What are your opinions on the new "Land Price Reductions, New Premium Perks, and Pricing Changes "?

[LittleMe Jewell]

Wow, gotta pay US $10 (or more) every month for some special exclusive collection of stuff.............. 

Um, okay.

[Selene Gregoire]

Before I would even consider joining such a group, I'd want to know exactly what this "gift" is and if it is copy/mod. 

I'm not going to pay for something I've never even seen, much less know nothing about. 

[Blush Bravin]

4 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Before I would even consider joining such a group, I'd want to know exactly what this "gift" is and if it is copy/mod. 

I'm not going to pay for something I've never even seen, much less know nothing about. 

Which is totally the right of the consumer. For many of us though we quite enjoyed the surprise of it. Different strokes as they say!

And I certainly wouldn't call it a gift. I highly doubt that owner of the group is calling it a gift either.

Edited June 6, 2019 by Blush Bravin

[Selene Gregoire]

19 minutes ago, Blush Bravin said:

Which is totally the right of the consumer. For many of us though we quite enjoyed the surprise of it. Different strokes as they say!

And I certainly wouldn't call it a gift. I highly doubt that owner of the group is calling it a gift either.

That may be true of the group you are in but can you say the same for all of the other similar groups? 

And no, I don't buy anything sight unseen. I've seen too many get ripped off that way with no legal recourse. I'm not about to support that kind of thinking in SL either.  Or anywhere for that matter. I wouldn't buy a car or house in RL without ever test driving or checking the plumbing than I would buy a house or car in SL without ever "inspecting" them. 

[Blush Bravin]

4 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

That may be true of the group you are in but can you say the same for all of the other similar groups? 

And no, I don't buy anything sight unseen. I've seen too many get ripped off that way with no legal recourse. I'm not about to support that kind of thinking in SL either.  Or anywhere for that matter. I wouldn't buy a car or house in RL without ever test driving or checking the plumbing than I would buy a house or car in SL without ever "inspecting" them. 

Can you say for certain that they don't? Why pass judgement when you don't necessarily have all the facts?

Those Luxe boxes .. for 1500 linden had multiple fatpacks from the likes of Blueberry, Tres Blah, Reign, Ison, just to name a few. They were soooooooooooooooooo worth the money. Which is probably why the creators stopped .. they really were just giving away their work.

And ... omg . so serious .. lighten up a bit!

Edited June 6, 2019 by Blush Bravin

[greek Wingtips]

So  premium users will pay more now? I can only see people will leave, I probally be one of them

[Blush Bravin]

22 minutes ago, greek Wingtips said:

So  premium users will pay more now? I can only see people will leave, I probally be one of them

Nope, won't leave. Won't give up even one of my premiums. I have three. It still is a great deal and I'm happy to pay the price if it means keeping SL healthy.

[Tick Marville]

40 minutes ago, greek Wingtips said:

So  premium users will pay more now? I can only see people will leave, I probally be one of them

And I will be one of them as well.  I've been inworld since 2008.  I owned land back in my early days but selling it off when you decide to move is just too much hassle and I'd just abandon it.  Groups don't mean a thing to me having way less than my limit and if I ever get to that point, I'd be happy to leave a few to gain a few.  Most of the old timers are gone now and my friends list has shrunk from 40 or so down to 4 so IM's are sparse.

I prefer just to rent now and when I decide on a change I just move-no hassle.  Up until the increase, the weekly stipend basically paid my rent so I figured it's a wash.  Now it no longer will. For me at least, I'll be much better off just buying L$ and paying rent so I'll just move to basic.  LL still gets my money-just not as much.  I understand Linden has overhead but so do I.

[Selene Gregoire]

50 minutes ago, Blush Bravin said:

Can you say for certain that they don't? Why pass judgement when you don't necessarily have all the facts?

Those Luxe boxes .. for 1500 linden had multiple fatpacks from the likes of Blueberry, Tres Blah, Reign, Ison, just to name a few. They were soooooooooooooooooo worth the money. Which is probably why the creators stopped .. they really were just giving away their work.

And ... omg . so serious .. lighten up a bit!

Those names mean exactly nothing to me. I've never heard of them. So no, I have no idea what they create or created.

I wish people would make up their durn minds on how I'm supposed to act/react on the forums. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 hour ago, greek Wingtips said:

So  premium users will pay more now? I can only see people will leave, I probally be one of them

I can see that there will be those that will drop their Premium.  Not really sure it will cause a flood of folks leaving though.  By the same token, there will likely be far more that do stay Premium and as LL rolls out more and more themes of the new Linden Homes, I can see the number of Premiums increasing., despite the higher fee.

