A brief note on pricing changes, which ran long.

[Jo Yardley]

11 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

I wonder what the average number of groups needed is for RPs, music venues, and whatever else is out there that needs multiple groups to make up for the lack of roles available. Last RPs I was involved in required a rough average of 3-5 each usually consisting of (at least) the main group,  "faction/guild" group,  land group and for those who were mods, the mod group. The music venues we had and the ones I've worked at were about the same in number.

I'm not sure what the average number is but for Berlin we're coming close to TWENTY, if not more.
And we also use facebook a lot.
If we had more roles and perhaps the option to start a chat and/or send messages/notes to only one role in stead of to everyone in a group, we'd probably only need two or three groups.
The number of members of our main group wouldn't change.

[Victorianna Writer]

3 hours ago, Coolnet Ordinary said:

I just want to take the opportunity to thank Linden Lab staff for listening and hearing our concerns and issues about the recent updates.  For me being part of different virtual worlds, I have seen them come and go.  About 9 years ago, a virtual world that I love closed down due to financial issues.  It came back 2 years later, however; it's still not the same.  Here on Second Life, the world continues to grow even through the hard times.   I'm happy to see that Linden Labs staff are listening to the community and taking on our inputs.  It's important that both the company and community to continue to communicate with each other for it to succeed.  There are many great ideas on how to help and improve Second Life.  I've seen a lot of helpful ideas to improve on the Second Life Premium Membership Packages.  I love the tier level idea.  Having Basic, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum packages.  Each one can have it a set price, and different types of packages it will receive.   Thank you again for hearing us 

 

I like your idea about the tier levels. I think that would work to everyone's advantage rather than just having 2 or 3 choices and not liking some or either of the perks each one gives or does not gives. Having multiple levels I think would work a great deal for many of us, especially to those of us that not only have been around for years but also that are merchants and or consumers as well. 

I've always been a premium user since I began playing years ago and have never had any issues with LL. Just this big hike after a decade is hard on some people so if they have multiple tiers to choose from would be great as well as giving them the option of how you plan of giving everyone the option of pre-paying on current pricing for a certain amount of time before the new prices come in affect. 

I've read a lot of complaints about the big hike in price on the VVO chat that the multiple choice of tier I bet what Coolnet said would satisfy a lot of those that are unhappy about the hike if they have more choices to choose from. IMO.

 

[Fox Wijaya]

13 minutes ago, Jo Yardley said:

If we had more roles and perhaps the option to start a chat and/or send messages/notes to only one role in stead of to everyone in a group, we'd probably only need two or three groups.
 

you can send notices to certain role only... always been there

[Erwin Solo]

4 hours ago, LeeeBlack said:

did I insult you?
You do not see the trend?
Tomorrow, basic accounts can enter a limit on clothes, on teleportation, on time online, and other *****.
Do you want it?

Yes, I want it; dial the grifters back.  I run a RP SIM where free accounts have L$5000 mesh heads, L$3500 mesh bodies, and the latest everything.  They all squeal that they are broke.  Its not true; its a grifter technique.  

[Selene Gregoire]

9 minutes ago, Jo Yardley said:

I'm not sure what the average number is but for Berlin we're coming close to TWENTY, if not more.
And we also use facebook a lot.
If we had more roles and perhaps the option to start a chat and/or send messages/notes to only one role in stead of to everyone in a group, we'd probably only need two or three groups.
The number of members of our main group wouldn't change.

There's no reason the number in the main would change other than someone "new" joining or someone "old" leaving for the most part.* I don't think the concern is with the main groups so much as the number of groups needed in addition to the main.  Thinking about it, if they were to separate land groups out from all the rest of the different "types" in some manner,  then it would be possible to cut the number of groups needed to 2. The main and the land (since not all players rent homes the group would likely be smaller in number). 

Hmmm. The more I think about this the more I think you are right that having more roles available would alleviate a good deal of the load. But without some numbers to play with, it's hard to tell.

 

 

*Characters come and go but there are times when the player is the same.  

[Grandma Bates]

How does one renew their account in advance to take advantage of the grandfathered rates. Also, how come the rates are not grandmothered. That would be much better.

[LittleMe Jewell]

4 minutes ago, Grandma Bates said:

How does one renew their account in advance to take advantage of the grandfathered rates. Also, how come the rates are not grandmothered. That would be much better.

