SL new user retention, expectation and usability

[EliseAnne85]

I, for the life of me, cannot remember my first ten minutes here in SL.  But, I do think it was more affordable back then when we had the Classic avatars.  I didn't even know about buying a skin for my Classic avatar until about a month or so later and the cost for a skin was about 10 dollars on average for a Classic  avatar.  And, then later I found about AO'S for the avis and bought one of those.  And, so on and on.

I didn't expect everything at once as Lindal suggested in this thread.  I took it slow and was fine with it.  But, today it is a different world with tons of video games that do deliver swiftly. 

I wish I had some insight as to what turns people off in the first ten minutes because I am wondering why or what it is myself.  

What's kept me here is the virtual art created by all these amazing people here that work for SL, and the music and meeting people from all over the world.

[JeromFranzic]

I'd been thinking of coming in world for several years, before the spring of 2021. I do have previous experiences with some mmorpg's, but haven't played them for several years. I have had a few close friends try SL recently. They all left due to the graphical and lag issues, as well as difficulty dealing with controls and the complexity of setting up things. I stuck around because I liked what I was experiencing (especially the visual art and in world games), and because I guess I'm a glutton for some forms of technical punishment LOL.

I do wish there was more socializing going on outside of clubs... to that end, maybe it's just me but I've talked to more people over at Open Sim vs SL. I'm OK with being a loner in world, gives me more time to mess with stuff as a nomad. Hehe! I know, I should join some builders clubs or something but I'm looking after relatives currently, outside of my day gig in IT, so that ain't happening for now 😕

What else... Thats all I've got. See ya later.

Edited August 15, 2022 by JeromFranzic

[Nalates Urriah]

Did you know…

SL is now 19-years old. For an online ‘game’ that is exceptional. (Ref) GameRant.com rates SL 8^th of 16 in old surviving online games.

The Game Rant image used suggests sex is a part of SL, IMO.

Did you know in these 19 years numerous serious studies of SL have been done. We know what gets people into SL, how long they stay, and why they stay. I think one of the best studies is Longevity in Second Life, by Chun-Yuen Teng and Lada A. Adamic at the School of Information, University of Michigan. (©2010) They obtained access to user metrics from the Lab.

Did you know the signup rates are through the roof? Obviously, the Lab’s A-B testing for the signup process has resulted in an excellent and effective process. But retention sucks. If you have followed the studies, you understand why that is so and why it is so hard to do anything about it.

Did you know that during the life time of SL Linden Lab has been testing and experimenting with all the processes making up SL. They read the published studies and do many of their own. So, all the stuff being suggested in this thread has been tried, tested, and experimented with.

Did you know, today testing and experimenting are ongoing? While we don’t get to see the data, which the Lab considers proprietary, it is there. We know new management people are exposed to it, it being historical and current data, from some of the things people like Ebb have said.

Of course, the Lab has the problem of often misunderstanding the stats. It is a common problem among people relying on stats more than personal first-hand experience. But, the problem we users have is understanding our personal experience and trying to project it on to ALL of the other SL users without any significant quantity of actual objective data. If there were a way to mix the knowledge and experience of the two groups, we would likely have some good or better solutions.

Did you know every so often we have this thread/discussion of what Lab needs to do to make SL more popular? It is usually filled with the new… or at least NEWER… users suggesting all the stuff previously tried, which they missed out on. And there are the older   …more experienced users that were oblivious to what was going on making their suggestions.

The majority of those participating in the discussion have never made nor run an online game nor bothered to look to see what studies have been done regarding the issue they are commenting on. Also, they base their positions and thinking on little or no data other than their personal observation. Basically assuming what they see is true for everyone. I think that is rational I just don't believe it is true/accurate.

Did you know you can build a region for new users? Someone in a previous post noticed that a new user landing area was not owned by the Lab. That is one of them. Did you know Firestorm owns and maintains a new user landing region? The Lab made these available so those that thought they had a better idea for retaining users could put it into practice. The Lab adjusts their signup system to send new-signups to those various privately owned regions as well as the Lab’s. New signups get spread around. The owner and Lab watch the stats to see how those experiments go. Anyone have those stats?

