Is SL too hard for newbies?

[Naiman Broome]

I had really a hard time getting to understand all the new upgrades with the bodies to look good, reaally a lot of patience from a friend of mine explaining me how to and a lot of time testing stuff...

 

Its not that easy pike buying a chair and rez it ...

 

Is this keeping new people from joining SL? Especially since their first approach with game seem to be nooblevel areas, noob level avatars and difficulty in the learning curve?

[Cinos Field]

In my experience talking with newbs - both ones i encounter in the wild and ones I introduce to SL - it's basically half the mechanical difficulties and half not having any idea where to go to find people to do what they want with. i.e. say you join SL and want scifi roleplay. Where do you go? You'd have to get lucky with search, or rely on word of mouth. If you want to be a DJ, where do you go? And so on.

 

[cunomar]

Sort answer , coming from someone who's full prior experience is limited to playing a few PS2 games , a laptop so i can print off invoices and i'd sometimes kill time browsing ebay , is YES .

For such a new user the experience is dependant entirely on luck .

The lucky ones will be picked up by some bored experienced user with whom they can communicate well due to a vaguely shared interest . Though its still very frustrating trying to tell those so used to the typical everyday problems such as lag that they don't even consider such things that their very specific instructions don't work for reasons you simply don't know .

For the unlucky ones candycrush is more interesting .

[Alwin Alcott]

no it's not to hard, newbies are to impatient or come with wrong expectations, by lack at usefull, and wrong information before starting ( hardly any efford by the hosting/owning company)

SL is in this matter "old fashioned" not able to play out of the box, but you need to get a skill to handle the viewer and world.
And as the issue OP posted, mesh bodies are the last to bother yourself with as newbie, that;s at the end of the learning curve, not the begin.

Edited October 30, 2021 by Alwin Alcott

[Theresa Tennyson]

2 hours ago, Naiman Broome said:

Its not that easy pike buying a chair and rez it ...

Buying a chair and rezzing it isn't necessarily easy either...

I'm in the process of learning Japanese. For anyone from a Western country, learning enough Japanese to function in even the most basic places in Japan can never be quick and simple. Regardless of how complex you might think Japanese is, it's actually more complex because I doubt anyone from an alphabet-using culture could even conceive of a language being that complicated. (As in - yes, you're probably aware that there are literally thousands of characters in Japanese, but did you know that most of them can pronounced in an average of two completely different ways?)

And yet, as the young woman who made the videos I'm watching pointed out, Japan has one of the highest literacy rates in the world. It's possible to learn Japanese; it just takes a long time.

Second Life is similar, and for similar reasons. There are layers upon layers of things that you can encounter that taken as a whole don't make a lot of sense, but each one was done for a defensible reason at some point in time. It's just complicated because the environment is comparatively old and conditions change, meaning that you'll encounter fragments of things from many periods and things that made sense once may seem bizarre under present conditions.

Hence, the problem. If you simplify (Japanese/Second Life) too much you'll reach a point where it will stop being (Japanese/Second Life.)

[Marigold Devin]

3 hours ago, Naiman Broome said:

I had really a hard time getting to understand all the new upgrades with the bodies to look good, reaally a lot of patience from a friend of mine explaining me how to and a lot of time testing stuff...

 

Its not that easy pike buying a chair and rez it ...

 

Is this keeping new people from joining SL? Especially since their first approach with game seem to be nooblevel areas, noob level avatars and difficulty in the learning curve?

It depends what a person is expecting Second Life to be. Personally speaking, I found the first fortnight really hard and nearly gave up several times, but fortunately found a couple of patient people who willingly mentored me in the basics and somehow I found what I was good at and enjoyed, and that was basically exploring, meeting people, and for a while, buying and selling land.  I even had a paid job for a while, working for an in-world publication, and that was a lot of fun, but also stressful, and I didn't come into Second Life for stress or work really.

My avatar has not been upgraded though since 2011, apart from the hair. I'm happy as I am with it, and just cannot be bothered to faff about with all the mesh stuff or play dress up dolly. 

Second Life has changed a lot since I began in 2007, and the initial orientation process seems to have improved, but if new people are too impatient to go through that, then there really isn't much hope they will want to stay, and I don't think that's a bad thing. Second Life just isn't for everyone, although Linden Lab no doubt would love it if it was.  

If (if) having a mesh avatar was compulsory when I began in 2007 then no way would I have had the patience for that, but I would have been slightly happier if someone had told me I had already such a lot of content in my inventory's library, including a large selection of mesh (and non-mesh) avatars, human, animal and otherwise.  

