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56 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

And this is where I think I have to disagree with Scylla a bit.

Nope. It's not allowed. I don't give you permission.

56 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I don't think we are (most of us) a bunch of elitist snobs who think that we are the only ones good enough for SL.  But there's an element of truth to her observation, too...we ARE different from the kind of spastic, flighty jerk who made that video.  We live at a slower pace.  We talk more than we charge around.  We stop and smell the roses, not just run frantically from place to place.

I was speaking, really, more of the predictable responses here to this particular issue, rather than to SL residents as a whole. As a general rule, I think your characterization is on the money: SL users are less goal-oriented, less hurried. We don't button mash or race the clock, and that's because the platform gives you no incentive to do so; indeed, you can't really enjoy or experience SL unless you take care and time over it. But it's probably also true that it's impossible to generalize too much about the user base here: it's an enormously diverse one, I'd have thought, representing all kinds of different approaches and responses.

And, for what it's worth, because *I* am not a gamer, and value the kinds of unique things SL offers -- art, music, immersive environments, and so forth -- I like to think that the platform generally appeals to a more contemplative (if not necessarily "elite") type of person. But it's also true that I've met a great many in-world who are not like that.

56 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Qie's got a telling point too...SL has always had a learning curve.  But explaining the mishmash that avatar appearance has become gives me, as a newbie helper, the screaming meemies.  As Belinda said, navigating that maze really calls for a mentor.  (SL has ALWAYS been easier to get into if you have a helping hand; I probably would not have stayed either, except that someone said hi, and explained a few basics to me...and that was back in 2007.)

What if the viewer had a built-in interface, mimicking somewhat the kind of interface used for customizing game avatars, into which any new body or clothing item was automatically loaded? And that interface was designed in such a way that changing appearance was intuitive and standardized across different merchant items and systems? Surely that would be possible? It would probably make a HUGE difference to new users.

56 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

We aren't "elitists", but it's also clear that SL is not for everyone.

'Xactly!

Edited by Scylla Rhiadra
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46 minutes ago, ThorinII said:

I disagree on the first and third point.  But the second point: Yes, the official viewer is crappy. Has been since Viewer 2.x. 😠

But when I created an alt last year to test the newbie learning place, I was impressed. Not over- nor underwhelmed, but in my opinion, LL did a good job in tutoring the basic functions of the viewer, like moving, camming, and so on. However, when I  started with my first avatar in 2008, the Learning sim was more fun - you went through a forest, entered a castle, learned to make a snapshot on the way, and so on. And it took me LESS than half an hour to "get" the viewer back then. Maybe that was because I didn't have any 3D game experience before at all, I don't know.

And about the learning curve for the basic mechanics being too high? Who the heck are you kidding? Okay, with the current official viewer, it is a bit complex and sometimes not very clear - and if you have inventory, chat, and build menu open, your interface is way more cluttered by all these dark layers than in the interface of Cool VL Viewer, for example - but it's nothing that can't be learned in a short time with a bit patience and the will to learn it.

My apologies: I should have been a bit less vague in my language.

By new user experience (and I realize now that this is very nearly a technical term), I meant not merely the initial tutorials and so forth, but really pretty much everything over the first couple of days, including finding interesting places to visit, learning how to buy and use items, meeting people, and so forth. Really, the biggest challenge is engaging and providing continued assistance over that really critical time. It's not just about making things work: it needs to be about showing why that learning process is worthwhile in the first place. I think LL does a terrible job at that.

I may need to differ with you a bit about mechanics, though. The basics of moving, interacting with objects, chatting, and seeing things are probably pretty simple and easy to learn: things like purchasing goods, putting them on properly, and using appliers, AOs and animations is a fair bit more difficult. But even the basics can sometimes be confusing. One of the reasons I hate the official viewer is because I find the chat window system enormously confusing. And even in FS, which is much better designed . . . well, I recently closed the local chat window, and it took me five minutes to figure out how to get it back.

But we should probably discount that example, because clearly I am an idiot.

