My thoughts on mainland

[PhantomPixel]

So, I have been reading through some of the threads on this forum. The most recent being the "History repeating itself.." thread and I see other users using words such as vital, affordable and beautiful when it comes to describing mainland. I have an idea on how to revive the idea of a mainland and some thoughts on the issues of the current mainland. The reason I am posting this in its own thread is that I am curious to hear others opinions on my thoughts to improve upon the current idea of "mainland".

Firstly my thoughts on using these words to describe the current incarnation of mainland : 

--Vital--

I do not see owning mainland as being vital in any way or ever see it becoming vital in the near or distant future UNLESS they somehow turfed out the land flippers who sell for ridiculous prices and gave everyone 2048 minimum as the free land offerings when taking out premium.

On top of that places like Anshe Chung and others offer 24/7 in world customer service, a huge library of items that their customers can use for free to decorate their regions and the ability to up and move to whatever parcel you want with any tier you have left remaining being transferred over to your new rental etc etc.

--Affordable--

Now on average 1/4 sim private rental with places like WRE, Chungs etc etc go for around $L4500 lindens a week, or less, with no prior purchase cost or monthly premium requirement. At the minute thats $17.98 USD per week or $71.92 USD per month....thats it...thats all you pay

Now if you go and purchase a 1/4 sim on the mainland however. The VERY least, if you are super super duper lucky that you can buy one for is $L1 per SQM. So thats $L16,384 lindens or $65.54 USD just to start and then $67 per month and, assuming you pay for premium monthly, another $9.50 on top of that. So to sum that together is $142.04 for your first month and then recurring $76.50 per month. If you pay for other tiers of premium then this price will be reduced.

Okay thats only a difference of $5 monthly for a 1/4 sim but you also have the upfront cost which as I said IF your lucky will be 1 linden per square meter but more often is 2-9 lindens per square meter depending on the parcel you purchase and to some people $5 is $5, plus the perks of private rentals as stated above.

Thats not including the lack of movability in mainland. Once you have a parcel you either set it for sale and hope, possibly wait months, for someone to buy it or you cut your original losses and go find another one to purchase with yet another high upfront cost etc etc and so the cycle repeats itself.

When it comes to a full region then yes owning mainland is cheaper monthly BUT you still have the issue of the upfront cost which on full regions can range (that I see) from $L100k - MILLIONS....depending on the location you want. If the region is say 1 linden per square meter then the cost isn't so bad in the long run (assuming you keep the region for longer than a year). If the sim however cost $L3-400K (and beyond) like I usually see....then your looking at 25 weeks 5 days of tier of private region tier paid for the same cost as simply buying the full mainland sim. Then add on top of that $175USD a month tier...in your first year, assuming the higher $L400k price....you end up paying $1600 USD (400k purchase price) + $2100 USD (tier) + $114 USD (assuming you paid monthly for premium)...totalling $3814 USD for that first year. You could go to a private region rental company and get 61 weeks of pre paid tier for that. Thats 1 year, 2 months, 1 week for the same cost as 1 year on mainland.

On top of that you get all the perks listed above along with custom ground textures, region controls, ground baking and greater custom terrain options.

Hence why they need to address the high re sell cost issues, land flippers etc etc before mainland becomes "vital".

--Beautiful--

Eh...really???. Mainland is filled with aged prim builds, gigantic awful looking sculpts, mass amounts of particles with horrific looking ground and rock textures. Land owned by avatars that NEVER log online anymore yet somehow still pay for their parcel each month and leave it filled with all kinds of horrendous looking items. Land surrounded by gigantic ugly flat wall sim surrounds or just generally filled with 342423242424 scripted objects whizzing and whirring to their hearts content taking up a horrendous amount of that regions resources. Its rare I ever enter anywhere on mainland any more and consider what I see to be "beautiful". But it is neat to visit sometimes as it can be like entering a time machine into SL's creative past. 

 

 

My thoughts on how we could improve upon this idea of having a mainland : 

 

 

We should remove linden homes and create a brand new mainland.

Now I know some of you will be shouting at your screen "BUT THAT WILL REPEAT THE SAME ISSUE"...but bare with me.