Edited October 30, 2021 by Marigold Devin
Thought about the question a little more and added something else.

[Coffee Pancake]

SL's UI problems all stem from the files/folders inventory paradigm.

It offers a lot of power, but falls far short of the systems games have evolved to manage collections of things.

What SL really needs now is collections, tagging and avatar slots.

EG A special kind of folder  that contains a collection of inventory items including an image and tags. This can then be presented to the user as a single item with a visual icon and list of tags derived from a notecard in the collection. By default the contents of collections are not shown to the user and can be presented as a visual inventory system (like the excellent wardrobe, but without the headache of needing to manually set everything up).

Avatar slots would simply be named groups of attachment points that tagged collections are dropped into.

EG An item collection tagged as a body would be a single item that is worn in the body slot, this can then be used to filter accessory collections by the type of body.

Retro fitting this to the existing paradigm would be possible, but there would be a of of manual work on our part to sort all our stuff so it worked correctly, new products could just be sold ready packaged.

[Marigold Devin]

1 hour ago, Alwin Alcott said:

no it's not to hard, newbies are to impatient or come with wrong expectations, by lack at usefull, and wrong information before starting ( hardly any efford by the hosting/owning company)

SL is in this matter "old fashioned" not able to play out of the box, but you need to get a skill to handle the viewer and world.
And as the issue OP posted, mesh bodies are the last to bother yourself with as newbie, that;s at the end of the learning curve, not the begin.

I do so agree with you about mesh bodies being the last thing to be bothering with as a newbie, there are far more other basic things to learn first.  

[Marigold Devin]

1 hour ago, cunomar said:

Sort answer , coming from someone who's full prior experience is limited to playing a few PS2 games , a laptop so i can print off invoices and i'd sometimes kill time browsing ebay , is YES .

For such a new user the experience is dependant entirely on luck .

The lucky ones will be picked up by some bored experienced user with whom they can communicate well due to a vaguely shared interest . Though its still very frustrating trying to tell those so used to the typical everyday problems such as lag that they don't even consider such things that their very specific instructions don't work for reasons you simply don't know .

For the unlucky ones candycrush is more interesting .

Well this for me is the right answer!

I was definitely one of the lucky ones, getting mentored at the beginning.  

[Mr Amore]

4 hours ago, Naiman Broome said:

Is this keeping new people from joining SL? Especially since their first approach with game seem to be nooblevel areas, noob level avatars and difficulty in the learning curve?

There's no Easy Mode to SL.

• TPVs = Veteran Difficulty
• Official Viewer = Legendary Difficulty

The viewer is highly customizable, but at the expense of having a lengthy menu options along the top, + hidden menus, + debug settings, +Toolbar buttons along the bottom. This is all before you reach the actual Settings/Preferences panel with hundreds of other options. Add to this an archaic inventory system, a broken SL Search and you'd wonder how anyone still plays this game.

The SL viewer is basically a debug client which only developers should have access too. A standard user needs a simplified experience with fewer options and screen clutter.

Edited October 30, 2021 by Mr Amore

[ChinRey]

4 hours ago, Naiman Broome said:

Is this keeping new people from joining SL?

Yes.

[arton Rotaru]

Well, I'm not a newbie, but I still haven't found the patience to get into the whole mesh body/head/clothes stuff. Part of it may be that I don't want to move around as such a terrible lagfest anyway.

 

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

I know that some new people that onboard are referred by relatives or friends who are able to guide them through the process. But that's not a big percentage.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

Generally, it's too hard for me, especially when it comes to avatar looks. I do understand the logic behind it all. I've been here since clothing layers and flexi hair and I've seen things evolve since then (remember tattoo and alpha layers becoming a thing? Remember the Linden hair and the Linden skin with tinting, wrinkling and freckles option?) To me, it's a lot of work to make a new outfit in comparison to the early days. I guess that's the price for avatars becoming more realistic in an open sandbox world like SL.

The current complexity of dressing up is definitely a factor in deciding whether to buy clothing in SL or not. If I estimate making a new outfit is going to cost me half an hour, and I haven't got the patience/time for it at that particular moment, I'm not wasting my money on it. But in comparison, trying out a new head or body system is absolute hell. It'll cost me almost a day figuring stuff out. Nowadays, I'll mostly waste time on criticizing and angering over new head and body HUDs. But with the first mesh bodies and heads, I'd buy these, complain about the necks, the eye positions, the lack of eye movements, etc. It's shelve the damn things for months and then try again. On a brighter note, BOM's actually kind of an improvement over all these different applier HUDs.