Do you know what keeps people in SL?

Do you know what the average life expectancy is for an SL users? My best data comes from 2010. Yours?

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

Maybe, in the first 10 minutes, newbies come to realize that SL isn't as pretty as they thought it would be, based on some pretty pictures on Flicker, or as shown in some promotional videos, and think: "well that was all a bunch of misleading advertising".

Also, how does the SL new user retention rate compare to other massive multi-player online platforms? I remember ditching WoW and ARK pretty darn quickly, quite unlike SL.

[Arielle Popstar]

41 minutes ago, Nalates Urriah said:

 

Did you know that during the life time of SL Linden Lab has been testing and experimenting with all the processes making up SL. They read the published studies and do many of their own. So, all the stuff being suggested in this thread has been tried, tested, and experimented with.

I've never seen an S/L Viewer Group that would make it so much easier to get help with the viewer even for experienced members. There is a reason Firestorm is the most popular viewer on the grid and that is in a large part because of its ongoing support to its users.

I've never seen an Live Chat button for new or old users in the S/L viewer.

I've never seen the walk/run/fly ui being up by default. Since every new download of the S/L viewer reverts to default behaviour necessitating reconfiguring it to my preferences, I would have seen it being up regardless of my previous settings.

I've never seen a graphically oriented Inventory interface, so again another idea presented here which to our best collective knowledge the Lab has not tried.

Ps- when it comes to S/L's longevity I would venture the reason for that is that they have not had to rely on the average resident to make their money but rather made the majority of its money from its land sales and that alone explains its age. This has also allowed them to be not too concerned with updating the viewer UI and instituting creator policies to make content more consistent and reduce the overall steep learning curve.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Arielle Popstar

[Madelaine McMasters]

35 minutes ago, Nalates Urriah said:

Did you know the signup rates are through the roof? Obviously, the Lab’s A-B testing for the signup process has resulted in an excellent and effective process. But retention sucks. If you have followed the studies, you understand why that is so and why it is so hard to do anything about it.

I remember Mark Kingdon beaming with pride over increasing new user signups from 20K to 30K/day. At the same time, concurrency was falling. If you know you're not keeping the customers who try your product, it makes no sense to bring in more. It makes even less sense to be happy about it.

Retention is indeed the hard problem. Improve that before drawing in more people to discover you haven't improved that.

 

[Bree Giffen]

I'd suggest that the downloaded SL client contain an asset pack that contains everything for the initial regions and avatars. Perhaps this will help with the initial experience of lag as everything is loaded from the resident's computer. People are used to downloading large setup files when they start a game. I just downloaded a hundred gigabytes recently from a Steam purchase and it downloaded quietly in the background as I continued to use my computer.

Essentially the new resident is playing and learning in their own little sandbox. Maybe the next step is to introduce other new players into that sandbox and then finally send people on their way into the SL world. To set expectations, several notices would warn people of how the world works (everything is player made) and how everything is loading from the cloud. 

As far as sending people off and meeting new random people there could be a Nexus where everyone could start from and even the most experienced residents would occasionally have to start back in the Nexus where they could accidentally bump into people on purpose. 

[Seicher Rae]

I think one of the best studies is Longevity in Second Life, by Chun-Yuen Teng and Lada A. Adamic at the School of Information, University of Michigan. (©2010)

It is sad that the best study (public domain) is from 2010. So their info was probably gathered from 2009 and earlier (just guessing, based on how studies are often done). Gosh, because nothing talked about in this thread has changed in 12+ years. Misleading ads and photoshopped photos in Flickr vs the old style graphics inworld. Etc. That may have been a cutting edge study back in the day, now it'll make a good coaster.

I think @Inara Pey's post had a lot of good, food for thought, but like some others are commenting, there's another side to it, too. Like when, where, how, how long and on whom did all of these suggestions get tried? (Since they are not new suggestions and yet they keep coming up over the years?)

