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What are the hardest things about Second Life for new players?


LuxuriousSin
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It will be different for each individual based on experience in using different apps, whether it's productivity, gaming, etc. Second Life is no different than Adobe Photoshop or NASA Rocket Scientist Engineering, each person new to it will have difficulty in different areas or aspects of it.

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Yes, avatar customization, in all of its incredibly complicated and byzantine glory.

Honestly, even veterans sometimes have trouble with that, and the recent introduction of BOM, although it may eventually make things somewhat easier, is at the moment yet another nightmarish complication.

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10 days of playtime was enough to realize an important part of SL Community is really harmful and hostile against new players. If they check and see your playtime is like a few days, they will either ignore you, block you, accuse you of being fake (depending on gender) or alt. I joined a nude beach and complimented a woman, and 10 days later, today I learnt that she was really mocking me off under the table. She thought I was trying to have an intercourse with her, while in fact I was experimenting on people's reactions to a compliment in middle of nudist beach. Guess what? This experiment was successful, and will help me to write my book.

Long story short, biggest threat against newbies are old players. At least half of them hate the newbies to death. So if you want to survive, create your account and freeze yourself for a few years, then boom! You will see some respect finally. (I will close my two accounts and leave this game for good. I hope you will have a better experience than me and not encounter this people. Stay safe.)

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Honestly it's the old applier system for mesh bodies. It took me a while to figure out what the heck was going on and I'm extremely tech-literate. I'm glad we have BoM now.

Out of the older features I'd say how to play walking animations that don't make you look like a literal duck.

Edited by Cinos Field
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I think it's how to use the built-in Second Life tools which are built-in to every object in SL, especially the ones that allow the person their creativity like access to the color palette under the TEXTURE tab in the Edit Menu as well as how to use the built-in SL tools to set transparency, glow, use full bright, etc.  

The reason this is difficult is because many creators block access to the SL built-in tools so many customers must think they don't even exist.  

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2 hours ago, akat19145 said:

10 days of playtime was enough to realize an important part of SL Community is really harmful and hostile against new players. If they check and see your playtime is like a few days, they will either ignore you, block you, accuse you of being fake (depending on gender) or alt. I joined a nude beach and complimented a woman, and 10 days later, today I learnt that she was really mocking me off under the table. She thought I was trying to have an intercourse with her, while in fact I was experimenting on people's reactions to a compliment in middle of nudist beach. Guess what? This experiment was successful, and will help me to write my book.

Long story short, biggest threat against newbies are old players. At least half of them hate the newbies to death. So if you want to survive, create your account and freeze yourself for a few years, then boom! You will see some respect finally. (I will close my two accounts and leave this game for good. I hope you will have a better experience than me and not encounter this people. Stay safe.)

Ten days is a little early to be on a nude beach...did you even have 'adult verification'?  I am just curious about that.  But, no, I do not hate newbies nor do a lot of other people on SL...many volunteer in Firestorm Support Groups, Building Groups, and volunteer on newbie areas as well as on the forum to help.

Edited by FairreLilette
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I'm not a new player, but having returned a year or so ago after a prolonged hiatus, yes, it's the all-new av customisation. I never spent all that long on my av to start with, but it's 20 times more complicated now and less than half as much fun. 

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The whole thing is a steep learning curve, and it doesn't suit everybody.

Being resilient and resourceful goes a long way, plus a real desire to crack the code when it comes to avatars.

This place is amazing and brilliant, but you have to stand in the right place and look in the right direction to get it.

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When SL started in 2003 was very different from now in 2019.

In 2003 it might have seemed strange to people to even have a 3D graphical environment. Things like moving around, clicking on stuff, and looking at inventory would have been weird.

 

Now it's more like...

'how do I level up?' 'what's my spec / class and can I change it?' 'how do I join a group for a dungeon?' 'can I be a catgirl or do I have to be an orc?'

vs:

'this is the free sexxytime game right? how do I have the sexxy time? Is there a quest I need to start to get these characters I see to join me for the sexxy time?'

... and instead of having to show people what they can find and what it is possible to expect... we have to remove improper expectations and show them how despite the limits it's still worth "playing this game".

 

I think the struggle now for dealing with new residents needs to shift to altering expectations away from what a 'traditional MMO' offers.

