Creator Arrogance

[Anna Salyx]

side tangent rant.  I use the M.Lara body.  Almost 3 years ago a significant update was released.  This included an update for the auto-hide script (v5).  The change to the AH tool ads some very significant QOL enhancements that cover a couple of my complaints about No-Mod clothing. 

• I can delete the script even if the clothing is No-Mod (which is often overlooked or bypassed by creator given "del scripts" options).
• I can *change* the AH settings to fit my own needs even if the clothing is No-Mod.
• It plays very nicely with other attachments that also want to authohide

and almost 3 years later major big name creators are still using the previous version of the AH script (v4) which doesn't always play nice, is sometimes put in the wrong link so they don't revert on detach, and you can't modify the settings or easily simply remove to use a BOM alpha layer instead.

I've asked nicely to some of the creators to please consider updating to using the new AH script.  literally those words "would you please considering updating to the M.Lara v5 autohide because it adds some nice features that v4 lacks.  thank you."  I've been met with crickets and almost 3 years later they are *still* putting out new products using the outdated script.

So, my plea: If you're making No-Mod clothing, when a new body version comes out that you are currently rigging for please please also check and see if there are new versions of the utility tools/scripts and if so, start using them instead of continuing to use outdated tech.  Is it too much to ask?

Side rant over, sorry for the diversion, I let you get back to your ongoing conversation.

Edited November 10, 2022 by Anna Salyx
fix typos

[Rick Nightingale]

@Salt Peppermint What disrespect are you referring to? As to being passive aggressive, I know what that means and I am usually careful to avoid sounding like that, except when I choose to. I do choose my words quite carefully. I find your tone a little passive-aggressive, implying that I am disrespectful and have a problem because I can't have things my way. Arguing for change and highlighting why and where there is a problem (in my opinion) is neither.

As for sellers not answering... yes, I've heard it all before. If after over two weeks (which I always allow - I have a RL too) with both NC and IM sent, a seller cannot answer a customer, perhaps they should reconsider running a business or hiring a CSR.

Edited November 11, 2022 by Rick Daylight

[Rick Nightingale]

13 minutes ago, Anna Salyx said:

side tangent rant...

My wife (and I since I do a lot for her) have that exact same issue, with the exact same non-reply from most sellers.

I will say that some time ago,  Elven Elder was kind enough to send my wife a version of clothing, modified as above at our request when we had that issue. Very quick it was too. That store has seen a lot more of our money (even though it is no-mod, lol).

[steeljane42]

54 minutes ago, Stephanie Lovely said:

Most creators are great to deal with. Some are downright awesome. I think the bad dealings stick in our memory more than the good ones. I will say that not everyone is cut out for customer service, and if you are a creator who does not have good people skills or you simply do not have the time to provide that service, it is time to get a good CSR.

Good CSRs are, well, good and useful. But since most creators don't consider SL their job, but more like a hobby, a lot of CSRs are often just their friends and many of them are rather terrible at "basic communication".

I didn't kept the track, but I'd say around 75% are great to deal with, the last 25% are 50/50 between useless and terrible, though. By useless I mean no answer/non-answer/not fixing anything even after accepting the fact there's a problem. Terrible ones are just rude, blame the user and so on. And yes, quite a few are passive-aggressive and overly protective of their "precious creator status" too and keep that "I know better, because I'm a creator" attitude. Those I don't deal with anymore if such experience happens.

[Rick Nightingale]

I'll just add one thing to balance some of the negativity in my post a few back. I had forgotten about this (which I feel bad about).

I spotted an item in a store that I really wanted. I had been looking for something like it for weeks. Turned out it was made by someone else, and was only sold as part of a full and very impressive skybox (the store was using it as the...store). I couldn't really afford to buy the whole thing, so messaged the creator to ask if it was available alone.

The upshot was that the creator was so kind as to give me a copy of the item for free (it wasn't sold alone). It made my day, as did just speaking with him. (and it had mod perms, lol).

