What would YOU do if you were Linden Lab?

[Prokofy Neva]

17 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

oh please no

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How much money do we have to give LL to opt out of "Prok Life"

Just name the price, we wont protest, not a word.

 

 

See, this is why SL continues to fail. Very vocal forums geeks with very deep-rooted ideas about economic systems continue to lobby the Lindens to make their ideal, socialist unicorn world.

LL itself doesn't live in that socialist world; they live in the real world of capitalism. So it's hard to justify why businesses within SL can't live in that real world, too, which means advertising and profits.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

19 hours ago, SibyllVane said:

I wholeartedly agree with all of this, it's exactly what I was going to suggest, and it's something I've thinking about long before these ooooh amazing news LL has brought us yesterday.

With enough time for a response, purging very old and unused accounts seems pretty fair and it would drastically reduce the load on servers - until switch to the cloud is completed - and maybe help with groups' lag, ultimately. How many people created alts for just one specific reason, or for the fun of it, just to forget about them the next day? Which brings me to the next point.

Limit the number of alts per account (or email) to what, 3? Maybe 5? I have often heard of people having up to what, 30 alts, and you can imagine the reasons behind this being plain malicious. Of course, this would only apply to new Premium users. Old ones would keep theirs, until first point applies.

Last, YES, YES, YES PLEASE: offer tiered (if not à la carte) Premium subscriptions!

That's my take... for now lol

I'm not getting the animosity to old accounts. The evidently cost the Lindens nothing to keep on their servers -- there can't be more than a few dozen thousands at most. If any of them might be a customer who would return, why not?

More to the point, if there are people with premium accounts and LAND which evidently they must have paid ahead a year or more, they have zero reason to purge them. I have to say I'm mystified by two 512s near my rentals, both of which have ugly builds with spinning crap, both of which were claimed in 2007, both of whose owners are no longer in the people list, but who are not considered "abandoned". I've filed tickets FOR YEARS about these lots and have been told each time that they are not abandoned. Huh? You mean there are people who paid $72 x 2 or 5 even to keep a premium account in SL? REALLY??? Who never log on? Even if you factor in the former "free 512," that could only be kept if you kept the payments on the premium.

No, these are not "Charter Accounts" -- those early adapters who got 4096 free for life. I know some of these, and for the most part, even if they don't log on, their parcels are nice, not filled with junk.

So what's up? The Lindens gave away free premium accounts? They keep billing a credit card on file and the people never notice and stop it? They're dead? All a mystery...

 

[Nethya Emor]

On 5/30/2019 at 8:02 AM, CoffeeDujour said:

Off the top of my head ... 

Nearly all of that, damn that's a nice list.

The pricing changes make sense, I hate them on my business side, but they do make sense on their side. Online marketplaces and such tend to have painful fees.

Items: Anything older than 10 years should not be on MP, they can still exist in inventory but reduce the spread of it. Let the new take over the ancient and clunky. Of course anyone active can re-post them.

Accounts: Apparently I had account older than 16 years that I never used. Send email that all unused old accounts are getting deleted, free up names so you can later use them again, ease your database.

Land-setup fees: These are still too damn high. Switch to cloud hosting already and reduce these down to month's rent at least, preferably down to half of it. I am guessing here that the main issue is possibility of too many private sims pop up and die right away that would cause too much stress, and it would be better to allocate land that already exists.

Piracy: Have at least one person familiarize and scout the SL market to take out the copybotted items. The baked on mesh will help, but even checking every two days you can find so many items that are obviously copied. Piracy is often due to ease of it, or too high prices, I don't expect it to ever go away but you may certainly take some effort to reduce it when it is plain and obvious.

I bolded a thing, it's not really noticeable. The heck?

Depending on how much effort it is, provide a SL social site inspired by Instagram. Add flickr's groups, sell it as a high quality service for bloggers since it combines best of all. This causes SL to spread less in the social media, but it also creates a very inciting and more interactive population. The new web profiles with spots and all were a good idea, just executed badly.

Take a professional level designer, UX designer, some SL veterans, some Lindens, and make a proper bloody tutorial area and introduction to Second Life. It is abyssal, I would never made it if I didn't have a friend in it already to pull be back in. Also add referrals, or bonuses for people who take new residents under their wing. Why? Because it's immensely complex to anyone not computer-savvy.

Get better marketing, utilize Twitch (after you create a fool-proof way of countering any trolls), encourage your media creators. SL offers you to explore your sexuality, your gender, your personality, your limits, pretty much everything. You can be -whatever you want-! Do you know how many people want that? You still haven't developed a proper approach for acquiring your potential userbase.

Redo your official Viewer, the fact that most people use TPV speaks for itself. Plus, it's a mess from what I recall using it last time, so it should be tied to the new tutorial area. The other path is to add viewer feature bounties, like Coffee said, and use your TPVs to push forward, support them and they will bring you many great things. Just imagine more professionals pushing your viewer forward with some minimal upkeep on your side, it's a good investment.

Provide more script options, while you wanted Sansar to have games in itself, SL already has them. Give people the tools for it, make combat smoother, easier to create. Improve UI scripts. You could run a good RPG on SL if it was easier and/or better.

Set a limit to a complexity a single item can have when worn on a person. Combined with your attachment limit, this should give some sort of an upper cap. Or have the graphic option to reduce most complex items to one LoD lower and save us the sanity without turning people into weird blocks of color, which causes more question and confusion from new players.

Scalable sims: Give options for owners to decide what they want to purchase. More prims? More people? More land? Add options for it, you could approach this like customizing your phone tariff plan. 