Maybe it's because of the work I do in SL, but I seldomly change outfits more often than once per two months. Skins and hair maybe once per year. Body and head system, once per 3 years, maybe. Too often to my taste. Some of my friends change twice or thrice per day, clothing, body, skin, everything. It's voodoo magic to me.

So, from my perspective, for a n00b, yeah, I fear very much that that's scaring away many. Only if you're curious enough and motivated enough to look as cool as the SL veterans, you might pull it of. How many people are missing out on a nice SL experience because of its complexity? I have no clue though. Sounds like a job for the LL market research team.

[Istelathis]

I think a lot of the difficulty depends on what the person using SL wants to accomplish.  There are a plethora of tutorials out there, which makes it relatively easy to accomplish most things in SL.  I remember my first day logging in, and going through the in world tutorial on social island - it was easy to move around.  I think the most frustrating part was having to change WASD to move instead of start typing, but that was really easy to solve.  I quickly learned how to use the camera, and even ride a vehicle via their little boat game.  

Mesh avatars were a little more difficult, but again with tutorials I learned how they work.  Even scripting wasn't all that bad, although I am still lousy at it, I can create some sloppy code to perform what I want to do.  

I think for someone who is used to mobile gaming, who has never relied on tutorials outside of the game it is probably more difficult because they are not used to going to outside sources for help.  I came from older MMORPGs that almost required you to have a browser open in the background or on another computer so that you can figure out where to find various mobs, what spells work the best, etc, etc.  Not to mention, the days of hunting down faqs on BBS's to learn how to configure your IRQ so your mouse would work with your modem.  If these people do a quick search they are likely to be able to grasp SL with little effort on their part, the barrier then becomes if they are patient enough.

Part of the charm of SL for me, is just how sophisticated it can be.  I enjoy browsing the web in search of answers, I feel a sense of accomplishment when I figure out how to do something.  That is what SL is though, it provides a level of freedom that allows you to do a lot of different things.  I imagine I can't be the only one that feels this way, there must be an audience out there that likes to tinker around with things, and that is exactly what SL provides us.  Perhaps a better approach to gaining more users, is to find that audience and bring them here, while also building more tools for people to use.

Edited October 30, 2021 by Istelathis

[Nalates Urriah]

The complexity of SL has nothing to do with the join rate. That is all about the complexity of the signup. One could see that in the monthly number of signups before that api broke.

Lots of signups but few stayed. The Lab has an on going testing program to solve that problem.

Successfully playing in SL is like being successful in RL. Both are complex because of all the possibilities. Unlike most other games you can do almost anything you can imagine in SL. Other games limit you to ONE PRIMARY activity... think first person shooter. The SL level of freedom makes for numerous paths in SL life and that changes what one needs to learn about SL. People come into SL expecting the typical restrictive game with little need to decide what to do. They only need to figure out how to do the game the single activity offered by the game. Before you get there in SL you are going to need to decide what you want to be.

It isn't the SL game/system/viewer that needs to change. It is people's expectations about what they are getting into that needs change. How do you change how the world thinks about SL?

In a game world where the game designer decides what you'll do it is a major shock to be free to do anything you want to do.

Edited October 30, 2021 by Nalates Urriah

[Sid Nagy]

Just like with every other software product, whether a game, a tool or a platform, not everybody is made out of the right material to be able to enjoy and understand it.
Second Life is no exception.
If you like it, you will master everything you need. But it doesn't come really easy in SL.

So be it. It will not change. It is very complex software because of it's huge possibilities and the creation of tons of user content.

Edited October 30, 2021 by Sid Nagy

[Bree Giffen]

I've been watching some 'I played SL' videos and these new residents always try to find something to do or people to chat with. They don't seem to be hung up on improving their avatar right away. People start thinking about their avatars AFTER they have decided to stay. From watching these videos I can think of a few improvements that might help.

1. I see new people complain about SL performance being bad and they think it's because SL is old. Then I notice that their graphics are set to high. Pretty sure they aren't turning it up themselves. One thing I've noticed personally while going to crowded events is that complex resident avatars are the root cause of slow performance. If the viewer could be set to specifically turn down avatar maximum complexity by default then the world will load much faster and generally be more responsive. New residents would think that SL actually playable and decide to explore. There should be some pop-up later telling people  why avatars are jelly dolls and how to change their graphic settings. This isn't a big change. It's just a viewer adjustment.

