$99 problems

[Malin Sabra]

5 minutes ago, Seba Serpente said:

Here is another problem with the decrease on the free account groups: People will leave a lot of creators groups and they no longer will be well informed of new releases, updates and offers.

This means a decrease on product sales and a lower power for store owners to keep their consumers up to date, or simply keep a close relationship with them.

That plus a probable increase in product costs due to  merchants earning less with the process credit fee increase, plus the mandatory premium account cost to be able to manage the business properly. The saving on land that some might get is not enough. Is all more expenses and less earnings our way.

Join their Facebook group instead 🤣

[Selene Gregoire]

1 minute ago, Lindal Kidd said:

We all know how you feel about subscribos, Selene!  And I agree with you that no one should be added without their consent.  But a properly set up subscribo is a good alternative to a traditional store group.

Well... not all of you know. lol

Even the properly set up ones can be a major PITA, especially with the reduced offlines. That right there is the showstopper for subscribos. Reduced offlines for basics. How would you compensate for that? Other than email, since that isn't always an option for some. Granted a very small percentage of the SL population but shouldn't their voices be heard along with everyone else's? 

[Seba Serpente]

1 minute ago, Malin Sabra said:

Join their Facebook group instead 🤣

Facebook is not the ideal medium for second life related communications. In fact, is against facebook terms of service to have an account for an avatar as it does not represents a real person.

Second Life has features built in for these purposes and in theory, should be the best tool... in theory.

[ananoelle]

10 minutes ago, mehllama said:

Maybe a compromise would be to start free users out with 35 groups and then after a year or so as active regular users and who've spent a certain threshold in-world, they get rewarded with additional group space. They are, after all, helping bring money into LL coffers and their regular active use also helps LL stay on the map as a viable virtual world experience.

Just one thought. 😃

I bet that threshold would be set at the cost of a annual membership lol

[Roxy Couturier]

Truly, the way in this day and age is to go to micro-transactions and cutting out subscription fees.

Extra Groups? one fee. Access to Premium areas like the sandboxes and Linden Homes? another fee. Mainland plots? another fee. Various $L 'packages' with decreasing cost for the more you buy. etc.

Then bundle them all into one 'Premium package' for a yearly fee.

 

[Jenna Mohegan]

14 hours ago, Toy Wiskee said:

I don't mind the increase. However, I wish I could get the "new" premium home before they do that so I can feel like I got something for it. Right now I'm still in an old house because i work for a living and can't sit by and wait for the new ones to be released in little handfuls. That's the only thing that gets my goat.

I kinda feel sorry for basics though, the group is dropping by 7. That is a major kick in the teeth to people who are basic, especially if your basic and still buy Lindens to play with. I have a feeling there will be a major drop in players, premium and basic will be saying bye, bye.

THIS! 

If anyone has had to pay to join a group, whether YOU personally don't like that idea or the idea of groups, is pissed right now and I think I'm safe to say there are a lot of us feeling this right now.  I belong to a mix of groups to enhance my SL experience.  For shopping, RPing, events, shows... a whole wack of things - Even as a premium member it's hard to get rid of groups to join new ones. 

I was going to get rid of my premium account because it's become useless, not being able to get a new Linden home kinda put a bad taste in my mouth and I had had to make a quick decision based on finances if it was worth it or not, it's not. Sure, going from 60 to 42 is going to be hard... but 60 to 35?! Really unfair. I hate this idea of being cornered into a premium account especially since I've started enjoying the game again with wonderful new people... and yah a price difference and a cut in groups will influence my decision to continue playing. 

I really hope LL takes a good look at these comments and reconsiders the group thing, I could live with a premium price increase when it became worth it again and I'm financially able. I get that the economy is changing and prices will go up... but don't take away things we already have, it's just mean. 

