Thoughts on the Town Hall meeting?

[bebejee]

20 hours ago, Ethan Paslong said:

because you shout like you'r in a hysterical meltdown

 

yeah yeah we know it now.... we won't forget it

1

The person I responded to is basic, you're not, so there's no "we".

Like I said earlier the caps were so LL won't miss the post. Your warehouse of grandfathered adults must be really worried by my post that you keep intruding, guilty much? no one else was bothered, Phil responded decently to clear what to him seemed like a misunderstanding.

 

[StrayWanderer]

/me settles into comfy chair, checks thread ...  EEEP!

worde

8 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

You mean we've been arguing needlessly? hrmph!

It's been worthwhile though, because, on this very page, loverdag taught some of us something that we'd no idea existed.

Phil?  Oh Phil?  Look what you did!

 

8 hours ago, Oz Linden said:

Ok... normally I'm happy to just listen to you all speculate about the silliest things (you often come up with good ideas I can steal that way), but this has consumed way way too much of the speculation space.

We will not restrict the ability of Basic accounts to rez.

Is just like High School...  Now the Principal is on to us!

8 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

It's been worthwhile though, because, on this very page, loverdag taught some of us something that we'd no idea existed.

But .. but .. pages of speculation got loverdag to show us NEW SEKRET TRICK!

NEW SEKRET TRICK is good, right?   

So.... 

They have announced that more than one premium level will be coming in.

And....    

SUPER-DUPER Premium!   Piggyback rides.   No more having to press my own up arrow to walk.   

How will the Piggyback rides work?!?!    

[Chic Aeon]

12 hours ago, bebejee said:

WOW! people suggesting how to make basic experience worse.

I FEEL LL NEEDS STOP PAYING GRANDFAERED RATES OF WEEKLY STIPEND TO PREMIUM MEMBERS, WITH ALL THE NEW PERKS IN LAND OWNERSHIP, LL SHOULD BRING DOWN ALL  STIPEND TO CURRENT 300L AND DO AWAY WITH THE 50L ONE FOR OLDER NON-PREMIUM ACCOUNTS. 

Especially with all the alts looting LL of that money, probably living RL off of it.

 

I think that would probably be ---- well, ILLEGAL?  Since there was an agreement (might be considered a contract) when those folks signed up. 

AND every alt that is premium ALSO PAYS A YEARLY FEE!!!!

Not sure if you have any idea at all what you are talking about -- or perhaps just trolling. 

[Chic Aeon]

So just in case anyone wants to actually get back to the POINT HERE LOL.

 

What could the new premiums have?

One of course could have the ability to own land with free tier (or a Linden Home) as we do now --- 

but of course not everyone really cares about that. 

 

Some folks simply want to get into the busy events FFFFFFIIIIIIRRRRRSSSSSTTTTT --  I know not WHY this is important.

 

The GIFTS aren't a big draw as far as I know. I have no friends that ever go get them. 

 

More groups -- even MORE groups -- would be important to some folks.

 

MAYBE there could be an upper level Marketplace  perk -- that might be a winner. Maybe the ability to have a second store? THAT would be popular. 

 

Even more free tier of course would be nice.  There is still a LOT of empty mainland out there. 

 

The ability to share inventory isn't going to happen but that WOULD be something folks would opt in on I think.

 

Any other idea on your WANT LIST FOR SUPER PREMIUM??????

 

 

[Callum Meriman]

48 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

What could the new premiums have?

 

There was a new capability added to the simulator code in 18.03.14.513292

Quote

Adds a new capability to request IMs that were delivered to the requesting agent while the agent was offline

Maybe this will be a new premium perk, no caps on offline messages. You log in, the viewer requests them with the new capability, and you get to see all of them.

Edited April 26, 2018 by Callum Meriman

[Drake1 Nightfire]

1 hour ago, bebejee said:

The person I responded to is basic, you're not, so there's no "we".

