Mainland Beauty

[Coffee Pancake]

On 12/04/2018 at 9:54 PM, Alyona Su said:

They already have: it's called HORIZONS. Exactly what you are describing, OP.

Horizons is just as much of a pigs mess as the rest of mainland, it just has some limits placed on residents (no terraforming, fixed parcel size etc)

On 13/04/2018 at 4:30 AM, ChinRey said:

There are rules for Horizons but from what I've seen the few times I've visited, people don't always follow them and LL doesn't seem interested in enforcing them.

Can you provide a link to the building rules for Horizons?

[ChinRey]

43 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Can you provide a link to the building rules for Horizons?

No. I just noticed they said it was going to be a science fiction themed area when they launched it. I didn't check any further than that. As you say, the place is a pig's mess and not something I'm interested in in any way.

[Coffee Pancake]

17 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

No. I just noticed they said it was going to be a science fiction themed area when they launched it. I didn't check any further than that. As you say, the place is a pig's mess and not something I'm interested in in any way.

I was just wondering if I had missed something.

They do state there is a theme, the provided default houses and associated goodies are themed, but it appears to be more of an "inspirational guideline" that actual rule. I've seen this come up on the forums before but haven't been able to find any Linden published stipulations that would be in anyway binding. 

[Fionalein]

I didn't find any myself and asked where they would be found, aparently in land info if you click the floor (was told so in another thread didn't check out yet). That beings said it is just the ugly adult twin of bay city...

De-gentrification seems a common occurance in SL neighbourhoods (it is starting to happen in bay city too).

Edited April 28, 2018 by Fionalein

[Coffee Pancake]

Quote

Horizons common land > About : Horizons is a sci-fi retro themed, adult continent on the mainland. Here you can purchase a parcel and live in the Horizons community. Horizons also has community regions, information hubs, and a 6 region experience where you can win fabulous prizes!

That's not in any way a rule. It seems some people have taken the word "themed" to imply way more than it actually does.

The wiki covers some technical basics of the homes on offer and the associated game experience. http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Horizons

Info in world is limited to how to use your home, group land and the game.

Most of Horizons still has the basic free housing on. The land was released to scalpers and most of it is still owned by the same people who bought into the initial land rush. If anything the only thing wrong with the continent is that greed has taken over and in order to recoup costs and make a profit, parcels are for sale well beyond the means of most residents. L$30K on the low end all the way up to $100K and it just sits there. LL need to release more regions and retroactively apply a "double prim + roads" rebuild to mainland regions.

Source : I live on Horizons and just went though everything I could find.

Also : Horizons is way nicer than Bay City... which was literally on fire the last time I looked. 

So : 

[Fionalein]

2 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

The land was released to scalpers and most of it is still owned by the same people who bought into the initial land rush.

They cannot hold up that investment forever... just patiently wait

[Coffee Pancake]

39 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

They cannot hold up that investment forever... just patiently wait

I did the math on it a while back, from memory it depends on purchase price and running monthly teir. If they are on the hook for more than a regions worth of teir they can sit on a parcel for years and still make a profit. 

This is how Life properties are able to own most of SL and just sit on it. As long as they turn over enough to cover teir then any land held is basically just potential profit. High land prices are there to offset the money spent retaining it while still providing ROI. It's a stable business model, but not a very good one as it leaves large chunks of capitol tied up in land and at the mercy of a single 3rd party. LL throttling new mainland supports this model at the expensive of the majority of their customers.

[animats]

On 4/12/2018 at 5:07 PM, Kara Trapdoor said:

Why can't /doesn't LL dedicate some mainland for those seeking residence on mainland and incorporate a few easy rules for such areas, similar to rental landlords, specifically no low lying skyboxes or sandbox type things below 500m? 

We may see something like that after the transition to Amazon AWS ("the Cloud"). LL has said they want to have regions that are not "always on", because on AWS, LL will pay for "on" time.  Empty isolated regions can then go fully offline, rather than using resources while idling. Connected mainland areas have to be always on, since you can look or  cross into them, but isolated regions don't. They'll turn on when someone teleports or logs in to them.

Once that works technically, LL will probably modify pricing and rules to encourage it. No idea what form that will take. But it might involve incentives and penalties to move mainland skyboxes and such to isolated regions that can go offline when idle.

This is going to shake up the land business. There will probably be higher pricing for private sims for "always on". Maybe a pricing level for "turns on for premium members only".