[Blush Bravin]

35 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Those names mean exactly nothing to me. I've never heard of them.

Nuff said. I won't make the mistake of speaking about SL fashion with you again. I've learned my lesson. 

[Selene Gregoire]

43 minutes ago, Blush Bravin said:

Nuff said. I won't make the mistake of speaking about SL fashion with you again. I've learned my lesson. 

lol

Assuming they are all clothing creators, how many of those were established more than 5 years ago when I was still modeling in both SL and InWorldz?  What makes you think your idea(s) of fashion are the same as mine? 

Who is the one being judgmental here and who needs to lighten up?

 

 

[Blush Bravin]

20 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

lol

Assuming they are all clothing creators, how many of those were established more than 5 years ago when I was still modeling in both SL and InWorldz?  What makes you think your idea(s) of fashion are the same as mine? 

Who is the one being judgmental here and who needs to lighten up?

 

 

All those I mentioned have been in business for at least 5 years. Blueberry being the newest the others I would guess may be as much as 8 to 10 years or longer. They are some of the top names in fashion here in SL and have been for some time. Mention any of those names to any fashion blogger and they will know them. It's not a matter of who's idea what fashion is .. my taste are most likely different than yours but that doesn't change the fact that those names are highly recognizable by those in the fashion industry in SL.  The only reason I brought it up was because of your suggestion that those boxes contained unknown commodities and consequently you would not have bothered to join the subscription, my point is that those names were so well known and to be offering fatpacks that many considered it a great deal and didn't blink twice at subscribing.

[Selene Gregoire]

17 minutes ago, Blush Bravin said:

All those I mentioned have been in business for at least 5 years. Blueberry being the newest the others I would guess may be as much as 8 to 10 years or longer. They are some of the top names in fashion here in SL and have been for some time. Mention any of those names to any fashion blogger and they will know them. It's not a matter of who's idea what fashion is .. my taste are most likely different than yours but that doesn't change the fact that those names are highly recognizable by those in the fashion industry in SL.  The only reason I brought it up was because of your suggestion that those boxes contained unknown commodities and consequently you would not have bothered to join the subscription, my point is that those names were so well known and to be offering fatpacks that many considered it a great deal and didn't blink twice at subscribing.

I was gone for those (almost) 5 years and since I haven't gotten back into modeling, no I would not know about some of them. I don't read fashion blogs. I don't need them. I don't follow SL trends and fads and have no desire to. Not even when I was modeling. I don't follow the trends and fads in RL either. I do my thing. Always have. Always will.

Mother taught me well. Maybe a little too well. I always wondered what it was like to turn down not only the NYC Ballet but the Metropolitan Opera, too, and raise a family instead. 

 

My point is, we don't all follow the trends and fad fashions in SL. Some of us just are not like "every other woman". 

Edited June 7, 2019 by Selene Gregoire

[Blush Bravin]

13 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

My point is, we don't all follow the trends and fad fashions in SL. Some of us just are not like "every other woman". 

So now you're into putting down women as though you are better. That's just sad. I'm not going to be drawn into your little game any further.

[Selene Gregoire]

Just now, Blush Bravin said:

So now you're into putting down women as though you are better. That's just sad. I'm not going to be drawn into your little game any further.

What are you talking about?  I haven't put any one down. If anything you've been putting me down simply because I don't fall all over myself to keep up with SL fashions! Game? What the hell? So all of this was to just try to make me look like something I'm not? I've certainly got your number now. Talk about playing mind games. Wow.

[Kiera Clutterbuck]

[LittleMe Jewell]

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

This thread sure got weird.

[Erwin Solo]

Yea, time to either close the thread or turn it into a spam thread. 

[Echo Kinsella]

On 6/4/2019 at 1:26 PM, Kiera Clutterbuck said:

Do you think he, or they, care about anything other than themselves and making money?

Wow! way to generalize half the country and belittle them.  Why bring him into this at all?

[Qie Niangao]

7 hours ago, Echo Kinsella said:

Wow! way to generalize half the country and belittle them.  Why bring him into this at all?

It appears the forums software again grabbed the wrong quote citation, which is bound to be mighty confusing to the cited contributor. It seems the intent was to respond instead to this post:

On 6/4/2019 at 2:37 PM, Beth Macbain said:

[...] Do you think he, or they, care about anything other than themselves and making money? [...]