Edited May 30, 2019 by Jenna Mohegan

[Coffee Pancake]

25 minutes ago, Desudesudesuka said:

I'm going to go full psuedocoder and say " why not just make groups run better?" I think something is very wrong with groups the way they've been implemented, for example, there's  the fact that user title switching was apparently a big problem.

They have tried, sunk a significant amount of dev time into this one. SL groups are unique in the number of concurrent users they can have, some are MUCH bigger than on any other platform. They tried a lot of alternative technologies for making group chat work but found nothing else that scaled like the existing system does.

[Paul Hexem]

Still 229 for a full region.

I can rent an entire server, 3+ GHz, 8 cores or more, with 96 gigs of RAM, for less than that. I guarantee we're not getting that much hardware dedicated to our 229 sim. At best we're getting a VM that's running on a server already hosting others.

And being premium still doesn't offer a lot for the cost when regions are still that expensive.

High membership cost, high L$ cost, high land cost... I'll just go play an MMO that makes me pay one reasonable price and gives me access to everything. Or for the same price as being a member of SL, I'll host an entire MMO for 600 people.

[Coffee Pancake]

31 minutes ago, Gadget Portal said:

Or for the same price as being a member of SL, I'll host an entire MMO for 600 people.

I wish you the best of luck with your new endeavor. Please let us know when you have all the server and client software ready to go.

[Raevyn Addams]

50 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Just fyi, many of us use the MP as a catalog and make our purchases in world.  For me, personally, no inworld store? No sale. The exceptions to that rule are slim to none.

It's probably not intended that way, and I don't want to step on anyone's toes at all, but I have a minor store on the Marketplace and no in-world store. I pay for a premium account but the only land I own is Linden Land in Bellisseria. It would be good to earn enough from my store to be able to purchase and rent additional land in order to have an in-world store for customers such as yourself who only purchase in-world and not on MP; but it's not always viable. And certainly not for small-time merchants like myself. Yes, I could give up my LH and rent a mainland parcel big enough to accommodate both a retail space and a private section for my "home" but if sales aren't great I'm spending more than I earn. There's no profit in that.

As for my thoughts on the rest:

While I don't like the Premium account price increase, as stated by others in a way its inevitable. No time is ever going to be a good time for change. And since I live in Australia the conversion rates between USD to AUD means I pay around 1.50 for 1 American dollar on any given day. When the economy has bad days I pay more; which can be double what my best friend in the UK pays for her conversion rates. It's not fair but sadly unavoidable. My real life job is not guaranteed so I pay premium by the month - and that means I'll have to miss out on locking anything in. Paying monthly costs more in the long run than paying annually, and when you add that to the conversion rates the cost of just being a member is more expensive still than what others pay. Yes, the double processing fees are going to hurt. I hate it, but I can't do anything about that beyond shuffle my budget and cope as best I can for as long as I can. If circumstances change and I can't afford SL I will be disappointed, especially after having spent so much time and money over my 8+ years here (this was not initially my main account, fyi). As hard as it is considering walking away if it came down to the wire I would have to. Second Life is a game after all; a luxury. Other priorities in life take precedence. If they begin to suffer, SL has to go. It's really that simple for everyone.

The reduction in Region price thing amuses me. While any reduction is welcome, it's almost tongue-in-cheek. The first sim/region I bought years ago cost me over $650 Australian dollars prior to the recent price reductions. By most people's standards that's too much money to justify, and I vowed to never buy another region again. Even at a reduced price a region today still costs me close to $350-400 AUD; so at the end of the day a $20 reduction means nothing. It certainly doesn't sway me to even considering another purchase. I understand SL is a business and that they have to make a profit somewhere. I get that. But the reduction is too small a drop in the ocean to be taken seriously. Lower tier first.

