SL = Video Game

[Coffee Pancake]

[Sammy Huntsman]

I would have to agree with this, on one part. The definition of a game has really changed. At one point, you could buy games, and you got a beginning middle and an end. Nowadays on steam, and especially with Minecraft's case, you get a "game." However, the ending comes later. So yes, SL is an open world sandbox game. Yet there is this emotional aspect, especially when you meet actual people, behind the keyboard in world. So its a double edged sword, when you call SL a game. 

Edited August 1, 2018 by halebore Aeon

[animats]

1 hour ago, Penny Patton said:

Also, when users ask "what is there to do here?" it's not that they're overwhelmed by the possibility of doing anything they want, let's be real here: SL has limits, and popular SL pastimes are defined by those limits. You're not going to get a full-on videogame experience in SL, shooting aliens, in fast paced action environments. We have some combat sims, but they're cludgy. 90's FPS games beat them in terms of responsiveness and interactivity. We got sailing simulators, airplane simulators, but they're all very basic compared to videogames doing the same thing. They have their communities, but I would bet good money it's other aspects of SL that keep them in SL, otherwise they could go find a boat or plane simulator on Steam that would work better, look better, run better, and be a whole lot more user friendly and easier to get into.

And I'm saying exactly what you say at the end there, that the new user experience is lacking. If you want more than a 3D chatroom, the new user experience isn't going to help you find it. It's not easy to jump from social island to flying a plane your first day in SL if no one points you in the right direction. There was a huge public outcry when LL ended the "mentor" program because the new user experience was so bad you pretty much needed a live person to help walk you through it until you could find your way around on your own. It's not that they need to be told what to do, it's that they have no idea what their options are or how to find them and dismissing them as needing someone to tell them what to do isn't going to make them feel any more welcome to stick around and find what SL has to offer them.

This is one of the most insightful commentaries on SL I've read.

The new user question "what do I do now" is a big one. I spent some time chatting with several shifts of Caledon Oxbridge greeters about that. New users expect more direction. One Caledon Oxbridge staffer said "some users think I'm a quest giver". Maybe there should be a quest giver.

Caledon Oxbridge itself is more "how to" training rather than "what can I do" information. So is the Firestorm welcome center. LL has tried building some new user experiences, but they're mostly uninteresting. SL needs something better at entrance.

Worth a try - a role placement center. Like a temp agency. When you arrive in SL, you can visit the placement center, get a live interview with a volunteer, and after some discussion, a choice of three starter roles to try for a week. You might be offered a role in a farming area, a race track, pilot school, a military sim, a fire department, a college, or even a strip club. Like one of those games where you pick warrior, mage, healer, etc. You get clothing and accessories to go with the job, and some contacts to talk to. You have a role for a week, and then, with some experience, can decide what to do next.

There are many forum ads for "we want people to join our group that does X". This would help match them up with new users.

 

Edited August 1, 2018 by animats
Clarify

[Penny Patton]

I'm generally against anything that requires a live person to hold people's hands, it's effective but it doesn't scale. That was the problem with the "Mentor" program, there simply were never enough mentors for the number of people coming in. I'm more in favour of fixing the tools we have, and introducing more that people can use themselves to find the content and activities that interest them.

 Expand the role of "Interest Tags" and integrate them with groups, events, land and marketplace listings. Allow people to associate 3 (5 at most) Interest Tags with any of these things then bring back the "Recommendations" tab in profiles. The old Recommendations tab was...not good. It just gave you a list of strangers who shared at least one of your interest tags. That kind of ham fisted attempt to push people into socializing is not effective, it's really obnoxious. Instead, Give people tabs to look at recommend Events, Groups, Locations and Marketplace items. When they join groups or explore locations recommended to them they will meet people and socializing will happen organically, rather than forced.

 Clean up Events. If someone is spamming the Events listings with dozens of posts, lump them altogether into a single listing so people can see what else is out there. Being able to filter by Interest Tags like I suggested above will also make it easier to find events actually relevant to you rather than events that simply cram in every keyword they can, rendering search useless.

 Use login and teleport screens to connect people with content (based on their interests), or share useful SL tips with them. We have to stare at those screens when teleporting and logging in anyway, might as well make them useful.

