A brief note on pricing changes, which ran long.

[Cakewithfruit]

I would like the company to publish statistics, I would like to know,

how many users are premium, how much island there is currently online, how many employees,

and much more.

[Polymath Snuggler]

3 hours ago, Cakewithfruit said:

I would like the company to publish statistics, I would like to know,

how many users are premium, how much island there is currently online, how many employees,

and much more.

If you could get my government to do that too while you're at it ~ that'd be amazing.

For y'know ~ things that actually matter.😊

 

But ~ in all seriousness ~ LL used to make a whole lot more statistics publicly available ~ they stopped , I'm not entirely sure why, but I think it was mostly because people would take them out of context and/or blow them out of proportion ~misinterpret them ~  rant about them, much like people are doing with these fee increases.

 

Giving people numbers isn't always a good thing, as they are frequently laundered and misused to apparently mean something that they do not.

Edited June 2, 2019 by polysail

[Madison Heartsong]

27 minutes ago, polysail said:

I just posted the math as to why this statement is completely incorrect ~ 

You posted why owning your own 1024 sq m parcel is still more for your money than renting one.  Lots of people still rented, for, especially before the premoun account price explosion, reasons I couldn't understand.  The fact is though that LLs' changes make owning a small parcel a much worse deal than it was (even if generally still better than renting), and land baroning a better deal (this is not an attack on full sim owners who rent parcels; if you have the money to invest it's a perfectly legit way to make money) I don't know why LL wants to make it even better when it was already pretty sweet though, while making everyone else with premum pay a lot more.

[Polymath Snuggler]

2 hours ago, Madison531 said:

You posted why owning your own 1024 sq m parcel is still more for your money than renting one.  Lots of people still rented, for, especially before the premoun account price explosion, reasons I couldn't understand.  The fact is though that LLs' changes make owning a small parcel a much worse deal than it was (even if generally still better than renting), and land baroning a better deal (this is not an attack on full sim owners who rent parcels; if you have the money to invest it's a perfectly legit way to make money) I don't know why LL wants to make it even better when it was already pretty sweet though, while making everyone else with premum pay a lot more.

....  The fact that owning your own parcel is more economical than renting is what's forced land barons to give up land baroning ~  one of my parcels I own with premium was sold to me by the person I rented it from for a year and a half ~

She sold it to me, because she was abandoning all her commercial land, and giving up on being a land baron, because it wasn't worth the effort anymore.

 

At any given point in time your average land baron has  somewhere between a quarter to a half of their total land estate not actively rented.  This means that in order to remain solvent they have to charge 30% or more than the cost of the land itself to not just hemorrhage money.  So you'll never hardly ever find a island rental at cost, which is what I was trying to explain before.

I understand that what you're saying is what you feel is happening ~ but it's not even remotely based in numerical fact~   in fact the numbers actually skew the other way ~ in favor of premium memberships ~ which I believe is the entire goal that LL has in all this.

 

I get upset about these things too ~ but I long ago learned that my emotions should not be tied to rational economic decisions.  My feelings in fact suck at economics ~ 

Fortunately! I have a calculator~

Edit: Oh yeah ~ one other thing

The 2.5 % > 5% Transfer Fee further hurts land barons as well actually, almost more than content creators, since they're dealing with fixed costs that are substantially higher than software licenses already.

Edited June 2, 2019 by polysail

[Selene Gregoire]

57 minutes ago, Cakewithfruit said:

I would like the company to publish statistics, I would like to know,

how many users are premium, how much island there is currently online, how many employees,

and much more.

They won't because then we would be able to see quite plainly that they aren't always completely honest with their customers and really piss a lot of people off to the point of actually losing enough customers to really hurt their bottom line.

[Madison Heartsong]

Okay, so maybe a way to characterize the changes is a "bail out" of the land baron business.

I'd wish LL had let the move, probably largely brought about through increasing the free land with a premium account, toward small ownership and less land baron/renting continue, even encouraging it.  Because, I think it's better without middlemen.

I know that before this account price explosion, I told a lot of people how they shouldn't be renting and should be owning and only occasionally was able to convicne someone to make the change.  It was so much of a better value, even before having no middleman.

If land barons have trouble filling land, some will sell the 1024 sq m parcels they now rent, to people who can get them for no tier, and not have to deal with a middleman.  And only the land barons who really treated renters well, would keep much occpuancy.  I f LL was going to mnake more money from account holders, land barons should also have had to pay more, so the rest could pay less.  LL should have been trying toi get as many people as possible into premium accounts, rather than actually indrecitly encouraging people to rent instead of giong premium.

