Do We Need a Level Between Basic and Premium?

[Persephone Emerald]

Linden Lab has been pushing for a Premium Plus subscription Level, which I'm sure some people would pay to have. I think given the current rates of inflation and Instability in the RL world however, many would prefer an option between the free Basic level and the current Premium level.

I'm proposing a new "Standard" or "Economy" level midway in cost and benefits to the Premium level. For $ 60/ year instead of $ 99/ year people could get 512 m of land, 56 groups, and $L 150/ week in stipend. I think they could get the same access to Premium sandboxes and gifts, because nobody really cares about that stuff much anyway. Maybe they could have the same level of customer support? Linden Lab could make more 512 m parcels in Bellisseria to support this new level and independent landlords could rent out more 512 m skyboxes, cottages, apartments and tiny homes. 

What do you think? Do we need a Level between Basic and Premium? If so, what do you think the cost and benefits should be?

Edited March 11, 2022 by Persephone Emerald

[LittleMe Jewell]

I think it would be beneficial, to both LL and the Residents to have something between the current Basic and Premium.

As to the Land/Tier allotment, I think they'd have to restrict the person to Mainland and not allow a Linden Home.  I say that because I can just image the back-end coding that would be required to enforce some people only being able to get 512 sized lots --- especially with the mix of lot sizes in the recent Newbrooke.

Outside of that, I think your suggestions for other benefits are good and I think the suggested price point is good also.

[purrrkitten]

How about just an option where you can get a last name by paying a one time fee without joining premium.

[Cali Souther]

Personally,  I wish I could buy more prims for my Linden Home.   I am not very good at decorating,  and tend to need more.   I know,  I can buy or rent land and get a lot more,  but I just want a small amount...      anyway...    That's just me.

I do think yours is a good idea and would be beneficial to people who can't afford the $99 USD a year + tax  😉

It's always nice to have options! 

 

 

 

[Persephone Emerald]

8 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I think it would be beneficial, to both LL and the Residents to have something between the current Basic and Premium.

As to the Land/Tier allotment, I think they'd have to restrict the person to Mainland and not allow a Linden Home.  I say that because I can just image the back-end coding that would be required to enforce some people only being able to get 512 sized lots --- especially with the mix of lot sizes in the recent Newbrooke.

Outside of that, I think your suggestions for other benefits are good and I think the suggested price point is good also.

I don't understand the coding details myself, but isn't Linden Lab already checking how much land one has available before they allow someone to get a 1024 m parcel? Let's say for instance that Joe Gerbil is a Premium member who has donated 512 m of his tier to a group. He has 512 m available to use and decides to get a 512 m Bellisseria home. He is recognized by his Premium code as being able to use Premium sandboxes and to request a Linden Home, but he can only get a 512 m one because his other 512 m is already allotted elsewhere. 

[MoiraKathleen]

4 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

I don't understand the coding details myself, but isn't Linden Lab already checking how much land one has available before they allow someone to get a 1024 m parcel? Let's say for instance that Joe Gerbil is a Premium member who has donated 512 m of his tier to a group. He has 512 m available to use and decides to get a 512 m Bellisseria home. He is recognized by his Premium code as being able to use Premium sandboxes and to request a Linden Home, but he can only get a 512 m one because his other 512 m is already allotted elsewhere. 

They check to see if you have enough available tier for the Linden Home you choose, but in terms of your example, currently you can donate 512 sqm and still get a 1024 sqm Bellisseria  home as long as you have increased your tier level and agree to pay for the additional tier above the initial 1024 sqm on your dashboard Land Manager page.  Just about every time I have had a Bellisseria home I have usually owned at least 2048 sqm of mainland as well.

 

20 minutes ago, purrrkitten said:

How about just an option where you can get a last name by paying a one time fee without joining premium.

If all you want to do is change your name, my understanding is that you just need to be premium at the time you actually make the name change.  Once changed, the name stays whether you are premium or not later on. So you could just go premium for 1 month, making the name change during that month. 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

1 hour ago, purrrkitten said:

How about just an option where you can get a last name by paying a one time fee without joining premium.

It was an entirely intentional decision by the marketing team to put name changes behind Premium. They want you to try it while you're at it and possibly find a reason to keep the subscription.

At best they might add a combo to get your name change in one purchase -- one month of Premium included.

 

On topic; isn't the land tier the most valuable part of Premium? Before the price increase, Premium actually paid for itself with the tier + stipend.