Edited by Scylla Rhiadra
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I didn't watch the video, but I looked at it in youtube in order to see some of the comments.  Of the negative comments about SL, I would imagine that many of those are from people who may not have given it a try, but are reacting to the video because they are a follower of that channel.  I also wondered whether the person creating the video was actually serious about wanting to create a SL account, or was just using it as something fun to trash for his channel and followers.

I started after the change from viewer 1 to viewer 2, and after the end of the mentor program.  I don't remember having major difficulties - my biggest issue was having a hard time figuring out what was meant by 'click on the dance ball' or 'click on my chim' the first time I went out dancing :).   It was also just before the advent of all the mesh bodies, so that may have made it a little easier for me.  Several things that really helped me were finding the forums and doing some reading in the 'answers' section before joining, finding and watching some of the LL videos, and after creating my account reading the 'getting started' section. and going to all the newcomer friendly areas in the destination guide to do their tutorials and take some of the basic classes.    There is a big learning curve, but I don't think it's unsurmountable given the resources that do exist (but may take a little effort to find).

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LMAO!!

This video no more represents A-the kind of people sl draws in, initially, or even for retention purposes, B-the kind of people we should probably want sl to draw in, C-the actual new user experience *I forgot the rest of my sentence out of annoyance with people using this video as any example of anything other than asshatery, my apologies*, it no more represents these things than it depicts the first christmas. 

He went INTO making the video with a chip on his shoulder, and very specific expectations. Anyone that does this, is going to be severely disappointed (and it's not even a severed head!).

A jackass gamer, who isn't even all that good at THAT, is hardly someone I would look to for a "so you're new here...show me your experience".

I've seen how actual newcomers, most specifically those with little to no preconceived expectations, of varying levels of knowledge and experience (games, platforms, chat rooms, etc..). They don't act this way, even when they're utterly frustrated at something that either doesn't work how they think it should, or just doesn't work at all (even if it's really operator error). They may verbalize frustration, they may even go off half cocked at first if they get *really frustrated...but, they get over it, and they continue on.

This guy had no intention of liking sl at all, and went into making the video based off that. I'm not the betting kind, but if I were, I'd bet a month's wages that he's not even remotely new to sl at all, and just pissed off about it not being what he wants it to be, or had a bad experience, or some other spastic event that sent him off kilter. This isn't the viewpoint of someone *actually new to sl.  When you look for everything that's broken, on purpose, you can't exactly be surprised when you find something. That was the intent of the video. Hell even in his description he states his intention was to join a dating site and talk to twitter folks....

Hardly worth even giving a glance, much less an entire forum post ;) 

 

Edited by Tari Landar
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   I haven't been a new user for a long time. I have no idea what the new user experience is like today. When I was a new user, I had the fortune to have rezzed at Orientation Station, which had excellent tutorials, created by Metaverse Mentors, that I conscientiously followed and learned from.

   I don't poll anyone outside of SL on whether they've heard of it, or what they think of it. Any guess I could make about that climate would be that, only a shot in the dark.

   The creator of this video, in my opinion, made it, primarily, to get views and laughs and not much more. It's possible he didn't seek out any tutorials. He's included whatever he could find with which to ridicule, intentionally seeking it out and editing it all for maximum spin. Even the commentary is heavily peppered with ultimately meaningless strings of words that have very little bearing on what we actually know. I didn't find the video painful to watch as an avid SL user. I did find it painful to watch as a real adult, seeing it as a reminder of the puerile culture engendered and perpetuated by some of today's youth.

Edited by Ivanova Shostakovich
Don't always trust correction suggestions. And fine them for errors.
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49 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

If they did, then those of us with less than 20/20 vision would be crying to get them enlarged so we can see them. Some of them are so small I have to almost put my nose on the screen to bring it into focus, with prescription glasses that are only 6 months old.

Sometimes it's better to leave well enough alone. :D

   It's just occurred to me that making a HUD have included size options would be easy.

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3 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

...the pseudo-elitist notion that SL attracts only the very best, most intelligent, and deeply creative people...

 

3 hours ago, Pamela Galli said:

I have read a lot of discussion on what it is that we have in common, those of us who fall in love and stay, but never has anyone accused us of high intelligence. 

   I've read a lot of posts, points made in arguments, and commentary over the years. I lurked for quite a while. One of the things that draws me here is the evident high intelligence of the participants. You're all just a bunch of smarty pants. There. I've made the accusations. Let the self-defense commence.

