Difficullt start for new participants?

[Paul Hexem]

2 hours ago, HarrisonMcKenzie said:

The challenge is that any change like this can break user content. Granted, that content might be worth breaking (thinking about really old scripting), but that does seem to be a concern LL heeds. Plus we're all cranky old people who don't like change. I absolutely agree that some housekeeping could make SL a lot more accessible for new players though.

Changing movement keybinds in the viewer can't break content that relies on it- scripts look for the movement command, not a specific key. Half the work for real keybinds is even already done, since we have the toggle.

If someone did make something that uses specific keys instead of the viewer command, they made something unsupported and knew the risks. It's on them to update it.

[JetReigns]

2 hours ago, Polenth Yue said:

I'm talking about how you came to the peeves threads and other threads to complain about not finding people, but never returned to the one posted in "Make Friends".

I did return, I messaged the person who asked about anime and went to the places you recommended. I didn't respond in the thread because I honestly don't know what I'm supposed to post in response.

4 hours ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

Second Life does take a lot of perseverance, I'm just not sure that's a quality that a lot of prospective new users have in abundance anymore. After all we live in a time where TikTok is becoming increasingly popular because apparently 10-15 minutes is far too long a duration for a video to hold the attention of some people, if it's not under 60 seconds they'll probably end up skipping the end.

Finally, someone put it into words. The modern day is saturated with a million different kinds of entertainment, all highly sensationalized and vying for your attention in a bite-sized format. TikTok disgusts me, but it's a great example of why people have so little patience for stuff like SL, because not only can they get that entertainment in a million easier ways -- but SL isn't the same shiny new innovation that it was when it started, so it doesn't inspire much desire to explore it. I mean, I used to think the games I played as a kid had incredible graphics, I was so immersed and I loved exploring them. Now... I have no idea how I managed to crush on polygons with artifact-ridden faces. Well, Skyrim and Minecraft redefined exploration in a way that made it hard to go back and enjoy the cardboard cut-out landscapes of older games, and now... even those are considered old games. 

(Edit: Okay I'll be honest. I actually played Oblivion, not Skyrim. I just chose the more popular example ToT)

I also think people who aren't familiar with computers and video games are much rarer than they used to be, so there's that. It's genuinely terrifying how many 8 year olds are given free reign with phone, tablets, and VR headsets... and my god, do I sound old right now.

Edited January 3, 2023 by JetReigns

[cunomar]

On 1/2/2023 at 3:38 PM, Resi Pfeffer said:

How to move and how to cam is one of the most essential basics, as its a 3D world.

You could have chosen to do some progress but you opted for being salty. Its your life

Look at my original post , all the controls anyone might need are on the screen in front of me and NOBODY could fail to understand them at a glance .

For a new user with no experience that means lesson 1 done and dusted in one second flat and we can move onto something more interesting like finding your way back to the place you just left .

While basic and simple necessity works interest grows and learning is interesting . Indeed SL had me triple my budget when it came time for a new laptop .

"Basic" for those of you so digitally smart you need help going to the toilet , actually means why press 10 buttons when you can press 1 to achieve the same thing .

[Polenth Yue]

59 minutes ago, JetReigns said:

I did return, I messaged the person who asked about anime and went to the places you recommended. I didn't respond in the thread because I honestly don't know what I'm supposed to post in response.

Whether the suggestions were what you were looking for or not. Whether it made sense (probably not as you didn't join the related groups). I will resuggest that a fantasy person will benefit from joining  * * Fantasy Faire Fans * *. It's a huge event and the group will lead you to finding out about other groups and other events. If you take no other piece of advice, join that group.

Also, given you find the newbie places too trollish and want a chatroom feel, I'd suggest Bellisseria Citizens. It's for the area with the Linden Homes that premium members get, but you don't need to be premium to join the group, visit the area or go to events. I think it might help you to see a group where people just chat about stuff, even if not specifically related to your interests.