SL has always had a large retention problem and it seems to be getting worse.

And yes, it is pretty amazing SL is still here... and so are we. (I will repeat I was 12 when I joined, 13 years ago...)

 

Edited August 15, 2022 by Seicher Rae

[Andred Darwin]

1 hour ago, Nalates Urriah said:

Did you know that during the life time of SL Linden Lab has been testing and experimenting with all the processes making up SL. They read the published studies and do many of their own. So, all the stuff being suggested in this thread has been tried, tested, and experimented with.

Really? For a long time SL has been "adding" and "trying" new "half baked" stuff and leaving many others behind... attract new users and leave them with bad performance... crashes, mainland pretty much somewhat abandoned... do whatever you want policy... of course they didn't not retain anyone, many here have been raising these issues for a long time... but things changed or at least seem to be changing now... recent viewers and servers overall are performing much better... seems to be going to new direction... even though many in management are still the ones since SL started going down ( which for me started in 2010 with Rod,. then Sansar,  list could go really long ... ), also, SL was never "affordable"... regions had a setup fee of over U$ 1000, maintenance fee of over U$ 300.... by the time they started lowering the price... the image was already twisted... expensive, low performance, somewhat offensive ... ( Sex games only!?)

I think SL's orange has a lot more juice to give! 

My point is, I think if they continue to work on the basic stuff ( improved performance, etc ), fix critical issues (in-world search and discovery, group /social functionality) and make SL more affordable ( is pretty close... at least not as bad at it used to be), then SL may even grow by itself... COVID, although very unfortunate in RL, gave a boost to SL, this metaverse hype, also giving some visibility to SL, Philip is to an extent, back with SL .... otherwise... Deja Vu again... economy, transactions going down, people who came back... just leaving... 

Edited August 15, 2022 by Andred Darwin

[Luna Bliss]

1 hour ago, Nalates Urriah said:

Did you know…

 

SL is now 19-years old. For an online ‘game’ that is exceptional. (Ref) GameRant.com rates SL 8^th of 16 in old surviving online games.

 

 

 

The Game Rant image used suggests sex is a part of SL, IMO.

 

Did you know in these 19 years numerous serious studies of SL have been done. We know what gets people into SL, how long they stay, and why they stay. I think one of the best studies is Longevity in Second Life, by Chun-Yuen Teng and Lada A. Adamic at the School of Information, University of Michigan. (©2010) They obtained access to user metrics from the Lab.

 

Did you know the signup rates are through the roof? Obviously, the Lab’s A-B testing for the signup process has resulted in an excellent and effective process. But retention sucks. If you have followed the studies, you understand why that is so and why it is so hard to do anything about it.

 

Did you know that during the life time of SL Linden Lab has been testing and experimenting with all the processes making up SL. They read the published studies and do many of their own. So, all the stuff being suggested in this thread has been tried, tested, and experimented with.

 

Did you know, today testing and experimenting are ongoing? While we don’t get to see the data, which the Lab considers proprietary, it is there. We know new management people are exposed to it, it being historical and current data, from some of the things people like Ebb have said.

 

Of course, the Lab has the problem of often misunderstanding the stats. It is a common problem among people relying on stats more than personal first-hand experience. But, the problem we users have is understanding our personal experience and trying to project it on to ALL of the other SL users without any significant quantity of actual objective data. If there were a way to mix the knowledge and experience of the two groups, we would likely have some good or better solutions.

 

Did you know every so often we have this thread/discussion of what Lab needs to do to make SL more popular? It is usually filled with the new… or at least NEWER… users suggesting all the stuff previously tried, which they missed out on. And there are the older   …more experienced users that were oblivious to what was going on making their suggestions.

 

The majority of those participating in the discussion have never made nor run an online game nor bothered to look to see what studies have been done regarding the issue they are commenting on. Also, they base their positions and thinking on little or no data other than their personal observation. Basically assuming what they see is true for everyone. I think that is rational I just don't believe it is true/accurate.

