Anti consumer practices from vendors

[Coffee Pancake]

13 hours ago, PheebyKatz said:

At least not once the word gets around. And we all know that in reality, NOTHING can stop the word getting around.

Thing is, word doesn't get around.

We all have our private and personal "do not buy" list, that we might occasionally mention in conversation or steer friends away from, but past that .. 

Discussion between friends about a particular merchant only comes up when someone gets burnt and others say "oh yes, I've been avoiding them for ages" or "yeah, their stuff has been actually broken for years and will never be updated or fixed".

[PheebyKatz]

5 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Discussion between friends about a particular merchant only comes up when someone gets burnt and others say "oh yes, I've been avoiding them for ages" or "yeah, their stuff has been actually broken for years and will never be updated or fixed".

Oh well, best advice is to just give up, then. If people don't even talk about shopping unless it's something bad that happened to them, there's nothing anyone can do about it all. I guess the only recourse is to complain about how much merchants hate customers and want them to have a horrible SL while gobbling up their money, and how bad SL sucks in general, and how awful everything is, because that's what everyone else has been doing for years and that's totally made everything better.

Why even talk about problems if there's no possibility of solving them? Just stop shopping and make your own stuff if it all sucks that bad.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

7 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Thing is, word doesn't get around.

And this is indeed the crux of the problem.

A free market system is premised on a balance of "power" between two forces. On the one hand, unregulated producers, merchants, and businesses have the ability to serve up to the public whatever they want (i.e., whatever they think will produce profits), even if the goods are shoddy, their business practices fraudulent, etc., because the "market" is supposed to "regulate" such practices by rewarding those who offer goods and services that consumers find valuable, and "punish" those who sell garbage or try to cheat them.

The mechanism by which this market regulation works is what one might call "word of mouth," although in practice more powerful communication tools are needed: a nation of several million people can't be alerted to scams by over-the-fence gossip, but requires a free media to get the word out about such practices. So, when a sufficient number of people (the number is the key) learn that Merchant X produces excellent goods and offers great services, they reap the rewards of more business, while those who cheat or scam, or offer crappy goods are correspondingly punished as word gets around about their practices.

It's actually a system that has never worked well, which is why at the beginning of the last century governments began to introduce antitrust laws and penalties for quiet "Gentlemen's agreements" between dishonest businesses.

But in SL the problem is badly compounded because LL has effectively crippled the second part of this equation. By not merely not providing tools to "get the word out" about shady practices, but actually forbidding them on LL's platforms (including most obviously this forum), LL has made it very very difficult for a sufficient critical mass of consumers to "punish" bad actors by depriving them of business.

Basically, LL has enabled merchants to do whatever they want, while making it all but impossible for the mechanisms by which the free market is supposed to work to function.

The dice are loaded against consumers here.

Edited January 15, 2023 by Scylla Rhiadra
Missing word

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Basically, LL has enabled merchants to do whatever they want, while making it all but impossible for the mechanisms by which the free market is supposed to work to function.

They have given (some) merchants such power that even when there are independent blogs, there is always the assumption that the bloggers are untrusted and only in it for the freebies .. which is probably correct as actually buying and reviewing would be prohibitively expensive outside of certain niches.

[Paul Hexem]

23 hours ago, PheebyKatz said:

And we all know that in reality, NOTHING can stop the word getting around.

Except LL's own rules. 

[EnCore Mayne]

the basis of all the problem's we complain about here or amongst ourselves is that LL is incapable of administering any type of "parenting" to its "children".

it was never part of Philip's vision to limit our freedoms. applying any type of rules which might govern or guide us was looked upon as disrespectful to his inexperience of wrangling a massively diverse userbase. external realities and legal requirements forced his naiveté of the ugliness of human interaction to submit the platform to endure a number of radical management changes along with a complete personal withdrawal. and here we are. bitching and whining for someone/anyone to deal with the insults to our vision of humanity.

and..., we have all manner of ideas and wreckoning to solve the unrelenting salvo upon our concepts of a cohesive, cooperative, and enjoyable life. with scarce feedback or begrudging acknowledgement from the "authorities" one might get a feeling that they just don't love us.

what's a child to do when they finally realize their parents aren't capable of helping them with their whoas? has that time come for you?