Yeah, that was me.. If you read what i was responding to it was about NEW PREMIUM MEMBERS and what possible reason they would be so instead of a non premium. And yes, i knew all about the grandfathered accounts but you cant get those perks anymore so they dont apply. 

1 hour ago, bebejee said:

Like I said earlier the caps were so LL won't miss the post. Your warehouse of grandfathered adults must be really worried by my post that you keep intruding, guilty much? no one else was bothered, Phil responded decently to clear what to him seemed like a misunderstanding.

If you think Caps helps  anyone pay more attention to a post... You need to learn to internet. 

[StrayWanderer]

I could envision this,  is even a serious thought.. 

At one price point have a Premium membership that has Stipend & Tier.

At the same price point Premium membership has Larger stipend & no Tier.

Call it a Shoppers package, something catchy.    This would appeal to people that want the more groups, more event access, but would just wanna rent land from another resident.   Might be worth looking at since Lab gets the money upfront and doesn't have to fiddle with processing the transactions on as many incremental Linden Dollar Purchases.

Could do additional packages based on larger weekly stipends, something like that. 

And I buried this lead earlier... Can make some Pricey Premium type accounts, with or without included tier, but the benefit there is lower per transaction fees, or expedited payouts.

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Callum Meriman said:

There was a new capability added to the simulator code in 18.03.14.513292

Maybe this will be a new premium perk, no caps on offline messages. You log in, the viewer requests them with the new capability, and you get to see all of them.

Since I log in daily and don't subscribe to "chatty groups" I don't have that problem (well once four years ago when I went AWOL for a few days) but THAT is a bonus for sure. 

Good sleuthing! 

[ChinRey]

3 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Any other idea on your WANT LIST FOR SUPER PREMIUM??????

A computer with a stronger graphics card.

And free electricity to power it.

[Qie Niangao]

6 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

The GIFTS aren't a big draw as far as I know. I have no friends that ever go get them. 

Back in time (2012) there was at least one premium gift that was very much worth getting, a railroad handcar compatible with the SLRR that was full perm except for scripts.

Since then, the gifts have devolved to no-mod garbage.

Honestly, Lindens, if it's no-mod, just don't even. Nobody wants it. It's a waste of time even stocking the gift givers with it.

[Fionalein]

5 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Back in time (2012) there was at least one premium gift that was very much worth getting, a railroad handcar compatible with the SLRR that was full perm except for scripts.

I don't get that one, was that before the open source SLRR scripts?

[Penny Patton]

@Chic Aeon

I don't think @bebejee was serious, I think they were making a point about how frustrating it is to hear people talking about making Basic accounts worse so they used an example of making Premium accounts worse for some.

If they were serious, then yeah,I believe that LL gives out grandfathered rates due to the agreements made when those people signed up. Also, if they were serious, then that's rather hypocritical of them, but again, I don't believe they were serious.

 

I love @StrayWanderer 's idea of multiple Premium packages at the same price point, but offering a different balance of features, so that people can choose the package that best fits their priorities in Second Life.

Someone mentioned removing the ability to use the forum from Basics, can't say I agree with the idea but let's turn it around and offer more web features to Premiums. Like the ability to have a more customized store front page on the Marketplace. I think that could appeal to a lot of shopowners in SL.

[Penny Patton]

And I second @Qie Niangao's comment. I lost all interest in the Premium Gifts when I saw they were no-mod. Especially when they were also so oversized.

I feel like anything the Lab gives out, whether it's a Library item, a Linden Home, or a Premium Gift, should serve a dual role as an incentive and as something that is an example of what can be done in SL, and as a good example of how to do it, so that people interested in content creation can learn from the content LL makes available to them. Like, I feel like I remember there being a prim building tutorial in a sandbox or something long, long ago. You'd go through the steps and build a prim chair that was also available in the Library as a reference. Am I misremembering, or was that a thing? I recall it being an orange, plastic looking chair.

