren't criticised. Instead, they are applauded.

Those who don't put in and don't take out, and yet manage to pay for things are making a success of SL, in just the same way as those who put in and take out. Both are successful in the SL world, and both merit applause, imo. I've posted before (long time ago now) that I initially put a few dollars in, in the beginning of 2007, and ended up taking between 4000 and 5000 US$ out each and every month. Nobody criticised it, and nobody criticises anyone doing it now. Nobody even hinted, let alone suggested, that I was worse than the freeloader who doesn't take anything out at all. On the contrary, we all applaud those who can make such a success of SL. So I see no reason at all to criticise those who neither put it nor take out, and no reason at all for them to keep quiet about it. It's a success. They earn their SL livelihoods within SL, and that, imo, is something to be proud of.

Edited November 23, 2017 by Phil Deakins

[BilliJo Aldrin]

5 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

Yes, of course money can only be taken out as long as money is put in. But the point I was making is that those who don't put money in and don't take money out are criticised here in the forum, whereas those who don't money in but do take money out are applauded for being a success in SL. That makes no sense at all, and that's what I made the point about.

 

I see it differently. Those who don't put in and don't take out, and yet manage to pay for things are making a success of SL, in just the same way as those who put in and take out. Both are successful in the SL world, and both merit applause, imo. I've posted before (long time ago now) that I initially put a few dollars in, in the beginning of 2007, and ended up taking between 4000 and 5000 US$ out each and every month. Nobody criticised it, and nobody criticises anyone doing it now. Nobopdy even hinted, let alone suggested, that I was worse than freeloader who doesn't take anything out at all. On the contrary, we all applaud those who can make such a success of SL. So I see no reason at all to criticise those who neither put it nor take out, and no reason at all for them to keep quiet about it. It's a success, and it's something to be proud of, imo.

If they manage to pay for things they are still contributing. Its possible to contribute to the economy without ever buying or selling Lindens, because someone had to buy the Lindens that you receive and spend on others.

I guess I'm referring to the 10 year old guy that still has on his noob clothes and a freenis who brags how he's never bought anything in here and mocks those that do. THOSE are the parasitic deadbeats that I'm talking about.

More successes like that and we'll all be over at  Inworldz

Edited November 23, 2017 by BilliJo Aldrin
deleted duplicate words

[Phil Deakins]

Alright. If any mock those who put money in, they deserve to be criticised - for mocking - not for choosing a money-free life in SL. It's their world, their imagination

Edited November 23, 2017 by Phil Deakins

[Innula Zenovka]

7 hours ago, Tari Landar said:

Beats me, I never said I understood how people come to the conclusions that they have, lol-in this case, whether or not a resident has a premium account. Though I doubt there is a way, other than having that info given to one by LL(which I really doubt would ever happen)

But, you can't deny the nasty things people say about those who don't have a premium account..I mean, come on, we ALL have seen it here, even if some folks have never seen people get all uppity about non-premium accounts inworld.

I'm fairly certain nasty comments are enough proof that plenty of folks look down on those they consider "freeloaders" and whatever else they want to attach as a defining characteristic for folks that don't have premium.  But..we've probably been 'round this old chestnut often enough that we've worn a pattern in the floor. 

I don't deny that at all.   I just wonder, though, to what extent -- if at all -- non-premium accounts are at any disadvantage in-world because of their status or even (unless they read these forums which, of course, not everyone does) they are aware of this hostility.

If you're a new account, then you're certainly going to find that some regions are closed to you because your account is <n days old, and you'll almost certainly find yourself subject to, or at least hear of others, disparaging comments about "noobs" or people with the "resident" surname.    However, I don't think that's the case for non-premium accounts.    

How can people discriminate against non-premium accounts, in the way that some people certainly do discriminate against new residents, when they can't tell with any certainty who has a premium account and who doesn't?

[Drake1 Nightfire]

4 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

Ah, ok. You wrote about the two as being the same in your previous post. That's all I'd read.

I'll say this again, though. In all my years in the forum, I have never been aware of any prejudice against non-premium SL users. Unfortunately, there is often prejudice against those who don't put money in, but not against non-premium users.

There was a very outspoken forumite back in the day that was also a merchant, buildings i believe, that was vehement about Merchants being only Premium members. She wanted each and every merchant to be forced to become premium or never be able to sell on the MP or have an inworld store. Several others agreed with her. There are plenty of premium users that lok down on and criticize non-premium users. 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

23 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

I don't deny that at all.   I just wonder, though, to what extent -- if at all -- non-premium accounts are at any disadvantage in-world because of their status or even (unless they read these forums which, of course, not everyone does) they are aware of this hostility.

If you're a new account, then you're certainly going to find that some regions are closed to you because your account is <n days old, and you'll almost certainly find yourself subject to, or at least hear of others, disparaging comments about "noobs" or people with the "resident" surname.    However, I don't think that's the case for non-premium accounts.    

How can people discriminate against non-premium accounts, in the way that some people certainly do discriminate against new residents, when they can't tell with any certainty who has a premium account and who doesn't?

Its not so much about premium vs non premium, its more about who has payment info on file.

Some guy walks into an escort sim, and  I see they have no payment info, and I think uh oh, another time waster.

Sometimes I'm wrong, but not often.