[Anna Nova]

Thank you all for this thread, I have never encountered the problem that @Coffee Pancakeraised, but if I did I would be just as incensed. I just added a few extra rules to my shopping.

When I go to 'events' it is always to buy a specific thing that the vendor is debuting at the event, AND has a non-event demo for.  I land, I cam to the vendor, buy the item, TP out.  So events, so far, are fine for me.  Now, if the demo was not accurate, say for instance, it contained a hud that wasn't in the purchased item, that would be the last time I bought from that vendor.  And I would probably write a notecard telling them why, and kept to remind me.

Commerce in a laissez-faire economy is a learning process,  if you don't learn you will get badly burned.  Those of us brought up in semi-socialist economies (UK, in my case) don't have the learned-responses that Americans have, I'm afraid.  The EU keeps trying to dumb-down the population by trying to ban caveat-emptor, it will not work in the Big Wide World (just like in SL).

[Ceka Cianci]

I can't help but feel that the moment things switched to the new mesh that the whole game changed and narrowed the field of creators..  you can't just pick up the tools anymore and go create and make something for yourself, not without creating most of it outside the world with a curve that is much bigger than the one we used to have.. Let alone the investment into those tools and time of learning them.

They should have the SLUniversity  aimed at showing more ways to create and tutorials on those kinds of things, rather than more focused on how to use products after they are already in here.

Now rather than having a world of creators, we have a world of buyers and sellers and troubleshooters. Just like RL the more advanced we get the more useless and lazy and dependent we become.

Alexa, look up how to create  in SL for me. Then read it to me and grab the grapes on the way and pluck them into my mouth..

hehehe

I just think if you're gonna have a university, make it a university. Not a product owners manual

I just remember that more than half my friends  on my friend list were always making something or learning how to make something.. now it's ,where can I get this , who makes the best that, what's happening to my eyes!  hehehe

 

I remember just having an idea for something and just going learning along the way how to make it..Plus having more than enough people around me that I pretty much grew up with in this world,  for answers when i ran into a question on something..

That kind of inspiration is really missing from the world today. i know so many that used to get bit  by the creative bug, just because others got bit too.

Today it's how to build your avatar, when it used to be ,how to build your world.

This is old compared to today, but I didn't have to go buy it and learned a lot making it.

 

This was looking in from outside

 

This was looking out at the view from the upstairs

 

This was looking down from the edge on the lower floor

Edited January 16, 2023 by Ceka Cianci

[EliseAnne85]

4 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

I can't help but feel that the moment things switched to the new mesh that the whole game changed and narrowed the field of creators..  you can't just pick up the tools anymore and go create and make something for yourself, not without creating most of it outside the world with a curve that is much bigger than the one we used to have.. Let alone the investment into those tools and time of learning them.

They should have the SLUniversity  aimed at showing more ways to create and tutorials on those kinds of things, rather than more focused on how to use products after they are already in here.

Now rather than having a world of creators, we have a world of buyers and sellers and troubleshooters. Just like RL the more advanced we get the more useless and lazy and dependent we become.

Alexa, look up how to create  in SL for me. Then read it to me and grab the grapes on the way and pluck them into my mouth..

hehehe

I just think if you're gonna have a university, make it a university. Not a product owners manual

I just remember that more than half my friends  on my friend list were always making something or learning how to make something.. now it's ,where can I get this , who makes the best that, what's happening to my eyes!  hehehe

 

I remember just having an idea for something and just going learning along the way how to make it..Plus having more than enough people around me that I pretty much grew up with in this world,  for answers when i ran into a question on something..

That kind of inspiration is really missing from the world today. i know so many that used to get bit  by the creative bug, just because others got bit too.

Today it's how to build your avatar, when it used to be ,how to build your world.

This is old compared to today, but I didn't have to go buy it and learned a lot making it.

 

This was looking in from outside

 

This was looking out at the view from the upstairs

 

This was looking down from the edge on the lower floor

I understand what you are saying, Ceka.