 Anyway, that gives me another idea. LL could invest some money into having some high quality tutorials made for SL. Maybe some of them would be a part of the basic new user experience, but other, more advanced, tutorials could be made available as a Premium perk. Of course, I think LL has a ways to go yet in improving interactivity in SL before a proper in-world tutorial could even exist because I'm thinking a combination of popup videos that appear in your viewer UI, times where the tutorial might take control of your mouse cursor and show you where to find a particular menu, and recorded, inworld examples that you can watch as something is put together to see how it's done as you follow around right next to it. Granted, in-world building is in need of an overhaul too but tutorials like these could still be used for scripting, texturing, showing good building habits, etcetera. You might think that texturing is something so basic there wouldn't need to be a tutorial, but every single z-sorting and local lighting glitch you see as a result of people not understanding the difference between masked and blended alpha textures says otherwise.

Then again, I'm not sure it's in LL's best interest to hide even advanced tutorials behind a paywall, given how much content creation is a part of SL. I still think the tutorials themselves are a good idea.

[Fionalein]

I keep telling myself the lab items are disgned like that on purpose: not to compete with the market.

Edited April 26, 2018 by Fionalein

[Qie Niangao]

21 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

I don't get that one, was that before the open source SLRR scripts?

No, the open source VRC scripts for SLRR locomotives have been around for ages, since before 2010 (which seems to be the most recent version we're distributing!).

The scripts in the handcar are a little funky anyway. When it encounters a "Buffer Stop" prim at a Linden station, the driver is unseated, which is inconvenient. But it's a pretty amusing little toy, with lots of built-in customization options. I've thought about redistributing a re-scripted version from VRC sites, but not entirely sure it would be welcome, and then sloth prevails.

[Penny Patton]

Alright, I'm going to just compile a list of the ideas people have suggested for improving Premium accounts:

• Improvements to how LL handles overdue payments on Premium accounts. (Original Post)

I'm not actually sure if this is a big issue anymore. I remember at some point it was such a problem that Premium residents were in danger of being locked out of their accounts if LL had issues with their automatic payment systems. That scared a lot of people, myself included, away from Premium accounts. I haven't seen that issue since I upgraded, but I also cash out from my shop and building income months ahead of the payment being due so the money is right there in my USD balance. Is this still an issue?

• Higher tiers of Premium with more land/higher stipends. (Original Post)
• Premium packages aimed at different types of residents (shoppers, builders, landowners) with different priorities on what they want out of SL. (Original Post)
• Easy to follow listing of different tiers and features of each. (Original Post)

These kind of go together, and LL has said they're planning on multiple types of Premium, but I don't know that they've released any specifics. I like these ideas. Stray added to this that if there are multiple types of Premium accounts, it's very important that LL communicate the differences between them well.

• Lower fees for things like cashing out, marketplace sales, etcetera. (Qie's Post)

LL recently announced increases to these fees, but what if Premiums paid a bit less than Basic accounts when it came to such fees? Of course LL would have to balance it so that the inceased number of Premium accounts offset the lost revenue in fees, but it could be a good enticement. Qie also mentioned marketplace listing fees, which I'm not opposed to (assuming the marketplace gets some long overdue improvements first) and that could also fall under this, where Premiums pay a lower listing fee.

• Name change at a reduced fee. (Original Post)

Most of this post is about making Premium accounts more expensive, but this one part stood out to me as a good idea, especially as we know last names are returning along with the ability to change names. It's been said that changing names will be restricted somehow, a fee was suggest, if that's the case than maybe make it a bit cheaper for premium accounts. Or maybe one additional free name change.

• Cloud Streaming to run SL on mobile devices or at better graphics settings on weaker hardware. (Original Post)

This was mostly aimed at a mobile strategy but there was talking of a streaming service at one point. I don't know if it turned out not to be feasible, but if it's an idea LL wants to revisit, maybe it could be included with some tier of Premium? Or at least offered at a reduced rate.

• Improved social/profile features. (Same post as above.)

I personally believe that profiles in general need some big improvements, but the idea of giving Premium accounts even more social features seems like a good idea to me. I'm not sure in what form they'd come but it's an idea worth thinking about.