If you're struggling with the group search, I can send join links if that'd help.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

24 minutes ago, JetReigns said:

SL isn't the same shiny new innovation that it was when it started

It's certainly fallen behind over the last decade or so but it still holds potential and with the addition of things like the new PBR system and reflection probes I think SL could still surprise a lot of people if enough creators can be encouraged to not only adopt the new features but learn how to use them properly and effectively without obliterating everybodies FPS in the process.

Given that there are issues with the complexity of the new user experience and the ever-dwindling attention span of said prospective new users perhaps LL should be concentrating on trying to find ways to more quickly connect new users with the types of experiences that they're led to expect. 

I'd imagine that's at least part of the reason behind their plans for the introduction of the new "centralized hubs" but I'd like to see them go further and attempt to improve the quality and availability of some of these virtual activities, either with the introduction of new features or by simply providing a better venue/infrastructure.

As an example, lets take exploration and vehicles (land, sea or air).  It's been pointed out recently (and repeatedly) that a lot of people enjoy sailing and flying around the mainland, either to explore or simply for the pleasure of travel.  It's also been pointed out that this activity requires a fairly high draw distance that can impact performance heavily in some areas and that upcoming changes could negatively impact the user experience of those partaking in these activities even further.

So here's my "radical" solution to this problem (and a couple of others besides):

LL creates a new continent, complete with roads and waterways, made up mostly of homesteads and a few full regions scattered around strategically (so that there's never too much content in a concentrated area) and populates it with well-optimized efficient modular content on the homesteads then creates points of interest to explore on the full regions.  Since LL isn't in the content creation business they could always choose to cut corners and preserve some of the "historic content" that people are always talking about being endangered which would give folks some interesting things to explore if they wish to get out of their vehicles.  They could even offer limited amounts of residential space similar to Bellisseria but with sparser population in order to provide some community areas to explore without the performance impact of densely populated areas.

As I said it's a radical solution and not something I really expect LL to attempt but there are ways to populate a region with content that don't actually require manually building it all by hand so it wouldn't technically have to be a mammoth task.  It would provide a better environment for people to explore and enjoy popular SL activities, at the same time it would allow LL to showcase a large scale environment that utilizes the latest features while providing reasonable performance and additionally it would give new users an experience that's at least somewhat aesthetically closer to the pretty screenshots they see on flickr.  Last but not least it would earn LL some brownie points from the "old-timers" for giving a nod to some of the much-loved content that came before.

Anyway, wild hypotheticals aside, I guess the point I'm meandering around is that LL can keep inventing new levels of premium account and tacking on new benefits and trying to cobble together features to improve the platform and make it look more modern but if they want to address the disparity between the shiny virtual eutopia they're offering and the crazy, weird world that people are actually signing up for then they're either going to have to be more honest with their advertising or put more effort into helping to provide the content they're promising people because there are a lot less people eagerly building their world for them now and the ones that are left can't do it all on their own.

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

So here's my "radical" solution to this problem (and a couple of others besides):

Everything LL do ages like milk.

They do a thing, and then move on to do the new thing. There is no iteration once the "product" hits the sim and they will never come back and revisit the content. Especially if that content has occupancy.

A far more radical proposal for LL.

• Revisit and revamp old Linden content.
• Delete the junk.
• Approach community content the we approach personal content. Iterate and refine based on actual usage.
• If something didn't work, reclaim the land and do it over, not do it again somewhere else. 

 

 

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

17 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Everything LL do ages like milk.

They do a thing, and then move on to do the new thing. There is no iteration once the "product" hits the sim and they will never come back and revisit the content. Especially if that content has occupancy.

A far more radical proposal for LL.

• Revisit and revamp old Linden content.
• Delete the junk.
• Approach community content the we approach personal content. Iterate and refine based on actual usage.
• If something didn't work, reclaim the land and do it over, not do it again somewhere else. 