[Fionalein]

14 minutes ago, animats said:

Maybe a pricing level for "turns on for premium members only".

Let me burst that bubble immediately: So let's say I want a cheap shop... OK, easy, I put it in one of those regions and log my premium alt in and sit it on a chair there... big fee saved... Nope, won't work out.

PS: even charging different depending on uptime will lead to acts of sabotage (oh I don't like that guy,... let's ruin his shop by hopping by all 5 minutes and make him pay for annoyng me)

Edited April 28, 2018 by Fionalein

[Pussycat Catnap]

On 4/15/2018 at 10:53 AM, Christhiana said:

They could at least make it AR-able. Then LL would only have to respond when someone actually has an issue with a privacy screen.

EVERYTHING in SL is AR-able.

I have yet to find anything in SL that there was not a way to include in an AR somehow.

On 4/13/2018 at 5:12 AM, Alyona Su said:

On all parcels and sims in "About Land" box there is one tab called Covenant. Almost every private sim uses this as their "legal" notice of any and all rules, especially rental sims. All mainland sims have a blank covenant (there is no covenant). Horizons and LL Homes do have covenants and there is where the 'legal-speak" rules are.

This is the covenant on Horizons:

Quote

There is no Covenant provided for this Estate.

Screenshot:

[Alyona Su]

12 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

This is the covenant on Horizons:

Screenshot:

 

 

Fair enough - they have changed it (removed it). It won't be the first or last time, I'm sure.

[Blush Bravin]

I've owned lots and lots of different mainland parcels over my years in SL. Most of the time I've broken even or made a good profit when selling land and moving to a better location. I've been settled in Barcola for some years now.

I have lived or had my shop on mainland since 2008 with the exception of about six months for my shop and a one year time period when I rented a homestead and shared it with my besties. Both times I rented from the same private island owner. The owner was nice and always met any need I required, but with mainland being so much cheaper over the long run (I did have four premiums accounts that collected the stipend over the year in order to pay the annual tier) and being able to recoup any money I've spent in purchasing mainland through careful purchases and reselling at the proper time, I decided I was just wasting my money by renting, so I returned to mainland happily both times.

I am an ardent supporter of mainland living; however, I am dismayed to see so much abandoned land going to waste. I would love to see Linden Lab through the use of moles (I'd volunteer) start a Mainland Revitalization Project. With the goal of the project being two fold:

1.)  to turn full abandoned regions into double prim terraformable land with permanent Governor Linden protected waterways or lakes included in each region.

This alone isn't the answer however, because we know that land speculators will come in and buy the land in auction and then raise the prices beyond the reach of normal people. So,

2.) I propose the auction system to be updated as well to have a maximum preset auction price on each parcel. Meaning that the land can sell for less in auction but can't go over a certain preset price. And as a result of this new system the price of the land at resale can never be more than that maximum preset auction price. This would allow for profit on resale only if the winning bid (or future sales) didn't reach the maximum price. This would bring the wild speculation we see in the land market to a grinding halt!

I really believe much of the ugliness we see in the mainland is due to land speculators taking extreme measures to strong arm the neighbors into buying their parcels. Fortunately for now we can derender the sky clutter and towers that mare the scenery in our neighborhoods. 

 

 

 

 

[Prokofy Neva]

On 4/12/2018 at 8:07 PM, Kara Trapdoor said:

Why can't /doesn't LL dedicate some mainland for those seeking residence on mainland and incorporate a few easy rules for such areas, similar to rental landlords, specifically no low lying skyboxes or sandbox type things below 500m?  