The groups and IMs changes: I can take or leave. At the end of the day I really don't care. As it is I probably don't make use of the benefits that I currently have. After reading something previously mentioned by Patch Linden about groups (specifically large groups) potentially causing lag I've trimmed them down anyway to barely 20; so offering more doesn't change a thing for me. I agree with others in that a raise to the stipend would have been MUCH more appreciated, even useful. That way I wouldn't have to pay more processing fees to buy more Lindens to buy more stuff... but again, this is all business. But changing the Limits for Basic I don't agree with. Don't take away what people already have, just don't offer them any more. While there absolutely should be a clear definition between Free and Paid accounts this new system really does feel like a 'Rob Peter to pay Paul' scenario, and I can understand why it would upset so many people (my other alts are basic members btw, so yes, I feel that pain too).

All-new Membership level has me cautiously optimistic. Until new details are released I'll continue on as I am and decide when that hammer eventually drops.

Overall these changes have me feeling... underwhelmed. And it hurts me to say because I do recognise LL is trying to evolve or adapt or even catch up after all these years, and genuine effort is preferable to none at all. It's just the same old story of not being able to please everyone all the time - and I don't envy them that. I do like my Linden Home though and am looking forward to more models, so I guess that's something positive? I was planning on bringing one of my alts up to Premium if one of the styles was more urban, but now I sincerely really don't know. It's a case of wait and see and hope for the best. That's all I can really do. 🤔

[Selene Gregoire]

35 minutes ago, Gadget Portal said:

Still 229 for a full region.

I can rent an entire server, 3+ GHz, 8 cores or more, with 96 gigs of RAM, for less than that. I guarantee we're not getting that much hardware dedicated to our 229 sim. At best we're getting a VM that's running on a server already hosting others.

And being premium still doesn't offer a lot for the cost when regions are still that expensive.

High membership cost, high L$ cost, high land cost... I'll just go play an MMO that makes me pay one reasonable price and gives me access to everything. Or for the same price as being a member of SL, I'll host an entire MMO for 600 people.

There are some rumors flying around that there are several groups of people who are working in Unity to create virtual worlds that are supposed to be far better than SL. I don't know if this is fact or not but I have seen signs that it is true. So maybe those of us who are slowly being forced out of SL will have a place to go in the fairly near future. I hope.

[mehllama]

1 hour ago, Desudesudesuka said:

No, they didn't think about the users. They have be be very out of touch to have done what they did. Their aggressive move to a subscription payment method makes it seem like the merchant income isn't on the radar for them. They think everyone is going to start buying premium, despite that they reduced the appeal of the game and jacked the price to cement that. The real pipe dream is people buying more land.

Yep. More quality free users in SL (because not everyone can do premium) means more total users, which benefits premium users too. It means SL is more viable for creators, club owners, and land sellers. People who haven't tried SL will see it has more than 10 users and give it a try (SL is basically like virtual world social media and social media without a lot of people and interaction is less appealing to prospective new users). The free users outnumber the paid users considerably, I'd imagine. Without the free users, SL would be much less viable or fun for premium users, I truly believe. I know that sounds self-serving but I think it is objectively true.

[Selene Gregoire]

2 minutes ago, RaeLeeH said:

It's probably not intended that way, and I don't want to step on anyone's toes at all, but I have a minor store on the Marketplace and no in-world store. I pay for a premium account but the only land I own is Linden Land in Bellisseria. It would be good to earn enough from my store to be able to purchase and rent additional land in order to have an in-world store for customers such as yourself who only purchase in-world and not on MP; but it's not always viable. And certainly not for small-time merchants like myself. Yes, I could give up my LH and rent a mainland parcel big enough to accommodate both a retail space and a private section for my "home" but if sales aren't great I'm spending more than I earn. There's no profit in that.

Please re-read my post. I did NOT say I never purchase from the MP.  I do make exceptions. Just not very often and it has to be something that I can't substitute some thing else for. 

I don't even know what you sell so it may be that your products aren't something I would purchase. I'm not saying that to hurt your feelings or make you angry. Send me a link to your store, please, and I'll be happy to take a look and maybe purchase something (will have to be no more than 50Ls since that's all the stipend I get each week). I do believe very strongly in supporting "local" businesses when I can.