Starting this Monday, there will be an option on your Premium Membership page.

https://secondlife.com/my/account/membership.php

There will be a prepay option under each of the current billing plans.

Edited June 1, 2019 by LittleMe Jewell

[Grandma Bates]

Just now, LittleMe Jewell said:

Starting this Monday, there will be an option on your Premium Membership page.

Excellent, thank you!

[Jo Yardley]

20 minutes ago, Fox Wijaya said:

you can send notices to certain role only... always been there

That is how you stop certain members of your group from sending or receiving notices, it won't allow you to send notes or chat with just some people in your group.

[Fox Wijaya]

Just now, Jo Yardley said:

That is how you stop certain members of your group from sending or receiving notices, it won't allow you to send notes or chat with just some people in your group.

you can switch that on and off for roles, and so send to the selected only, same with joining in chat ( at least that is how it is intended, didn't use it in years)

[Jo Yardley]

5 minutes ago, Fox Wijaya said:

you can switch that on and off for roles, and so send to the selected only, same with joining in chat ( at least that is how it is intended, didn't use it in years)

Yes but that is a lot of hassle and my idea would be to make that a lot easier.
With sub-groups you don't need to do that and you could easily chat/send notes with any type of role in your group and even have chat windows open with several roles at once.

[Persephone Emerald]

I'm so glad LL is keeping the number of groups for basic members at 42.  Merchants & sim owners depend on people being able to join their groups.

However, as a premium member (I have 2 premium & 2 basic accounts), I don't think premium members need to have more than 60 groups. Giving groups more roles might help, without  adding more work for the servers.  If I have 70 groups, I'm probably going to fill every one of them, but I don't *need* 70 groups. 

Please continue to make SL run more smoothly & beautifully, but don't bother with giving us premium members more group slots.

[Fox Wijaya]

3 minutes ago, Jo Yardley said:

Yes but that is a lot of hassle

it will be a lot more hassle when the group system gets  infarct soon.

[Victorianna Writer]

10 hours ago, Mollymews said:

for me the decision is pretty straight forward

I will be taking the prepay offer which will give me til end of January 2021 for another $US72.  What new Super Premium offer might be available then I will consider, til then I am not going to worry about it much at all

 

I'm doing the same as Mollymews and going to take the prepay offer as well which will give me till  2021.

[Victorianna Writer]

5 hours ago, Jo Yardley said:

That is how you stop certain members of your group from sending or receiving notices, it won't allow you to send notes or chat with just some people in your group.

That's when you set those that you want to send notices to a different role in the group so that you can send them a nc or msg. that you don't want others to see. 

Edited June 2, 2019 by Victorianna Writer
Nvm....I just realize what I wrote and it's wrong lol. my bad.

[Jennifer Boyle]

I can't read all of this thread, but I'm hoping that Lindens do, so I'll add a few thoughts.

First, my point of view. I have been in SL since 2007 with no long absences. It is a hobby for me, and I have no desire to do anything commercial. I make a few basic things out of prims for my own and friends' use, tweak my shape, and occasionally do some very basic scripting, but beyond that, I buy what I need. I don't mind spending money; SL is cheaper than a lot of other hobbies. In short, I am a consumer, like probably most residents.

I have no problem with increasing the price of premium accounts, which has been the same as long as I've had one. I think it would have been wiser to increase it incrementally over years instead of waiting until now and increasing it by almost 40 percent, but that's water under the bridge.

The technical issue that I would most like to have addressed is slow rezzing when I logon or land in a region. Often, maybe usually, I have to wait, and wait, and wait for things to rez, even when I'm in one of the two sims where I spend most of my time, even though my cache is the largest permitted size and is on an SSD, and even though I have a  powerful computer and a fast connection. There is at least one forum thread about this issue.

Some recent developments are great, like animesh, and really add something to my experience. Others, like pathfinding and experiences, which I still don't understand, do nothing AFAIK to improve my SL, and I wonder why LL put resources into them.

The feature that I would most like to see added is the ability to use a VR headset. It could be a paid add-on feature.