 Really, and perhaps most importantly, LL needs to step up the engagement and interactivity features. Animesh will help, and so will EEP and Gridwide Experiences, so the Lindens seem to recognize this and appear to be working on it, which is great. LL needs to solve the problems with pathfinding so we can actually use it, it's going to be a lot more useful when Animesh is here.

 There needs to be more ways to interact directly with the SL viewer interface so LL can create interactive tutorials that show people how to use the interface, and SL content creators can create experiences that use the interface in new and interesting ways.

I'm always frustrated when people throw their hands up in the air and suggest there's nothing that can be done to make SL more interesting, engaging, and intuitive, because there absolutely is a lot that can be done.

[animats]

16 minutes ago, Penny Patton said:

I'm generally against anything that requires a live person to hold people's hands, it's effective but it doesn't scale.

I tend to agree, but the arrival rate isn't that high at any newbie entry point I've visited. At Oxbridge Caledon, it's about one every 2-3 minutes. At the adult safe hub in Zindra, it's one every few minutes. I haven't tried the general hubs, which are probably higher. Supposedly SL gets about 11000 new signups each day, but those are web signups and may be from bots. I'd like to know how many ever appear in-world at all.

It doesn't have to be rolled out at all entry points. The advantage of doing it with humans is that you get to find out quickly what works and what doesn't. Implementing some big automated system, like Linden Realms, and then find out that it's a griefer magnet, is a way to spend too much money for too little result.

[Paul Hexem]

6 hours ago, Phorumities said:

actually i might not have used the correct terminology, but i only said what others have said 1000 times over.

They were wrong 1000 times over.

Penny's been very eloquent about things that can be improved already, but I also want to add that plenty of games today, including the ones I listed, are not pre rendered or pre loaded.

Gamers are getting procedurally generated maps, voxel terrain that can be modified, and building their own vehicles and structures right in game, with the stability and FPS they expect. 

More and more games are starting to offer features very similar to SL, but they're doing it with far less lag and less issues. 

If we got past the excuse that "SL isn't a game, it's supposed to be terrible!", maybe we can further improve things.

[Phorumities]

11 minutes ago, Gadget Portal said:

 

If we got past the excuse that "SL isn't a game, it's supposed to be terrible!", maybe we can further improve things.

well right there is a point of debate. I don't think SL is terrible, I think it's great. Most people are their own worst enemies, having setting that are too high for their machines. Then they go buy a new machine and go woo hooo now  I can go ultra on everything, then complain because they are slower than ever.

Instead of raising second life's standards, perhaps we should lower our expectations a bit.

[ThorinII]

4 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

I'm always frustrated when people throw their hands up in the air and suggest there's nothing that can be done to make SL more interesting, engaging, and intuitive, because there absolutely is a lot that can be done.

SL was way more intuitive when the official viewer was still on version v1.x. You still can see the difference when comparing the cluttered official viewer to the Cool VL Viewer.

And even though I've been in SL since May '08 (with my first account), I have never found SL not interesting enough, not engaging enough, or not interactive enough.  Quite the opposite, SL has never stopped to amaze me.

I think it's simply a matter of expectations. Of course, someone who got spoiled by high-framerate games will be disappointed by everything in SL. Both because of the partly low fps, the unoptimized content, and because SL has no objectives whatsoever.  No "boss" to beat, no points to gain, no goals to meet, no storyline to follow, nothing that qualifies for an actual game.

Because of that, I think that SL will always be a disappointment for gamers, no matter how hard LL tries to improve this virtual world.

Edited August 2, 2018 by ThorinII

[MoiraKathleen]

19 minutes ago, ThorinII said:

Because of that, I think that SL will always be a disappointment for gamers, no matter how hard LL tries to improve this virtual world.

I think there is some truth to that statement.

I am not a gamer.  When I first started, I didn't even know what FPS meant, let alone how to display it in order to tell if it was good or bad.  Everything that I've learned about performance I've pretty much learned from reading here in the forums.  There are some things that I still haven't figured out - especially around VRAM and textures - and even if I did figure out how to see what those measurements are, it might be like with the new LOD tools in the FS viewer - I see numbers but don't always know if those numbers are good or bad.