There are some wonderful, kind, talented and just generally good people in SL. Loads of them. Some of them sell stuff no-mod and I still like them.

 

Edited November 10, 2022 by Rick Daylight

[Gabriele Graves]

Most creators haven't been great to deal with in my experience, some are, some are OK and yes there are definitely a few who are awesome but there are many who have been simply awful.  However like any population of people it will be a mixed bag and have awesome right down to lousy.

All that anyone can state are their own experiences.

From my own experiences:

* I have witnessed a lot of over-inflated egos and precious people.

* There are more than a few that are outright hostile to having to deal with customers for anything at all.  Even seemingly begrudging them a useable product and treating their payment as a tribute more than an equitable transaction.

* There appears to be an unspoken belief among many that criticism is a threat against them all which creates of lot of protectionism of each other and circling the wagons when there is a perceived threat whether real or imaginary.

* There are more than a few who love to play the victim and tell you all about how bad they have it.

* It's seems to be very common to weaponise bloggers and friends to silence criticism, valid or not.

* More than a few are happy to tell customers lies, make promises that they have no intention of keeping and other underhand behaviours in an attempt to avoid criticism from unhappy customers.

Finally, yes there have been some great creators and a few notably awesome people who I will forever remember fondly but in my experience the ugly it isn't limited to just a few "bad apples" it's endemic.

I believe that this comes down to how little customer protections there are built into SL and so unethical behaviours become common.

To anyone thinking of responding, please remember that these are my experiences, are perfectly valid and though your mileage may vary it does not invalidate mine.

Edited November 11, 2022 by Gabriele Graves

[Salt Peppermint]

On 11/7/2022 at 4:59 AM, Gabriele Graves said:

Yes people have the right to run their businesses however they please even if they decide to engage in shady practices and/or be indifferent or outright hostile to their customers.  They shouldn't be surprised though if their reputation and sales plummet as people discuss what they don't like about such businesses.

while this might be so with one or the other creator, those should be addressed directly imho. Generalizing it, includes also all those who have great business practices and work ethics, who truly care about their customers. I find that pretty unfair. 

there are black sheeps everywhere, in the end we all still are just human beings. 

[Gabriele Graves]

26 minutes ago, Salt Peppermint said:

while this might be so with one or the other creator, those should be addressed directly imho. Generalizing it, includes also all those who have great business practices and work ethics, who truly care about their customers. I find that pretty unfair. 

there are black sheeps everywhere, in the end we all still are just human beings. 

Life is unfair, you'll get over it.

[Qie Niangao]

11 hours ago, Salt Peppermint said:

I would highly recommend to start learnings meshing and texturing, it seems impossible to understand how much time , work and effort goes into that if you haven’t tried it yourself. Yes, even into different colourings. 

Every time I buy a fatpack I get a little twinge of sadness for the time spent by the creator choosing all those colors, when at best they've landed on some that will almost work with the outfits I'm trying to assemble. I really wish clothing creators would simply assume color choices need end-user tweaking because they always do.

This is one aspect where RL comparisons really don't apply. In RL, (unless we're dressing fashion models, maybe) an infinite palette isn't practical—we're not going to dye individual clothing features. But in SL we can, if we haven't been denied that ability by arbitrary permissions settings.

Of course there are other reasons to value Mod permission on clothing besides fine-tuning appearance, but color and materials is where one would expect SL fashion creators to most easily understand their customers' basic wants. And certainly some do.

(Also, I just have to say this: Yes, it takes time and effort to do a good job making SL clothing. Some of us do other things in SL that also take a lot of time and effort. Is it really necessary that we all spend our time making SL clothing? That might not be good for business, right?)

[Salt Peppermint]

 

17 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Every time I buy a fatpack I get a little twinge of sadness for the time spent by the creator choosing all those colors, when at best they've landed on some that will almost work with the outfits I'm trying to assemble. I really wish clothing creators would simply assume color choices need end-user tweaking because they always do.