 

 

This is why I made a point of mentioning "historic content".

Preserving some of those older builds as legacy content to be explored and placing it in pleasant low lag surroundings equates to consolidating some of the more unique and interesting pieces of SL history into a smaller area to serve as a sort of virtual tourist attraction so that the remaining junk can be discretely swept aside and replaced with better alternatives.

I'd rather not see large swathes of mainland disappear in favour of some new scheme or project that may or may not work out but I don't think trimming away a little of the excess land mass would really hurt that much and at the end of the day does it really matter whether they reclaim the land and try something new in the same location or simply repurpose some of those excess regions and move them to another part of the grid to form a new separate land mass?

The result is the same either way, you keep some of the more popular legacy content and start revamping and repurposing the regions and content that isn't worth preserving and then adapt your approach according to which new content/areas/centralized hubs prove most successful and/or popular.

[Coffee Pancake]

2 hours ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

This is why I made a point of mentioning "historic content".

That's half the problem .. I would argue there is no content so historic is should be out on display for no one to care it exists. There is sentimental content .. but that's not the same thing. Stick it all in rez boxes and library it all, then anyone can rez it, feel a suitable amount of nostalgia, and then delete it.

Linden builds should serve some active purpose, if they aren't actively doing that anymore, pick them up and put something better in the space.

The whole concept of historical builds in SL is flawed. We were calling builds and locations historic almost out of the gate which isn't how that works. In SL it just creates dead weight that has no meaning anymore because all the people who cared when it was new have long since left .. because none of this was important enough to hold their attention.

 

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

6 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

That's half the problem .. I would argue there is no content so historic is should be out on display for no one to care it exists. There is sentimental content .. but that's not the same thing. Stick it all in rez boxes and library it all, then anyone can rez it, feel a suitable amount of nostalgia, and then delete it.

Linden builds should serve some active purpose, if they aren't actively doing that anymore, pick them up and put something better in the space.

The whole concept of historical builds in SL is flawed. We were calling builds and locations historic almost out of the gate which isn't how that works. In SL it just creates dead weight that has no meaning anymore because all the people who cared when it was new have long since left .. because none of this was important enough to hold their attention.

 

I don't disagree with any of what you just said but the point of relocating and reusing that old content wouldn't be to safeguard some rare and precious jewel so much as to fill space with a few unique builds to break the monotony of all the procedurally generated content surrounding it (while at the same time clearing more old content off the old mainland to make way for better things).

Of course it would be much better if LL were to build all those points of interest themselves with content created using the latest features but can you really see LL creating ten or twenty genuinely unique, interesting and/or useful full regions of content, and even if they did how long do you think that would take them?

Additionally, In the context of what I was suggesting (i.e. a large low-lag environment for people to explore using vehicles with a few points of interest to make it less repetitive), you wouldn't want those points of interest to be insanely popular locations that attract throngs of visitors since that's just going to adversely impact performance.  Better to have mildly interesting curiosities that are worth a casual glance and perhaps occasionally exploring.

You can argue that hosting old content is simply a waste of space and resources and technically I'd agree with you, but it's no more wasteful than the countless regions housing one or two parcels filled with old content surrounded by abandoned land and at least the resulting regions would have some continuity and be more aesthetically pleasing as well as serving some purpose, even if that purpose is just to decorate an otherwise repetitive procedurally generated environment.

Bear in mind the theoretical (and wildly improbable) continent in question isn't a proposal for a new version of mainland or a replacement for anything but merely an example of the type of thing LL could do to try and bring the reality of SL in line with what their promotional material is offering.  While it would be nice to have a virtual world where all the activities were on offer across the entire grid the reality is that in order to provide an experience similar to the one that LL are currently marketing Second Life as they either need to wave a magic wand and make the lag disappear (as well as turning all residents into professional content creators and level designers) or start finding ways to mitigate it like providing new areas and infrastructure that are better suited for the various popular activities they promote.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

Of course the alternative would be to just reduce the mainland to a size necessary to accommodate the amount of truly useful Linden content that serves an active purpose.... in which case I'd say about 5 or 6 regions will suffice!