I fear with PBR it will only become worse in that it will be so "things" focused and not people focused.  And, that PBR is a commercial enterprise but it's not really about people and friendships, it's an oh my reflection in the water is amazing.  Personally, I don't care about reflections in the water, that's not why I've been here all these years.   It's the people I've been here for and the building was on a more equal level.

As far as this thread, I cannot really think of any merchandise in SL I have been  disappointed with.  I'm seeing things like "there is a lot of full perm stuff at the events now" but what I wanted to say is that with COVID and the war, creators have been making less new content and I can't blame them as it's a helluva a lot work to make stuff for SL.  I don't shop EVENTS, I shop MP mostly.  I'm overall very happy with what I have.  And, there is a lot of good stuff on MP with demos.  I was happy with the demo, I'm happy with the product.

I think the problem in this thread seems to be HUD related or confusing huds and what works on the fatpack and what works or doesn't work on the single item.  HUDS are extremely difficult to make imo, took me several weeks with screaming real headaches to make my first HUD.  If you don't know what works on the single, my suggestion for this thread is send a nc to the creator and ask as they could be newbies to huds.

Edited January 16, 2023 by EliseAnne85

[BelindaMercedes]

On 1/13/2023 at 7:06 PM, Coffee Pancake said:

I am getting REALLY annoyed when vendors neglect to mention the difference between single color and fatpack versions of items.

I am NOT going to plump for a fatpack that's 5 - 8 times the price of a single because that's the only way of getting an assured outcome.

I am equally annoyed that we can't name and shame "brands" that pull this stunt. It's anti consumer, undermines trust in shopping and the platform in general. Consumers should have the right to know what they are getting before they pay and Linden Lab should be on the side of the consumer as negative shopping experiences hurt them far more than it hurts us.

 

 

I agree with this.  recently I wanted to buy an item, and there was noway to know if the undershirt colour was as shown on the single item advert, or was only available in fatpack.  I messaged community manager and creator to ask.  and store manager come back and said all colours of undershirt could be changed on a single item.. But then had creator message me saying only could be changed in fatpack version.  So frustrating that even the store doesn't know if an element of an item is fatback only.

 

 

[EliseAnne85]

12 minutes ago, BelindaMercedes said:

I agree with this.  recently I wanted to buy an item, and there was noway to know if the undershirt colour was as shown on the single item advert, or was only available in fatpack.  I messaged community manager and creator to ask.  and store manager come back and said all colours of undershirt could be changed on a single item.. But then had creator message me saying only could be changed in fatpack version.  So frustrating that even the store doesn't know if an element of an item is fatback only.

 

 

That's crazy stuff.  All they had to do was try it on to double check if they forgot.

[JulsToffy]

What a great thread, very interesting to read so many insights. I agree that the latest trend in product presentation on out-of-sl examples is rampant and I hope it diminishes. 

There is one question I want to ask of the people here, or rather throw in my two cents. Would you consider selling items by colour an anti-consumer practice? I tend to avoid shops that do that, unless each colour has something unique to it or comes in several colour packs at least for some variety (like, a pack of pastels, a pack of plains, a pack of florals, etc.). But is it anti-consumer or a necessity because each texture is lindens spent to upload it... Regardless, I usually shop where stores often HUDs and sell fatpacks right away without splitting items into a whole rainbow. I definitely wish more creators did that but I guess I understand if it is necessary.

[Resi Pfeffer]

6 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

That kind of inspiration is really missing from the world today. i know so many that used to get bit  by the creative bug, just because others got bit too.

Today it's how to build your avatar, when it used to be ,how to build your world.

I built a lot with prims in the first years of my SL starting in 2007, hardly keeping up with sculpties and then completely left behind when mesh came around the corner.
I do see that as a personal downgrade for my worth being a SL citizen over years, but i dont wanna blame SL for.
Technology evolves and there is  always some people being way better than the majority of us, getting the biggest pieces of the cake.
If LL would have set up some mesh/bento barriers to keep Jon Doe able to build a house himself, people would complain about SL still looking like 2010 in 2020. SL would be more empty and outdated, instead of being fairly crowded and more boring.