Also improve your sims as much as you can, some other virtual worlds are making bold statements concerning amount of people in one sim (however they all lack in other aspects so eh).

Improve your Inventory system (tags (can even use MP categories to auto-place some), searching by permission,attachable image), add image previews for Outfits (rezz avatar in a separate space with items, snapshot, seems easy). 

Add a client-side supported weather, it adds a ton to immersion but it is too heavy on server side. And immersion is important.

See about allowing more complex animations, as they are quite important for immersion and the feel.

Allow basic animation manipulation tool. How much more interesting would it be to actually wrap arm around someone rather than type '/me wraps their arm around you' while you are clearly not doing that visually.

If you're not going with VR. Can you still utilize their controllers? Moving arms around, later when the technology catches up you can expand on it. But actually dancing or at least trying to seems like fun.

Marketing again, collaborate with some music artist to show off SL to the public eye again.

Tie avatars and all into one account, pretty much parroting what Coffee said, but unite them all under one account. I have so many I need to look up names, then restore password, it's a mess. Sharing inventory items would depend on LL's data on how much do people with alts spend on identical items.

Offer a discount to larger corporations who want to make their presence on SL. Last time it went bad since they don't know what they're doing, but have a person who can 'translate' what they want into SL terms.

In my opinion Sansar has great potential, but it won't reach it until they reduce all loading times massively, allow greater avatar customization, another camera position, and allow some adjustment to how much lighting/shadows an avatar accepts from environment.

[SibyllVane]

3 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I'm not getting the animosity to old accounts. The evidently cost the Lindens nothing to keep on their servers -- there can't be more than a few dozen thousands at most. If any of them might be a customer who would return, why not?

More to the point, if there are people with premium accounts and LAND which evidently they must have paid ahead a year or more, they have zero reason to purge them. I have to say I'm mystified by two 512s near my rentals, both of which have ugly builds with spinning crap, both of which were claimed in 2007, both of whose owners are no longer in the people list, but who are not considered "abandoned". I've filed tickets FOR YEARS about these lots and have been told each time that they are not abandoned. Huh? You mean there are people who paid $72 x 2 or 5 even to keep a premium account in SL? REALLY??? Who never log on? Even if you factor in the former "free 512," that could only be kept if you kept the payments on the premium.

No, these are not "Charter Accounts" -- those early adapters who got 4096 free for life. I know some of these, and for the most part, even if they don't log on, their parcels are nice, not filled with junk.

So what's up? The Lindens gave away free premium accounts? They keep billing a credit card on file and the people never notice and stop it? They're dead? All a mystery...

 

I have no idea why they keep them. Maybe in hope they would return, at some point? But if so, why not risk to lose them to help the actual active base of users with lag and related issues? Also, I was referring to very old, outdated, forever inactive accounts... definitely not premium or land owners, for as little active as they can be; call them the casual alt, created and left to die there, not online for 5+ years, maybe even 10. Always giving a 90 days prior notice via email, like someone else had suggested. Anyone coming back straight from 2004, or 2006, would have to start from scratch anyway, toss the whole of their inventory and learn everything anew. So why not? I am no LL employee so I don't know the actual implications of this, or even the advantages, but I would gladly hear about those from a Linden. It's just food for thought, and it seems feasible with the due precautions.

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Nethya Emor said:

In my opinion Sansar has great potential, but it won't reach it until they reduce all loading times massively, allow greater avatar customization, another camera position, and allow some adjustment to how much lighting/shadows an avatar accepts from environment.

It's going to take a lot more than technical tweaks to change Sansar's course. It's a lifeless husk of a virtual world, like so many before it.

Maybe you really can't make this work without allowing adults to adult.

 

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

See, this is why SL continues to fail. Very vocal forums geeks with very deep-rooted ideas about economic systems continue to lobby the Lindens to make their ideal, socialist unicorn world.

LL itself doesn't live in that socialist world; they live in the real world of capitalism. So it's hard to justify why businesses within SL can't live in that real world, too, which means advertising and profits.

I'm pretty sure disagreeing with your list of ways to blight what's left of the mainland, and funnel people to your rental agency, isn't on it's own enough to call someone a socialist unicorn.

I am however perfectly happy to take that as my title going forward.

[ZairaSangh]

23 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Purging accounts would not do anything, aside from make people who decide to spin up SL after a long break upset that their account is gone.

 

As I stated - they would need to give ample amount of time after sending an email to the email address on file - but it is not uncommon for games to purge old accounts, because yes it DOES do something.  They are housing your entire inventory on their server.  People that played for a few years and then left in 2009, probably aren't coming back and have years worth of inventory being housed for no reason.

[Fox Wijaya]

8 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I'm not getting the animosity to old accounts. The evidently cost the Lindens nothing to keep on their servers -- there can't be more than a few dozen thousands at most.

 

there are nearly 60.000.000 registered users... and a (relative) active userbase around 1.000.000 ... that "few" thousend that's stored is a joke.

[Erwin Solo]

I actually think Linden Labs does a pretty good job.  They are careful and do incremental change.  They do a great job at backwards compatibility.  I think they should sell homesteads to people who don't own full regions already.  Since I have a full region, that doesn't affect me directly.

Oh, and they need to finish up the last name project, so that people that want them can get them.  

[Claireschen Hesten]

16 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

They won't be when you have to pay for them, and when the Lindens send traffic to them. Also, there's a difference between a store at the first Help Island -- which the Lindens used to have with user-created items for sale, and may still have -- and any other Orientation Island, and what you describe, which involves traveling a distance from Ahern. 

