We have the power to make SL a "big thing" again (really) and tip the ongoing narrative, let's do this! c= let's do our part (for our sake)

[lucagrabacr]

2 hours ago, Storii Darkheart said:

So I’m obviously late to this topic, but I feel like I need to point out something about advertising “on the behalf of LL” that hasn’t necessarily been talked about. 
 

This is a Second Life. I love the people in Real Life. I love my friends. But I don’t necessarily want them involved in the communities I’m in while I’m online. People always talk about SL is SL and RL is RL and for some people that’s very true. I’m fine to mix the two generally, but I’m not trying to actively bring people from my RL into SL and try to fit them into the communities I’ve made a spot for myself in. 

That's very understandable Storii, but you don't have to necessarily "advertise" for SL to help SL c= and not necessarily by bringing people who know you mainly in the physical world as well

[Sid Nagy]

8 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

Congrats. They didn't design it that way and the ship did indeed sail some time ago.

Next?

To me it is not about if it should be done, I'm perfectly fine with how the inventory works at the moment, but more if it still could be done.

[Rolig Loon]

2 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

To me it is not about if it should be done, I'm perfectly fine with how the inventory works at the moment, but more if it still could be done.

There are certainly other ways that inventory might have been designed from the start, but that's really a moot point now.  SL residents have had 18 years to accumulate inventory items, many from creators and merchants who are no longer around. Items are given names that do not necessarily tell you what they are.  [ I have an item in my inventory labeled "Cloud Nine".  It's a scooter I market in MP, but it might be a dress or a particle generator, for all you know.] People have repacked their own inventories in quirky ways too, so many items are no longer in the system folders where you might expect them.  Redesigning the inventory system at this point would be a logistical nightmare and would create massive confusion for residents.  Even if it could be done, the cost of developer time would be prohibitive, and the potential loss of longtime residents could be staggering.

[FairreLilette]

On 5/30/2021 at 9:40 AM, lucagrabacr said:

indeed Roblox, Fortnite, or some elusive blockchain venture with little correlation to how we the actual users of virtual worlds use them

Regarding Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft or lesser kinds of slimed down graphics avatars are popular for reasons that SL does not have.  Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft or the other similar type of "big" games have real life toys they sell plus they run on phones and that's why the avatars are so extremely simple and primitive.  Thus, they are NOT like SL at all which has amazing avatars, doesn't sell real life toys and wouldn't run on a phone.  

I think SL may be reborn again but it may take a new viewer, an avatar with even more realism like real joints and bones for some examples.  What was hot was cryptocurrencies and NFT's seem like a good idea with their smart contracts BUT having SL accept cryptocurrencies (as some want) would make SL too unstable, imo.  SL seems like a great venue for online gambling which is partly legal in some states in America now and for people to make NFT's if that market heats up again and/or stabilizes as cryptocurrencies are a bit unstable right now, imo, but SL offering the ability to make digital art and even NFT's into the future is definitely one of SL's pluses.  

I think the metaverse will just remain varied due to people wanting simple "games" that will run on a phone.  So, the metaverse is varied.

Edited June 9, 2021 by FairreLilette

[animats]

2 hours ago, FairreLilette said:

What was hot was cryptocurrencies and NFT's

"Was" is appropriate. NFT sales seem to have dropped 90% since May.

The next "metaverse" thing is branding. Gucci is in Roblox. Sothebys is is Decentraland.

There's something new in avatars, the Wolf3d.io avatar creator. This creates an avatar based on a picture, usually a selfie. Sominium Space and VRChat, among many others, are using this. The consumer product is called "Ready Player Me". It's a clever bit of marketing. While the avatar appears in someone else's virtual world, it's fetched from a URL from Wolf3d each time it's used. Clothes changes are done via their site. So, once you have their avatar, you're tied to their clothing store. It's free. For now.

SL once had an avatar from picture system. What happened to that?

[cunomar]

21 hours ago, Ardy Lay said:

So you like Windows 1.0?

I as 30 odd years old before i ever touched a keyboard and only then because the girlfriends kids kept messing up their laptops .

Though entirely alien to me XP was intuitive , I was able to navigate and learn it alone with no prior experience = it was user friendly and i even enjoyed learning my way around it .

Win10 now and every glitch , usually caused by an update , Its just quicker and easier to erase everything while doing a factory reset than it is to try and fix it . Whats the point in learning stuff they will change tomorrow anyway .