My idea is to design a whole new mainland separated into commercial and residential sectors, with parcels divided by roads that avatars can walk or drive around. Ownership of this mainland can only be attained by purchasing and maintaining premium. When you purchase premium you have the option to obtain one of these parcels which are 2048sqm in size and remain yours for the duration of your premium membership. Perhaps even slightly bigger plots for those who pay for a higher tier of premium (when tiers of premium come in). You can opt to choose to receive a parcel on either commercial or residential. Therefor creating close knit residential communities with commercial districts with in world stores that avatars can walk or drive from their house to visit. This plot is totally empty when received and is yours to design however you see fit. If you give up paying for premium then you loose the plot of land and it reverts to say.....a wooded, grass, park type design to keep in theme with the surrounding community type design.

The reason why I think this would be a good idea is as follows : 

-Removes the initial purchase price on mainland which even on small plots of land can be in the tens of thousands

-No monthly cost other than paying for premium

-Good initial way for avatars to start owning and maintaining land without having to pay the ridiculous upfront land flipper fees.

-2048sqm is large enough to have a decent house and garden and more than enough space for a reasonable size in world store. Those who want bigger plots could get them, as stated previously, by maybe paying for a higher tier of premium.

-Enhances the community aspect of second life with avatars living, shopping, hanging out etc etc next to one another.

-Commercial zones help small businesses have a reasonably priced in world presence. Also could help in bringing stores back in world instead of having to trawl through the endless amounts of crap on marketplace to find something interesting.

-Encourages new developers to sell their products inside of Second Life, alongside fellow creators, instead of ONLY on the previously mentioned marketplace. 

-Commercial zones could have stores, cafes, small clubs....whatever it is that people want to build there.

-All of the above as well as all the perks that come with premium ownership.

-A million other reasons.....

 

Thoughts?

[Akasha Sternberg]

37 minutes ago, PhantomPixel said:

So, I have been reading through some of the threads on this forum. The most recent being the "History repeating itself.." thread and I see other users using words such as vital, affordable and beautiful when it comes to describing mainland. I have an idea on how to revive the idea of a mainland and some thoughts on the issues of the current mainland. The reason I am posting this in its own thread is that I am curious to hear others opinions on my thoughts to improve upon the current idea of "mainland".

Firstly my thoughts on using these words to describe the current incarnation of mainland : 

--Vital--

I do not see owning mainland as being vital in any way or ever see it becoming vital in the near or distant future UNLESS they somehow turfed out the land flippers who sell for ridiculous prices and gave everyone 2048 minimum as the free land offerings when taking out premium.

On top of that places like Anshe Chung and others offer 24/7 in world customer service, a huge library of items that their customers can use for free to decorate their regions and the ability to up and move to whatever parcel you want with any tier you have left remaining being transferred over to your new rental etc etc.

--Affordable--

Now on average 1/4 sim private rental with places like WRE, Chungs etc etc go for around $L4500 lindens a week, or less, with no prior purchase cost or monthly premium requirement. At the minute thats $17.98 USD per week or $71.92 USD per month....thats it...thats all you pay

Now if you go and purchase a 1/4 sim on the mainland however. The VERY least, if you are super super duper lucky that you can buy one for is $L1 per SQM. So thats $L16,384 lindens or $65.54 USD just to start and then $67 per month and, assuming you pay for premium monthly, another $9.50 on top of that. So to sum that together is $142.04 for your first month and then recurring $76.50 per month. If you pay for other tiers of premium then this price will be reduced.

Okay thats only a difference of $5 monthly for a 1/4 sim but you also have the upfront cost which as I said IF your lucky will be 1 linden per square meter but more often is 2-9 lindens per square meter depending on the parcel you purchase and to some people $5 is $5, plus the perks of private rentals as stated above.

Thats not including the lack of movability in mainland. Once you have a parcel you either set it for sale and hope, possibly wait months, for someone to buy it or you cut your original losses and go find another one to purchase with yet another high upfront cost etc etc and so the cycle repeats itself.