This is one aspect where RL comparisons really don't apply. In RL, (unless we're dressing fashion models, maybe) an infinite palette isn't practical—we're not going to dye individual clothing features. But in SL we can, if we haven't been denied that ability by arbitrary permissions settings.

Of course there are other reasons to value Mod permission on clothing besides fine-tuning appearance, but color and materials is where one would expect SL fashion creators to most easily understand their customers' basic wants. And certainly some do.

(Also, I just have to say this: Yes, it takes time and effort to do a good job making SL clothing. Some of us do other things in SL that also take a lot of time and effort. Is it really necessary that we all spend our time making SL clothing? That might not be good for business, right?)

totally understandable and very valid point of view!

from my own experience, customers basic wants and needs vary by A LOT. what one finds amazing, another one finds useless to them. What one absolutely needs and wants, another doesn't care about at all. 

I started out as selling everything mod and after plenty of personal bad experiences which had nothing to do with things being copied or not, I had switched to no mod and my life had been so much easier since then. However, I changed my way of selling a few months ago and with that I went back to sell in mod perms again. Time will tell if I will continue this way or not. 

Edited November 11, 2022 by Salt Peppermint
typos, sorry

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

9 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I really wish clothing creators would simply assume color choices need end-user tweaking because they always do.

This is one of the areas in which PBR materials may actually help to improve matters (if creators can be persuaded to take advantage of it).

Unlike diffuse textures (which may contain information derived from a combination of the roughness/metalness of the surface and diffuse lighting & shading), albedo maps contain purely the base colour of the surface they're applied to, so by using a desaturated/grey-scale albedo map you can specify luminance values of the surface without adding any colour information and then allow the user to select the colour by tinting parts of the asset instead.  Since all the highlights and shading on objects are the result of the roughness, metalness, normal & AO maps, tinting the desaturated albedo map of a PBR material should have a more realistic effect than can be achieved with a diffuse map.

Certain games use a very similar approach for user-customizable content, although rather than individual faces/materials they employ an RGB mask to specify which areas of a texture/model should be colourized.

 

[Ceka Cianci]

Sorry, thought I was in a different thread.. hehehe

Edited November 11, 2022 by Ceka Cianci
Posted in the wrong thread..

[PheebyKatz]

I think a great take-away from all of the dicsussion in this thread is that seeing how the customer base in SL perceives many vendors gives a good idea of how to stand out as an exceptional vendor. Anyone who sells anything in SL can learn a lot if they put personal feelings aside for a moment and look at the reasons people give for what pleases or displeases them about the way they perceive ("most") vendors.

One wouldn't even have to change very much to please a greater number of people. Look at successful marketers, and how they can openly present what some might see as flaws or reasons to avoid buying, and others will see them as advantages and reasons to buy. Presentation isn't everything, but it's a big part of everything.

All feedback is good, even negative feedback. Not that I feel one should be a doormat, but you could do a lot worse than seeing what displeases people and why, and thinking of how to avoid displeasing them, or even how to make their day.

A customer once bought two of something that I sell with full permissions, I'm assuming as gifts for the kids. I sent them a message explaining that they didn't need to buy it twice, and that I was refunding one of their purchases because it would feel wrong to keep the money, knowing they never had to pay me twice.

The response I got almost made me cry. They were flabbergasted that a vendor was human enough to actually care, and to do something without being asked, when I could have just kept their money "like anyone else would have". They said they didn't care about the money as it was such a small amount (although 200L$ is a lot to some people, which is why I sent it back), but that my thoughtfulness had made their day. They ended up refusing the money and sent it back, with extra, as a bonus for "being the most genuine MP vendor I have met to date."

I've done this several times now, and only one person didn't respond. They probably thought I had made a mistake, and just kept quiet about it, feeling like they'd won something. And that's okay, too.

