Difficullt start for new participants?

[JetReigns]

19 minutes ago, HeathcliffMontague said:

If the deafault was WASD  (which works  just fine in SL) instead of arrow keys that would put off a lot of people too. I can use WASD just fine, but I can also use a stick shift and drive in the UK. (although when driving in SL, I've worn out llots of arrow keys on keyboards, I mean you have to be more precise when driving here and be more alert to the very minute details than in most games than what WASD or mouse action allows for, reason why old school arrow drivers populate the leader boards a lot I guess). To look around, for building or anything else, it's just Alt key plus mouse. Muscle memory can be relarned, but the first stuff sits kinda deep.

No offense, but... what are you talking about? WASD is functionally the same as using arrow keys, it's just in a different area of the keyboard.

Anyway, WASD is the industry standard for 3D over-the-shoulder games (whether you consider SL a game or not is irrelevant), so I really doubt it would put off anyone. I'm not suggesting that the option to use arrow keys be taken away or that everyone should be switched over. By "set to default" I simply mean that brand new users on brand new accounts can walk around with WASD without having to change their preferences first.

[Theresa Tennyson]

4 hours ago, cunomar said:

All very good . But you describe possibilities not basics .

If a kid wants lego and you instead provide a learn architecture book .................................

What if a kid sees your copy of Autocad and wants to "play" with it?

[Arielle Popstar]

6 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

What if a kid sees your copy of Autocad and wants to "play" with it?

Then you also give the kid the Autocad for Dummies. Haven't seen one for Secondlife yet but it needs it worse then Autocad.

[Theresa Tennyson]

9 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Then you also give the kid the Autocad for Dummies.

And you'll get "This is bawwwwww-rinnnnnggg! How do I make a house?"

 

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

And you'll get "This is bawwwwww-rinnnnnggg! How do I make a house?"

 

Just give the kid a gun and walk away. 

[colleen Criss]

@Chic Aeonjust blogged a bit about this just a week ago while making a business avatar. New Residents don't have an easy time of it but @Lindal Kidd gave some good advice. Now, if this new resident stays after some of the comments in this thread , I'll be shocked. 

Happy New Year and @Robsfl, welcome to Second Life  !

[Rolig Loon]

Second Life has a steep learning curve. Get used to it. 

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, JetReigns said:

No offense, but... what are you talking about? WASD is functionally the same as using arrow keys, it's just in a different area of the keyboard.

Anyway, WASD is the industry standard for 3D over-the-shoulder games (whether you consider SL a game or not is irrelevant), so I really doubt it would put off anyone. I'm not suggesting that the option to use arrow keys be taken away or that everyone should be switched over. By "set to default" I simply mean that brand new users on brand new accounts can walk around with WASD without having to change their preferences first.

For me, WASD is a.left hand operation.  I'm right handed and find it more.intuitive to.use the arrow keys.  I've also never gamed before so when I started SL it WAS easier with arrow keys as default.  I.probably would have never moved.otherwise.

Anyone coming to SL.who.HAS played other games using WASD would probably also know or figure out quickly, how to.change controls.  Just my non gamer opinion.

[PheebyKatz]

The learning curve and the complexity of putting together a unique avatar out of next to nothing when I was new was one of the things that kept me interested in SL long enough to get hooked. It was created by nerds, for nerds, and the rest of the world just sort of found it and pimped it out to the masses. Remember, everything in SL is made by Residents, even down to the little flowers out there in the grass; learning how to build ourselves in our own little world is what SL was about from the start.

Ease of use, in my unpopular opinion, is a two-edged bisecting tool. On the one hand, you get a lot more people, and they spend a lot more money, if you make everything push-button easy, but on the other, you lose the spirit of the whole thing. If it's all just handed to you from the start in perfect, prepackaged spoonfuls, it might as well just be an MMO based on IMVU and Facebutt.

The freedom to make yourself into literally anything you want, and be completely unique, well, that comes with the responsibility of learning how. And there's a lot you can learn how to do in SL. If it was easier, all those new users would probably get bored anyway, and complain about more of the social BS than about the difficulty in learning tech stuff.

Learning how to put it all together is only as difficult as it is because so many people put out "easier" alternatives to learning, like selling full avatar systems, HUDs that do things only n00bs would think to do, replacement heads, basically everything a person would want or think they needed if they didn't want to learn how to make it all themselves. The result is what we have today: a mass of confusing stuff that people have to sort out before they can even make themselves a "toon".

