Is SL too hard for newbies?

[PixelBerry]

11 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

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.

Ah that is a shame, it's always nice to learn something from someone else, I still to this day learn new things that I had no idea about. 

[BjorJlen]

   Raises hand... 🤚

   Being a new player who actually played SL way back when, I considered myself to be a newb even though I had some experience with SL before (and still do in many ways). And your right... the learning curve here has grown considerably and can even be overwhelming at times; even more so since I am disabled and all. This is why, as with most "games" I play, I tend to do a lot of research first (like reading reviews, watching video's about SL, going over it's history (again), etc), and then when I was ready I joined these forums and began reading up on things here. Then once I was comfortable enough, I started to reply to posts, react to them, and even finally introduced myself here.
   This of course took time, but hey most of us have that at least in part, right? Anyways, during this time I began to learn about the controls, menu's, and options in the game itself (which has been a daunting task at times too I must say). But threw it all I tried to keep to the adage of taking "baby steps" to accomplish my goals, which was getting back into SL and learning what had changed. Because in basic terms, enough baby steps can make big steps, and so I was/am satisfied with my learning pace so far. Especially since I (and most everyone here as well) have RL responsibilities to deal with, so my time needed to be balanced as well.
   But even threw all that, the learning curve can still be... daunting at times (heck it took me ages to figure out how to change the "W" key to be the forward movement key instead lol), especially in regards to my avatar as people have mentioned already. It can be and IS in my case a very challenging prospect learning about creating a avatar, and I agree that it may be one of the hardest things to learn in SL. But fortunately for me, I have been blessed enough to find some very, very kind thoughtful people to help me learn about this feature and teach me with patience about the oh so many options of avatars and their creation. It should be the "last" step in one's SL learning experience, but you can always multitask it learning other things as well.
   Finding people in game to help and guide you can be a bit of a problem in the game, but this is where these forums come in; they are a blessing. Because once people start to know you, and decide your not just a asshat, then so many of those who interact here will be more then fine in helping a new player out, whether it be in game, or with advice, or even links to such things as tutorials. I truly believe that if the forums did not exist, SL would be a far different, and possibly lower populated, place. But when it's all said and done, there is always something to learn in SL, and that is a great thing truth be told.
   Because as a wise "man" one said, "Stop Learning, Start Dying". And between you and me, I am not ready to die just yet lol. So is SL hard for new people to get into and learn? Absolutely! But that can be a good thing too, because nothing worth learning or doing is ever easy. RL can be a challenge, as can SL sometimes too. That cannot be avoided (even if SL was improved upon, and it should be as has been mentioned already by some very smart experienced people). But in the end, it's all about the journey and not the destination, and to me (and to many of us), that can be it's own reward. So beginners, I say persevere (in both SL and RL)... because the rewards can be amazing. 😁

Peace...

[Coffee Pancake]

26 minutes ago, BjorJlen said:

Finding people in game to help and guide you can be a bit of a problem in the game

BRING BACK MENTORS AND LIVE HELP

[Janet Voxel]

It can be, but keep in mind you’re getting second hand opinions from people who stayed. 

My first impression of Second life and was: there’s a lot going on here. I don’t mean activity wise either. I mean in the viewer itself and that’s just the regular LL viewer. I knew how to move around from playing video games. The problem was ‘Where do I go now?’ I figured out how to tp, but now, how do I go back? I remember ending up at the freebie pyramid for about a week, which was great learning about clothes, hair, etc. When I figured out how to leave, everybody looked better. That leads me to the next problem.

That was 2009. I was concerned that I looked like a noob, even though I was. Where I ended up wasn’t really helpful because it didn’t help me look like everybody else. I still hadn’t completely understood the concept of Secondlife and that you have to go to different locations and buy things and that there is no real quality control on the things you buy.

So I tried updating myself. I uploaded $20, which was a lot for a 20 year old college kid. I ended up at some mall and bought a skin for some outrageous price. I think it was between 2500 and 3000L. Needless to say the mall was a total ripoff and so were the clothes I bought there. In the end, I still looked like a noob and had no more money. I still didn’t know where to go to meet people and I still looked like crap. Eventually, I started asking random people for help.