 

Did you know you can build a region for new users? Someone in a previous post noticed that a new user landing area was not owned by the Lab. That is one of them. Did you know Firestorm owns and maintains a new user landing region? The Lab made these available so those that thought they had a better idea for retaining users could put it into practice. The Lab adjusts their signup system to send new-signups to those various privately owned regions as well as the Lab’s. New signups get spread around. The owner and Lab watch the stats to see how those experiments go. Anyone have those stats?

 

 

 

Do you know what keeps people in SL?

Do you know what the average life expectancy is for an SL users? My best data comes from 2010. Yours?

So how in the world did we get Sansar out of all this knowledge?

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

14 hours ago, Seicher Rae said:

When I brought up SL something like 5-7+ years ago (I'm horrible with time ranges, it is a bit of denial I use), I would get either the "never heard of it" or "haha! isn't that the game for computer sex?" To which I would huffily reply that sure, a small percentage of people do that, but it is all about building and exploring and art and socializing all over the world and music and... all the while keeping silent about my BDSM connection in SL.   However, I digress... but now, it isn't even the snicker about the "computer sex game." It is flat out, no one has heard of it.

Every time I get that reaction, I just go, "Oh, ok" and drop it. Then I think, "Gosh, I'd bet LL's marketing team would be thrilled to know that here's another one."

A few I told asked about the computer sex thing.  I told them that's only a small part.  The bigger thing is live music!

At my RL bar we used to simulcast the game on our TVs when my man DJed at some clubs. We'd get asked questions about that. That ended when we pulled mostly out of SL except for occasional visits in world. 

The last time when I was at the bar I got asked "What was the cartoon world you guys played in? I want legs!"  Think he was referring to HalfatarBook!

[diamond Marchant]

16 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

What I want to talk about is new user expectation and usability.

1. Thanks Coffee, great topic.

2. We are all subject to survivorship bias in threads like this.

3. I have no idea what is going on before the first 10 minutes. Why does a protonoob type http://www.secondlife.com and press ENTER? (I would be shocked to discover that SL marketing has anything to do with that) This forms the expectation.

4. The first 10 minutes needs to get some good (addictive)  brain chemistry going on. 

5. The "I'm here because of a friend" story should not be underestimated. Having a "friend anchor" in SL generates favorable brain chemistry.

6. So does sex.

Edited August 15, 2022 by diamond Marchant

[Lindal Kidd]

15 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Isn't that what AFK places are?

Well, I was being facetious when I mentioned a "Newbie SeX Hotel". And the answer is yes, they are...but remember, the newbie horndog doesn't have any money. If we did have an NSH, it would be free for avs under 30 days.

Not that I think LL would sponsor such a facility. Frankly, I was surprised when they put up that Introduction to Skill Games Island place.

[Ceka Cianci]

8 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

I think that's random chance (? maybe locale based, iono)  .. the last alt I rolled to look at the new user experience wasn't a user build, it was a Linden one.

 

How long ago was that?

My alt is still there..I would say there was at least 20 others that landed there last night in the short time i spent there.

I thought I would see if my main could teleport there.. At first It wouldn't let me go to that sim, saying  you can't go back to welcome island.. So I tried Central Park which is the sim on the other side of the bridge..

It let me TP there, then let me walk across the bridge to the start point where new users were still coming in.

I've made alts and done this the last three years, I did it a few years ago as well couple of times.. It's the first time I've ever seen or heard of a user running an entry point for new members. let alone us ever being able to have access to new users coming in.

Either way, the two things that concerns me most is, the first choice they are given, which is after the barest minimum of key commands is, do you want to go to the right where you can socialize, which is going over the bridge and out into the world, or do you want to go left and finish the tutorials..

The other is, My main character that's been in world for a long time can just walk over the bridge and have access to fresh users just getting into the world for the first time. If I can do it, so can the bad elements of SL that we know, that love to prey on new users.

It's their world  and they can hand the responsibility off like they did when they opened up the info hubs if they want.. 