I made my first "toon" in my first ten minutes inworld. Then I spent the next seven years or so making it better. It's kinda part of why I like SL. There's always more to learn, so I never get bored with it. But hey, as long as people want to just buy (or get for free) an entire experience as if it's passive entertainment, people will try to sell it to them. Good for the economy, I guess.

Don't even get me started on how everyone joining these days disregards the fact that SL has its own culture, and that they'll have to learn how to integrate into it somehow if they want a fun and happy SL.

Edited January 2, 2023 by PheebyKatz

[JetReigns]

and you guys wonder why SL hardly retained any new players in the 2020 boom...

The fact stands that the vast majority of people who come across Second Life look at the website, see pretty pictures featuring beautiful avatars doing activities like jet skiing along with a pitch about "finding your community" and whatnot, and they expect to get that experience in a form that makes sense to them. Because why would you expect anything else?

So of course they're going to be confused (and probably very much rubbed the wrong way) when they're dropped into a space that looks significantly worse than the pictures, and everyone's telling them they have to drop a wad of cash and bend over backwards to understand their system and culture, all before they have even been given a reason to stay yet. Call it entitled if you want, but I call it being reasonable with your time and money. I think the only reason people aren't accusing SL of being a scam is because it has so much history and some creators who are doing LL's job for them making decent starter guides, showing them how to make SL into what it's advertised as.

You also have to remember, SL is very old and a lot of you have been on it for years -- if not when SL was still fresh and new. When SL was new, it made sense for people to prepare for something really out of the ordinary because it was very much out of the ordinary at the time. People were drawn in by the novelty of something that had never been done before, and so it makes sense that SL attracted an audience of learners, innovators, and puzzle-solvers at the time. Emphasis on... at the time. Things have changed a lot, and SL has competition that is prettier and easier to use. The only major advantage SL has over competitors is in creation, which is devastatingly under-emphasized.

Compare it to Roblox, which emphasizes user generated content and paints the front page with links to developer tools. It's not a good platform by any means, but it's successful at attracting its target audience. Meanwhile, SL's little section about user-generated content leads you to the market place, not to tools or information about how any of it is made.

I dunno, I just don't understand why it's such a point of contention when people air their grievances about the poor new user experience. All of the frustrations (from this and previous threads) make perfect sense to me. Maybe if SL actually advertised itself as what it is, this wouldn't be a common stress point. Unfortunately, nowhere on the "join" pages of the website does it show what the UI actually looks like, mention anything about SL's deeply sandbox-nature, or explain how it actually works. What other entertainment platform expects you to do so much homework without even telling you what you're signing up for? If I hadn't already known about SL from years ago, I'd absolutely think it's a scam.

But yeah idk I'll probably just get written off as whiny or uneducated lmao

[Rolig Loon]

17 minutes ago, JetReigns said:

and you guys wonder why SL hardly retained any new players in the 2020 boom...

Not really. This is not a "boom" world.  It appeals to a wide variety of people because, as several people have pointed out, it's not a "game" with a goal or a reward system that tells you what you are supposed to do. It's very much like RL, full of competing, contradictory ways of doing things.  Linden Lab sets a basic set of expectations (TOS, Community Guidelines, and such) but largely refrains from setting standards in other things. It's not the sort of "boom" world that attracts people who prefer instant gratification or one-size-fits-all ways of doing things.

The result is a rather freeform mix of approaches to creating clothing, buildings, vehicles, and everything else. It's a chaotic mix, but so is RL.  As Pheeby said earlier today, SL has a special appeal for those of us who enjoy puzzles, the more challenging the better. "The freedom to make yourself into literally anything you want, and be completely unique, well, that comes with the responsibility of learning how."  There are plenty of people who don't enjoy puzzles at all, of course, but that's not a show stopper. One of my very best friends in SL refuses to upgrade to a mesh body, has never figured out how to use her camera, and can't create anything more complicated than a plywood box, but she has a great time exploring new places, dancing, and just sitting and talking.

SL is complicated, but so is RL. The big advantage of SL is that you can take it as seriously or as whimsically as you like, finding your own way to "play" and doing it at your own pace.  And you can teleport.

