Secondlife declining player base

[Polenth Yue]

1 hour ago, Michaelatv Destiny said:

I just been back in SL for two hours June 2019, and promptly uninstalled it again. main reason, Just empty of avators,  the Bots in stores instead of real people have contributed to the lack of social interaction Once seen, even on shopping trips, used to pick up a couple of new friends to hang out with. I see shopping is mostly done by only one person, yet in 2010 pairs were the norm. sandboxes, once  busy were empty. Blakes seas were unusually quite, with most of the old Airports that used to be full devoid or decayed of any activity.

June was the big birthday event, which was packed with people. On 4th July, I went to a community party in Bellisseria, the new Linden Homes continent. People are still around. They're just not in the same places they were years ago and they will be attending seasonal events where relevant.

[Selene Gregoire]

21 minutes ago, Amina Sopwith said:

I had to look that gif up, I've not seen Men in Black 3. Ok, so according to the wiki: "Boris is an intergalactic criminal and the last known member of the Boglodite race." So I looked up Boglodites: "The Boglodites were a species of parasitic aliens. In order to survive they had to continuously devour planet after planet, to avoid their species' starvation. After their invasion of Earth was blocked by the establishment of the Arc Net Shield, the entire species went extinct, except for Boris The Animal."

Total fiction, of course. The Tories and Brexit Party still crawl the earth, so the species is clearly not extinct. 

Well... Obviously Boris isn't extinct either. He's living in the UK. /me runs

[Amanda Crisp]

Maybe the key to retaining Residents is to be better able to direct them to content they *want* and ensure that they *understand* that the content providers are....other residents....and not SL itself ?

Operating in an open “Environment” is a different ( or at least a more intense ) social skill-set than that used for a closed-loop “Game”. Perhaps if prospective Residents relate to that concept, they will be better prepared to “go find your own fun” as opposed to wandering and being disappointed by the lack of a set progression path.

Edited July 7, 2019 by AmandaKeen

[Michaelatv Destiny]

On 7/6/2019 at 10:05 PM, Amina Sopwith said:

You're right, of course, but you may as well stay in the game. Even Gor is going to be better than our green and pleasant land once we've crashed out with no deal. They're ruled by psychotic six foot tall golden alien insects. We're going to have Boris.
 

UK is a joke right now, and many suffering from bad exchange rates that make second life even pricier to use. I used to play Gor a lot, in the Valkyrie Forests as a Panther, but my main role in second life for 5 years was as diplomatic officer in a large urban combat faction, in NOR the once famous 12 sim combat zone Using the WARP meter system. That whole 12 sim region no longer exists, only in players memory's of times gone by.    Gor is not quite my cup of tea , as each region you go to has none standard global rules and tends to make ones that are not acceptable to  a factions raiding party., which takes the spontaneously surprise attacks from Docks away, if you have to read 500 words what you can do or not. Dont know about Boris, he does make blunders, but he does have a sense of humour, but now all this tit for tat between The US and us over our ambassadors illegal leaks, doesn't do anyone any favours, and with labour falling apart as well, and Merkels health becoming an issue for the EU to deal with only adds to all the uncertainty that affects  currency's all over. For me, I just see in my UK daytime, literately no one now to engage with. Boris or failed NHS Hunt, is what we going to get one way or the other. Just hang on to your hats., and hope if Boris wins his better relationship with Trump, may push up rates again. 

[Rob Huntsman]

On 7/11/2019 at 3:02 PM, Michaelatv Destiny said:

UK is a joke right now, and many suffering from bad exchange rates that make second life even pricier to use. I used to play Gor a lot, in the Valkyrie Forests as a Panther, but my main role in second life for 5 years was as diplomatic officer in a large urban combat faction, in NOR the once famous 12 sim combat zone Using the WARP meter system. That whole 12 sim region no longer exists, only in players memory's of times gone by.   

Linden Labs didn't wanna support any combat systems or categorize anything really for their players, all combat systems = roleplay, Gambling = Gaming regions, and Bots = high traffic regions. A great majority of people be wearing rose tinted glasses to think SL is booming. Anyway, this makes you wonder why you can't find anything to do in SecondLife. Anyways, with Sansar done, hopefully Linden Labs will now update SL's engine to compete with other video games. Before anyone says "SL is not a videogame" here is google.

[Penny Patton]

1 hour ago, Haselden said:

hopefully Linden Labs will now update SL's engine to compete with other video games.