[Ardy Lay]

2 hours ago, cunomar said:

I as 30 odd years old before i ever touched a keyboard and only then because the girlfriends kids kept messing up their laptops .

Though entirely alien to me XP was intuitive , I was able to navigate and learn it alone with no prior experience = it was user friendly and i even enjoyed learning my way around it .

Win10 now and every glitch , usually caused by an update , Its just quicker and easier to erase everything while doing a factory reset than it is to try and fix it . Whats the point in learning stuff they will change tomorrow anyway .

Hey!  Maybe this tactic will work for Second Life too!  (Don't take this seriously.)  Just erase EVERYTHING and start over from some templated state where we all have the same inventory and no groups and no friends and no ...  no ...  don't drown me, please.  Just kidding.  Oh wait, somebody tried already.  So, yeah, we know very few Second Life Residents (admit) they did anything in Sansar, way fewer than "Up Stairs" anticipated.  I tried.  It was just, well, not made for me.  I managed to get a free shark avatar to transfer trash objects from the ground to various trash receptacle objects, but what was the object of this exercise?  I do not know.  I was told it was some sort of charity fundraiser thing to help clean up real beaches but for me it was hours trying to learn the controls and discovering that text chat was just almost impossible.  I was told so many times to connect a microphone but I don't see how hearing my trying to type messages would have been helpful.  I don't talk.

I have introduced a few people to Second Life.  All but two just walked away.  One became a griefer briefly then got bored.  Another got excited about virtual adult activities and demonstrated to me that even though he had a beautiful wife and family his idea of "making a hot avatar" resulted in something that I found repulsive.  Every feature was grossly exaggerated.  Is this aspect of avatar creation something that other systems also have or is it unique to Second Life due to the crazy amount of customization SL residents can attain?

People want to be amused, right?  What can people new to Second Life do or experience that can be amusing to them and do those of us that have been in Second Life want to have it around?  I remember so many 3rd-party campaigns for make-your-own-fun-at-the-expense-of-others that brought people to Second Life only to try to ruin it for the people already in Second Life.  Many of those would just fall flat today because the "fun" that they were dark-advertising is no longer possible due platform improvements, but, many of the social disruption methods mostly still work.

Sorry, I guess I do not know how to help.

[Jaylinbridges]

On 6/9/2021 at 12:10 AM, Alwin Alcott said:

it looks here now that the inventory is thé biggest problem there is in SL ...
But mainly a resident personal issue ; clean it up.

I have another solution to that. Once you log in to SL in any browser (TPV's must follow the SL experience), SL starts the timer.  You must spend one hour per day (or login?) working only on your inventory.  You will not be allowed to TP, IM, chat, run scripts, sit, walk, or fly with your avatar until your one hour of inventory maintenance time period is up.  Rezzing from inventory would be allowed , as would adding and attaching mystery objects. Forced clean up.  That should solve the inventory problems.  Working on the JIRA now...

 

Edited June 10, 2021 by Jaylinbridges

[cunomar]

I read the clean install firestorm update once , and if i spent a few days trawling the internet to decipher it then i'm sure i could follow them . But instead i gave intuition a go and just went ahead installed the new - logged in and then deleted the old version .

To my astonishment it worked and thats what i've done ever since .

I don't know if its normal because i was 6 months into my sl before a chance comment in public chat had me clear inventory cache revealing i had failed friendly assistance so many times because my inventory was actually broken right from the start .

But regardless I was told somewhere along the line that i had 5000 odd unwanted items in my inventory because it provides the "bones to build upon" for want of a better description . Which is fair enough .

But why the hell aren't they all i one folder so i can actually find the thing i bought yesterday when i can't remember exactly what its called .

A year later when i've added a thousand things i do want but can't remember what they are precisely named,  i'm advised to organize my inventory into folders which means i have to open and rez 6000 things to find out what they are before moving them to a junk folder , that might keep me occupied for a year or 3 - if i could be bothered .

[Jaylinbridges]

2 hours ago, cunomar said:

But regardless I was told somewhere along the line that i had 5000 odd unwanted items in my inventory because it provides the "bones to build upon" for want of a better description . Which is fair enough .

But why the hell aren't they all i one folder so i can actually find the thing i bought yesterday when i can't remember exactly what its called .

The SL Library has 3500 objects + folders in it.  You can't delete it, and it is not in your Main Inventory.  Only if you rezz or add or wear a Library object or texture will it be added to your Main Inventory, and in the appropriate default folder for the object.  The Library has nothing to do with searching for items you added.