[Arielle Popstar]

1 hour ago, JetReigns said:

and you guys wonder why SL hardly retained any new players in the 2020 boom...

~~~~

But yeah idk I'll probably just get written off as whiny or uneducated lmao

Naw, you make a lot of good and valid points but for the hardcore fan boys and girls, it doesn't matter. To them the fault will always lie with the new user though we all know for certain reasons LL has chosen to not make it more user friendly. It could be fairly easily but probably because they see the majority of their income come from Land tier, it is probably not worth their while to make changes to make it easier for newer residents. There is also a likely limitation in how big the grid could grow as when concurrency increases too much, the grid starts to creak at the seams as additional users increase the server requirements exponentially. Bottom line I think they are ok with the population here and are not too motivated to make things too easy and wind up with a flood of new people loading up the grid to where it crashes.

[animats]

SL clothing is awfully complicated.

The two most common questions at Firestorm Help Island are

1) what do I do here?

2) how do I fix this &%$@! clothing disaster?

If LL could fix those two problems, onboarding would be much easier.

[ValKalAstra]

37 minutes ago, JetReigns said:

What other entertainment platform expects you to do so much homework without even telling you what you're signing up for?

Here's a bit of a reality check: All of them. Look, I'm not trying to pick a fight over Second Life needing to be less arcane. It's menus nested in menus tucked away behind an ancient and befuddling UX. It could be so much more, agreed! However the reality is that every virtual entertainment platform also requires a lot of implicit knowledge. An example. Have a newcomer play a game like Skyrim.

It begins with the dual stick controller feeling like an arcane and overwhelming device. Watch actual newcomers. They'll struggle hard with moving and aiming the camera at the same time. They will not know which button is which and need to look down constantly. Ideas such as save slots, stats and attributes will at first be alien to them. They've got no knowledge about what they can interact with in the world.

• "I can pick up a mug but I can't touch the table? Why?"
• "I can open this door but not that door? Why?"
• "Where did the cheese go? It just vanished!"
• "What do you mean, inventory? I am being attacked, I don't have time to browse an inventory! Oh time stops? Why, that makes no sense!"
• "Is that a dragon?"
• "HOLY. HELp, Okay press A to - help which button was A ah - no okay run there, gosh I am running into a wall, help okay no yah I scraped along the wall, let me orient myself, yah this looks like a do... oh THAT is what is meant by save slot."

And then that same user continues on, gets more experience and one day will run into questions like:

• "What is DLC?"
• "What are mods?"
• "What is nexus?"
• "Mod manager?"
• "Param conflicts?"
• "Shaders?"
• "What's resolution?"
• "Anti aliasing?"
• "FOV?"
• "Driver conflicts?"
• "SSD? Ram?"
• "Pagefiles? High Mem Patch? DX Injector? DLL Hook?"

To someone that has gamed for a while - all of these answers will seem like child's play. Easy. To a newcomer they do not. To wit I suggest looking up Dean Takahashi, Cuphead tutorial - and that guy writes about games for a living. The key difference between Second Life and other virtual entertainment platforms is that the industry has worked out standards over the years. If you understand the concepts in Skyrim, you can head on over to Minecraft and apply around 90% of them. You then skip on to Roblox and can figure it out as well. You dip into VR Chat and after an initial confusion due to the nature of VR - you apply most of your knowledge.

Second Life then was made at a time when those standards were not yet established. See the Arrow Key versus WASD debate going on here. That debate has been settled in the industry for decades yet here it is still alive, simply because Second Life has been created on older design paradigms. As a result, people switching over from video games, for example, will have a much harder time for it. Some knowledge transitions well enough. Other not so much and many standards we gamers take for granted are simply done differently here and need to be relearned from scratch.

I do hold that all things considered, Second Life is not an iota more complex or difficult to learn than any other entertainment product once you get into it. However it's adherence to older design paradigms causes constant friction with established industry standards, making it as rough to learn when you're a complete newcomer as it is rough to learn when you've got implicit knowledge from other entertainment. After years of being used to just pick up a game and play, because we do have acquired the skills - having to relearn feels rough and frankly, sucks.

The core issue then is what can you do? If you begin to adapt SL to modern design principles, you begin losing the older audience that has kept the project afloat for years. Some of them will argue tooth and nail that nested menus are the superior way of doing things, for example. It needs better user guidance - but the issue is that a lot of the user experience is in essence third party products. The second SecondLife offers a guide for one product, all the other products will cry foul. Frankly, Second Life might be best left untouched in that regard. You have entrenched users trained on the current system that you risk losing in favour of chasing an audience that might not come. Don't forget that SL ain't exactly the new and shiny.