The engine isn't the problem. Not entirely. It does have some very substantial problems, but the engine is not the problem. LL actually has been updating it over the years so it's not exactly as out of date as a lot of people assume. The problem is the content people have filled SL with. Since LL's attempts to curb badly made (unoptimized, framerate killing) content were set up by people who did not fully grasp the problem, SL is filled with content would kill performance in any videogame engine, no matter how modern and regardless of the hardware running it.

If you build an optimized environment in SL, it can look gorgeous and run at a smooth framerate even on laptops with onboard graphics. It's actually kind of amazing how well SL can run when you don't fill it with content that just is not made for realtime 3D rendering and avatars walking around literally hogging more rendering resources than some entire sims.

If LL wants to fix that problem, make SL an experience that runs smoothly for most users, they need to figure out a way to tackle this problem that they created by lacking a full understanding of the problem to begin with. And they need to do it without flushing 16 years of legacy content down the drain, causing the userbase to ragequit. But since LL still doesn't seem to understand that they don't fully understand the problem, it's like trying to explain colour to someone who has always been blind, and doesn't speak your language.

While underwater.

 

 

Fighting sharks with lasers on their heads.

[Solar Legion]

Oh for .... not this again ....

[Qie Niangao]

5 hours ago, Haselden said:

Anyways, with Sansar done,

Ah ha ha ha ha
Ha ha ha ha ha
/me gasps
Ha ha ha ha
...

[Selene Gregoire]

7 hours ago, Haselden said:

Linden Labs didn't wanna support any combat systems or categorize anything really for their players, all combat systems = roleplay, Gambling = Gaming regions, and Bots = high traffic regions. A great majority of people be wearing rose tinted glasses to think SL is booming. Anyway, this makes you wonder why you can't find anything to do in SecondLife. Anyways, with Sansar done, hopefully Linden Labs will now update SL's engine to compete with other video games. Before anyone says "SL is not a videogame" here is google.

Not seeing anything in that image that says SL is a video game. It talks about playing games in SL and says SL is an online virtual world. Only Google tries to label it a video game. If you're going to just take Google's word for it... that is foolish.

[Sammy Huntsman]

2 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Not seeing anything in that image that says SL is a video game. It talks about playing games in SL and says SL is an online virtual world. Only Google tries to label it a video game. If you're going to just take Google's word for it... that is foolish.

To be quite frank, its pretty much a Sandbox game. Kinda like Minecraft, or the plethora of other games of that same nature on Steam. I don't get why people have a problem with others it's not wrong for them to say that, just like it's not wrong for you to say it's not a game. And you do realize, that most games are virtual worlds of some sorts. And MMOs are literally Online Virtual worlds. That and you can do the exact same thing in SL, like in other games. The user created content, is just basically mods. You are literally adding something new to the game. That and we are technically called players. We play Second Life. That is not to say that you are wrong for how you think. But please don't sit there and correct others on how they think. It drives me up the wall. Someone says something like SL is a game. Other party says, it's not you are wrong. You are insert whatever label you feel like it, you need to be educated. The other person, goes and gives very good arguments as to why they think it's that. And you still without missing a beat, tell them they are wrong and that how they think is rude and hurts the other player base. Like they aren't saying it to offend people, that is how they look at SL. And before you go well there are real people behind these avatars. Same goes for many online games, there are real people behind those avatars. Who make friends, create bonds, find love. I literally heard of a wedding in GTA Online.

[AyelaNewLife]

28 minutes ago, halebore Aeon said:

To be quite frank, its pretty much a Sandbox game. Kinda like Minecraft, or the plethora of other games of that same nature on Steam. I don't get why people have a problem with others it's not wrong for them to say that, just like it's not wrong for you to say it's not a game. And you do realize, that most games are virtual worlds of some sorts. And MMOs are literally Online Virtual worlds. That and you can do the exact same thing in SL, like in other games. The user created content, is just basically mods. You are literally adding something new to the game. That and we are technically called players. We play Second Life. That is not to say that you are wrong for how you think. But please don't sit there and correct others on how they think. It drives me up the wall. Someone says something like SL is a game. Other party says, it's not you are wrong. You are insert whatever label you feel like it, you need to be educated. The other person, goes and gives very good arguments as to why they think it's that. And you still without missing a beat, tell them they are wrong and that how they think is rude and hurts the other player base. Like they aren't saying it to offend people, that is how they look at SL. And before you go well there are real people behind these avatars. Same goes for many online games, there are real people behind those avatars. Who make friends, create bonds, find love. I literally heard of a wedding in GTA Online.