I recently took advantage of the premium benefit and purchased my first mainland area.  I spent quite a bit of time finding a space not surrounded by a lot of low lying airspace things cluttering the sky or other things that were not overly appealing to me, when I just wanted to purchase a space to live.  The coast seems to be sold and resold for high prices and is a little more residential, as people tend to want to live there vs putting up a shop, renting column skyboxes, or using it as a sandbox. What is the reason LL doesn't have areas where no sky builds can be below 500m, and maybe a few other easy rules? I think it would greatly improve their land sales. Also, why is some of the mainland SO hilly to the extent that it cant all fully be terraformed flat?  There must be logical reasons for these things, but so far I haven't figured them out. I think they want more people to purchase mainland and enjoy that, and right now some other landlords are making a ton of money with markup on some nice land spaces. LL could be making money off this.  Granted there may be a little monitoring or checking on people who don't cooperate, but maybe they could designate home owner association presidents to check up on complaints or something like that.. or at least try a relatively little area with a few extra rules.  LL DOES still get land fees from people who own larger parcels than their premium covers.  They have rules about land rating, why not a few extra easy rules in certain areas. Maybe they could have dedicated mainland sections like residential, business, company, rentals, sandbox, etc.  I really don't know what might work best, but I saw people clammoring for quality land spots, other scalping others for the prim locations, and MUCH junk, err, things in the air but still very low lying tings, obstructing views of many others w/out a care. I even saw some block in others on the coast so their tiny water can't open to the open water any more, stacked column rentals from ground way up into the sky, etc. It's quite interesting but I do think more mainland could be sold by LL if there were dedicated areas for those just wanting a nice residential area.  People might landscape beautiful areas.  Right now the only option for a beautiful area is derendering a lot of air objects. 

I really think the Lindens should make a Mainland-wide rule in the TOS that you cannot place things in the sky below 500 meters.

People are hugely inconsiderate and do this which really drives me mad. Why? It's not like it's harder to put it at 500 or higher instead of 100. Most often, they are in an enclosed dome, so it's not as if they are looking out this "panoramic view".

I think LL has to make this a rule and police it, and it will stop eventually.

They also have to make it a rule that if you do not log in and attend to your land for X amount of time -- 90 days? A year? -- that autoreturn will be put on at the very list, or your build will be removed at the most. The other big blight of the mainland is seeing junk pile up on no-show autoreturn 0 land.

[Prokofy Neva]

There are some who viciously despise landlords, picture them all as rapacious slumlords greedily bilking their customers, and who refuse to realize most Mainland rentals lose money or break even, or have very little profit unless they are huge.

So they are endlessly thinking of ways to punish them. Why not make their prices go up by having SL move to the cloud (although prices just went DOWN and should continue to GO DOWN for tier if server costs decrease for the Lindens which they should in the cloud. 

Mainland's very NATURE is "always on", so you couldn't do this to Mainland.

And quite frankly, you couldn't do it to private islands used as rentals, either, because there might be even just one tenant on a sim. So what? Surely the cost of keeping them on is not so great such as PUNISH landlords -- the BULK of Linden LAb's profits! -- by jacking up prices to force them to pay more to be "always on".

More to the point, the Lindens haven't indicated they have this plan.

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

There are some who viciously despise landlords, picture them all as rapacious slumlords greedily bilking their customers, and who refuse to realize most Mainland rentals lose money or break even, or have very little profit unless they are huge.

The lack of profitability should be a pretty solid hint to do something else.

Land rental businesses keep the price of mainland artificially high and choke up supply. 5 minutes looking for land to buy makes this painfully apparent.

Land rental should be limited to private regions ONLY. Everyone should be free to buy and sell mainland to their hearts content, but not to sublet it. Ever.

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Land rental businesses keep the price of mainland artificially high and choke up supply. 5 minutes looking for land to buy makes this painfully apparent.

No. The land flippers keep the the price of the more attractive parcels high, not the rental businesses. As for mainland land in general, there is still no shortage of supply and I can't imagien there will ever be.

 

1 hour ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Land rental should be limited to private regions ONLY. Everyone should be free to buy and sell mainland to their hearts content, but not to sublet it. Ever.

I would never ever recommend anybody to buy a single little parcel of mainland or consider doing it myself. Yes, you can derender and block all the nasty stuff your future neighbors choose to litter their land with but if you are happy with that solution, you'll be even happier on an isolated island where you get exactly the same with no effort at all.

[Prokofy Neva]

2 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

The lack of profitability should be a pretty solid hint to do something else.

Land rental businesses keep the price of mainland artificially high and choke up supply. 5 minutes looking for land to buy makes this painfully apparent.

Land rental should be limited to private regions ONLY. Everyone should be free to buy and sell mainland to their hearts content, but not to sublet it. Ever.

Ridiculous, through and through.

Many people are in rentals as a hobby, or simply to offset their own costs, and they are FREE to do so.

You're making a completely unfounded statement, based on hatred and prejudice, and not fact, claiming that "rentals keep prices high".