Anything you Buy or Receive recently is in your Recent Items Tab.  You can change how many days a recent item stays in your Recent Items Tab.  It's best to move recent Items to the right category folder while you can still remember their names.  You didn't do that, so you have a mess now. 

SL doesn't have mentors to tell you that, and if they did, most newbies would ignore their advice anyway.   Just like most newbies ignore the basics of SL at the intro station. 

 

Edited June 10, 2021 by Jaylinbridges

[Coffee Pancake]

8 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

I have another solution to that. Once you log in to SL in any browser (TPV's must follow the SL experience), SL starts the timer.  You must spend one hour per day (or login?) working only on your inventory. 

 

Ahhh .. the myth that organizing your inventory allows you to locate the stuff you have.

Spend hours and hours sorting and ordering it all ... and all you're actually doing is refreshing your memory about what you own. Didn't remember it the last time, this time wont be any different .. only now it's just more densely and complexly sorted.

[Sid Nagy]

I do remember that my Christmas decorations are in the folder Christmas stuff, which is a sub folder of my House Decoration folder though.

No matter what the creators called it, it is there when it starts to itch somewhere around the first of December.

[FairreLilette]

21 hours ago, animats said:

"Was" is appropriate. NFT sales seem to have dropped 90% since May.

The next "metaverse" thing is branding. Gucci is in Roblox. Sothebys is is Decentraland.

There's something new in avatars, the Wolf3d.io avatar creator. This creates an avatar based on a picture, usually a selfie. Sominium Space and VRChat, among many others, are using this. The consumer product is called "Ready Player Me". It's a clever bit of marketing. While the avatar appears in someone else's virtual world, it's fetched from a URL from Wolf3d each time it's used. Clothes changes are done via their site. So, once you have their avatar, you're tied to their clothing store. It's free. For now.

SL once had an avatar from picture system. What happened to that?

Those avatars are "cute" but not my style but I like the idea of it as a kind of caricature of one's self.

I was looking at avi's on the web this morning and came across Render Hub.  The bodies and the skins look much more human than SL but I thought the heads weren't quite as nice.  The bodies on Render Hub have far better arms, knees, and detailed skins for females.  I do not want to post the link though because there are some nude avi's on there.  On Render Hub it says these avi's only rez in Maya or other such programs.  I'm not even sure what these kinds of avi's are for but if SL ever makes a more realistic human with joints, bones, and detailed skins for females, I'll be there!  It's about $60.00 for an avi on Render Hub, body and head included. 

The textures are HUGE though; SL needs to learn how to make better use of the cloud.  

Edited June 10, 2021 by FairreLilette

[Arielle Popstar]

On 6/9/2021 at 11:26 AM, Rolig Loon said:

There are certainly other ways that inventory might have been designed from the start, but that's really a moot point now.  SL residents have had 18 years to accumulate inventory items, many from creators and merchants who are no longer around. Items are given names that do not necessarily tell you what they are.  [ I have an item in my inventory labeled "Cloud Nine".  It's a scooter I market in MP, but it might be a dress or a particle generator, for all you know.] People have repacked their own inventories in quirky ways too, so many items are no longer in the system folders where you might expect them.  Redesigning the inventory system at this point would be a logistical nightmare and would create massive confusion for residents.  Even if it could be done, the cost of developer time would be prohibitive, and the potential loss of longtime residents could be staggering.

So S/L should stop UI progression because we have too many 18 year old accounts dragging 17.99 years of baggage around? I don't know what the exact answer is but at the very least it seems to me it wouldn't be difficult to make it a togglable option for either a text based inventory UI or a graphic one or even a combination of the two. The text based one is a nightmare for new and old alike and probably accounts for quite a few new people not coming back. 

At the TPV meeting yesterday Vir Linden mentioned that the Outfit gallery, (CTRL+o) in the S/L viewer and Firestorm is a bit of a hack but it least it proves that having both available is possible. Just have to figure out how to expand its ability to allow inclusion of a wider range of content that is not just focused on a whole outfit.

Considering the amount of older residents who have argued against the idea, I am starting to wonder if the lack of development in this area is more as a result of them then as a result of LL not seeing where the viewer needs work to flatten the learning curve of S/L in general. The Lindens at the meeting certainly seemed to think the graphic based Inventory UI is a good idea though did mention it would require some work. It is the one area that has not ever really had a significant improvement but is desperately needed if they ever hope to start retaining some newer users to offset the the long slow decline of the userbase.