When it comes to a full region then yes owning mainland is cheaper monthly BUT you still have the issue of the upfront cost which on full regions can range (that I see) from $L100k - MILLIONS....depending on the location you want. If the region is say 1 linden per square meter then the cost isn't so bad in the long run (assuming you keep the region for longer than a year). If the sim however cost $L3-400K (and beyond) like I usually see....then your looking at 25 weeks 5 days of tier of private region tier paid for the same cost as simply buying the full mainland sim. Then add on top of that $175USD a month tier...in your first year, assuming the higher $L400k price....you end up paying $1600 USD (400k purchase price) + $2100 USD (tier) + $114 USD (assuming you paid monthly for premium)...totalling $3814 USD for that first year. You could go to a private region rental company and get 61 weeks of pre paid tier for that. Thats 1 year, 2 months, 1 week for the same cost as 1 year on mainland.

On top of that you get all the perks listed above along with custom ground textures, region controls, ground baking and greater custom terrain options.

Hence why they need to address the high re sell cost issues, land flippers etc etc before mainland becomes "vital".

--Beautiful--

Eh...really???. Mainland is filled with aged prim builds, gigantic awful looking sculpts, mass amounts of particles with horrific looking ground and rock textures. Land owned by avatars that NEVER log online anymore yet somehow still pay for their parcel each month and leave it filled with all kinds of horrendous looking items. Land surrounded by gigantic ugly flat wall sim surrounds or just generally filled with 342423242424 scripted objects whizzing and whirring to their hearts content taking up a horrendous amount of that regions resources. Its rare I ever enter anywhere on mainland any more and consider what I see to be "beautiful". But it is neat to visit sometimes as it can be like entering a time machine into SL's creative past. 

 

 

My thoughts on how we could improve upon this idea of having a mainland : 

 

 

We should remove linden homes and create a brand new mainland.

Now I know some of you will be shouting at your screen "BUT THAT WILL REPEAT THE SAME ISSUE"...but bare with me.

My idea is to design a whole new mainland separated into commercial and residential sectors, with parcels divided by roads that avatars can walk or drive around. Ownership of this mainland can only be attained by purchasing and maintaining premium. When you purchase premium you have the option to obtain one of these parcels which are 2048sqm in size and remain yours for the duration of your premium membership. Perhaps even slightly bigger plots for those who pay for a higher tier of premium (when tiers of premium come in). You can opt to choose to receive a parcel on either commercial or residential. Therefor creating close knit residential communities with commercial districts with in world stores that avatars can walk or drive from their house to visit. This plot is totally empty when received and is yours to design however you see fit. If you give up paying for premium then you loose the plot of land and it reverts to say.....a wooded, grass, park type design to keep in theme with the surrounding community type design.

The reason why I think this would be a good idea is as follows : 

-Removes the initial purchase price on mainland which even on small plots of land can be in the tens of thousands

-No monthly cost other than paying for premium

-Good initial way for avatars to start owning and maintaining land without having to pay the ridiculous upfront land flipper fees.

-2048sqm is large enough to have a decent house and garden and more than enough space for a reasonable size in world store. Those who want bigger plots could get them, as stated previously, by maybe paying for a higher tier of premium.

-Enhances the community aspect of second life with avatars living, shopping, hanging out etc etc next to one another.

-Commercial zones help small businesses have a reasonably priced in world presence. Also could help in bringing stores back in world instead of having to trawl through the endless amounts of crap on marketplace to find something interesting.

-Encourages new developers to sell their products inside of Second Life, alongside fellow creators, instead of ONLY on the previously mentioned marketplace. 

-Commercial zones could have stores, cafes, small clubs....whatever it is that people want to build there.

-All of the above as well as all the perks that come with premium ownership.

-A million other reasons.....

 

Thoughts?

A lot of my thoughts and good ideas... BUT... you only write about sqm^^ what about prims for each parcel? That´d be interesting for me^^ The size is .... well secondary but... I need enough prims^^ (current home is 2500 prims on 5k sqm)

[KanryDrago]

More importantly you start off with an unproved premise,

Mainland is worth saving -  first you have to show this to be true before arguing about how to do it. This is the same thing we are getting in rl currently about saving our high streets even though frankly most people couldn't give a damn

[PhantomPixel]

2 minutes ago, KanryDrago said:

More importantly you start off with an unproved premise,

Mainland is worth saving -  first you have to show this to be true before arguing about how to do it. This is the same thing we are getting in rl currently about saving our high streets even though frankly most people couldn't give a damn