The price of land is a function of what the Lindens' SET THE START PRICE AT, and that goes up when they can get it. And land barons jack it up to keep its price high to flip it. One could argue that land flippers keep the price of land high. But that's a good thing, because when a person wants to sell their land, they then have a market -- instead of having to abandon it. The enormous amount of abandoned land is not only a function of high tier, but of a rock-bottom land market that began to bottom out a few years ago due to blight, micro-parcel ads and other factors.

If anything, Mainland rentals prices go down and down -- just look at the ads on this very forum over time. A Mainland rental agent cannot charge over a certain amount of he will not have customers; further more, there is the hard stop of the price that anyone could pay in tier themselves plus a premium -- and many do.

This idea that people can't be free to rent out Mainland is again, only based on hatred of capitalism -- of the small holders' type, while worshipping the oligarchs who in fact have far higher prices on private islands. Again -- fact-free claims, not based on actual examination of facts on the literal ground.

Read Tyche Shepherd's reports on the Mainland. A large percentage of it is in end-users' hands, not rental agents, and many of the rentals, as I said, are to friends or a few people, even at a loss, just to cut costs. Fly around and see the facts instead of inventing "cures" that are merely meant to savage classes of people you hate.

Edited May 3, 2018 by Prokofy Neva

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

No. The land flippers keep the the price of the more attractive parcels high, not the rental businesses. As for mainland land in general, there is still no shortage of supply and I can't imagien there will ever be.

 

I would never ever recommend anybody to buy a single little parcel of mainland or consider doing it myself. Yes, you can derender and block all the nasty stuff your future neighbors choose to litter their land with but if you are happy with that solution, you'll be even happier on an isolated island where you get exactly the same with no effort at all.

The idea that "five minutes of looking for land to buy" somehow proves that a) rentals keep the price high or b) even flippers keep it high is simply not based in fact.

Use the search lists and you'll find plenty of good, cheap land. If you can't sell it, abandon it if it blights up next door, and buy a new one. Lots of people do just that.

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

No. The land flippers keep the the price of the more attractive parcels high, not the rental businesses. As for mainland land in general, there is still no shortage of supply and I can't imagien there will ever be.

The bulk land flippers and the renters are in most cases, the same people. Go to Zindra, good luck finding anything not owned and simultaneously rented by Life Properties. try Horizons .. there are a dozen bulk land owners tops (although many seem to be the same actual person), most of the continent is locked for sale at prices well beyond anything people will pay .. which is why the entire continent is covered in default buildings (they have NEVER seen occupancy). Very few actual people live there and there're significantly more parcels owned by the big few than it seems, many parcels are placed in holding land groups and not set for sale so as not to dilute the choke hold on a supply. 

The entire mainland market is stitched up. You either buy from them or rent from them and they set the price for both. When LL release new land, these "businesses" get first shot via the auction house perpetuating their strangle hold.

From LL's perspective it's an easy way to get new land paid for right from release, but they do also recognize it's toxic effect on actual land ownership and premium membership or they wouldn't have released all those free Linden homes.

It's bad for the consumer, bad for retention, bad for premium membership uptake and bad for Second Life as a whole.

32 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Ridiculous, through and through.

Many people are in rentals as a hobby, or simply to offset their own costs, and they are FREE to do so.

You're making a completely unfounded statement, based on hatred and prejudice, and not fact, claiming that "rentals keep prices high". If anything, Mainland rentals prices go down and down -- just look at the ads on this very forum over time. A Mainland rental agent cannot charge over a certain amount of he will not have customers; further more, there is the hard stop of the price that anyone could pay in tier themselves plus a premium -- and many do.

This idea that people can't be free to rent out Mainland is again, only based on hatred of capitalism -- of the small holders' type, while worshipping the oligarchs who in fact have far higher prices on private islands. Again -- fact-free claims, not based on actual examination of facts on the literal ground.

Read Tyche Shepherd's reports on the Mainland. A large percentage of it is in end-users' hands, not rental agents, and many of the rentals, as I said, are to friends or a few people, even at a loss, just to cut costs. Fly around and see the facts instead of inventing "cures" that are merely meant to savage classes of people you hate.

There is no universe in which you can play the victim here. I stand by everything I said. The reputation "mainland sale & rental business" have in Second Life is justly deserved.

I would like to see strong pro-consumer rules concerning mainland sales that favor actual end users, encourage people to become premium members and put the mainland back in the hands of the people who wish to live on it.

Edited May 3, 2018 by CoffeeDujour

[Fionalein]

13 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

I would like to see strong pro-consumer rules concerning mainland sales that favor actual end users, encourage people to become premium members and put the mainland back in the hands of the people who wish to live on it.