[Da5id Weatherwax]

25 minutes ago, polysail said:

The 2.5 % > 5% Transfer Fee further hurts land barons as well actually, almost more than content creators, since they're dealing with fixed costs that are substantially higher than software licenses already.

The folks this will hurt "most" aren't those in one particular "SL trade" or another. It's those folks whose margin is already slim. Whether your costs are fixed or dynamic, whether those costs or the income you make as a result are large or small. If your margin is already tiny, even a tiny increase in costs relative to income can eliminate it entirely. That's when active participants in the SL economy cease to participate. If you've got a larger margin - as some, but not all, content creators and some, but not all, land barons tend to have - you will be able to eat this increase with little difficulty and remain on the positive side of the ledger. If your margin is small, whether you're a landlord, a clothing store, a club owner or anything else, this is going to hurt you worse than that other guy.

[Fox Wijaya]

24 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

They won't because then we would be able to see quite plainly that they aren't always completely honest with their customers and really piss a lot of people off to the point of actually losing enough customers to really hurt their bottom line.

and they don't have to do that.. it's a company, here to make money, most misinformation doesn't even come from LL but from residents with a misplaced democratic/communistic view that all should be decided by a majority of players.

it would be from the same catgory if people here start demanding to get the revenue and cash out info from all the stores with a > 750 dollar process credit.

Edited June 2, 2019 by Fox Wijaya

[Polymath Snuggler]

9 minutes ago, Madison531 said:

Okay, so maybe a way to characterize the changes is a "bail out" of the land baron business.

I'd wish LL had let the move, probably largely brought about through increasing the free land with a premium account, toward small ownership and less land baron/renting continue, even encouraging it.  Because, I think it's better without middlemen.

I know that before this account price explosion, I told a lot of people how they shouldn't be renting and should be owning and only occasionally was able to convicne someone to make the change.  It was so much of a better value, even before having no middleman.

If land barons have trouble filling land, some will sell the 1024 sq m parcels they now rent, to people who can get them for no tier, and not have to deal with a middleman.  And only the land barons who really treated renters well, would keep much occpuancy.  I f LL was going to mnake more money from account holders, land barons should also have had to pay more, so the rest could pay less.  LL should have been trying toi get as many people as possible into premium accounts, rather than actually indrecitly encouraging people to rent instead of giong premium.

I've literally been explaining why everything about your sentiment on this topic is completely off-base ~ but ehhh~ 

@Da5id Weatherwax

That is a serious concern of mine really ~  especially since services in SL sell for mere pennies on the dollar of what their actual value is.

I had a close friend of mine point out to me awhile ago that my "scribbling little scripts for people" in LSL~ if framed in "real world" terms, it's a custom code project in a proprietary language, with an obscure API that plugs into a system with tons of workarounds and caveats that need to be known.  If someone put up a job posting for an LSL scripting project ~ they'd be paying premium hourly wage, yet here I am charging people 2000L$ for an hour of work and thinking it's high.

[Pamela Galli]

14 minutes ago, polysail said:

I've literally been explaining why everything about your sentiment on this topic is completely off-base ~ but ehhh~ 

@Da5id Weatherwax

That is a serious concern of mine really ~  especially since services in SL sell for mere pennies on the dollar of what their actual value is.

I had a close friend of mine point out to me awhile ago that my "scribbling little scripts for people" in LSL~ if framed in "real world" terms, it's a custom code project in a proprietary language, with an obscure API that plugs into a system with tons of workarounds and caveats that need to be known.  If someone put up a job posting for an LSL scripting project ~ they'd be paying premium hourly wage, yet here I am charging people 2000L$ for an hour of work and thinking it's high.

Also hardly anyone thinks about all the free support creators / merchants provide — not for their products, but, for example, explaining how SL works. Eighty percent of the support issues has nothing to do with the functioning of my products per se, but the buyer’s viewer, or permissions, the region, the router, how to deal with coalesced groups, how to edit a linked prim, why the doors are all blocked, how to reset scripts , how to replace a script,  how to find missing inventory, how to redeliver, how to open a box, etc. You name it, either the creator or landlord provides the explanation or walks the buyer through the steps to find it, But the more LL encroaches on user made content, the more they will find they must pay actual Lindens to provide support. 