[mehllama]

1 hour ago, Roxy Couturier said:

Truly, the way in this day and age is to go to micro-transactions and cutting out subscription fees.

Extra Groups? one fee. Access to Premium areas like the sandboxes and Linden Homes? another fee. Mainland plots? another fee. Various $L 'packages' with decreasing cost for the more you buy. etc.

Then bundle them all into one 'Premium package' for a yearly fee.

 

And let people buy them with Lindens if they want to. You should be able to purchase anything from LL in Lindens since all of it can be cashed out (and I'm sure LL won't charge itself the cash out fee, although if they use a third party that might sting them a little).

[Raevyn Addams]

1 minute ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Please re-read my post. I did NOT say I never purchase from the MP.  I do make exceptions. Just not very often and it has to be something that I can't substitute some thing else for. 

I don't even know what you sell so it may be that your products aren't something I would purchase. I'm not saying that to hurt your feelings or make you angry. Send me a link to your store, please, and I'll be happy to take a look and maybe purchase something (will have to be no more than 50Ls since that's all the stipend I get each week). I do believe very strongly in supporting "local" businesses when I can.

It's okay, I'm not taking offense at all, merely responding to your quote: For me, personally, no inworld store? No sale. The exceptions to that rule are slim to none. 

We're all free to shop where we like, how we like. Just as we're able to choose whether we choose to pay for Premium or not. That's all I meant. Again, as stated then, no offense was intended and none was taken. Sorry if it was taken that way 🕊️

[Selene Gregoire]

1 minute ago, RaeLeeH said:

It's okay, I'm not taking offense at all, merely responding to your quote: For me, personally, no inworld store? No sale. The exceptions to that rule are slim to none. 

We're all free to shop where we like, how we like. Just as we're able to choose whether we choose to pay for Premium or not. That's all I meant. Again, as stated then, no offense was intended and none was taken. Sorry if it was taken that way 🕊️

Thank you for clarifying. I wasn't sure.

I still would like to see your products. 

Aw shoot. It's the other forum that has the peace sign. This will have to do. ✌️ 

[Cackle Amore]

2 hours ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Just fyi, many of us use the MP as a catalog and make our purchases in world.  For me, personally, no inworld store? No sale. The exceptions to that rule are slim to none.

That seems a bit petty, probably only like 10% of the stores on MP have a inworld.

[Kadah Coba]

1 minute ago, Digit Gears said:

That seems a bit petty, probably only like 10% of the stores on MP have a inworld.

I'd be surprised if its that high. Of the few MP stores I see have an in-world linked, most no longer exist.

[Selene Gregoire]

11 minutes ago, Digit Gears said:

That seems a bit petty, probably only like 10% of the stores on MP have a inworld.

For some reason I rather doubt we shop at the same places for the same things. When the big move to the MP occurred I thought I would be losing the vast majority of the inworld stores I buy from. Fortunately, for me, I've been proven wrong. The majority of the places I shop at still have inworld stores. The ones that are still creating content anyway. Some of them are gone from SL and no longer have either location.

[Kadah Coba]

I made a long post on my take in the other thread. Dropping a link here so I don't have to duplicate it here in case LL only reads one of these.

TL;DR, only one narrow class of resident sees any positive from this change and it amounts to saving $17.75 off $255/m. Everybody else gets some level of screwed.

One additional point I didn't make in that post, the increased processing fees, this is mostly reasonable to me as such became industry standard about a year or more ago. LL seems to have chosen to do a single larger increases later rather than several smaller increases over the past few years.

[Selene Gregoire]

4 minutes ago, Kadah Coba said:

chosen to do a single larger increases later rather than several smaller increases over the past few years.

The smaller increases over a period of time would have been the better business move. Makes a bitter horse pill a bit easier to swallow. 

