Something so simple ity should be obvious

[Coventina Dalgleish]

This is a simple statement on the cost of this environment, and yes it is not a game it is an experience, something to be enjoyed. Yet, the pricing structure is a limitation in this adventure. After owning 3 full islands back in the day then rolling back to a homestead I do tire of spending  a thousand dollars a year for this adventure I am pulling back to my free lands. Yes I have to endure the lag of the mainland now but that is of little consequence as to the cost. Perhaps LL might wake up to the fact they made the best 3D adventure ever, and yes it is still a game folks. Anything created in the sense of 3D is a game yet this  has evolved  to something much more than just another game. The pricing structure is killing this environment. I have observed the supposed replacements, HIfi and sl2 they are wanting and do not seem to enjoy or employ the structure of this environment. I have been here a long time and have enjoyed many aspects of the GAME.  but I see it dieing a slow death because the powers that be seem to have their heads well planted in a very dark place. I finally dropped my homestead because it cost just too much. Yes, Phillip Rosedale has his new project from what I have seen it lags light years behind this project. SL 2 seems to be an after thought. This is a platform that works and works well perhaps it is time for LL to wake up to the fact that the poorly structured pricing is killing the game. Maybe a break even point like so many of us have had to endure will keep this  totally amazing creation alive

[bigmoe Whitfield]

The price structure is what keeps the lab up and running and there is no SL2, that project is called Sansar and has nothing to do with the SecondLife platform.     While we have seen a few changes to pricing, the lab is never going to bottom out sim prices, they would bite themselves in the foot if they did.

[Callum Meriman]

Two angry posts in quick succession. One lambasting the Lindens, and one trying to sneak in "game".

 

[kathyparnes1]

Yes, i agree secondlife is not cheap, in fact in the country i live in the price is close to double, due to the exchange rate of the U.S dollar.

I also have had many a joyous hour on this grid. (but not paying so much though)

I mean, why buy a top of the range luxury sports car, when all you do is drive to the shops and take the children to school?

The answer is .. because you want to.

Edited January 28, 2018 by kathyparnes1

[Phil Deakins]

Something so simple it should be obvious?

17 hours ago, Coventina Dalgleish said:

This is a simple statement on the cost of this environment, and yes it is not a game it is an experience, something to be enjoyed. Yet, the pricing structure is a limitation in this adventure.

Your statement might be simple but your thinking is waaaay too simple. There have been many threads about tier being too expensive, and suggesting that it should be reduced. I agree that it sounds simple enough, but there's something that's always been overlooked by those who suggest it. I overlooked it myself until a couple of months ago, when the idea finally dawned on me. It's this...

LL can't reduce tier and continue giving the weekly stipends. If tier comes down, stipends have to stop. The reason is that, if tier comes down but stipends continue, then owning land is free or profitable, depending on how much land is owned. (Stipends are an important part of attracting premium users, so I doubt that LL would want to discontinue them). As it is now, a whole mainland sim can be had for less than half the $195 tier - approximately $92 per month. The first 512 is tier-free, but the tier for the second 512 costs only around $1.43 per month, and not the $5 that's listed in the tier costs table. The costs for all other land sizes are reduced like that.

This is why. Two premium accounts, paid annually, costs $144 a year. The combined stipends for them add up to L$31,200, which, when converted to US$ =  around $127. 144 - 127 = $17 per year, which is about $1.42 per month. The user with two premium accounts acquires a 1024 plot and both accounts donate their tier to it, so the user has the second 512 for a cost of around $1.42/month - not in tier, but in the cost of the premium accounts. The same thing works all the way up the land sizes. You just keep getting premium accounts to cover the required tier, so you pay no tier at all. You only pay for the premium accounts.

So it's clear that, if LL reduced the cost of tier, and continued with the stipends, then owning land would be either free or even profitable. I can't be certain, but I suspect that that wouldn't be a good thing.

Edited January 28, 2018 by Phil Deakins

[ChinRey]

11 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

So it clear that, if LL reduced the cost of tier, and continued with the stipends, then owning land would be either free or even profitable.

From the point of view you present, it already is if you have an old enough premium.