Edited June 2, 2019 by Pamela Galli

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

3 minutes ago, Pamela Galli said:

Also hardly anyone thinks about all the free support creators / merchants provide — not for their products, but, for example, explaining how SL works. Eighty percent of the support issues has nothing to do with the functioning of my products per se, but the buyer’s viewer, or permissions, the region, the router, how to deal with coalesced groups, how to edit a linked prim, why the doors are all blocked, or to reset scrips, how to replace a script,  how to find missing inventory, how to redeliver, how to open a box, etc. You name it, either the creator or landlord provides the explanation or walks the buyer through the steps to find it, But the more LL encroaches on user made content, the more they will find they must pay actual Lindens to provide support. 

As someone who needed you to come actually help me place a house on a parcel many years ago, I can attest to this. *blushes*

[kaecyus]

Put simply, I cannot afford an increase from $22.50 to $39.56 (a 50-ish% increase in quarterly plan, and now being hit for VAT), plus the decrease in my currency's value as of late. I can get land and L$ for cheaper, and only paid over the asking rate for both as a security measure to make sure I got someone on a phone line if my account was compromised.

This price increase isn't a bitter pill, nor one that will be vomited back up. It's one I simply refuse to take.

[RuffertasAlt]

5 hours ago, Kirakuma said:

the mainland is inferior land it's laggy broken buggy there's no reason to pay for premium to have access to property on that *****y land you should rent from an estate owner

I do a lot of exploring, and I find that depending on the continent, subcontinent, or region you are visiting, lag can vary wildly. True, a good estate manager can help things run more smoothly by making their tenants follow reasonable rules. In my opinion, though, I think most of the Mainland's problems are caused by residents who overload the system with too many textures, too many scripts, and bad mesh. I have a small parcel on one of the oldest regions, and I'm always surprised how well it runs*, while a brand new region can be swamped when a large number of avatars converge bearing bling.

*hope I don't have to eat those words.

[Luna Bliss]

53 minutes ago, Fox Wijaya said:

and they don't have to do that.. it's a company, here to make money, most misinformation doesn't even come from LL but from residents with a misplaced democratic/communistic view that all should be decided by a majority of players.

it would be from the same catgory if people here start demanding to get the revenue and cash out info from all the stores with a > 750 dollar process credit.

Your analogy doesn't quite hold as LL is as much a platform as a company, and a platform should go by different rules --  so they can't be compared to only a company.  As a merchant, I am not a platform for my customers -- my customers don't depend on me to earn money or make any kind of investment decisions in my products.
While I don't believe LL is obligated to provide customers with all their deepest secrets, they do advertise that SL is a place where residents can earn money. So they do need to provide a certain amount of stability. And, fortunately, I have seen them take care in making changes related to financial concerns of customers.

[Cain Maven]

43 minutes ago, Pamela Galli said:

Also hardly anyone thinks about all the free support creators / merchants provide — not for their products, but, for example, explaining how SL works. 

That is so true! SL has a steep learning curve, and merchants end up doing a lot of explaining of the basics -- something that really should be a Lab job. But if we decline to help customers with these basics, we are told we provide poor customer support

[Garnet Psaltery]

1 hour ago, polysail said:

At any given point in time your average land baron has  somewhere between a quarter to a half of their total land estate not actively rented.  This means that in order to remain solvent they have to charge 30% or more than the cost of the land itself to not just hemorrhage money.  So you'll never ever find a island rental at cost, which is what I was trying to explain before.

You can if the owner isn't running a business.

[Polymath Snuggler]

2 minutes ago, Garnet Psaltery said:

You can if the owner isn't running a business.

That's... not ... relevant.

Business or not, if 1/3 of your parcels remain un-rented, you have to charge that additional amount to your active renters or you operate at a loss.  Whether or not your goal is to turn a profit or not is completely irrelevant to the fact that not doing this causes you to basically just be donating money to LL for the right to own empty land.

[Garnet Psaltery]

1 minute ago, polysail said:

That's... not ... relevant.

Business or not, if 1/3 of your parcels remain un-rented, you have to charge that additional amount to your active renters or you operate at a loss.  Whether or not your goal is to turn a profit or not is completely irrelevant to the fact that not doing this causes you to basically just be donating money to LL for the right to own empty land.

You said "you'll never ever find a island rental at cost,".  I disagreed.  Some people do operate at a loss, if there are things that make it worthwhile, such as a good community.  

[Polymath Snuggler]

...."Find people who are willing to operate at a loss to subsidize your existence" is not really a sound economic strategy ~ but okay.    I'll go amend my minor hyperbole.

Edit: Fixed ~  that still doesn't detract from the point I was making though.  Of course if your landowner operates at a loss you'll get cheaper land.  But under standard circumstances ~ even if your rental region is non-profit ~  my overall math is not wrong.