So let’s recap so far: Overwhelming UI, I was steered to a place with outdated things, then steered to a rip off place with overpriced outdated things. It’s rough out there for a noob.

So I started asking people where they go and what they do. Reactions varied, but I started getting landmarks and an idea of where I could go. Keep in mind, this was still the era where people actually gave you free things. Imagine what it’s like now? I was really just looking for a place I could hang out and chat with people. Instead, I’m tp’ing around still trying to make my avatar look like everybody else. Eventually I found some people. 
 

Mind you, there’s about three places where people would’ve logged out and never returned. I’m riding this out, there’s got to be something I’m missing. So I meet this guy…you know when it starts out like that what’s coming. So I meet this guy and he’s all, “I can see you care about your avatar, some of my friends can help you.” He introduces me to one of his friends…a lady friend, he had lots of lady friends. She starts giving me all this free stuff, skin, shape, clothes, shoes. I’m finally starting to look like everybody else. Then she says, “What viewer are you using?” The one everybody uses? Oh, no, no, no…nobody uses that viewer. Download this viewer. I think it was Firestorm. Downloaded. Installed. Logged back in. Ok…now enable this thing called RLv. Log out again. One of the free things I’m wearing is a collar btw. I’ll spare the gory details of that episode and the couple of days it took me to disable rlv and take the collar off.

The point of the story here is, as a new user: You run into people that don’t really have your best interest at heart too and you don’t really know the difference. It’s hard to tell the difference.

Fast forward 12 years. A lot of new people I talk to have the same basic problems. Except now it’s worse. People aren’t as friendly, you not only have to worry about your avatar, but which body and head to get. Shopping events make things a little better, but how do you know what is crappy mesh and what is good mesh? There’s still the issue of where to go to meet people, what place is active? You mean there are other viewers too?

I’m not going to pretend to know the answers or say everybody had the same kind of experience I had, my first month or so. But a lot of things aren’t very intuitive and the people you first run into can seriously shape your initial experience here.

 

[Coffee Pancake]

7 minutes ago, Janet Voxel said:

I was steered to a place with outdated things, then steered to a rip off place with overpriced outdated things. It’s rough out there for a noob.

A replacement, fully open source, documented with blender & Maya dev kits, commercially viable (ie, not junk, something creators will make content for), mesh body and head made by LL and mapped to all the body sliders is desperately needed.

[Alwin Alcott]

4 minutes ago, Janet Voxel said:

People aren’t as friendly, you not only have to worry about your avatar, but which body and head to get.

and this is the problem, it shouldn't be the worry in the first weeks/months in SL .
Newbies do NOT need to get a body and head asap. They need to learn the ropes of the viewer and world, ánd than go shop for their new look.
Starting this the first day they'r here will indeed scare them off, perhaps one more day, but after a week 90% is gone.
If the starting regions let people to fast out, before even being able to unbox or rezz a prim, that should change, keep them for a week/month or after a test, and after that the big PG world is wating. One month later, Mod and Adult opens for you.
Just a fraction of the sign ups will make it, but it will be more than now.

[Quistess Alpha]

56 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

BRING BACK MENTORS AND LIVE HELP

Random thought: what if we had new residents auto-join a new-resident help group? (that the tutorial or whatever explained how to use.)

[Evangeline Arcadia]

I've been in SL for a long time so I can't remember exactly if I found it hard to learn. I don't remember it being difficult though, but maybe because I went through the welcom islands or something. But I can see some of the points others are making here.

The whole business with mesh heads and bodies...I've never bothered , it's just too much faff, so I can certainly sympathise with new users on that front.

The other thing is, would it be right to assume that many of those trying second life are used to gaming in general (compared to users back when SL first opened)? If so, then maybe what LL needs to do is be on a par with how gamers learn their games today. I'm not a gamer but have seen others play in the past and know that a lot of them do have some kind of tutorial system inbuilt - or they used to anyway - I'm a bit out of touch with this these days, so maybe it's not even a relevant perspective.

Another thought, could there be more visible help menus and pop up help on the viewer screen, you know, like you see on some UI's - the boxes that guide you through what you can do? I don't use the official viewer, so maybe it has this already.