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Just now, Ivanova Shostakovich said:

 

   I've read a lot of posts, points made in arguments, and commentary over the years. I lurked for quite a while. One of the things that draws me here is the evident high intelligence of the participants. You're all just a bunch of smarty pants. There. I've made the accusations. Let the self-defense commence.

My pants aren't smart..they can't even figure out how to stay up on their own

😛 

I'm waiting for the plumber dude to finish snaking out the pipe in the yard...friggen trees and old as dirt houses..I swear.. I have nothing better to do than read the forums, lol. 

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1 hour ago, Lindal Kidd said:

But explaining the mishmash that avatar appearance has become gives me, as a newbie helper, the screaming meemies.

Ain't that the truth.

In the Catwa support group (and I'll bet this also happens in other large groups, such as Maitreya Lara Friends) we get days when we're pretty much SL101 tutors, as we have one-day and two-day newbies arriving in chat. Someone told them they must have a Maitreya body and Catwa head (or a Signature body and Catwa head) and these poor people have no idea what a HUD is or how to wear it, or what an alpha layer is. We've had people who don't know how to unpack things, how to open and/or search inventory. We have people who say they "put on the head" they purchased and it's not there and now their whole head is missing (and we have to explain patiently that they need to wear the head as well as the alpha.) We have people who don't know how to use their viewer and ask questions about that. Try to explain what to click when the person you're explaining to has no idea what you're talking about, and you have to describe in infinitesimal detail what you need them to do. Anyone got an elderly relative (and I don't mean the savvy ones who pick things up quickly) whom they've ever tried to explain computer stuff to? Translate that into SL and working with a complete newbie to mesh body parts.

We try to help as much as we can, but once we realise that Person X is so new that they will monopolise chat with non-relevant questions about how SL works we always try to guide them gently toward places where they can learn about SL, rather than taking up hours of time in a support chat that's dedicated to a specific product. It's becoming more and more common these days, and it can honestly be exhausting when the newbie in question has already been getting some help from a friendly group and is reluctant to go somewhere new to learn how Second Life works in general.

We're also aware - because people send us messages about it - that the above puts people off asking questions in chat about what we're actually there to do: which is help with Catwa head questions. The whole situation isn't helped by some of the people who told those newbies to buy mesh heads and bodies also telling them that "Catwa chat will help you with anything, because it's busy and there's a lot of people in it".

29 minutes ago, Ivanova Shostakovich said:

   It's just occurred to me that making a HUD have included size options would be easy.

Many of the body and head main HUDs have resizing options these days, but some of them are so big (I'm looking at you, Maitreya!) that you can't size it up much more without losing some of it off the bottom of your screen.

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1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

What if the viewer had a built-in interface, mimicking somewhat the kind of interface used for customizing game avatars, into which any new body or clothing item was automatically loaded? And that interface was designed in such a way that changing appearance was intuitive and standardized across different merchant items and systems? Surely that would be possible? It would probably make a HUGE difference to new users.

I dunno.  At one point, LL gave the viewer two "faces"...the regular "full" viewer, and a greatly simplified one for newbies, which was the default setting for new avatars.  It caused endless confusion, not to mention frustration among the newbies.  You see, pretty much all the appearance adjustments were missing, and changing appearance seems to be the FIRST thing most newcomers want to do!

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1 minute ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I dunno.  At one point, LL gave the viewer two "faces"...the regular "full" viewer, and a greatly simplified one for newbies, which was the default setting for new avatars.  It caused endless confusion, not to mention frustration among the newbies.  You see, pretty much all the appearance adjustments were missing, and changing appearance seems to be the FIRST thing most newcomers want to do!

That was an absolute disaster of a fuster cluck .... 

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1 hour ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I dunno.  At one point, LL gave the viewer two "faces"...the regular "full" viewer, and a greatly simplified one for newbies, which was the default setting for new avatars.  It caused endless confusion, not to mention frustration among the newbies.  You see, pretty much all the appearance adjustments were missing, and changing appearance seems to be the FIRST thing most newcomers want to do!

