I have an idea to increase the popularity of the game

[666mila]

need to do increase the scholarships depending on the activity...and the creators of interesting Sim to provide discounts on land

[Selene Gregoire]

Scholarships? LL isn't in the business of awarding financial aid to college students so I'm not sure what you mean by scholarships.

I seriously doubt LL would ever offer discounts on land. Look how many years (more than 10) it took for them to just lower the cost of regions. Add to that the fact that it really did not make them affordable for many of us who want them.

[Janet Voxel]

46 minutes ago, 666mila said:

need to do increase the scholarships depending on the activity...and the creators of interesting Sim to provide discounts on land

Do you mean give a discount for interesting sims and for high traffic? They’d have to get rid of alts and bots first. The system as it is badly broken, a discount would promote more botting.

[Bree Giffen]

Hopefully, the revenue from new residents would be greater than the discounts given to the creators. It seems like a roundabout way to increase profits. 1.5 x larger avatars for premiums would require no discounts. 

[Fionalein]

2 hours ago, 666mila said:

need to do increase the scholarships depending on the activity...and the creators of interesting Sim to provide discounts on land

that is what they try to pull off at Sansar right now, ...

[animats]

2 hours ago, Fionalein said:

that is what they try to pull off at Sansar right now, ...

That's what bugs me. All that effort on Sansar, and it still has very few users.  Sansar: concurrent users < 100. Second Life: concurrent users 30,000 .. 50,000.

But we're getting SSL and more water sims. There's some action.

I'd like to see six months of intensive bug fixing. SL has too many long-standing server side bugs. With animesh and EEP out the door, and nothing that big in the pipeline, it's time.

 

Edited March 29, 2019 by animats

[Nextio]

New people aren't going to worry about subscriptions, sim discounts, prim counts, etc.  It's all about the avatar, and SL's avatar system is a fragmented mess. 

Try getting a new person to understand the multiple layers of it and they get turned off immediately.   Believe me, i know from experience, because i've tried to get around five people to stick around but they give up after a couple days because you have to waste a lot of time learning how to customize their avatar.

You have to explain the classic avatar system and how it's irrelevant now, but they are still going to have to learn it anyway, because the base components are still needed, especially if/when they come across outdated freebies from 2006.  You gotta explain the tattoo layers, which are also skins, clothing, and makeup layers.  Then you have to worry about finding hair because the default Ruth hair looks like a helmet, but not just any hair, because there is Prim hair, Flexi hair, Rigged & Unrigged, Fitted hair.  Next is clothing, and if we're talking about the classic avatar, then it is composed of multiple separate layers; upper, lower, gloves, socks, and skirt.  Don't forget about shoes either.  Many outdated freebies do not come with alpha layers, so you have all these shoes that are unusable with feet sticking out of them.  This leads to explaining the wonky alpha system and all it's layers.  There is also the height issue where everyone is 7 feet tall.  You also have to learn about prims and mesh such as jewelry and accessories.  

The above is just the classic system monstrosity.

After all that, you have to learn about Standard Size clothing, Fitted Mesh, and now Bento Mesh.  Oh, and let's not forget the various mesh bodies and heads, such as Catwa, Belleza, Maitreya, etc.  Make sure you know about appliers and omega layers too.  Good luck newbie!  You're going to need it. 😁

Ironically, Sansar's avatar customization is severely limited.  They can still salvage Sansar  though if they redesign their avatar system and make it more robust.

 

Edited March 30, 2019 by Nextio

[Chic Aeon]

37 minutes ago, Nextio said:

ronically, Sansar's avatar customization is severely limited.  They can still salvage Sansar  though if they redesign their avatar system and make it more robust.

Doesn't appear to be happening. While most everyone (at least LOTS of vocal people) wanted a standard default avatar with sliders ---- The Lab opted to let others do their work (not all that suprising really).  On the plus side with Marvelous Designer clothing -- most things will work on "human" avatars as well as anime one (Raviolli made some cute ones). So there are lots of new custom (but human) avatars out in the STORE now. 

I have bought a couple of free ones for whenever I log in again. Not sure when that might be. Not the platform I thought I was investing in. Not alone there LOL.   

 

But yes, definitely a learning curve now for new folks. Not so bad in the past with ONLY the default legacy avatars. So the ones with let's say chutzpah will persevere, and others will move on. 

[Rolig Loon]

52 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

But yes, definitely a learning curve now for new folks. Not so bad in the past with ONLY the default legacy avatars. So the ones with let's say chutzpah will persevere, and others will move on. 