Wait since when would that be in the interest of the Lab? Sell more premiums accounts, ridiculous...

Edited May 3, 2018 by Fionalein

[Qie Niangao]

On 15/04/2018 at 11:03 AM, Parhelion Palou said:

There is a maximum height. It's 4128 meters (max build height plus half of the max prim height). If it's mainland there won't be rules. Rules need enforcers (who can't be residents) and LL certainly doesn't have enough people to waste time enforcing the in-world equivalent of homeowner association rules.

You can go higher.  Even with Mesh, you could start at the link limit (54m) above the build ceiling (4096) to get to 4150 plus half the maximum prim height, to get to 4182.

But prims can also be Top Shear'd in X and Y.  Set one to .5 and the top edge of that 64m prim can be 32m higher. If both are set to .5 and the prim is rotated 45 degrees, the point at the very peak will instead be... I guess 32 / sin45° or about 45m, so somewhere around 4227m.

Competitive griefing for sport.

 

[Parhelion Palou]

15 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

The bulk land flippers and the renters are in most cases, the same people. Go to Zindra, good luck finding anything not owned and simultaneously rented by Life Properties. try Horizons .. there are a dozen bulk land owners tops (although many seem to be the same actual person), most of the continent is locked for sale at prices well beyond anything people will pay .. which is why the entire continent is covered in default buildings (they have NEVER seen occupancy). Very few actual people live there and there're significantly more parcels owned by the big few than it seems, many parcels are placed in holding land groups and not set for sale so as not to dilute the choke hold on a supply. 
Those bulk land flippers are paying tier. What more does LL need to care about? That's their entire deal with mainland. Someone buys land and pays LL tier on it. After that it's a resident-to-resident thing that's outside LL's interest.

The entire mainland market is stitched up. You either buy from them or rent from them and they set the price for both. When LL release new land, these "businesses" get first shot via the auction house perpetuating their strangle hold.
Exaggerate much? You could buy some abandoned land. It's not hard to find; it's everywhere. Put in a ticket and there's a good chance LL will sell it to you directly so there's no worry of land flippers grabbing it.

From LL's perspective it's an easy way to get new land paid for right from release, but they do also recognize it's toxic effect on actual land ownership and premium membership or they wouldn't have released all those free Linden homes.
The Linden Homes were set up as an easy way for newbies to get into having a house. It was expected that once a newbie had done all that could be done with 117 prims (back then), the newbie would move to bigger parcel on mainland. It had nothing to do with toxic effects on land ownership, etc. "Toxic Effect" would be a good name for something, BTW.

It's bad for the consumer, bad for retention, bad for premium membership uptake and bad for Second Life as a whole.
This sounds like a campaign speech. Got any data to back up those claims? Mainland doesn't need fixing. It's a free-for-all that has beautiful spaces, a lot of mediocre spaces, and some incredibly ugly spaces. It's the New Jersey of SL.

 

[Kyrah Abattoir]

Thing is few large and powerful land owners are not such a great deal for Linden Lab:

• From a logistical standpoint, yeah fewer customers is better but...
• All of them generally pay their tier at the highest possible discount since they are at the very least owning a whole region worth of land.
• When you own dozens of regions, you have a lot more power and leverage than a dozen of people with 512 sqm plots.
• Anytime one of them decides to pack up, it hurts, a LOT. When a 512sqm user decides to pack up the effect is negligible at best.

One region 100% occupied with base premium users nets Linden Lab from 384$ to 608$ a month (assuming 1024sqm plots).

One mainland region owned by a land baron nets Linden Labs from 165$ to 181$ assuming group bonus and a fully tiered up land owner.

Even at 50% occupancy small land owners are still more profitable.

Edited May 15, 2018 by Kyrah Abattoir

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

• All of them generally pay their tier at the highest possible discount since they are at the very least owning a whole region worth of land.

Actually no. Even if you own a whole sim and get the maximum quantity discount, the tier per m2 is still considerably higher than the net price for the land included in the premium account.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

39 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Actually no. Even if you own a whole sim and get the maximum quantity discount, the tier per m2 is still considerably higher than the net price for the land included in the premium account.

I'm purposely not taking in account the L$ kickback because this wasn't about what it cost to the user, but what it brings in income to Linden Lab. Or are you talking about something else i didn't factor in?