[Arielle Popstar]

8 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

SL doesn't have mentors to tell you that, and if they did, most newbies would ignore their advice anyway.   Just like most newbies ignore the basics of SL at the intro station. 

Newbies tend to figure that a platform such as S/L would be intuitive enough that they can muddle through, not realizing that User-friendly is not a term that should be used here.

[Rowan Amore]

As the least techie person in the world, I managed to muddle through the first few months.  Even today, I still learn something new now and then.  Of course, I'm not of the "I want it now and I want it easy" generation.  Ya gotta work sometimes to get what you want.

Might explain the abundance of wish lists now?  Hmmm. 🤔

[Coffee Pancake]

2 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

At the TPV meeting yesterday Vir Linden mentioned that the Outfit gallery, (CTRL+o) in the S/L viewer and Firestorm is a bit of a hack but it least it proves that having both available is possible. Just have to figure out how to expand its ability to allow inclusion of a wider range of content that is not just focused on a whole outfit.

(That wasn't the TPV meeting, maybe you mean the Open Development User Group)

Figuring out how a pictorial inventory would work is the hard part.

It's one thing to demand SL have it, it's quite another to come up with a practical solution that works with the existing asset systems.

If you really really want SL to have this - work though solving the problems of how it can work rather than just demanding that it does.

[animats]

This is from an article about why Roblox is so successful:

The Metaverse’s allure lies in its limitlessness, familiar and well-organised structure and the exciting way in which it allows young people to interact both with each other, the brands and characters that populate it, as well as the narratives that unfold within it.

Vitally, children and teenagers are moulding the Roblox metaverse in real-time, defining it as the community grows and interconnects in a collaborative and interactive way.

The Metaverse has been designed to specifically integrate key values shared by generations Z and Alpha.

This includes the ability to showcase your unique identity, to make friends, to enter and participate in an immersive environment, cross-platform compatibility, having diverse interests catered to, an ease of use and the avoidance of a steep learning curve, an in-built commerce system, as well as having a space that combines politeness and trust.

OK, let's look at that list for SL:

• showcase your unique identity - got that.
• to make friends - got that.
• to enter and participate in an immersive environment - got that.
• cross-platform compatibility - SL is still very weak on mobile.
• having diverse interests catered to - got that.
• an ease of use and the avoidance of a steep learning curve - do NOT have that.
• an in-built commerce system - got that.
• as well as having a space that combines politeness and trust - some places in SL, yes.

That's not bad for SL. It indicates that ease of use and avoidance of a steep learning curve are the main lacks. We know that, of course. It's useful, though, to have lists from the outside for LL's incoming top management, when hired.

 

Edited June 10, 2021 by animats

[cunomar]

13 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

The SL Library has 3500 objects + folders in it.  You can't delete it, and it is not in your Main Inventory.  Only if you rezz or add or wear a Library object or texture will it be added to your Main Inventory, and in the appropriate default folder for the object.  The Library has nothing to do with searching for items you added.

Anything you Buy or Receive recently is in your Recent Items Tab.  You can change how many days a recent item stays in your Recent Items Tab.  It's best to move recent Items to the right category folder while you can still remember their names.  You didn't do that, so you have a mess now. 

SL doesn't have mentors to tell you that, and if they did, most newbies would ignore their advice anyway.   Just like most newbies ignore the basics of SL at the intro station. 

 

I will simply ask why ?

If i buy something it should go into MY closet and not be mixed up with 3500+ left in there by the previous owner . Why must i set the recent tab , I've just started the game you can't get any more recent than that so if i buy 50 things my first day or first month and thats what my inventory shows , i'm going to find what i'm looking for even if i can't remember its name .

A block feature that actually works would be good to , remove them from my screen and me from there's .

Edited June 10, 2021 by cunomar

[Solar Legion]

Debug setting: NoInventoryLibrary. Set it to True. Now how about not assuming your experience is the norm on that, hmm?

On blocking: Block/Mute the individual, move on with your Second Life. It literally does not matter if they can still see or hear you. At all. You blocked/muted them, not the other way around. They get to decide if you've merited the same for them. Either way, you're no longer interacting with them.

Edited June 10, 2021 by Solar Legion

[Rolig Loon]

14 minutes ago, cunomar said:

I will simply ask why ?