I only mention it because once upon a time there must have been trams running on the line to ferry newbies around and it only goes between Ahern (dore) info hub and Luna Oaks mall.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

On 5/30/2019 at 11:19 PM, Prokofy Neva said:

I've always been very clear on what the Lab needs to do:

1. Increase capacity for inworld advertising by restoring ads at infohubs or any kind of Linden gathering place.

2. Increase Linden roadside billboards where ads also can be purchased.

3. Enables ads and rotating store spaces at newbie landing places.

No, just no.  The only people using billboards now are tacky mainland businesses living in the past.  And besides who uses infohubs in a world of direct teleporting?  Did you just time travel from 2004?  And roadside billboards when you later say region crossings aren't important?

And ads and store spaces at newbie landing places?  But that would create a favored class, by routing newbies to whatever store or baron stuck in 2004 placed ads there.  And who decides on the ads?  If it's first come first serve, it would end up like Land did there for a while, with predatory businesses, buying up ads with bots or something.

Besides, a lot of people are fed up with being swarmed with advertising in RL, maybe they want to see less of it in SL?

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4. Just as there is a section on the forums to advertise land, have a section to advertise new products or services. And enhance the ability to advertise land on the MP, which is now expensive and annoying.

That might not be a bad idea

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o No one cares about sim seams -- this is a geek obsession and the obsession of certain megalomaniacs with world-building ambitions to control people. Most users to not drive or ride enough to care.

World buidling ambitions?  Control people?  I think you're reading too much into things.  And what about the masses of people in Bellisseria and the Blake Sea with their boats?

 

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o The new windlight is not something the public demanded, but again, a small set of geeks and artists for their own needs/wants. It's about to bring havoc and tears.

Grinding the axe against geeks again?  The pictures that those artists take are good PR for SL!

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The Lindens don't really care about inworld business, except for a few large big revenue groups of landlords or breedable creators. And it shows. It means they don't encourage medium and small business and then don't have customers themselves.

So you want LL to "fete" and show favoritism to business?  To show favoritism to your business?  Why should small mainland land barons still trying to live in the SL of 2005 receive favoritism?  LL takes a hands off approach for a reason, and you of all people should know why.  It's so they don' t get accused of creating a "Favored Inner Core", lets call it "FIC", pronounced like "Bic" as in the pen, because it's "In-ner" not "eye-ner".  And what about the people who don't own businesses?  And you can't say LL doesn't encourage economic activity when Marketplace is a thing!

 

On 5/31/2019 at 5:24 PM, Prokofy Neva said:

So what's up? The Lindens gave away free premium accounts? They keep billing a credit card on file and the people never notice and stop it? They're dead? All a mystery...

 

Not a mystery, it's people who keep their account because they might log in rarely, but like the thought of having a place of their own whenever they want it.  After all, the premium fee was only $72 a year...not much in the age of netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and MMO subscriptions

 

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See, this is why SL continues to fail. Very vocal forums geeks with very deep-rooted ideas about economic systems continue to lobby the Lindens to make their ideal, socialist unicorn world.

 if those people are lobbying Lindens to creat a socialist unicorn world, they've failed.  Because SL has a ton of economic activity EVERY SECOND.

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LL itself doesn't live in that socialist world; they live in the real world of capitalism. So it's hard to justify why businesses within SL can't live in that real world, too, which means advertising and profits.

Because it's tacky, and people are burned out over being overwhelmed with advertising in RL.  Besides, SL is not RL no matter how much you want it to be.  And plenty of businesses in SL make profit in the SL we have today.  We don't need tacky signs at infohubs spamming newbies who don't know any better.

[RohanaRaven Zerbino]

Thank you for starting this theme, as this is exactly what I’m contemplating about for last couple of days.

It is easy to criticize not knowing the facts LL is facing to, so let’s call what I’m about to write a “view from the other side”, meaning this is completely personal perspective.

Honestly I am surprised they stuck so long to mostly tier sourced income, and that frightens me, because I doubt they are actually familiar with possibilities of their own their product.

Know your customers

 

This is very simple and in the same time most complex rule for every business. But more than anyone, LL is in position to really determine the average age of SL residents. My estimation would be around … 40? So, why are those people in SL? For fun? For making money? For some sort of life extension? I am sure there is more questions to be answered.

Bounds between people may start in SL, but there is so many social networks nowadays where real bounds started in SL are kept alive – my SL friends and me we are connected via FB and we are rarely talk in SL anymore. We met in RL one way or another, and honestly we don’t need SL anymore for anything. With all that Facebook, Twitter or whatever social network is there, is it enough to advertise SL just as another social network where you can meet new friends, have fun or whatever wording they are using?

SL needs people who are able and willing to pay to LL services, which lead us to another category of users:

Money makers

 

I would say money makers are huge part of the SL community. Even there is usual categorization from small to big business, it is useless in this case. For LL purposes, I would say categorization to those who are doing business for paying expanses of their SL, and those who use process credit option is more adequate, for obvious reasons.

Should LL encourage more business to withdraw money from SL? I believe it is in their best interest. Again, what are their limitations, I don’t know. But what I do know that some changes must be made, regardless financial moment.

- first of all, stop treat us like idiots: if some feature is asked for many years, its release is more “sorry for keeping you waiting for so long” than “exciting and shiny new feature!”. Forcing “excitement” in everything LL announces is bit childish, and I am sure english language does have some synonyms and more subtle ways of wrapping bad news into gift paper – unless you are so stubborn to treat adult people as 12 years old.