I just think it's taking things in the wrong direction and not putting their best effort towards the problem.

Rather than using some users lagged out sim where textures are blurring up constantly when trying to read the information boards, because of the resource taxing stuff jammed in there to try and make it feel like a paradise.I swear there was so much stuff in there in such a small area.

They should open up one of them new slick sims made for events, for a much smoother experience.

I would be looking at a board that finally rezzed, and it would keep going in and out of focus.

I never seen so many users as ghosts in a long time like I did last night..

Sorry if I'm coming off as frustrated, but I went in there in the mindset of a new user, even used the SL viewer. Didn't touch anything until I learned it from the boards..

It left me with more concerned about the problem, than I started with. it feels like things went backwards instead of forward.

 

 

 

[Coffee Pancake]

2 hours ago, Jackson Redstar said:

1) Initial Lag
2) The UI - way to hard to understand simple things

3)What to do and where to go

The last time I spun up at alt to see the new user experience, there wasn't any appreciable lag .. not anything like what we deal with day to day visiting places. I can't comment on the stock UI being so familiar with it

.. although as someone who doesn't use firestorm aside from rare testing purposes (RLVa etc), I find the UI to that impenetrable and confusing because they rename literally everything, move it about and then add 3 million extra options. As soon as the task at hand is accomplished I'm tapping out and cursing.

"What next" is a big question for brand new users, but I think the question that's asked in the first few minutes isn't necessarily the same as when it's asked 30 minutes in. 'What TF is this' vs 'Where TF is everyone'.

 

1 hour ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Maybe, in the first 10 minutes, newbies come to realize that SL isn't as pretty as they thought it would be, based on some pretty pictures on Flicker, or as shown in some promotional videos, and think: "well that was all a bunch of misleading advertising".

This is a big one, SL on flickr looks amazing .. going from that to in world is a huge step down. It's something that's instantly apparent and will register as a deception.

1 hour ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Also, how does the SL new user retention rate compare to other massive multi-player online platforms? I remember ditching WoW and ARK pretty darn quickly, quite unlike SL.

WoW has crazy good retention and has been going forever, is slowly dropping off and losing ground to FF, but that's mainly because the last couple of expansions have fallen flat. Everyone comes back for the next expansion just in case it's good, and that's not cheap.

The brand new user experience in WoW wasn't great. You would get dumped in old content and then have to weave your way though half a dozen different expansions to level just so you could find everyone else and play current content. They have over hauled this and made it a far more cohesive "single expansion" experience. WoW is also night and day different with a friend.

As for brand new user guidance, it's exceptional .. you're drip fed in baby steps. If starting solo, you're more likely to quit because you got bored rather than some WTF reason.

 

14 minutes ago, Bree Giffen said:

I'd suggest that the downloaded SL client contain an asset pack that contains everything for the initial regions and avatars. Perhaps this will help with the initial experience of lag as everything is loaded from the resident's computer. People are used to downloading large setup files when they start a game. I just downloaded a hundred gigabytes recently from a Steam purchase and it downloaded quietly in the background as I continued to use my computer.

As I mentioned above, I didn't notice this as a huge issue with the Linden new user regions, but I think this idea has some legs for the rest of us. I wouldn't mind having a button to "fetch this location" that ran off and downloaded an asset pack to seed the cache for where ever I was .. of course that requires a working cache, um .. 

11 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

So how in the world did we get Sansar out of all this knowledge?

I think Sansar was built with a long list of lessons leant from SL in mind, the problem was the people who decided what half there lessons were didn't use SL or didn't like us or our fun.

 

 

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

40 minutes ago, Bree Giffen said:

I'd suggest that the downloaded SL client contain an asset pack that contains everything for the initial regions and avatars. Perhaps this will help with the initial experience of lag as everything is loaded from the resident's computer. People are used to downloading large setup files when they start a game. I just downloaded a hundred gigabytes recently from a Steam purchase and it downloaded quietly in the background as I continued to use my computer.