I have been a premium member for many years. My reasons are that, first, it's been essentially free when the land allowance and stipend are taken into account and it's paid annually, so, why not? The features that have value for me are the better support, which I haven't needed recently but has been a lifesaver in the past, and the increased limits on groups and offline IMs. I care nothing for the premium gifts; I've never seen one I wanted. I looked at the premium destinations today; there were none that interested me; they didn't seem to interest others, either, as no one was at any of them. So, again, from my point of view, LL is wasting resources on things that have no value. I have alts with premium accounts; the attraction for them is Linden homes, and nothing else.

The major shortcoming of premium accounts is that content can get deleted if the bill isn't paid. (Yes, I saw Patch Linden's post saying that there was a grace period.) It has always seemed strange to me that someone could pay for years, then miss payments and get content deleted, while someone with the same content who never paid anything could keep the content indefinitely for free. Why not just turn the unpaid premium account into a basic account, leaving the inventory intact and returning inworld content from land with unpaid tier? Fix this, and premium accounts will be more attractive.

If groups are resource hogs, then LL should look for ways to decrease the number. It would be a good start to delete groups that have no owners---I know that there are groups the owners of which have closed accounts. Second, charge a weekly fee for keeping a group. It could be small enough to not be a barrier to anyone with a reason for maintaining one and still get rid of a lot of groups, especially ones whose owners have no further use for them but no incentive to delete them. Perhaps there should be limits on the number of members that can be increased by paying more, or maybe the group fee could be something like L$0.10 per member per week. That would be more palatable if group owners could charge members a small weekly fee for membership.

We need multiple levels of membership. I agree with others that free accounts should not be able to cash out. We need a very basic free account for new members who are trying out SL. These accounts could have a lower number of groups, like 20, and no stored offline IMs (They could still have them sent to email.), perhaps a limit of 12,000 or so for inventory, and a VERY CAREFULLY SELECTED simplified feature set. ). The problem with the basic viewer setting when it was tried before was that the feature set was so limited that one could not experience SL with it, so the first thing newcomers did was to look for a way to turn it off.) Could these accounts have a time limit, like six months or a year, after which they had to be upgraded or get cancelled? We need a really low-priced basic account, something like $2 per month or $20 per year, almost a token amount, with abilities like the current basic account. We need at least two levels above that. Should all accounts be allowed to have unlimited inventory? Perhaps there should be a size limit that increases with the level of account. Perhaps friends lists should work that way, too. Could higher level accounts have more attachment points?

It would be nice if we could have some kind of a la carte choices about limits, because one size doesn't fit all. Something like extra group slots for a few Linden dollars a week. Extra offline IMs for a small fee. Extra land capacity for a fee. Maybe charge separately for some features, like voice? Etc.

Finally, as I said in another post, I think LL would be wise to use focus groups of residents, a LOT, and the cost of doing focus groups inworld is almost nothing.

[Coffee Pancake]

13 minutes ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

The major shortcoming of premium accounts is that content can get deleted if the bill isn't paid. (Yes, I saw Patch Linden's post saying that there was a grace period.) It has always seemed strange to me that someone could pay for years, then miss payments and get content deleted, while someone with the same content who never paid anything could keep the content indefinitely for free. Why not just turn the unpaid premium account into a basic account, leaving the inventory intact and returning inworld content from land with unpaid tier? Fix this, and premium accounts will be more attractive.

They do not nuke your account from orbit the day you miss a payment.

 

[Jennifer Boyle]

23 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

They do not nuke your account from orbit the day you miss a payment.

 

I know that. I didn't say they did, but my understanding is that, after a month or so, they do.

[LittleMe Jewell]

3 minutes ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

I know that. I didn't say they did, but my understanding is that, after a month or so, they do.

After a month of being delinquent, you account gets locked so that you cannot log in.  In order to get you account unlocked, you have to pay them whatever you owe.  The account itself doesn't disappear from inworld groups and such for 6-9 months.  Even then, I doubt they actually nuke it from the databases for a bit longer.

In other words, you probably have about a year from the time that you become delinquent to do something about it before your account, and thus inventory, would be nuked.

[Polymath Snuggler]

Just now, Jennifer Boyle said:

I know that. I didn't say they did, but my understanding is that, after a month or so, they do.