I think if you read the premise properly you will get the impression that current mainland can go to hell and we should create something new that encourages people to move onto it and brings back a greater sense of community to Second Life. Proving mainland is worth saving is irrelevant when the current incarnation of mainland, if nothing changes, will remain to the end of SL time. So might as well improve upon the idea and create something thats more viable for the SL community

[Blush Bravin]

I love my little corner of Mainland. I live in a very nice double prim parcel. I have two premium accounts, which I pay annually. With the sqm I get from those two accounts, I use the sqm for my store/home and a linden home that I use as a workshop. I pay no tier at all! If I saved the weekly stipend (yeah right, I'm a shopper as much as a creator, but if I did) I could cash in that stipend at the end of the year and pay for the next annual fee. My total out of pocket expense would then equal about $30 which I would add to the balance of my cash out. That's a bargain compared to what I would have to pay for renting the equivalent in a private region. 

I agree about the plague of land flipping in Second Life. It all starts with the auctions where land flippers are by far the largest group of people winning the bids. I have suggested possible measures to insure that flippers don't dominate the process in the past, but I don't see Linden Lab taking those kinds of measures because of their policy of hands off. One thing that could possibly help is if they made ALL mainland as attractive as the popular lands are now. Roads help to sell parcels but by far the biggest attraction is water. Water features need to be added to the landlocked central portions of the mainland. Flippers only gobble up the "good" lands, but if it was all good there would be no way they could buy all the good land.

Something I'd like to see, but don't have any idea if it's even possible to implement is a no build zone between 100m and 500m in the sky. This would help with the abundance of sky junk that clutters the view. It would also put an end to those horrific towers that some construct in the hopes of getting their neighbors to sell their parcels for next to nothing just to escape the blight.

 

[Phorumities]

1 hour ago, PhantomPixel said:

 

 

Thoughts?

I've  proposed this several times and its been shot down by the forum worthies.

Subdivide the entire mainland into various lot sizes, with a preponderance of 1024's and 4096's. Put roads thru the wilderness and line every road road with 4096's. Then, list each parcel for the sale price of  1L per PARCEL. That addresses affordability AND mobility and mainland will be on an even footing with estates. A horrible neighbor moves in beside you? abandon it and grab a different parcel.

The areas behind the road front parcels can subdivided set for sale for the same 1L per PARCEL and picked up by anyone wanting to move up to a higher level of tier.

8 4096's per sim, 4 on each side of the road will generate as much tier as the tier on a full mainland sim.

In every way, mainland is superior to estates. Let's make it so that those that want mainland can get mainland as easily as it is to get estate parcels.

But nooooo it's better that landflippers hold land which no one is willing to invest money in buying.

Even now when anyone can put in a ticket and get land direct for 1L per sq m, flippers are buying land at that price from LL and are still trying to collect 500% profit on it.

Wanna populate mainland? Give it away.

 

Edited August 30, 2018 by Phorumities
added a word

[Phorumities]

8 minutes ago, Blush Bravin said:

 

I agree about the plague of land flipping in Second Life. It all starts with the auctions where land flippers are by far the largest group of people winning the bids. I have suggested possible measures to insure that flippers don't dominate the process in the past, but I don't see Linden Lab taking those kinds of measures because of their policy of hands off. One thing that could possibly help is if they made ALL mainland as attractive as the popular lands are now. Roads help to sell parcels but by far the biggest attraction is water. Water features need to be added to the landlocked central portions of the mainland. Flippers only gobble up the "good" lands, but if it was all good there would be no way they could buy all the good land.

 

Even flippers don't have deep enough pockets to buy up all of mainland. People can get the parcels they want, and the flippers can sit on their parcels and lose money month after month.

[Phorumities]

39 minutes ago, PhantomPixel said:

I think if you read the premise properly you will get the impression that current mainland can go to hell and we should create something new that encourages people to move onto it and brings back a greater sense of community to Second Life. Proving mainland is worth saving is irrelevant when the current incarnation of mainland, if nothing changes, will remain to the end of SL time. So might as well improve upon the idea and create something thats more viable for the SL community

I personally don't want to live in a community. Why do some people  think everyone wants to live in communities?

[PhantomPixel]

Just now, Phorumities said:

I personally don't want to live in a community. Why do some people  think everyone wants to live in communities?