I think that because of the large size of the user base, it is difficult for information about improvements made to be communicated.  Even when it is something where LL has sent out emails (like with some of the land/tier changes or jelly dolls).   For improvements to be made and utilized correctly by users and creators, in order to bring about performance improvements across the grid, all of the non-gamer types are going to need to be communicated with in a way that leads them to understand the importance of doing things in a new or different way (instead of, for example, continuing to build with lousy LOD's or large textures, or solving jelly dolls by setting the avatar complexity to unlimited and not caring about whether others can see you or not). 

I also think that the new user signing up has to take some responsibility as well for figuring out where to find information about how or why to do things, what there is to do, and so forth.  I was just looking at some pictures I took during the first couple of months I was inworld and I was surprised at all of the different things I had investigated and learned during the first month, and then during the first 3 or 4 months.  I read a lot of knowledge base and SL wiki topics, read a lot in the forums (especially in the 'answers' section).  I was lucky to have the SciFi Con and the SL birthday events occurring shortly after I joined, so attending those also provided a broader look at what was possible and what was available to do. 

 

   

[Paul Hexem]

1 hour ago, Phorumities said:

well right there is a point of debate. I don't think SL is terrible, I think it's great. Most people are their own worst enemies, having setting that are too high for their machines. Then they go buy a new machine and go woo hooo now  I can go ultra on everything, then complain because they are slower than ever.

Instead of raising second life's standards, perhaps we should lower our expectations a bit.

That's literally just another way of saying "it's not a game, it's supposed to be terrible".

 

1 hour ago, ThorinII said:

I think it's simply a matter of expectations. Of course, someone who got spoiled by high-framerate games will be disappointed by everything in SL. Both because of the partly low fps, the unoptimized content, and because SL has no objectives whatsoever.  No "boss" to beat, no points to gain, no goals to meet, no storyline to follow, nothing that qualifies for an actual game.

Because of that, I think that SL will always be a disappointment for gamers, no matter how hard LL tries to improve this virtual world.

Sure, as a game, SL will always be miserable. The technology behind it shouldn't be miserable too, though. Why shouldn't LL look at companies making games that do the same things as SL, and learn from them in order to improve SL?

 

13 minutes ago, moirakathleen said:

I think there is some truth to that statement.

I am not a gamer.  When I first started, I didn't even know what FPS meant, let alone how to display it in order to tell if it was good or bad.  Everything that I've learned about performance I've pretty much learned from reading here in the forums.  There are some things that I still haven't figured out - especially around VRAM and textures - and even if I did figure out how to see what those measurements are, it might be like with the new LOD tools in the FS viewer - I see numbers but don't always know if those numbers are good or bad.

I think that because of the large size of the user base, it is difficult for information about improvements made to be communicated.  Even when it is something where LL has sent out emails (like with some of the land/tier changes or jelly dolls).   For improvements to be made and utilized correctly by users and creators, in order to bring about performance improvements across the grid, all of the non-gamer types are going to need to be communicated with in a way that leads them to understand the importance of doing things in a new or different way (instead of, for example, continuing to build with lousy LOD's or large textures, or solving jelly dolls by setting the avatar complexity to unlimited and not caring about whether others can see you or not). 

I also think that the new user signing up has to take some responsibility as well for figuring out where to find information about how or why to do things, what there is to do, and so forth.  I was just looking at some pictures I took during the first couple of months I was inworld and I was surprised at all of the different things I had investigated and learned during the first month, and then during the first 3 or 4 months.  I read a lot of knowledge base and SL wiki topics, read a lot in the forums (especially in the 'answers' section).  I was lucky to have the SciFi Con and the SL birthday events occurring shortly after I joined, so attending those also provided a broader look at what was possible and what was available to do. 

That's another thing LL could learn from games, especially MMO's. How to effectively get information out to the users.

[Penny Patton]

1 hour ago, Phorumities said:

well right there is a point of debate. I don't think SL is terrible, I think it's great. Most people are their own worst enemies, having setting that are too high for their machines. Then they go buy a new machine and go woo hooo now  I can go ultra on everything, then complain because they are slower than ever.

Instead of raising second life's standards, perhaps we should lower our expectations a bit.

Hard disagree here.

 If you thoroughly enjoy Second Life and can't see how it could be improved, that's fine. I love it when people enjoy Second Life. However, handwaving criticism of SL away saying "well, they shouldn't expect so much" doesn't help anything, do you think someone new to SL trying to figure it out is going to feel inclined to stick around if every question and criticism they have of SL is met with a response like that? Second Life has always had trouble holding on to new users as it is, listening to the complaints of people SL has failed to hold on to is how you understand what can be improved.