It honestly feels like some people need the non-video-game label to justify to themselves why they spend so much time in Second Life. "I'm an adult, adults don't spend hours playing video games... but spending hours in a virtual world? That's totally fine, and completely different!" In truth, the distinction is meaningless. Second Life follows the same patterns of activity and new player retention as MMOs, from a technological standpoint it might as well be a game. The only impact the label has is in the minds of those that use it... and if you're so insecure about your hobbies that you insist upon slapping one label rather than the other on it, then you honestly need to grow up.

[KanryDrago]

1 hour ago, halebore Aeon said:

To be quite frank, its pretty much a Sandbox game. Kinda like Minecraft, or the plethora of other games of that same nature on Steam. I don't get why people have a problem with others it's not wrong for them to say that, just like it's not wrong for you to say it's not a game. And you do realize, that most games are virtual worlds of some sorts. And MMOs are literally Online Virtual worlds. That and you can do the exact same thing in SL, like in other games. The user created content, is just basically mods. You are literally adding something new to the game. That and we are technically called players. We play Second Life. That is not to say that you are wrong for how you think. But please don't sit there and correct others on how they think. It drives me up the wall. Someone says something like SL is a game. Other party says, it's not you are wrong. You are insert whatever label you feel like it, you need to be educated. The other person, goes and gives very good arguments as to why they think it's that. And you still without missing a beat, tell them they are wrong and that how they think is rude and hurts the other player base. Like they aren't saying it to offend people, that is how they look at SL. And before you go well there are real people behind these avatars. Same goes for many online games, there are real people behind those avatars. Who make friends, create bonds, find love. I literally heard of a wedding in GTA Online.

Labelling it a game hurts sl for the simple reason people see game, they come they find none of what they expect such as quests, item drops, levelling up etc and then they quit and bad mouth SL. It leads to people joining SL with malformed expectations

[Selene Gregoire]

26 minutes ago, KanryDrago said:

Labelling it a game hurts sl for the simple reason people see game, they come they find none of what they expect such as quests, item drops, levelling up etc and then they quit and bad mouth SL. It leads to people joining SL with malformed expectations

I've seen it happen time and time again since 2004. 

Wasn't hard to find this article from 2007: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/17538999/ns/technology_and_science-games/t/if-second-life-isnt-game-what-it/#.XTyma-hKiUk

Second Life is not a game, it is a community. A global community utilizing a creative platform as both social and creative outlets. You can create games within SL but SL itself isn't a game. Never has been and never will be.

Those that don't understand or know of the distinction between a video game and an open environment virtual world created by the people who populate that world are always going to be disappointed and leave. Because they had the wrong expectations given to them by people who insist SL is a video game.

[Sammy Huntsman]

33 minutes ago, KanryDrago said:

Labelling it a game hurts sl for the simple reason people see game, they come they find none of what they expect such as quests, item drops, levelling up etc and then they quit and bad mouth SL. It leads to people joining SL with malformed expectations

But at the same time, there are tonnes of games that are in early access that lack any sort of that. Yet we still call it a game. I don't see how it is wrong for others to label it as they want, i don't know why you need to sit there and correct people. You don't see me correcting you, saying you're statement is invalid.

[KanryDrago]

1 minute ago, halebore Aeon said:

But at the same time, there are tonnes of games that are in early access that lack any sort of that. Yet we still call it a game. I don't see how it is wrong for others to label it as they want, i don't know why you need to sit there and correct people. You don't see me correcting you, saying you're statement is invalid.

I just told you exactly why....they tell people its a game, people come expecting a game, people leave and post about how crap SL is because they came expecting its something its not. Which part of that are you struggling with?

For the vast majority of people SL has no game like qualities at all, they come to a virtual world and mainly socialise and make friends. The number of people that come and stay because they see it as a game is vanishingly small. You promote SL for what it is and then people dont come expecting something different

[Sammy Huntsman]

10 minutes ago, KanryDrago said:

I just told you exactly why....they tell people its a game, people come expecting a game, people leave and post about how crap SL is because they came expecting its something its not. Which part of that are you struggling with?

For the vast majority of people SL has no game like qualities at all, they come to a virtual world and mainly socialise and make friends. The number of people that come and stay because they see it as a game is vanishingly small. You promote SL for what it is and then people dont come expecting something different

Again, as I said before. It shouldn't matter what someone calls it, you have what you feel it's best to be called. I have what i feel it's best to be called. Let's leave it at that. Please stop saying your way is right, while mine is wrong. Jeez, I look at it as a Sandbox Game, end of story. You can look at it as a Virtual World, that is fine. Again please stop invalidating how others think.