• A lottery. (Original Post)

This post brought up other ideas but they'd already been suggested in previous posts. I wonder how feasible a lottery would be? I know there are strict laws on lotteries.

• A Photo Album (Original Post)

This was suggested for PIoF accounts but could be a Premium perk. We can already post screenshots to our feeds, but SL shrinks them down to low-res files. Maybe Premium accounts could have their own photo album with high-res screenshots?

• Making it easy for someone unhappy with the sim they're in to move to another sim. (Original Post)

"Hell is other people", that saying applies heavily to owning mainland. Neighbors can harass each other through how and what they build, one person can lag a sim so much it's practically unusable to anyone. Maybe you move into a new sim and just find that you and the neighbors do not get along. Or maybe you'd just rather move in next to your friends! None of these issues should be a problem in a virtual world, but the way LL handles mainland has made them very big problems for some. There's numerous ways LL could address these issues, but one way would simply be to make it easier for a landowner to relocate to another sim. How this would take place needs to be fleshed out, but as it is now, moving from one sim to another is a frustrating, time consuming, and potentially costly process. It should not be that difficult.

• Allowing the owner of multiple Premium accounts to link them together, making it so they can access the inventory of all of their linked accounts. (Same post as above.)

This just makes sense to me. Maybe you buy a hat on one account, but then decide you want to wear the same hat on a different account. Or you upload a texture to one and don't particularly want to take the time to relog twice over, or pay another upload fee just to get to it. SL isn't a game where getting an item on a high level account would give your lower level accounts any sort of advantage if they could access it. Being able to access inventory across multiple accounts would just be convenient, and convenience sells. Someone said "this will never happen" but do we have a reason why this isn't feasible? I feel compelled to point out there are features we enjoy today that people in the past said "will never happen". So never say never, unless there's an insurmountable technical hurdle.

An additional part of this could be giving all of your linked Premium accounts shared L$ and USD account balances so you're not switching between accounts to find where all your money is. Or shifting money between accounts when tier time approaches.

• Yet more groups! (Original Post)

More groups are always good. On numerous occasions people have explained to me why we have group limits at all, but I must admit I've forgotten the specifics. Something to do with how opening a group chat connects to everyone in that group or something. I'm sure someone here can explain it. I'm all for more groups but not at the cost of additional lag and failing group chat (which is already a problem). LL might need to investigate ways to make more groups feasible. Or provide an alternative to traditional groups.

• The ability to have a second Marketplace store (Same post as above.)

I love this idea. Could maybe combine this with the "linking accounts" idea from above so that you can run multiple stores under different accounts and have the money all go into the same purse.

• Premium Tutorials (Original Post)

I brought this up then immediately talked myself out of it being a good idea to restrict such tutorials to Premium accounts, but still including it for because I'm a completionist. 

Apologies if I missed anyone's suggestions for improving Premium accounts but I hope putting every one I could find into one post here makes it easier for people to check them out and discuss them. I know I caught a couple that I missed the first time around.

 

 

Edited April 26, 2018 by Penny Patton
Bolding for readability.

[bebejee]

10 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

 

I think that would probably be ---- well, ILLEGAL?  Since there was an agreement (might be considered a contract) when those folks signed up. 

AND every alt that is premium ALSO PAYS A YEARLY FEE!!!!

Not sure if you have any idea at all what you are talking about -- or perhaps just trolling. 

 

I didn't know the agreement part which would make it a problem, I KNEW the rest, even before reading Drakes post.

Penny why am I a hypocrite for a suggestion that would help LL save money if it was possible to do? they're not a charity after all.
 

[Chic Aeon]

4 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

I love @StrayWanderer 's idea of multiple Premium packages at the same price point, but offering a different balance of features, so that people can choose the package that best fits their priorities in Second Life.

I agree that would be great but I thinking that it probably isn't the plan (current anyway) as there is no "extra" income from a possible "new super premium" level (someone else's title there :D). 