I have no clue why this weird thing with quote citations happens sometimes. I also have no clue what this whole argument is about, but I feel compelled to point out: if prices are reduced for the Land product, other fees must rise; this was the plan all along. If creators don't like it -- despite the most lucrative SL market for user-generated content in years -- they might want to look for a different side hustle. If a creator can't make it in SL now, even with the increased fees, they're never gonna make it anywhere.

[Luna Bliss]

I think I need more coffee before I catch up on this thread 

[Luna Bliss]

On 6/4/2019 at 3:20 PM, Theresa Tennyson said:

 

I find your talking about "middle class" creators rather disingenuous. I know, everyone thinks they're "middle class," but I'd consider a "middle class" creator one whose SL business pays for their Second Life expenses, but who has another source of income for their RL living expenses. This fee change actually helps the middle class as I'd think of it, because their fixed expenses are reduced with the land price reduction and most SL fees can be paid in US dollar balance, which means the increased cash-out fee won't be as much as a factor. As I've noted earlier, if a merchant owning a region is only cashing out a few hundred a month, they're coming out ahead. People who make Second Life their full-time job are really "one-percenters." 

It would only be disingenuous if I were making an attempt to be insincere via leaving out pertinent information crucial to the opposite side of the argument (your apparent belief that the reduced price of land will benefit merchants or at the very least it will be a wash).

The problem is I don't believe the new ratio with land prices reduced will benefit MOST merchants; many merchants don't own land (many MP stores have no link to an inworld store), and many who do own land fund it via Premium memberships (and the price of Premiums are going up, not down).
Plus, so many residents who provide various services in SL (like musicians, for example) don't even need land, so the increasing cashout cuts only causes their income to continue to drop as they are not benefitting from a drop in land prices if they don't own land. I'm kind of among them (more like a service provider) as most of my income is received via custom designs on others property, and the majority of additional income comes from MP sales (so no land needed in these cases) -- very few sales come from my inworld store.
I am glad that at least some merchants will benefit by paying less for land though.
The fact that SL appears to be proceeding with caution via making changes slowly says to me that even they don't know what effect these changes will have  (Ebbe said something to that effect...testing the waters gradually as they attempt to rebalance where they get their income ). It's reassuring they are proceeding slowly, although I know some don't feel a doubling of cashout fees is slow at all.

*I'm thinking of middle-class in SL as those making $600 to $1200 or thereabouts for full-time (over more than full-time) work, poverty level in RL but representing a living wage & doable in some areas of the country, and it's these I've been seeing disappear from SL for some time - the 'hollowing out' of the middle-class I mentioned. It's easy to see that increasing cashout cuts hurt that segment of SL financially as the cashout fees will reduce their income more since they are cashing out more (*note -- they're typically working full time to earn this money while those just covering SL expenses are not).
But what I'm more concerned about in terms of SL's survival, is that increasing cashout fees will diminish the segment of SL who might be more important for SL's continued existence because they are greater in number -- those hard-working merchants who are covering their SL expenses and also depending on $100 - $300 extra each month to pay a few RL bills. Once again, if they don't own land these new changes won't benefit them, plus if they do actually cash out money and incur the new cashout fee they will be seeing their profits decrease as the cashout fees increase.

Anyway, I'm not saying this new equation (more income from cashouts via land sales for SL) is not a good plan for the overall success of SL going into the future -- I simply don't know.

One important fact to consider (for those who keep pointing to the fact that we should not complain because other games take 30%), the problem with thinking about SL in this way is that there's no recognition that SL and other games are not the same -- SL was founded on UGC (user generated content) as a focus and there is a large creator community -- remove the incentives for residents to participate in a way they perceive as fair and a disaster could ensue.
Difficulties lie ahead for merchants, most importantly as the cashout fees continue to increase -- I hope merchants who need to leave will not cause SL numbers to decrease further if they aren't able to 'pay their way with a little extra cash on top' anymore through SL income. I also hope it won't cause a loss of quality content for residents to enjoy -- because, as you know, creating is hard work, and selling can be even more difficult -- my guess is that many would leave if not compensated adequately, whatever that compensation might be for each individual merchant.

Edited June 7, 2019 by Luna Bliss

[Luna Bliss]

33 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I also have no clue what this whole argument is about, but I feel compelled to point out: if prices are reduced for the Land product, other fees must rise; this was the plan all along. If creators don't like it -- despite the most lucrative SL market for user-generated content in years -- they might want to look for a different side hustle. If a creator can't make it in SL now, even with the increased fees, they're never gonna make it anywhere.

I don't see the main issue as whether creators like it, but whether or not the changes actually contribute to the viability of SL going forward. Even SL does not know the answer to this, and is why they're proceeding carefully as they make changes.