Edited October 30, 2021 by Evangeline Arcadia

[Janet Voxel]

27 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

A replacement, fully open source, documented with blender & Maya dev kits, commercially viable (ie, not junk, something creators will make content for), mesh body and head made by LL and mapped to all the body sliders is desperately needed.

This is another issue: back in the day if you wanted to create, all you had to do was go to a sandbox and….start. Now, you have to apply for a kit. Might not get the kit, might not even be told why. 
 

There’s a barrier to entry now.

 

[kali Wylder]

I don't know about newbies, but SL is too hard if you've just been away from it for a few months. It's way more work than fun just to come back for a visit.  The work/fun ratio is so skewed that I rarely have the energy to log in.

[Cinos Field]

18 minutes ago, Janet Voxel said:

This is another issue: back in the day if you wanted to create, all you had to do was go to a sandbox and….start. Now, you have to apply for a kit. Might not get the kit, might not even be told why. 
 

There’s a barrier to entry now.

 

Unless you're a furry, anyway! Quite a lot of furry body parts come with UV maps, and the bodies with freely available dummy models.

It's not too late to join the fuzzy side!

 

 

[BjorJlen]

39 minutes ago, Quistess Alpha said:

Random thought: what if we had new residents auto-join a new-resident help group? (that the tutorial or whatever explained how to use.)

   That is a good suggestion actually, but I would only have it create a auto-message instead that allows you to join the new resident help group instead. Many people make new alts via new accounts, and do not need this help option anyways, so why bog up the system by auto-joining them? It certainly would leave it a lot less cluttered and focus on only those who are new to SL in general. Just a thought...

Peace...

[Odaks]

34 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

Newbies do NOT need to get a body and head asap. They need to learn the ropes of the viewer and world, ánd than go shop for their new look.

 From a purely sensible point of view, you are absolutely correct.

However, I think that the desire to fit in, to look the part and not to stand out as a newbie, can be a very powerful draw. That is when all sensibilities get chucked in the bin. 

[Janet Voxel]

35 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

and this is the problem, it shouldn't be the worry in the first weeks/months in SL .
Newbies do NOT need to get a body and head asap. They need to learn the ropes of the viewer and world, ánd than go shop for their new look.
Starting this the first day they'r here will indeed scare them off, perhaps one more day, but after a week 90% is gone.
If the starting regions let people to fast out, before even being able to unbox or rezz a prim, that should change, keep them for a week/month or after a test, and after that the big PG world is wating. One month later, Mod and Adult opens for you.
Just a fraction of the sign ups will make it, but it will be more than now.

Everybody doesn’t care about how their avatar looks, but a lot of people do. Think about it this way: when you look at the splash page for Secondlife or any kind of advertisement: do the starting avatars look like that? For some people, it can be very consuming to look like what you saw before you even downloaded the app. The issue isn’t really that it’s false advertising. They are showing SL at its best. It can all be yours too…for about $50….to start.

To put it another way: If the latest hot video game came out after months and months of hype. The characters didn’t look like what was advertised or you couldn’t do what the game promised, there’d be an uproar. I’m looking at you Cyberpunk 2077 and No Man’s Sky.

I recently opened an account with an alt. Newbie island has improved. Know what the new barrier is? You can’t go anywhere you want. A lot of places have an ‘age’ limit. Your account has to be at least 30 days old. I think if that happened to me back in 2009, that might’ve made me log out and never come back.

I know a lot of that has to do with sim owners and they have their reasons, but barriers are bad. 

[Odaks]

9 minutes ago, Janet Voxel said:

do the starting avatars look like that?

Exactly the point!

[animats]

54 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

A replacement, fully open source, documented with blender & Maya dev kits, commercially viable (ie, not junk, something creators will make content for), mesh body and head made by LL and mapped to all the body sliders is desperately needed.

Roblox has just developed new technology to make clothing Just Work.

In the new Roblox system, the clothing is automatically adapted to fit the avatar. This is very new, and still in test.

 

Next generation of Roblox clothing on new-style avatars. It's not just blocks any more.

Their in-house designers like a somewhat anime style. That's not built into the system. Creators can create and sell third-party clothing.

(Roblox has an average user age of 13, remember. Clothing has to have more coverage over there.)

So, it can be done, and has been done.