If vendors find they have a tarnished image in many people's minds, it may not be their fault, but they can certainly change it for the better. All you have to do is something unthinkable, like check your transaction history now and then for failed deliveries, send thank-you notecards out of the blue now and then, send a gift occasionally to someone who helps you discover a mistake in a listing, etc.

Even if nobody owes anybody anything, it just makes you stand out even more if you pay it forward when it's not even owed, and therefore totally unexpected. People like pleasant surprises. I may have a rinky-dink little MP, and it may all just be stupid junk and toys, but my customers love me. I actually had someone tell me they wished I charged more because it felt unfair to give me so little when others charge so much.

I guess if my RL depended on my online business I might be less inclined to be this way about things, but the same attitude always paid off in my RL work, also, so hmmm...

Edited November 11, 2022 by PheebyKatz

[EliseAnne85]

5 hours ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

This is one of the areas in which PBR materials may actually help to improve matters (if creators can be persuaded to take advantage of it).

Unlike diffuse textures (which may contain information derived from a combination of the roughness/metalness of the surface and diffuse lighting & shading), albedo maps contain purely the base colour of the surface they're applied to, so by using a desaturated/grey-scale albedo map you can specify luminance values of the surface without adding any colour information and then allow the user to select the colour by tinting parts of the asset instead.  Since all the highlights and shading on objects are the result of the roughness, metalness, normal & AO maps, tinting the desaturated albedo map of a PBR material should have a more realistic effect than can be achieved with a diffuse map.

Certain games use a very similar approach for user-customizable content, although rather than individual faces/materials they employ an RGB mask to specify which areas of a texture/model should be colourized.

 

I asked if Albedo was just tint or a color and was told no.  I posted a tutorial from YouTube on PBR and the finished content of a living room and said it looks mostly NOT textured but rather tinted.  And, the response I got was perhaps they forgot to texture it.  I also in my previous posts about PBR said I couldn't find any photos of PBR content.  So I put in the search bar just now PBR gaming content and went Oh my gawd!  Not a good Oh my gawd.  Many items looked shiny or bumpy like a dragon for example but the color looked flat just like it was tinted and not textured.

The PBR gaming content I saw was for more like war video games because you need metalness and roughness for weapons, not to mention the shiny.  Most clothes and wood furniture and a lot of things in real life and SL do NOT have roughness nor metalness.  

I'm not so sure PBR gaming looking content is what I want for SL.  I don't like it that shiny for one, nor tinted for two.  

Since I was told one could use a diffuse map instead of just tinting with the albedo, I then got to thinking it's going to be very realistic.

After looking at PBR gaming content, it's a bit blah and better suited for war games. 

LL should have done something with the brightness and the darkness because the brightness and the darkness had far, far more interesting 3D effects.  The brightness and the darkness in the SL editor could turn a 2D texture into one that had actual 3D effects.  Look at the textures of the clothing below - there is no 3D effect.

Here's one example of a PBR created object; it's very shiny but not my cup of tea...

Edited November 11, 2022 by EliseAnne85

[Salt Peppermint]

@EliseAnne85the PBR viewer is still in alpha stage, it's not released yet. it'll be a major game changer

[EliseAnne85]

2 minutes ago, Salt Peppermint said:

@EliseAnne85the PBR viewer is still in alpha stage, it's not released yet. it'll be a major game changer

I'm gathering that and have been seeking out viewing some of this PBR created content for weeks so I could get an idea of what it looked like.

From what I've seen so far, it's not what I would want.  If someone could have put up some items that show what this will look like, that would have been good.  

Game changer doesn't make any sense to me because for me to view PBR created content I'd need to upgrade parts of my computer as it's not a gaming desktop but does fairly well considering I can clean the fans because ALM makes the fans work harder.  And, I have to clean my fans a lot because of ALM.

I'll have to see photos of SL items before I'd consider upgrading computer parts.  

I wish they'd do a spin off of this PBR and let those who want to gravitate to it, do so, and those that don't, don't.  Like they did Sansar.  