Yeah, it's almost as confusing as Real Life™.  If I travel to Europe or China or Japan, I have to deal with different sizing systems, unfamiliar brand names, different currency, strange driving regulations, funny-looking outlets to plug electrical appliances into (and different voltages), incomprehensible systems for buying train tickets........  the list never ends.  And then I think of all the weird things that people visiting North America have to deal with. 

The same happens when I log in to SL. I figure that I am visiting a different country.  I don't expect it to look like home or to have the same familiar features I see every day. I expect to have to learn new ways of doing things, bizarre terms for items and actions, and local customs that make me scratch my head.  I'm on vacation (or, after 12 years, I am an ex-pat), so part of my daily task is to learn how this strange world works and to fit in as well as I can.  For me, it's all part of the adventure.  I guess that's the difference between being a tourist and being a traveler.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

The top 3 shortest ways to popularity

1. Giving away candy
2. Giving away free money
3. Making hollow campaign promises

[Parhelion Palou]

8 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Making hollow campaign promises

If I'm elected, I promise to:

1. Eliminate lag (thereby helping retention)
2. Not only make land free; make it so LL pays you to own land. (Definitely helping retention, but LL would be out of business quickly.)
3. Add a feature in which someone who receives a crude proposition has a choice between accepting the proposition or nuking the person from orbit. Their avatar would turn to ash and not be able to log in for 24 hours. This would lead to a lot more people on the Social Islands looking for foolish newbies to nuke, but it could possibly hurt retention.

[animats]

18 minutes ago, Parhelion Palou said:

If I'm elected, I promise to:

1. Eliminate lag (thereby helping retention)
2. Not only make land free; make it so LL pays you to own land. (Definitely helping retention, but LL would be out of business quickly.)

Sansar has both of those. It didn't help.

[Ceka Cianci]

Say I'm goin for a pop fly and my top pops off..That could get some attention, right?

Rosie O'Donnell: CEKA!! This isn't baseball we're talkin here..

[Selene Gregoire]

3 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

Say I'm goin for a pop fly and my top pops off..That could get some attention, right?

Rosie O'Donnell: CEKA!! This isn't baseball we're talkin here..

Pick the durn cap up, dust it off, put it back on yer head and get back in the game!

[Parhelion Palou]

4 minutes ago, animats said:

Sansar has both of those. It didn't help.

SL has people, an incredible array of things to buy and things to do, and the ability to have communities in which multiple people can create things on the same region. Sansar was designed as a lot of separate worlds in which only the owner can create. There's little to do or to buy. Sansar is also a long way from being complete.

I was making empty political promises anyway. Nuke politicians from orbit ... that would be popular.

[Nextio]

18 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

Yeah, it's almost as confusing as Real Life™.  If I travel to Europe or China or Japan, I have to deal with different sizing systems, unfamiliar brand names, different currency, strange driving regulations, funny-looking outlets to plug electrical appliances into (and different voltages), incomprehensible systems for buying train tickets........  the list never ends.  And then I think of all the weird things that people visiting North America have to deal with. 

The same happens when I log in to SL. I figure that I am visiting a different country.  I don't expect it to look like home or to have the same familiar features I see every day. I expect to have to learn new ways of doing things, bizarre terms for items and actions, and local customs that make me scratch my head.  I'm on vacation (or, after 12 years, I am an ex-pat), so part of my daily task is to learn how this strange world works and to fit in as well as I can.  For me, it's all part of the adventure.  I guess that's the difference between being a tourist and being a traveler.

Haha, that made me laugh, but not a fair comparison. 😉

A better comparison would be like trying to learn American, Asian, and European sizes, currencies, outlets, etc, all on the same day.  When you travel to each country, you only have to learn one standard until you leave.  In SL, you will have to learn all the various components developed over 15 years, then compound all that into a day or a week, all depending on how much patience a newbie has.

[Rolig Loon]

9 minutes ago, Nextio said:

A better comparison would be like trying to learn American, Asian, and European sizes, currencies, outlets, etc, all on the same day.  When you travel to each country, you only have to learn one standard until you leave.  In SL, you will have to learn all the various components developed over 15 years, then compound all that into a day or a week, all depending on how much patience a newbie has.

That's a decent point.  It all depends on how eager the newbie is to learn everything quickly, and how comfortable she is with uncertainty in the meantime.  I spent a few days in Dubrovnik last year and had a crash course in learning how to handle currency, figure out where to buy a pass for the bus ( and which routes went to places I wanted to visit ), and a dozen other things ... all in a language that I do not speak. I'm a quick study, but I can imagine people who would feel totally helpless without a local tour guide to lean on.  Part of the responsibility for acclimating newcomers falls on the local community, but another important part always remains with the traveler. It's not reasonable to expect either party to do all the work, or for a newcomer to expect to learn everything on the first day.