One could argue for having more user friendly options but gosh, have you seen the options menu? Did you know there's even more options hidden behind debug variables? Yah I don't think adding even more will help. That doesn't mean there aren't things that could be improved but it's walking a fine thin line that could very well break SL entirely.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 12/25/2022 at 5:44 PM, Robsfl said:

Hi all,

it seems that this forum lacks a place for newbies, which confirms my first impression: This is a small and rather closed community.

I tried to dip into SL to get some experiences. I started out on a pathway (difficult to walk, why no turn on right mouse button?) that gave some first insights which sounds good at first, but it just continued endlessly. At some point it tried to explain how I can customize my avatar but it failed. I could buy some items for free but gained no idea how to wear them or change my appearence.

Finally I deinstalled. If even such a simple task as customizing you avatar is extremely complicated then this has no future and will stay a very small community. Which I regret, I would have like to participate like in VR chat or other platforms.

BR

Yes, everything you say is true. Type "Second Life" into YouTube and other key words to get some videos on how you customize your avatar. Try again when your nerves have settled. It's fun.

[Resi Pfeffer]

9 minutes ago, animats said:

SL clothing is awfully complicated.

True, but thats not a thing where the focus is only on SL. Once i tried my bfs favorite game Star Citizen. I had no idea how to get somewhere, let alone getting into a spaceship, or going to another planet as a complete newbie at first.
If some people dont want to get help from others and/or figuring out things themselfes, they better stick to tiktok and youtube shorts.

[Paul Hexem]

3 hours ago, JetReigns said:

You also have to remember, SL is very old and a lot of you have been on it for years -- if not when SL was still fresh and new. When SL was new, it made sense for people to prepare for something really out of the ordinary because it was very much out of the ordinary at the time. People were drawn in by the novelty of something that had never been done before, and so it makes sense that SL attracted an audience of learners, innovators, and puzzle-solvers at the time. Emphasis on... at the time. Things have changed a lot, and SL has competition that is prettier and easier to use.

This in particular is actually a really great point.

Imagine if Ford or Oldsmobile had stuck with a slew of hand levers on their automobiles instead of switching to steering wheels and pedals when the rest of the industry did?

[Polenth Yue]

7 hours ago, JetReigns said:

I dunno, I just don't understand why it's such a point of contention when people air their grievances about the poor new user experience. All of the frustrations (from this and previous threads) make perfect sense to me. Maybe if SL actually advertised itself as what it is, this wouldn't be a common stress point. Unfortunately, nowhere on the "join" pages of the website does it show what the UI actually looks like, mention anything about SL's deeply sandbox-nature, or explain how it actually works. What other entertainment platform expects you to do so much homework without even telling you what you're signing up for? If I hadn't already known about SL from years ago, I'd absolutely think it's a scam.

A lot of people acknowledge that it's hard (including Linden Lab), but you need to talk to those of us who acknowledge it's hard and not the people who tell you that you're a whiny newbie. At the moment, you seem to ignore responses that are trying to help you, and argue with the people who are not trying to help. So, what is it you're after? Help finding communities or help finding arguments? If it's the former, your friend thread awaits, and I have some other suggestions based on things you've said since then. If it's the latter, have fun I guess, but I'll stay out of it from now on.

If nothing else, know that it used to be a lot worse. People fell off the cliff in the tutorial, couldn't figure out how to fly, and that was the end of that.

Edited January 3, 2023 by Polenth Yue

[Resi Pfeffer]

14 minutes ago, Polenth Yue said:

If nothing else, know that it used to be a lot worse. People fell off the cliff in the tutorial, couldn't figure out how to fly, and that was the end of that.

As soon as i arrived the first time at help island as a new born newbie, i wanted to get somewhere else, away from all the noobs, because i felt like i deserve better. That almost got me the darwin award as i landed somehow on abandoned land and had no idea idea what to do there but walking around and looking at things i didnt like. The way back to help island was gone, had no idea how to go back there.
Gladly i made it into a sandbox after a quite a while where a nice person answered all my questions.

Im not sure why i told my story, lol. But maybe for telling others to stick to new things, even though if it looks pointless or too difficult, sometimes.

Edited January 2, 2023 by Resi Pfeffer
typo

[animats]

33 minutes ago, Resi Pfeffer said:

As soon as i arrived the first time at help island as a new born newbie, i wanted to get somewhere else, away from all the noobs, because i felt like i deserve better. That almost got me the darwin award as i landed somehow on abandoned land and had no idea idea what to do there but walking around and looking at things i didn't like. The way back to help island was gone, had no idea how to go back there. Gladly i made it into a sandbox after a quite a while where a nice person answered all my questions.