I wish the official SL client you could customise to make it like the old school version 1 viewer. One reason I liked using Singularity, although that one doesn't seem to be updated anymore. The way the official client is --- it fries my old ancient brain figuring it out!

[Lindal Kidd]

15 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

Instant gratification.   That's what is lacking for new people and there really is no way for LL or anyone to fix that. 

I've always thought that, too. But, what if there WAS a way to give newcomers "instant gratification"? I mean, that's what Zuckerblob wants to do with his "Metaverse". I'd encourage LL to start thinking WAY outside the 19-year-old SL box.

The NUX avatars may be a start. The SL University video series is a start. And I'll repeat my earlier suggestion: a FREE 30 day Premium subscription. Make it like other free offers of this kind...after the 30 days, it auto-renews as a pay subscription. Include a big box of clothes, hair, shoes, and stuff.

Arielle's suggestion of a GUI Inventory makes sense, too. Instead of every Object looking like a tiny cube, have a little snapshot of the item open up when hovering over it.

Oh, and a small thing...except for people under 18, set the default Maturity level preferences to G,M,A. Having to find out about that, find the settings (in THREE different places!), and change them is just one more little annoying barrier to the full SL experience.

[Coffee Pancake]

12 minutes ago, diamond Marchant said:

2. We are all subject to survivorship bias in threads like this.

Very much so, although some of us did fail the first time round.

12 minutes ago, diamond Marchant said:

3. I have no idea what is going on before the first 10 minutes. Why does a protonoob type http://www.secondlife.com and press ENTER? (I would be shocked to discover that SL marketing has anything to do with that) This forms the expectation.

4. The first 10 minutes needs to get some good (addictive)  brain chemistry going on. 

5. The "I'm here because of a friend" story should not be underestimated. Having a "friend anchor" in SL generates favorable brain chemistry.

6. So does sex.

My first successful session was the friend brain chemistry, I logged in the next day and because I'd been told how to fly and sit and teleport about got off to a great start .. and then found there was sex here. Social anxiety kept me from the "humping grounds" but once I started to get a feel for the culture it was everywhere, SL became a mystery to unpick by reading profiles.

[Lindal Kidd]

15 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

At first It wouldn't let me go to that sim, saying  you can't go back to welcome island.. So I tried Central Park which is the sim on the other side of the bridge..

It let me TP there, then let me walk across the bridge to the start point where new users were still coming in.

That's odd. Welcome Island 2 (currently the only LL Welcome Island) is not connected to any other regions physically. If you try to go back there after leaving, you get the message you saw, but you CAN return to an exact copy of it, called Welcome Back Island.

I'll have to have a look for this "Central Park" place.

[Seicher Rae]

7 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

find the settings (in THREE different places!), and change them is just one more little annoying barrier to the full SL experience.

I use Firestorm, so I don't know about the other viewers but omg, yes, this... for so many things. SOUND stuff is just stupid with how many places need to be lined up just right or it doesn't work. Voice. Animations... 

The viewers should probably load for newbs, with the navigation "panel" (what do you call that little box with the movement arrows?) the camera "panel" already displayed with a notice of what they are ... that would take 2 seconds for an oldbie to turn off. Hm. That's probably problematic for some reason programming-wise but still.

I want things quick and intuitive! Turn it on show me something to push. I hate reading directions. (Which is one reason I still am such a noob in here.)

[Ceka Cianci]

9 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

That's odd. Welcome Island 2 (currently the only LL Welcome Island) is not connected to any other regions physically. If you try to go back there after leaving, you get the message you saw, but you CAN return to an exact copy of it, called Welcome Back Island.

I'll have to have a look for this "Central Park" place.

Ya, this wasn't an LL owned welcome Island.. It is a user owned Welcome Island..

Central park is where it will let you land since you are already a member..Central park is the first place you go after Adventure Island.. Adventure Island is where the start point is and new users landing for the first time..

You can walk over the bridge to get to Adventure Island.