I gave up on creating content a lot of years ago, apart from textures for logos, paintjobs, etc.
But every once in a while wonders do happen. After the 20th blender tutorial i tried to follow, i finally found one explaining things matching my vibe, doing things on the screen i was able to understand and to reproduce.

Long story short.
There is no way to turn back time, and no way to get a big chunk of SL users the knowledge they would need to use SL as it was used 15 years ago. Its up to each person and up to how important it is for them to do other things than just using objects bought from other creators.

[Ceka Cianci]

32 minutes ago, Resi Pfeffer said:

I built a lot with prims in the first years of my SL starting in 2007, hardly keeping up with sculpties and then completely left behind when mesh came around the corner.
I do see that as a personal downgrade for my worth being a SL citizen over years, but i dont wanna blame SL for.
Technology evolves and there is  always some people being way better than the majority of us, getting the biggest pieces of the cake.
If LL would have set up some mesh/bento barriers to keep Jon Doe able to build a house himself, people would complain about SL still looking like 2010 in 2020. SL would be more empty and outdated, instead of being fairly crowded and more boring.

I gave up on creating content a lot of years ago, apart from textures for logos, paintjobs, etc.
But every once in a while wonders do happen. After the 20th blender tutorial i tried to follow, i finally found one explaining things matching my vibe, doing things on the screen i was able to understand and to reproduce.

Long story short.
There is no way to turn back time, and no way to get a big chunk of SL users the knowledge they would need to use SL as it was used 15 years ago. Its up to each person and up to how important it is for them to do other things than just using objects bought from other creators.

I'm not looking to turn back time, Just looking at a point where time took a turn and changed, ya to better smoother looking things..But we have so much less than we did before..

There was a time when they sold this thing of, your world your imagination and so much of the world pushed towards that.. Now it's pushing to, your avatar and how you can build it.  Just have a look at the university..

Have a look at the old KB and the new one..

People come here for way different reasons now..Because it's sold as something much different now  than it used to be. that's not my fault or yours or anyone over there..

They can sell it how they want, it's not my world.. I just notice things is all, and looking back isn't always  wishing for back then but maybe  they should find a road up ahead that can get closer to where the users are getting pushed more to something similar again, rather than just buy lindens buy stuff and  upload pictures to flickr and feel that's creating as it gets.

They lost a lot of this feel.. They did not us.

 

Edited January 16, 2023 by Ceka Cianci

[Scylla Rhiadra]

17 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

They have given (some) merchants such power that even when there are independent blogs, there is always the assumption that the bloggers are untrusted and only in it for the freebies .. which is probably correct as actually buying and reviewing would be prohibitively expensive outside of certain niches.

Blogging in SL is interesting. Bloggers almost invariably receive free goods for blogging about them, of course; this is frankly why a good many bloggers blog at all. And they are expected, in return, to highlight those goods in pictures and credits. Failing to showcase -- really, advertise -- those goods to the satisfaction of the merchant will sometimes lead to be dumped.

On the face of it, it is a form of graft, albeit a pretty common one even in RL. But one wouldn't really call it "corrupt" for the simple reason you reference: we all know that this is how it works, and so we don't really trust the bloggers to be objective. We aren't taken in (generally) because we understand (most of us) how the system works.

Finding critiques of goods and services in SL, and most especially thoughtful and measured ones, is therefore difficult. We've got the MP reviews, which are easily gamed and only available for goods purchased on the MP, and we have . . . Virtual Secrets.

It's not a lot to go on.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Actually, it occurs to me that one partial solution would be to permit anyone who purchases an item, whether in-world or on the MP, to write a review on the MP. But I suspect the coding for that would be difficult to impossible to accomplish.

There is the danger, too, of retaliation from creators for poor reviews, but that's always going to be an issue if an critique is transparent. Anonymous critiques are suspect by their very nature.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

13 hours ago, EnCore Mayne said:

the basis of all the problem's we complain about here or amongst ourselves is that LL is incapable of administering any type of "parenting" to its "children".

13 hours ago, EnCore Mayne said:

what's a child to do when they finally realize their parents aren't capable of helping them with their whoas? has that time come for you?

How broadly would you apply this principle?