But lots of folks that would work.

Maybe a Basic Premium (like what we have now) where you get to choose two things -- like free tier, getting into event early etc and then a Super Premium where you get it ALL including some new stuff.   Sounds like a win-win. 

 

[Chic Aeon]

3 hours ago, Fionalein said:

I keep telling myself the lab items are disgned like that on purpose: not to compete with the market.

That's been my thought too for some time. I suspect there are SOME people who enjoy those gifts. If you look at the quality of the prizes on hunts these days (not all as there are a few superb hunts but in general) -- people still go on the hunts. Some folks just like to collect everything and anything. 

And yes that railroad rider was very cool. My friend got one!  And the very FIRST premium gifts were very nice. They were made by a top H and G store (maybe The Loft?  Can't quite remember) and were extremely nice. 

I haven't kept up with the current gifts. They used to be advertised more. Now I don't see any post on what the new gifts might be. 

[bebejee]

10 hours ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

Yeah, that was me.. If you read what i was responding to it was about NEW PREMIUM MEMBERS and what possible reason they would be so instead of a non premium. And yes, i knew all about the grandfathered accounts but you cant get those perks anymore so they dont apply. 

If you think Caps helps  anyone pay more attention to a post... You need to learn to internet. 

7

Been on internet 20 years, definitely know an occasional capped para or sentence thrown in between and more so in a sea of regular posts, stands out and draws attention, that its considered bad netiquette is irrelevant.

[StrayWanderer]

2 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

• Yet more groups! (Original Post)

 Something to do with how opening a group chat connects to everyone in that group or something.

The Why Groups are Capped.  The permanent paid for groups not the short term Ad-hoc conferences.

Even though it looks like the reason for a group is the chatting.  Think of it like this ... 

Groups are Land permission management thingies with a chat tacked on top. 

It is more about setting who can do what on what land and all that stuff in the setting group roles and permissions on a per role basis.    

So Yup...  Avatars logging in and out and moving from parcel to parcel means:  Do a buncha server stuff and check who can do what now, and who can now talk to who, and the real killer...  tell everyone else who in the group is online at a given time .  They did tinker a while back with adjusting the frequency of doing the checking.  Reducing that helped fix some of the chat lag issues.

So that's the why groups are capped.    

But is a different thing from the short term Ad-hoc conferences, which can have their own lag issues.   

 

[Qie Niangao]

First, and inconsequentially: the whole discussion about grandfathered stipends is much ado about nothing. There aren't that many accounts remaining Premium from 2006, and the few of us who continue to pay that annual fee after all these years are not posing much of a burden on the Lab's bottom line: so they sell a bit fewer freshly minted L$s, but they keep a few more accounts logging in and spending those stipends on user-generated content. If they removed the grandfathering, most of us wouldn't care. Personally I'd probably just downgrade an alt and abandon 1024 somewhere. Some few folks might get offended and drop everything because "they've supported SL all these years and this is how they're treated," etc., but really only a few. It's just not important, one way or another, and I've just contributed another paragraph to the spill of pointless pixels on the subject.

Now, a sometime-cited Super Premium benefit I'm not sure has been made yet in this thread: Scripting features, possibly bundled. One notable example: grid-scope Experiences. On the other hand, the world would be a much better place if Experiences could be bought by appropriately vetted (e.g., PIOF or Premium) accounts for a one-time fee and last forever as long as they're not an abuse vector. It's inherently bad that these things depend on recurring fees, such as their current dependency on the owner retaining a Premium subscription. This makes everybody who might use the Experience -- perhaps unwittingly -- dependent on that Experience-owner's SL longevity. We're right now seeing the turmoil caused by a third-party vendor service terminating their SL presence, and we should want to minimize such vulnerabilities in future.

In general, I hope the Lab has a marketing whiz* thinking about this unbundling of consumer services. Amazon just keeps adding stuff to Prime and that seems to be working pretty well for them (at least in the US).