[TaliaTalford]

I think bringing back second life mentors would do wonders for user retention. The steep learning curve,  mixed with the jadedness and antisocial tendencies of a lot of older residents does little to keep people coming back. more advertising would help as well. 

 I know they can’t fix the crazy amount of lag but there are literally hundreds of bugged out things they can and should fix ,  like all the teleportion fails  people have been experiencing lately . There is no excuse as to why a lot of these things haven’t been fixed yet. 

[Coffee Pancake]

36 minutes ago, TaliaTalford said:

I think bringing back second life mentors would do wonders for user retention.

Killing the mentor program did literally nothing to the retention statistics .. just like everything else that has been tried over the years. It really doesn't matter what LL do , they could literally drop brand new avatars from the sky into a hot lake of lava and retention would be the same flat percentage ... actually that might be fun, people could swap stories about how LL griffed their zero day old avatar.

The mentor program was great .. except when it wasn't. One notable example being a few mentors taking it upon themselves to play gatekeeper & manipulating LL into getting the "riffraff" banned.

[Shudo]

19 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

The mentor program was great .. except when it wasn't. One notable example being a few mentors taking it upon themselves to play gatekeeper & manipulating LL into getting the "riffraff" banned.

Yep, that's the biggest problem when anyone is given power. They start making up, and enforcing their own rules. Power goes to their head.

It's been the death of far too many ventures in SL over the years as well.

A mentor program can only lead to clique+abuse+other bad things.

[Sasy Scarborough]

They used to have discounts like that, the hubs, you had to own four sims I think it was, and as long as you provided some kind of learning , info type portals they were discounted, the rest of the land you could do your clubs, stores etc...then they got rid of the discount and most of them closed down.

Edited March 31, 2019 by Sasy Scarborough

[BilliJo Aldrin]

On 3/29/2019 at 4:10 PM, animats said:

That's what bugs me. All that effort on Sansar, and it still has very few users.  Sansar: concurrent users < 100. Second Life: concurrent users 30,000 .. 50,000.

But we're getting SSL and more water sims. There's some action.

I'd like to see six months of intensive bug fixing. SL has too many long-standing server side bugs. With animesh and EEP out the door, and nothing that big in the pipeline, it's time.

 

It's all our fault. We were all supposed to go to Sansar, look around, fall in love with and move in, never sullying SL with our presence ever again.

If it worked as planned it would be 50,000 concurrency in Sansar, and 100 in SL.

Better luck next time LL

Edited March 31, 2019 by BilliJo Aldrin
added a word i left out

[Lancewae Barrowstone]

re: mentors,

Yeah see, mentors should have no power, only their own eagerness and love of helping others because it's fun to them.  It's fulfilling and sparks a raw energy every time, as if bringing sight to the blind. I know some, who will try to mentor newbies every time they meet one, because SL is too valuable to waste and a noob is feeling around to perceive the imperceptible potentialities they've heard, or intuited, are out there.  It's not land that draws them, it's not even the avatar yet that holds them, it's a sense of some connection that must await them, somewhere, some reason to stay another 5 minutes and another 10 that turns into a decade. 

That's what mentoring is for.  Not just some info bot, but an inspirational force.  There are only a few such.  Give them no power; give them a stipend if you wish, that would make sense.  And they probably won't even care about that, but it's one reason for someone to agree to a schedule.  But the coolest, most curious oddity of all is that one good mentor can bring you others.

One could write a dissertation on the newbie phenomenon in Second Life, because noobs all fall within a basket of certain potentialities -- some are only curious and of varying patience, some just want to mess around an hour and bug people, others are willing to perceive a depth of possible richer experiences, of fantasy dramas, and yet don't know quite how to get there yet, and so on.  If you compiled a basic list of human interests that can work inside virtual worlds, food is not one of them so you go down to the next item, SEX, and that works.  And then you go down to say, motorcycles, oh yeah that works too, and then dancing and music and chatting, and flirting and romance and living in a city with civic responsibilities or immersing into a fantasy combat roleplay with a family to fight for and protect, and worlds upon worlds open up.  That is what mentoring can do.  Open some windows onto alien scenes all to be found inside this single entity called "Second Life."

Such mentoring is valuable. It should not be left unharvested. 

[Drake1 Nightfire]

I'm confused. Did she ever say what game she was talking about? 

On 3/29/2019 at 12:05 PM, 666mila said:

need to do increase the scholarships depending on the activity...and the creators of interesting Sim to provide discounts on land

I mean, that opening salvo was like me drunk texting an ex at 3 am.. Wait, did she mean The SIms? 

[Amanda Crisp]

Game?