I don't really have any suggestions about that because I've never had interest in any the perks. (If you want land (outside of Bellisseria), renting is cheaper.) Name changes are still really close, but I just don't care enough to pay for Premium first.

Edited March 12, 2022 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Coffee Pancake]

45 minutes ago, MoiraKathleen said:

Once changed, the name stays whether you are premium or not later on. So you could just go premium for 1 month, making the name change during that month. 

Which makes a name change the better part of $50.

It's obscene.

It should be a no brainer vanity purchase and easily accessible to everyone.

 

[Quistess Alpha]

2 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Which makes a name change the better part of $50.

It's obscene.

It should be a no brainer vanity purchase and easily accessible to everyone.

If you want people to change their name more often, perhaps you kind viewer people could find a way to tie people's personal settings and chat logs to their UUID rather than their username?

If the cost were a lot less, I'd probably consider getting another name and switching between names more often. . .

[purrrkitten]

2 hours ago, MoiraKathleen said:

If all you want to do is change your name, my understanding is that you just need to be premium at the time you actually make the name change.  Once changed, the name stays whether you are premium or not later on. So you could just go premium for 1 month, making the name change during that month. 

I know how it works. But I'm not going to pay for premium and then the extra $39.99 for a name change. That's ridiculous. Worth it for some but not for me. I would like to just pay for a name change because I don't want or need premium. I'm probably not alone in this. I'm sure there are a lot of people who signed up during the username era who would like a last name.

[Prokofy Neva]

3 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Linden Lab has been pushing for a Premium Plus subscription Level, which I'm sure some people would pay to have. I think given the current rates of inflation and Instability in the RL world however, many would prefer an option between the free Basic level and the current Premium level.

I'm proposing a new "Standard" or "Economy" level midway in cost and benefits to the Premium level. For $ 60/ year instead of $ 99/ year people could get 512 m of land, 56 groups, and $L 150/ week in stipend. I think they could get the same access to Premium sandboxes and gifts, because nobody really cares about that stuff much anyway. Maybe they could have the same level of customer support? Linden Lab could make more 512 m parcels in Bellisseria to support this new level and independent landlords could rent out more 512 m skyboxes, cottages, apartments and tiny homes. 

What do you think? Do we need a Level between Basic and Premium? If so, what do you think the cost and benefits should be?

I think this is a great idea because the Newbrooke homes have a 512 m2 parcel option and they are actually very spacious and don't feel cramped, especially the one-story version.

I have an old alt that gets $50 a week because at one time in their history, the Lindens decided that not just premium accounts should get stipends, but non-premiums should, so it gets $50. It gets eaten up in group search/places fees, but still. 

There has been speculation about Premium Plus that it might be so Plus, that it has non-land options that would only be groups, discount uploads, content, whatever. But somehow I don't think the Lindens will do that.

Their revenue is based in land. They don't like that, but it's reality.

[Mollymews]

3 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Linden Lab has been pushing for a Premium Plus subscription Level, which I'm sure some people would pay to have. I think given the current rates of inflation and Instability in the RL world however, many would prefer an option between the free Basic level and the current Premium level.

I'm proposing a new "Standard" or "Economy" level midway in cost and benefits to the Premium level. For $ 60/ year instead of $ 99/ year people could get 512 m of land, 56 groups, and $L 150/ week in stipend

i like this.  Only variation I would suggest is $US5 a month or $US50 per annum.  There a quite a few people on fixed lower incomes (pensioners, sickness beneficiaries, etc) who would like this

$US10 a month doesn't sound much to many people but it is too quite a few people on fixed incomes. For half that ($5) can get a tiny home and a little bit of spending money. If Linden did this then I would be very happy for the people able to have this 

[Setsuki Takeda]

3 hours ago, purrrkitten said:

How about just an option where you can get a last name by paying a one time fee without joining premium.

Or include one change when you join premium...

 

I didn't want to pay extra when I joined, but eventually I just couldn't stand that *stupid* "Resident" name, so I ended up paying $39.99 for something that would have been included if I created an account as premium in the beginning.

 

Of course I wasn't sure I was staying until I had already built out an entire city in SL and owned so many buildings, furnishings, and landscaping items that it would cost me more than a stimulus check to add all the stuff I owned to a new avatar even if I didn't get the "I should not have bought that" junk again.

 

Or just go back to letting people use a real name when they sign up even if they're free, but then the seven-hundred and thirty-five million alts that make up most of the SL avatars would eat all the premium names.