- listen to us – if, for example, there is a high demand for more than one shop under the same account for marketplace, LL’s role is to provide it, not to contemplate if it is ok or not. Yes, there are reasons why people are asking for that feature, and I am sure they are very well explained already. If there is a high demand for some feature, your job is to provide it. No, in 5 years it will not going to be “exciting news”.

- monitor MP, it is your product and it is your responsibility to keep it protected. If product is flagged and commented as stolen, react, you don’t need us to chaise fax machine to send out DMCAs, you have all the info you need under your nose.

- the fact you stated something is forbidden will not stop people from committing frauds of all kinds, uploading illegal content from internet for example. You have to act like you mean it.

- accept the fact that every business has certain % of unreasonable customers, so does yours. Find the better way to deal with it.

- when you void money from creators account because it may be from unauthorized source, send us anything that could help us protect our self in the future – transaction number, name, anything. Yes, I could block this person from buying both inworld and MP now (thank you for that, btw).

- there are a significant number of people in SL who consider the ticket system and live support useless. How about doing something on that field that would prove them to be wrong?

- speaking of support, where are your premium users from? Is it really fair to have limited support working hours for worldwide 24/7 product?

The bottom line is that actions like those could make us feel safer, and more treated properly, so some of the money makers could decide to dedicate more time to their SL business that could lead to more money withdrawal.

Cut the costs

 

LL really needs to rethink about Sansar. There are opinions (not rumors, but opinions!) that Sansar is big failure. I would gladly give my reasons for that opinion: you don’t have creators over there that would bring it to another level.

When I joined SL back in 2007 it was fully functional grid, with economy and residents eager to try something new, to create in virtual world, to start virtual business. THAT was exciting! Part of those people are not in SL anymore, part of them are running their business for years now, new one came and they had all techniques and tools on the plate, and now you are expecting people to turn their back to all that to develop a content for a new grid? If I would be entitled, I could name at least 5 names of SL who are leading in their fields and whose incomes are coming purely out of SL. Yes, there are few enthusiastic professionals who are experimenting with Sansar, but that is simply not enough. Without content, there are no users, and so far Sansar has been presented to us as nice looking showroom. Honestly, that is one of the reasons why open grids will never be big as SL – if they can not provide protection, full perm creators will not risk in there, therefore there is no content and no significant number of active users, and unless they upload stolen content and that way the circle closes. Not to mention the fact that Sansar requires some new techniques to be learned, and we all are already on the high level learning curve, daily, to meet the need of our customers, as we are making real money in SL.

The second money eater – and yes this IS based on rumors – are LL abandoned lands. Based on rumors, numerous abandoned sims are laying empty out there costing money while they could contribute to LL income. On the other side, there are Linden homes and possibility of using premium plot as sort of land discount. That LL policy “one size fits all” is wrong on more than one level – use abandoned land for people who really don’t need your Linden home but an empty plot, and who already have rented land for their business from individual landowners.

One size fits all …

 

Doesn’t work neither in RL nor SL. Established business as LL is should be aware of that. Pushing all people in the same pot sends a very wrong message – you want more income with less work. Not going to happen in 21. century and with running virtual grid.

Let’s talk about this fuzz with premium account changes.

All of the sudden we got new Linden home community lands after waiting for so many years. Are you aware you were charging for heavily outdated buildings for way longer than they deserved it? From my point of view it means one of two things: or you are lazy, or you have organization problems.

And even the new continent is not finished, and even you didn’t provide homes for all premium members who want it – you are raising prices. So, how long those people would have to wait till they get a new premium home? And yet, you are asking them to pay for it.

Yes, we have the early payment option that will be open during few weeks period, and that will fill the gap between more builds rezzing and paying for them. Good offer for money injection in short time period, but will the continent be finished this time next year?

Beside that little step you made, what else are you offering as part of your premium pack?

- premium access – as I’ve heard people are not happy with it at all, they are still waiting for ages to teleport to busy places as sim can handle up to … 40 avatars? Am I wrong?

- premium sandboxes – I am sure there are people who will use those, but I don’t believe we are talking about significant number. Why? Because they have homes to rezz, or we are renting land and we have building platforms already in our privacy.

- live support – with limited working hours, and very often as far as I’ve heard copy/paste knowledge base programmed answers. No, I didn’t personally use live support for years, but I like to have access to it, just in case if I need it.

 - premium gifts – again, periodically one time job.

As list may go bit longer, for me there is no real value in the pack. And please take this as my own personal view, I am not saying everybody should feel the same way.

I am using Linden home as emergency spot in case of rolling restart, when it is not convinient for me to log off cause I am – for example – in the middle of customer support conversation. Live support is there just in case of emergency, didn’t use that for years now. Sandboxes, hunts, small winter cabin – really not my thing. I am sure other people will have different opinion, but that depends of their – guess what? – it depends of their needs!

But, to tailor more than one type of premium account type, you need to go back to beginning: know your customers. And I am asking again: do you know your customers?

Let me introduce you to one type of your customer: me. I belong to a group of people who are living out of SL, and I am not complaining with my income. But, I am working very hard for decade now. And I am happy with that, with all the things I’ve learned, all business experiences I’ve had in SL even the unpleasant one, as those thought me a lot of things. Yes, I am living with knee pain and extra body weight, but it is not LL’s fault (hmm, wait, maybe I can find the way to but the blame on LL for that too … naaah, just kidding)

So, yes, I am eager to see SL is progressing, and I am applauding to the part of LL team who brought bento, animesh and all those bells and whistles to the grid as those were really exciting news that opened the path for real SL progress.

But in the same time, I couldn’t be less interested in SL parties, or endless shopping. Yes, I am investing money into my business even if I buy dress, hair, chair, table, because I am buying it because I need it for the visual presentation on my vendor images, or furniture is simply well proportioned for my needs.

