Freedom to, freedom from and the future of mainland (shared experience)

[Polenth Yue]

I'd be one of those without a home if the mainland had build rules, so I will live with weird unfinished piles of prims in exchange for being able to build what I like. The official themes tend to favour realism, which doesn't work so well for my shop. It's currently a giant cake, which is only going to fly on the mainland.

Derendering everything looks really weird. It doesn't help that the terraforming isn't great on the sim. Every issue is highlighted without the buildings covering it up. It also makes the texture repeats on the terrain stand out.

What I would like is for the current rules to be enforced. There aren't many for the mainland, so it's not a lot to ask.

[Lewis Luminos]

I am a little late but this is an interesting topic to me, since I have resided on the same mainland region for 9 years. I started with 1024m and now own a bit over 6000m, with the help of a premuim alt. 

The reasons I stay are many.

First, I struck lucky with land in a nice part of Sansara, protected on east and west sides between a lake and a Linden road. If my neighbours across the road build something ugly I can't even see it because the Linden road is up on a viaduct that blocks my view of anything built the other side of it.

Second, I cannot rent 6000m of land for less money than I am paying in tier and premium fees. Financially, it's a no-brainer.

Third, Island living makes me claustrophobic. From my mainland home I can sail, drive, ride or fly across literally hundreds of regions. No estate can offer that because none of them offer that much public, protected space. The thought of being unable to step across my parcel borders and explore leaves me cold. I am effectively paying not just for my own parcel, but also for access to an entire continent, and that to me is priceless.

I would like to have the opportunity to take a Linden home in Bellisseria as well because of the community, which mainland lacks (although i occasionally meet my neighbour on the north side, who has been there almost as long as me) but I can't justify the jump in tier fees for it, and I am not willing to reduce my current holdings for it. 

I am not an anarchistic builder of random chaos but I do like to switch themes and maybe once or twice a year I will do so; from steampunk to Roman to Arabic to traditional New England and a few more over the years. That's another thing I can't do on rented Estate or Linden Home without packing up and moving.

How to make mainland more attractive than Linden Homes? I think the obvious and easiest solution is to raise the free tier allocation to 2048 but ONLY on regular mainland. Keep the Linden Homes limit at 1024. There is more than enough abandoned land to cover the increased demand and it means that every premium user could get their Linden home AND 1024m of mainland. Why choose when you can have both?

Closing and deleting unfinished continents like Gaetea, and moving residents to alternative continents, would also help. Less abandoned land, more of the existing land being occupied. Less abandoned land would also mitigate the falling price of mainland.

Mainland is my home and I'll be there until either I or SL is gone, whichever comes first.