1 hour ago, ThorinII said:

Because of that, I think that SL will always be a disappointment for gamers, no matter how hard LL tries to improve this virtual world.

 But what are you basing this on? Second Life's performance can be dramatically improved with a few changes and a bit of time. There's nothing preventing Linden Lab from adding more interactivity features to make SL more intuitive and engaging. All of the problems people complain about when it comes to SL have solutions.

When people suggest that gamers would only be interested in Second Life if it had points to score and bosses to beat I have to say that they're making a lot of ill-informed assumptions on what's driving people away from SL in the first place. Fact of the matter is, there are a lot of gamers already in Second Life and gamers have been interested in virtual worlds like Second Life longer than anyone. Gamers are people, they have a variety of interests just like anyone else. SL falls short of the mark for many not because there's no aliens to shoot or quest givers telling them to find 18 boar tusks, but because it has real problems that have been pointed out, discussed, and shown where they can be improved time and time again, but in 15 years those improvements never came.

[Axel UwU]

Can SL even be thought to be a game? It has no set goal,no objective. A game to me would be something like Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. SL seems more of a social networking platform to me.

Edited August 2, 2018 by Axelfoxthefoxyfluff

[Penny Patton]

5 hours ago, animats said:

I tend to agree, but the arrival rate isn't that high at any newbie entry point I've visited. At Oxbridge Caledon, it's about one every 2-3 minutes. At the adult safe hub in Zindra, it's one every few minutes.

But you have to look at it this way, if you rely on a live person to walk everyone through their introduction to Second Life, how long do you have to spend with them?  More than 2-3 minutes, that's for sure. Probably more like an hour or two, with follow up questions going on for days or weeks. Meanwhile, more people keep signing in.

 Let's say you have a new user logging in to Oxbridge Caledon every 2-3 minutes, I'll even go so far as to say this is only happening during business hours, 9a-5p. That's 20 people an hour for just one arrival point in Second Life. Add to that the adult safe hub in Zindra and that's a 40 person welcome staff for two sims, assuming they can completely explain everything a new SL user needs to know in 60 seconds. But then there's what, eight Social Islands? That's 320 people you need to add to the orientation staff, again assuming they can do the impossible and properly introduce people to SL in 60 seconds. And that's just during business hours, assuming no one takes breaks!  Want to be able to handle this all day and night? Gotta nearly triple that staff number. And we haven't even counted all the other new user zones. We're talking a staff literally in the thousands and haven't even addressed the key point here that no one can properly introduce a new user to SL in only 60 seconds.

 An automated tutorial on the other hand, that can scale. No matter how many new users are coming in, each of them has that tutorial available to them as long as they need it. And such a tutorial isn't this crazy, out there idea. LL has simply never tried it. Well, they kinda tried it once but because the tools weren't there to support it, it was a pretty spectacular failure. That's why so many of us argue for better tools, so SL can have the intuitive user engagement such an experience requires.

[animats]

You'd do it manually as a market test, on a sample of new users. Say one new user point. See if offering people a shortlist of roles helps. If not, can that idea. If it works, figure out how to automate it.

Building a big automated thing without market testing resulted in the Horizons Experience.

[Callum Meriman]

1 hour ago, Axelfoxthefoxyfluff said:

Can SL even be thought to be a game? It has no set goal,no objective.

Can playing tonka trucks in the sandpit be thought to be a game? It has no set goal,no objective.

[animats]

45 minutes ago, Penny Patton said:

Second Life's performance can be dramatically improved with a few changes and a bit of time. ... All of the problems people complain about when it comes to SL have solutions.

Yes. On the technical side, SL is missing an important piece - content optimization.

Video games work because the content is designed to a polygon budget. SL doesn't have that. Whatever creators make is uploaded to the asset servers and fed back out to the viewers. There's no content optimization being done automatically by LL.

Now, it used to be that game development relied on manual content optimization. But in recent years, there's been progress. Some links:

• Simplygon - a service of Microsoft. "Simplygon is the gold standard for automated 3D Optimization. All devices have variant graphic performance and all 3D Data is different. With Simplygon you can adapt your 3D assets to run smooth on any platform. Simplygon can be used either as a desktop application or a fully automated pipeline."
• InstaLOD - "Everything you need for the production and automatic optimization of 3D content"
• Automatic billboard impostors - video.