Well, yes! Exactly!!!

What I imagine is not a new or different viewer skin, but a large pop-up window taking up, probably, most of the screen, with the avi pictured in the middle, and button panels on the left (for mesh body, head, feet, and hands, as well as eyebrows), and on the right (for clothing, hair, and other add-ons). Clicking on buttons would open pop-ups with the maker's options shown; clicking on these would apply the changes. One-stop shopping, with a standardized layout, for apppearance!

I really can't imagine that the actual interface itself would be that difficult to make, and makers would have access to whatever code was required to make their goods compatible. What might be difficult would be accommodating -- or anticipating -- all of the options creators put into their merchandise.

I'm tempted to do a mock-up in PS. Do you think I could get some sort of commission from LL when they are blown away by the idea and develop a working model???? 😉

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1 hour ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I dunno.  At one point, LL gave the viewer two "faces"...the regular "full" viewer, and a greatly simplified one for newbies, which was the default setting for new avatars.  It caused endless confusion, not to mention frustration among the newbies.

Ummm, the fact that LL couldn't get it right back then doesn't automatically mean it's impossible - or even particularly difficult. ;)

Edited by ChinRey
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I enjoy watching videos of people on their first day..

Mentors were a big help on help Island in making peoples first day a better one..Now it's just drop them at some popular info hub..

I used to love spending time at help Island just answering questions new users had.

Do they even have orientation island anymore?

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6 hours ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Try "SL is a creative platform." instead. Most will usually get the idea and if it appeals to them, they will hang around long enough to start the learning process. If they have more of an attention span than a flea does, they'll stick around for the long haul. If not, then SL just isn't their cuppa and never will be because SL isn't for the elitist or hardcore gamers.

Eh, there are always exceptions! I am very much a hardcore gamer with 25+years of gaming experience (started with NES, sadly missed original Atari times by a couple of years) and I did play a few games on a semi-competitive level (original CS and Broodwar to name a couple) and despite not having as much time for games anymore these days I still keep up with some of my favorite genres/series. And yet I still very much enjoy SL ever since I decided to give it a chance. It is very different kind of entertainment and gives my mind a rest whenever I mess around my sim, shopping for new stuff or do some roleplaying.

 

You are correct about attention span, though. If a person, gamer or not, doesn't have it, then no way they'd stick around SL for too long, but same can be said about some MMORPGs as well. They might have more polished UI in general, but still require some attention to details, like reading on what does what, some kind of an inventory/character management and some more.

Those so called "gamers" usually quit such games in a day or two as well, I know it well from my own experience. Whenever I had/wanted to make a new character in mmos for whatever reason, I always did team up/added people as I was progressing on that new character. Mmorpgs, especially last couple generations of them, might not be as socially oriented as they used to be when the genre was new, but they still promote social aspects a lot, it's more fun and easier/faster to level/explore/do stuff together. Long story short: by time I got that new character to the mid levels (usually a week or so) over 80% of people I had on my list weren't logging anymore at all, by time I got to the max level/endgame - it was closer to 90% and at least half of the remaining 10% were just alts/twinks like my own character.

 

So to sum up my thoughts on the topic/video (gotta admit that I couldn't watch the whole thing, it's awful). Should LL continue to make experience and new user experience better? Definitely! But no amount of improvements will make a certain type of people stay in SL after they try it out for a day.

It's just the F2P culture these days. It costs nothing (with an exception if someone is unfortunate enough to have a data cap or just have too slow connection) to try SL or a few hundreds if not thousands of F2P games. And people do and will continue to try them out, in most cases to never be seen again. As another example, a certain free CCG recently was celebrating over 100m accounts made, but based on the activity on the social networks, youtube/twitch, official forums and what not, I'd say that it got maybe 1-2% are still playing it on regular basis and is clearly on decline as it ages.

It's even true for the retail games too. There are stats on Steam for example and certain not free online games games with over 7-10m of estimated owners (used to be exact numbers, but steam changed API a while ago) and 30-60k people online. It is OK for people to try things out and move on for whatever reason. And no, it doesn't mean that LL or those game developers should turn their products upside down just so those people who already moved on would give their product another chance.