[purrrkitten]

4 minutes ago, NanashiNyx said:

Or include one change when you join premium...

 

I didn't want to pay extra when I joined, but eventually I just couldn't stand that *stupid* "Resident" name, so I ended up paying $39.99 for something that would have been included if I created an account as premium in the beginning.

 

Of course I wasn't sure I was staying until I had already built out an entire city in SL and owned so many buildings, furnishings, and landscaping items that it would cost me more than a stimulus check to add all the stuff I owned to a new avatar even if I didn't get the "I should not have bought that" junk again.

 

Or just go back to letting people use a real name when they sign up even if they're free, but then the seven-hundred and thirty-five million alts that make up most of the SL avatars would eat all the premium names.

I've been here for 8 years so I know I'm staying lol.

I don't like being "resident" but I think the way to change it is ridiculous so I'll keep it. I think it was stupid to get rid of last names in the first place.

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Quistess Alpha said:

If you want people to change their name more often, perhaps you kind viewer people could find a way to tie people's personal settings and chat logs to their UUID rather than their username?

The viewer doesn't know the UUID associated with a name till it's told it which creates a chicken and egg situation with regard to loading preferences, and we don't want to have a situation where you log in with a new name, and the viewer then forcefully demands you relog because it now knows who you are.

Half the people wont read (or wont understand, language issues, etc) the viewer asking nicely, and if we force a restart then they will presume it was a crash, and then come to the conclusion that their new and expensive name is somehow broken (and then do something random as the next step, like try to log in with a different viewer!). Having helped a few people go though the process myself, the high cost adds a huge fear factor, that they might screw it up and lose everything.

For chat logs there is less of worry about creating a mess, however when we've gone over anything relating to logs we always end up back at usernames are human readable, UUIDs are not. People like to viewer hop and they take their chatlogs very seriously. As it stands, the files are self explanatory and the viewer interface to them very simple. Users can mess with chat logs to their hearts content and so long as the viewer can find the file it wants when it wants it, everything just works.

 

I'm not saying the process shouldn't be smoother or can't be made smoother, we're just exceptionally wary about making it worse, especially factoring in viewer hopping.

[LittleMe Jewell]

4 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

I don't understand the coding details myself, but isn't Linden Lab already checking how much land one has available before they allow someone to get a 1024 m parcel? Let's say for instance that Joe Gerbil is a Premium member who has donated 512 m of his tier to a group. He has 512 m available to use and decides to get a 512 m Bellisseria home. He is recognized by his Premium code as being able to use Premium sandboxes and to request a Linden Home, but he can only get a 512 m one because his other 512 m is already allotted elsewhere. 

In thinking about it, they have already fully separated out the options that are on 512 plots via applicable Bellisseria choices (Newbrooke 512 is a different select than Newbrooke 1024), so they would just need to add some coding to ensure that you cannot select anything except a 512 Linden Home, even if you were willing to pay more for extra tier.  At least that is the restriction I would associate with this. 

They'd then have to re-code the way extra tier is currently paid for.  Right now it simply takes the total that you have used and subtracts out 1024 and you pay for the rest.  They'd have to modify that a bit to subtract either 512 or 1024 depending on your status ---- they might actually already have something like that in the works if their upcoming Premium Plus is going to offer more tier.

[Sid Nagy]

9 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Which makes a name change the better part of $50.

It's obscene.

It should be a no brainer vanity purchase and easily accessible to everyone.

 

LL is a business so there has to be a profit.  So there have to be price tags on everything they offer: land \ tier, L$ transaction fees, marketplace fees, name change, premium account.  Every commercial company (LL is one too) wants to make as much profit as possible. That's why they are in business.

We as users do often things for Second Life more for the fun of it than anything else, because we love what the platform has to offer to us.
LL loves what the platform has to offer too: The existence of their company, because profit.

Edited March 12, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Coffee Pancake]

5 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

LL is a business so there has to be a profit.  So there have to be price tags on everything they offer: land \ tier, L$ transaction fees, marketplace fees, name change, premium account.  Every commercial company (LL is one too) wants to make as much profit as possible. That's why they are in business.

We as users do often things for Second Life more for the fun of it than anything else, because we love what the platform has to offer to us.
LL loves what the platform has to offer too: The existence of their company, because profit.

I hope everyone will remind you of this if you ever complain about the price of anything ever again.