The real win is doing things automatically which creators cannot do. Such as creating reduced models of things bigger than a single object. Houses. Entire parcels. Entire sims.

Now, of course, SL is much more dynamic than most video games. Any content can be changed. But in practice, most SL content doesn't change much.  Optimization can exploit that. A background task is needed which finds objects that haven't changed in the last few minutes or hours, and combines them into big static optimized objects for rendering purposes. This is a form of caching. Changing any part of such an object invalidates the optimized object group and throws you back to the regular object; the optimizer reruns when things quiet down. Buildings, roads, household objects, vegetation - all those don't change much, and can be ground down into single optimized models for lower levels of detail. Entire parcels might be optimized down to one medium-LOD model that kicks in when you're maybe 20-50m outside the parcel.

This is a big job, but the hard parts can be purchased. The part LL has to write is mostly bookkeeping. It's not hard real time; users never wait for this. It's done on background servers. Yes, ambitious, but far easier than Sansar.

[Coffee Pancake]

4 hours ago, Gadget Portal said:

If we got past the excuse that "SL isn't a game, it's supposed to be terrible!", maybe we can further improve things.

It's not an excuse .. more a depressingly accurate descriptor.

The performance is shocking at times, if you're not a gamer .. GO GET SOME GAMES and see what your hardware can do, then go back to SL and cry.

There isn't a whole lot we can do. Optimizing content helps a little, being frugal with VRAM helps a little, standing alone on a prim high in the sky helps a little. We can only work with the tools we have, and we're trying to cook a 7 course meal for 40 off a camping stove with wooden pans while someone else plays with the gas supply.

Sansar is not the answer, LL have fallen into the "build it and they will come" trap that befalls so many beautifully themed and entirely deserted regions. Creating a space and then offering people the potential to do a dozen different kinds of _______ doesn't and hasn't ever worked. Successful and popular spaces in SL stick to a singular purpose, come here and do THIS .. even if THIS just means stand about with 30 other avatars in silence while you poke IM/group chat and reddit/facebook/etc.

The directionless nature of SL is it's biggest weakness and I'm not talking about the not much we all get up to, the Lab have no idea what SL is actually for. No direction, no goals, no roadmap and no clue why we all keep logging in. Their development model for the last 15 years has been "add stuff, see what people do .. add constraints when they inevitably do crazy things".

Imagine what would happen if they decided that SL is a place to make and play games in a massively social setting. 

Sure we would do all the things we do now, but development would have a purpose that would positively impact everything we did even if it wasn't part of the mission statement.

 

[Klytyna]

On 01 August 2018 at 2:31 AM, Gadget Portal said:

Penny nailed why it matters.

Because many games do many of the same things that SL does, but they do it with less lag, higher framerates, and on lower spec computers.

And whenever a new user comes along and says "Why do I get 90 FPS in my other games, but only 18 FPS in SL?" everyone tries to justify it by arguing that SL isn't a game, when we should all be asking why LL isn't looking at what these other game devs are doing.

There's no NEED to look at other "games" to find out what they are doing to get 90 fps...

We already know.

They are NOT allowing over 1000 TB of unoptimised amateur hobbyist made content to be streamed in an unlimited tidal wave at the gamers client.

They are NOT allowing the users to make their own content at all in most cases, even the permitted content isd severely limited.

You can't just walk anywhere and do anything, you have to follow the path thats been navmeshed through the scenery, thats designed to only be seen from the offcial path or areas, you can't just have any avatar you want, you have to stick to the permitted types and componants.

There is a world of difference between downloading and installing 30 gb of data on your pc, and then burning 1/4 gb a night in handshaking at 90fps in combat with a server, and downloading 2 gb a night of content EVERY night, 7 days a week 52 weeks a year, and handshaking at 9 fps.

...

Telling people that SL is a game is the big part of the problem.

Some IDIOT says "theres this GAME called SL, go try it"

The noob downloads a tiny cvlient, wheres the 30 gb of level maps and permitted character class models and npc models...

Then the log into the GAME and... No intro video to give them a clue what its about, no npc telling them who there character is, and how they have to find their...