 

[animats]

17 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

They do a thing, and then move on to do the new thing. There is no iteration once the "product" hits the sim and they will never come back and revisit the content.

This is LL's biggest corporate failing. There's a strong tendency to half-finish something, declare a victory, and go home. Animesh, pathfinding, Project Interesting, safe hubs, region crossings - the list goes on.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, animats said:

This is LL's biggest corporate failing. There's a strong tendency to half-finish something, declare a victory, and go home. Animesh, pathfinding, Project Interesting, safe hubs, region crossings - the list goes on.

Two guys run projects at LL. One finishes a prototype, and then the other other one says, "Hold my beer"!

[Coffee Pancake]

59 minutes ago, animats said:

This is LL's biggest corporate failing. There's a strong tendency to half-finish something, declare a victory, and go home. Animesh, pathfinding, Project Interesting, safe hubs, region crossings - the list goes on.

Or half finish something, not see sudden and inexplicable growth / residents dancing in the streets / etc, and defund / abandon the project leaving it half done. Project will get no further attention for a 1 - 2 changes in leadership.

[Solar Legion]

Here we go again with one of these types of thread ...

Just reading through the first page, I already have an idea of how it has unfolded over the rest.

I'm going to chime in with my own experience and viewpoint.

Firstly, even starting out back when I did it was not difficult whatsoever to figure out how to wear clothing or components. The only complication these days is the difference between "Wear" and "Add" - one replaces while one does not.

Expecting Second Life to function like VRC and others? Don't. It is not any of them nor should it strive to function the same way.

I am quite certain a fair bit more has already been covered as well and I will be somewhat nice here and not state how I think concerning finding it "difficult" to do the more basic actions (such as avatar customization).

Stay and learn or do not and go for something "simpler" ... In the end, it is your choice. "Simpler" is not always better.

[SodaGnome]

I should make a video named "the idiots guide to starting second life." A huge problem for me has always been getting the curser out of the chat window. As a noob I was stuck on that for hours. I quit and came back and had that same problem again. If I remember right it's a check box somewhere. Same with using WASD it's a check box that needs to be found and clicked in firestorm anyway. 

[Love Zhaoying]

11 minutes ago, SodaGnome said:

I should make a video named "the idiots guide to starting second life." A huge problem for me has always been getting the curser out of the chat window. As a noob I was stuck on that for hours. I quit and came back and had that same problem again. If I remember right it's a check box somewhere. Same with using WASD it's a check box that needs to be found and clicked in firestorm anyway. 

Will the idiots know how to turn on their computer, and watch a video?

[animats]

11 minutes ago, SodaGnome said:

I should make a video named "the idiots guide to starting second life."

This is a real book. From 2008.

"If you're feeling overwhelmed by the online world that is Second Life, Second Life For Dummies is the book for you! Written by a pair of experts who know the program inside and out, this book offers the scoop on getting around and making friends as well as how to personalize your avatar or even open a Second Life business."

Looks like the problems haven't changed much in 15 years.

[SodaGnome]

I always get the $80 strategy guide for video games. Otherwise I could not do anything. I'd write one for second life named "How to roleplay a real life woman playing a woman avatar as a real life man." It would have 100's of tips like "be sure to mention your frustration at your live in real life boyfriend often and casually as a part of your daily chat" and "always add extra o's when you type lol for example lool or looooool." 

[Coffee Pancake]

14 hours ago, SodaGnome said:

.....

The number of lesbians makes so much sense when that's how guys here think.

[PookieTM]

15 hours ago, SodaGnome said:

I always get the $80 strategy guide for video games. Otherwise I could not do anything. I'd write one for second life named "How to roleplay a real life woman playing a woman avatar as a real life man." It would have 100's of tips like "be sure to mention your frustration at your live in real life boyfriend often and casually as a part of your daily chat" and "always add extra o's when you type lol for example lool or looooool." 