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

@EliseAnne85I don't know why you're having trouble finding examples of PBR in modern games, pretty much all modern games using a 3D engine utilize PBR.

Since you're looking for something that isn't just "shiny or bumpy"  here's a clip from Red Dead Redemption 2, everything you see in this clip (and in the game overall) is done using PBR shaders/materials...

 

[PheebyKatz]

36 minutes ago, EliseAnne85 said:

I wish they'd do a spin off of this PBR and let those who want to gravitate to it, do so, and those that don't, don't.  Like they did Sansar.  

It could always just be an option that can be turned off in Preferences. My laptop doesn't care much for having Ambient Occlusion turned on, so I just do without it. I don't bother with seeing people's sweat or oiled-skin effects either, and I'm fine with it.

I do try to make sure my clothing materials settings are done correctly though, just so I don't walk around looking like I'm wearing PVC while thinking that my dress has a nice matte finish. It can be easy to give wrong impressions when you don't see what everyone else is seeing.

I'm sure it can handled in such a way that everyone won't have to buy a new computer, but like anything else, it might result in some people just going around looking great to themselves, and looking like poop to half of everyone else.

Edited November 11, 2022 by PheebyKatz

[Lewis Luminos]

On 11/10/2022 at 3:32 AM, PheebyKatz said:

All I know is, if it's a legal product, it'd be cheaper for me to go get it, rig it and upload it myself, and if it's an illegal product it's been on the MP forever and nobody's ever done anything about it.

Those hairs may or may not be illegal

However, even if they are, Linden Lab won't (and maybe legally can't) remove them unless ther original copyright owner - the person who made the mesh for the SIMS - files a DMCA with Linden Lab.

It may be that the original copyright holder knows already, and does not care. 

Or it may be that the orignal copyright holder has actually granted a license to one of these creators (we woult not know which one. It could be both).

Or it may be that one of these creators actually IS the SIMS mesh creator, using their personal SL account.

Or it may be that the SIMS content was ripped from somewhere else and that is illegal too.

Or maybe the SL one is the original?

We can never know.  

The fact that content doesn't get removed does not mean that Linden Lab is turning a blind eye to theft. They just cannot know what agreements have been made in private, unless a DMCA is filed. They can't just "guess".

The proper course of action, if you suspect that the SL product is stolen, is to contact the SIMS creator and tell them about it. They can then decide if they wish to (or can) take action.

 

 

 

[PheebyKatz]

8 minutes ago, Lewis Luminos said:

Those hairs may or may not be illegal

However, even if they are, Linden Lab won't (and maybe legally can't) remove them unless ther original copyright owner - the person who made the mesh for the SIMS - files a DMCA with Linden Lab.

It may be that the original copyright holder knows already, and does not care. 

Or it may be that the orignal copyright holder has actually granted a license to one of these creators (we woult not know which one. It could be both).

Or it may be that one of these creators actually IS the SIMS mesh creator, using their personal SL account.

Or it may be that the SIMS content was ripped from somewhere else and that is illegal too.

Or maybe the SL one is the original?

We can never know.  

The fact that content doesn't get removed does not mean that Linden Lab is turning a blind eye to theft. They just cannot know what agreements have been made in private, unless a DMCA is filed. They can't just "guess".

The proper course of action, if you suspect that the SL product is stolen, is to contact the SIMS creator and tell them about it. They can then decide if they wish to (or can) take action.

 

 

 

Thanks, I did think of all of that, literally all of it, but you took the time to type it out, and that's cool of you. You're right, of course.

I'm tempted to just buy the derned hair. Like, seriously, it's perfect on me, I tried the demo.

XD

Edited November 11, 2022 by PheebyKatz

[EliseAnne85]

1 hour ago, PheebyKatz said:

It could always just be an option that can be turned off in Preferences. My laptop doesn't care much for having Ambient Occlusion turned on, so I just do without it. I don't bother with seeing people's sweat or oiled-skin effects either, and I'm fine with it.