In RL and SL, there are laws and/or "rules" about harassment and bullying, and so forth, designed to protect people. Would you argue that these are also instances of the "Nanny State," and that everyone should just learn to handle bullies on their own? What about laws against theft? Should we just learn to be more careful, and not expect "authority" to protect us? If so, how does being scammed by an unscrupulous merchant differ?

Were there more and better resources available to protect tenants and consumers, I might be more inclined to agree: the point of this thread is precisely that there aren't. You're telling us that we should learn to fight back, and ignoring the fact that we've been forbidden the use of weapons to do so.

I don't think that many here believe that LL can, or will, step in to institute better and stronger guidelines to protect us from scams and questionable business practices. We all know that that isn't going to happen.

What we are talking about here is how we, the "children," can better empower ourselves so that we can manage the job ourselves.

Edited January 16, 2023 by Scylla Rhiadra
Clarity

[Rolig Loon]

7 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

I can't help but feel that the moment things switched to the new mesh that the whole game changed and narrowed the field of creators..  you can't just pick up the tools anymore and go create and make something for yourself, not without creating most of it outside the world with a curve that is much bigger than the one we used to have.. Let alone the investment into those tools and time of learning them.

That's a very common feeling. My life as a creator certainly changed as mesh started coming to SL. I spent my early years making prim, flexi, and system clothing and selling it primarily in world. I wasn't an inspired designer, but I did well by the standards of those days. As mesh arrived, I learned the basics of Blender but quickly realized that I was no match for the good designers. I've never bothered to try rigging clothes. I still have a few clothing items on my MP store today but the only ones that continue to sell well are lace nighties. I'm out of the clothing business and I haven't had a shop in world since 2014.

On the other hand, I have learned to handle Blender well enough to make small household items for myself and friends, and some of them find their way into my MP shop. I was never destined to be a major vendor, but I have comfortably transformed myself into a hobbyist with just enough mesh and texturing skill to have fun and to create a few things I can be proud of. The transformation has freed me, too, to focus on my primary creative strengths as a scripter. All in all, it's been a comfortable evolution and I have few regrets.

I know several people whose careers in SL have followed a similar path, but there's no denying that most of the really good mesh items these days are made by semi-professionals who spend their creative time outside SL. There are fewer hobbyist creators like me in SL now. In one nostalgic part of my mind, I miss the days when everyone seemed to dabble in making things. We were a world of amateurs.  Another part of my mind, though, recognizes that the average quality of things is much higher now. SL would not have survived the last decade if we were still making things for ourselves out of prims. We have become a world of consumers and we are no longer satisfied with simple things.

[Orwar]

15 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Actually, it occurs to me that one partial solution would be to permit anyone who purchases an item, whether in-world or on the MP, to write a review on the MP. But I suspect the coding for that would be difficult to impossible to accomplish.

   I'm not sure how difficult that would be, but I figure that with there being a lot of different vendor scripts out there it might be pretty iffy. It'd also require the items to be listed on the MP for you to be able to review it, so then stores would just have another reason not to use the MP.

24 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Bloggers almost invariably receive free goods for blogging about them, of course; this is frankly why a good many bloggers blog at all. And they are expected, in return, to highlight those goods in pictures and credits. Failing to showcase -- really, advertise -- those goods to the satisfaction of the merchant will sometimes lead to be dumped.

   Back when I was a blogger manager, it happened on occasion that a blogger would contact me about issues with the products. As they generally got their hands on the products before an event opened, it was almost like having a brief beta phase - but at the same time it wasn't really set up to be one; if a blogger had any issue with the product they were as likely to find a work-around (like finding a different pose or angle, or even post-processing the issues away) as they were to let me know. I also know a lot of bloggers who very frequently talk about dropping certain brands/creators because of the frequency of troubles they have with their products, and I know that a lot of creators and brand managers aren't entirely open for criticism; sometimes the bloggers won't say anything because they're afraid they might get dropped for being problematic (which, frankly, strikes me as appalling). 

   At the same time, I know that creators get themselves into the same kind of stressful situations as the bloggers do; just like bloggers sign up for as many brands as they can (because more free stuff!) and get burnt out by the workload, creators often feel compelled to sign up for as many events as possible and churn out as many releases as possible to keep their business afloat, which may have a deteriorating effect on their quality of work.