[Sid Nagy]

32 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

I hope everyone will remind you of this if you ever complain about the price of anything ever again.

Understanding how things work, doesn't have to make me happy with how they work, does it?

[Coffee Pancake]

6 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

Understanding how things work, doesn't have to make me happy with how they work, does it?

Unless Linden Lab are manually changing your name all over the database (something they made a point of saying they weren't doing!), then the $50 fee is for an automated process.

Would you pay $50 for your marketplace purchases to get moved to your avatars inventory ?

How much would you pay to be teleported to a different region?

Should IM's be charged by the character or the byte?

[StarlanderGoods]

3 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Unless Linden Lab are manually changing your name all over the database (something they made a point of saying they weren't doing!), then the $50 fee is for an automated process.

Would you pay $50 for your marketplace purchases to get moved to your avatars inventory ?

How much would you pay to be teleported to a different region?

Should IM's be charged by the character or the byte?

Yes, but have you thought about freemarketeconomicslandofoportunitytrickledownpullsyourselfbythebootstrapslibertarians ?

[Jennifer Boyle]

8 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

LL is a business so there has to be a profit.  So there have to be price tags on everything they offer: land \ tier, L$ transaction fees, marketplace fees, name change, premium account.  Every commercial company (LL is one too) wants to make as much profit as possible. That's why they are in business.

We as users do often things for Second Life more for the fun of it than anything else, because we love what the platform has to offer to us.
LL loves what the platform has to offer too: The existence of their company, because profit.

Charging too high a price for something can lower, not increase, profits. I forget what economists call the concept, but when the price is zero, or the price is so high that sales are zero, profit is zero, but somewhere between, there is a sweet spot where the product of sales and price is maximized. It's speculation, of course, but it seems to me that $39.95 for a name change is way above the sweet spot. I also think LL missed an opportunity to make more money by not offering an option to change one's last name to that of another account, which would appeal to a lot of partnered people and people who RP family relationships.

I think LL made a big mistake by offering free accounts with a full feature set that last forever, and in their place, I would, at least, place more limits on NEW free accounts---things like inventory size, number of friends, number of saved offline emails, number IMs forwarded to email, number of picks, access to the beta grid, amount of Linden dollars that can be bought or owned, or, just limit the time they can continue as free with full features, e.g., to one year. It might even be  better to offer the highest level account free for one year and, after that, put reduced limits on it, so new people would get used to having the full feature set. I don't know if it's technically feasible, but, if so, they might consider limits on attachment points and clothing layers, building tools, maximum quality of graphics, and, even, time online per day or number of free accounts that can be in a sim at the same time. I would also, when introducing new features, consider limiting them to paid accounts, if technically feasible. If they did this, they would need to have a lower level paid account than the current premium, maybe something like the current basic account for $3.00 per month or $30.00 per year.

[LittleMe Jewell]

While I don't really like the price increases that LL has done over the years and I've not always agreed with some of the other things they've done, the Name Change fee is probably the only one where I think they truly did make a HUGE mistake in pricing.  Based on comments in the forums and the changes my Friends have done, I have no doubt that they do get quite a few people paying the price.  However, I really think that if they had made it available to non-Premiums and charged $25-30, they'd actually make more money off it in the long run.  While I have heard that they wanted to price it so that the name changes did not overwhelm the servers, I really do thing that a total fee of $25-30 would still accomplish that.

Edited March 12, 2022 by LittleMe Jewell

[Marigold Devin]

18 hours ago, purrrkitten said:

I've been here for 8 years so I know I'm staying lol.

I don't like being "resident" but I think the way to change it is ridiculous so I'll keep it. I think it was stupid to get rid of last names in the first place.

You have a fab name and don't need a last name - like Madonna and Cher - but I agree with you, LL never should have got rid of last names in the first place.

[Sid Nagy]

4 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Unless Linden Lab are manually changing your name all over the database (something they made a point of saying they weren't doing!), then the $50 fee is for an automated process.

Would you pay $50 for your marketplace purchases to get moved to your avatars inventory ?

How much would you pay to be teleported to a different region?

Should IM's be charged by the character or the byte?

The moment I think Second Life costs more than I can justify for myself, I'm out.
It is just entertainment and hobby.

One thing is for sure, since LL has the new over lords they try to increase their profits, more than they try to really improve the platform.
We are paying for the Sansar failure, not for added quality.

Edited March 12, 2022 by Sid Nagy