 

[Alwin Alcott]

36 minutes ago, Odaks said:

 From a purely sensible point of view, you are absolutely correct.

However, I think that the desire to fit in, to look the part and not to stand out as a newbie, can be a very powerful draw. That is when all sensibilities get chucked in the bin. 

36 minutes ago, Janet Voxel said:

 barriers are bad. 

i have no drivers license.. can't handle the gears, can't handle the brakes, have no clue how much fuel, and who cares i have 3 flat tires.
That are newbies.. learn the basics first.

It's no video game... however... EVEN in candycrush or angry Birds you will start at level 1 ..... 2...3...till it gets interesting at level 50...
New players should be right informed about SL, it's not possible to survive with the i want it and i want it now mentallity.
And this is LL to blame with their bling entry screens and pictures. It's a lie waiting, and a lot of disapointment.
Same with the business ..building ( nothing gets build inworld anymore) .. and so on. People should know upfront..hey buddy, it's going to take a while, but you'll make it if you take these, and that steps on the educational track we made for you.

[Eggy UwU]

on my point of view: 

SL is always a struggle to figure out for some newbies and new players. i feel like there should be a better guide from SL itself that maybe? i know there are some youtube videos and sources that are out there made by the community, but i think there needs to be a long updated guide on SL!

 

[Nalates Urriah]

2 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

BRING BACK MENTORS AND LIVE HELP

I doubt that will happen. The Lab experimented with live helpers/mentors. Intuitively it sounds good. Examining a couple of years of data they found people that did NOT get live help stayed in SL. Those that got help didn't stay all that long. That is when they dropped the live help groups.

I used live help when I first came into SL. I'm still here. If the Lab is to be believed then I am an exception. Whatever, it will be hard to change the minds at the Lab when they have measured the result.

[Janet Voxel]

1 hour ago, Alwin Alcott said:

i have no drivers license.. can't handle the gears, can't handle the brakes, have no clue how much fuel, and who cares i have 3 flat tires.
That are newbies.. learn the basics first.

It's no video game... however... EVEN in candycrush or angry Birds you will start at level 1 ..... 2...3...till it gets interesting at level 50...
New players should be right informed about SL, it's not possible to survive with the i want it and i want it now mentallity.
And this is LL to blame with their bling entry screens and pictures. It's a lie waiting, and a lot of disapointment.
Same with the business ..building ( nothing gets build inworld anymore) .. and so on. People should know upfront..hey buddy, it's going to take a while, but you'll make it if you take these, and that steps on the educational track we made for you.

One of the interesting things about Second Life is how it touts uniqueness. There is a flip side to that, the sheer amount of conformity. There are many ways to do things, however…

When someone asks for help with something…anything. The usual answer is usually “What I do is…” That doesn’t work for everybody. Keep in mind we’re talking about newbies that don’t stick around or things newbies struggle with. There are certain things that people have struggled with and in a lot of ways, those things have gotten worse over time.

It’s not really the controls people struggle with.  It’s the UI, the lack of good direction as to what you can do and the lack of uniformity. Right from the start. 
 

It’s funny you mention a game like candy crush. Sure you start with level one, but the concept is simple and it’s pretty intuitive. You can’t say the same of second life. If I hit the striped red jelly bean, it’s going to erase all of the red jelly beans…every time. If I buy a pair of jeans, they may not fit. Why? Because it’s not for the body I’m wearing. I have the right body but there are little bits poking out. I have to alpha it? What’s that? Oh it’s in my hud? What’s BOM? Wait…my body is BOM and I have to wear an alpha? But the clothes didn’t come with an alpha. Now what? 
 

That’s just one example. I could come up with dozens of examples where something goes wrong. There’s five different ways to do it, for the simplest thing. For someone that doesn’t get it….imagine how exhausting it must be spending an ridiculous amount of time trying to do something simple….daily.

So while you’re saying start at level one. What’s level one? Learning how to walk and fly? I already know how to do that. Someone else might not. But I do…now what? Where do I go to meet people? I went there; nobody’s there. Now what? I can sit on a platform and build…stuff? I don’t want to do that. I want my avatar to look nice. You don’t care about that? Well who can I talk to that can help me? Hi…I need help with my avatar. Well, what I do is….I don’t want to look like that. Now what? Nobody still told me where I can go to meet people. What’s a furry? I’m not into that. Now what? *logs off*There’s nothing to do in Second life and it’s hard.