   Both the blogger and the creator aspects can easily become very troublesome if your motivation becomes material gain rather than passion for what you're doing. But for some people in some parts of the world, the SL economy just is strong enough to pay rent and keep food on the table even as a smaller clothing brand if you just get into enough events, and for the same reason, blogging can be extremely attractive because cashing in a few $s on a whim to buy a bit of virtual clothing just isn't viable option for everyone - especially with the current economical situation around the world. 

[EnCore Mayne]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

In RL and SL, there are laws and/or "rules" about harassment and bullying, and so forth, designed to protect people. Would you argue that these are also instances of the "Nanny State," and that everyone should just learn to handle bullies on their own? What about laws against theft? Should we just learn to be more careful, and not expect "authority" to protect us? If so, how does being scammed by an unscrupulous merchant differ?

Were there more and better resources available to protect tenants and consumers, I might be more inclined to agree: the point of this thread is precisely that there aren't. You're telling us that we should learn to fight back, and ignoring the fact that we've been forbidden the use of weapons to do so.

I don't think that many here believe that LL can, or will, step in to institute better and stronger guidelines to protect us from scams and questionable business practices. We all know that that isn't going to happen.

What we are talking about here is how we, the "children," can better empower ourselves so that we can manage the job ourselves.

perhaps i should have used another analogy.

my attempt at opining a scenario we might find thought provoking wasn't to aid in debating the thread's focus. however one interprets its mental images that may be rolling around in one's head, they were intended to invoke a mature attitude towards the failures or foibles of our common plight. i may be wrong. perhaps one day the real sun will really break through the digital pixels we're staring at. i'm not going to tell you you're wrong in believing it will.

i've encountered more than my share of  ghastly behaviour inworld. suffice it to say that i feel equally frustrated by their every instance. and on each occasion, depending on its severity of harm to me or my concept of its harm to others awaiting the insanity to be confronted by it or the perpetrator, i deal with it using the tools the game provides.

airing a social, moral, or ethical deficiency of another member onto a public forum, while entertaining for its communal significance, does nothing to solve the slight. the best we can do is rile up the guards enough to suspend communications outright. there's just no way of avoiding it. we're not going to be handing out pitchforks for the raid at midnight [anymore].

essentially, the chasm between our definitions of RL and SL, is far wider than what can be conceived by the use of their relevant acronyms appearing in written form. SL is not the real world. it isn't now nor will it ever be. it's a platform for real people to do what their minds and skills allow them. all manner of beasts come through those portals. no one tells them what to do or how to do it. if they step on someone's toes, bat you over the head with a brick, or any number of assaults to your pixelated doll, relax; it's just a game.

unless you've got some serious money in it, then it's war.

prepare yourself for what you make of it. "serious" is real world. watch out.

[EliseAnne85]

5 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Finding critiques of goods and services in SL, and most especially thoughtful and measured ones, is therefore difficult. We've got the MP reviews, which are easily gamed and only available for goods purchased on the MP, and we have . . . Virtual Secrets.

It's not a lot to go on.

I'm not a big fan of critiques, even in the real world, because I believe they are gamed or paid for mostly.  So, I'm skeptical about them in general whether rl or sl.  The demo usually tells me everything I want to know.  

But, what I think I am hearing from some threads lately is a) Why are a lot creators not telling us in the ad what the perms are, and b) the Huds for fatpacks and what will work or change on the single item is confusing, thus are creators deliberately doing this so people will pay more money and just buy the fatpack.  

I just don't know.  It's either laziness or deliberate to encourage people to buy the fatpack.  I, myself, do not encounter confusing huds like this very often.

But, Scylla, you brought up consumer protection via external websites.  First of all, how can one prove this is a deceptive practice and not just pure laziness because first of all creators want a sale and with these confusing huds they are losing sales I'd assume.  I don't buy confusing hud stuff.  However, there is a demo and no one is putting a gun to anyone's head to buy anything, so I don't know if there is a need to warn people or not with external websites if you take into account real scary consumer products in real life such as cigarettes wherein the cigarette companies were putting "stuff" inside cigarettes to make them more addictive without the consumer knowing.  There are usually real serious reasons for consumer watchdogs or whistleblowers in rl.  I just don't see it so seriously with SL, not to mention no one is forced to buy a product with a confusing demo.  