As I tell new users, arriving in Second Life is like arriving in a strange city. The world is indifferent to you. There are many things you can do, and nothing you will be compelled to do. People who enjoy such an experience do well in SL. Those who need more direction can feel lost.

[Polenth Yue]

51 minutes ago, Resi Pfeffer said:

As soon as i arrived the first time at help island as a new born newbie, i wanted to get somewhere else, away from all the noobs, because i felt like i deserve better. That almost got me the darwin award as i landed somehow on abandoned land and had no idea idea what to do there but walking around and looking at things i didnt like. The way back to help island was gone, had no idea how to go back there.
Gladly i made it into a sandbox after a quite a while where a nice person answered all my questions.

Im not sure why i told my story, lol. But maybe for telling others to stick to new things, even though if it looks pointless or too difficult, sometimes.

I found someone in the middle of nowhere on the mainland once. They wanted somewhere with music and dancing, so I explained how to use search to find clubs and how to teleport. This was the point where people could pick a topic that interested them and it'd dump them somewhere sort of connected but also a landmark you'd never pick unless you hated new people. An alt I created during that time ended up stuck under the stairs in a mall that time forgot. People who picked steampunk ended up in the basement of one of New Babbage's taverns, instead of at the town hall or even just in the tavern itself.

Anyway, let's hope the new player experience and community hubs they're working on stop trapping new people behind piles of barrels and under staircases.

[Istelathis]

As has been discussed to death, it would probably help tremendously if the new user experience mimicked familiar environments that users are comfortable with.  WASD is one such standard that should be enabled by default, and there should be another camera mode created specifically for navigating the world via mouse and keyboard that is typical of most modern PC games, which is likewise enabled by default and togglable by a shortcut.  Inventory needs to be simplified, perhaps just a separate and new inventory management system that only displays articles of clothing, a paper doll menu is needed where people can drag and drop portions of their outfits into so as to equip them.   

None of this will probably ever happen, but it would probably increase user retention if they were to log into a familiar environment that they could at the very least maneuver around in without clunky controls that do not make very much sense to them, along with an UI they can easily navigate to customize their avatar with.  

Edited January 3, 2023 by Istelathis

[Sid Nagy]

SL is a niche market. Always has been and always will be, until it closes it's gates somewhere in the future.
It is not made for the millions. Usability is limited. You like it and get the hang of it over the time or you don't and leave after a short while.
Just like with any other game/platform.

[JetReigns]

8 hours ago, Polenth Yue said:

A lot of people acknowledge that it's hard (including Linden Lab), but you need to talk to those of us who acknowledge it's hard and not the people who tell you that you're a whiny newbie. At the moment, you seem to ignore responses that are trying to help you, and argue with the people who are not trying to help. So, what is it you're after? Help finding communities or help finding arguments? If it's the former, your friend thread awaits, and I have some other suggestions based on things you've said since then. If it's the latter, have fun I guess, but I'll stay out of it from now on.

If nothing else, know that it used to be a lot worse. People fell off the cliff in the tutorial, couldn't figure out how to fly, and that was the end of that.

I just want to be clear, my rant here was completely unrelated to stuff that I have personally complained about. I just felt like it was weird how little people seemed to empathize with newbie frustrations.

I never meant for it to seem like I was ignoring advice that I received in the pet peeves thread -- I didn't expect to get serious replies to that because I was just venting, and didn't want to steer too far from the "pet peeves" topic by replying to everyone.  Sometimes I don't have anything to say, either. Still, I have checked out all of the hangout spots people have shared with me, looked into more events and music venues, tried finding those social hubs? the list goes on.

I'm not sure where you got the impression that I argue with people who are trying to help though. Seriously, I just went through all of my posts... One person's advice basically amounted to telling me that I should want to socialize the way they socialize, so of course I responded explaining why my personal preference differs. That wasn't an argument.

[xDancingStarx]

Well everyone has the right to argument from their point of view, but thankfully I'm convinced that it's not Linden's point of view that SL is "autocad" with an intellectual barrier rightly in place to be guarded from "kids". That's a very unhealthy point of view in fact. Not only for the future of Second Life and potential investments but also for the variety of users inside of Second LIfe. Linden will always be striving for making the learning curve less steep but this is just a difficult undertaking. The learning curve isn't steep because it's meant to be steep and people failing it aren't missed (autocad-kids), but because it's a difficult matter. I'm sure that one big chunk of it will be solved though once the new mesh body is out.

Edited January 3, 2023 by xDancingStarx