I will dare to say that sale weekend offers of any full perm creator, me including, significly contribute the progression of the grid, as weekend discounts give creators opportunity to invest smart and to have better offers in their shops.

But we have to test. Numerous times, not just once or twice. For that purposes I am spending hours on beta grid. Not convenient at all, as we are talking about public sandboxes. So, the real premium account value for me would be possibility of free uploads, for entire year, for real US$ that would go straight to LL pocket. And I would be testing on stable grid, in the privacy of my fully equipped building platform with no need to keep my eye on 4 hours restriction.

Empty 1024 plot instead of Linden community home would also be very interesting for me – at the end, I need a place for secondary Casper vendors dropboxes and a place to run to in case of already mentioned rolling restarts.

E- mailed DMCAs option for trusted SL business. Yes, I understand the reason for faxing DMCA, but till couple of years ago I thought fax machines are not even used anymore.

I am sure other people could come out with more different ideas.

But hey, this requires a lot of work in LL office, numerous meetings (I guess), long contemplating (few years at least) so I am hoping for something like that to be open for discussion in 5 -10 years. And just when we get tired of everything, we will hear about “exciting new features” (really people, what is the story behind all that excitement, what kind of mental picture are you trying to paint with that kind of word choices?)

Process credit increase …

 

For me, it is not about increase for 2.5%, but about the process.

You have already made some changes in process credit fees, when was that, last year? In the meantime Tilia’s logo caught my eye on process credit window. Don’t ask me when, I don’t remember, just know it is there for some time now.

Simple search revealed that Tilia is “a subsidiary of Linden Lab, focused on payments and the compliance work associated with operating virtual economies,” Peter Gray, the Lab’s director of Global Communications said in answer to my initial questions, “and it will provide services for both Second Life and Project Sansar.” (quote from Inara’s Pay blog post on November 4, 2015 https://modemworld.me/2015/11/04/linden-lab-and-tilia-inc-speculations-on-the-labs-new-subsidiary/)

So, if I understand well, all income Tilia should be making to be sustainable is coming from SL and Sansar?

But Sansar is not operational yet as it should be by now. And LL, Sansar and Tilia, they all need income. That is all understandable and I am in, but – have you really deserved it?

Partially.

From what we know (and sure there are thing we are clueless about), LL does have only one source of income, and that is SL. That one source of income must cover expenses for 3 projects.

Team who brought new features like animesh and bento, have done fantastic job.

For support ask someone who use it.

Whoever is in charged for MP protection, development, support – failed big! They want us to be on our knees to do anything that is asked from them to be done. For how many years we were asking for block on MP? MP manager? MP multi shops? Why flagging stolen items/illegal resale’s at all if no one pays attention. Write ticket after that. Send DMCA. By fax. Beg for gatcha category. Wow, there is gatcha category, but gatchas doesn’t HAVE to be there?!?! Search mess. Not enough categories. Wrong categories. Anything else? I am sure there is.

I guess that list of work that should be done long time ago could be even longer. Just crossed my mind – can I pay to have my group name changed? If I understood well, you will charge for last names. I don’t need last name, but would like to change my group name. Anyone?

What I am trying to say here is that, with a small shifting of perspective you could see there are numerous possibilities for justify the price increasment, and even more, you would have people who would pay willingly for your services. I would encourage you to go back to the table, to speed communication in your own office, to talk to business people of Second Life (we are not biting – yet!) on the forums, to open your eyes and ears and to come again with better tailored offer.

We are all part of the same system, and we are mutually dependent. If you cannot understand that about SL than we are all in the huge problem. You want economy to grow and to create more income sources for LL? Great, we want that too, as that would mean faster development of the grid, more quality grid, more economically stable grid, and above all, grid that will survive for the next 16 years.

At the end, note to business owners …

 

LL is not here to run your business, they are here to provide platform and creation/business tools, and to provide high level of protection of the grid and residents. LL is business and as much as I have word of two on how they could improve their perspective, they are earning money just as we are. They are one of the kind and they don’t have a business model to follow, over the years they had to deal and discover all the business patterns of virtual worlds we are now taking for granted.

Business owners really must learn business/sale/advertising techniques, and to set up their own style in that field. They have to be flexible enough to follow the all kind of changes in creation and running business process.

When petrol goes up, everything goes up from bread to diapers. It is usual economic practice, and I don’t see any reason why it would not be implement in the SL prices formula. SL business is not easy money. In here you are your own boss and with competition, sometimes it requires even more effort than some RL business.

For some, SL business is role-play just like any other, for some it is serious business. Most of us are self thought and we always have to ask our self what can be done better, different, what mistakes we should correct. But most of all, we need to keep our feet firm to the ground. There is no SL without us. There is no “us” without LL. We should stop take LL for granted, as much as they should stop taking us for granted. SL and LL are not some hippy community and we have to help each other to grow.

 

And as much as I am eager to read other opinions, I am not in the mood to discuss my level of usage of english language, not today, ok?

Edited June 2, 2019 by RohanaRaven Zerbino

[Marianne Little]

3 hours ago, CronoCloud Creeggan said:

No, just no.  The only people using billboards now are tacky mainland businesses living in the past.  And besides who uses infohubs in a world of direct teleporting?  Did you just time travel from 2004?  And roadside billboards when you later say region crossings aren't important?

And ads and store spaces at newbie landing places?  But that would create a favored class, by routing newbies to whatever store or baron stuck in 2004 placed ads there.  And who decides on the ads?  If it's first come first serve, it would end up like Land did there for a while, with predatory businesses, buying up ads with bots or something.