I do try to make sure my clothing materials settings are done correctly though, just so I don't walk around looking like I'm wearing PVC while thinking that my dress has a nice matte finish. It can be easy to give wrong impressions when you don't see what everyone else is seeing.

I'm sure it can handled in such a way that everyone won't have to buy a new computer, but like anything else, it might result in some people just going around looking great to themselves, and looking like poop to half of everyone else.

That's one of the things that's not decided though.  The first decision in a SL blog about PBR is that ALM will become unable to be turned off.  Many of us are hoping that is not the decision because some of us use ALM sparingly because of the fan issue.  I'm lucky in that I have a desktop where I can easily clean my fans but those with laptops have a harder time cleaning the fans and are, in fact, now having fan/over-heating issues.  This over-heating issue has been discussed in many threads of late not because of PBR but because of PBR, ALM will not be a choice to turn on or turn off any longer.  It will just be on all the time.  It's estimated that will kill about 1/3 of current users or force an upgrade to a gaming PC.  We will have to wait to find out that decision re ALM.  Unless I missed a blog that says ALM is not going to be forced to on all the time with PBR.

Edited November 11, 2022 by EliseAnne85

[EliseAnne85]

1 hour ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

@EliseAnne85I don't know why you're having trouble finding examples of PBR in modern games, pretty much all modern games using a 3D engine utilize PBR.

Since you're looking for something that isn't just "shiny or bumpy"  here's a clip from Red Dead Redemption 2, everything you see in this clip (and in the game overall) is done using PBR shaders/materials...

 

I did have a difficult time because I wrote in my post I do not play any kind of "games" but asked if someone could please tell me a game so I could at least see it.  I got no response but we are off topic.  However, I do have an IM and someone could have sent me something.  I searched PBR content and got pretty much nothing.  This morning I searched PBR gaming content and saw items I did not care for.

Those clothes in the video you shared look very good but part of the scene went very dark for quite some time.  But, I saw enough, the clothes and the furniture do look good.  Thanks for sharing.  Not sure many of us aren't going to need an upgrade to a gaming pc to run it, however.  And, therein lies the problem.  With EEP the lighting goes too dark a lot of the time and I don't care for that.  

But, one thing this thread does show is that we like "our world, our imagination".  We like to be able to tweak things.  But, EEP is too much tweaking for me.  I use mostly shared environment.  

Edited November 11, 2022 by EliseAnne85

[Rick Nightingale]

Bit of a necropost now I guess, but I was reminded of this thread today regarding the mod/no-mod thing.

Earlier I was looking for hair. Good men's hair is a rare thing in SL IMO, but I finally found something close enough. Demo'd it fully, even checked that it had a script remove button. Yep. Bought it.

Then I set it up and removed the scripts. Nope. Only one of the three scripts was removed. That means the hair still acts as if it is touchable to run the resizer (the only script that got removed). That means I cannot click on my head to move my avatar the way I always do (in Firestorm). Of course, the hair is no-mod. Arghh! Wish I had bought it on the MP,. not the in-world store, then at least I could have left an appropriate review.

In contrast, I bought a rather nice full trench coat outfit - wonderfully made, and amazingly it is mod perms. The advert even encourages modding it and the texture HUD itself can be modified to create custom tints! Some people like to make others happy I guess, and like that their products can be further 'enhanced' by the purchaser. Even if in this case it's likely not needed because it's about perfect as it is. The seller is, I believe, a member of the furry lot. Now there are folks with the right sort of attitude to mod perms (and some cracking good avatars!) That purchase was on the MP and got a glowing review.

Edited December 2, 2022 by Rick Daylight

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

36 minutes ago, Rick Daylight said:

That means I cannot click on my head to move my avatar the way I always do (in Firestorm).

Perhaps you could wear a nice jaunty, non-scripted hat?  

[Rick Nightingale]

Well, I actually wore a transparent prim sphere on my head and it worked. Never thought of a hat... and I even have a hat folder in my inventory!