Here’s the thing. Whatever you come up with, for every person that it works for, there’s going to be five people that says it’s stupid and they don’t want that. If came up with a cool intro and a story based “This is your avatar” intro, somebody would come along and take a big steaming dookie on the idea and they wouldn’t be wrong, because it just doesn’t work for them.

I don’t think most people want “I want it all, I want it now”. If they do, so what? How you use second life is not how everybody else uses Second life. Your morality or code of conduct is not everybody else’s.
 

I think people want the experience that they saw in those pictures and that slick ad. That’s not a big ask. The thing is you can have that…if you invest X amount into your avatar, know where to go, have an established store, etc.

However it’s done it has to be simple and intuitive on a level that it’s just not right now. And you know what? If it’s done that way people will still hate it.
 

[Marigold Devin]

4 hours ago, kali Wylder said:

I don't know about newbies, but SL is too hard if you've just been away from it for a few months. It's way more work than fun just to come back for a visit.  The work/fun ratio is so skewed that I rarely have the energy to log in.

I was away from Second Life for a few years, and you are right, when I logged back in after such a break, things had changed a fair bit, and I found trying to update my avatar was just too much like hard work and took the fun factor out of my Second Life and was very mentally draining. I don't need to be part of a rat race, it's not real life, it's supposed to be recreational (isn't it?)

Returning to forums also I found I could only join in with the fun threads or general discussions, because I have gone back to being noob really.

I guess what I'm saying is, Janet Voxel made a good point, that all of us here on the forums are people who may have found Second Life difficult to learn when we first joined, but we persevered and stayed.  There is no way of reaching out to those who created an account, dipped their toes into Second Life, never to return again, and finding out exactly why they didn't stay, whether it was just too much of a learning curve. 

There were a couple of people I knew out in real life who I brought into Second Life. One was a gamer, the other was not. Neither found Second Life appealing. Maybe I put them off.  

[Janet Voxel]

2 hours ago, Marigold Devin said:

I guess what I'm saying is, Janet Voxel made a good point, that all of us here on the forums are people who may have found Second Life difficult to learn when we first joined, but we persevered and stayed.  There is no way of reaching out to those who created an account, dipped their toes into Second Life, never to return again, and finding out exactly why they didn't stay, whether it was just too much of a learning curve. 

There were a couple of people I knew out in real life who I brought into Second Life. One was a gamer, the other was not. Neither found Second Life appealing. Maybe I put them off.  

That’s definitely part of it. The other part of it is: while we’ll never know what the reason a person who logs in that one time and nopes out after five minutes was, we do get valuable feed back from people that ask for help.

When people call Secondlife a game it triggers people. While technically it’s not it really, it shouldn’t be surprising that a lot of people see it that way and why. Yet, a lot of people discount that. To be honest…as a game, second life sucks. That in itself is an answer.

While some people may not be concerned with how their avatar looks. A lot of people it does. Look at the discussions that happen right here and how many of them revolve around identity, gender identity, sexual identity, etc. What’s the most popular thread in this forum? How does my avatar look today? When somebody is asking for help or talking about something, people often throw a random picture of their avatar into their post.

I’m not making fun of people that do those little things. It just goes to show how it ties into everything. There’s a reason triple A games make millions of dollars off of micro transactions just customizing a character.

When I found Second Life, it was a pretty dark time in my life. What it does…works for me. My husband? I tried to introduce him to it, he tried it a couple of days. “It’s trash…” that was his feedback. I know he’ll play Warzone for hours on end though. Secondlife definitely isn’t Warzone. When someone says “I don’t know what to do” that’s valuable feedback. People say the things that frustrate them about second life all the time. “When I wore this dress, my eyes came out” Why? That’s easy…attach the dress, not wear it. But why? Well see….*logs out*
 

It often boils down to: ease of use, where to go, finding their community, what to do and what to do when something goes wrong.

How do we fix that? Or I should say: how does LL fix that?