- people will know how to move, look at inventory, and so on.

- they will be shocked at how bad the default 'characters' look, and need to be shown that through customization / mesh bodies / etc you can exceed most MMOs.

- need to explain that no, this is not the game that has banner ads on that XXX site... though it actually does a better job than those games will at 'sexxy time' but... not if you just jump in 'like a level 1 noob trying to join an endgame raid.'

- Some of the camera and movement controls here are really weird compared to other 'MMOs'. This is the autoCad of MMOs... everybody else went one way, and it wasn't this way... and now this revolutionary thing feels 'weird'. If you want to know what I mean, many top MMOs have free-demos to try the game. Do so, run around and notice how much easier it is to just move around in them... SL suffers the cost of being early. When it came out the MMOs were still doing 'side scroll' and '2.5D'... They got to see what SL did wrong with camera / motion, and do it different.

 

I often see 'noobs' that ask where to get a 'job' to 'earn lindens' - this might for many stem from the idea that the game currency is earned by playing the game... as it is in MMOs... some education on the different nature of things here is vital.

 

I would have to think about this for a while to have a better set of ideas... but all of which would stem from my feeling that today's "noob" is likely coming from having played 3D-games like MMOs, whereas yesterdays 'newbie' was coming from 'what is 3D?' The new person today doesn't lack experience in all this - they instead have too much of the wrong preconceptions.

 

 

Edited by Pussycat Catnap
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57 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

... but all of which would stem from my feeling that today's "noob" is likely coming from having played 3D-games like MMOs, whereas yesterdays 'newbie' was coming from 'what is 3D?' The new person today doesn't lack experience in all this - they instead have too much of the wrong preconceptions.

 

 

That's a really good observation, Pussycat.

I will also agree with others who said anything to do with avatar customization. I can take long hiatuses from SL, and it seems like every time I come back there is some new fairly basic appearance thing that is totally different from the last time, and I'm a noob again. System clothes, then come back and it is mesh clothes with various sizes that don't match my avatar's body shape. Mesh feet and hands that need to be matched to skins (I almost always had seams, and so would just color my feet blue and claim "socks".) Mesh heads. Appliers! And, and, and, NOW it is the BoM that I'm totally ignorant about. I get so frustrated because I don't mind reading to keep current, but I frickin hate feeling like I have to read so much I might as well get a Master's degree in SL!

It perhaps isn't as daunting a curve if it is what you are "born" with when you rez in, but I have to think it is difficult for noobs.

Another thing I think is difficult for noobs is SL photography, and for that one I have to say from what I've seen (following some social media sites on the topic), some of that difficulty is because people do NOT read (or watch videos) to learn the viewer. Over and over I see where people think merely setting the preferences to generic "ultra" will give them a good photo. A lot of people don't have the energy to learn about the various sliders; instead, they want everything handed to them instantaneously. Since SL photography, especially selfies, is so popular I think that learning curve may also be a tough one, whether it needs to be or not.

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The avatar system.

Basic avatars and clothing with alpha layers aren’t the hardest to explain to noobs and they can figure it out petty quick.

Once you get into mesh or specialized bodies that’s where things get complex and it goes over the average noobs head without extensive research. I still barely know how to use kemono. 
It’s one thing to use the avatar appearance editor because it makes things so easy, stuff fits into special slots just for that category of stuff and it’s nice and simple to navigate.

Give a noob a mesh body and watch them try to figure it out. None of the regular SL stuff is used, you gotta add individual parts. Alpha out your entire body, more tweaking is to be done via a provided HUD, many come with a variety of alternative options, then you need clothing that may be proprietary to that avatar body style and if it isn’t you will likely still need to modify your body alpha cuts to get it to work right, Some stuff won’t line up right and you’ll need to adjust it manually which...

oh boy

if you have used any kind of 3D software in the past then that little reference node and orientation Axis guides aren’t that unfamiliar. You can figure out how to move and rotate your accessory correctly. 
Most people can’t, that is entirely alien to them. I showed a noob how to do that and they thought they broke the game or entered some kind of developer mode. 

Manually changing body textures, even I just learned that recently. My avatar was nsfw by default and to make it SFW there wasn’t an extra provided shape or skin, I had to change the textures used in my skin and that’s not complicated once you know how, but until you do that’s this weird process of hoping you don’t break anything and not knowing if it’s actually right or not.