I also wanted to say that I think you or someone else brought up deceptive practices.  What the cigarette companies did by putting more addictive ingredients into cigarettes and not telling their consumers was a deceptive practice.  Making a confusing hud is not.  There are a gazillion and one other things without confusing huds people can buy.

Perhaps holding classes on how to have a successful business in SL would be more helpful.

Edited January 17, 2023 by EliseAnne85

[Sammy Huntsman]

On 1/13/2023 at 6:49 PM, Love Zhaoying said:

- Must have both a Marketplace and in-world store. Must sell at the same price in both.

 

Why should all creators have both? I mean I actively encourage creators to start out with an MP store only. Due to the fact, that they are A just starting out and B probably don't have the money to be able to afford to have both MP and Inworld Stores. 

 

On 1/13/2023 at 6:49 PM, Love Zhaoying said:

- Must have a support group.

 

Also to this, again this falls on if a creator is just starting out. You can't expect them to drop a tonne of money into having an actual inworld store, and a support group. That is just ridiculous. I mean if I wanted to just start out, that would be an insane and entitled ask of anyone, to tell me that I require an inworld and MP store. Especially since I want to make money first, and then worry about all those other things later on. 

[Resi Pfeffer]

14 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

There was a time when they sold this thing of, your world your imagination and so much of the world pushed towards that.. Now it's pushing to, your avatar and how you can build it.  Just have a look at the university..

You are right, and i also miss the old times a little.
But buying and dressing up an avatar is actually one of the very few things that can be done and learned in a reasonable amount of time.
And there is also something like group pressure, im sure. I lived close to blake sea (not mainland) for a while, and whenever one of the new neighbors rezzed a self built house, a few of us (including me) got a little upset about the uglyness of the "brick" placed there, and shortly after the landlord also asked the tennant to get a home from the MP they can approve to match the regions theme.

[Ceka Cianci]

15 minutes ago, Resi Pfeffer said:

You are right, and i also miss the old times a little.
But buying and dressing up an avatar is actually one of the very few things that can be done and learned in a reasonable amount of time.
And there is also something like group pressure, im sure. I lived close to blake sea (not mainland) for a while, and whenever one of the new neighbors rezzed a self built house, a few of us (including me) got a little upset about the uglyness of the "brick" placed there, and shortly after the landlord also asked the tennant to get a home from the MP they can approve to match the regions theme.

I'm hoping the NUX kind of changes that up some.. This way they might  hit the ground running in other directions, rather than getting sucked up so soon into the events scene vacuum, where they end up falling prey to creator groupies... I swear creator groupies are the worst.. hehehe

Seriously, I just hope that  The NUX will get them aimed in a wider variety of directions and less, omg help me set my avatar up.. that just takes them right to one road that many get stuck on..

 

[EliseAnne85]

5 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

I'm hoping the NUX kind of changes that up some.. This way they might  hit the ground running in other directions, rather than getting sucked up so soon into the events scene vacuum, where they end up falling prey to creator groupies... I swear creator groupies are the worst.. hehehe

Seriously, I just hope that  The NUX will get them aimed in a wider variety of directions and less, omg help me set my avatar up.. that just takes them right to one road that many get stuck on..

 

I was thinking the same about NUX.  Get a halfway decent avatar and some stuff and then go out and about and see what this world called SL is.  

I think Gacha changed the SL world into mesh things more than anything, especially when the items were being sold for super cheap on the resale market.  Now, most want mesh, except one place I do hang out mostly, which is Raglan Shire.  It still pretty much looks the same as it did 18 years ago.  It has little to almost no mesh.  I'm not even sure if the Shire has many sculpties even.  They don't want to change it because it is for everyone to build with non-mesh, non-sculpty stuff.  It's to build for fun, not perfection like mesh.

Edited January 17, 2023 by EliseAnne85