"long lost sister Fuki, who is a Japanese 9 tailed cyber-kitsune-war-droid cunningly disguised as a 14 yr old schoolgirl in a latex maids outfit, who can fire otaku-seeking laser missiles out of her ass Gundam style"

Theres no mission briefings, no missions, no character sheet with their experience score and level on it, no objective, and they don't "get this weird game" and they wonder why it's soooooo slow loading the half gb of content for the "level" around them, why isn't that already installed on the hard drive?

Creating your character's look? Why does the character editor not have 99.999999999% of the character components in it, why is there no help text for all the stuff.

SL is NOT a "game" in the sense that the word is understood in by most of the noobs who get told about this "game", that's why they have such unrealistic expectations of it, and are thus dissapointed.

...

It's like telling people that a wickerwork picnic basket is a Star Trek style Meal Replicator, and then they open the lid and find it contains cold chicken with a "army of ants" dressing, and a couple of cans of Inca Cola...

And then you ask "whay is a replicator doing that our picnic basket isnt, why are picnicers so upset when they find out we lied about it being a replicator"

...

SL is NOT a mmorpgfps "game".

 

Edited August 2, 2018 by Klytyna

[Theresa Tennyson]

3 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

The directionless nature of SL is it's biggest weakness and I'm not talking about the not much we all get up to, the Lab have no idea what SL is actually for. No direction, no goals, no roadmap and no clue why we all keep logging in. Their development model for the last 15 years has been "add stuff, see what people do .. add constraints when they inevitably do crazy things".

Imagine what would happen if they decided that SL is a place to make and play games in a massively social setting. 

Sure we would do all the things we do now, but development would have a purpose that would positively impact everything we did even if it wasn't part of the mission statement.

 

They would have Playstation Home, which failed.

The whole "no idea what SL is actually for" isn't limited to Linden Lab. There was a post recently where someone who has a pretty significant SL business said that "Second Life is 90% dressing up your avatar." However, I'm sure that there are others in Second Life who would say that it's "90%  sandbox building", "90% social chat", "90% roleplay", "90% virtual sex", etc. and you'd very quickly get the idea that it was being run by Max Bialystock.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Producers_(1967_film)

The reason Second Life has survived is its very open-endedness, but that means that you have the problem of things set up for one possible use of Second Life conflicting with another very possible use. For instance, right now the market for things used in static photography projects is huge - i.e. very detailed builds and avatars that look great in a static setup where their extreme complexity isn't a problem, and is actually an advantage. It makes lots of money for in-world users, and therefore lots of money for the Lab.

The problem comes when those same elements are used for a setting that requires a very high dynamic load like a club or action game and they beat the rendering engine like a rented mule because it's trying to do something that no game developer who was attempting to have high dynamic performance would do. However, both clubs/action games and static photography are perfectly acceptable things to do in Second Life and if the Lab decides to choose one use over the other it will change what made Second Life as successful as it is in the first place, and there's no guarantee that the change will be beneficial for the platform.

[Marth Coberts]

On 7/31/2018 at 6:15 AM, Phorumities said:

I don't cry when I play a game and lose.

A game doesn't rip my heart out and hand it to me and say here deal with it.

So no, Second Life is in no way shape or form a game to me.

To others maybe, but not me. 

Wait, how'd I miss this post?

 

Nier: Automata will play with your emotions, especially that true ending scene, Dust: An Elysian Tail will drop your heart like an ugly baby, A Hate in Time will warm it, and even Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask will make you realize the futility in the effort you put in.

 

If done right, a Video Game can take your heart, rip it into little pieces, kick it around, THEN hand it back all covered in dirt for you to deal with it.

[Phorumities]

9 hours ago, Gadget Portal said:

That's literally just another way of saying "it's not a game, it's supposed to be terrible".

 

I never said SL was terrible, I said it was great.

Video games have no interest or appeal to me.

[Phorumities]

9 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

Hard disagree here.

 If you thoroughly enjoy Second Life and can't see how it could be improved, that's fine. I love it when people enjoy Second Life. However, handwaving criticism of SL away saying "well, they shouldn't expect so much" doesn't help anything, do you think someone new to SL trying to figure it out is going to feel inclined to stick around if every question and criticism they have of SL is met with a response like that? Second Life has always had trouble holding on to new users as it is, listening to the complaints of people SL has failed to hold on to is how you understand what can be improved.