 

Because it's tacky, and people are burned out over being overwhelmed with advertising in RL.  Besides, SL is not RL no matter how much you want it to be.  And plenty of businesses in SL make profit in the SL we have today.  We don't need tacky signs at infohubs spamming newbies who don't know any better.

Too long to reply to everything, it's Sunday. But the tacky part. The moles could have a design group. I would think you have to apply for a board. Strawberry Singh just became a LL employee, she is an example of one who could fit for a job like that.

The Moles today have better ideas about design. They did a good job in Bellisseria.

I am one who like what residents do with their private land, transforming them into cities. Some have them only for show, some roleplay. Ad boards would look in place there

I can only speak for myself, but I am sure there are more than me in SL, who's not from urban, overpopulated areas filled with advertisements. I will probably never go and see the big cities and highways for real, so I am a bit thrilled if LL built places like a Japanese Metropolis, or a Dubai, or Route 66 where ads are natural.

People will always cry favoritism and Linden pets about anything, so they will do it with ad boards too. Jealousy, why is that brand advertising, but they didn't accept my ad. They must be Linden or Mole alts. It is natural. Can't avoid it. Is it really our concern? It's our money, we can spend it where we like. Stores arguing and bickering, writing scalding things on FB, Twitter, their blog, is not new. Some brands and stores succeed, some close after struggling a long time. A tale as old as SL.

And please, don't think I want it everywhere. Zones. Second Life is big. I don't think everything new is doomed to be a clone of 2004.

[DarkRavenWolfie]

i would integrate the optimisations of Sansar with SL and would shutdown Sansar altogether. Lets be honest: almost nobody but Linden Labs cares about that pet project of theirs, its not popular.

[ChinRey]

19 minutes ago, DarkRavenWolfie said:

i would integrate the optimisations of Sansar with SL and would shutdown Sansar altogether. Lets be honest: almost nobody but Linden Labs cares about that pet project of theirs, its not popular.

The "optimisation" of Sansar is heavily based on preloaded complete scenes and that wouldn't really work well in SL. Imagine teleports and sim crossings taking a minute or two.

[Cakewithfruit]

published statistics to find out how the company works, more communication with users.

[Madison Heartsong]

I'd have tried to build the base of premium users further, rather than making a lot more moneyper premium user.  The increased land allowance for a premium account was a great example of that sort of action.  LL could have found more tnagible things that didn't really cost LL to offer but would have been valuable to premium users.  Enough of them and I'd even accept a smaller price increase than the large one they implemented without complaint.

[Morena Tully]

As part of the tutorial area, I'd also add a virtual person beneath a big "Explore SL!" sign that will give a simple explanation (and perhaps a video link) how to find and open search, how to use it by typing in a search term, then how to go to places that are in the results. Not only does this help a newbie to never be lost somewhere or "stuck" but it also will immediately show them the limitless possibilities and how just about anything they can think of exists here. If a newbie knows how to look for things, the controversy over advertising is needless.

I realize that a good chunk of people who try it here would type in something naughty, because SL has a reputation that I wish it didn't have, and the idea of the adult venues being the first thing a brand new shiny avatar sees makes me shudder. I think the good in giving them the knowledge of the freedom here outweighs the bad though, and if they see something freaky, well, it's because they wanted to. I just have a feeling if newcomers were able to grasp just how vast SL is, the retention would be  better.

[Roary McGillivary]

What would I do if I were Linden Lab. 
Well I wouldn’t want to change much that has been done already, I think LL is starting to steer SL into the wind to catch the sails and continue to propel it forward into a prosperous future. With that in mind I would consider my following idea’s and see how viable they are. One I would pull the plug on Sansar or strongly consider it. Why? Because in this thread I’ve seen where most of us think it is a flop, and here is my thought on why it is such. Because those of us who have been in SL for any length of time are used to and want to create our own “experiences”. An experience should be some thing that effects you to make you grow because you have participated in an activity that you had to work at to develop and bring into existence, worked at to make it happen. Sansar removes that by having an “experience” pre planned, pre made all you have to do is put the batteries in push the button and watch it go around with its short lived flashing lights and enticing sounds. In the end there is nothing to connect you and make you feel you have a part in it. I feel that is why Bellisseria has been doing so well. Because the Residents there are making it valuable to them / OUR selves. 
Not much I think could or can be done about free accounts other than maybe make free accounts more of a trial period? So instead of having a long standing free account after six months you are presented with the option to become a premium member or not. ( yeah I know that would go over well.) So lets leave the free accounts alone, other than restrict them after the six months to general content only. 
Mainland - what can I say?  There is a lot on Mainland that is an eye sore, and where does one start? It would be such a HUGE undertaking to start to try and reign in all of the “possible violations” such things like LOW hanging sky boxes and platforms, annoying sounds and Heavy scripted objects. 
Some “Road repair” is seriously needed, as a GTFO member I constantly run into low hanging trees in the road, Roads just abruptly ending, uneven road surfaces,  vegetation seemingly over growing the road. Don’t get me wrong the main lands have some pretty awesome road ways but they really need some maintenance.

Zoning: zoning area’s for specific things like commercial businesses and or content creators stores, residential areas. SIM Boarder Crossing, what more needs to be said about that? Regardless of whether you are walking, flying or sailing SIM Crossings are hazardous some times. I know LL has done a bit for SL pilots, but I think more could be done some how. I could go on and on and I am sure many of you could too. 
Virtual business, perhaps look into what could be done to promote REAL LIFE business to come back into SL and do business here in SL. Promote and hire people to work a job inworld through perhaps virtual testing of products and idea’s 

I dunno my last thoughts are to bring more users in under LL guidelines to continue to build and create content for the happy and healthy future of SL. I am glad that LL is honestly starting to show they are listening to OUR voice. In closing Thank you Lindens, Thank you Moles for your dedication and hard work.  