2. If people want to 'do' things and meet people then give them something to do! I think that dropping new residents into an amusement park with rides would provide the backdrop needed to start up conversation with other new people and experienced residents. I've done this with new people in the past and it's much better than 'social' island where a bunch of people stare at each other inside a stone circle. It doesn't have to be an amusement park specifically but it has to have activities or places where your avatar can move, climb and do stuff. This isn't hard to implement. It's just building things in-world.

3. When people actually want to change their avatars the only solution I can think of is 'video tutorials'. That's how I learn how to do many things now. I asked my mother once how to cook a dish I remembered from childhood and she told me to just look up the recipe on You Tube. I'm not just saying new people should just look up random tutorials. SL needs to point people to the best videos. I think a YT creator would try to make the best tutorials if they knew SL will recommend players to view them. I think LL cultivating residents as SL advocates on social media sites is a good idea.

[Nalates Urriah]

41 minutes ago, Bree Giffen said:

...

1. I see new people complain about SL performance being bad and they think it's because SL is old. Then I notice that their graphics are set to high. Pretty sure they aren't turning it up themselves. One thing I've noticed personally while going to crowded events is that complex resident avatars are the root cause of slow performance. If the viewer could be set to specifically turn down avatar maximum complexity by default then the world will load much faster and generally be more responsive. New residents would think that SL actually playable and decide to explore. There should be some pop-up later telling people  why avatars are jelly dolls and how to change their graphic settings. This isn't a big change. It's just a viewer adjustment.

Some FYI...

The viewers do a system test when starting to determine what graphics setting to use. The LOW to ULTRA setting thing. So their graphics card determines which setting is selected. I've forgotten whether the CPU is considered in the test or not.

The Lab has actually built the viewer to give new users the best performance and experience possible based on their hardware without their having to make any changes. While the Lab's decision on what's best can be debated, it is basically impossible to know what a new subscriber will want, great renders or top performance. I suggest even the new user doesn't know. So, improve performance at the price of render quality? One then get complaints about lousy graphics rendering.

After years of A-B testing I figure the Lab has it about as well adjusted as is possible.

Complex avatars do add to lag. But, one can set their ACI limit, as you point out. They will still see a high degree of lag in crowded regions even if few avatars are fully rendering. The region doesn't have to render the avatar. All it cares about is how much stuff it is wearing and getting all that info to the other users in the region. So a 80k ACI avatar with 20 attachments is the same as an 800k ACI with 20 attachments to the region server. I hope this would clue people into the fact that the avatar complexity is a minor part of the lag problem.

There are two lag intensifying factors in a crowded region. Scripts are a major factor. If you enter a region with a high number of scripts you'll notice massive lag. Look at the percent of scripts run per frame in Viewer Stats (Ctrl-Shift-1). Lots of avatars with lots of scripts has the same effect as lots of objects with lots of scripts. I am pretty sure avatar script count is NOT part of the ACI number.

The other significant factor is the information load the region server has to handle. As each new avatar arrives the data load goes up exponentially. Data has to be sent to each avatar in the region as to what every other avatar in the region is doing. Plus the Havok physics engine has to determine if every one of those avatars is bumping into anything or each other. A phenomenal amount of calculation is added to the region.

Thinking that avatars are the 'root' cause will limit people's thinking. Regardless of how over dressed an avatar may be, users can adjust their computer and viewer to deal with it and give them decent performance. But, asking someone to guess what each user will want or think the user will have any clue is not a workable solution.

Edited October 30, 2021 by Nalates Urriah
add clairifying text

[Lindal Kidd]

2 hours ago, Mr Amore said:

A standard user needs a simplified experience with fewer options and screen clutter.

LL actually tried this, years ago. The viewer had a "beginner" mode and an "expert" mode. Unfortunately, the beginner mode didn't address what almost every newbie wants to do first: play around with their avatar.

So, people would try out SL, wind up thinking that SL avatars were not very versatile, and quit.

[Hooten Haller]

Last year I invited a number of friends to SL to try a square dance system I created. These were very smart, computer literate people. They were already using Minecraft, and I wanted them to make the jump to SL. Two complaints stood out from multiple people: the avatars and the movement controls.

The avatar complaints were either "This is uncanny valley" or "The stock women are WAY too femme." 

The movement complaints had nothing to do with the dance system. The main complaint here was the system was "old fashioned". I am not sure if it was the key assignments or physics. None of them came back, preferring Minecraft for their dancing as well as general building/creativity.