 

[Prokofy Neva]

Yes. Over 3.5 million have left NYC due to the pandemic, leading to $34 billion losses in business; 33% of the restaurants closed and many never re-open -- not to mention the 35,000 who died. My son and his wife, his best friend from school, two of his employers, his gym trainer, and two clients all fled for Florida. Even policemen have been lured away with bonuses. Did you know rents are down 10% now...I looked down on the river bank this morning and I saw our new building complex owner had parceled little microplots and set them to $3 million a piece to encourage this restaurant that has been there for 50 years to "buy the view"...

Oh, wait. You mean the virtual world? 

You should look at one of my polls in Baileya: 

"How can the new user experience be improved?"

Simplify Orientation Island      457
Have a Buddy System             590
Provide Jobs to Newbies     1828
Have Paid Help-Desk 24/7  263
Suggest Places to Visit       870

It has run for years. The Lindens now have "Destinations" which is very helpful. You can debate whether they simplified Orientation Island, but they tried. Their help desk is not 24/7 but at least during business hours in California. 

What they didn't do was provide jobs to newbies -- the single greatest demand. Yet that would be incredibly complicated, even if they, as the platform provider, decided to tackle this issue. Can they put newbies to work laying roads and planting trees in Bellisseria? Not really, that's a skilled job actually, and you can't just hand building perms to any passing newbie, even if they information on file, they might grief the place. A lot of the ways that people made money initially are outlawed now. Not everyone wants to be driven into the world's oldest profession. Gatcha re-sales are one entry point or breedables, but you need capital and rent money to make it in that space. You can tell people to "learn to code" but you know? There are an awful lot of scripters already.

It's a very hard problem to solve and one I'm confident Mark Zuckerberg has not the slightest concern about.

People are real, and they want real things like jobs, so they can earn money and buy things. And there aren't jobs, except for the highly skilled or those unskilled willing to take incredibly low salaries and put up with enormous amounts of abuse from employers and difficulties in the environment.

 

Edited October 31, 2021 by Prokofy Neva

[animats]

39 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Provide Jobs to Newbies

That may not mean "jobs" as an income source, but just tasks to do. If you spend any time at the new user areas, you find that the two big questions are "What do I do now?", and "How do I fix this &$*@! clothing problem.". One of the helpers at Caledon, who tends to sit on the benches near the entrance, says that many new users think he's a quest giver.

LL has tried, with things like Linden Realms, but they're not that interesting.

Part of the problem is that many of the interesting things to do require skills users won't' have on day one. For example, sending users on a quest across mainland using the Drivers of SL HUD, which gives turn by turn directions. That HUD allows for making stops, and doing various tasks at stops. So it's really a full quest system. But there are so many things that can go wrong on a road trip in SL that it would be tough on new users. And all the stuff of attaching a HUD and rezzing a vehicle is a pain. With a grid-wide experience, though, it could be set up so that the new user just walks through a portal to start the quest.

 

Edited October 31, 2021 by animats

[Prokofy Neva]

40 minutes ago, animats said:

That may not mean "jobs" as an income source, but just tasks to do. If you spend any time at the new user areas, you find that the two big questions are "What do I do now?", and "How do I fix this &$*@! clothing problem.". One of the helpers at Caledon, who tends to sit on the benches near the entrance, says that many new users think he's a quest giver.

LL has tried, with things like Linden Realms, but they're not that interesting.

Part of the problem is that many of the interesting things to do require skills users won't' have on day one. For example, sending users on a quest across mainland using the Drivers of SL HUD, which gives turn by turn directions. That HUD allows for making stops, and doing various tasks at stops. So it's really a full quest system. But there are so many things that can go wrong on a road trip in SL that it would be tough on new users. And all the stuff of attaching a HUD and rezzing a vehicle is a pain. With a grid-wide experience, though, it could be set up so that the new user just walks through a portal to start the quest.

 

No, no, no.

It doesn't mean "things to do".  Or "ways to test out various developers' grid-wide concepts for products".

It doesn't mean quests. There are plenty of quests and hunts and plenty of people take part in them.

It doesn't mean driver HUDS, there are already endless pods spamming sims.

It means real jobs where you make real money so that you have it to spend on all the things you want that other people have in this world. Many people are from the poor world of the East or South, not the rich world of the West and North.