[Selene Gregoire]

46 minutes ago, Roary McGillivary said:

So lets leave the free accounts alone, other than restrict them after the six months to general content only. 

How about... hell no!

[Mollymews]

if I was the owner of SL. I had another thought which will cost a little fortune to implement but anyways

3D web-based Marketplace

the main things I would do design-wise:

1) Single buyer experience. Can only ever see 1 avatar (our own). Delag
2) Shop owners can theme/decorate the interior of their store
3) Movement between shops be like teleport. Select an item using similar to current filters and voila
4) When we select an item then we get a 3D model to look at and able to walk and cam around it and thru it. Like a house or garden stuff we can walk thru. Furniture, vehicles we can sit on. Etc etc
5) Clothes, shoes, jewellery, etc shown on a mannequin whose shape, skin and hair, look exactly like our avatar. But also can be worn on our avatar as we choose, with the capability also for us to access and wear our own inventory items to better see for mix-n-match. Mix-n-match includes demo items we have obtained previously into our inventory from other stores
6) 3D store owner would have to rent it from me. For those who can't/won't/don't/unable to pay rent then can still put your stuff in the existing 2D mall
7) 3D store owner will also have the same 2D mall presence.  Buyers can toggle between 2D and 3D views as they prefer

as the owner of SL (if I was) what I would learn from this, is how I might then be able to use this as a base for a total inworld 3D web application

[Coffee Pancake]

2 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

1) Single buyer experience. Can only ever see 1 avatar (our own). Delag

* See Catznip.

[Mollymews]

yes Coffee about the current viewer options

I was meaning about what I would have in my 3D web store complex. I would only have 1 avatar per instance. Later on when building off this for the total inworld 3D app then what you highlight and lots of other viewer things would be incorporated

Edited June 3, 2019 by Mollymews
what

[Penny Patton]

Oh, I'd do a lot of things differently. But the first thing I'd prioritize would be reigning in SL's performance issues. The SL community that has stuck with it over the years tends to be extremely forgiving with how poorly SL runs, but most people just aren't and this pushes away a lot of potential new SL residents. If LL wants to grow their userbase, this is a problem they need to tackle. Now, most of SL's performance woes come from badly made content that ignores the fundamentals of designing content for realtime rendering. LL can't just throw out all of that content, there'd be riots, but there are ways they could promote better made content going forward.

First I'd make an official Second Life Content Creation Blog (name subject to change). This blog would:

• Explain what does and does not impact performance in SL, in a way most users can easily understand.
• Dispel the myths and misinformation regarding what causes and does not cause lag. (There is a lot of misinformation and downright crazy beliefs out there, and these people aren't going to believe information that contradicts their long held beliefs unless it comes from an official source.)
• Provide "best practices" guides to help SL content creators create content that is better optimized for SL.
• Give easy to follow guides for users who want to get the most out of their land in Second Life. 
• Hold regular contests, challenging SL content creators to put all this information to good use, and reward them for doing it.
• Showcase some of the best content SL has to offer.

Make ARC universal, make it take texture use seriously, and link a hard cap on avatar ARC to newer features, like animesh, bakes-on-mesh, and all new features released in the future. This preserves legacy content (simply remove all attachments using the newest features and the cap is removed) while pushing content creators into optimizing their work.

Give everyone better tools to manage their ARC. You can't just throw a hard cap on people and expect it to do much good if you don't give people the tools they need to work with that cap. I'd make it easy for people to find problem attachments, and push content creators into listing information like ARC in marketplace listings. It would be as easy to understand as Land Impact.

Going over the ARC cap would replace your avatar with a pixel stand-in on other people's viewers. You would be able to still view your avatar in case you wanted to go over the cap to use legacy content in a photo. To be clear, as content creators began optimizing their work, there would be less and less need to do this. Optimized content can still look as good as any of the content you use today.

 For an analogy, let's say content is a delicious cake. Today's SL cake bakers are using something on the order of an entire truckload of flour to create one cake. Now, they aren't putting that flour into the cake itself, the cake would taste terrible. No, most of that flour is winding up on the floor of the kitchen. Pushing them to only use the flour they need would not hurt the cake, it would just mean they'd have to stop dropping a truckload of flour on the floor in the process of baking that cake.

Speaking of Land Impact, I'd make texture use count towards it. I'm not going to go into all the details here, but there would be good building practices that would help people manage this, too. (IE: linking two or more objects that use the same textures would reduce their LI so that the textures aren't counted multiple times. Better still if there was a way to manage it per parcel even without linking but I'm not sure how feasible that is.) I'd try and find a way to link this to new features, too. If there are no new features coming that would make this feasible, I'd link the new LI calculations to something like a LI increase. Choose to accept the new LI calculations on your land and you get some bonus LI to work with. If you're using optimized content on your land that would amount to an overall increase in LI at your disposal. As time went on, more and more content would be optimized making this a win-win for all SL landowners.

 

-----

Now, none of this would fix the performance issues overnight. Second Life's existing userbase would be adopting these changes at their own pace and the benefits would become more obvious over time as newer content slowly phased out the older content. After a two or three years, however, everyone would be experiencing higher FPS, faster load times and less lag. And many more people would be able to use features like shadows without sacrificing too much on the performance front.