Edited June 2, 2019 by polysail

[Theresa Tennyson]

2 hours ago, Madison531 said:

I know that before this account price explosion, I told a lot of people how they shouldn't be renting and should be owning and only occasionally was able to convicne someone to make the change.  It was so much of a better value, even before having no middleman.

In January 2018, owning a 1024-square meter of Mainland would cost a minimum of $132.00 a year. After the "explosion", it costs $99.

[Madison Heartsong]

3 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

In January 2018, owning a 1024-square meter of Mainland would cost a minimum of $132.00 a year. After the "explosion", it costs $99.

And to be fair it costs lfar ess, given the stipend.  But the increasedland allowance cost them almost nothing with all the empty land, so that doesn't justify making up for it..

I have trouble understanding why LL can have a huge price hike and be defended by many.

People have said they should open financial info, and I understand why they won't do that.  Ir's actually no win for them:  They're either struggling financially and really need the revenue, which would justify the price increases but people would be screaming the sky is failling, that sl is in big trouble; or they're doing fine and just found a way they feel will make even more money.  If that's the case, the price increases are awful.

So, I want to restate they aren't obligated to share financial info at all, and I wouldn't if I were them regardless of the specifics, but so many want to give them the benefit of the doubt, though regardless there'd be better ways to raise money, which might have included a smaller increasein membership fees as part of it, but this is big.  The old system was, in fact, a really great deal...but that's part of why it bothers me so much that they're making it a lot less great.

[Polymath Snuggler]

Just pretend that they've been slowly raising their fees every 2 years like every other service out there and that you've got a lovely discount for the last 8 years and it finally ran out.

[Sahfur Silvera]

Wow, after we mentioned the downsides and explained the problems with the group limit reduction they reconsidered, evaluated it and changed to a more reasonable and probably much healthier solution for the economy AND the players! 

It appears I was still right to consider Linden Lab the best developer all these years. Still ahead of the pack this many years in in freedom, transparency, adaptability. ^^

As far as things that might help the platform go, since my last post covered reasons why the group change would have been bad overall, lets speak of changes you are doing that will be unilaterally good and how I see making sure those changes go over the smoothest! It may seem off topic but my previous post touched on this and the real topic at hand is essentially grid health and decisions pertaining to it, isn't it?.. 

I believe that bake on mesh will be very healthy for the grid as it was suggested as a way to unite the mesh new and the system old/sl roots to promote cohesion as well as make it simpler for new users. One thing I must suggest though - make it somewhat easy for developers to continue supporting the applier systems in addition to system layers on their mesh with this change via some sort of scripting method to disable or enable it dynamically via script. I know this is easy to overlook and it might already exist in development. This will make sure the new system is actually used and reduce conflicts between the inter-medium of appliers and BoM. Make it so someone can script the bodies to swap between omega and BoM easily via scripts the developer adds in an update and it should encourage people to continue buying a wider variety of things instead of going into smaller holes economically speaking, perhaps? Just make sure the feature isn't too "static" or it might slow down adoption.

I just came to give credit for what I see as listening to the players and possibly some more insight.. 

Edited June 2, 2019 by Sahfur Silvera
I shouldn't grammar while sleepy

[Boyzn Sorbet]

I have had 2 accounts since 2008 which both of them have fluctuated between premium and basic membership.  Currently I am only using one account on a basic membership due to financial reasons beyond my control.  It was hard to drop a large chunk of my groups when I went back to basic only because most of them were paid memberships and I lost all that money I had paid.  Furthermore the capping limits of messages was rather draconian and had to uncheck group messages and chats in what groups I had left as my messages were being capped daily.  SL might not realize this but I am a financial member of this community despite not being a premium member.  I go shopping and  I pay for rent on a small lot.  When basic members pay for services and item in world, that money is spread around the proverbial SL world in which those members pay for fees and land tiers amongst other things.  I get that SL wants to increase their prices, but why, as a basic member, do I/we have to lose functionality and basic services in world?  SL will eventually end up alienating some of us with each slice you take away from our basic service.  You've done enough to hurt SL why do more?

[Maryanne Solo]

23 hours ago, polysail said:

"Offline install" is called ripping content from SL.  That's a bannable offense.

On the other hand ~ maybe you got banned for posting off-topic nonsensical stuff in unrelated threads...

I like to keep my creations outside SL these days.

Perusing your posts, its not hard to see what you "make" for SL. 

Miss the point entirely did we ^^?