If i buy something it should go into MY closet and not be mixed up with 3500+ left in there by the previous owner . Why must i set the recent tab , I've just started the game you can't get any more recent than that so if i buy 50 things my first day or first month and thats what my inventory shows , i'm going to find what i'm looking for even if i can't remember its name .

I think you may have misunderstood. Items in the Library folder are not "in" your inventory; they are accessible from there. And they were not "left in there by a previous owner".  The library is a collection of items that Linden Lab makes available to all accounts.  To use any of them, you need to actually copy it into another folder somewhere in your inventory.

You do not need to reset the parameters on your recent tab.  As you said correctly, as a new resident, everything in your inventory has been added there within the past 30 days. When you have been in SL for a longer time, though, you might find it useful to mess with those parameters in order to look only for things you bought this week or over some other period.  The parameters you set will help you narrow your search for things that you know must be somewhere in inventory, but you are having trouble locating.

[cunomar]

21 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

On blocking: Block/Mute the individual, move on with your Second Life. It literally does not matter if they can still see or hear you. At all. You blocked/muted them, not the other way around. They get to decide if you've merited the same for them. Either way, you're no longer interacting with them.

Only  person i really wanted to block in sl i could still see as a grey silhouette and even managed to ignore them slagging me off in open chat daily for a few weeks . I learned to hate so i personally don't need a block feature at all any more .

But if second life is to be more than a game the there should be self determined consequences , the one im thinking of has probably been here 15 years and would probably be wondering why there is nobody over a week old in sl if block worked both ways .

[Solar Legion]

M'kay. Now, unless you've explicitly enabled the option to do so, you cannot see the local chat of a user you have decided to Block/Mute. They appear as a nondescript gray form? So. What.

You blocked/muted. You cannot see their chat unless you specifically opt to see it and there's pretty much not a thing visually they can do to mess with you.

Nothing more needs to be done.

Edited June 10, 2021 by Solar Legion

[Arielle Popstar]

4 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

If you really really want SL to have this - work though solving the problems of how it can work rather than just demanding that it does.

You asked for specifics and I pointed some out that would be helpful without any demands:

On 6/5/2021 at 4:25 PM, Coffee Pancake said:

Nooo nonono no. You have to be very specific.

We have had a basic viewer from LL in the past and it irked everyone who used it.

Just demanding a simpler viewer .. and the not saying what that might be is no different from showing up to a dev meeting and yelling "FIX THE BUGZ" or "YOU SUCK". 

 

On 6/5/2021 at 4:56 PM, Arielle Popstar said:

Not about removing stuff but making it easier to navigate through the inventory would be a great start. Old and new users alike find it just as much of a hot mess as you find my quotes in dark theme. Slogging through a typical Mesh body folder requires me to read every entry there to find one specific body, the hud, feet, hands, save stick etc etc. Some new icons differentiating those would be great. Though I realize it is beyond the ability for a tpv dev to change but the ability to rename some no mod items to be more relevant would be nice. The ability to use some thumbnails for items so I don't have to click through a half dozen variants of a body to find the one I am looking for. A Ctrl+Z function so one could step back to a previous worn item. Better search functions within the Inventory. Would be great if one could actually access Inventory through a web page instead of only through a viewer. That should allow for more options in making the stuff more graphical instead of all text based. Point and click.

Maybe if one cannot handle specific suggestions, one should not ask for them. I have spent 3 pages working through some of my suggestions as to what could help new user retention without making them a demand to any here or to LL. I feel pretty strongly that some of them would do much for that but I am starting to see that the problem isn't so much with LL as it is with "get of my S/L lawn" types who can't handle a potential threat to how they been doing things for the past 18 years.

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Arielle Popstar said:

You asked for specifics and I pointed some out that would be helpful without any demands:

You're misunderstanding me.

The reason we don't have pictorial inventory after 18 years in this hole, is simple. No one has worked out how to make it function with the asset systems we have. This is not a new idea.

If you want this - there are a lot of problems to be solved.

Plan the functionality. How is stuff shown, when is it shown, how are all the different random ways people can mess up their inventory going to be handled, what data is required to do this, where does that come from, when, and where is it stored. This is going to require some research.

Saying "I'd like pictures and menus" is a bit like demanding flying cars and saying they should have seats and engines. Showing pictures from other entirely different platforms isn't helpful as those systems don't transplant onto SL.

If this was easy, we would have it already.