I don't think EVERYONE wants to live in a community. But a fair amount of people do enjoy the community aspects, plus with different sizes of land available depending on tier level (if you went with my idea). You could just keep yourself to you and ignore everyone and sit in a skybox forever more or rent privately or go back to old mainland (which im guessing will there till SL death)

[Phorumities]

2 minutes ago, PhantomPixel said:

I don't think EVERYONE wants to live in a community. But a fair amount of people do enjoy the community aspects, plus with different sizes of land available depending on tier level (if you went with my idea). You could just keep yourself to you and ignore everyone and sit in a skybox forever more or rent privately or go back to old mainland (which im guessing will there till SL death)

So a good percentage of mainland is abandoned, but instead of addressing that issue and suggesting ways to correct it, you want to create even more mainland?

It would be easy enough for LL to designate communities on the existing mainland, and have building codes if that was what people wanted.

[PhantomPixel]

1 minute ago, Phorumities said:

So a good percentage of mainland is abandoned, but instead of addressing that issue and suggesting ways to correct it, you want to create even more mainland?

It would be easy enough for LL to designate communities on the existing mainland, and have building codes if that was what people wanted.

I was talking in realistic terms of how SL usually goes which is "lets do it but in the worst possible way". My preferred idea would be to do what I suggested and gradually start depreciating the current mainland by removing unused sims and regions and maybe moving those that are still occupied together or converting those that are left on their own into stand alone regions maybe. Idk. It wouldn't be something to undertake lightly and would require a great deal of thought on how to do it effectively. Such as, if you give your current mainland sim / parcel you can only abandon it and not set it for resale maybe and then once a sim it completely empty it gets taken offline.

I do like your idea though of reducing mainland to 1 linden a plot and only sellable at 1 linden a plot. That would definitely encourage more people to take up on it and remove the issue of the overpriced flippers

[Phorumities]

2 hours ago, PhantomPixel said:

I was talking in realistic terms of how SL usually goes which is "lets do it but in the worst possible way". My preferred idea would be to do what I suggested and gradually start depreciating the current mainland by removing unused sims and regions and maybe moving those that are still occupied together or converting those that are left on their own into stand alone regions maybe. Idk. It wouldn't be something to undertake lightly and would require a great deal of thought on how to do it effectively. Such as, if you give your current mainland sim / parcel you can only abandon it and not set it for resale maybe and then once a sim it completely empty it gets taken offline.

I do like your idea though of reducing mainland to 1 linden a plot and only sellable at 1 linden a plot. That would definitely encourage more people to take up on it and remove the issue of the overpriced flippers

No no, you can still sell it for any amount you want. And really desirable plots will still go for more. I have no desire to eliminate flippers. My plan will just allow ease of purchase and ease of mobility.

With thousands of 1 L parcels to choose from, who is gonna buy from a flipper anyway?

 

[Blush Bravin]

3 hours ago, PhantomPixel said:

I was talking in realistic terms of how SL usually goes which is "lets do it but in the worst possible way". My preferred idea would be to do what I suggested and gradually start depreciating the current mainland by removing unused sims and regions and maybe moving those that are still occupied together or converting those that are left on their own into stand alone regions maybe. Idk. It wouldn't be something to undertake lightly and would require a great deal of thought on how to do it effectively. Such as, if you give your current mainland sim / parcel you can only abandon it and not set it for resale maybe and then once a sim it completely empty it gets taken offline.

I do like your idea though of reducing mainland to 1 linden a plot and only sellable at 1 linden a plot. That would definitely encourage more people to take up on it and remove the issue of the overpriced flippers

I'd like to see them turn large parcels (or complete regions) that are unoccupied into water (properly terraformed) and made into protected Governor Linden owned land. As more land in the region becomes available permanent Governor Linden owned green spaces could be developed. Once enough land has been transferred to Governor Linden the remaining parcels could be made into double prim land. Doing this would revitalize the region and what once was barren unwanted land would become an oasis of sorts. I'm sure it would take an army of moles to accomplish this task. I have no idea if it's even feasible to try this. But it sounds like mainland heaven to me.  