[Kadah Coba]

2 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

For some reason I rather doubt we shop at the same places for the same things. When the big move to the MP occurred I thought I would be losing the vast majority of the inworld stores I buy from. Fortunately, for me, I've been proven wrong. The majority of the places I shop at still have inworld stores. The ones that are still creating content anyway. Some of them are gone from SL and no longer have either location.

In my experience, stores for human female shaped individuals are more likely to have an active in-world store. That appears to be one of the larger classifications market segments in SL. For those of us in the margins, the sales volumes on merchandise for our demographic is often not enough to sustain an in-world presence on its own.

[Selene Gregoire]

2 minutes ago, Kadah Coba said:

In my experience, stores for human female shaped individuals are more likely to have an active in-world store. That appears to be one of the larger classifications market segments in SL. For those of us in the margins, the sales volumes on merchandise for our demographic is often not enough to sustain an in-world presence on its own.

You're making the assumption that the majority of my shopping is for clothes. Sorry, that isn't what I do the majority of my shopping for. .

Edited May 30, 2019 by Selene Gregoire

[Remi Shenanigans]

Folks apparently don't remember back in the bad old days of SL, when group numbers were limited to 25 for both basic and premium, buying a sim was a major investment, and lindens flowed like water on the grid.

It's the economy, folks. SL is effected by it, just like everything else. Yes, the prices need to increase. It's either increase of the whole of SL folds eventually when they can no longer afford to keep it running. They listen to people complain and moan about how there is lag, and servers are running badly, not enough avatars allowed on sims, why can't you wear more than two pieces of animesh, why....why...why....wha....wah...wahhh.

This is how we end up sounding to the folks who run Linden Labs. They can only do so much with the finances they are getting currently and yes, it sucks they have to increase fees. You want to ***** at someone, ***** at the credit card companies who are charging Linden Labs higher fees for them to process our linden orders. You want to ***** about servers not running as well as they should? Yell at the creators who are refusing to optimize their mesh creations because they can't be bothered or don't know how.

I get why the limits on the groups and the offline ims. It saves bandwidth and it saves money in the long run. Mind you, I spend a LOT of money on SL for lindens as well as have a premium account. Am I going to renew now? Most likely not. Am I going to stop spending money on SL? Not really. I like to mod too much. Am I going to throw a fit over the fact I can't add new groups once I drop my premium? Nah, not really. Only ones that count for me are already on my account now as it is.

Remember that these are PEOPLE on the other side of the screens, just like we are. Would YOU want to be yelled at for things that are kinda out of your control?

If you want to blame something, blame the damn economy, not a company that is trying to keep things going the way we have grown accustomed to and has to make sacrifices and changes we don't like very much just to keep our Virtual World running.

[mehllama]

4 minutes ago, Wendy Macpherson said:

 

Remember that these are PEOPLE on the other side of the screens, just like we are. Would YOU want to be yelled at for things that are kinda out of your control?

 

I haven't seen a lot of yelling going on. 😃 This has been six pages of a very friendly conversation and people have aired their complaints, praises, grievances, and suggestions quite reasonably as a whole. Chiding people for offering feedback (which LL does want to have) is counterproductive. We shouldn't feel ashamed to maintain open communication channels. 

Things in the end are more than just "the economy" or "third party processing companies", if I characterized the summary of your statements correctly, but a holistic view that encompasses those possible factors with the impact of keeping users reasonably happy, encouraging the commerce that helps sustain LL and allows many to then buy land, which also sustains the company. And of course that critical mass of 40-50k users logged in at any given time. Again, most users - nay, most regular medium- and long-term users (we can exclude the alts and newbies) are "free" users, which is in itself a misnomer since these users spend a considerable amount in SL too. We're not comparing those who give back to deadbeats; but those who can afford premium (hence the name) and those who nevertheless in many cases still spend a good bit as well as draw more people to the platform simply by being active.