 But what are you basing this on? Second Life's performance can be dramatically improved with a few changes and a bit of time. There's nothing preventing Linden Lab from adding more interactivity features to make SL more intuitive and engaging. All of the problems people complain about when it comes to SL have solutions.

When people suggest that gamers would only be interested in Second Life if it had points to score and bosses to beat I have to say that they're making a lot of ill-informed assumptions on what's driving people away from SL in the first place. Fact of the matter is, there are a lot of gamers already in Second Life and gamers have been interested in virtual worlds like Second Life longer than anyone. Gamers are people, they have a variety of interests just like anyone else. SL falls short of the mark for many not because there's no aliens to shoot or quest givers telling them to find 18 boar tusks, but because it has real problems that have been pointed out, discussed, and shown where they can be improved time and time again, but in 15 years those improvements never came.

When i first joined SL i didn't think wow this place sucks i thought wow this place is amazing and I went on from there.

I guess it comes from having a naturally positive attitude, which also explains why have no problem meeting people and making friends.

[Phorumities]

1 hour ago, Marth Coberts said:

Wait, how'd I miss this post?

 

Nier: Automata will play with your emotions, especially that true ending scene, Dust: An Elysian Tail will drop your heart like an ugly baby, A Hate in Time will warm it, and even Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask will make you realize the futility in the effort you put in.

 

If done right, a Video Game can take your heart, rip it into little pieces, kick it around, THEN hand it back all covered in dirt for you to deal with it.

like i said i don't do video games,

however i do cry at movies, sometimes because they are so moving and other times because they were so bad that i wasted 15 bucks and two hours of my life.

 

[Paul Hexem]

4 hours ago, Klytyna said:

There's no NEED to look at other "games" to find out what they are doing to get 90 fps...

We already know.

They are NOT allowing over 1000 TB of unoptimised amateur hobbyist made content to be streamed in an unlimited tidal wave at the gamers client.

They are NOT allowing the users to make their own content at all in most cases, even the permitted content isd severely limited.

You can't just walk anywhere and do anything, you have to follow the path thats been navmeshed through the scenery, thats designed to only be seen from the offcial path or areas, you can't just have any avatar you want, you have to stick to the permitted types and componants.

There is a world of difference between downloading and installing 30 gb of data on your pc, and then burning 1/4 gb a night in handshaking at 90fps in combat with a server, and downloading 2 gb a night of content EVERY night, 7 days a week 52 weeks a year, and handshaking at 9 fps.

...

Telling people that SL is a game is the big part of the problem.

Some IDIOT says "theres this GAME called SL, go try it"

The noob downloads a tiny cvlient, wheres the 30 gb of level maps and permitted character class models and npc models...

Then the log into the GAME and... No intro video to give them a clue what its about, no npc telling them who there character is, and how they have to find their...

"long lost sister Fuki, who is a Japanese 9 tailed cyber-kitsune-war-droid cunningly disguised as a 14 yr old schoolgirl in a latex maids outfit, who can fire otaku-seeking laser missiles out of her ass Gundam style"

Theres no mission briefings, no missions, no character sheet with their experience score and level on it, no objective, and they don't "get this weird game" and they wonder why it's soooooo slow loading the half gb of content for the "level" around them, why isn't that already installed on the hard drive?

Creating your character's look? Why does the character editor not have 99.999999999% of the character components in it, why is there no help text for all the stuff.

SL is NOT a "game" in the sense that the word is understood in by most of the noobs who get told about this "game", that's why they have such unrealistic expectations of it, and are thus dissapointed.

...

It's like telling people that a wickerwork picnic basket is a Star Trek style Meal Replicator, and then they open the lid and find it contains cold chicken with a "army of ants" dressing, and a couple of cans of Inca Cola...

And then you ask "whay is a replicator doing that our picnic basket isnt, why are picnicers so upset when they find out we lied about it being a replicator"

...

SL is NOT a mmorpgfps "game".

 

Incorrect. 

[Dillon Levenque]

10 hours ago, Callum Meriman said:

Can playing tonka trucks in the sandpit be thought to be a game? It has no set goal,no objective.

Not really, no. It's simply using your imagination to explore the sandpit with your trusty truck.

To me, that sounds a lot like my experience in SL.