 

[Phil Deakins]

11 hours ago, KanryDrago said:

More importantly you start off with an unproved premise,

Mainland is worth saving -  first you have to show this to be true before arguing about how to do it. This is the same thing we are getting in rl currently about saving our high streets even though frankly most people couldn't give a damn

I think that's the silliest thing I've seen written here for quite some time.

I don't often go into the centre of my city but, when I do, it's full of people shopping in the "high street". Some people (me included) prefer to not to use high streets, and shop either online or in out-of-town locations, but I doubt that even most of those "couldn't give a damn" whether or not the high street still exists.

And, of course, it's self-evident to 'most people' that mainland is worth saving. If nothing else, it's the entry level of land ownership, and the only level that a great many people could, or would choose to, afford. Imagine an SL where the only way to have a home is renting the space from a land baron, or shelling out a lot up front up front, and US$295 (recently reduced to US$249) a month thereafter. That SL would have a much smaller population that the current SL has. Apart from that, mainland earns money for LL, some of which is passed on to us in the form of paying for improvements, and all sort of ways.

Edited August 31, 2018 by Phil Deakins

[Callum Meriman]

20 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

Imagine an SL where the only way to have a home is renting the space from a land baron

Daw, there are a lot of nice people who rent land Phil. Tarnishing them all as "Land Barons" is a bit mean  

[Qie Niangao]

The shaky premise, seems to me, is that Mainland needs fixing at all. Until recently, I hadn't taken any extensive tour of the Atoll since the tier changes -- I'd only vaguely noticed a some new neighbors and a more crowded map. Now that I've looked around more, though, this change has had huge effect, at least on this continent. It looks nearly as "developed" as it did back ten years ago when they couldn't print new continents fast enough -- and the builds look much, much nicer than they did back then (although I do miss the free-for-all pre-Mesh creativity showcase).

The old Linden Homes continents are pretty dusty in comparison, and the parcel sizes just don't match the Premium tier levels, so there's very likely a market for a new version of these. That seems to be in the works. Maybe there's something to be learned from Horizons, which never caught on with me personally, but they do seem at least more interesting than the Homes regions.

One problem mentioned above will be completely solved in a few weeks: "liquidity" -- frictionless switching from one land holding to another -- which comes when the new auctions system opens for resident-to-resident sales. I suspect this will pretty much end the "flipper" market, too, except on the very most exclusive of super-premium locations. I certainly wouldn't be designing new Mainland models until I saw the effects of this change, and if I were a Mainland reseller, I'd be dropping inventory as fast as possible to cut risk of future losses.

Finally, a general observation: some folks will never appreciate a thing (Mainland, Second Life, Hawaiian pizza, whatever) on which others whole engagement is centered. Not every perceived "problem" actually wants solving.

[Phil Deakins]

43 minutes ago, Callum Meriman said:

Daw, there are a lot of nice people who rent land Phil. Tarnishing them all as "Land Barons" is a bit mean  

I'm sure you know what I meant, Callum

There's nothing negative about being a land baron, though. At least not that I'm aware of.

[Garnet Psaltery]

1 hour ago, Callum Meriman said:

Daw, there are a lot of nice people who rent land Phil. Tarnishing them all as "Land Barons" is a bit mean  

Well, I assumed he didn't mean them all, because that would include me, a very small land baron, and I know at least one person who has oodles of land who is nice.  Anyway the point of that preamble is that I 'liked' the bit about high streets.

[Callum Meriman]

44 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Hawaiian pizza

With egg? This one is scrambled egg on the pizza, topped with pineapple

http://yum-o.org/recipe/breakfast-hawaiian-pizza-with-ham-eggs-cheese-and-pineapple/

 

[Phorumities]

7 hours ago, Blush Bravin said:

I'd like to see them turn large parcels (or complete regions) that are unoccupied into water (properly terraformed) and made into protected Governor Linden owned land. As more land in the region becomes available permanent Governor Linden owned green spaces could be developed. Once enough land has been transferred to Governor Linden the remaining parcels could be made into double prim land. Doing this would revitalize the region and what once was barren unwanted land would become an oasis of sorts. I'm sure it would take an army of moles to accomplish this task. I have no idea if it's even feasible to try this. But it sounds like mainland heaven to me.  