400 L$/week in stipend adds up to about 20,800 Lindens - c. 83 U.S. dollars -  a year so if you signed up for a premium account at the right time, you end up with a net gain even if we ignore the whole land issue.

500 L$/week adds up to about 26,000 Lindens - c. 104 US$. I'm not sure if there actually are anybody who receives that high stipend though. It may be just a rumour.

[Phil Deakins]

I'd thought of that, ChinRey, but I wasn't going to do the sums because it doesn't apply to the vast majority of SL users. Besides, it would need new 400/500 premiums to build up a decent land size, and I doubt that very old basic accounts would get 400 or 500 if they go premium now. But, even if they do, I doubt that anyone has enough of them for a decent size of land.

I don't think that 500L/week is just a rumour. It's been mentioned enough through the years that I accept it.

Edited January 28, 2018 by Phil Deakins

[Alwin Alcott]

2 hours ago, ChinRey said:

 It may be just a rumour.

it's not a rumour   i have 3 premiums.. depending on age/ date of joining i get stipends ... /me is sad.. guess who gets the 300...

Source: Stipend Linden
Stipend Base L$500

Source: Stipend Linden
Stipend Base L$400

Source: Stipend Linden
Stipend Base L$300

Edited January 28, 2018 by Alwin Alcott

[Phil Deakins]

Ty Alwin. Appreciated information.

[Ceka Cianci]

I just missed getting the 500 a week stripend by just a few days..I went premium July 31 2006 \o/ hehehehe

 

Stipend

Stipends are a certain allowance of money paid weekly (on Tuesday) to residents in L$. Until May 29, 2006, Basic Account residents would receive L$50 per week but new basic account residents born/created after this date no longer receive a stipend. Those basic accounts that still recieve a stipend are required to login at least once a week to recieve the stipend for that week. Premium Accounts created before July 21st, 2006, receive a weekly allowance of L$500 and do not have to login to recieve their stipend. Any Premium account created after July 21st but before November 1st receives L$400 per week, while Premium accounts created after November 1st receive a stipend of L$300 per week.

Stipend Amounts

The table below details what weekly stipend will be given to Basic and Premium accounts which were created within the dates specified.

*this next part in bold belongs under the chart,but since I grabbed it after I posted,I just can't get it below it where it belongs..hehehe*

(*) - Per weeks on which the account is logged in.

Previously, resident stipends would recieve bonuses from things like ratings (given by others) and some leader board standings (such as amount of calling cards collected).

Account created within	Basic	Premium
(unknown) - 2006-05-28	L$50 (*)	L$500
2006-05-29 - 2006-07-20	L$0	L$500
2006-07-21 - 2006-10-31	L$0	L$400
2006-11-01 - current	L$0	L$300

Edited January 28, 2018 by Ceka Cianci

[Anna Nova]

There is a clothes creator, he's a Gizmo but not from Earth, who gives everyone a L$200 Gift Card every week.  Unfortunately he's been doing it so long I have everything in his shop...  even the ones that don't fit very well.   It's my exception to the No-mod rule - never look a freebie in the perms.

I still find a use for the Lindens from the stipend though.

Edited January 28, 2018 by anna2358

[Phil Deakins]

52 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

Stipends are a certain allowance of money paid weekly (on Tuesday) to residents in L$. Until May 29, 2006, Basic Account residents would receive L$50 per week but new basic account residents born/created after this date no longer receive a stipend. Those basic accounts that still recieve a stipend are required to login at least once a week to recieve the stipend for that week. Premium Accounts created before July 21st, 2006, receive a weekly allowance of L$500 and do not have to login to recieve their stipend. Any Premium account created after July 21st but before November 1st receives L$400 per week, while Premium accounts created after November 1st receive a stipend of L$300 per week.

 

[Ceka Cianci]

As far as those seeing a game..I kind of go with Philip Rosedale's vision of second life being more of a virtual 3d internet..

The whole thing is based around it,from our viewer/browser to our slurls/land/site, our ID's/IP's,our content/creation,our grid /internet/connection to the world.

Edited January 28, 2018 by Ceka Cianci

[Paul Hexem]

Line.

Break.