 

9 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

It seems hopelessly frustrating for new users who expect to use voice (probably most of them) to instead stumble into the general SL population where voice is pretty rare.

Not really. You can check almost any game's forum, be it console or PC games and that topic shows up all the time. "Why other people don't use mics? I want them to hear my breathing, my vacuum cleaner and my TV... for a reason!". Well, because most people don't, even with way more smooth and out of the box experience that current gen consoles provide, they even include the basic (arguable terrible, but it does work) mic in the box.

Edited by steeljane42
Typos and more typos
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Sorry, the fact that Linden Lab tried at all to create a "new user friendly" version of the Second Life client showcases just how much of a failure such a venture really is. 

Most functions - even some added in by Third Party clients - are either set up in "common sense" ways or are simply not all that hard to figure out. 

The online documentation could use an update and a proper Helper or Mentor program established again, possibly some proper updates to Orientation ... But that really is about it. 

The truly advanced stuff is hidden until explicitly enabled/told to show. 

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5 hours ago, Fionalein said:

OFF TOPIC RANT ON COMMENT:

Shhh, there's real autists who love SL. Please rephrase your words with moron/moronic (which you probably won't be allowed to call anyone on the Forums due to TOS) but please stop using the word reserved for a non-neurotypical mindset as an insult.

Think about it ;) you wouldn't call anyone gay as an insult (despite it being done so by others in the past), would you? Same principle applies here ...

 

5 hours ago, Ethan Paslong said:

have more?....

just for info.. there are many amongt the sl players

here's one

 

thanks a lot

Yeah, bad choice of wording at the time. "Autism" is used as online slang to describe those with typical 4channer mindset/mannerisms/behavior.

I certainly didn't mean to offend those dealing with the actual condition so for that I apologize.

I also made a hyperbolic statement of which I will try to keep myself in check when commenting whilst frustrated in the future.

Edited by Lucia Nightfire
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6 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

And actually, that's sort of what is disturbing about this: that we still have to have this conversation, because the new user experience still sucks, the official viewer is still crappy, and the learning curve for the basic mechanics of the platform is still too high. Surely after 9 or 10 years, this should all have been improved?

Yes. So let's look at what went wrong here technically that could be fixed.

First, the new user went through the entire video with a damaged avatar. He picked the newbie avatar "Thomas", which comes with a horse attachment. Thomas, which I've used, works fine both with and without the horse. But somehow he broke his avatar, probably by trying to get off the horse using "detach".

SL avatars are easy to damage and hard to fix. This is totally different from almost anything else in virtual worlds, virtual reality, or gaming. Even Sansar has a better system. Yes, SL's system is hugely flexible. But nothing in the system automatically notices that something has gone badly wrong and tries to help the user fix it. Hence, embarrassment and frustration for new users. There are "Avatar Health" menu options. Those should be be unnecessary. The user should not have to worry about this.

Second, encountering partially rezzed avatars. This is a combination of bugs. There's inherent delay, yes, but sometimes it just breaks.  If an update message gets lost, it can be many minutes before the situation fixes itself. That's a bug.I've argued that most messages between sim and viewer should go over a TCP connection, so they don't get lost. Only a few types of messages (mostly ImprovedTerseObjectUpdate) can really be lost without penalty.

There's also a problem where asset loads sometimes fail with errors indicating that the AWS -> Akamai -> caching server chain failed, producing a bogus HTTP 404 error, and those errors don't get retried. On top of that, if you watch bandwidth usage during loading, after about 10 seconds, bandwidth usage drops way down, maybe to a tenth of the usual max of 1.5mb/s, and assets trickle in for a minute or more. Somewhere, asset bandwidth allocation is badly flawed.

The overall impression to new users is "this thing sucks". They're right. By modern game or VR standards, it does. It continues to suck because LL is not fixing their legacy bugs.

It's going to be really entertaining when Sansar goes live on Steam and Linden Labs has to face a tough audience. It will be good for LL.

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Keep right on laughing, it hasn't changed anything. 

The "basic" version of the client failed simply because they tried to target a section of computer "users" that they really shouldn't have.

That's the reality. 

You find it amusing that someone recognizes this and dares to state such, openly. 

That's nice. 

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