 

Before doing that, let them fix the mess they made out of the continental edges. You should be able to sail all around the outside of every continent. 

[Qie Niangao]

16 minutes ago, Callum Meriman said:

With egg? This one is scrambled egg on the pizza, topped with pineapple

http://yum-o.org/recipe/breakfast-hawaiian-pizza-with-ham-eggs-cheese-and-pineapple/

That's just lazy quiche.

Also, this Rachel Ray person should learn more about the smoke point of cooking oils. There's just no reason to risk using extra virgin olive oil in a skillet when there are plenty of superior oils (including light olive oil). Sure, it's possible to get away with it, but far too easy to accidentally produce a bunch of free radicals long before any smoke is detected.

[ChinRey]

On 8/30/2018 at 10:24 PM, PhantomPixel said:

My idea is to design a whole new mainland separated into commercial and residential sectors, with parcels divided by roads that avatars can walk or drive around. Ownership of this mainland can only be attained by purchasing and maintaining premium. When you purchase premium you have the option to obtain one of these parcels which are 2048sqm in size and remain yours for the duration of your premium membership. Perhaps even slightly bigger plots for those who pay for a higher tier of premium (when tiers of premium come in). You can opt to choose to receive a parcel on either commercial or residential. Therefor creating close knit residential communities with commercial districts with in world stores that avatars can walk or drive from their house to visit. This plot is totally empty when received and is yours to design however you see fit.

Great idea. There's one slight problem though: who's gonna stop your neighbor from building some ugly monstrosity that ruins the whole neighborhood?

I hate to do the "tried it didn't work" response but, well, they did try it and.. it didn't work.

What you describe is almost exactly what Mainland was intended to be right from the start. The inevitable result is what we see today. That doesn't mean it can't work but it does mean that some of the basic premises have to be changed and I don't think that is realistic within the context of Second Life.

Edited September 1, 2018 by ChinRey

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

The shaky premise, seems to me, is that Mainland needs fixing at all. Until recently, I hadn't taken any extensive tour of the Atoll since the tier changes -- I'd only vaguely noticed a some new neighbors and a more crowded map. Now that I've looked around more, though, this change has had huge effect, at least on this continent. It looks nearly as "developed" as it did back ten years ago when they couldn't print new continents fast enough -- and the builds look much, much nicer than they did back then (although I do miss the free-for-all pre-Mesh creativity showcase).

 

I have similar thoughts about Satori, one of the continents with the largest amount of abandoned land. As the GTFO game catches on it's become a popular area for "trucking", with many "hubs" along the road. People are clustering builds along the roads and particularly near the hubs and much of the surrounding area is open, but that's exactly what you'd see if you were driving a truck in a region like the American Midwest.It would be nice if some sort of subtle landscaping was done on the empty regions and possibly a "land swap" option that would encourage people with small lots in the middle of an empty region to consolidate, but I don't think it really needs to have a great increase of density to be interesting.

[Phil Deakins]

I'm not one who thinks that the mainland needs saving or fixing. From my point of view general mainland is much better now than it was before the marketplace pretty much removed shopping from SL, and adult places were moved out. The open spaces (abandoned land) are much more desireable compared to the mainland back then. It could have been better if LL had seen what was happening, which they did, and designated many new sims as 'residential', which they didn't. It was all one heck of a mess back then, and so much better now - much more like the real world, as Theresa pointed out.

So, if anyone really does think that the mainland need saving or fixing, please tell us why you think that.

Edited August 31, 2018 by Phil Deakins

[Blush Bravin]

1 hour ago, Phil Deakins said:

I'm not one who thinks that the mainland needs saving or fixing. From my point of view general mainland is much better now than it was before the marketplace pretty much removed shopping from SL, and adult places were moved out. The open spaces (abandoned land) are much more desireable compared to the mainland back then. It could have been better if LL had seen what was happening, which they did, and designated many new sims as 'residential', which they didn't. It was all one heck of a mess back then, and so much better now - much more like the real world, as Theresa pointed out.

So, if anyone really does think that the mainland need saving or fixing, please tell us why you think that.

I kind of agree with your point in that I don't want to see mainland become densely populated. I want it to be beautified. Take the abandoned land that's there now and turn it into water or green spaces that are permanently protected lands owned by the Governor.