 

Edited August 15, 2022 by Ceka Cianci

[Coffee Pancake]

1 minute ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I've always thought that, too. But, what if there WAS a way to give newcomers "instant gratification"? I mean, that's what Zuckerblob wants to do with his "Metaverse". I'd encourage LL to start thinking WAY outside the 19-year-old SL box.

I'm not sure I agree with the instant gratification thing .. There has to be some kind of brain chemistry reward in the first session or they user wont ever come back, but that's no different than picking up a book if the first page doesn't grab you.

The idea that younger people have no attention span or aren't up for a challenge is garbage. Look at the huge success of Elden Ring .. a from-software game that spends most of it's time laughing in your face about how garbage you are and killing you.

 

1 minute ago, Lindal Kidd said:

The NUX avatars may be a start. The SL University video series is a start. And I'll repeat my earlier suggestion: a FREE 30 day Premium subscription. Make it like other free offers of this kind...after the 30 days, it auto-renews as a pay subscription. Include a big box of clothes, hair, shoes, and stuff.

Starter gifts get farmed (L$, Tier, GOH rolls). Don't think people wont spin up a new payment method to get 30 days free something over and over again.

People used to roll and run multiple new accounts just for the free L$. LL killed it when it inevitably got automated.

1 minute ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Arielle's suggestion of a GUI Inventory makes sense, too. Instead of every Object looking like a tiny cube, have a little snapshot of the item open up when hovering over it.

We can't do that, to see an object it must be placed in world somehow and rendered. Doing this comes with certain undesirable side effects - the object is no longer in inventory, scripts fire, attach points change, etc. To place an object in world and not have those things happen is wide open to object duplication vulnerabilities.

We can do it for BoM layer stuff, but only on the system avatar .. we have prototype code that does this and .. the end result is so far from expectations of what this should look like it got tossed straight on the garbage pile.

Arielle want's IMVU's inventory, the closest we have is the CTS wardrobe and that's involved and complicated to get working well, there is no way we can automate all the manual decision making that goes into setting that up.

1 minute ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Oh, and a small thing...except for people under 18, set the default Maturity level preferences to G,M,A. Having to find out about that, find the settings (in THREE different places!), and change them is just one more little annoying barrier to the full SL experience.

Yes please.

This needs to be really simple .. ask the user the first time they try to engage with an A region or search for A content if they want to update content preferences, and then just do that and move on.

[Bree Giffen]

I also think the building tools need to be updated. I've read in previous threads that many of us like to sit and build things. I used to sit and build all the time when I started. It was fun, interesting and really delved into the 'modding' aspect of gaming. I've seen kids stop playing the survival game in Minecraft and simply create things in the creative sandbox mode. The desire to build things exists in the younger generation. Better building leads to other aspects of SL such as becoming a merchant or building interesting regions.

[Ceka Cianci]

The first thing is they are going to want to know what to do and they need to know the controls..

Not just awsd or arrow keys.. this is what I learned last night before given the options of, go out in the world or learn more about the controls.

first board is aswd and arrows

Second board is, where the chat button is, how to type and the range of chat.

Third is, where the People button is and right clicking to get the sub menu and how to add friends.

The fourth is, Clicking the people button getting the menu and learning how to IM someone..

The fifth board is,

That's a big mistake right there.

 

 

Edited August 15, 2022 by Ceka Cianci

[Istelathis]

LL would need to do quite a lot of work to maintain higher user retention, as suggested earlier WASD should be the default to move around, the mouse should operate the same as it does in larger games so that people feel more comfortable with the transition, inventory needs to be updated and streamlined, a paper doll menu should be included to give users a preview of outfits they wish to put together, it is a lot of work that needs to be done.

Essentially, provide new users an experience they are familiar and comfortable with so that they can jump into the "game".  

 

It is funny whenever I get involved with an MMO for a few weeks and come back to SL, I feel a bit disoriented, I get used to looking around me while running via the mouse, it is not really that much of a pain for me, but for some people it is just out of the norm.  Same goes with inventory, what they need is familiarity to build off of.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Istelathis