Kemono skin appliers. Just put a big syringe in my hand, I have no idea how to use that, I clicked on it and it didn’t do anything. Turns out it only works with a special version of the kemono body and even after that my body would randomly twitch and the new skin wasn’t the exact right shade and supposedly I had done everything right but I gave up on kemono after that.

I couldn’t explain that to a noob if I wanted to.

There needs to be a much more universal way for character customization in a formal and simple to use UI, including manual adjustment. That system as it is has a very steep learning curve and I’m willing to bet it’s things like that which drive people away when they start. It’s too complicated for a casual player.

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Joining the crowd of being a returning player (played roughly around 2016-18, then dropped off the game, an found a spark to come back.) 

I'd say hardest for me is actually finding active Sims, and of course, crying over dead sims I use to go.


Active can mean different things to different people, but I typically think of it as a sim I can walk into, and have there be a decently crowded sim, or whatever, and have a really active Local chat. 

Of course, reading the whole "How SL culture has shifted from local to IM" post, is very true. I just miss walking into a sim and just being able to strike up a conversation with anyone in Local chat. 

Now its basically only clubs are active, an everywhere else is just Idle Simulator 2019. x3

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I think the hardest part for most people is to make the shift from "this is how games work" to "this is how SL works". Anything else is, as Aylona said, up to individual skill and experiance.  I recently watched an interesting video on how previous gameing knowledge already gives you a headstart in any other games that you play, compared to someone who picks up their first game. I think the more someone has done things with similar functions, the better they handle SL. I did pretty well, when I started in 2010. The only thing I never mastered has been building behond placing items in a decorative way 😂

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I think one of the hardest things for new players to get their head around is expectations, particularly around money.

Realistically speaking, there aren't many ways for people to earn a living through SL. Or more precisely, there aren't ways for many people to earn a living through SL. The economy is based around most of us buying low volume lindens on a semi-regular basis; yet the assumption that so many new residents have is that "getting a job" is what most of us do. We end up with disillusioned new players quitting, and many others working 'jobs' that amount to little more than outright begging (like most hosts, or the lower end of the adult industry).

A lack of knowledge can be fixed, easily if you have good search engine skills. But adjusting an existing expectation is far harder, and often more painful.

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2 hours ago, AyelaNewLife said:

I think one of the hardest things for new players to get their head around is expectations, particularly around money.

Realistically speaking, there aren't many ways for people to earn a living through SL. Or more precisely, there aren't ways for many people to earn a living through SL.

This is certainly true. I find that it takes some newbies quite a while to understand that residents are trading goods and services with each other. L$ are like poker chips, but we are selling them to each other with real money that we bring in world from RL.  The only residents who turn a profit are those who are successful creators or who can provide land or services at a competitive price. The economy is much more like RL than like a typical game in which players earn free tokens from the game itself by solving puzzles.  That basic mismatch of expectations divides newbies into three groups: (1) Entrepreneurs who have the skills to run a profitable business in world, (2) Consumers who are comfortable bringing enough money into SL to pay for the land and other goodies that they enjoy, and (3) People who can't figure out the system quickly enough or who get dissolutioned and leave. 

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2 hours ago, AyelaNewLife said:

I think one of the hardest things for new players to get their head around is expectations, particularly around money.

This is certainly true. Many people seem to be suprised that SL holds a real economy and that this economy is fueled by real life money, that, at some point, is brought. There is also the misconsception, that jobs are just part of the "game" and that they are the natural way to earn currency. I noticed that many are stunned the very moment they realize most items for avatar customization aren't free. The concept that they are paying for the work of another user is new to them.

The only good thing is, that the "hi, how do I get rich here?" fad seem to have died over the years. The articles about succesful people in SL, like Anshe, made so many newbies believe the virtual streets of SL are paved with gold.

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The difference between “virtual world” and “game”. Seeing other Residents as “People” and not “Competing Players” or “Sexbot NPCs”.

Also the lack of a predetermined objective; its up to the Resident what they wish to pursue here...

...and just like in Real Life; that messes with people who want very linear goals.
 

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Edited by AmandaKeen
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