No ~ no they do not "nuke" your account.  Your land holdings go bye bye, because they're unpaid for, and your account does go into lockdown until a payment is made, which can be problematic, if you only use L$ sale to pay your fees, you can't access the marketplace to sell your L$ to get your USD to pay for your fee to unlock your account.  But they don't delete anything.  I've had friends who were premium~ quit, ~ came back 2 full years later and were locked out.  It took a few days of pestering support until they got everything reset back to where it needed to be.  It was a pain in the butt ~ but nothing was nuked.  No nuking occurred.  That's for an account that was 2 + years arrears.

 

Mind you they still ought to just make it so you can set what you want cut when you auto-revert to basic.  But I'm tired of people spreading rumors of death and demise due to premium account non-payment.

[LittleMe Jewell]

On 5/31/2019 at 1:09 AM, Dizzyscorpio Dragovar said:

I am not saying necessarily getting the stipend or even the land per se...but I do believe there should be some folks that spend the same or more amount of money as each other...in your example of rice and peaches you are right...2 people choose to spend money differently but its still going to the same store... I understand folks heightened emotions about this topic...i guess what I don't seem to get is why when we all shopping at the same store why there aren't different type of frequent shopper rewards....but hey at the end of the day.it will be what it will be...I just wondered why no one ever seemed to think about those that are spending money differently enjoying certain aspects Thank you everyone for your response and as I said if anyone can explain the monetary difference when its all going to the same place for example). Premium members have a 75% rate of purchasing more lindens than a non premium so that is why and such.)..hey that makes simple business sense..but I have never seen numbers like that come out 

Lots of people spend money on Amazon, but it is only the ones that choose to pay the Prime fee that get most of their super duper bargain deals.  Best I know, you get nothing from them just because you might spend lots of money there.  

[Jennifer Boyle]

21 minutes ago, polysail said:

No ~ no they do not "nuke" your account.  Your land holdings go bye bye, because they're unpaid for, and your account does go into lockdown until a payment is made, which can be problematic, if you only use L$ sale to pay your fees, you can't access the marketplace to sell your L$ to get your USD to pay for your fee to unlock your account.  But they don't delete anything.  I've had friends who were premium~ quit, ~ came back 2 full years later and were locked out.  It took a few days of pestering support until they got everything reset back to where it needed to be.  It was a pain in the butt ~ but nothing was nuked.  No nuking occurred.  That's for an account that was 2 + years arrears.

 

Mind you they still ought to just make it so you can set what you want cut when you auto-revert to basic.  But I'm tired of people spreading rumors of death and demise due to premium account non-payment.

I was misinformed. Thanks for educating me.

[Female Winslet]

4 hours ago, LeeeBlack said:

Tomorrow, Lindens will impose additional sanctions for basic accounts - they will limit the number of clothes, number of accounts per person (email), the number of characters in the message, remove personal albums, remove avatars photo, set a limit on the number of teleportations, introduce a commission of 200 percent on depositing money ...,

Ah yes, the basic accounts forced to walk around wearing only a barrel because that is the only clothing they are able to own.

The limited number of accounts per person, as existed long ago. 

The limited nu

Sorry. I ran into the limited number of characters in a message. Then suddenly I remembered I was premium currently, so I can type as much as I want to.

The removal of personal photo albums. . . . wait, we have personal photo albums? Where do we get those? All these years I've been carrying around textures in my inventory when I could have had an album?

And no photos of an avatar allowed! If you try to take one, some bodyguard comes over and shoves their hand in your camera. 

We will all teleport and then teleport again, only to end up in the (extremely crowded) cornfield where I could never ever leave or move again.

And now that you mention it, I did notice that I bought $L5000 and somehow ended up with -$L5000 on my account. I guess that's the 200% commission at work!

Yes, that's the future of SL. Starting tomorrow, which is Sunday. Yes, in a further dastardly act, LL implements these changes on . . . a day when they are closed.

Or maybe someone is being just a teeny tiny be alarmist. Naaahhh... couldn't be!

tee-hee-hee.

 

[MLALRS7044]

Good news everyone: Linden Lab just announced they are not reducing the number of group slots for regular/basic/non-premium members. Check this information out.

 

[MarissaOrloff]

I know that I am in the minority here but for me this change is a savings of $165/yr ($192 for grandfathered region - $27 yearly premium increase) with 10 more very needed groups added.

Edited June 1, 2019 by MarissaOrloff