___________
*I do think modestly reducing Mainland tier at the same time as increasing the bonus tier allotment was a stroke of genius. I'm sure far fewer accounts used their extra bonus area to downgrade than if there weren't also that price reduction. Somebody has good marketing instincts.

[Penny Patton]

1 hour ago, StrayWanderer said:

Even though it looks like the reason for a group is the chatting.  Think of it like this ... 

Groups are Land permission management thingies with a chat tacked on top. 

This is how I've seen it for a long time and honestly I feel the whole thing needs a serious rethink.

Groups as we know them are used for land management, but in addition to the lag and disconnection issues this means only one group can be associated with a given piece of land. That in itself is very limiting. 

I kind of think LL should consider the possibility of a new form of group. They could call them "Circles" or "Communities" or whatever, and these would be primarily social driven. Let's call them "Communities" so Google doesn't give us dirty looks. So, Communities wouldn't be related to land management, so they wouldn't need to do those checks at all. However, a Community could be associated with one or more parcels, and multiple communities could be associated with the same parcel.

Through a community you could see (if the group permissions allow) who is on a piece of group land at any time (manually updated like when you refresh a group to see who is online, so as not to cause performance issues), you could bring up a calendar of events associated with all group associated land, there could be a sort of community wall. 

And all of this could be set up in such a way where you could join many more Communities than you can groups. Possibly unlimited, if that's feasible. Communities could become a better way to distribute notices, hang out in Community chat rather than group chat. Maybe you could set alerts to be notified when there's people at a Community hangout(s)?

Groups would still be used, but for their main purpose of land management.

I know this is drifting from the idea of improving Premium accounts, but it still ties in with thoughts on the Town Hall as it relates to features LL could be looking into going forward.

[Vanity Fair]

13 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

So just in case anyone wants to actually get back to the POINT HERE LOL.

Any other idea on your WANT LIST FOR SUPER PREMIUM??????

1

I want LOTS of group spaces so I can join all the fashion groups I want to, instead of swapping in and out at the 60 group limit.

[Skell Dagger]

14 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Any other idea on your WANT LIST FOR SUPER PREMIUM??????

I've no idea how workable they are (and I live by the old maxim that if you don't ask... etc...), but a couple of things I would like to see are:

1. A 'premium lane' group chat option so that the 'super premium' members' chat always goes through, regardless of group chat lag. This would be especially helpful for store CSRs and group moderators, who - during long spells of group chat lag - have no choice but to sit helplessly while the occasional question gets through, and some other random person's (sometimes completely incorrect) answer also gets through, while their own (correct) answer repeatedly receives "your message may have been dropped by the server" errors.

2. The ability for store owners (especially those whose products are popular enough to make them the targets of scammers) to register their store/brand name (e.g. Catwa, Lelutka, Maitreya, etc) somehow with Linden Lab, so that if any scammer tries to create a new account with that store/brand name anywhere in it (for example: "CatwaHeadGift Resident", "LelutkaGiveaway Resident", or "MaitreyaFreeBody Resident", etc.) the store owner is sent an email alert to ask "is this you?", after which they have the chance to reply that the potential account is a scam attempt. The account creation process for those registered names would likely need to be held in abeyance ("You have tried to create an account containing a registered name; please try a different name" warning, perhaps?) until the store owner has responded, but if they're genuinely creating the account themselves - for a store-related reason - then they will be online and able to respond to the email immediately anyway.

A case study scenario for that second one would be the eight or nine 'free Catwa head gift' accounts that the Catwa CSRs - myself included - had to deal with over the Easter weekend. It caused a great deal of confusion to the tens of thousands of people in the support group, caused the CSRs and Catwa herself untold headaches with the constant ARs we were having to file, as well as having to deal with up to 30 reports per hour of people coming into group to warn everyone or question if the 'gift head' they'd just been given was genuine. I know, too, that Catwa wasn't the only store hit by this wave of scammers over the Easter weekend, so other store owners would probably welcome an option like that.