[Penny Patton]

I want to point out a few additional thoughts about land pricing in SL.

First, hey, we'd all like land in SL to be cheaper! That would be great! Hell, I'd love for it to be free! That'd be awesome! But, in order to keep the lights on, LL has to cover their expenses and, according to statements from LL, land cost is where LL gets most of their money. Not the marketplace. Not premium accounts. Land ownership.

Now, there are arguments to be made for lowering the price of land to get more people buying land. I've made those arguments myself, but that's not what I want to talk about right now. Right now I want to point out that if you own land in SL, chances are you're wasting most of it without even realizing it! That's right, you own more land than you realize!

 Here's the thing, from prims to mesh to avatars, everything in SL can be made larger or smaller...except land. If you want more land you have to buy more land. You can't go into "Edit Land", grab the little white box in the corner and stretch it all larger like a prim or mesh object.  There's no "Land Size" slider you can adjust to make your land larger or smaller like an avatar shape. If you're paying for 512sq.m. of land that is all you get. If you make all of the content on that land larger, you are making your land smaller in relation.

Here's an exercise, rez a cube and make it 10x10m. That's the size of a 33x33 foot room. Don't make any walls yet we're just doing an exercise here.

Ok, so there's are 10x10m(33x33') room. For reference, my avatar in this scene is 6'1" in those shoes. So slightly taller than average for an adult man in the real world. Now let's decorate, but we're first going to decorate with furniture at the typical sizes furniture in SL comes at out of the box.

Looks comfy, right? Keep in mind most men in SL are 7-9' tall, so significantly larger than my avatar in this picture. That's why I seem so small despite being 6'1". You can find women of all sizes in SL, tall and short, but it's extremely rare to see a guy shorter than 7' in SL, so most furniture in SL is made to accommodate men 7-9' tall. So let's see what happens when we resize the furniture to be 1=1 scale. That is, how large these items should be if we're assuming realistic human sizes for avatars.

Wow, my avatar doesn't look tiny anymore, and look at all this extra space! It's as if we suddenly have more land to work with! Almost twice as much space it looks like! I'd recommend avoiding no-mod furniture since you obviously won't be able to scale it down like this if you can't modify it.

 Now, with smaller items like furniture, you don't typically save much Land Impact by scaling it down, you're mostly saving space. A couple points here and there, but it's not usually a huge savings. But with buildings, on the other hand, if we reduce the typical SL house down to 1=1 scale we're often going to see huge Land Impact saves. I usually manage to cut the LI of a house or other structure down to half when I reduce it closer to 1=1 scale. Buildings also tend to be scaled up much more than furniture. Again, furniture is scaled up to accommodate 7-9' tall avatars, but buildings have to accommodate SL's awful default camera placement so people tend to make buildings, vehicles, etcetera more like double scale. If you make a room much smaller than 10x10m you're going to have a lot of issues with the camera, but we can fix this!

Click here for an article about the camera settings I've been using since at least 2007. They solve every camera issue you're going to run into when trying to build smaller. Better still, LL will be adding these settings to the official viewer in an upcoming viewer update, along with tools to change and save your very own personal camera placement settings! So look forward to that!

 And I'm not even saying we should all be building to 1=1 scale, so please don't misunderstand. Even with my improved camera settings I would not recommend making rooms much smaller than about 10x10 (but be honest, 10x10 is already tiny compared to most rooms in SL buildings) and I'd even suggest making ceilings a little taller than you'd find in real life. The key part of that is "a little", not a lot.

 By doing all this you should be able to free up about twice as much space and anywhere from 1/3 up to about half your Land Impact.

 And this is just one trick to getting more value from the land you're paying for. Just one trick that allows you to build more using less land. There's other tricks to, such as using rezzer systems that allow you to save environments as rezzable packages that are only rezzed on your land when you're using them, and using skyboxes connected via teleporter doorways to build vertically instead of horizontally to take advantage of the 4000m of space above your land.

I think LL should do more to showcase these tricks to people so that they can see the true value of the land they're paying for and maybe not feel quite so much like SL land is overpriced.

Edited January 28, 2018 by Penny Patton

[Phil Deakins]

GROOOoooaaannn.....