New users trying SL for the first time would be greeted with a better looking, better running Second Life, drastically increasing the likelihood that they'd stick around. This means a lot more income growth for Linden Lab.

Of course, tackling the performance/content problem isn't the only thing I'd do if I were LL. I could write a book on the things I'd do to improve the experience (some of those things having already been suggested by others in this thread) but this is just one of the first things I'd turn my attention towards. It's long overdue.

Edited June 3, 2019 by Penny Patton

[Kyrah Abattoir]

Thank you @Penny Patton for the most sensible post in the entire topic

[Coffee Pancake]

 

3 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

Oh, I'd do a lot of things differently. But the first thing I'd prioritize would be reigning in SL's performance issues.

If anything SL demonstrates that while the tech plays a role, it being crumbly and slow isn't stopping us all logging in .. many of us on long dead Intel integrated graphics.

The bulk of SL's user base wouldn't notice an extra couple of FPS that limits would bring (20% faster is nothing when you're getting 12 fps) , but they will notice that they can't wear their favorite shoes and favorite hat at the same time.

SL is what it is .. and poor FPS doesn't detract from that for those who 'get it'.

Quote

but most people just aren't and this pushes away a lot of potential new SL residents. If LL wants to grow their userbase, this is a problem they need to tackle.

An equal number are put off by the lack of organised objectives, literally everything being some kind of paid DLC, the sex, the laughably janky nature of the sex, the fact everyone is a real person, the lack of freedom to shoot everyone without consequence, the miles and miles of empty locations, the vomit inducing vehicle border crossings, an amount of self motivation being required at all ... and so on.

Yes, everyone complains that it runs terribly, but if you take that away the complaint becomes 'there is nothing to do' or 'it looks poop' (aka my avatar looked poop and I wasn't going to pay to improve it) and retention doesn't change.

Quote

Now, most of SL's performance woes come from badly made content that ignores the fundamentals of designing content for realtime rendering.

Fundamentally SL's tech woes are far deeper than just the content being overkill. It's entirely server side and even with amazing FPS, the experience is never going to feel fluid.

You can't make games here and that's a huge problem. Anyone who thinks you can needs to go play some actual games.

When it comes to rendering and content, If there is going to be any kind of major voodoo, it's time to be reworking the entire pipeline to use fully threaded vulkan. Modern CPU's and GPU's are bordering on idle for SL because the existing architecture just can't leverage what we have. The entire system was designed back when two cores was considered fancy and graphics cards were pretty anemic.

One core at full tilt and a GPU at 20%, and a tiny amount of VRAM on the table, hardly makes for a good starting point to change the way everything works for performance purposes. LL do have an open job listing for such a developer specifically for SL. To do it right is going to be a major architectural overhaul.

Simply put; The viewer does not scale and it really needs to scale. The deeper magic can not be changed, which is why they made Sansar.

Quote

LL can't just throw out all of that content, there'd be riots, but there are ways they could promote better made content going forward.

Agreed, and any enforced AIP ('avatar impact points') system is going to throw most of the last 5 years content under a bus. There is no way to add limits and keep all the $!**@*?* we have been uploading without a care in the world.

If you draw a line in the sand, then the entire content creation side of SL will turn on a dime. Content will get rammed back in with all the LOD's set to the absolute minimum, and people will be told "yeah, LL changed everything so now you can't wear your stuff, but I've made as new version that's fine, you just need to change this debug setting". Designers are heros for finding a fix, LL are evil and incompetent, firestorm will do what all its users are now yelling at them to do, and those of us who pushed for change are literally why people can't have nice things.

Quote

First I'd make an official Second Life Content Creation Blog (name subject to change). This blog would:

• Explain what does and does not impact performance in SL, in a way most users can easily understand.
• Dispel the myths and misinformation regarding what causes and does not cause lag. (There is a lot of misinformation and downright crazy beliefs out there, and these people aren't going to believe information that contradicts their long held beliefs unless it comes from an official source.)
• Provide "best practices" guides to help SL content creators create content that is better optimized for SL.
• Give easy to follow guides for users who want to get the most out of their land in Second Life. 
• Hold regular contests, challenging SL content creators to put all this information to good use, and reward them for doing it.
• Showcase some of the best content SL has to offer.

YES

I would add,

• explicitly point out the things we do that are very bad.

(Like putting a mall at your regions landing point)

Quote

Make ARC universal, make it take texture use seriously, and link a hard cap on avatar ARC to newer features, like animesh, bakes-on-mesh, and all new features released in the future. This preserves legacy content (simply remove all attachments using the newest features and the cap is removed) while pushing content creators into optimizing their work.

Without explicitly easy to follow workflows for getting content from X into SL, this will only push creators to cheat. We're amazingly good at finding ways to cheat.

Quote

Speaking of Land Impact, I'd make texture use count towards it.

I'd make my items rez with no textures and then set them via script.

Making Li change dynamically is a great way to get stuff returned, so that's never going to be a feature of any Li system.

Put up a wall, watch us find a way round rather than build a better ladder.

Quote

faster load times and less lag.

People are already experiencing this thanks to the CDN and other changes from LL. They don't notice. SL is SL is SL as it was 10 years ago.

Quote

And many more people would be able to use features like shadows without sacrificing too much on the performance front.

Not with the current system where shadows happen on the same core as everything else. Shadows as implemented cuts the tiny fraction of your CPU SL actually uses in half, on a good day.

 

if you could solve all a virtual world's problems with better tech, Sansar wouldn't be such a sore spot. It's going to end up objectively better in every technical way, and still be a ghost town.

 

Edited June 3, 2019 by CoffeeDujour