I was able to get a few more people to try again later. These were not game-literate people, and though they were _basically_ comfortble using computers. They had a lot of trouble with camera controls and moving. They had trouble noticing instant messages and teleport offers. They didn't know how to detach the handbags and other unnecessary starter avatar objects. 

Clearly there are a LOT of barriers people run into using SL. 

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

Sl can't be that difficult otherwise we wouldn't be there.

However, what might help newcomers is a sort of recap of why certain things are the way they are.

6 hours ago, Cinos Field said:

half not having any idea where to go to find people to do what they want with. i.e. say you join SL and want scifi roleplay. Where do you go?

But this is probably the biggest hurdle a newcomer has to leap over, given that it includes the invidious prejudice several places have against newcomers.

[Varistentia Varriale]

22 minutes ago, Hooten Haller said:

Last year I invited a number of friends to SL to try a square dance system I created. These were very smart, computer literate people. They were already using Minecraft, and I wanted them to make the jump to SL. Two complaints stood out from multiple people: the avatars and the movement controls.

The avatar complaints were either "This is uncanny valley" or "The stock women are WAY too femme." 

The movement complaints had nothing to do with the dance system. The main complaint here was the system was "old fashioned". I am not sure if it was the key assignments or physics. None of them came back, preferring Minecraft for their dancing as well as general building/creativity.

I was able to get a few more people to try again later. These were not game-literate people, and though they were _basically_ comfortble using computers. They had a lot of trouble with camera controls and moving. They had trouble noticing instant messages and teleport offers. They didn't know how to detach the handbags and other unnecessary starter avatar objects. 

Clearly there are a LOT of barriers people run into using SL. 

Actually the movement system is very modern you just left click on the back of your avatar, hold it and then move camera with mouse and steer with arrow keys just as you would in any modern game such as for example Guild Wars 2. However this movement trick is not really explained anywhere as far as I know so most likely steer their avatar with the arrow keys alone which then of course can feel very archaic. Beyond mere avatar control SL works more or less like your standard 3D program where you move the scene around with camera controls. SL is really a 3D program with a shared world that we inhabit, it's both part experience (I don't want to use the G-word) and part creative/design tool. Of course one could argue that perhaps there should be a creative/design mode with one set of controls and one experience mode that has a completely different set of controls that's more in line with what a "normal" user would expect coming from the "G-scene". 

Edited October 30, 2021 by Varistentia Varriale

[PixelBerry]

Back when I joined Second life in 2007 as a 13 year old I did not have any difficulties on learning the most important stuff, but were in a different time where people have to figure out more things, such as where to get replacements for their standard linden lab body, what is bento, animesh, mesh, rigged mesh, alpha, bom. Also having to learn how Second life works, how the viewer works and all that, now I don't know if it has gotten more advanced since back then but either way it probably is more overwhelming for a newbie now than it was back then.

There was a whole lot more people and places as well, so it was easier to find someone to befriend and talk to, but now were less people and were spread out or hiding in our homes.

There are less regular hangouts and more lewd or afk lewd places, so I do understand why newbies feel so lost and have no idea where to go, other than clubs or shopping events. Unless they are into the whole nsfw business, but if not it's going to be a whole lot more difficult for a newbie to find somewhere to go, there are also those places that yeets people who are less than 30 days old.

So yes in general, I think it's difficult for a newbie to figure out Second life, at least more now than back then.

There are youtube videos and there is that basic tutorial you learn on the first sim, but I find the youtube videos to be messy and not top notch in quality in audio and what not, and the tutorial just learns you the basics and then you get thrown into Second life without having any clue on what to do now.

The learning curve should be improved on, but I don't know how.

Do anyone know if there's any people at the first sim that helps newbies?

[Lindal Kidd]

8 minutes ago, PixelBerry said:

Do anyone know if there's any people at the first sim that helps newbies?

Sometimes. Newcomers rez in at a Welcome Island, or a Learning Island (followed by Social Island). There are several versions of these initial tutorial regions. Some helpers, members of the White Tiger Mentors group, are allowed access to one of the Welcome Islands, and one of the Social Islands. Plus there is an entry path that leads to Firestorm Help Island. The Newcomer Friendly category of the Destination Guide has links to Caledon Oxbridge University, NCI, New Resident Island, Ayuda SL Brasil, and other resident-run orientation and help areas.

It takes real dedication to spend a lot of time in these areas as a helper. 90% or more of the newcomers will not even respond to a friendly greeting, but will completely ignore you. If you're a woman, another 8% or so will proposition you. Only a few will actually accept your offer of help, or will stick around long enough for your explanations.