Lmaoooooo

[Christina Halpin]

Probably the most important thing for a community that does not want to die is making things easy for beginners.

Fun thread, and I think important. Robsfl, Second Life is a great place and I'm sorry you were unable to enter. The learning curve is steep at the start and it never stops; I wonder how any beginner can stay.

You did not mention the problem of sitting down and seeing only a blank wall and not knowing where you are or how to fix things.

thank you for taking your time to give feedback.

 

 

[Flea Yatsenko]

LL really needs to turn the current client into the advanced editor and make a lightweight client that has an interface that only contains the most commonly used features by the average user, and work on making them as easy to use as possible. No build tools, a very simple avatar editor (editing shape, editing outfits, etc), great chat/friend system, easy way to explore and find people and places, and an easy way to shop. The current viewer is way too complex for any sort of newbie, and it's designed by people who are so familiar with SL that they don't realize how complex it's gotten.

Really, they need to take inspiration from games like The Sims and VR Chat and how those interfaces work, and apply it to a lightweight interface on the current viewer. The tech updates they have planned for 2023 are fantastic, and some of them would make a simpler interface way better than it would be based off of what the official viewer is now (like outfit previews), but besides missing support for mobile platforms, this is probably the second biggest thing holding SL back from seeing major growth. Content creators are usually 1 in 100 users, the default client shouldn't cater to 1% of users.

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

20 minutes ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

LL really needs to turn the current client into the advanced editor and make a lightweight client that has an interface that only contains the most commonly used features by the average user, and work on making them as easy to use as possible. No build tools, a very simple avatar editor (editing shape, editing outfits, etc), great chat/friend system, easy way to explore and find people and places, and an easy way to shop. The current viewer is way too complex for any sort of newbie, and it's designed by people who are so familiar with SL that they don't realize how complex it's gotten.

Really, they need to take inspiration from games like The Sims and VR Chat and how those interfaces work, and apply it to a lightweight interface on the current viewer. The tech updates they have planned for 2023 are fantastic, and some of them would make a simpler interface way better than it would be based off of what the official viewer is now (like outfit previews), but besides missing support for mobile platforms, this is probably the second biggest thing holding SL back from seeing major growth. Content creators are usually 1 in 100 users, the default client shouldn't cater to 1% of users.

I seem to remember the Lab making an easy, simplified  viewer years ago.  Am I remembering that wrong?  

I don't know why that viewer didn't make it.  Maybe it didn't have enough options and very few new accounts used it, but it would be nice to have an simplified option for the first few weeks for new accounts.  

[Ceka Cianci]

5 minutes ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

I seem to remember the Lab making an easy, simplified  viewer years ago.  Am I remembering that wrong?  

I don't know why that viewer didn't make it.  Maybe it didn't have enough options and very few new accounts used it, but it would be nice to have an simplified option for the first few weeks for new accounts.  

I think you are meaning the Ongo or something like that.. You could  log onto ongo or ongoing or whatever it was called.. It was like a steam or a Uplay.. You chose second life and you could log in from there and have much better performance.. It was kind of like streaming SL or something like that..

If that is what you are referring to, I used that on our older system and it really ran great.. I think Ongo or whatever ended up closing up.. We had that for other games at one point and I was excited to see it added to there..

 

[Rolig Loon]

1 hour ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

I seem to remember the Lab making an easy, simplified  viewer years ago.  Am I remembering that wrong?  

I don't know why that viewer didn't make it. 

The simplified viewer was introduced about 2009 and it was dead unpopular, so it didn't last very long. I suspect part of the problem was that you couldn't do much beyond basic movements and dressing yourself. Even early on, people know that there's a lot more to SL than that, so they might as well use the real viewer.