[KanryDrago]

Just now, halebore Aeon said:

Again, as I said before. It shouldn't matter what someone calls it, you have what you feel it's best to be called. I have what i feel it's best to be called. Let's leave it at that. Please stop saying your way is right, while mine is wrong. Jeez, I look at it as a Sandbox Game, end of story. You can look at it as a Virtual World, that is fine. Again please stop invalidating how others think.

Which part of its mis selling it to others that then tell others its crap are you missing? You can call it what you like in your own head when you mislead others and bring them here under false pretences it hurts sl and therefore hurts my experience. Your claim it has no effect is therefore spurious and rejected your views are as valid as a 9$ bill

[Sammy Huntsman]

1 minute ago, KanryDrago said:

Which part of its mis selling it to others that then tell others its crap are you missing? You can call it what you like in your own head when you mislead others and bring them here under false pretences it hurts sl and therefore hurts my experience. Your claim it has no effect is therefore spurious and rejected your views are as valid as a 9$ bill

Yep, it's totally my fault for telling them what I think it is, but at the same time giving them the opportunity to form their own opinion on what they think it is. Wanna know something, people have a mind of their own, and can think for themselves. So basically saying that I am bringing them to SL under false pretenses is absolutely false. I am not bringing them here, I am not forcing them to get on. They chose to log on, and if they chose to log on than what they think is up to them. I really can't bring anyone anywhere, without them first wanting to come to where i want to bring them.

[KanryDrago]

1 minute ago, halebore Aeon said:

Yep, it's totally my fault for telling them what I think it is, but at the same time giving them the opportunity to form their own opinion on what they think it is. Wanna know something, people have a mind of their own, and can think for themselves. So basically saying that I am bringing them to SL under false pretenses is absolutely false. I am not bringing them here, I am not forcing them to get on. They chose to log on, and if they chose to log on than what they think is up to them. I really can't bring anyone anywhere, without them first wanting to come to where i want to bring them.

Fine continue to harm sl with your assertions, you obviously don't care. You tell people its a game they expect a game. There is no game here, merely games within the world. I however care about SL and will continue to tell you that you are wrong because you are

[Sammy Huntsman]

2 minutes ago, KanryDrago said:

Fine continue to harm sl with your assertions, you obviously don't care. You tell people its a game they expect a game. There is no game here, merely games within the world. I however care about SL and will continue to tell you that you are wrong because you are

I am not harming SL at all, and just cause someone labels SL as a game. Does not mean that they don't care about it. It just means that they just label it differently. There are still tonnes of people logging into, or joining SL. LL has not really lost any money, so I would say that SL is doing pretty well. And as I said before, SL is more akin to an MMO. With a very indepth sandbox aspect to it.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

19 minutes ago, KanryDrago said:

Fine continue to harm sl with your assertions, you obviously don't care. You tell people its a game they expect a game. There is no game here, merely games within the world. I however care about SL and will continue to tell you that you are wrong because you are

Secondlife is a game kiddo, you just have a very narrow point of view of what qualifies as a game, as usual.

[KanryDrago]

26 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Secondlife is a game kiddo, you just have a very narrow point of view of what qualifies as a game, as usual.

pffft kiddo? Well that right there disqualifies you from having an opinion, not that all your previous comments hadn't

[Selene Gregoire]

57 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Secondlife is a game kiddo, you just have a very narrow point of view of what qualifies as a game, as usual.

I can see why you chose the last name of Abattoir.

It means slaughterhouse. 

[Kyrah Abattoir]

3 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

I can see why you chose the last name of Abattoir.

It means slaughterhouse. 

I know. It also begins with A, that's why I picked it back then, first in the list.

[Solar Legion]

Oh for the love of ...

The argument over what Second Life is has been done to absolute death over the years .. Seriously, agree to disagree and move on.

As for the post that sparked this oh so lovely round? You're a known quantity here in the forum Haselden - we get it, you're here for the fighty fighty, shooty shooty and little else and you honestly believe the load you're trying to sell to everyone else.

The reasons for the current state of Second Life and the engine behind it are rather wlel known to most at this point and frankly the users that come into the forum to demand that Linden Lab do something about it/cater almost exclusively to your demands and vision for the platform as a whole ... It's getting very old, very quickly. As are the posts by users who conflate their personal segment of Second Life seemingly on a decline with some greater decline or "death" of the entire platform ...

Go and build yourselves a new platform.

Seriously - just go and do it. Don't want to? Then perhaps it is time to open your eyes, understand and respect the fact that you're not the only set of people who use Second Life. Honestly, the same goes for the rather vocal vehicle user crowd too.

Now if you'll pardon me, I've got to see if the wood from these various soap boxes  - yours included - can be salvaged and repurposed into someting that is actually useful.